Why we don't need more women in tech... yet • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#41

Post by points » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 12:36 PM UTC

spitfire wrote: post #9

Why aren't there women in technology today? Probably because they're smart enough to stay away. Technology today, particularly startups, is an ego driven, fad chasing death-march. What sane person would want to spend their time with emotional children reinventing the wheel and following every fad that comes along? Instead you could work in pr, or management, or even cabinetmaking. So why don't we have women in tech?…

I'd say more that programming is dull work. You only get excited about it if you're a geek.

To most sane normal people, it's factory work. Mindless monkeys churning out code, working on their own hunched over a computer until 3am.

Women are social. That's the main reason IMHO that programming doesn't appeal to them.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#42

Post by Tichy » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 12:36 PM UTC

nagrom wrote: post #40

Tichy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure it is somehow culturally induced, but it might not be in the control of the parents to prevent it? There is other environment besides the parent's home.

I absolutely agree with you that it is cultural influence - that's my point! There is no specific relation between gender and colour, it is entirely culturally-induced. Parents may say that they have raised their child gender-neutral, but that is to some extent impossible since gender-norms are all around us, often unconsciously so. When they see their child craving gender-specific toys, it's more likely an indicator…

It's not so easy to change culture, though. Also I think at least some parts of culture have evolved because of biological differences between the genders. I don't think women will ever be exactly the same as men - unless we all converge on some new androgynous type.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#43

Post by zeteo » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 1:19 PM UTC

kellishaver wrote: post #23

As one of those elusive women in tech... I don't know. I have mixed feelings on the whole issue and usually try to avoid it, mostly because I just don't see it as a big deal. I've never felt like an outcast or that I didn't belong in this field because of my gender, nor have I ever been made to feel like the center of attention because of it (thank goodness). It just is. Of all the women I know personally, only one o…

A close friend of mine recently graduated from college. She was quickly offered a couple of programming jobs, but turned them down. After a while, she altogether stopped applying for any programming jobs. Finally, after one year of searching, she found a (non-programming) consulting job that she jumped onto. When I asked her why she avoided programming so much, she said that spending 8+ hours a day interacting with just a computer was close to her personal idea of hell. She likes to interact with people, meet new people etc.

Now granted this is just one data point. But, for me at least, it opens the door to a different hypothesis:

1. Women have a significantly different nature of the work / salary trade-off from men. 2. Reduced interaction with people is a put-off for women. 3. Thus, only half of society is really willing to do the geekiest tech-sector jobs, which puts a premium on the salaries for those jobs.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#44

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 1:22 PM UTC

alsomike wrote: post #19

jerf wrote: post #12

I'm not sure this argument stands up to the facts. Women have been pouring into every discipline over the past twenty+ years. That's a significant number because we're now talking people born in the 1990s, which can not be said to be a decade untouched by feminism. Women are graduating with more degrees then men now, women are the majority on campus, and the proportions are rising. Every discipline, engineering and c…

Here's actual data: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/cwsem/PGA_049131 What "natural disinclination" do you think women have, exactly? They don't like math? Women received 47% of math undergrad degrees in 2002 and that number has been stable for 20 years. They don't like computers? The physical sciences use computers pretty heavily, and women received 42% of undergraduates degrees in those fields in 2002, compar…

I only have anecdotal data, but in my experience most women getting a math degree are doing so with the goal of being a math teacher. Also, if you break physical sciences down by field, just under half of women in physical science are in biology (vs one quarter of men).

Here is a possibility: women got into CS in the 80's and 90's for the money. Now that CS is not a path to quick dotcom riches, the women (and men) who were chasing the money have gone back to business.

As for astronomy, there were 276 astronomy majors nationwide. I think if you pick one of the smallest fields and draw conclusions from it, you should at least admit you are cherrypicking.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#45

Post by sesqu » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 1:43 PM UTC

demallien wrote: post #28

nocipher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand. Your point is that computer science, as a field, has done many things to attract women and that it has still been unsuccessful. Furthermore, since so much effort has been put forth in this pursuit, the computer science community cannot be held responsible for the gender inequality. I'm not sure that that is what you are trying to convey, but that is about the clearest argument I can read fr…

Um, I think that jerf is trying to say that your figures can be interpreted another way. For example, maybe back in '83, computer science was comparatively friendlier towards women than other maths-oriented degrees, such as engineering, medecine, and astronomy. But as these other degrees have become less mysogynistic, they have successfully taken women away from maths disciplines that had previously been comparativel…

According to the link above, there were approximately equal amounts of 24-year-old men and women getting bachelor's degrees in 1980, but undergraduating men proportionally outnumbered women in natural sciences and engineering 2.66:1. By 1998, bachelor's degrees had increased by 34% for men and 85% for women, but in NS&E the increases had been 23% and 110%, leaving the proportional gender ratio of NS&E undergraduates at 2.14:1. Notably, engineering degrees for men fell by 21%, which had a larger impact than women entering.

I didn't hunt for post-bubble figures.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#46

Post by hvs » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 1:59 PM UTC

nhashem wrote: post #27

I blame John Romero. John Romero, for those who don't know (or used to know, before his name faded into obscurity over a decade ago), was at one point best known for his work on idSoftware and his creation of several milestone games such as Doom. He then split off to release his own game, Daikatana, a move that garnered a particular amount of hype. The message at the time in 1997 seemed to be, "Video games are cool.…

I highly doubt that the failure of one company caused all women to give up on software development because it wasn't cool any more (Carmack was equally or more of rock star). Especially since working for a game company is one of the most grueling experiences in the software industry. On top of that, as "famous" as he may have seemed, I challenge you to find someone who didn't play computer games that even remotely knows who he is.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#47

Post by astine » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 2:31 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #17

jpark wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely convinced that "society starts conditioning for gender roles very early". You'd have to show me hard data. On the other hand, there is fascinating evidence to prove the reverse: Case in point is David Reimer, who received the first ever sex re-assignment surgery conducted on a developmentally normal child at age 22 months. David became Brenda. "At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refus…

The plural of "anecdote" is not — actually, we don't even need a plural here. That case is interesting, but I'm not sure it proves anything. There are natural-born girls who have a similar aversion to girliness. It's just not the norm. The life story of one person (particularly someone with a family history of mental illness) just doesn't seem like valid grounds for such a broad conclusion.

It certainly proves that gender identity and perceived gender roles are not entirely environmental. If the segregation of of boy toys and girl toys were the only or primary cause of gender personality for boys and girls then it would have been easy to raise Reimer as a girl. As it is, this demonstrates that at least a substantial portion of femininity for girls and masculinity for guys is inborn. That not every girl is feminine and not every guy is masculine, despite upbringing, actually reinforces this point.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#48

Post by jlees » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:02 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #21

blahedo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's hard to argue with her basic claim, which is that it's not at the college or at the job-recruiting level that we need to focus our attention if we want to be more gender-balanced; it's on the little kids. Speaking as a college educator, I can confirm that the social biases are already set, if perhaps not in stone. I guess you could claim that gender-balancing the field is undesirable, which is strange, or…

But that's exactly my point; we've already done a lot of work on that front. You can see the results everywhere else. Are we really sure that after decades of work on this matter, work that has obviously come to fruition in field after field after field, that there isn't something other than "social bias" at play? At what point does the field get to stop self-flagellating? I guess part of what I'm saying is that at t…

The problem with arguments like this is it makes me feel like a freak for being a woman in computer science. Thanks.

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#49

Post by jlees » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 4:04 PM UTC

kellishaver wrote: post #23

As one of those elusive women in tech... I don't know. I have mixed feelings on the whole issue and usually try to avoid it, mostly because I just don't see it as a big deal. I've never felt like an outcast or that I didn't belong in this field because of my gender, nor have I ever been made to feel like the center of attention because of it (thank goodness). It just is. Of all the women I know personally, only one o…

I wrote a (quite frankly dull and rambly) blog post about my upbringing to try to figure out why it made me an engineer, and it's pretty much the same. I was encouraged to tinker and nothing was ever discouraged. The only discouragement was lack of knowledge from careers and university advisors at school who didn't even tell me computer science was an option (for uni or a career).

I think that kind of upbringing helps, heck it's crucial. However, a lot of social signals can easily curtail it - peer pressure for not being girly and being called names etc (never happened to me, but I know others it did happen to).

Re: Why we don't need more women in tech... yet

#50

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Sep 08, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

jlees wrote: post #48

jerf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly my point; we've already done a lot of work on that front. You can see the results everywhere else. Are we really sure that after decades of work on this matter, work that has obviously come to fruition in field after field after field, that there isn't something other than "social bias" at play? At what point does the field get to stop self-flagellating? I guess part of what I'm saying is that at t…

The problem with arguments like this is it makes me feel like a freak for being a woman in computer science. Thanks.

The problem with arguments like this is that I have an irrational negative emotional reaction when I read them. Thanks.

Fixed that for you.