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

A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

kapwing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 482 posts

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#21

Post by rectang »

jandrese wrote: post #5

Interesting that popular perception is that it is hard to be a woman in STEM because you get so much unwanted attention, but in this case it was exactly the opposite. She wasn't able to find lab partners for projects in male majority classes and felt lonely.

There are lots of opportunities for outreach, if you look for them. From the article:

"Include her, ask her for advice, introduce her, learn about her work and her life in the same way you would with any male friend or coworker. If you’re an investor, professor, journalist, or manager, take it on yourself to sponsor a young woman’s career."

I've done a number of those things over many years, and found it very rewarding -- both in the interactions with my individual colleagues, and in how it affected the wider teams.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#23

Post by ajkjk »

Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school.

It was nerdy boys, almost entirely (I remember one exception), who wanted to stay after school playing games on the iMacs in our classroom, and I am pretty sure that it would only be the boys in my class who might have, for instance, received and gotten excited about a copy of "C++ for dummies" in ~2000 (granted, the book was terrible and I didn't really start coding for 6 more years, but the spark was already there).

Sure, video-game-interest is not the same as going into tech, but it correlated a lot as I grew up -- these kids ended up being the ones who were, like, coding on graphics calculators or in HTML/CSS a couple years later. There were a few more girls involved by then, but the ratio was still very skewed.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#25

Post by groceryheist »

modbait wrote: post #2

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. As an unattractive computer nerd, I've been regularly reminded my entire life that I am creepy. Skipping.

There are also female computer nerds that are not conventionally attractive. It might be worth trying to make friends with someone less intimidating.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#26

Post by JPKab »

modbait wrote: post #2

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. As an unattractive computer nerd, I've been regularly reminded my entire life that I am creepy. Skipping.

I have a talented, and wonderful, female dev on my team.

One thing though:. She has described to me some of the male coders as being "creepers".

When I asked for specifics, she couldn't provide them. She simply stated it was a "feeling".

The one commonality I found with the creepers is that they are pretty clearly below average in looks. The question is whether this is a correlation or a casual factor.

But definitely challenged her to try to focus on actions rather than "vibes".

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#28

Post by kazinator »

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy.

"Honey, there is this random blogger who thinks I should befriend a girl in my company. It's supposedly not creepy or anything. What do you think?"

If I didn't care what my wife thinks, I'd still have to think twice and consider the gender-political climate of the modern age.

The mere perception of having some intention of wrongdoing can harm you.

In all corporate ethics training courses, you're always hammered with the message of avoiding even the perception of a conflict of interests and such.

Usually, those "avoid perception" messages are with regard to corruption. The rhetoric isn't used in sexual misconduct training, but the concept naturally carries over. If I'm to avoid creating so much as the perception that some official is being bribed into signing a deal, of course it must also be good to avoid so much as the perception that I have some sort of designs of a female coworker. I want simpler rules that are more general.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#29

Post by southphillyman »

modbait wrote: post #2

> Go befriend a girl in your class or company. It’s not creepy. As an unattractive computer nerd, I've been regularly reminded my entire life that I am creepy. Skipping.

Maybe this observation is more apt for dating interactions vs. coworker relationships but......intelligence seems to be VERY high on women's checklist after a certain age. Not to mention the stability/security that can be leveraged via trading on your intelligence.

Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech

#30

Post by kazinator »

jandrese wrote: post #5

Interesting that popular perception is that it is hard to be a woman in STEM because you get so much unwanted attention, but in this case it was exactly the opposite. She wasn't able to find lab partners for projects in male majority classes and felt lonely.

Maybe the chilling effect of several decades of gender politics put a damper on the unwanted attention.

Boys are hammered with messages about sexual misconduct, and so even ones without any such intentions want to avoid the mere perception that anything is going on.

Post reply on HN