Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constructs that brought this about.
In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially and even in your own family to justify working whole nights, weekends and late hours consistently. You can try to fight that when you are single, it gets near impossible to do that after marriage and kids. Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons.
At the other end, super success in software depends on all this start up culture which is very hard on most women.
Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a teenager.
When people talk about Female founders or coders I think they mean young pretty female founders. There are few, and for good reasons.
I see no shortage of older females in software managament or software arch. positions and many moms are just fine doing startups on their 50s.
In many European countries those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.
Women aren't required to have kids?
I myself am a coder because I loved modding games when I was younger. I do like creating things regardless, but I got to that point because a childhood friend shared PC games with me (games that his uncle shared with him)... and then you end up spending a large chunk of your childhood on the computer, so it's natural to progress down that path. But I know both guys and girls that played games like me and chose not to do a career that is computer-related.
It'd be great to have more gender balance in computer science, but actually in all fields too. I found in my art history classes in college that the class was around 80-90% female, for every class I took. This was basically the opposite of my computer science classes...
Man though, it's tough to judge society in the present lol.
I think the problem is that we always name these two. Ada Lovelace died 161 years ago. Is she really all that relevant a role model for girls today?
1. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...
2. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-idiocy-of-techcrunch-di...
Social construct theory is dead. Girls who have a genuine interest in technology couldn't care less about the sex of their coworkers (because if they did then they would be sexists).
Are you serious? When did it "die", again?
Our solution was to simply make a small set of our classes for girls only. This provides girls with the option of learning either in an all-girls or a regular environment, so girls who feel uncomfortable are not discouraged to the point that they drop out.
Your solution will make the problem worse. Because nothing will really change in the way boys work, and you will see the same late night, whole night, full weekend culture among them.
Girl's classes will see a far little attendance totally detached from culture in the other part of world. Soon the rewards will dry out and move towards crazy work culture and attendance in girls classes will decline.
I honestly couldn't care less about idealistic principles when the all-girls classes have been working great for us and have boosted the number of enrolled female students.
Separating things sounds like it'd just make the male stuff even worse since there's no negative feedback. And it doesn't strengthen the girls to speak out when a guy tries some dumbass posturing or whatever.
And I say this even while planning to send my daughters to all-girls school just for possible reduction in the general adolescent "distractions". I just don't see what's comp-sci specific.
When any student, regardless of gender, is uncomfortable in a class, they will pay less attention and perform noticeably poorer.
I'm woman and my experience is that most adolescent males are not apes and are able to act like human. Separating them by gender is accepting bad behavior as norm when it actually is not a norm. Young polite males are often off putted by pseudo-masculinity too, but you just told those that they have to suck it up.
The stereotype of adolescent male being half ape is as a accurate as the stereotype of woman being way too much emotional. Despite stereotypes, most young males are ok people and most young females are able to reason rationally.
I think if you want more women to be coding, you have failed definitely. Why not show that women can be as strong as the boys, can rub shoulders and brain and still come out on top? By segregating based on gender, you only support that women have stereotypical attributes which prevent them from being as good as men, and men are good because of their stereotypical attributes.
Your genitals do not make you a coder, it's really down to the culture and societal expectations of both genders.
I merely wanted to point out a practical experience and was not trying to advocate gender segregation.
primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender, and you know this -- "acting like boys" has nothing to do with genitals -- but seem profoundly confused and angry about it.
I'm sorry, but just like stories around racial diversity in tech you're about to see a bunch of HN comments making _EVERY EXCUSE CONCEIVABLE_, and then some, to dismiss your concerns and/or say this blog is doing damage instead of helping. I think they're all wrong, but I can't argue against all of them. All I can do is upvote your supporters and downvote the detractors.
Please just keep on keeping on. I have a daughter here who will benefit from the path you're creating. You won't see it in the comments of HackerNews, but there are men in tech who can actually see the glass walls & ceilings women run into in this field starting back to at least high-school and won't deny it with pedantic arguments that go nowhere & prove/disprove nothing.
That is all.
> I have a daughter here who will benefit from the path
> you're creating
Why? I mean, why would women want to get into coding?
If one is not already working with computers, from the outside world, its a crappy job, and the money isn't better than many other things. Not to mention the insane hours culture. Women have a clean sheet choice. Why work in an office, killing your brain on hugely complex things for not much extra money, sat in front of what is essentially a complex toy?
Has it ever occurred to people that perhaps girls take an objective choice based on purely the work and reward (money or psychological) and make a wise choice to do something else?
Also, coders are seen widely was geeky, spotty, awkward, weirdos, who cant get laid. And, um, they are often banging on about getting more women in the workplace. From a girls POV, that's sounding a bit iffy at best.
My attitude is to just let women do what they want to do, and if I get a CV from one, well, I dont want to know if its a woman or not. I just want the skills. I dont care if its a man, woman, or what ever. Just don't get in anyones way and let nature take its course.
But personally, I cant help thinking women are making a smart choice, and going for better way to spend life earning a crust. I mean, really, look at what we do. Its a terrible way to be. And we know this is true because even the big tech companies go out of their way trying to make offices and environments fun and exciting. And that is for men. Heh, even men hate it, and need a bouincy toy to distract them!!! I don't see many of other companies going this far. Why? Because the job is awful.
So, men, stop trying to shit up womens lives by making them feel bad for not wanting to work down the mine.... sorry, code.
XXXXX love you all, obviously ;)
If it was a 'terrible way to be', I wouldn't be working here; I like my job. Also, if they try to lure me in with bouncy toys, I'll tell 'em to fuck right off - that probably means the other working conditions, pay, etc are shit.
But when I found out I was bloody hooked on the idea!
Then again the question is, why do females not get hooked on the idea, even when they don't grow up in such a techy environment. Is it really "our" fault or is even "our" job to trying to confince people how great programming is? We've a lot of events especially made for females where we try to excite them for computer science, but so far it didn't add much to the imbalance. So for me it seems (at least here in Switzerland) that we're doing everything possible to get women into programming, but if their interests are somewhere else, what else is there to do? Do we really need to play a blame game?
That's what I meant with "natural" interest. We can't force women to get "hooked" on the idea, they need to get there on their own.
Sure you can learn to program as you can learn to play a game or learn how to knit, but why do we have to artificially get women into the industry just to get number imbalance up? I guess the situation is simply different than here in Switzerland, because here we do all kinds of stuff to get more women into the industry but the numbers haven't really changed, so is it still "our" fault? Can't we just accept that women might not be so interested in computer science as much as most men are not interested in female-dominated professions.
I won't stop anyone promoting computer science, regardless whether it's for women or men, I'm just fed up with all the generalizations and prejudice regarding "the industry" and the fact that people simply don't want to accept that there are generally differences in interest between genders.
If you're threatened by the thought of more women in coding, then you don't really believe that we're a meritocracy. If you're one of those folks, then somewhere, deep in your heart, you know that things aren't fair, and when kick ass women programmers come in, you as a mediocre participant, will be pushed down to the bottom.
Meritocracy wants the very best. Seeks out the very best. Welcomes the very best.
To use an analogy, I can't imagine Olympic athletes being happy for the best competitors from another country being sidelined due to their sexual preference. No, that's not happening. because world class athletes know their victories are hollow unless they're truly competing against the very best in the world. Unlike Silicon Valley. We don't want competition. Nope, we want our nice, cozy little in crowd, keep that money nice and close so we can control it.
As Chris Rock said, there's a difference between rich and wealthy. Michael Jordan is rich, the owner of the chicago bulls is wealthy.
Women want to be wealthy, not just rich. African Americans want to be wealthy, not just rich. And right now, according to PG himself, the path to that wealth is by learning to code.
So anyone trying to stop that from happening, can pretty much categorically be described as a bigot.
> To use an analogy, I can't imagine Olympic athletes being happy for the best competitors from another country being sidelined due to their sexual preference. No, that's not happening. because world class athletes know their victories are hollow unless they're truly competing against the very best in the world.
But you can probably see how male Olympians would be annoyed if they had to put up with 24/7 accusations that their superior performance in comparison to female Olympians was only because how much they hated them.
1. American children of any affiliation (race, sex, gender, location) need to learn how to code, because it is the literacy of the future - without it you are left behind in both earnings potential and career choices. To make that happen everyone here can take a step to show a child something cool they can do with code. Get them fired up about expressing their creativity with the tools of tech! For every one child that reminds you of you when you were young, pick three that don't, to make things even in the long run.
2. Niche groups, previously underrepresented in tech need better representation, because diverse perspectives raise the permutation of potential problems noticed, problems tackled and solutions possible, period. Representation also leads to better mentorship, resources, and an even start for everyone with talent and grit, regardless of background. Once we get a unicorn IPO from each underrepresented group, things will change. If we aren't getting those, something is wrong with 1) or 3) or both.
3. Existing representatives of underrepresented groups in tech who have the experience and skills to lead and build successful businesses today need to be able to receive the same support and the same proportion of support as regularly represented groups. Nothing more, nothing less. We have yet to see data from anyone about percentage of seed* funded startups out of 1000 applicants from their representative group. That data can easily close this conversation for good or surface a problem that can be addressed next if need be. If there is a real problem here however, teaching children how to code won't be the way we need to solve it. This is the only data we have seen and it is not encouraging: http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/11/02/how-female-en... .
How would you detect or solve for a problem in this cluster?
* mentioning seed, since that sample would be most likely to be sufficient to gauge trust in underrepresented groups by investors. Later rounds could skew for industry trends in the short run. The goal is to run a regression that shows objective information.
Good article, I think you're right on target with the issue.
We have way more serious problems to solve, really.
I wasn't aware that we had to attack the list strictly in order.
When did the writer of this article say this? When has anybody said this? Please, I'm very interested.
There are other female founders out there that code. I'm sorry to say that you're not the first, nor the last. It's about how we get MORE female founders and female coders to increase the diversity of the startup world.
(Incidentally, I'm female, a startup founder and I code. )
This in particular is not limited to women. As a guy from a non-CS background, I felt the same way for a long time. I'd say it's a function of experience rather than gender.
Otherwise, it's built on the assumption that most females on Hacker News don't already know how to code, which may or may not be the case.
1. It is important to like who you are and what you do. I am glad you are proud of being who you are,
2. But at the same time I don't like when people are calling out initiatives like "more women in tech". Look, getting a job is tough. It can be luck or qualification. I know someone is going to cite some research studies but at this point, let's just say yes we get it, a lot of assholes out there are discriminating women. But in reality, you can't stop them by hiring more women. You wish you could just get more women in manager level so that more women can be hired. That's not going to happen magically and hoping women managers hire more women is also acting discrimination. I am not comfortable with that kind of initiatives. It is as if I was a broker setting a goal for myself. That's just number game, there is nothing we gain from it other than growing the numbers.
3. All-girls class is just bad. For one it's like containing them, like putting them in a zoo and wait for them to do something amazing and then we pay a visit and cheer them for their accomplishment. Events meant for helping girls to find self-esteem is great but then again, too many is going to do damage because they soon will get attached to these "all-girls" environment. To actually work in the real world, one must accept the flaws and be ready to work with unfriendly people. What is even more frustrating is that we are dogfooding people with the crazy things CS and programming are doing. The ability to code is great, awesome. But coding is just a tool. Like every other tool out there, you can either make something awesome and powerful or something ugly and useless. Knowing how to code doesn't make you smarter or special. It's like knowing quantum physics suddenly makes you a wantable guy among your girlfriends? That's just bullshit (for some it's true but then that's just bullshit). And that's pretty much stereotyping.
What we need is to stop telling girls or any group of people to do XYZ because they are the minority or is having disadvantage. Making exceptions to them isn't going to help them. I am Asian (Chinese to be exact) and if 20 years later Asian MD dominates like 80%, do we start another initiative to bring up other ethnicity? If all the ice cream truck drivers are Asians, do we want more diversity? If we think (or because studies have shown...) that girls don't end up in tech because they are afraid or because they were told they weren't good enough, having all-girl class won't solve the problem when they enter the real world either.
Teach people about computer and web literacy, about science and engineering, about what people do in their daily jobs. Teach regardless of gender or race. We all deserve to know them and we don't need to have special non-profit organizations going after XYZ groups of people. Bring those things into core education.
The problem I care about is that this industry is hostile to a very large group of people, women arent around not only because they arent encouraged early on, but because they are being driven out when they do get here, ask any women in the industry what their experiences have been and it will likely be surprising and upsetting, it has been to me at least every time.
If women are being driven out as you describe, it should be possible to measure. For example, if they are being actively driven out, women in technology should then be naturally gravitating towards those companies, conferences and similar spaces which has an lower hostility than the average.
While some people do perform some studies like that, it still very much in a early stage.
From statistics and Wikipedia and HN have done, one shared answer that have provided is a cultural phenomenon, in which anonymous non-social interacting work is a male dominated area. I would very much like to see a study how true that is, if its located to the IT industry, and if it is true globally.
Organizations for girls in tech offer resources to the few girls who are actually there. I encourage you to try to find me a program that isn't completely voluntary, but I doubt you will.
I did not say a gun was pointing at the girls to force them to program. If low female population in the tech sector is due to the lack of resource and the stereotyped masculine geek image, then how does inviting girls to an all-girl programming class help them in the long run?
If we want to minimize stereotype, and if the stereotype has to do with gender, then we need to educate both genders. This means bring in female speakers to educate and show to both the boys and the girls what they do as software engineer or as a mechanical engineer. The same resource we offer to girls can be offered to boys.
Because the popular culture has associated geek with a masculine image, a lot of girls don't think they are capable of or should be involved. Is mixed gender event less powerful than single-gender event? To some extent yes. For the beginning, the girls may feel comfortable with their own gender. But later on? First time working with a guy on a hackathon project? I am not shy, but if you ask me to work with a female for the first time, I probably end up being shy and careful.
but you don't want to put any effort into thinking or learning about gender
What do I need to know about gender? What is special there that I am not aware of?
In reality, people think differently about themselves. Some people think they are more capable than others. The best we can hope is that we can give each other a chance to show what they can do, to bust the myth that guys are better.
I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed,
ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race,
sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene
between my duty and my patient;
If you are born in the wealthy London suburb of Hampstead, you are likely to live eleven years longer than someone born in to a family in the much poorer Somers Town/St Pancras area.
If you are a sexually active gay man, you are more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than if you are a heterosexual. If you are an Ashkenazi Jew, your children are more likely to suffer Tay-Sachs disease.
If you are setting medical policy, you will sometimes need to target particular communities for intervention and prevention.
These factors should never be used as a reason for providing lower quality of care. But if an observable trend exists that is causing a particular problem for people in a specific community, it should be permitted for considerations of minority status to be taken into account for deciding health policy.
Like, I'm okay with the government spending less money and effort telling childless people to vaccinate their kids than the money they spend telling parents to. I'm okay with the National Health Service putting a free condom dispenser in gay sex clubs and not doing so in primary schools.
(I know is quite common way of talk, but still...)
Have women have ever been robbed of being able to code like voting? Why does it receive so much attention? What adversity did they need to overcome to be where they are? Is it physical like someone who suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome or glaucoma overcoming their disability? Is it mental like someone who suffers from dyslexia mastering programming? Or was it political like a North Korean who discovered coding while facing imminent persecution for the forbidden knowledge?
I know women who can code just like men and they are great at it but their gender has nothing to do with it, it's just their ability and strengths as developers. Does a person's gender really merit so much of our attention when the basis for the argument is as superficial as a binary label society have placed on people, never mind the the other categories of people that fall in between and who are shunned.
You are right, it is not the level of oppression as seen in North Korea, but it is severe and blindlingly obvious, and by making that statement you are helping increase that hostility towards one gender, that isnt nice.
> Every female would have had to get over the constant
> systematic assumption that they didnt belong in this field,
> from the culture being the only girl in the room / on the
> team / to the constant assumptions that they are in
> marketing at meetups and generally just reminded at ever
> step that they 'dont belong'
I often get "so, you're a designer?"
But the rest of the statement was ironic given recent popular story about the topic - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...
A situation where I have experienced this first hand is where a fellow SDE (female) colleague by chance happened to sit at a desk next to one of the VPs at our organization. Many people instinctively thought she was the VP's assistant and spoke to her as such. She was a fantastic coder, had a PhD, but because she sat next to a man in a position of power was assumed to be an assistant.
Not trying to sound like a feminist (I am far from one) but I believe what women are being robbed of is 'equality'. It is a real problem in our industry.
Does not compute.
I'm a bit fed up with people advocating more women in <insert male dominated industry here>.
As far as I can tell these same people don't complain that teachers and nurses jobs are mainly occupied by women.
Everybody seem to agree that a nursing job is not attractive for most men. Maybe the reason that women are few in tech is because these professions are not attractive to them.
I've got a male friend working in nursing. I admire his dedication to caring for people, but there's no way I'd switch places. I get to write Python all day, he gets to clean up other people's bodily fluids for a dismal salary. We both think we've got the better deal in life because he gets to care for people while I just write dull programmes for computers to make some business more financially successful, and that's got no grand overriding meaning unless you are a hardcore capitalist Ayn Rand type.
Why is nursing not attractive to men? Because men don't care about people? Absolutely not. How about: because of low pay and because gender roles dictate that it's not a "manly" thing to do? Indeed, the friend who works in nursing is a campy and effeminate gay man. Which matches the stereotype.
The reasons men and women go into particular jobs isn't set in stone. There's no gene that turns one person into a programmer and another into a nurse. It's social conditioning, it's stereotypical gender roles, it's educational opportunities, it's pay and benefits - it's a whole bunch of shit we can change.
If a woman wants to go into computing, she should be able to without having to deal with stupid nerds-as-the-new-frat-boys brogrammer bullshit, and if guys want to go into nursing, they should be able to do so with their heads held high and without anyone questioning their masculinity or making assumptions about their sexuality. Blowing up society's gender roles and expectations is key to this.
There are programmes aimed at getting more men into nursing and teaching. There are programmes aimed at getting more women into construction.
Consider the reasons for non-attractiveness. In the case of nursing, it's bad pay as well, presumably. In the case of IT, the general unfriendliness is one reason, though there might be others. Shouldn't we just remove the removable ones?
(I don't first-up reject the theory that there might be 'biological' reasons that apply to the majority of people, but we won't really find out until we try. And there will always be outliers.)
(Why, you ask? So that when I walk into a room, I could be the boss too, and not automatically be tagged with 'secretary'. It's about status and power in the end, maybe?)
THIS COMES UP EVERY SINGLE TIME THIS TYPE OF THING COMES UP. PEOPLE DO HARD AT GETTING MEN INTO WOMEN-DOMINATED PROFESSIONS SUCH AS TEACHING AND NURSING. I'M WRITING THIS IN CAPITAL LETTERS IN THE HOPE THAT PEOPLE WILL STOP BLOODY SAYING THIS EVERY BLOODY TIME!
Bah.
tl;dr: the consensus seems to be that it would be better if there would be more male teachers so the boys would have more teachers to relate to.
I think these articles are mainly link-bait for pageviews, nothing more.
Maybe men should start advocating for more boys in <insert female dominate industry here>? Sounds like a good Superbowl Ad campaign!
Side note: I remember in my first year of university there was like 30 girls and 1 boy in the nursing faculty. Everyone cheered on that lucky guy :P
In this system, women who find interest in coding, despite all the pressures to just stick to their role, need all the role models they can get. Could you tell me, did you read the article before making this comment?
What females need to realize is that they have the same God-given talents as anybody else (i.e. men).
I know many girls who are great coders and can stand toe-to-toe with men in a coding throwdown. But they don't make their sex a thing that everybody else needs to recognize, they just get on with the job. You don't read/hear them blogging and whining about how hard they have it because they use their talent to overcome obstacles, not complain about them.
Did you ever test that assumption?