Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 258 posts

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#41

Post by busemann »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

> Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included.

> These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone.

These are also the reasons the SJWs and other bullies from the regressive left have had such an easy time finding footing in the software development world lately and continue to do so.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#42

Post by youzicha »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the ac…

https://youzicha.tumblr.com/post/129386003779/relative-and-a...

Someone else also pointed out that the U.S. population has increased by about 20% since the 1980s, so although the absolute number of women CS students are about the same, that still means it's proportionally going down.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#43

Post by cmiles74 »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

I don't think it's a stretch to imagine the socially awkward men you've met in the field aging into slightly less socially awkward older men tasked with hiring new developers. When hiring, it seems a small logical jump that they will higher more people like themselves (socially awkward men) and avoid people who differ. It's a pretty commonplace dynamic and an easy trip to fall into.

What surprises me is how hard people are resisting recognizing this dynamic, and insisting the current state is somehow the "natural state".

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#44

Post by randomdata »

Edmond wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact. For instance I have worked with a lot of Indian immigrants who are programmers and I don't find the correlation between social awkwardness and the people doing programming. While programming might be appealing to socially awkward western/American men , I don't think one should go from that to c…

The article posted a few days ago suggested that people from places like India are pushed into tech for financial reasons, being one of the few options to escape extreme poverty. Because of that there is also a more equal distribution of men to women.

Whereas Americans have far greater choice when it comes to being able to sustain oneself, and thus tech is not a top choice of – well – anyone, except among those 'socially awkward men'. The harsh reality, and one that is difficult to imagine for the small few of us who actually enjoy this kind of thing, is that tech is a highly undesirable career path for most people. Men and women alike.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#45

Post by denzil_correa »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

> Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone.

The "crowding out" happened in the 1960s. Like the article points out, the stereotypical image of a computer programmer as a "socially awkward man" did not exist before the 60s. The creation of that very image is what led to "crowding out". And now, you are mentioning the same self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#46

Post by gaius »

Edmond wrote: post #30
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact. For instance I have worked with a lot of Indian immigrants who are programmers and I don't find the correlation between social awkwardness and the people doing programming. While programming might be appealing to socially awkward western/American men , I don't think one should go from that to c…

The "socially awkward" archetype of a computer programmer I think is mostly a western (probably American) cultural artifact

It was around that time in the 80s that "the nerd" or "the geek" became a staple movie character. Computers up 'til then had just been a piece of industrial machinery like a lathe or a microscope. Now they were associated with "losers". Richard Pryor in Superman III. Revenge Of The Nerds. Etc etc.

And by and large society was perfectly happy to relegate computing to these losers and shun them. Noone cared about the demographics of these losers, either, it was not "problematic". It's only recently when the geeks have built something that took over the world, that people are saying, hey, I didn't do the work or make the sacrifices but I deserve the rewards. That's where we get "brogrammers" et al.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#47

Post by danielvf »

LogicalBorg wrote: post #15
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the ac…

This may be what you're looking for: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp According to that table, women's bachelor's degrees in computer science: * were low in the 1970's, about 15% average * were higher in the 1980's, about 35% average * declined in the 1990's to about 25-30% * steadily declined from 27 to 17% in the 2000's

There are now 60 women graduating for every 40 men who do so (in the US). There has also been huge growth in the number of overall graduates. To find absolute numbers you need to adjust your percentages by these factors.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_320.20.a...

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#48

Post by someguydave »

utnick wrote: post #10
danharaj wrote: post #6

There's a strong correlation between women entering a field and it having low prestige, and men entering a field and it having higher prestige. Guess which field of ours was considered busywork for women to do until men realized it was going to transform society as we know it.

When do you think programming began to have high prestige? I didn't think programming in the 80s or 90s was a particularly prestigous or high status job, salaries back then kind of reflect that too

I don't think it is a prestigious job today. When was the last time you remember a movie starring a computer programmer? How often do you hear the phrase "We better consult the computer programmers before we make this important decision"? How many novels center on the daily procedures of computer programming?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#49

Post by rawnlq »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

There was a really interesting nerds vs feminists war on Scott Aaronson's blog a few years ago:

> I believe that “the problem of the nerdy heterosexual male” is surely one of the worst social problems today that you can’t even acknowledge as being a problem

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2119

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#50

Post by rayiner »

k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

First, that's not true. https://i.imgur.com/pkZPrOI.png. CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today. Twenty years ago, the Space Shuttle's software team was quite gender balanced: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff.

Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender the profession in ways that has little to do with the work. Think about all the references to hiring "cowboy coders" and "code ninjas." We emphasize hiring the lone gunman coder who learned to code in their basements, while the job actually is highly collaborative and team oriented.

Post reply on HN