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Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

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Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#11

Post by DanBC »

M_Grey wrote: post #7
fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

Or coal miners! /s Seriously, the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech, money, success, and influence. The general thinking is and has been that you try to fairly populate the mid-top range of jobs, and that's more effective than trying to shoehorn in more women driving dumpsters.

> Or coal miners

This is said every single time this comes up. People need to learn how to use a fucking search engine.

http://www.womeninmining.org/

http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/135815/API_Study_Getti...

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#12

Post by dmoo »

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

She seems pretty clear about it

"I care about computer science. When I was in school in the 1980s, women got about 37 percent of computer science degrees and law degrees then. Law went up to 47 percent now. In medicine, we were at 28 percent in 1984. That’s gone up to 48 percent. Computer science went from 37 percent to 18 percent. I started to learn about it and say, my gosh. To me, the tech industry is one of the best places to work right now."

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#13

Post by DanBC »

MollyR wrote: post #4
fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

There has been movements for more female sanitation workers, as for male elementary school teachers and nurses, haven't heard of that. The gender demographics of tech is important due to the perceived wealth and power of Silicon Valley. I personally say perceived because I thinks its the VC's who have the real wealth and power.

A mix of articles about men in nursing and men in teaching: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7088418

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#14

Post by throwaway2016a »

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

> What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

I don't see anything in the article about building websites. There is a lot more to Computer Science than building websites even if websites and mobile app are the chosen UI for a great many enterprise and B2C projects now.

Edit: What about women data scientists? Women firmware engineers? Women AI developers? Women database administrators? It's interesting that the mind would immediately associate woman with the more creative CS subsets vs one of the more math heavy ones.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#15

Post by Retric »

dmoo wrote: post #12
fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

She seems pretty clear about it "I care about computer science. When I was in school in the 1980s, women got about 37 percent of computer science degrees and law degrees then. Law went up to 47 percent now. In medicine, we were at 28 percent in 1984. That’s gone up to 48 percent. Computer science went from 37 percent to 18 percent. I started to learn about it and say, my gosh. To me, the tech industry is one of the b…

Some tech jobs are very flexible, but many of them are completely toxic and expect crazy hours. If anything I find women tend to make more rational career choices, which makes programming far less appealing than you might think.

PS: I have also been outnumbered by female developers on a team before. But, never at 'toxic' work environments.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#16

Post by forgottenpass »

M_Grey wrote: post #7
fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

Or coal miners! /s Seriously, the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech, money, success, and influence. The general thinking is and has been that you try to fairly populate the mid-top range of jobs, and that's more effective than trying to shoehorn in more women driving dumpsters.

the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech

Because they're nerds?

[...]money, success, and influence.

Oh. Well, I'm sure they'll stay in the field when the find themselves crammed into an open office, working on yet another webapp, with little to no control over product direction. And a wage trajectory of a field that is leveraging it's current cultural cachet to drive a huge recruitment effort.

Once the jig is up, and exposed as just a way to drive down wages, we'll be back to being seen as the hate-worthy nerdy fuckers in the basement. And society will go back to encouraging girls away from the field.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#17

Post by throwaway2016a »

jkot wrote: post #8

> fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this 'problem' will solve itself. EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college. Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years men will be a small minority at university education.

Anecdotally, I had five woman in my CS program out of 100 students (I know, pathetic)... but all five of them graduated. Can't say the same for the men.

My wife was an Electromechanical engineer, in her program they had the same number of woman but a higher percentage because there were fewer students in the major in general. I think they all graduated although a couple of them had to retake some courses so they didn't finish on time.

But my guess is it is a cultural thing not an aptitude thing. Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren't necessarily expected of men. Especially in male dominated majors where I have definitely observed the attitude where woman need work harder to prove they deserve to be there than men.

Edit: summary: my hypothesis is men fail out due to apathy since they are told from birth that college is their right and expectation whereas woman have something to prove. As that changes I expect either the woman will become apathetic too or the men will step up their game. Either way, a system out of equilibrium seeks balance.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#18

Post by M_Grey »

forgottenpass wrote: post #16
M_Grey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or coal miners! /s Seriously, the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech, money, success, and influence. The general thinking is and has been that you try to fairly populate the mid-top range of jobs, and that's more effective than trying to shoehorn in more women driving dumpsters.

the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech Because they're nerds? [...]money, success, and influence. Oh. Well, I'm sure they'll stay in the field when the find themselves crammed into an open office, working on yet another webapp, with little to no control over product direction. And a wage trajectory of a field that is leveraging it's current cultural cachet to drive a huge recruitment eff…

I think you're overestimating the relative glamour of waste disposal.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#19

Post by throwaway2016a »

truetaurus wrote: post #9

Has she got nothing better to do?

The nice thing about having money and freedom at the same time. She gets to choose what to do based on what she wants to do not what other people thing she should be doing. Within the bounds of the law, hopefully.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#20

Post by kukac »

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

I totally agree with you. No one really seems to be able to explain this.
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