[maggie]

CS and programming are actually /not/ often the focus of gender issues by feminists.

The discussion on the gender-balance in said fields is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always. The 'feminist' crowd (gender theorists, women's studies academics, etc.) is honestly not that interested, or aware, of our problems.

[gaius]

That is because computer programming is (still) not a particularly prestigious job, it still suffers from negative stereotypes, nerd, geek, etc. Right now, we're under their radar.

There is a reason feminists want us to say "chairperson" but don't care if you say "binman".

[johnnybgoode]

> The discussion...is brought up internally, most of the time, if not always.

You may be right, but I suspect the reason for the above has something to do with the influence of feminists.

[maggie]

I doubt it.

That implies that the problems women face in computing (by being women) historically and currently are myths and only exist if you think about 'em.

They aren't, and there's plenty of evidence to show otherwise. email me if you really want a lit. review on the subject.

[rewt66]

Data point: My mother was a programmer back in the 1950s. She wrote numerical programs that simulated missile trajectories... in octal. She thought it was great when she got an assembler.

I don't recall her ever saying anything about discrimination on the job. The thing she griped about was being told by a math professor that math was no place for a woman.

Maybe there are some gating effects happening that steer women away from trying technical fields? It seems to me that, within most software places, you belong if you know your stuff. Nobody cares about your race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other basis for "discrimination". We care if you can code. (If you can't code, and got the job as a token person-of-that-color/gender/sexual orientation, then we usually have a problem with that, but that's not the same as bias against that color or gender or sexual orientation.)

That's the way it's been almost everywhere I've ever worked, and I've been in software for 25 years.

So what I'm trying to say is, there's almost always room for some introspection, but maybe we're too hard on ourselves? Maybe the lack of women in software isn't really the software guys' fault?

[johnnybgoode]

No, that's not what I was implying. I'm suggesting that the issue would be brought up less often if feminists did not have significant influence in our society. I can put a positive spin on it if you prefer: Thanks to the work of feminists over the past few decades, women and men in computing know well enough to bring up the issue of sexism in their field on their own.