[moistgorilla]

I'm kind of disappointed by the comments here. Not just by the fact that people couldn't read the entire article before making judgments but more that I would have thought the people of this website would understand why it's important to bring women into tech.

Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment). The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture. The stereotype of a computer whiz is a man. Ask yourself why you never considered becoming a nurse (if you are a man) and you will understand why women reject the idea of working in the tech industry.

[JanneVee]

>Women aren't biologically inclined to not like STEM fields (which I sadly see is a popular sentiment).

True.

> The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

Ehm... not always. I've found that there is a cultural bias that the STEM fields are considered asocial and culturally women/girls have been raised to dislike asocial activities.

[jeremyarussell]

+ for recognizing that. Consider this though, what causes first, the asocial stigma? And what causes our society to keep girls from asocial activities?

An argument could be made for a broader more general form of misogyny.

[JanneVee]

> what causes first, the asocial stigma? And what causes our society to keep girls from asocial activities?

In most western societies there is very little that keeps girls from these activities. But then there is the boob tube, watch some disney channel and study the stereotypes present in the shows. It kind of answers both questions. But it is not only Disney Channel I would consider it pervasive in western culture as a whole. e.g. Like TV shows like The Big Bang Theory.

[prodigal_erik]

If there were a lot of women with the kind of monomania that gets them through http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/L/larval-stage.html, but repelled from the profession by incidentals like role models, then there would be a lot of women hacking alone outside their day jobs. Are they really out there, and just aren't identifiably publishing that work or going to these conferences? Or is that kind of anti-social obsession not evenly distributed among teenagers?

[Ntrails]

I don't really see why a dislike of hospitals, excrement, and old people would hold women back from working in the tech industry?

[jeremyarussell]

I think you missed the point on that by a bit. See the point was men don't generally become nurses as often as women, because of the social stigma that it's a woman's job.

The way I figure there is no biological reason why a girl wouldn't want to expand her mental capacities via technology and programming. It's strictly because it's seen as a nerdy guy stuck in basement thing, then the brogrammers came out and people realized it's also a guy-that-views-women-as-objects field. Yeah, those brogrammers really helped the cause.

Went off on a bit of a tangent there. Sorry.

[Ntrails]

Actually, I was intentionally pointing out the absurdity of the blanket statement being made, whilst attempting to apply humour. I did consider being a nurse, when training to help with a family members illness the nurse teaching me suggested I would be good at it. I was not interested, in large part for the exact reasons I listed above.

I would also like to point out that the gender imbalance in nursing is not blamed on the nurses - you yourself describe it as a social stigma.

Fixing societal attitudes needs something rather more than an introspection on the tech industry and why we are full of terrible people. It needs parents and schools to encourage girls to study the relevant areas, it needs schools to get all of their pupils trying out basic programming in a rewarding, exciting and gender neutral environment.

I could be wrong - but to my mind this is a problem in all of STEM and fixing it needs a broad response to treat it as a single issue.

N.B. Women not going to conferences because they are home to a host of manchildren who spend half their time drunk is a separate issue and one deserving of serious attention.

EDIT: I have no idea why some of this seems to be in italics. Sorry :(

[prodigal_erik]

(Asterisks are markup for italics, see http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc for some details.)

[Strang]

> The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

That is quite an assertion. Surely you can see that there are many, many more factors than just this one, even if you discount "biological inclination"?

[nitid_name]

>The reason women don't go into these fields is because of the misogynistic culture.

[Citation needed]

[juridatenshi]

There are definitely studies that show this is why some women leave the field, even after overcoming the hurdles to get into it in the first place.

http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...

[lindseybieda]

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents - evidence of misogynistic culture.