As a woman in technology, a coder no less, I totally understand the pipeline problem. Men dominated technology in the very early days, and men made up most of the workforce. As much as society, government, and education attempt to force women into STEM fields, it's going to take a while before there are enough women, with enough experience, to truly equalize compensation. As for girls opting out of coding, that's ok.. Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and that should not be see as some failure.
> Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and that should not be see as some failure.
It's also true that not all boys want to code, and not all boys want to take a STEM path.
But what if a larger percentage of boys want to code or take a STEM path? If this were so, it would look like a pipeline problem, and it would look like a pipeline problem that's quite hard to fix. It might actually look like the reality we currently see.
But wait, it used to be that computer science was almost evenly split between men and women, right? Where did all those women go?
This is a reasonable question to ask, but it's not the only reasonable question to ask. Another question to ask would be: 50 years ago, what percentage of the overall population had computer science degrees? And is that percentage larger, smaller, or roughly similar to what it is today? I don't know, but I think it was likely much, much smaller than it is today. It might be the case that there are more female computer science graduates today as a percentage of the total population than there was 50 years ago. But how could that be true, if (as we know) men with computer science degrees now way outnumber women with computer science degrees?
This isn't really a trick question, the answer is pretty easy: Today there are a lot more people with computer science degrees. That increase was disproportionately men, and that's a consequence of a pipeline that is disproportionately men.
So what's the difference between the pipeline 50 years ago and the pipeline today?
But what if a larger percentage of boys want to code or take a STEM path? If this were so, it would look like a pipeline problem, and it would look like a pipeline problem that's quite hard to fix. It might actually look like the reality we currently see.
Why is that a problem? Why is it something to fix? Why do we want to achieve perfect 50% ratios on people's motivations and desires?
I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get more support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.
What is glamorous in middle school and high school ? Well, the jobs the people "in power" at such institutions have, and in their own families. So Mom's job (the carer's job, because most families have a carer and a provider or at least have those roles be unbalanced and of course most contact will be with the carer, not the provider). The teacher's job. Caring jobs in general. And of course the "in power" jobs on TV. Men are immediately discouraged from doing that and so they skip ... what of course turns out to be mostly undesirable roles. Which make these women easily exploitable, and perhaps there ought to be some discussion of why that is such a big problem for anyone.
Maybe what needs to happen is we need to start telling women of age 10-12 "you know, in 10 years, a bit more, you'll need to support yourself, maybe a family. And as a teacher, carer job, or mom, it'll suck. You'll be low on the scale, and dependent. Think about it now and save yourself a lot of pain later".
20 years later (because that's how long it inevitably takes) we'll have a majority women, because they really do outcompete men on average given the chance. I mean, I do agree there's no way in hell this will ever happen, but one can dream.
>I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get more support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.
This is actually an interesting point and I haven't been able to find information about it.
Lets say we have X amount of women who are going into STEM... but say for example I used to live in the Detroit area. The universities at the time I was about to head into post-secondary were offering 'scholarships' where women who took their first year in engineering, would get the rest of their education for free and most of the engineering credits would act as wildcard credits toward any other degree if they chose to switch.
So perhaps we lack women in IT because they went to engineering instead?
>I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get more support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.
There might be something to this. I've anecdotally read somewhere that there are now more women in med school and law school than men. If that's true, and women are over-represented in even higher-echelon pipelines, are they funneling women away from comp sci? It's not the solution, certainly, but the answer to that question might be interesting.
Because the focus of the article is about how the gender gap/discrimination in tech issue is nuanced, and the other is literally talking about default stereotypes in tech and how they are damaging.
Literally, the article invoked a stereotype, because the overwhelmingly common stereotype is damaging.
Not sure what you're saying, but it sounds like we're kind of agreeing, maybe? It just seems pointless to urge that we quit using tired tropes to solve a problem, but then immediately invoke another trope to make your point.
Are men coding alone in their basements really the problem?
The problem here was me hearing what sounded like a knee-jerk-y reply to commenting on a stereotype, which usually means the conversation will descend into a horror pit. Language and behavioral conditioning does weird things.
The article claims that prospective girls see "men in hoodies coding alone in their basements" as role models. That's obviously not an accurate view of software engineering but is it really the view that teenagers have? If so, that's a real problem.
> Girls in elementary school show equal interest and aptitude as boys when it comes to coding
That might be true today, but it's a steaming crock of made-up bullshit if they're saying it was that way 15 years ago. You know... At the beginning of the pipeline that would have produced an even distribution today.
Gender gap isn't a problem to solve. It may be a symptom of many things, such as harrassment, discouragement, discrimination, or environmental biases that make women less comfortable than men. Gender gap is smoke, go find fires the need to be put out, and solve those. Otherwise you'll slam into a wall because the "optimal" ratio does not exist and has no consensus, but specific harmful behaviors and and systems are indefensible.
I agree with you. It's frustrating when we focus on symptoms instead of the root causes, which are deeply encoded in our culture. It just makes it that much harder.
It's also frustrating when it's not discussed at all. It's hard to bring up the biases and subtle discrimination that occurs as a PoC without making a privileged person run for the hills.
I applaud people whose job is focused on bringing change to organizations. I can't imagine how difficult it is to do this work effectively.
I think you misunderstand the purpose behind those pushing the gender wage gap narrative. Virtually everyone realizes the reality of why the gender wage gap exists and how it's not because of harassment, discouragement, discrimination, or environmental biases. That includes the people who are pushing the narrative. They aren't stupid, they know they are wrong.
Instead they have a different goal. They are collectivists. Their goal is that everyone gets paid exactly the same regardless of what job they do. They want a university professor to be paid the same as an elementary teacher.
Their goal is Marxism/Communism/Socialism. You can't argue with them that a professor should be paid more because of education and skills; because they dont consider those as reasons to be paid more or less.
One stat I've never seen in these types of discussions are how many women are applying for tech positions vs men. If that number is low then it's probably a pipeline issue.
I think the article is trying to say that the state of the pipeline is what it is because of the way that the end of it appears to those who might be in the beginning of it. Young women aren't going to stay in the pipeline for a career that looks like they will have a hard time excelling in once they reach adulthood.
Despite my distaste for the authors invoking basement coder stereotypes, I can see their point. We can keep blaming the "pipeline" if the industry is rife with sexism and harassment. Our current state of affairs influences the pipeline.
Sexism and harassment is even more prevalent in the entertainment industry and there are plenty of women working in entertainment. Although I agree sexism/harassment exists in tech, I don't believe it's a valid argument for why there is a gender gap.
Male and female actors rarely compete for the same roles. Many other jobs in the entertainment industry are dominated by men. Orchestras used to be, but blind auditions made them more balanced. Just pointing to the entertainment industry doesn't disprove a connection between sexism and gender imbalance.
Yeah, I certainly don't know either. I'm just saying that arguing that it _is_ a pipeline issue based on the stats vs. saying that it's a culture issue that affects the pipeline is just two people talking past each other.