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Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

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Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#11

Post by zer8k »

3c6bYDXLMj wrote: post #5

We aren’t in for a pleasant surprise. If this userbase is anything less than 70% male I’d eat my hat. Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive. But HN, being a community of old farts lamenting about the good old days (if I have to read another comment about how great it is that the site hasn’t changed in 20 years I’lll scream), as well as techno-libertarians wanting to tell…

> Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive

Ah yes the old and tired argument comes out again. Since there are 50% men and 50% women in the world why doesn't tech look the same?

Cool opinion though...it's so 2015. Almost vintage! I particularly enjoyed the part where you imply it's a bad thing. Why don't we hear about that with welding, house building, firefighting, policing, the military, or any other male dominated field Dr. Inclusion?

Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#12

Post by grepLeigh »

If you haven't already, check out StackOverflow's Developer Survey. The historical data goes back to 2015.

Strangely, it looks like the 2023 StackOverflow survey opted not to collect gender among their demographics responses. IIRC, the breakdown is approximately 90% male, 5% female, 1-2% non-binary, 1-2% prefer not to answer or prefer writing their own response. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/

Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#13

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

grepLeigh wrote: post #12

If you haven't already, check out StackOverflow's Developer Survey. The historical data goes back to 2015. Strangely, it looks like the 2023 StackOverflow survey opted not to collect gender among their demographics responses. IIRC, the breakdown is approximately 90% male, 5% female, 1-2% non-binary, 1-2% prefer not to answer or prefer writing their own response. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/

As of the time I write this post, the current vote distribution is not exactly what you outlined but it is extremely close. Almost surprisingly so given the current vote pool is only around 70 as I write this. I would have thought it would take a larger sample size to normalize

Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#14

Post by grepLeigh »

zer8k wrote: post #11
3c6bYDXLMj wrote: post #5

We aren’t in for a pleasant surprise. If this userbase is anything less than 70% male I’d eat my hat. Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive. But HN, being a community of old farts lamenting about the good old days (if I have to read another comment about how great it is that the site hasn’t changed in 20 years I’lll scream), as well as techno-libertarians wanting to tell…

> Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive Ah yes the old and tired argument comes out again. Since there are 50% men and 50% women in the world why doesn't tech look the same? Cool opinion though...it's so 2015. Almost vintage! I particularly enjoyed the part where you imply it's a bad thing. Why don't we hear about that with welding, house building, firefighting, policing…

Well, you do hear about those things (welding, house building, firefighting, policing, the military).

For example, the United States Marine Corps is slowly integrating some basic training and has a few co-ed companies [1]. This was such a far-fetched idea in the 90s that Ridley Scott made a movie about it starring Demi Moore (G.I. Jane, 1997).

Firefighting is another excellent example [2]. 7-11% of firefighters in the United States are women (depending on how volunteer vs. career firefighters are counted). I remember that statistic because StackOverflow's female respondent rate hovers around ~5%. "Women are more likely to run into burning buildings than what I'm doing now" is the kind of gallows humor that gets me through the day.

There are also advocacy groups for other gender/work minority combinations, like male nurses and caretakers.

[1] https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/61/Docs/FOIA/Reading-Ro...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_firefighting

Edited: typos

Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#15

Post by cyclotron3k »

zer8k wrote: post #11
3c6bYDXLMj wrote: post #5

We aren’t in for a pleasant surprise. If this userbase is anything less than 70% male I’d eat my hat. Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive. But HN, being a community of old farts lamenting about the good old days (if I have to read another comment about how great it is that the site hasn’t changed in 20 years I’lll scream), as well as techno-libertarians wanting to tell…

> Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive Ah yes the old and tired argument comes out again. Since there are 50% men and 50% women in the world why doesn't tech look the same? Cool opinion though...it's so 2015. Almost vintage! I particularly enjoyed the part where you imply it's a bad thing. Why don't we hear about that with welding, house building, firefighting, policing…

No need for the sarcasm and derision. Let's try to keep things civil.

Re: Poll: What are the gender demographics of HN?

#20

Post by Jensson »

3c6bYDXLMj wrote: post #5

We aren’t in for a pleasant surprise. If this userbase is anything less than 70% male I’d eat my hat. Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive. But HN, being a community of old farts lamenting about the good old days (if I have to read another comment about how great it is that the site hasn’t changed in 20 years I’lll scream), as well as techno-libertarians wanting to tell…

> Tech has obviously in general has made considerable progress in being more inclusive

What do you mean? It basically hasn't changed at all, the only thing that changed was the messaging but not anything significant. The ratio of women in engineering related fields like programming has been pretty steady the past 30 years.

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