[DBYCZ]

Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science.

If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.

[ajross]

What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome?

I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to exclude them from medicine as recently as our parents' generation.

So... given a choice between "tech is fundamentally different from medicine and chicks don't like it" and "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion", I'm taking the later as the obvious hypothesis.

[manfredo]

The gender equality paradox is one strong example. Contrary to the narrative that women don't go into tech because of restrictive gender roles, the countries with the greatest amounts of gender equality, the highest male child rearing participation, the most generous parental leave, the smallest wage gap, etc. actually have the lowest rates of women in tech. By comparison the countries that have the most restrictive gender roles and worst gender inequality have some of the highest percentages of women in tech. The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech. Many gender- oppressive middle eastern and southeast Asian countries have a figure in the 30% or even 40% ballpark.

Edit, here's an article explaining this since judging by subsequent comments I may have done a poor job: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

[ajross]

Why is that "tech" and not just "time"?

Tech careers have only been spoken of as such for about a quarter century. Where were scandanavian female doctors as far as representation in the 1970s?

I mean, you're still sort of sidestepping the issue, but you brought up the analogy: what is it about tech that is fundamentally more gender-selective than medicine?

[manfredo]

I think you're missing the core point. It's not that industries are selective of gender. It's that people are selective of the industry they work in, and on average women select things other than tech. The agency is on the part of people.

So the less restrictions there are on gender roles, the more agency people have to select fields based on their own preferences.

[ajross]

No no, I get your point. I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument.

Basically, you're saying "chicks don't like tech", and I'm saying "prove it". And you won't. And then you try to tell me that I'm missing the point because I failed to note that chicks don't like tech.

[manfredo]

> I'm saying there's a much more obvious hypothesis for why "people are selective of the industry they work in", and you need to refute that instead of circularly insisting on its truth as the basis for your argument.

...no? It's your responsibility to provide evidence for your "much more obvious hypothesis". I provided evidence for my claim that women choose not to go into tech on their own volition. I provided global statistics that demonstrate that the more freedom and equality women have, the less they choose to go into tech. I did "prove it" as you insist I need to do, so I'm confused why you continue to say that I have not provided evidence . It's your turn to provide evidence in refutation of this claim.

The way you keep summarizing this as "chicks don't like tech" and insisting that I provide evidence of my claim while simultaneously calling your explanation "much more obvious" without providing evidence to back it up is not indicative of a good faith discussion.

[kansface]

If women have surpassed parity in other (far more demanding), more prestigious and better paying fields, why do you think that at the same time, the trend went in the other direction in our field? Do you think the tech workers of Silicon Valley - probably the most left leaning white collar professionals in the most left leaning part of the country simultaneously put up barriers for women at the same time that doctors and lawyers were taking them down? Do you think that demographic became more sexist from the 70s to the 10s to the exclusion of women?

[belorn]

> I'm saying "prove it".

There is a rather obvious finding in a study quite a long time ago that simplistically said: individuals in a group who belonging to a minority feel less secure than those individuals belonging to a majority.

From there we can make a relative small jump to say that when everything else is equal, individuals like to feel safe over not feeling safe. In additional when faced with adversity, how safe a individual feel has a strong potential to effect the outcome.

Those points is actually from a gender study looking at gender segregation. It doesn't say anything about "chicks don't like tech" or that "dudes don't like teaching", nor is parent comment.

[PhasmaFelis]

> The Scandinavian countries have 10-20% women in tech.

Wait, 10%-20% of what? 20% of all women (or all men) involved in tech work seems like a lot.

[manfredo]

Female representation in tech. I meant that 10-20% of tech workers are women.

[camelNotation]

It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

[krastanov]

Is it not important to understand where these choices come from? Not because we have to enforce any particular distribution of genders, rather because it is useful to understand any differences that exist and whether they are truly personal choices.

[Grustaf]

Surely the reason is obvious, as it pervades all of society. Women are, generally speaking, more interested in people than men are, and men are more interested in things. Yes there is a big overlap, and yes there are plenty of exceptions, but the trend is very clear. And yes it is present from birth, so it can’t be just society.

[UncleMeat]

> Surely the reason is obvious

Most human behavior is not obvious on close inspection. And when what seems "obvious" happens to align with traditional expectations of historically oppressed groups we should be very very skeptical of our personal gut feelings.

[Grustaf]

It’s not just a gut feeling though, there is plenty of scientific evidence. And given our evolutionary history and the fact that women give birth, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that women are more interested in people.

I really don’t see the point in denying this, it certainly doesn’t benefit women. Most women probably wouldn’t like to be men.

[camelNotation]

Sure it's important and maybe one day we will understand:

1. Why it happens

2. Whether or not it is positive or negative

3. How to engineer society to work differently

But as it stands now, we don't know any of that and programs that try to force women into STEM fields are just weird. I mean, I am all for programs that help them feel welcome and accepted and uninhibited in STEM careers because some of them do choose to be programmers and such and they should be respected and treated fairly. But programs that look at the gender gap and assume it is a problem that needs to be fixed are just dumb.

[jrs95]

Well the people that profit from this kind of narrative haven't gotten enough corporate influence and money from beating us over the head with it yet so it has to continue.

[ajross]

> There is no problem to solve.

Which is exactly what people said about unrepresented demographics in career XXX, for literally every XXX of the past few centuries in which the representation has since normalized. The example above was medicine, but we can play it with any high-status career you want: law, government, corporate middle management, academics, finance... Back up a hundred years and there were effectively no women (or african americans, pick your demographic) in those careers. Now they're much closer to parity.

And in all those cases, small-c conservatives interested in preserving the status quo trotted out all sorts of arguments just like this. And they were wrong every time.

So tell me again how your cool bit of jargon makes this all go away like magic?

[dang]

Could you please stop prosecuting your points with edgy snark on HN? You've done it an awful lot.

I realize it's frustrating when it feels like you're surrounded by people who are wrong and unfriendly (and believe me I know how that feels), but everyone here needs to stick to the site guidelines no matter how wrong other people are or one feels they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[SuoDuanDao]

The gender equality paradox is the observation that offering men and women more freedom increases the degree to which they self-select. In other words, offering people more freedom of choice increases the under-representation.

The alternative - shaming women who do not go into tech - is unpalatable to most.

[ajross]

The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. It's being vastly misapplied here, and the authors of that study (it was one study) would be horrified to see this rhetoric.

Go back and look at the scatter plot. It's a weak, but real correlation. The random deltas between nations are well above the significance of the gender signal. There's good science to be argued about there.

But it's being used here to justify an outrageous outlier. Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude. Nothing from that study argues for this kind of effect, nothing at all.

[tth3uoku]

>The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. Lumping everyone who mentions it together and othering them does not seem constructive.

>Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude.

How can you be sure? Men are on average more interested in working with things, and women are on average more interested in working with people [1]. "...non-biology STEM majors showed lower [people-orientation] and higher [thing-orientation] interests than biology and health majors."[2] Self-efficacy and competence beliefs tend to be a factor that keep women away from tech [3]. The Gender Equality Paradox also mentions competency as a factor.

1. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018... 3. https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will-i-...

[manfredo]

> But it's being used here to justify an outrageous outlier. Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude. Nothing from that study argues for this kind of effect, nothing at all.

This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Tech is not an "outrageous outlier". there are plenty of jobs that are over 95% male and female respectively: https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/segregation-work-ame...

Here's a much larger list: https://fourpillarfreedom.com/visualizing-u-s-occupational-e...

Software isn't an outlier. In terms of representation of men, it's just behind "printing press operators" and just ahead of "taxi drivers and chauffeurs". Women are about as overrepresented in "File clerks" and "loan interviewers and clerks".

Software is an "outrageous outlier".

[iagovar]

Ok, so let's have 50 more years of social engineering. What would you do if the trend does not reverse? Would that be enough for you?

[msluyter]

Shouting "gender equality paradox!" doesn't warrant a mic drop. Aside from particular policies in Scandinavian countries that might actually limit women's options[1], the underlying issue is we don't know what a "natural" allocation by gender in STEM might look like. It's not like we can eliminate all societal/cultural barriers in a given population and run an experiment over time to observe how many women self select into STEM in some context free state of nature.

And so, while we might hypothesize that a "natural/biologically driven" allocation be uneven (and I'm willing to grant), we have no idea by how much. Perhaps it's really 95/5, or who knows, perhaps it's 60/40.

The argument that where we're at now is where we should be (and thus why we shouldn't try to eliminate various obstacles to entry) is really just a form of status quo bias. It's the same argument that's been used over the years to justify why women couldn't go to college, be lawyers, etc... etc...

[1] https://capx.co/what-jordan-peterson-gets-wrong-about-the-no...

[mpweiher]

> particular policies in Scandinavian countries

The gender-equality paradox does not just apply to Scandinavian countries, but reproduces pretty much around the world: female participation in engineering etc. is inversely proportional to HDI.

In fact, it even reproduces over time! I think we can all agree that, for example, the US is more egalitarian now than it was in the past. Yet female participation in CS has actually dropped since the 60s or 70s.

> we don't know what a "natural" allocation by gender in STEM might look like

This is both true and, maybe somewhat surprisingly, irrelevant. The reason is that the GEP is not about the absolute levels, but about the sign of the change. To be more precise:

If your hypothesis is that "societal forces/sexism/oppression are the main causes for lack of female representation", then you would expect higher levels of participation in societies that are generally more egalitarian and more free than in societies that are generally less egalitarian or not free, regardless of the absolute levels.

So your theory demands that there is a positive correlation between HDI and STEM participation.

If there were no correlation, that would probably already disprove that hypothesis.

However, it is worse than that, much worse, because the correlation is actually negative. I have to admit that this stunned me, as it apparently stunned the researchers working in the field, because it is such an unexpected and hugely significant result.

And once again, absolute levels are completely irrelevant here, it's just pretty clear that when you remove oppression, you get more gender-segregated workplaces at least when it comes to the empathising/systematising divide.

> The argument that where we're at now is where we should be

Who "should" be deciding where we "should" be? To me, it should be the people who decide what they want to do. If many more women than men now decide to go into veterinary medicine (used to be the other way around), who are we to second-guess them? If many more women than men prefer to go into early childhood education, who is to say that this is "wrong"?

That's the part I really don't understand, quite frankly.

[BearsAreCool]

I think it is misleading to use the lowering rates of women in computer science as proof of anything, especially when you look back to the 60s or 70s. Unlike many scientific fields computer science was much more of a womans field when it started off than it is now, for instance (and I am aware this is quite possibly cherry picking) if you look at images of the bletchely park codebreakers who worked on the origial turing machines to break encryption you'll notice a majority are women. One explanation I found of why this changed in america was the marketting of console video games, up until around the 90s these were not sold as toys and when it came for atari and such to choose between marketting to boys or girls, they chose to sell to boys, leading to connections between boys and computers or electronics.

I don't think this has anything to do with how sexist america is at any time, but rather how the gender roles have changed over a relatively short time period.

[Grustaf]

Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers.

It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this.

Surely this is a more plausible explanation why there are more women in medicine than in programming?

[wsy]

Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the girls want to become pilot. Excerpts from this feature are available here (only in German): https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/beru...

[Grustaf]

Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise.

For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation?

No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.

[wsy]

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies?

I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls.

Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.

[Grustaf]

I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!

[Grustaf]

Also, since medicine is so much more prestiguous than programming, and probably at least as well paid, why do you even want women to go into programming? Why not let ambitious women study medicine, law and whatever else they do, and be rich and happy?

[jrs95]

Because any male dominated space is seen as a threat and must be eliminated, even if men initially gravitated into that space partly due to social rejection outside of it.

[black-tea]

It's sad how far down you have to go to find the truth in these comments, even if it's only for a moment while the drones downvote it out of visibility.

[black-tea]

All these kinds of studies just expect me to believe that the result is a good thing. Girls want to become pilots? Why is that good? Do we have a shortage of pilots? Would having a female pilot improve your flying experience?

How about making more women want to do manual labour? There is a huge shortage of women in those industries.

[wsy]

It is an empirical experiment, it only expects you to acknowledge that girls will become interested in male-dominated professions when getting in contact with the right role models. That is a fact, good/bad does not apply.

Now, indeed it is an additional question if we should foster such career choices for girls. My personal opinion is: the people most talented for it should become pilots. By further opening this career for girls, the talent pool is increased. Consequently, the pilots who make it will be more talented on average.

Some boys who could have become pilots in the past will now not be able to, because now their talent isn't sufficient anymore. Why should they be protected from the competition?

And to get back to the original topic, we indeed do have a shortage of software developers, so having more female developers would also benefit our economy.

[philonoist]

You see, this is the problem when logic is expounded using clever syllogisms.

First of all, If an empirical experiment expects me to only acknowledge something, then it will raise my suspicions higher for nefarious intentions of controlling what I should think or conclude. You laid out its intentions clearly here.

Second, you say talent pool will increase if opening this career for girls and at the same time say some boys aren't able to be pilots for lack of talent. Now combining these two, having more female women in this sector would benefit our economy. Tada!

You didn't consider the case where some women won't be pilots for lack of talent and with opening up of new generation of men to this sector, the talent pool expands just as much.

Look, here are one fact: The tech industry will do fine and surprise itself with high quality talent even without women in it. This is true had the industry been without men in it as well. It doesn't increase or decrease had one sex been not allowed. The economy doesn't benefit except for maybe by diversification and that too can be compensated by methods of reaching out to those spaces where only one class of people could have immensely benefited. So lets say sexual harassment apps. Most of them are made by men only teams in Google Play store and they get reviewed great! Lets say Periods and menstrual conscious exercises and diet. Men have designed great apps in this as well.

This in itself is not reason for discrimination of women or men either way. That is to say, neither women nor men should not be excluded by this reason.

[henryaj]

> "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion"

also seems like a hard-to-believe hypothesis.

See https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... for an outline of the 'interest' hypothesis - essentially, women are stronger than men in both verbal and math/science domains, but prefer the former, so will pick subjects that more closely align with their interests when society lets them do so. In countries with worse egalitarianism and social security, they'll gravitate towards subjects that bring them more economic freedom.

[nadam]

I don't have evidence why they do not choose tech carriers. But I know that as a kid I was fascinated by being able to program a computer. I have seen many-many likeminded boys in the demoscene (in eastern Europe), but not a single girl. (Entrance was free for girls on demo parties, while boys needed to pay.) And it was absolutely not a career choice, we did not care about the money or a career, we just enjoyed to program, or more precisely we just could not imagine not to program. I never knew why girls do not program but I assumed that they are not that interested. And not just not interested in programming, but also not interested in boys who program. This was 30 years ago. (Things changed since then, it is more cool to be a programmer nowadays.)

[QualityReboot]

> If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome?

Who feels welcome in tech? It's an elitest culture filled with strong personalities that fancies itself a meritocracy.

[anisppp]

The same can be said about medicine.

[Grustaf]

Doctors are not socially awkward, it’s much more fun for a normal person to hang out with medical students than with programmers.

Who could possibly feel welcome in an industry filled with awkward, mostly introverted geeks?

[epicureanideal]

The "awkward" stereotype does not describe most software engineers I've encountered in my career. Even "introverted" only applies to somewhat more than the average percentage in the rest of society, in my experience.

[Grustaf]

I don’t know where you work but I’ve worked with close to a dozen software teams and in all cases the vast majority of coders have been very awkward. The contrast with other fields I’ve worked in, such as business or finance is sharp.

Maybe it’s different in other countries but i doubt it, based on conferences I’ve attended.

[Valmar]

Probably because in tech, merit is what matters quite a bit.

Merit is... what skills can you personally bring to the table that can help? In a meritocracy, no-one cares about your race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Diversity of skillsets matter more than diversity of <biological attribute>. The former is useful, the latter is basically meaningless.

[MarkMc]

To say that "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" suggests that the percentage of women in tech is slowly growing from a low base, on a similar trajectory to women in medicine a generation or two ago.

But that is not the case. In 1984, 37% graduates of computer science were women but in 2017 only 12% were women [0]. How can it be that with so much more focus on diversity and inclusion today so many women are choosing a non-computing career than in 1984? The tech industry does seem to be on a fundamentally different path to medicine and law in this regard.

A second point is that writing computer code seems to have a strong appeal to people close to the autism spectrum - people who love to close the door to their private office, put on their headphones and write code for 6 hours without any interaction with another human being. And men tend to be greatly overrepresented on the autism spectrum.

[0] https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse...

[jrs95]

Personally I think an even bigger factor than not feeling welcome, if we're talking about getting people in the door in the first place, is the negative connotations associated with being in this industry to begin with. As far as social status goes, it's probably below average. Men who work in tech have a pretty negative stereotype. But because we're men, we can't even explore the possibility that this could have an impact because the immediate outrage and accusations of sexism it would cause.

[rdtsc]

Not GP. But I have seen these kind of studies are often suggested:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

---

We synthesized evidence from interest inventories over four decades and found large sex differences in vocational interests, with men preferring working with things and women preferring working with people.

---

Engineering can be said to be involved with "things" and "med schools" with people?

Informally we could perhaps translate that to "Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees (a small pun on Google's hiring practices https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en) that everyone else, namely women, should enjoy doing same". I mean, they might and many do, but it is not an obvious thing like it is often presented and it should be discussed. Of course, we can then ask where do those interests come from and some will say because of how people are socialized and others will say because of hormones and other biological differences.

[mpweiher]

> Just because men like to sit in a cubicle all day and invert binary trees

Yes. Except that even most men don't want to do this. It's just that of the fairly small percentage of people overall that enjoy this, more are men than women.

I still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue.

[rdtsc]

I don't either. It seems there are strong cultural components as well. At least it seems useful to continue talking about and studying.

[DanBC]

> still do not understand why this is even (made into) an issue

1) we don't know if it's true or not.

2) population level statistics are used to deny women jobs, so they're losing out on work and companies are losing out on best talent for a job.

[mpweiher]

> population level statistics are used to deny women jobs

I have never heard of this happening in tech. Can you elaborate?

I have seen population level statistics used to deny men jobs, not the other way around.

[krastanov]

A lot of sibling comments stick to the "gender equality paradox" while forgetting all the other research on the topic (this is already a heavy selection bias). Yes, women in Scandinavia and women is Bangladesh, given the chance to pursue a career in STEM, might make choices that superficially support the notion that women self-select out of tech. But this line of reasoning forgets to compare what other choices/opportunities the women in those two countries have and similarly does not compare this to the background rates for these choices in the population at large. It is rife with interesting statistical fallacies that are worthwhile to discuss.

[Grustaf]

Well but that is the point isn’t it. Women in poor, unfree countries go into tech because it makes a huge difference to their personal finances and comfort. In Scandinavia everyone lives in freedom and comfort, so you can work with something you actually enjoy instead.

[krastanov]

Certainly, that is a big part of it. But this should be carefully compared to the "background signal" in these cultures. To take it to an extreme: how certain are you that men go into STEM for reasons different than boys being told "STEM is for boys". Both young boys and young girls have that "common sense" imposed on them by our culture, so it is very unreliable to claim that any choice is unrelated to that cultural experience as a child.

[Grustaf]

Nobody says “STEM is for boys”. Maybe in the 50’s, but certainly not when I grew up in the 80’s.

[krastanov]

Maybe that is true where you are. But I have seen it first hand in parents and teachers in the US, France, and Bulgaria.

[black-tea]

> What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"?

There are fewer women doing coding despite no barriers to entry, more opportunities (like this one) and preferential selection (thanks to people like you).

Just look around you for the evidence. Men spend their free time on hobbies, building things, playing with machines. Women call men boys for doing this. They do not want to do it. They do not understand why men do it.

[mpweiher]

> What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"?

Every study that actually bothered to ask that question?

1.

For example, there was an ACM study that asked both men and women (most studies do not). To their surprise, they found that women reported greater levels of support from their management than the men did. One of the few things they asked in terms of attitudes where there was a statistically significant difference between men and women was, drumroll, "interest in technology".

And that's for people actually in the profession!

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...

2. Then there was the study that looked at why women leave engineering. #1 reason? "Didn't like the work/not interested in engineering". #2 reason was starting a family, #3 was didn't like the environment.

https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/NSF_Stemming%20the%20Tid...

(Note: look at the actual numbers, not the headlines, because the headlines are very, very selective and do not reflect the actual numbers)

3. There was a study about high school students taking (or not taking) CS in Israel. They looked at all the factors that are usually trotted out, support, role-models, etc. No difference. The one point that showed a difference: "interest in CS", with the boys taking the class at 100% and the girls at 43%. For kids not taking the class the level of interest was gender-neutrally low. Interestingly, this was reported as "no statistical difference", which is...odd.

(Semanticscholar actually has the table in question, it's table 7 in the gallery)

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-science-issue...

4. The ROSE project showed that non-interest in science and engineering starts at a very early age. It also shows that interest dropping generally in countries with higher HDI, not just for girls, though for girls it drops even more quickly.

So it's not just the Gender Equality Paradox already mentioned quite a bit here, but also a more general Development vs. interest in STEM issue.

https://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjob...

And of course there are the more general studies that show that a difference between people vs. things (empathising vs. systematising) is one of the largest and most robust gender differences that has been found (in the same category as the difference in aggression).

[Udik]

> If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence

Ha. Anecdotal evidence? I thought we had better than that (especially when talking about stuff such as other people's subtle, unconscious biases, as judged by someone who has had a job application accepted or rejected..)

[TulliusCicero]

There's some evidence of gender preferences here, that, broadly speaking, women prefer people, men prefer things. This post goes into it more (see section 4): https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

> What is this “object vs. people” distinction?

> It’s pretty relevant. Meta-analyses have shown a very large (d = 1.18) difference in healthy men and women (ie without CAH) in this domain. It’s traditionally summarized as “men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people”. I would flesh out “things” to include both physical objects like machines as well as complex abstract systems; I’d also add in another finding from those same studies that men are more risk-taking and like danger. And I would flesh out “people” to include communities, talking, helping, children, and animals.

> So this theory predicts that men will be more likely to choose jobs with objects, machines, systems, and danger; women will be more likely to choose jobs with people, talking, helping, children, and animals.

In there, there's a link to a study, though that link appears to be dead right now. Here's the study's abstract and a different link https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004....

> How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta‐analyses and three cross‐cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men).

> In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people‐oriented and less thing‐oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender‐egalitarian societies than in gender‐inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.

Anyway, while it's not an open and shut case, it's very hard to explain why these preferences are stronger in more egalitarian/less sexist societies, rather than weaker, using conventional social progressive thinking. If the idea behind these preferences and decisions is "well, that's because of societal sexism", why are the least sexist societies doing the worst there, and the most sexist societies the best?

I'm socially progressive on most issues, but I find much of the arguments and reasoning from other social progressives for this topic to be fairly disingenuous. They often strongly give the impression of having decided that basically all strong gender preferences must be because of some kind of oppression or stereotyping, any scientific inquiry that indicates otherwise is morally unacceptable, facts be damned.

[mpweiher]

> "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion"

This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind.

[dragonwriter]

> > "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion"

> This is a testable hypothesis and wrong. Women's participation in CS is dropping, so it absolutely is not the same curve, just a little behind.

Women's inclusion dropped in medicine between the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, and came up after that, IIRC, so it could well be the same curve just 100 years or so behind.

[mpweiher]

Hmm...do you have evidence for that?

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_medicine#History seems to say quite the opposite.

[DoreenMichele]

Jessica Livingston, an investor who happens to be female, isn't saying "There should be more women in tech." She's saying "If women want to found tech companies, they need to learn to code. Not coding is a barrier to successfully founding a tech company that trips up lots of women interested in founding a company of this sort." and putting her money where her mouth is and offering women an opportunity to learn to code.

[DBYCZ]

A scholarship for a CS program seems a much more worthy cause, as everyone with an internet connection has access to learn everything needed to begin a career in tech.

[dragonwriter]

It's funny how the same people who argue that there are real differences between men and women that are biological in origin which produce all of the differences in representation in tech can't imagine that there might be real, at least on-average, differences between men and women (whether of biological or socialization-rooted origin) that affect what learning methods and contexts they are most successful with and in.

[gdix]

I find it very easy to imagine. So if women on-average would be more successful with "Learning Method X in Context Y" what's stopping someone from simply creating a school or company which facilitates people learning from that method? We wouldn't have to resort to "we're giving women $9000 to help them learn to code".

[SolarNet]

You realize scholarships are way more exclusive than half of all people right?

I got a scholarship based off of the street I lived on. I got a scholarship based off of the career choice of my fraternal grandmother (e.g. if she had been my maternal grandmother I would not have qualified). I got a scholarship based off of how similar I was able to make architecture sound to programming.

Women only scholarships are barely even notable.

[yakshaving_jgt]

Nitpick: you mean “paternal”.

[DoreenMichele]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465743

For those folks downvoting me, please note that the thing I replied to was substantially edited. I don't recall the exact original wording. But this was a reasonable reply to the original text.

No, I'm not removing it to accommodate someone's else's bad faith shenanigans and help them look good at my expense. The topic here is sexism. I'm a woman. I'm probably the most "prominent" woman here in terms of participation on HN.

I'm leaving the link here.

[austincheney]

> Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech"

I don't think there is any problem (shortage) of women in tech, but this is a substantial deficit of women in startup tech. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect this is due to the personalities needed at an early stage startup and some degree of narcissism or self-interest that many developers (particularly women developers) find less appealing.

[RandomInteger4]

Perhaps this is also due to risk aversion?

[DoreenMichele]

Women tend to be more risk averse in part because they are capable of getting pregnant and women are generally expected to put their kids first. A man puts his career first and hardly sees his kids, he's a good provider. A woman puts her career first and misses a birthday party, she's a bad mother and a monster.

In order to raise a child with someone so you can make parenting a priority, you need to put their career first. In order to raise a child alone, you need to make so much money that you can afford a nanny and that still is tough because good childcare you trust is tough to find. (A US senator recently gave a speech about how the challenges of finding good childcare nearly derailed her career and her aunt resolved it by showing up to do the childcare.)

[RandomInteger4]

Yes, this is what I meant. I should have been more clear in my statement. Maybe I'm mistaken, but being in a startup seems like a riskier career move than taking a job with an established player in tech, which is why women would be more averse to joining a startup.

[DoreenMichele]

I'm a woman. I was agreeing with you and expanding on some of the why.

It's all good. I saw nothing wrong with you bringing this up.

I'm very aware of the children angle because of having kids. I didn't think it would impact my life in the way it did. So I've thought a lot about it and read up. I try to add some female perspective to the HN discussion because it's an overwhelmingly male environment.

Carry on.

[chillacy]

The evolutionary psychology explanation is a couple steps away from the biological explanation:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24485492/

I prefer the biological explanation because someone will invariably nit the EP for being infalsifiable, and at least with the bio explanation there is a pharmacological “solution ” to any man or woman who wants to be more risk tolerant.

[DoreenMichele]

I generally agree, but with a couple of provisos:

1. Birth control methods are not infallible. They reduce the risk of pregnancy. They don't eliminate it.

I knew a woman whose mom was diagnosed with a tumor when they thought she was tool to have a baby. They scheduled her for surgery. The "tumor" they removed turned out to be an unplanned pregnancy.

My life changed course when I turned up unexpectedly pregnant due to the failure of my (admittedly not terribly reliable) birth control method. I was already married and wanted kids, so I kind of shrugged and took it philosophically, but it sensitized me to the fact that, no, "just take birth control" isn't some magically perfect answer here.

Even if a woman is celibate, she can be raped and wind up pregnant. This reality means that fertile women can never feel 100 percent in control of their bodies and lives.

2. The personal behaviors that women logically choose to protect themselves and their children end up shaping the culture. Those become expected social norms for women.

Those social norms can be very hard to try to defy and it can cost a woman big time to succeed in defying them. This is likely the real source of the evolutionary psychology explanation.

People get raised with a lot of messaging about what is or is not appropriate behavior and a lot of that messaging is gender specific. "Girls do or don't do this." "Boys do or don't do that."

Some people get more of that kind of messaging than others. It can take a lot of years for a grown woman to question such messaging and decide she can reasonably and safely disregard it.

People who grow up in very strict households often go through a rebellious phase in their youth. A common outcome is they get burned in some manner, such as ending up pregnant out of wedlock while drunkenly hooking up with a stranger.

Such people often wind up even more strict than their parents. Their takeaway is they should have listened to their parents. Their parents were right. These restriction are good and necessary and important.

I'm quite convinced that a lot of religious edicts and cultural norms of the "morality" variety are shorthand explanations for what not to do if you don't want to horrifyingly derail your life in an unrecoverable manner that will also negatively impact the lives of other people.

Before we had antibiotics and birth control, just don't have sex outside of a monogamous, committed relationship was the only real answer to issues like venereal disease and a child you couldn't support. Once you had either of those, you were pretty much stuck with it and your life was basically ruined.

Now we have antibiotics and birth control, some people are still saddled with edicts of "no sex before marriage" and some people are informed "Use a condom. Practice safe sex...etc" Still, there is no cure for AIDS, so we still have diseases where the only good answer is "Jut don't get it to begin with.

Behaviors like "no sex before marriage" don't stand alone. They get paired with edicts concerning myriad other behaviors that are "risk factors" or slippery slopes.

Don't be alone with a boy. Don't drink or do drugs. Etc.

It's quite challenging to unpack all that as an individual within your own lifetime in a timely enough manner to go ahead and accomplish things before you are like 80 years old. Even if you can unpack it for yourself, now you have to deal with everyone else you know still going "You shouldn't be doing that!"

Some of that is slowly changing organically over time. But some of it only happens if you actively push against "But why can't I do x, y or z?" And that's almost always drama.

[gcheong]

That may be how it is now in medical colleges but it was a long road in getting there, starting with being allowed to even attend medical school in the first place, and some would say we're still on it. It didn't just go from 0 to where it is now overnight.

[ketzo]

Yeah, I don't see how the example of medicine is anything except further reason to encourage women to join tech fields.