[olefoo]

There is nothing about programming computers that is gender specific; in fact it seems kind of weird and awkward that we have to discuss this at all.

Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constructs that brought this about.

[kamaal]

Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture.

In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially and even in your own family to justify working whole nights, weekends and late hours consistently. You can try to fight that when you are single, it gets near impossible to do that after marriage and kids. Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons.

At the other end, super success in software depends on all this start up culture which is very hard on most women.

[aortega]

It's very simple for me: From 20s to 30s most women are having babies, because it's the only time on their lives when they can do it safely. They can go startuping later.

Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a teenager.

When people talk about Female founders or coders I think they mean young pretty female founders. There are few, and for good reasons.

I see no shortage of older females in software managament or software arch. positions and many moms are just fine doing startups on their 50s.

[kamaal]

Please note there are age related discrimination problems in our area of work. And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors and when you talk of architects you are talking of UML-drawing clueless people in semi-managerial roles.

Almost anything that requires solving hard engineering problems like scalability, quality you will again get back long hour working engineering culture.

The competition is fierce from younger people. Also the level of learning you are required to do to just 'catch-up' with existing trends in technology in simply too much.

In all the problems look very similar to that in other branches of engineering too. Mechanical engineering for that matter sees too little enrollment from girls, same with civil engineering.

[aortega]

>And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors

No, I think you should fire your manager :)

[mdisraeli]

It is worth noting that it is very common for women to be 'promoted' out of technical roles into managerial or administrative positions, often before they have been able to develop true competencies or career plans.

[pjmlp]

I would say it depends a lot on the country as well.

In many European countries those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

[kamaal]

>>those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.

What good would that do?

If you pass laws that make it difficult to start and sustain a competitive company, next time around you will see such companies would be starting up in some other country.

Now the whole ecosystem suffers.

[shaan7]

you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees? I know a lot of companies that are the best in their business and never have to.

It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

[kamaal]

>>you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees?

Not at all, but to be a "competitive company" you have to be "competitive" which is essentially doing better than your competition. The issue is someone is always willing to put more effort than you/your company. This is where it all breaks down.

This is exactly what makes our profession so much sought after. Because at some point you can make money non linear to your effort, and if you compress that effort into a small period of time you can make a fortune.

For every person that is happy to go back working 4 hours a day, there are people to put in 16 hours a day.

>>It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.

IT professionals in India are not cheap. Compare it with any other profession in India, even engineers. We come out easily as better paid people here.

And even a cursory look at the start up industry across the world, not just in India will tell you what kind of a fierce competition it is.

[hibbelig]

I don't agree that abusing employees helps. Software development is a creative activity, and you've got to get enough rest to be creative.

Disclosure: European here.

[girvo]

Yknow, a lot of the world doesn't run their economy through some zero-sum fuck-your-employees-the-bottom-line-is-what-matters crap...

[pjmlp]

I work in the enterprise world with a few major Indian consulting companies.

Their European sites always have problems trying to force the Indian work style on the European workers.

Somehow their managers keep forgetting our work laws.

[nerfhammer]

Perfectly legal in the US, as long as you're salaried.

[pyrocat]

> "Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons."

Women aren't required to have kids?

[DanBC]

A better reply would have been "we'd like mean to take paternity leave too".

I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case.

[BWStearns]

>> I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case

While I agree with advising caution, and disagree with the gp sentiment, I don't think that mild gender insensitivity and poor communication skills are as of yet civil or criminal offenses on comment sections.

[DanBC]

Bob says "hiring women is risky because they all have babies".

Bob sets up a startup and gets to the point of hiring.

Does Bob wonder whether his earlier public comments have left him open to discrimination claims?

[BWStearns]

Fair, but unless he is actually discriminating he should be able to get by with relatively few issues.

[pyrocat]

I think you misunderstood my tone, which in hindsight I should have phrased differently. I was saying

"Women aren't required to have kids... but this quote implies that all women have kids, which annoys me"

[ZenPro]

"Women aren't required to have kids..."

^^ Double edged sentence you have there ;-)

I am pretty sure they are; unless there are some serious medical advances and questionable ethical boundaries.

[ZenPro]

Downvoted? For saying women are necessary in the birth of children?

HN is weird.

[cclogg]

The other comments here are talking more about the work-life balance issues that might be causing the gender gap... but I personally just think it's to do with parents/relatives, role models, and the time between grade 1 and grade 12.

I myself am a coder because I loved modding games when I was younger. I do like creating things regardless, but I got to that point because a childhood friend shared PC games with me (games that his uncle shared with him)... and then you end up spending a large chunk of your childhood on the computer, so it's natural to progress down that path. But I know both guys and girls that played games like me and chose not to do a career that is computer-related.

It'd be great to have more gender balance in computer science, but actually in all fields too. I found in my art history classes in college that the class was around 80-90% female, for every class I took. This was basically the opposite of my computer science classes...

Man though, it's tough to judge society in the present lol.

[boyaka]

Because Art History is so incredibly important. Whatever could we possibly do without more people studying Art History?

[ps4fanboy]

I think for a long time programming has been presented as very hostile to work life balance, I had read about examples in high school like horror stories of crunch time. I think this does a lot to discourage women and men. My brother in law is doing programming at the same University that I did and the class sizes are 1/5th what they were when I was there.

[tomp]

Really? I would imagine it's exactly the opposite - it's one of the rare professions that can earn you a livable salary without working overtime/two jobs. Though, maybe if one extrapolates about the entire profession from the few famous startups (and movies about them), you're quite correct.

[ps4fanboy]

I am not talking about reality but outsiders perceptions of what the industry is like.

[chongli]

( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. )

I think the problem is that we always name these two. Ada Lovelace died 161 years ago. Is she really all that relevant a role model for girls today?

[_bfhp]

Well, with the combined factors of WWII keeping the men busy, and the general conception around that time that "computing" was boring data-entry work -- and so, fit for women -- the fact that those handful of pioneering women (Hopper et al) were alive around early/mid 20th century isn't coincidence. The last real "wave" of women programmers has long been over..

[_bfhp]

@poorelise - I admit that I'm ignorant of modern figures in programming who are women. What I meant with "wave" is that the famous women programmers that are often mentioned/taught about, cluster around a time period where we can identify a trend.

[poorelise]

There are many famous female coders working atm, I think there is even a web site dedicated to them.

The problem is when you require a "wave". Then people start getting really confused about statistics and correlation vs causation.

[JonnieCache]

As soon as it became clear that software was an important and serious business, it immediately became male-dominated.

[_bfhp]

What's weird is that people assume that this has to do with programming specifically, instead of the larger workings of gender as a social construction and hierarchy (laid upon the material reality of sex dimorphism). Discussing gender isn't weird, men (and many women) just aren't very literate about the thing.

[JetSpiegel]

Sure, with a title "I'm a Female who codes" people have certain expectations. What's so strange about a female who codes?

[animus9]

Actually most men who program are just interested in it. Same with the ladies. Discussing gender is irrelevant to this forum. This new age jargon will have a short shelf life once the truth gets out. Those who sow seeds of discord will soon have to reap their crops.

[_bfhp]

There's a gender imbalance in the programming field. This, to many, is worthy of thought. If you think you really know what's relevant to be discussed on Hacker News, you should shoot pg an email volunteering to moderate, see how that goes

[pyrocat]

So how's your militant MRA cult going?

[jacobtracey]

What?

[DanBC]

Animus9 is an obvious mens rights advocate.

They are indistinguishable from trolls; the only difference being that they believe the stuff they say.

[_bfhp]

@poorelise - you seem unfamiliar with what DanBC means by "mens rights advocate" -- let me help you:

Men’s Rights Activists advocate for ‘human rights’ with rape and death threats - http://feministcurrent.com/7555/mens-rights-activistsadvocat...

The most persuasive MRA ever - http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/06/11/the-most-p...

White Hot Rage: the men's rights movement - http://prospect.org/article/white-hot-rage

[animus9]

Your label, not mine. I don't believe in the MRA movement or whatever you call it. I am opposed to off-topic gender politics articles (which are becoming more frequent here) as I believe they are divisionist and ruin the spirit of this forum. This is Hacker News NOT Gender Politics News.

[poorelise]

So advocating mens right is equal to being a rightwing military cult person?

Are you really of the opinion that men's rights are not important?

Also, ad hominem...

[nthrow]

Your statement is about as intelligent as saying feminists are indistinguishable from trolls. The men's rights movement, like feminism, isn't monolithic.

[smtddr]

Nothing about the 1s & 0s themselves, but most of the environments & presentations where it happens? Those tend to lean stereotypical-male-centered[1][2].

1. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...

2. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-idiocy-of-techcrunch-di...

[animus9]

The only thing suspicious is the propaganda machine which is creating this never ending list of gender-tech articles and their associated divisionist jargon.

Social construct theory is dead. Girls who have a genuine interest in technology couldn't care less about the sex of their coworkers (because if they did then they would be sexists).

[_bfhp]

"Social construct theory is dead"

Are you serious? When did it "die", again?

[romanovcode]

Posts like these get high views. I'd say it's more of a link-bait thing.

[_bfhp]

Did you read the article?

[animus9]

Did you read the truth?

[animus9]

I have watched the manipulation of online forums in real time by a specific group with a specific political agenda. Hacker News might very well be the next victim.

It used to be about technology. What place does subversive gender politics and social construct theory have amongst hackers and lovers of technology?

[nthrow]

Before the dotcom era and the mainstreaming of geek chic, programming used to be considered pretty uncool. Men and women who went into it were seen as nerds. For women, more so than men, finding a mate has been seen as part of being able to survive comfortably. So women stayed away from the stigma of programming, lest it lessen their attractiveness. Now, after things reversed and geek chic became mainsteam, the profession's seen as cool. Other professions seen as less cool (trades for example) don't seem to be the targets of the diversity lobby.