Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The number of women in the software industry when they join it might be roughly equal to the number of men, and their salaries might well be higher, but after a few years a lot of the women have left. That's the problem. The industry is set up in a way that isn't inclusive, doesn't treat people equally, and in a lot of cases is actively anti-women because hiring practises don't deal with things like pregnancy well enough. Looking at people who're entering the industry is interesting, but looking at people who've been there for 5, 10 or 20 years is more interesting.

Something to note about the average salary - the fact women are paid more is probably a function of them being hired by more progressive and successful companies that pay more. I doubt they're being paid more because they're better - developer quality isn't related to gender as far as I know. Ideally if women had an equal chance of being hired across the industry, including the poorer companies with rubbish wages, then the average pay would be the same.

> The number of women in the software industry when they join it might be roughly equal to the number of men, and their salaries might well be higher, but after a few years a lot of the women have left.

Note: we've just shifted the goalpost from "women don't join the industry because its misogynist and elitist" - as it used to be for the past year or two with those discussions - to "women join the industry about just as men do, but later (5-20 years!) leave because industry is misogynist and elitist".

Also note: women are being paid more on average.

Ok, so feminists have won, right? Can we stop with the gender threads before people realize that:

> I doubt they're being paid more because they're better - developer quality isn't related to gender as far as I know.

literally means men are being victims of sexism in the field?

Not at all. They're paid more because the only companies that hire them are good ones, who pay well, and who understand women are just as good as men. In order to have equality the bad companies need to start being equal too. That doesn't make men victims. Men have many more opportunities than women, but mainly at the bottom where companies pay badly.

Now this is a nice thing to believe - the only companies that hire women are the good companies. I assume they're good by virtue of hiring women. So, company + hires women + pays them well => good company, good company => does well on the market. I don't think it stands to scrutiny. I'm not sure if you mean that those companies are morally good, therefore successful on the market (generally, the reverse is true), so I'll ignore this point, but I propose another interpretation:

The companies that hire women are the ones that can afford it. Seems more likely, but it would imply that women are less capable than men in this field. Assuming this is not true, with less women than men in the industry, you should expect proportional amounts of them in both "bad" and "good" companies. It should average out to equal pay.

Since it's not virtue, and not good companies being charitable, I smell only one other likely explanation: maybe it's profitable for companies to hire women as programmers now? If it's not because of merit, then how could it be? Maybe it's because it is fashionable nowadays to go out of your way to make it good for women, and you risk PR flop if you don't? Here. I smell sexism.

Whenever I see these sort of topics discussed, I rhetorically think: why is there no initiatives to make careers like HR, veterinary work and other areas more inclusive.

Both genders have strengths and weaknesses due to their biological and genetic differences, so it's only natural for one side to dominate certain fields.

Pushing equality to the point of progressive politics is just going to harm people. They won't be able to get into careers that they are naturally good at, for example, because it's no longer fashionable to hire them.

> Whenever I see these sort of topics discussed, I rhetorically think: why is there no initiatives to make careers like HR, veterinary work and other areas more inclusive.

The answer I believe is actually quite simple: because IT is a hot field, HR is not. HR is "just a job", while IT is now recognized as easy money - you just have to spend few months learning how to bang on your keyboard, and you're off to be a next Zuckerberg or at least to be earning in your first year more than 50% of the population of your country. When the supply finally catches up with demand and average wages go down, I expect IT will be just like medicine or law - boring to talk about.

> Both genders have strengths and weaknesses due to their biological and genetic differences, so it's only natural for one side to dominate certain fields.

This is exactly why it's so hard to have a conversation about this issue. That statement alone pisses off a lot of people who don't believe there are differences between gender - even biological.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com