One stat I've never seen in these types of discussions are how many women are applying for tech positions vs men. If that number is low then it's probably a pipeline issue.
You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
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Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#12Lots of opinions, but no data to back it up.
No. A fair amount of boots-on-the-ground experience, though...
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#13As a woman in technology, a coder no less, I totally understand the pipeline problem. Men dominated technology in the very early days, and men made up most of the workforce. As much as society, government, and education attempt to force women into STEM fields, it's going to take a while before there are enough women, with enough experience, to truly equalize compensation. As for girls opting out of coding, that's ok.. Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and that should not be see as some failure.
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#14One stat I've never seen in these types of discussions are how many women are applying for tech positions vs men. If that number is low then it's probably a pipeline issue.
I think the article is trying to say that the state of the pipeline is what it is because of the way that the end of it appears to those who might be in the beginning of it. Young women aren't going to stay in the pipeline for a career that looks like they will have a hard time excelling in once they reach adulthood.
Despite my distaste for the authors invoking basement coder stereotypes, I can see their point. We can keep blaming the "pipeline" if the industry is rife with sexism and harassment. Our current state of affairs influences the pipeline.
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#15> Girls in elementary school show equal interest and aptitude as boys when it comes to coding That might be true today, but it's a steaming crock of made-up bullshit if they're saying it was that way 15 years ago. You know... At the beginning of the pipeline that would have produced an even distribution today.
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Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#16Found this piece very interesting.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-progra...
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#17I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get more support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.
What is glamorous in middle school and high school ? Well, the jobs the people "in power" at such institutions have, and in their own families. So Mom's job (the carer's job, because most families have a carer and a provider or at least have those roles be unbalanced and of course most contact will be with the carer, not the provider). The teacher's job. Caring jobs in general. And of course the "in power" jobs on TV. Men are immediately discouraged from doing that and so they skip ... what of course turns out to be mostly undesirable roles. Which make these women easily exploitable, and perhaps there ought to be some discussion of why that is such a big problem for anyone.
Maybe what needs to happen is we need to start telling women of age 10-12 "you know, in 10 years, a bit more, you'll need to support yourself, maybe a family. And as a teacher, carer job, or mom, it'll suck. You'll be low on the scale, and dependent. Think about it now and save yourself a lot of pain later".
20 years later (because that's how long it inevitably takes) we'll have a majority women, because they really do outcompete men on average given the chance. I mean, I do agree there's no way in hell this will ever happen, but one can dream.
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#18One stat I've never seen in these types of discussions are how many women are applying for tech positions vs men. If that number is low then it's probably a pipeline issue.
I think the article is trying to say that the state of the pipeline is what it is because of the way that the end of it appears to those who might be in the beginning of it. Young women aren't going to stay in the pipeline for a career that looks like they will have a hard time excelling in once they reach adulthood. Despite my distaste for the authors invoking basement coder stereotypes, I can see their point. We ca…
Sexism and harassment is even more prevalent in the entertainment industry and there are plenty of women working in entertainment. Although I agree sexism/harassment exists in tech, I don't believe it's a valid argument for why there is a gender gap.
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the article is trying to say that the state of the pipeline is what it is because of the way that the end of it appears to those who might be in the beginning of it. Young women aren't going to stay in the pipeline for a career that looks like they will have a hard time excelling in once they reach adulthood. Despite my distaste for the authors invoking basement coder stereotypes, I can see their point. We ca…
Sexism and harassment is even more prevalent in the entertainment industry and there are plenty of women working in entertainment. Although I agree sexism/harassment exists in tech, I don't believe it's a valid argument for why there is a gender gap.
Yeah, I certainly don't know either. I'm just saying that arguing that it _is_ a pipeline issue based on the stats vs. saying that it's a culture issue that affects the pipeline is just two people talking past each other.
Re: You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists
#20As a woman in technology, a coder no less, I totally understand the pipeline problem. Men dominated technology in the very early days, and men made up most of the workforce. As much as society, government, and education attempt to force women into STEM fields, it's going to take a while before there are enough women, with enough experience, to truly equalize compensation. As for girls opting out of coding, that's ok.…
> Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and that should not be see as some failure.
It's also true that not all boys want to code, and not all boys want to take a STEM path.
But what if a larger percentage of boys want to code or take a STEM path? If this were so, it would look like a pipeline problem, and it would look like a pipeline problem that's quite hard to fix. It might actually look like the reality we currently see.
But wait, it used to be that computer science was almost evenly split between men and women, right? Where did all those women go?
This is a reasonable question to ask, but it's not the only reasonable question to ask. Another question to ask would be: 50 years ago, what percentage of the overall population had computer science degrees? And is that percentage larger, smaller, or roughly similar to what it is today? I don't know, but I think it was likely much, much smaller than it is today. It might be the case that there are more female computer science graduates today as a percentage of the total population than there was 50 years ago. But how could that be true, if (as we know) men with computer science degrees now way outnumber women with computer science degrees?
This isn't really a trick question, the answer is pretty easy: Today there are a lot more people with computer science degrees. That increase was disproportionately men, and that's a consequence of a pipeline that is disproportionately men.
So what's the difference between the pipeline 50 years ago and the pipeline today?