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by ralfd 2232 days ago
> Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confidence.

I'm sceptic to this claim because discriminatory and derogatory behavior in medicine or law are much more widespread. And female students flock to these professions.

1 comments

If true, this is extraordinarily significant.

It could mean that woman who are driven away from software engineering by discriminatory and derogatory behaviour are somehow exhibiting differences to their law / medicine counterparts.

Is there any research in to this question?

I don't know about any comparative studies, but sexism in medicine (even patients are calling female doctors honey or sweetie) is an ancient problem.

https://www.girlsglobe.org/2019/03/12/time-confront-sexism-m...

I can't imagine sexism or work environment (looong hours and exhausting shifts) are substantially worse in engineering.

What is different is, in my opinion, that medicine/law is perceived as higher status than nerd stuff. There are popular tv series idolizing the glamorous life of New York lawyers and the heroism of doctors/nurses. When are techies depicted favorably and not as social autists? The goth chic in Navy:CIS maybe, but not much else.

I'm not sure shopping exclusively at Hot Topic in your forties is idolizing tech in any way. If they wanted the character to be cool and edgy, they should have updated her look at least occasionally.