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Comment by pavornyoh | Hacker News Reader

> What really keeps women out of Tech?

It is because they don't want to be there. The opportunity is there for everyone to take thus men and women. I actually think women have an advantage in this space and it is up to them to see it and advantage of it.

As a woman, I am tired this. If you want it, go and get it. There shouldn't be any special treatment. Prove you deserve to be at the table, prove you deserve to be there based merits etc.. Not because of gender, race etc.

People are going to wonder why this conclusion? Because when people see you as a women trying to achieve something, a lot are willing to help and push you. Don't moan about it, go ahead and just get into Tech if you want it that bad.

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I tend to agree with this. For whatever reason, girls just don't like the work. When I stated studying, the ratio was 50:50 split. By graduation time, it was down to 80:20 as he girls transferred into different courses or dropped out. I was friends with many - as they changed or dropped out they all said they don't like the subject matter or the type of work.

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.

@Brc, I agree with you a 100%. Obviously this has to be discussed and does stir emotions. It is fine but people have to understand although you can raise a kid a certain way, they won't always do what you want. We also have to consider external factors that influence such decisions and why a person decides to choose a specific field. It will be nice for the ratio to be 50:50 when it comes to these things but it does not work that way.

Not going to hijack the thread but I am going to use myself as a guinea pig. I am a young black woman who likes hanging out here. I personally don't believe things should be handed to me. I expect to be judge based on my merits and as such. Did someone force me to come and be on hacker news? No. It a place I really like and learn alot and has been welcoming. So if women want to be in tech, they just need to make the effort and show the desire for it. They can start by choosing courses in universities and seeking out help and asking questions. They can also do research and see where like- minded individuals hangout if they are really serious about learning.

While 1) my own experience somewhat matches yours, and 2) it does seem, subjectively to me, like a lot of this can be attributed to women freely choosing not to go into the profession early on, you did absolutely nothing to refute any of the points in the article.

Regarding the dropping out, I think it is (at least partially) due to a lack of positive reinforcement. Imagine two students, one male and one female, who were both good science students in high school and decide to take CS 101. They both get a 70% on the first test. The male student will (implicitly or explicitly) be told "shake it off, you'll do better on the next one" while the female student will be told "well you tried, maybe CS isn't your thing". I used to see this a lot in engineering classes, the male students took the failures as a fluke and the female students thought it meant they should do something else.

>> Prove you deserve to be at the table, prove you deserve to be there based merits etc.. Not because of gender, race etc.

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.

This is too generic a comment to count as substantive discussion. It would be better if it engaged with the specific content of the article.

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

@Deng,

My point is Women are every bit as talented, smart, and tenacious as men. The focus on women is good in that there are women that just need to go for it - reference to the article however broad my initial response was.

Schema for gender discussion in tech, version 3.c.ii:

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.)

Are you aware that you are replying to a woman?

Yes.

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