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

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

#71
post #23

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…

An interesting data point here ia that girls at all-girls schools tend to take much more interest in STEM subjects, which suggests that he issue might be more to do with social percpetions of what is for girls and boys rather than inherent interest differing between genders.

Maybe, but there is selection bias when looking at just girls who go to all-girls schools. Assuming they are mostly private, this would likely select for wealthier families, which may have a correlation with STEM careers. Furthermore, girls from all-girls schools have parents that are willing to enroll them in all-girls schools, which likely correlates with a certain personality type, whatever that may be.

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

#72

The first part of this had great citations to cite that women are more social. Where the data was lacking is that 1) software is perceived as anti-social and 2) that other anti-social careers face similar problems to software engineering. For example if socialization was such a critical decider, why are some many women maids or professional housekeepers? Most people in this career don't get much on-the-job socializat…

> Or what about accounting and book keeping; which is a professional, white collar career that also happens to employ more women than men?

That's the difference though. Accounting is professional. Software engineering is often not. Moreover, while accounting is often asocial (not much social interaction), many software engineers (male and female) can be downright anti-social (against common means of social interaction).

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

#73
post #23

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…

> 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.

I think your experiences are typical, thanks for sharing.

I'm curious what theory-of-the-gap you've found that you like more than the ones you've seen? You were (intentionally or not) a little cagey about your ultimate position. :)

For my part, I usually see that young girls are the ones who are pressured the most to stay out of STEM. I'm sure that by the time they got to 10, the little girls in your class already "knew" that afterschool computer games weren't really "for girls". Kids are very impressionable to even off-handed comments, and they will self-censor if they think they don't belong.

Anyways, it's all to say that I think there's no secret--if you actually make little girls believe they can do math or code, they'll do it. It's just that as a society we spend a lot of time telling them they can't.

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

#74
post #50

Are the rest of the STEM career paths seen as more social than CS? Is mathematics more social than CS? Because CS is almost (not quite: physics is almost as bad) unique among STEM specializations for its gender disparity. I talk regularly to academic math people (because cryptography) and the sense I have is that if anything, CS is far more social than the work they do --- to get anything significant done in technolo…

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

#75

>Invest in social events: It can take a lot of time to set up opportunities for your team to hang out , but casual socializing is awesome for the extroverts on your team and crucial for retention... and go out of your way to include everyone. Going through this at work. The extroverts took over my department and now our (mandatory) team meetings have (mandatory) fun events that give extroverts time to brag about what…

You are correct.

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

#76
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.

Also notice that even though she had the option, she didn't approach anyone to try an secure a lab partner. She posted her own position opening and waited until all spots were taken. She could very well have clicked on anyones post and that would have been the end of it.

Yeah, this is what bugs me with the advice to "Go befriend a girl". How about they come and befriend me? Like with dating, there's the expectation that the men need to make the first move. (Whatever, it's not necessarily a bad expectation, but when it's implicit like this I'm not always sure it was intentional...)

Of course in the friend case I think it's more of a function of your local environment than anything else. At the same company I've experienced a large difference in the local atmosphere between the Seattle and Vancouver offices, the Vancouver office was quite a bit more welcoming and more people would randomly introduce themselves.

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

#77
post #24

> Compared to almost any other industry, women are underrepresented in technology. Except for the many industries where women dominate like: Preschool and kindergarten education Nursing Accounting Social Work Psychology

Note the pay on those careers.

"Women's Careers" pay significantly less. And they're all 'emotional' and 'soft skill' jobs.

That's a problem.

Edit: So, at -3 currently. Is the -1's a "disagree" or "stfu"? Please state where I am wrong.

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

#78
post #50

Are the rest of the STEM career paths seen as more social than CS? Is mathematics more social than CS? Because CS is almost (not quite: physics is almost as bad) unique among STEM specializations for its gender disparity. I talk regularly to academic math people (because cryptography) and the sense I have is that if anything, CS is far more social than the work they do --- to get anything significant done in technolo…

> Are the rest of the STEM career paths seen as more social than CS?

This guy actually put some pretty decent work into researching this - he found that women dominate "sociable" STEM fields like veterinary sciences and obstetrics, while men dominate the "cold" STEM branches like surgery and computer science.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

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

#79
I read this article and can't help to see how much cultural views and media representation is blending facts with fiction. Starting with the statement "Compared to almost any other industry, women are underrepresented in technology", looking at gender segregation statistics per profession paints a very different picture. Taking Swedish statistics (which get collected as part of taxation and made public), technology profession are usually very average with around 75%. It sounds huge thinking that for every 1 woman there is 3 men, but that is about average for every employed swede for both men and women. You take a random person of the street and there is around 80% chance that the person is working in a profession which has higher than 2:1 gender ratio. The official definition of a gender segregated profession is 60/40 or higher, and 88.5% of the population falls in that category with about 12% women and 13% men working in gender equal professions. Going from the other end, I am manually looking at the list and there is 40 professions with 90% or higher gender segregation none which clearly fits as a technology profession. Top 1# is midwife with 99.7% women (total 5692) and #2 is floor installation with 99.4% men (total 3581). The first recognizable technology profession (system programmer) is listed with 80% men, ranked #75th worst of a total listed 156 professions (including the few gender equal profession).

Without this context, discussing numbers like "women hold only 25% of technical roles" is impossible. 75th position means (given equal distribution) that taking a random person of the street should give a 50% chance of them working in a more gender segregated profession than technology.

What is causing half the population of Sweden to choose gender segregated professions where the majority outnumber the minority with 80% to 20% and do the theories of the article explain it? Personally I don't think so. If social behavior would be a major source then we should be able to predict which professions would be dominated by men and which by women if we ranked the social engagement in the work place, but such prediction model seems poor when I manually go through the top worst segregated professions where both male and women professions are mostly team based.

http://www.duochjobbet.se/nyhet/nio-av-tio-har-jobb-med-ojam... (for a 2012 list that was easiest to grab, but one can always go to the Statistics Sweden (SCB)).

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

#80
post #23

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…

I keep reading about a "women in tech" gap, but if it exists, it must be regional. I've lived and worked, as a programmer, in the Dallas, TX area for over 20 years across 5 different employers. There have always been _lots_ of women in technology-related roles, everywhere. The vast majority of them (as well as the vast majority of the men) have been Indian, though. Is this different in San Francisco/Silicon Valley?

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