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Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

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Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#31

Post by enraged_camel »

codemac wrote: post #6

The goals of this post are noble, and I almost agree with the conclusion. How the post gets there seems to be based out of a very negative conflation. How is the lack of women in the tech industry, and the offensive notion that women fair poorly in STEM subjects for no other reason than they're women uttered in the same breath? They shouldn't be for the very same reasons as this post extolls. > Being told that female…

>>Anyone who believes that women inherently do worse in STEM subjects needs to be called out, in the most negative of terms. No one should say it, period.

I don't think the point is that they inherently do worse, but rather that, currently and on average, they do worse.

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#32

Post by davorak »

wfunction wrote: post #8

The goal of getting women into tech should be to equalize the gender ratio of the people who actually are in tech to that of the people who want to be in tech. That's the real balance that we need to reach for -- and unlike what many people seem to think, this ratio is not necessarily 50%.

50% is an easy first order approximation. Better approximations are great, but I see not obvious winner for a better approximation whose error bounds do not include 50% and has or is likely to gain significant mindshare.

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#33

Post by danso »

A little off-topic...but I was just reading "Coders at Work" and of the 15 coders interviewed, only one was female (Fran Allen):

http://www.codersatwork.com/fran-allen.html

Despite this, the author (Peter Seibel) begins his introduction by mentioning Ada Lovelace in the very first sentence. In the next sentence, he talks about the six women - Kay Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum - who were called to be the first programmers of ENIAC.

I don't know if this was explicitly intentional on Seibel's part, a sort of gender-balancing of the book given its one female interviewee, but it was a nice reminder of how, at one point in time, it wasn't strange at all that women were among the forefront of computer pioneers. Today, the numbers have receded to the point that some people just think that women are inherently not "built" for programming. Well, some clearly were...this isn't like arguing whether the Navy SEALs should let in a real life "G.I. Jane"...given the history of women in programming, it's still a strong possibility that the gender disparity is heavily influenced by social trends and stigma and is something that we can mitigate.

(note: I'm not accusing Seibel of not having enough diversity in his book...it's very likely Fran Allen was the only woman available for his book and who played as interesting a part in history as Robert Knuth, Peter Norvig, and the other big names that Seibel interviews)

Edit: Also, the Fran Allen interview is really interesting. I jumped to it to see her thoughts on the gender disparity, but most of the interview is on her thoughts about early programming, teaching scientists to code, and how C ruined the art of compilers

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#34

Post by btilly »

Here is the challenge. If you don't make men aware of the ways that we as an industry fail to be fair, there is no hope of changing it. But if we rub the unfairness of the industry in women's faces, we are creating barriers to fix the problems.

The solution, put in positive terms, is that if you want things to be better, you need to encourage women to look on the positive side.

In that light, I think that if http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/26/software-for-underserved... gets taken to heart by people in the startup community, that will do more to address this issue than any 10 heartfelt rants about the inequity of the present situation. (For those who don't follow the link, it is patio11 pointing out that if you want to create a successful consumer business, the odds are very good that your primary customers will be women.)

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#36

Post by iamdave »

Blahah wrote: post #29
samfisher83 wrote: post #21

I thought tech mas about metocricity. Plus all the girls I know just want to be PMs.

Prime Ministers? Parlour Maids? Post Modernists?

I'm going to take a huge leap here and assume Project Manager.

A pretty common abbreviation in tech, the context should have tipped you off.

---

edit: One startup I worked for that focused on improving federal regulation compliance in the banking sector had a team of 5 project managers, 1 was male. Our product management team was entirely female.

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#37

Post by yummyfajitas »

scoofy wrote: post #18
codemac wrote: post #6

The goals of this post are noble, and I almost agree with the conclusion. How the post gets there seems to be based out of a very negative conflation. How is the lack of women in the tech industry, and the offensive notion that women fair poorly in STEM subjects for no other reason than they're women uttered in the same breath? They shouldn't be for the very same reasons as this post extolls. > Being told that female…

>Anyone who believes that women inherently do worse in STEM subjects needs to be called out, in the most negative of terms. No one should say it, period. Outside of a university context, I would agree with you. Statements like this are the reason tenure is still needed in a university setting. No axiom should be sacred if we genuinely care about understanding the world and making the world a better place for everyone…

Outside of a university context, I would agree with you.

So non-academics don't have the right to an inquiring mind?

Also, what other lines of inquiry should be forbidden?

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#39

Post by jscheel »

After a blow-up in my town a few months ago, I tried to encourage a few notable female tech proponents that negativity was not the way to win the fight. I was publicly lambasted, called denigrating names, had false information spread as far as cities 3000 miles away, and even had a meme made about me (containing incorrect info, imagine that). Negativity breeds nothing but negativity. I often fall into the trap myself, so it was pretty disheartening to see others fall into it so hard when I tried to warn them away. To be fair, I didn't handle the situation perfectly, but at least I know that and am willing to change. Effective communication starts with introspection. Tolstoy said it this way, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

Re: Stop complaining about the lack of women in tech

#40

Post by mjn »

danso wrote: post #33

A little off-topic...but I was just reading "Coders at Work" and of the 15 coders interviewed, only one was female (Fran Allen): http://www.codersatwork.com/fran-allen.html Despite this, the author (Peter Seibel) begins his introduction by mentioning Ada Lovelace in the very first sentence. In the next sentence, he talks about the six women - Kay Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence…

Some of the depictions in the 1960s, interestingly, played up programming as a stereotypically "women's" occupation, complete with pop-psychology explanations of why women were particularly suited for it: http://blog.fogcreek.com/girls-go-geek-again/
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