[verroq]

It is the weekly females in tech industry time again?

At the risk of derailing the thread, why do so many people want to get more women into programming? Isn't that just as misguided as trying to get more men into nursing? Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.

[ZoFreX]

I don't want to get more women into programming. I want to end the endemic and prolific discrimination against women in programming. The lack is a symptom.

I also find it very weird that an entire industry went from being female dominated to male dominated and everyone defends it saying "it's always been this way! Equality isn't about enforcing even ratios!"

Well no, it's not, but when you have these situations, where the number of people who could do something is vastly different to those that stick it out as a career, and those that do talk about systematic intolerance and abuse, there is a problem there.

[verroq]

As others have said, it's very hard to discriminate against women since it's is mostly based on problem solving/programming skill. But that is not to say there isn't a general air chauvinism and/or objectification in the tech industry.

I agree that getting more women into tech is a solution, but this always operates under the assumption that women actually want to be in tech.

[rmc]

Appeals to history are silly aswell because the whole industry. Software has less history than Coca Cola!

I mean, traditionally, there were less than 100 programmers world wide. No-one has any problem with ignoring that.

[Pewpewarrows]

The point isn't to have exact same gender ratios in the tech industry.

There are women out there who would make great programmers / sysadmins / etc, but never finish the process of becoming one, are dissuaded from ever starting, or flat-out quit the industry after N number of years, simply because of the barriers put in place by men assuming that the field is only for men.

[jiggy2011]

What sort of barriers? Most of this seems to come down to "Women feel uncomfortable in tech because there are too many men" which of course prevents there from being more Women in tech.

It's also possible that some of the pressure comes from other women , not just men. A woman might be considered weird by other women for wanting to hang around in an environment dominated by geeky men.

I know tech women who have been called dykes by their female pier group in the same way male nurses might be accused of being gay.

[mitjak]

Example from the article: at a conference, the audience thought the author is a recruiter because she's a woman.

[jiggy2011]

I don't really see how that is a barrier to entry.

[yarrel]

You're not going to get hired if people think you're not there to get hired.

[jiggy2011]

People will naturally make assumptions based on prior experiences and statistics , essentially "optimising for the common case". In the same way that I would make an assumption that somebody from say Pakistan is more likely to be a muslim than christian.

This is simply how humans operate, probably because it has survival value and is more a function of evolution than prejudice.

It's not a difficult assumption to get past anyway, talking knowledgeably about something a recruiter would probably not know or even wearing a tech related T shirt would make people change their assumptions.

The only way to solve that particular problem properly would be to have more women in tech.

An actual barrier would be a company or a CS programme deliberately discriminating against women by not employing them. Now I'm sure this does happen in some cases and would be difficult to gather evidence of because any company admitting to this practice would be open to law suits. Another example would be of creating a workplace that was somehow misogynistic in some way, but I actually find that more common in other industries than in tech.

OTOH , many universities seem to actually discriminate in favour of women for CS, in some cases lowering entry requirements on giving a priority on placement. They still tend to end up with 80%+ men though.

One observation I have made about women who work as developers or in an engineering/science field is that the majority I have met have tended to be chinese. This makes me wonder if there is in fact a stigma attached to western women going into tech but I don't necessarily think this stigma comes from the inside.

[yason]

What are the barriers exactly?

Programming is about most gender-agnostic industries there are: there's no heavy lifting of anything (except figuratively speaking) and you don't need to deal with that many people so it doesn't basically matter if you're a man, woman, or an alien.

It certainly is that programming isn't for everyone, men included, and the current bias seems to signal that significantly more men are interested in programming as a career than women.

The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait which might contribute to the outcome in the case of programming, but similarly the heavy use of aesthetics and social interaction in cosmetology is a feminine trait which might contribute to the outcome of the gender distribution for that vocation.

You can bring the horse down to the water but you can't make her (or him) drink.

[ReadEvalPost]

What are the barriers exactly?

The pervading attitude of The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait is a rather good example of at least one barrier. Do you not see how that statement is extremely problematic?

[yason]

How is that a barrier? Extremely problematic? What the heck?

First, note that it's my impression that logic and action are more dominant with men. Based on my experience on life, women, men, and relationships, logic and action seems to strenghten men's inherent identities. Men feel manly when they build stuff and solve problems, and that's generally essential to a male identifying himself as a man. This applies to cocky behaviour and winning women, too.

Now, women can certainly do both. I know women with high capabilities in logic and action such as my wife but the thing is that women often choose not to: their identities are enforced by other things in life. Unlike with men, for women it's not essential to exercise logical problems in order to be a woman. My wife doesn't rediscover her feminine identity in solving problems and fixing stuff eventhough she has done and succeeded in that before we met. My daughter is more interested in fixing bicycles and learning to use the tools in my toolbox than my son is, but it's the other things that she already does that she's using to learn how to grow up to become a woman.

Thus, I suggested the especially masculine trait of enjoying logic might contribute to the gender bias of programming as it seems to contribute to the gender bias of other activities, too. (Or it might not, but I didn't happen to suggest that.)

It's not a barrier, however. It's choosing not to drink, even if brought down to the water. And that's perfectly okay!

This might just be too much to accept for people of naivete. Men and women are different and there's generally no way around that in the long run.

EDIT: Back to the topic: programming doesn't give a squat about whether you're a man or a woman. It only requires logical capabilities and the willingness to use them. It doesn't dictate where the willingness comes from and for what I know, my fellow programmers don't give a rat's ass who wrote the code. They would accept women where they accept men because gender isn't a criteria in communicating with source code.

[verroq]

What he is saying is that although that's the assumption, programming ability can be quantified such that the assumption becomes irrelevant.

[ReadEvalPost]

There is no way to make that assumption irrelevant. In absolutely no way is programming a perfect meritocracy, and social factors come into play just as much as any field. If the pervading attitude is "men are inherently better at this task," why would a woman want to enter the field?

Besides, if programming ability could be accurately quantified, there wouldn't be a constant stream of articles on how difficult it is to separate the wheat from the chaff when hiring.

[_pius]

What are the barriers exactly?

The heavy use of logic is a masculine trait ...

OK, this is Poe's Law territory. You're trolling us, right? Because otherwise you just wondered aloud what possible barriers there could be to women joining our field and then exposed yourself as one of them.

[bryanlarsen]

It appears that the traditional male superiority in logic and math can be traced almost completely to two things:

- the tendency of people to assume that boys are better at math, encouraging boys and discouraging girls

- the tendency for people to encourage young boys to play with spatial & logic toys such as Lego and for girls to play with dolls

[JackDanger]

Also: much of that "traditional male superiority" is simply non-existent. Statistics is a field where half of all working professionals are women.

[klaut]

Exactly my thoughts!

[simon]

Upvoted.

It's worse than just females in tech, it's OMG men and women are different! Eeek!

I kinda like the difference myself. Not because I don't want women in tech, but because women should be able to pursue whatever they want that makes sense when you consider their differences from men.

I assume this makes me a bad person.

[raganwald]

Blacks and Whites are different. There's no discrimination, it's just that Blacks are more interested in basketball and driving taxis and making music then getting into Harvard or practising law. We should celebrate these differences instead of trying to tear down barriers that don't exist.

[JasonFruit]

I know you're being sarcastic, but you bring up a point that I wonder about: there's certainly a difference in cultural values that contributes to the racial and gender profile of different occupations. Do we have a responsibility to change those values? Most ways of measuring progress on the problem have the unstated expectation that the difference in values doesn't exist, and you can't meet the measurement goals without eliminating that difference.

[raganwald]

Let's switch from talking about race and gender and use the words "Insiders" and "Outsiders" and think of a big structure, we'll callit "The Keep."

I think the first and most urgent job is to change cultural assumptions amongst the insiders. If they are thinking that outsiders aren't biologically inclined towards living in a keep, not qualified to maintain a keep, &c., that's a huge barrier, a moat if you will.

So we remove that. The next problem is that even with the moat gone, the outsiders fear being uncomfortable inside, whether from being one of a very few outsiders amongst a lot of insiders or from other outsiders resenting them moving into the keep.

I think it's important to remove those sources of discomfort and to actively encourage outsiders to consider moving inside so that we get all of those who woud like to come inside but fear unpleasant consequences.

After that, I don't think we need to try to convince people who like living outside to come in. Let them be happy outside! But I do think we should remove barriers to coming inside and encourage coming inside to counteract any fears of negative consequences for those who would otherwise like to come into the Keep.

[moistgorilla]

There is a huge stereotype that tech is for men. There is a ton of misogyny in the tech sector. The hope is that by bringing women into the tech sector this stereotype ceases to exist. This is important because there are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine. There is a ton of wasted potential out there.

[verroq]

Most men didn't pick tech because it's for men, they picked it because they liked it.

>There are women out there that get interested in tech but society pushes them away because it's not feminine

I'm not sure if it's societal pressure that is the deciding factor for young women they picking a field of interest.

[klaut]

Upvoted as well. I see more and more of these complaints lately and it just feels that people complain just for the sake of complaining. Perhaps for the rest of the women (me being a woman in tech) programming and tech just isn't interesting enough to pursue it? That could just be one of the reasons - like i have no interest in nursing, thus i am not pursuing that as a career. Stop looking for reasons for complaining and go and pursue stuff you love.

[rmc]

What's wrong with men in nursing? Or are they just half men, a bunch of fairies for doing 'women's work'?

[jacalata]

Because if there were more women in programming I might not have to deal with people doing a double take as they walk into my office and saying 'oh I expected you to be a guy!'

[__alexs]

> Just because we strive for gender equality doesn't mean every job has to have exactly the same gender ratios.

Actually for pretty much any job not based on manual labour it does mean that. And even then it's mostly because we don't have enough robots.

[verroq]

You are willing to accept physical differences but not psychological differences between men and women?

[__alexs]

Yes because there is no evidence that such differences are anything but a result of variables such as socio-economic status, how stable your upbringing was and the amount of calories you had as a child.

[JackDanger]

The lack of women in the industry isn't the problem, it's the symptom. The problem is a monoculture of chauvinism and sexism.