The Readers of Hacker News: 86% male

[derekc]

https://www.google.com/adplanner/#siteSearch?identifier=news.ycombinator.com&geo=US&trait_type=1&lp=false

Another interesting statistic: 100% of us all went to "some college" or beyond?

[ArcticCelt]

Wow 14% female! That's at least 5 times mores than in my computers science classes. (no joke)

[oz]

During my year at uni, there were about 12 girls out of the 120 cohort. Strangely, that also works out to 14%...

[WiseWeasel]

> there were about 12 girls out of the 120 cohort. Strangely, that also works out to 14%

That would be strange, since it's 10% according to my maths.

[pkulak]

That's not a great ad for your university's math department...

[oz]

That's a good excuse for why I dropped out...

[oz]

Oops! Guess that's why I failed Pre-Cal...

[BigEd781]

Even if these numbers are accurate, who cares? Get ready for a shock; men and women are different. We think differently, act differently, and like different things. Why is that bad?

[_delirium]

There seem to be changes over time that are larger than genetic drift could account for, though. For example, in 1985, about 35% of undergrad CS degrees were awarded to women, while in 2008, it was 18%. What caused the proportion to drop in half over that time period?

[WiseWeasel]

Because clearly, we (especially you) are creating a hostile environment for women on Hacker News, by our stubborn refusal to up-vote more cat-related stories.

/ducks

[gphil]

Now that I think about it, it's always felt 100% male to me. Can any females speak up and prove me wrong?

[AmberShah]

Really? REALLY?

sigh...

[nearestneighbor]

Sorry, but both of these stats are bullshit.

[sparkiegeek]

100% when you look at data for UK, though it appears we're less educated - 23% "High School"

[gstar]

Per capita, people in the UK are more likely to have a degree - they converted all tertiary schools (formerly polytechnics) into universities in 1992.

[Mistone]

shocking.lol. while def has correlations to the dev/startup community, HN is a very low design site, super info driven, seems like that would appeal more to male demo then female.

[AmberShah]

I don't think it has anything to do with the design or the fact that it's info driven as it does the type of content. 12% was the amount of females graduating in computer science last time I checked, so it actually matches up pretty well.

[chc]

Seriously, any other explanation for this is like noticing that 50% of the US population doesn't have a uterus and deciding, "Well, birth control is very popular in more highly developed nations, so maybe Americans commonly have their reproductive systems removed."

[genericone]

I wouldn't say its a very 'low' design site as much as it is a very 'simply' designed site. I find HN to be very easily browsed and wouldn't have it any other way. The simple design shouldn't have any bearing on the number of female visitors to HN.

[Mistone]

disagree, there are the blatantly obvious reasons as stated in comments above. Women do read tech news sites but I think HN design is more appealing to men. Not the core reason for the audience stat but an aside.