[notastartup]

To the Boys of HackerNews: I am a Male Founder who Codes but no one cares because there's too many of us and that makes us not at all interesting.

Have women have ever been robbed of being able to code like voting? Why does it receive so much attention? What adversity did they need to overcome to be where they are? Is it physical like someone who suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome or glaucoma overcoming their disability? Is it mental like someone who suffers from dyslexia mastering programming? Or was it political like a North Korean who discovered coding while facing imminent persecution for the forbidden knowledge?

I know women who can code just like men and they are great at it but their gender has nothing to do with it, it's just their ability and strengths as developers. Does a person's gender really merit so much of our attention when the basis for the argument is as superficial as a binary label society have placed on people, never mind the the other categories of people that fall in between and who are shunned.

[daleharvey]

Every female would have had to get over the constant systematic assumption that they didnt belong in this field, from the culture being the only girl in the room / on the team / to the constant assumptions that they are in marketing at meetups and generally just reminded at ever step that they 'dont belong'

You are right, it is not the level of oppression as seen in North Korea, but it is severe and blindlingly obvious, and by making that statement you are helping increase that hostility towards one gender, that isnt nice.

[peteretep]

    > Every female would have had to get over the constant
    > systematic assumption that they didnt belong in this field,
    > from the culture being the only girl in the room / on the
    > team / to the constant assumptions that they are in
    > marketing at meetups and generally just reminded at ever
    > step that they 'dont belong'

Which they have in many more prestigious and traditionally more masculine fields, with medicine being the prime example.

[thisone]

> to the constant assumptions that they are in marketing at meetups

I often get "so, you're a designer?"

[ekianjo]

Probably because some women think they are ostracized because of their gender only, and not because of their skills (or lack of?). It's always funny to see these kind of gender kind of statements, you don't see the same thing with races at all like "I am Asian and I code" - I just find this line of reasonning by separating people with one criteria (gender/race/eye color/hair color/whatever) really preposterous, yet some women insist on seeing things this way.

[daleharvey]

Your comment is fairly disgusting, it admits that women are ostracized in the industry but then implies its because they ... as a gender ... lack the skill to code.

But the rest of the statement was ironic given recent popular story about the topic - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...

[yummyfajitas]

A charitable interpretation of his comment: many women suck, just as many men suck. People who suck are treated as bad programmers. A subset of the women who are treated as bad programmers assume it is due to their gender rather than their poor ability.

An equivalent claim which I made in real life:

Steve, an old school NY boy with a south-asian family: "She dissed me because I'm brown."

Me, another old school NY boy more Italian than anything else: "She dissed you because your a bridge&tunnel boy rather than a wealthy hipster in $200 skinny jeans. She'd have dissed me too."

[ekianjo]

Notice the question mark after the "lack of skills" - I'm just saying this may be one reason among others. Not everything revolves around gender.

[daleharvey]

Even accepting it as a questionable hypothesis is ridiculous. Everything does not revolve around gender, which is why a lot of people (not just 'some women') question why this industry revolves entirely around the male gender. Comments like yours help exacerbate that.

[ekianjo]

I don't see guys complaining "why are nurses mostly females? OMG there must be some discrimination going on, let me find a user group on the internets to complain about that". Some professions have more females than males, and some others the opposite. And some workplaces have about an equal ratio. There isn't a great conspiracy at work going on here. It's fairly obvious that since the beginning of computing, most people interested in computers happened to be male, and therefore you end up with an industry mainly composed by male workers. This is going to evolve as there are more and more schools to learn coding/design/etc... than before, and therefore I expect more women to come in that workforce progressively. Whether it's 50/50, no-one knows, but honestly who cares? It's not as if women are prevented from entering or learning. There are very capable women in many IT-related industries (I know many working in video games), and honestly if a woman has the right skills and the right attitude, I don't see why a company would turn them down. But bear in mind that in terms of employment, men and women are not equal (women tend to want to have kids and maternity leave) and that's also something an employer factors in when they recruit people, especially when they are in a very small structure. Just stating the obvious.

[boyaka]

Questioning about whether something revolves around gender is kinda making us revolve more around gender.

[Zombieball]

Unfortunately I believe there are gender stereo types in our culture which make many men view women as inferior coders (both in the workplace situation and an interview environment) simply because they are female.

A situation where I have experienced this first hand is where a fellow SDE (female) colleague by chance happened to sit at a desk next to one of the VPs at our organization. Many people instinctively thought she was the VP's assistant and spoke to her as such. She was a fantastic coder, had a PhD, but because she sat next to a man in a position of power was assumed to be an assistant.

Not trying to sound like a feminist (I am far from one) but I believe what women are being robbed of is 'equality'. It is a real problem in our industry.

[JonnieCache]

>Not trying to sound like a feminist (I am far from one) but I believe what women are being robbed of is 'equality'.

Does not compute.

[Zombieball]

Haha, until this comment thread I don't think I ever would have written that sentence.

Maybe I should go buy a bra to burn...

[JonnieCache]

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/burnbra.asp

[jmnicolas]

Yes exactly.

I'm a bit fed up with people advocating more women in <insert male dominated industry here>.

As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women.

Everybody seem to agree that a nursing job is not attractive for most men. Maybe the reason that women are few in tech is because these professions are not attractive to them.

[tommorris]

I was doing a Ph.D to become a lecturer, which is technically a teacher. Have you seen the pay for teachers and lecturers? I'm making more in my first year of tech contracting than a mid-career academic or teacher would make in salary.

I've got a male friend working in nursing. I admire his dedication to caring for people, but there's no way I'd switch places. I get to write Python all day, he gets to clean up other people's bodily fluids for a dismal salary. We both think we've got the better deal in life because he gets to care for people while I just write dull programmes for computers to make some business more financially successful, and that's got no grand overriding meaning unless you are a hardcore capitalist Ayn Rand type.

Why is nursing not attractive to men? Because men don't care about people? Absolutely not. How about: because of low pay and because gender roles dictate that it's not a "manly" thing to do? Indeed, the friend who works in nursing is a campy and effeminate gay man. Which matches the stereotype.

The reasons men and women go into particular jobs isn't set in stone. There's no gene that turns one person into a programmer and another into a nurse. It's social conditioning, it's stereotypical gender roles, it's educational opportunities, it's pay and benefits - it's a whole bunch of shit we can change.

If a woman wants to go into computing, she should be able to without having to deal with stupid nerds-as-the-new-frat-boys brogrammer bullshit, and if guys want to go into nursing, they should be able to do so with their heads held high and without anyone questioning their masculinity or making assumptions about their sexuality. Blowing up society's gender roles and expectations is key to this.

[DanBC]

Every single time this topic is mentioned someone makes the comment about nurses or teachers; or women in construction.

There are programmes aimed at getting more men into nursing and teaching. There are programmes aimed at getting more women into construction.

[kaybe]

I heard tons of people complain about that, though for other reasons - it would be really good for boys (and their social and academic performance) to have male rolemodels, the argument goes.

Consider the reasons for non-attractiveness. In the case of nursing, it's bad pay as well, presumably. In the case of IT, the general unfriendliness is one reason, though there might be others. Shouldn't we just remove the removable ones?

(I don't first-up reject the theory that there might be 'biological' reasons that apply to the majority of people, but we won't really find out until we try. And there will always be outliers.)

(Why, you ask? So that when I walk into a room, I could be the boss too, and not automatically be tagged with 'secretary'. It's about status and power in the end, maybe?)

[Zombieball]

Just curious why you think nursing is bad pay? Or what do you consider to be bad?

Where I live (Vancouver, BC.) entry level (students) pay for nurses is $50K/year. Average earnings for nurses I believe is on the order of $70-90K/year though.

[kamaal]

I think it is mainly because nursing isn't a 'career' kind of a job. You can make $50K an year, but 10 years down the lane, now what?

While your engineering friend is aiming to sell his start up for some millions of dollars, your job doesn't even have the scope to even attempt anything like that even if you wanted to.

[DanBC]

Nursing has career path through specialist forms of nursing (intensive care, nurse-prescribers, etc) to management of teams, wards, hospitals, health trusts, etc.

That's what a normal career. Most people don't have the sell-the-company lottery as an option.

[kamaal]

Actually my point was, if you look at it carefully- Professions like teaching and nursing do have a degree of career progression, but that looks super pale in comparison with any anything in the engineering domain.

The argument is similar to the discussion about Wall Street traders and Programmers. Note each of those folks at the Wall Street are taking back millions in bonuses each year. Yet we are to them a nursing-like profession, what the nursing profession is to us.

[notastartup]

It's almost like Vancouver cares more about nurses than software developers making up a significant portion of tech industry.

Think about this, an entry level nurse makes more than an entry level software developer in Vancouver, an experienced nurse ends up making more than a intermediate/senior developer with several years of experience at a firm in Vancouver.

Nurses get paid overtime, software developers are not, as overtime is almost expected with any software project.

Nurses get unions, software devs do not, because someone decided that tech jobs are not as valued or skilled as being a nurse, and that the market is efficient or protected from exploitation by employers knowing that the supply of jobs is seldom, so they treat them like commodity.

[Zombieball]

I think this argument also holds true about Vancouver when you replace nurse with [insert random trade] (e.g. HVAC technician, elevator technician, etc.)

On average I feel software devs are highly underpaid in Vancouver (even more so when you take into account the cost of living).

[CJefferson]

> As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women.

THIS COMES UP EVERY SINGLE TIME THIS TYPE OF THING COMES UP. PEOPLE DO HARD AT GETTING MEN INTO WOMEN-DOMINATED PROFESSIONS SUCH AS TEACHING AND NURSING. I'M WRITING THIS IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN THE HOPE THAT PEOPLE WILL STOP BLOODY SAYING THIS EVERY BLOODY TIME!

Bah.

[watwut]

The lack of male teachers is considered a problem by many people in education. A lot of words were written and conferences organized on the topic.

tl;dr: the consensus seems to be that it would be better if there would be more male teachers so the boys would have more teachers to relate to.

[romanovcode]

Never in my life I've seen an article named I'm teacher and I'm a male!; Life as a male nurse; etc..

I think these articles are mainly link-bait for pageviews, nothing more.

[DanBC]

Do you hang out on teaching or nursing forums?

[melindajb]

do you really not know how to use google?

[tommorris]

> Never in my life I've seen an article named I'm teacher and I'm a male!; Life as a male nurse; etc..

http://healthcareers.about.com/od/nursingcareers/tp/Male-Nur...

http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/08/22/confessions-of-a-mal...

http://www.nursetogether.com/i-am-a-male-nurse

http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/06/male-nurse-so-what/

http://www.modernmedicine.com/modern-medicine/news/life-male...

http://dwilliam.hubpages.com/hub/My-Life-As-A-Nurse-in-Retro...

http://www.nursebuff.com/2011/11/male-nurses-on-defying-ster...

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/02/25/male-nurses-make-m...

http://nursingfirst.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/the-life-of-a-m...

http://www.nursingtimes.net/why-are-there-so-few-men-in-nurs...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-145183/More-men-wo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9849976/T...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-numbers-of-men-tea...

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/il2il/im_a_male_kinder...

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/men-teach-elementary-school/sto...

http://timlondinium.wordpress.com/

http://www.thelocal.de/20121025/45767

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14748273

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/sep/30/primaryscho...

If only there were some sort of website you could use to find web pages by entering relevant keywords...

[Zombieball]

I feel that both ethnic and gender diversity can improve many work environments, be it software development or nursing.

Maybe men should start advocating for more boys in <insert female dominate industry here>? Sounds like a good Superbowl Ad campaign!

Side note: I remember in my first year of university there was like 30 girls and 1 boy in the nursing faculty. Everyone cheered on that lucky guy :P

[boyaka]

You seriously believe we need more effort put forth in the nursing industry? Please list a single one of these <insert female dominate industry here> that is highly important for solving mankind's problems?

[_bfhp]

Gender isn't "just a binary label," it's a system of normalized roles, and girls and women, historically and now, were/are steered to roles that involve carework, "womenly" professions, etc.

In this system, women who find interest in coding, despite all the pressures to just stick to their role, need all the role models they can get. Could you tell me, did you read the article before making this comment?

[theorique]

Bravo.

What females need to realize is that they have the same God-given talents as anybody else (i.e. men).

I know many girls who are great coders and can stand toe-to-toe with men in a coding throwdown. But they don't make their sex a thing that everybody else needs to recognize, they just get on with the job. You don't read/hear them blogging and whining about how hard they have it because they use their talent to overcome obstacles, not complain about them.

[ps4fanboy]

While I agree with what your saying, the common man has only very recently and in most places 50 years more than the common woman been able to vote. It is a relatively new invention.

[smtddr]

You sound like you don't believe there is any significant gender bias or sexism in the tech field. Is that what you think?

[ekianjo]

And you think it's by putting every message under the "I am a woman, look, I can code too!" will actually change whatever gender bias there may be in a positive way ? On the contrary, I think it goes in the wrong way, by highlighting the wrong differences instead of the common points no matter the genders.

[mercurial]

Why not? This is an industry with precious few role models outside of heterosexual white males. Highlighting the fact that it is, indeed, possible to succeed in this field without being a member of this category is good, and encourages more diversity. It may even, you know, be a motivating factor for some.

[greenyoda]

I'm skeptical that drawing special attention to female founders who are coders will reduce gender-biased behaviors. The most effective way of combating gender bias is for the people who run companies to stop tolerating that kind of behavior in their employees. Do you have an employee who makes disparaging remarks to another employee based on their sex? Then tell them to cut it out, and if they don't, fire them. Do your hire "brogrammers" who behave like frat boys at work? Then start hiring people who can behave in a civilized manner in professional environments. That's the only way that real progress will be made.

[smtddr]

I think the problem should be tackled from both sides.

The people who already make up the tech field, mostly men, should absolutely behave in a professional(non-frat-boy) manner as you say.

_AND_ everyone already in the tech field should let girls & women outside of the field know that they are welcome & fully capable of entering the tech field by showing more role-models and more blogs like this one.