What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

I'd argue those are better classified as extroverted traits rather than masculine traits. Believe me, there are more than a few males that suffer from this being the dominant culture in business (or anywhere). Of course it makes sense though - introverted culture is more introspective thus not as dominating by nature. If there was ever going to be a winner, especially if the business has a focus on sales, it was going to be the one that rewards competitiveness and confidence.

I'd say the next big battle in workplace equality is going to focus on treating introversion fairly. I've seen MBTI's, a kind of personality test, used to define who a business hires and fires despite them claiming otherwise (forgetting that MBTI tests are pseudoscience). You can guess which personality types they prefer, regardless of gender. They want "rockstars".

Icanhackit suggested that these present traits are "extrovert" in nature, however there are traits that are feminine that are extrovert as well - communication, team-building, etc.

My wife who is an extrovert and holds a position of corporate importance half-jests about putting a poster in her office that says "I am your manager, not your mom".

Here is an article (well shared by now) that suggests that boards with women members may be good for the business, exactly because they provide a good counter-point to "masculine" traits of aggression and risk-seeking behaviour.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/01/the-effect-o...

It's exhausting for men too to switch from exact equals professionally, and then being dominant romantically. Sheryl Sandberg says more women should ask out men, given that equality in romance carries over into the workplace, but that seems pretty low on feminist concerns.

I'd love to see the industry become less masculine, rather than the onus being on women to act more masculine.

as evidenced by this doco on the "Gender Equality" paradox https://vimeo.com/19707588

I think this matters because it's very difficult to make any sort of meaningful progress when people seek to invalidate the experience and opinion of those they claim to represent. This is by no means unique to feminist discourse, but it's particularly evident in this case.

A problem with feminism as it currently stands is that too often it's less about improving the life of women than advancing a sociological ideology.

Exactly. Masculinity is all about taking risks. Capitalism is about risk. So of course men lead the way.

You grant (at least for the sake of discussion) that more women would help with the tech industry's sex discrimination problems, and that diversity itself would "probably" be good.

But then you ask, "but other than that, why is it important?"

It makes no sense to disregard sex discrimination and diversity when considering whether this topic is important. Sex discrimination and diversity are themselves already important.

It's like asking about the benefits of exercise, setting aside the health benefits and psychological benefits.

> Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers?

People do worry about those topics, but we mostly talk about tech here on Hacker News.

The humanist/utilitarian answer: because computer science is intrinsically awesome and rewarding, so global utility is maximized by ensuring that anyone who might be interested has an unimpeded path towards experiencing that awesomeness.

Artificially limiting the supply of talent to something that I assume many of us on HN believe to be an important field is not a good thing.

> Why aren't we as worried that not enough men show interest in being nurses or kindergarten teachers or social workers?

I think that is important, teaching young children particularly since good teachers can have an enormous influence on a large number of people.

One big difference however is in the scale of pay.

Doing small things to fix these flawed expectations has nothing to do with dismissing others as little girls who only care about nail polish. Articles suggestions like changing the course name from "programming in java" to a more descriptive "creative problem solving with python" hardly warrants such criticism.

There could be a few factors that account for the vast majority.

I rarely play video games. (I played some in college, simply for finding bugs and backdoors so that I could win easily, not for the fun of playing itself. After one year, it became boring and I stopped.) I don't like Star Wars. I am not in particular interested in Sci-fi. I think the time can be better spent in other books. For example, the non-technical books I just finished are Madame Bovary (translated by Lydia Davis. Highly recommend), On the Move (autobiography by Oliver Sacks). I am re-reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Also, I don't like beer. When I go out with colleagues, I drink wine or strong liquors.

I can tell my colleagues what I like now, but it was different when I first joined the industry. I cram-watched all the Star Wars, most Star Treks, etc. I forced myself to finish some popular sci-fi novels. I drank beer when going out. It was like you are trying to fit yourself into a model that is not you. I still remember one scene during the first week of one job. All the engineers were playing Guitar Hero, loudly, when waiting for a push. They invited me, which I greatly appreciate. I said I didn't know how to play and I rarely played video games. They were astounded. One engineer said, "It is not a game. It is a life style."

Edit: When I posted this, the comment consisted entirely of its first paragraph.

By the time we all started working, it was further down to 90:10. My office recruited a lot of female grads, we had a female department head who positively discriminated. One of my first mentors was female. In that respect I think my early experience was atypical.

But they kept dropping out as time went on, transferring into different streams/jobs.

There are some things that need to be done - particularly at helping parents understand their school age girls like of STEM - but ultimately I don't think it's worth trying to socially engineer and entire field to be 50:50 when you'll struggle to find that many women who want to study it, learn it and work in it for decades.

1. An article is posted wherein a woman describes wanting to be in tech and not doing so due to active and passive opposition.

2. Many comments discussing how women aren't in tech because they don't want to be there.

I swear, these threads are all straight out of How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ (a book I strongly recommend; it's absolutely hi-damn-larious.)

I would add white privilege or majority privilege to that... quite a few blokes get a seat at the table cause they identify with the majority group or vice versa.

The women are all hyper-capable, responsible and determined. The men are all petty, flawed, impulsive and frequently fighting with each other. It's absurd if you realize what is happening.

Hollywood has a history of being a canary in the coal mine when it comes to stereotypes...both good and bad. For example, when homosexuality started becoming more accepted in American culture one of the first signs were prominent gay sitcom characters.

"As Dr. Cheryan points out, stereotypes are only partly true, and women who actually take classes in computer science don’t hold the same prejudices as women who get their ideas from pop culture."

So the male nerd culture aspects inside the system aren't as offputting as however the current popular stereotypes make them out to be. Sounds like there are some lower hanging fruit than changing people's desires.

(As to why we'd want to fix it in the first place... I don't know many tech companies right now that are satisfied with the size and depth of the talent pool. Getting more education to more people to become potential candidates could only help with that, and increased demand for a major tends to increase department size, so I don't think it's a zero-sum game with males losing out here. More people with at least a cursory or exploratory level of education in science could eventually lead to better policy around it, etc, too.)

I'm not quite sure what a prop would be for low social status women.

Tech posters also seem entirely like a high-school/college-age cultural thing rather than a sign of real interest. Most of my (almost entirely male) software engineer coworkers have as their desktop pictures nature scenes, cityscapes, or picture of people, very few have sci-fi/fantasy/anime/whatever screenshots or art.

If you go to more directly-related things like "reading and commenting on HN on a Sunday" where someone is likely to very well be learning things that apply to their job, it would be interesting to see how much of a turnoff that seemed to be compared to the above-listed tangential culture markers. Though even then, while I'm sure business owners love having employees who will willingly do uncompensated work-related study on the weekend, I'm doubtful that it's a thing we should be striving towards.

I am a woman with a Certificate in GIS. I know some HTML and CSS. I run some blogs.

I joined an email list -- a parenting/homeschooling list -- when my now 28 year old son was 11. It led to me becoming a moderator of an email list for a time. My advice was seemingly popular on that list. Someone liked my writing and wanted to put some of it on their website. Later, she helped me move that to a site of my own and take over the coding.

There are things I would like to do in this world to help other people -- to educate them, to empower them to solve hard personal problems. I joined Hacker News in hopes of eventually learning to write code to do that. So far, life has gotten in the way.

My two adult sons are masters of framing traditionally male interests in a way that appeals to me. My oldest son got me playing Master of Magic -- now one of my favorite games -- by telling me "It's like SimCity" and then helping me to play it in a way that appealed to my interest in civilization building. My sons want to make video games for a living. If things work out, I may join them in that endeavor at some point.

Having girly motivations does not mean writing code is of no interest to you. You can be interested in people or whatever and see code as a way to accomplish your goals. Mulan is the single best movie I know of that portrays a woman having success in a man's world doing a man's job for girly reasons: She loved her father. She felt guilty that she was a daughter and not a son. If she had been born a boy, she would have been conscripted, not him. So she went in his place -- and saved a nation, to keep her beloved family member alive.

You can be a girly girl and love someone enough that you would murder others over it. We aren't all helpless whiny crybabies. Sometimes, doing things like a girl makes you a total badass.

But there are serious "marketing" problems with how we approach the problem space currently.

Best comment on this submission IMHO.

Making a subject more welcoming to folks who aren't actually interested in it just seems ridiculous. I wouldn't want a physician who doesn't actually care about bodies and biology; I wouldn't want my care designed by someone who isn't really into reliability, moments and materials; why would I want software written by someone who doesn't hunger and thirst to manipulate symbols and code?

Quite. The person who happens to like sci-fi isn't motivated by excluding anyone; they like it because they like it and will share their enthusiasm with anyone. Has that person intentionally done something wrong? And if not why should they be censured for it? That is the elephant in the corner of the room here. There is no conspiracy to keep women out of tech, never has been, and demonizing decent people for innocent things, doesn't ultimately help anyone.

Edit: honestly, I'm curious how this mindset comes about. How is it possible to ignore the importance of people being given the opportunity to work wherever they are capable? How is it possible to ignore the impact of being denied access to an incredibly lucrative and glamorous industry? How is it possible to ignore the many ramifications that has on lives and livelihoods?

How would you feel if you were kept out of the tech industry? Would you be placated by sentiments that the industry was seemingly "doing just fine" without you?

First-order logic: if (A AND ~B -> ~C) AND C, then (~A OR B).

The persistence of the gender gap in technology despite decades of effort to "fix" it is an annoying refutation of the blank-slate theory of human nature on which the entire worldview of many people, particularly gender activists, rests. In other words, if it's simultaneously true that tech is gender-imbalanced and that there is no systemic discrimination involved in this gap, then groups of human being might have innate differences, and acceptance of this fact has far-reaching and upsetting consequences.

Therefore, there must be no gender gap or there must be systemic discrimination. Since the existence of the gender gap is obvious, there must be systemic discrimination, and the pundit class has been on the warpath trying to uphold this narrative and cherry-pick evidence supporting it.

It is an implied social contract that forms the foundation of our modern American society, irrespective of functional necessities or efficiencies. Efficiencies are not the point here.

Your project's total addressable market probably includes a diverse population of people. Meanwhile, the decisions in your project are made by the folks involved in it -- maybe some PMs, hopefully some UX and design engineers, and probably some programmers. I believe that our opinions are informed in part by our environment -- as someone living in California, I come up with California-oriented solutions to problems a bit more easily than ones suited to other locations. (I think this is why Dark Sky came from a team in New York, for example.)

So, I conclude that a diverse team will come up with ideas that are broader, and as a result, solutions that help more people, than would a less-diverse team.

One interesting observation, for which I don't have any citation, is that I find there is less trepidation to enter CS and Engineering careers from women who curiously come from Russia and China, which at least historically have been quite patriarchal. In some ways it might be that constant drumbeat to succeed and emphasis on science over softer subjects could have an impact, but it's all speculation on my part.

> Yet US has done just ok with males (white and asian) doing this stuff. Ie better than anybody else in the world.

That doesn't mean the US and others can't do much better. Think how much talent is lost - more than half of it. There's a shortage of talent in SV. There is much that needs to be done in the world.

> Is there any proof that increased diversity has any effect

I've read about a lot of evidence that more diverse groups make decisions significantly better.

Because now there's money in it. No-one cared about this when the IT department was at the bottom of the corporate pecking order. No-one cares that refuse collection is almost exclusively male, but that's a job of real social importance...

Which is that just the sheer numbers of male students or female students in particular subjects is overwhelming. For example, in my American Lit class, there were literally three male students including me. The funny thing in that class was that at least half of the subject matter was basically about how the white male was evil.

But I definitely didn't fit in there, even without the subject matter. And its not that the girls treated me differently, they didn't -- but I knew I was different. Because I was surrounded by girls.

So I think that just the fact of the momentum of having lopsided student counts of males versus females has a huge effect. People do need to fit in and being with people who are really just like them is a big part of that. I think the stereotypes do have a big impact too, but its a double-whammy -- even when girls might not really be influenced by the stereotype, the reality of being the only female or one of a small group of females surrounded by young men in their classes will make them question their place.

So I think the social dynamics have more to do with it than people realize and I think this is a good article.

The idea is that this is what "keeps people out". Surely, the flip side is true, and people are defined / made happy by the same notions.

People in the west are so far up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that we've stopped caring about the basics of life. Specifically, of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#... we no longer choose a job that gives us food, shelter or safety (the first two), and instead we choose jobs based on how well it provides us with love/belonging, esteem and self-actualisation. That is why young people choose jobs less and less with money as the sole or even primary determinant.

If this is the case, that people are choosing professions that help them feel self-actualised or belonging, no matter what tech does, or what Public Relations, Child-care workers or predominantly female dominated occupations do, is less important that the people it attracts / already has attracted. And these same sorts of people will dominate, as this belonging and fitting in becomes increasingly entrenched, and snowballs on itself like runaway recurssion.

That seems, to me, the logical conclusion of slight biological gender differences combined with a rise up the pyramid of needs, which lessens the pressure of the former two to create cultures that trump biology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE is a documentary about Scandinavia's attitude to gender relations, and the whole series is brilliant, and shows that gender separation is, if not inevitable, certainly understandable.

But if the computer class isn't just a editor/spreadsheet/media class (which is okay, and maybe even important, but not "computer"), having computer parts and tech magazines around (within reason) provide a relatively realistic representation of what the field is about.

To me that paragraph read as "computer class is okay when it has nothing to do with computers" - which I think is sad.

But then the description is so non-descript, that it's hard to tell what kind of images they provided. If the "computer parts and magazines" version looked like http://moo.acadiau.ca:7000/865, that may indeed not be very attractive.

(Also: coffee makers in class rooms? yuck. I wouldn't want to be in a class that smells like coffee all the time)

The key is to make it a priority to move to an area where all the families promote a culture that views academic excellence as a good thing.

I know this isn't available to everyone due to financial limitations. But it's probably available to more than realize it.

Exactly: both boys and girls get strong negative feedback for being nerdy. Yet, somehow more boys are sufficiently interested that they find their interest more important than the negative feedback.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/09/tar...

Target tries to make one step in the right direction (like making sure a chemistry set is not labeled as a BOYS chemistry set) and people respond with:

"You liberal POS idiots are ruining this Country. Just because you morons don't want to think there are boys and girls, doesn't mean the rest of us with a brain have to think in your warped ways."

"Complete stupidity. I want my girls and boys to identify with their gender."

"This is stupid! So you think my grandson's wants to sleep on a frozen bed set made for girls and my granddaughters wants to sleep on spiderman bed sets. I don't think so. You better leave well enough along before you lose your business."

"This is just stupid. Kids are being taught not be them selves such as a true boy or a true girl. Men now a days are not men, they are girly men. A lot of women are not women they are trying so hard to fit into a mans world. Leave kids to b kids please. Pinks and blues do not hurt any one!"

I don't think this difference is a problem we need to solve. Diversity is supposed to make our culture richer, right? If so, why are some people trying so hard to make us all the same?

Of course we shouldn't artificial barriers to non-gender-normative career choices --- but gender disparity in a particular field is not itself evidence that these barriers exist. We've already done quite a bit to draw women into technical professions. Whatever disparity remains is on them.

I think that the big difference in STEM is that nerdy boys exist in such a number that they can still get acceptance and support. It's not as normal as, say, being a football player, but male nerds aren't exactly rare.

In contrast, because there are much fewer female nerds, their awkwardness is even more exaggerated, and this feeds back on itself to heighten the pressure to conform. Boys find some support in numbers, and their interest in the subjects smooths over any discomfort. Girls don't have any of that support, so if they aren't absolute fanatics about the subjects, they're going to conform.

Exactly how are Barbie dolls in conflict with chemistry sets?

Even boys who own chemistry sets play with them far less often than they do with action figures. Is there some connection between chemistry sets and action figures that advantage them over Barbie dolls?

Is it just Barbie dolls? I hope my 14 year old daughter's American Girl dolls haven't ruined her for STEM; that's her current planned field. The boy, 16, played with legos and video games. I'm guessing he's going to be history major, or a writer. Did we do something else right? Or are we doomed and just don't know it yet?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, today I'm a software engineer.

I know this is purely anecdotal, but I think we forget that if you give kids access to everything, they will figure out their own playtime and communities.

Unfortunately from that point on more male than female students go on to more fully grok programming. I believe this is because the hidden costs associated with pursuing the craft are unequal between the two genders. For either gender it can represent a 'ding' on their popularity scorecard so to speak, but the ding is felt far more profoundly for women. One can certainly debate why this is and of course it's possible to trace this phenomena historically back into the days of ancient greek culture and before.

My feeling on the matter personally though is that the cultural norms of highschoolers have simply not had time to adapt to the idea that "geek is sheik" because the sentiment has only existed (outside of hacker culture) for the last decade (and perhaps it's still only a thing in California). In addition to that there has never been a "female astronaut moment" for computer science, so to speak in terms of it breaking into the consciousness of the average teen. This may be a chicken/egg type problem.

I think this is shifting now, but my opinion is that the biases which effected how highschoolers were feeling 15 or 20 years ago about computer science are still skewing the hiring statistics today because there are far fewer women job applicants who have been doing this kind of programming work for 15 or 20+ years...

How many were programming BBS systems in ANSI C back before AOL was a thing, or how many were following along with the early web as the standards (things like CSS) were being flushed out and it's possibilities were being explored (intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_B31nF3sU0&t=2m10s)

According to the statistics there are a lot more men who have been engaged in "Internet engineering" in one form or another for most of their life and this kind of multidisciplinary computer-science background can skew a hiring decision in their favor assuming both candidates are equally well versed with the most current technologies. Young programmers find ways to make up for the often times narrower scope of their experience (lack of a lisp beard) by being really good at the things that they specialize in, and by tracking more closely the cutting edge. I feel there are more women who are joining this cohort every day, but there are still not as many and it's a shame.

Computer parts and tech magazines might be inevitable detritus of any office/area focused on working with technology. Do I have to lockup my programming books and hide away the spare components I'm working with?

making video games is/requires programming so there's bound to a be a large overlap in programmers who are interested in video games.

Sci-fi inspires lots of people to get into programming. From wanting to create R2-D2 and C3PO to wanting to create projected holograms, wanting to create tricorders, computers that can take voice commands, touch surfaces, fancy new interfaces, virtual reality, AI, and many other topics touched on in sci-fi that are all directly related to programming.

Sports are not directly related and do not directly inspire most jobs but sci-fi does directly inspire many programmers to program and probably many other STEM careers. video games also inspire many programmers to program since video games are programming.

Each of those have industry and education groups dedicated to changing the disparity.

I am in Norway, and men are hardly underrepresented in teaching and nursery here. I also visit tunnels under construction due to my work sometimes, and can't say a girl in reflex and hard hat is that uncommon sight. They are still under-represented in STEM overall, however. Not sure what the conclusion is here, but it is probably not the one you are trying to make.

(Not that either of those are strategies really.)

Will you also be flag-protecting articles which take different viewpoints? I ask because I've never seen a thread on any other topic or expressing any substantially different view on this topic have flags turned off, but perhaps that's just observation bias on my part.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1168182/Catfights-...

It wasn't in IT, but it happened for many of the same reasons as stated here.

The outcome is just one of several possibilities, and the media field may be more prone to have divas (although IT has too many divas of all sexes, IMHO), so I'm curious how the tableflip subculture will fare (hopefully much better).

(I am a woman. I am sometimes referred to as "he" on HN. I am quite open about my gender and it is specified in my profile. But the default assumption here is that anyone talking must be male -- because tech. This is accepting a stereotype.)