[Someguywhatever]

>to the difficulties they had getting/staying in the field despite having a strong desire to be there/here

Why isn't it ok that they just aren't interested in it? Women have agency and intelligence and if they want to do something then they can and will do it.

I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X". So it's not a generic effort to understand a gender disparity, it is a specific directed effort to force women (who have agency and freedom) to go into a field that they don't really seem that interested in. Blaming men for women not taking CS degrees either directly or indirectly IMO denies womens agency and is totally unnecessary.

I think women are doing what they want to do, and they largely don't want to take CS it seems. Maybe if society stopped nagging them about it the situation might change organically.

[blihp]

It's perfectly fine for women not to be interested in CS or any other field. There's probably a nature/nurture argument to be made for some of the disparity but that doesn't explain all of it. For example, one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts, another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here. Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'? Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place? To me, that's a problem. If a woman doesn't want to be in a field, sure that's their choice. If they're actively discouraged from it, that's a problem.

I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers. I'm not talking about good-natured joking around on the job or even flirting, but rather something that in retrospect I can honestly say was discrimination. I also recall that in those situations, I was in no position to do anything about it so it's not like speaking up would have helped... more likely I would have been shortly out of a gig myself.

[weberc2]

I fully agree with you, and I'm really interested in understanding how pervasive these issues are--if they are as pervasive as some claim, then we should absolutely take corresponding action.

The puzzling thing is that many of the proponents of the "sexism => gender disparity" hypothesis seem to regard digging deeper into their claims as sexism. It's almost as though they think "not being sexist" demands that we only sample/write-about/etc those women-in-tech who have horror stories about workplace sexism and anything else is "denying their lived experiences" or some such.

For example, when I try to understand why women in medicine and law in the 80s and 90s were so much more successful than women in tech today, proponents of the discrimination hypothesis come after me like I've committed some grievous moral infraction.

[stcredzero]

Can any men here seriously recall in a professional context a boss referring to their 'package'?

I can recall someone who did that before he became my manager.

Or that they should leave the field so that some more deserving woman could take their place?

I know a man who was told almost exactly that by a professor. (Minus the woman specifier.)

[skj]

> Minus the woman specifier.

So, "you should leave this field so someone more deserving can have a place"? When you take out the gender qualifier it doesn't seem so ominous.

[weberc2]

Right. Was she asked to leave so someone more deserving (who happened to be a man) could take her place, or was she asked to leave so a man (who happened to be more deserving) could take her place? It seems like someone went out of their way to make the phrasing unusually ambiguous, as though they wanted to make an accusation of sexism but with plausible deniability in case they get called out (motte & bailey fallacy?).

[stcredzero]

Are you referring to my comment? My comment involves a man being told that.

[weberc2]

No, I was referring to the original comment or comments of this form generally.

[Someguywhatever]

>one of the women in the article referenced a boss commenting about her breasts

This is not a problem that's unique to STEM or CS or anything like that though.

>another talked about being encouraged to drop out so a more deserving man could take her place... that's not lack of interest, that's actively discouraging those who want to be here

Again, I don't see that as a problem thats particularly tied to CS or programming or STEM or whatever. I'm not saying its not a problem but thats simply a general problem. I mean a woman could literally name any field and state those reasons and it would have the same impact, and be equally as bad, but those aren't problems specific to the field of STEM or CS or programming or whatever.

>I've been in more than one professional situation where I was made uncomfortable with how a co-worker or manager was referring to female candidates/co-workers

I've literally been in the room when my boss made weird sexual comments to a female coworker. We looked at each other wide-eyed like neither of us could believe this was really happening, and it was like something out of a training video it was so stereotypical. She thought it was weird but it didn't really phase her, she just let it pass and didn't call him out on it. I think he was just socially weird and didn't realize how his comment would be received until he saw our faces. Nobody said anything and we just carried on with our meeting. She seemed to just take it as "this happens occasionally" almost like encountering road rage on the highway, like I'm not going to give up driving because some people are annoying. I think she took this type of attitude.

These things happen and the level of behavior control/policing that would be required to eliminate such occurrences would be onerous. The cure would be worse than the disease in my opinion. Particularly heinous harrasment can already be dealt with in the legal sphere. I don't want to hand wave it away but, I don't think it can be eliminated in a practical way TBH.

[majormajor]

> I find this whole obsession with "Women in X" to be suspicious because nobody is interested in gender disparities in other fields and starting up "Men in X".

A quick google search turns up groups for and mainstream media discussion of men in nursing and men in teaching.

Is it "suspicious" that one that you as an engineer see the most of is the one that (a) involves your own field and (b) involves a currently-extremely-prominent-in-media-overall field (fake news, election meddling, self-driving cars, Uber, etc)?

[Someguywhatever]

I don't think you can honestly argue that there is as significant an effort to get men into Nursing as there is to get women into programming.

[majormajor]

I think anyone who reads HN or other tech media is incredibly disproportionately overexposed to the tech gender conversation compared to the general public.

It just isn't a thing that registers much for the non-engineering people I know.

I have no idea how much I'd see discussion about men in nursing if I was a nurse. I know a few (women) nurse, it's something they've mentioned occasionally, same with teachers. But in both cases, you see much less of anything about those fields in the news right now.

[weberc2]

The fact that major media publications carry stories on gender in tech but not in nursing, teaching, etc (or at least very infrequently) is a pretty good indication that the issue in tech gets more promotion. And this shouldn't surprise anyone; women's issues in general enjoy quite a lot more promotion than men's issues (e.g., "wage gap" vs workplace fatality gap, breast cancer vs prostate cancer, sexual assault vs literally every other kind of assault, etc).

[Someguywhatever]

This is me with my tinfoil hat on, but I think the real reason behind the push to get women into tech is to drive down wages by growing the labor pool. That's the real reason IMO that big companies and others are pushing so hard for women to code and to get into STEM. I don't think that these big companies really care about women or anything, but doubling the labor pool and thus driving down wages, now that's something I can really see big corps getting on board with.

[weberc2]

Hey, there are dozens of us! Dozens!

[dnautics]

conversely no one is asking why there aren't more women in oil drilling.