Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by MarkMc 2647 days ago
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...