| > the idea that you have to be "passionate about computers" to do the job is one of those things that men have made up to exclude women. I didn't say that they need passion. I am saying, however, that I am less likely to go into medicine because I am not interested in it. Maybe the same could be the case for women? (meaning, if there is a general trend that less women are interested, then less will join said field of work, because it is their choice not to). > That logic implies that those women are not qualified for the job and that you could never build a gender balanced team with qualified women. You have a good point. This sentence does have a negative connotation as you say, but it is not exclusively said. Could it also be possible that a push to hire more females (explicitly because of needed gender balance, something that is, in my opinion, contrived) has happened enough recently that people's minds go there first? > Until we make gender balanced teams the norm people are going to keep thinking like that, which is why it is so important to take corrective action. Interesting point. I'm not willing to say you're wrong, because you might be right. I'll admit, I thought that less women graduate with CS degrees than men though. Am I wrong? If not, how do we get more women to enter that major? And what if they don't want to simply because they're not interested? edit: I appreciate that we can talk about this btw, and that you seem to respect my opinion. I think this is a valuable part of this discussion. Thanks. |
This is absolutely true but it is also true that there are many successful people working in the tech industry at all levels with very little formal comp sci education.
If men can get software engineering jobs with no formal comp sci education, which they certainly can, then the fact that there is an imbalance in degrees does not mean that we have to have an imbalance in employment.
The low representation of women in CS at university level needs to be addressed as well but the best way to do that is by making software development a job that women want and believe that they can succeed in.
People go to college to get training for a career and so if women feel like software development is a profession that excludes women they aren't going to waste their time and money training for it.
"the percentage of CS-degree holders who were women peaked in the 1980s at 34% and has been on a downward trend ever since, even though women currently earn 57% of all undergraduate degrees."
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/cracking-the-code:-why-aren...
The fact that there has been a sharp decline in female participation in CS in just the past few decades demonstrates that this is a temporary anomaly and not some "fundamental difference between genders" and further demonstrates that large changes are possible with the correct policies.