Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers | Hacker News Reader

Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

themacro.com

132 pointsstvnchn310 comments

Women who are halfway into their careers in tech are leaving at a rate of 56%, which is more than double the quit rate of men. One reason for the high quit rate may be that women have a much lower chance of being promoted, even when they have the same amount of experience and tenure as their male peers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

So around the time a lot of people have kids? They probably discover that you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid, and at 2+ you might as well just stay home.

I'm going to go out and a limb here and say that solid support for working moms would be one of the more effective strategies for long-term careers for women. I also can't imagine that it's that easy getting back into a tech career after 8 years of being a state-at-home mom (which is about 2-3 kids, with the youngest finally in kindergarten), looking for to work for a specific 6 hours per day on school days.

Maybe SF is different, though. I'm not there.

I find it quite interesting that a similar number of 50% of men who enter the teacher profession also leaves while the number for women is about half. In stark contrast however, the quote text, the theory on why men drops out of female dominated professions share nothing in common with the theories on why women leave male dominated.

In a 2009 report by the Swedish national agency, they argue that the reason why people drop out at a higher rate compared to the dominating gender is that the work culture integrate gender identity when there is unequal gender ratios, and the more a individual work and study, the more are they forced to either assimilate into that culture or quit. Compared to the argument about "lower chance of being promoted", a hostile culture seems much more likely as a root cause to high drop rate, and I would be surprised if culture crashes had no correlation with promotion rates.

In Ontario, male teachers are not allowed to take children to the washroom, even if the child is a boy. This is a problem because if a child with a disability needs to use the washroom, he needs to wait until a female staff member is available.

I understand why men would drop out of the school system. Before you even start, you're already considered a predator.

This is simply an insane case of workplace sexism. Most ambitious people will steer clear of careers that have such blatant gender discrimination. Ontario is really shooting itself in the foot here, by providing a strong disincentive for male teachers to join the profession.

There was an anonymous Japanese post by a preschool teacher that echoed similar sentiments. The main reason he quit was because the parents treated him with suspicion for having deviant tendencies.

I hardly think that particular case (abhorrent and indefensible though it is) is indicative of the statu quo.

Any reason for that? I mean, it's anecdotal evidence, sure, but it's not the first time I've heard such a story about how men are treated in the teaching profession. It's only one data point, but even a single data point is superior to the no data points you've countered with.

Well, all of the schools that do not enforce such a ridiculous rule are my data points. So unless you suggest there are more schools enforcing that rule than not, then I have more data points, so I win. Right?

The truth is that that anecdote brings no value whatsoever to the discussion.

It brings a little value, in the form of a single data point. Not "none" otherwise no one could talk about their experiences ever, without being accused of wasting everyone's time.

Also, there need not be more than 50% of schools enforcing this policy, for it to discourage men from entering the profession. Even 10% would be a lot.

>"Also, there need not be more than 50% of schools enforcing this policy, for it to discourage men from entering the profession. Even 10% would be a lot."

Unless they're quick to "take a hint", then only a handful of examples could have a huge impact.

I'm not in that profession, and judging from the state of society at the moment, I too wouldn't want to work in a profession that functions near children. I could post links to a few articles, but a general search about it will yield multiple examples of parents being hostile/suspicious of male teachers around children. Recently read about an airline that forbid male passengers from sitting next to unaccompanied minors. We as a society have deep problems with gender, but meanwhile we're busy focusing on just one.

My point is that your single anecdote (or "data point" or whatever you want to call it) isn't indicative of the statu quo. Does it mean there are places where men are discriminated against? Yes. Does it mean the statu quo is discrimination against men? No.

The "status quo" can be discrimination against men even if a small minority of schools actually implement this policy. If one tech company out of one hundred had a policy in place whereby female employees were required to come to work early in order to make coffee, we'd likely be talking about regressive culture at all tech companies, not just complaining about a shitty policy enforced by a few outliers.

We would do so because one company out of one hundred implementing such a policy would be highly likely to indicate some shitty attitudes everywhere, even if the shitty attitudes didn't always translate to that particular shitty policy. Likewise, even if most schools do not have this policy, even a few percent of schools implementing a policy which amounts to "men are to be considered sexual predators until proven otherwise, and even then" is probably enough to indicate we have some fucked-up culture going on even in schools that don't actually have this policy.

In other words, the fact that this rule isn't slapped the fuck down for the insane bullshit that it is, same as if the school had a strict "no lesbians" policy, even if it is the only school on the planet to implement this particular policy (which it isn't), already indicates an unacceptable tolerance for this kind of sexism at a societal level.

Moreover reminder you're the one who brought up "status quo" in the first place. The rest of us are talking about what keeps people out of a profession. Status quo may indeed not be assuming that all men are sexual predators, yet the likelihood of same may still be high enough to keep men out of the profession.

Actually that single data point does a lot. It shows an example of something important. In the absence of more data points, it is not reasonable to assume this is an isolated case. Unless you have statistics or evidence to support your position that discrimination against men is negligible, we have data to support that there is discrimination, and no data to support the countervailing position - only your assertion.

Anecdotal, but my cousin was a primary school teacher and faced an incredible amount of hostility because of his gender from parents and colleagues and left for construction after 2 years.

Westerners seem to have a serious distrust in men when it comes to young children. A woman talking to kids in a park is most obviously a mom. A man talking to kids in a park is most obviously a paedophile.

If I see a random child and they look at me, I used to ignore them. Not because I don't think it's hilarious to stick my tongue out or make a face - but because I was worried what someone might think. And, hell, I'm only 30 - it will only get worse as I get older.

I decided that I would not bow to that absurdity, and now I choose to say hello, or run away, or say "boo" or whatever takes my fancy in interacting with said child. Because it's amusing getting a response, watching them process the event and make a decision on how to react. I'd still be nervous if I saw a child without obvious supervision though. To try and help, or not to try and help...

At least where I come from I do not feel that in the slightest.

Trans-men report the opposite:

http://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/

'Most trans men I spoke to also identified another commonality: Once they transitioned [from female to male], walking became easier, but talking became harder. To be more specific: walking home after dark felt easier, casually talking to babies, strangers and friends felt harder.

“I have to be very careful to not be staring at kids,” says Gardner. “I can look at a mom and her baby, but I can’t look for too long. I miss being seen as not a threat.” Ditto for kids on the playground and puppies, multiple guys said.'

On a similar note, I heard a story from one trans guy who was disturbed by the reaction when he accidentally bumped into somebody on the street. The other guy recoiled back, threw his hands up, and started profusely apologizing while sounding like he was in a panic. It took the trans guy a few seconds to realize that the other guy was afraid of him and thought he'd beat him up for bumping into him by accident.

Unfortunately not too surprising, but that's still a very interesting anecdotal data point from someone in a position to see the contrast.

I envy you. I feel weird when dealing with children for exactly that reason.

That's very odd. I can see why parents want to be protective, but immediately shielding a kid if a male interacts playfully with them seems an overreaction.

It's very common. I have a friend who got the cops called on him when he took his 3-year old daughter to the park one day. He said it took a while to prove that he was a) the father and b) he hadn't abducted the daughter.

Where did that happen? I'm not doubting you in the slightest -- just interested in data points (my gut says maybe somewhere in the South, if this is the US, or somewhere rural?) Also, any factors he thinks might have contributed -- e.g., daughter crying, or does he have a big bushy beard, or was there a crazy parent who had a bad interaction with him, or...? That sort of reaction from authorities is just absolutely chilling, no matter the case.

It is an overreaction, but it's a common one. I'd like to believe it's all horror stories, but it's more than enough to create a chilling effect.

Seems to be the case in the East as well, judging from what I've read.

This is completely anecdotal, but I've noticed that gender ratios in groups in general create pretty harmonouus groups if they fall in ranges of 40% - 60% or <10%. Like put 4 women and 6 men in a group, they come along. Or put one man and 9 women in a group, they come along. Put 3 guys and 7 women into a group and there is constant power struggle. This seems to be more true for kids.

Small minority is likely to adapt or leave. Close to 50/50 ratio genders balance each other out. With strong minority the minority tries to have balanced group, but the majority wants to engage in "guy talk" or girl talk". The way men interact with other men and how women interact with other women seem to be one of the most distinct differences between genders.

Do you have a citation for the "50% of male teachers leave"? I'd be interested in the details. Thanks!

Rapport 2009:7 R, Swedish national agency of higher education.

A start would be to read page 18 and down, but the conclusions on page 31 and 56 is what most of my comment is based on. To translate a section with title "why do men drop out":

"Our conclusion, somewhat simplified, are three main root causes. First, men who start studying to become a teacher can be less convinced in their decision, because they are walking outside societies norms and are not doing a typical male job, and thus the decision to become a teacher is questioned from the beginning. The second reason is that men are faced with a traditional feminine culture which they either have to assimilate or rebel to, both which makes life more difficult. Thirdly, there are few male role models compare to female role models."

But do give any indications that these are the real causes, or are they also just speculating as so many others do when it comes to explaining those phenomena? Did they study the causes at all? Or did they just note "50% drop out" and then jump to the conclusion that it must be because x?

Thanks for translating.

"they argue"

They speculate, you mean? Those are all "just so" stories...

> you might as well just stay home

But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption?

I'd love to see not just solid support for moms at work, but solid support / encouragement for dads at home: paternity leave up-to-par with maternity leave, a normalization and acceptance of stay-at-home dads where desired, etc. It's kind of amazing how prevalent the assumption is that children are mom's problem. As a guy I care about this not just from a supporting-women perspective but from a when-I-have-kids-I'll-want-to-spend-time-with-them-too perspective. This should be one of the easiest ways for men to be sold on feminism.

Somehow though, paternity leave is a second class citizen and people who talk about advancement of women mostly just talk about maternity leave benefits. Let me help! I'm happy to take care of kids while you build your career!

As someone who has taken the kids out and about during the day, I have to say that it's awkward. You end up being the only man in a group of dozens of women with their kids, or you are the guy at the playground sitting by himself while his kids play on it (which looks a ton like you don't have any kids to an outsider). Society, at least in most of the U.S. is frankly a bit hostile to males as the caregivers. I can't imagine what single dads have to go through.

And now you know how it feels to be the only woman engineer on a team of 20 engineers. It's awkward and sometimes hard for women engineers like me to focus on our jobs because of the awkwardness contributing to hostile work environments. And this is why it's awesome that YC is supporting Women Who Code.

Sure. Just so we are clear though, there is a huge difference between being regarded and treated as a potential pedophile/kidnapper (father at a playground) vs. simply an outsider.

http://www.freerangekids.com/thanks-for-assuming-im-a-pedoph...

I don't think "simply an outsider" covers many of the experiences described by some women in tech: Groping, sexual harassment, assumptions on getting the job on looks, over-scrutiny of their work, etc ...

This is not every woman's experience, but neither is the pedophile one. I have worked at an all girls school and everyone - parents, students, children was fine with it.

At least you're not treated as a criminal or pervert.

thank you

Here in Sweden I'd say it's always basically 50/50 when I take my kid to the playground, no matter what time of day. Make it easier for dads to take paternity leave and more will do it and it will become more common and stop being awkward.

You're right, of course. But there are biological reason why all else being equal, having mom stay home might work better than dad. (Breastfeeding, mainly)

Also as a dad I fully agree with your other point - I want to spend time with my kids as well, and I bristle at the suggestion that my kids are my wife's 'problem.' I love my kids, and if I had the means I would spend all of my time with them. But considering the reality that one of us has to work so we can eat, I've found that it's easier on me emotionally to spend time away from them than it is for her. Maybe that's not widely true, maybe it's nurture over nature, maybe it's something else entirely, but it's something that exists and maybe shouldn't be absent from these discussions.

There are biological reasons favoring dad as well. As the father of a toddler, I count physical strength as a huge asset. Example use case is carrying my sleeping infant holding with a single arm while the other hand unlocks the door.

> Example use case is carrying my sleeping infant holding with a single arm while the other hand unlocks the door

I think you are underestimating the strength (as well as form) women are born with, specifically for this reason. Most women I've seen carrying children on their hips with one arm behind their backs look much more comfortable than when a man does the same thing.

Did you know that breastfeeding pumps and refrigeration had been invented and refined over the last century?

Yes, I did know that. I assume you don't have kids? Breastfeeding is extremely difficult and painful for most women, and pumping moreso. I can only watch my wife crying from the excruciating pain of having her breasts pumped by a cold machine several times a day so many times before I say 'you know what, let's not do that anymore.'

Just wanted to chime in here to agree with you. While some people don't mind pumping, there are benefits to both the mother and the child when breastfeeding directly. It does come down to choice about what you prioritize in life. Far be it from any of us to deride women who prioritize their family's income, but we can't simply hand wave by saying "we have pumps and refrigerators!"

I can't believe I'm about to talk about breast feeding on hacker news but here goes.

> there are benefits to both the mother and the child when breastfeeding directly

There is data that points this in both directions, and there isn't a lot of agreement in any of it. There is a push for "brest is best", and a LOT of that is based on W.H.O recommendations. These are a direct result of Nestle pushing formula in the third world, and the impact it had on infant mortality.

If you live in a place without clean water, then breast feeding is the way to go. This assumes you don't have any communicable diseases, AIDS being the biggest one, but it is a large list of infections that preclude you from breastfeeding.

If you live in a first world country, and have access to clean water, and the facility to clean and sterilize bottles, there isn't a BIG gain that is universally agreed on in the research available.

Also, we raised an entire generation of Americans on bottles (75% of children born in 1971 were never breastfed, even in the hospital) and everyone turned it fine.

"Turned out fine" is highly subjective. The peak violence rates in the US happened when that cohort was 22; right around the age at which people commit the most violent crimes. So at least on that one metric, that cohort was probably among the worst ever (I'm not claiming a relationship to breastfeeding, of course).

Breastfeeding declined dramatically from 1910 to 1945 (and stayed below 30% from 1945-1970s). While crime went up from 1965+, it also went steadily down from 1935-1960.

100% agree. At the start-up I work at when I brought up we needed to set a maternity leave policy, I made a point of saying we should match it with a paternity leave policy.

I'm a woman, but if I was hiring and it came down to someone I had to give x weeks of paid leave to if they had a child (aka a woman) or someone with the same credentials and skills who I wouldn't need to give that leave to (a man), you bet your ass it would impact my hiring decisions. Particularly at a small company.

Matching maternity leave with paternity leave removes at least one rational incentive to hire men over women.

Having equal parental treatment is a good start. But how do you deal with the subtle cultural bias against men who partake of the leave policy? Their peers and boss judge them as not being committed enough to 'the team'.

We should do all we can to support mothers and parents. They should be free to make their own choices. But nobody should be surprised if mothers make different choices than fathers. Nor should we force the matter. There is some biology here. Equality doesn't create interchangeability.

I'm arguing for equality of opportunity, not outcome. If the final split isn't 50/50, fine, as long as everyone is making free choices. The problem is that today that (equality of opportunity) is not the case -- there's immense pressure for the woman to be the one to stay home, if someone does.

The immense pressure is the women's own doing. Women largely prefer to partner with men who make more money than them, so naturally if one partner becomes a stay at home parent it makes more sense economically for it to be the woman.

If women don't like the pressure to be a stay at home parent, then women can start marrying men who make less money than them (men don't as a group place little value on their partner making more than them) and instead face the pressure of providing for their family.

As a women who would love to have my future husband raise the kids, let me tell you it's not easy to find an intelligent man in a big city who is willing to stay home and raise children.

Of course, just like it's difficult for such a man to find a woman wanting to be the careerist in the family, because both groups are minorities.

Do you know what their reasons are? I'm really curious, because that seems the obvious choice for me (assuming your wife is earning enough).

But "free choices" is a tricky thing. Many would say that so long as 50/50 isn't reached, for whatever reason known or unknown, the choice is not free.

And some would argue that, since we can't achieve 100% perfection, we shouldn't bother trying to fix something that's broken.

Precisely. I just want equality of opportunity, that people are free to do what they want, not necessarily that the choices are a perfect 50/50 coin toss. However, since we posit that there are no inherent biological mental differences between sexes then some people contend that if the split is not 50/50 then there is still discrimination.

I suppose we have to believe that male and female brains work exactly the same, don't we?

It'd be nice if we could maybe admit that people work differently, without having to stack-rank it.

We especially shouldn't be surprised if mothers make different decisions with fathers when society judges them, parenting books fearmonger, and parental leave is extremely disparate.

Why don't we set aside the biological differences (all of which we have the means to offset) and tackle the most obvious problems first.

>> Why don't we set aside the biological differences.

Because short of growing our young in labs, biology is the one thing that cannot be removed from the equation.

That's completely ludicrous. There are breast pumps, there is formula, there is no compelling reason that a mother has to stay at home. The question becomes is this a biological imperative or a social imperative, and until we remove the social portion it's too confounded to tell. Why do we also assume that men have no "overwhelming paternal instinct?"

The answer is that we have an ideology strongly rooted in the past and justified by the ridiculousness that is modern evo-psych.

Not the biology I meant. I meant the fact that someone just hauled around a baby inside themselves for nine months, with all that entails. Breast pumps cannot change the fact that women and men may have different views.

I don't understand. Do you think that gestating makes you have a stronger attachment to your baby, even after months of having your child around?

You're right that men and women may have different views. The overwhelming majority of women in my parenting group who could afford to were very excited to go back to work. The majority of fathers had a romanticized view of staying at home.

Maybe my experience is an outlier, but I think that after a few months both parents have developed connections with the baby -- it's just that half of them are told by society that if they haven't it's wrong. There's a reason that many women develop postpartum depression, and I don't think that it's entirely chemical. Being a stay at home parent is extremely isolating.

Pregnant women are much more likely to take parental leave than men because they have to.

> There is some biology here.

Sure. But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of.

So at the very least, we need to carefully consider both biology and possibility when we talk about this. But if we're going to err, I think it's worth leaning the other way for a while. We'll never really know where the true balance lies until we try things with the assumption that biology is not all that important.

That's certainly popular for most topics on Hacker News. Can people live on synthetic food substitutes? Let's put some up on Kickstarter and see! Do humans have a natural lifespan? Let's try pretending otherwise and see where we get. Maybe we could also favor it for radical ideas like women having careers.

> But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of.

I don't think the centuries old explanations are as bogus as you imply. The differences between men and women that we can all agree on such as avg. strength, breast feeding composed a lot more constraint on the divisions of labor. Regardless of what you think about breastfeeding or formula today you can't argue that it more or less forced women to do the early child rearing in centuries past. And men's increased brute strength was far more important for much of the labor before the industrial revolution.

"Natural differences" was used to explain all sorts of things. E.g., why women couldn't be writers or doctors or lawyers or senators. I think those were bogus. Women weren't allowed to vote in the US until 1920 (and we were early adopters). I'm pretty sure that voting didn't require brute strength before then.

"Natural differences" was also used to justify slavery. That goes back to Aristotle, and up through the US Confederacy. I think that was bogus too.

I also assert that the claim of individual differences can only ever justify individual situations. If a strong person ends up having to carry the coal because a weak one can't, fine. But we're talking about systems where millions of people were judged on hypothetical averages and the crudest of stereotypes. E.g., firefighters need to be strong, but there's no reason to think that the US's weakest fireman was stronger than the US's strongest woman.

And I think that the reason women were forced to do all the childrearing was mainly not biology. Even if we ignore things like cow's milk and wet nurses, dads are perfectly capable of doing all the work once a child is 2 or so. Women were forced to do it because they lived in patriarchal societies where women were nearly property.

So I think we should always be deeply suspicious of any justification that comes down to natural differences. The history of it as an argument is absolutely terrible.

>But why does it have to be the woman who stays home? Why is this just the tacit assumption?

Maybe you should be asking the mothers.

Well, it's cultural, undoubtedly. Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it. But as far as I've seen/heard there is also significant social cost to stay-at-home dads. They're alternately demonized, ignored, assumed incompetent, assumed less worthy for not financially supporting the family, or just not accommodated in a thousand other ways. That's what we (society) should challenge and change, IMHO. It would be a huge win for women and for men alike.

>Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it

My hunch is that you don't actually know any women in tech who have decided to take a leave from their careers (either temporarily or permanently) in order to raise their children, and your handle + the fact that you just made that account makes me think you're a troll.

Many (most?) mothers suffer if they can't be around their young children. That's not to say that fathers don't either, but who do you think typically wins out in an argument if it comes down to deciding which parent keeps working and which handles childrearing?

You're pushing a narrative that suggests that being responsible for childrearing is a burden and a sacrifice, and that the argument is "who gets to keep their career" and not "who gets to raise the kid(s)". Most parents/couples absolutely do not see it that way, and I really do believe that, if given the choice, both fathers and mothers would overwhelmingly choose to be the stay-at-home parent. The ones that actually wanted kids, that is.

Strongly disagree, and I say that as a parent who loves his child. Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor, and leaving the workforce to do it leaves many women in precarious financial and social positions as a consequence. I know a middle-aged woman who left her job as a hospital exec to be a stay at home mom. Now the kids are grown, she's bored out of her mind, she's ineligible for any career that would challenge her, and resents being financially dependent on her husband. I probably know more women in that position than the other way around, between family and friends. It's particularly challenging when marriages don't work out later in life, which is common.

And saying that you should be happy staying home if you really want kids is a crock. You can love your kids without desiring to restructure your whole life around them. And as a society we should be skeptical of glorifying parenthood to the point of encouraging people to structure their lives around their kids.

> Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor

As opposed to a job, which is often hard unfulfilling mental labor?

> Raising kids is often hard unfulfilling manual labor

I don't see how raising a human can be classified as unfulfilling. Is making a CRUD app really more fulfilling than raising a child to a happy, healthy, well-adjusted adult? That seems an order of magnitude more fulfilling.

As for the ex-exec who's now bored, that can also be seen as a symptom of "career worship" that projects such as the OP seem to focus on. There's a lot you can do with your time so you don't end up bored. Learn to cook, sew, program for fun, read, write...

It seems like the #1 problem is that people are basing their identities on their career and then finding themselves lost when they end that career to raise a family. Even worse they are resenting the children and partner because they're not on the career track anymore.

A career is a burden not a privilege. People would be a lot happier if they saw through the marketing hype and realized that.

Just out of curiosity, what is the largest # of consecutive hours you have been responsible for a young child? I love my son and watching him progress over the last 11 months has been amazing but the day-to-day of raising a child can be mind numbingly boring.

I know it's boring and very, very hard work. Which is why I believe that we should support stay at home moms (and dads) by elevating the position in society and recognizing the hard and rewarding work it is. Going back to a career and paying someone to take care of your child is quite frankly the easy way out.

Women leaving the workplace to raise kids should be seen as a victory, not a "problem" that needs to be fixed. It's definitely not easy though and all of this media broadcast negativity surrounding being a parent instead of having a career can't make it any easier.

What do you think happens when your kids reach school age? You can kid yourself that changing diapers is part of some noble struggle (it is not), but there's no way to fool yourself during the 7 hours you'll spend waiting for them to get back from school. And, as they get older, those 7 hours become 9, sometimes 12, as they join clubs and go hang out with friends.

> I know it's boring and very, very hard work

So you're now agreeing with 'unfulfilling manual labor'?

You didn't answer his question. Can you?

Well, no, I don't think it's a burden and a sacrifice to take care of kids. From what I hear it's one of the most rewarding things in life, and I look forward to it (I'm in my late 20s and am thinking about having kids ten or so years from now). This is more in the context of career breaks, i.e., the current HN thread - in that context, taking time off a career is a burden.

I actually do know a few couples who've had long discussions about staying home. "Not really thinking about it" is a bit harsh, I admit, and I'll back off a bit there; but certainly the cultural bias leads to a default assumption, which people seem not to notice sometimes, i.e., the discussion framed as whether the mother should stay home, not who should stay home. For the couples I'm aware of, the father continuing to work was not in question.

I do think your implication that mothers may care more about kids than fathers do ("that's not to say that fathers don't either, but who do you think wins...") is a little disappointing. It's part of the cultural bias that I am trying to fight against here.

And finally, please don't call me a troll just because I have different ideas and opinions than you do. I'm trying to have a good-faith conversation and I care a lot about this issue. (Yes, I'm using a throwaway because any sort of gender politics discussion is politically dangerous. I hope my points are not dismissed as a result.)

There is a huge cultural push for women to leave the workforce after having a kid, which you don't even really appreciate until you try to swim against the tide.

After law school, my wife and I pursued the best jobs we could find, which left us working about 120 miles apart. We also had a baby. There was enormous pressure on her to make a career sacrifice to come work where I did, none for me to do the same. Even when there wasn't active headwind, just the total lack of support and encouragement was demoralizing and might have caused a less obstinate woman to just give in.

What kind of pressure was there? You, her family, your family, friends, coworkers, ...? Were they only saying that she should make the sacrifice (easy to ignore), or was she e.g. not promoted because of it (hard to ignore)?

I would argue the exact opposite applies to many people:

I couldn't care less about promotions (An additional $40,000? It doesn't affect my happiness in any way). If I want extra responsibilities for the challenge, I can usually engineer my roles and projects to do them without moving up the org-chart.

On the other hand, all your family and friends judging you, raising eyebrows, making you feel like a bad mother ... that one is harder to ignore.

Hm... I guess my logic would be, if they don't agree (or at least try to understand) my choices/reasons/morality, then they're not real friends!

> Many couples just do it that way because that's "how it's done" without really thinking about it.

Are you sure about that? Have you asked them? No one that I know makes these decisions just because that's "how it's done," although I can imagine that might be how it looks from the outside.

Because women dont want to marry men who want to be primary stay at home dads, some do, but I have never met a woman who wants that. Most of the women I speak to when asked think its a little bit funny.

Women tend to prefer men that are higher status than themselves. For a working woman (especially one in tech that earns alot) they tend find partners who are also employed.

This makes a dichotomy where if a man makes $100k+ in most places in the US, they can one-income support a family. Where as women tend not to look favorably to men who take time off of to stay at home.

Women's desire for high status men is something that comes to us from being primates. It's at best a mixture of nature and society. Even if we had a radically egalitarian society, there is a part of many couples that would be unsettled by it.

All that said, there is nothing about that should stop women from pursuing careers in tech. Of all work, ours is one that is really friendly to working remotely and with flexible hours.

Modern-day living expenses being what they are, most people nowadays actively seek out partners who work because, unless you're filthy stinking rich, having a dual income is the only way to afford to raise a family and still have a decent lifestyle.

It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

> It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

While resulting partnerships obviously must be reciprocal, preferences don't have to be.

It's because women have specific preferences, and men just want women.

I don't think that's supported by evidence such as in those famous okcupid blog posts.

There are a variety of studies suggesting that "solid support for working moms" - in the form of paid leave, subsidized day care and the general Nordic experience - do not actually help much.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/the...

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

In fact, paid leave encourages women to be less attached to the workforce - as paid leave goes up, women leave the workforce for more time.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2348505

the country in the OECD which is most successful at getting women into tech is Saudi Arabia. (Next up are Ireland and Mexico.) Are they known for solid support for working moms? They do a lot better than countries you'd expect to support working moms, like Sweden and Finland.

https://www.oecd.org/gender/data/percentageoftertiaryqualifi...

(Outside the OECD Iran does quite well also, as does India.)

[0] "One reason for the poor Nordic performance at higher corporate levels is high taxes, which limits the amount of household services supplied through markets. If it is harder to hire someone to do the chores, that makes it harder for women to invest the time to climb the career ladder."

This is just so goddamn laughable. Again we come back to the implication that women are the de-facto owners of housework.

[1] just shows that in countries where people tell children the meaningless platitude of "girls aren't any different than boys" without treating girls and boys differently there's no change. An increase in anxiety there makes perfect sense -- at least if I'm told I'm bad at something I don't have to stress out about why I'm inferior.

[2] Just like everyone reasonable has been saying for decades, paid leave for women isn't the only metric you should be looking at. Creating a disparity in paid leave for women and men again creates a default assumption of women as caregivers. It also determines workplace reentry. In this sense, rather than pushing for extended maternal leave in the U.S., we should be pushing for equal paternity leave.

[3] This is not a measure of getting women into computing, it's a proxy. Having been to the middle east I can tell you that college graduation rates are not a good metric to determine how many women are in the workforce. I'd say nearly half of the women (middle - upper middle class) had engineering degrees. Just about none of them had jobs, especially in rural areas. It's a piece of paper that increases your eligibility for marriage -- "look my wife has a CS degree, she's very smart, but she doesn't have to work".

Women are the de-facto consumers of housework - the party most likely to care if it's done or not.

Creating a disparity in paid leave for women and men again creates a default assumption of women as caregivers.

Sweden used to give both parents 16 months of leave to split as they liked. When parents chose to give it all to the mother, Sweden decided to force men to take 2 months (or give them up). Now they are increasing it to 3 months.

I guess Swedish bureaucrats know better than parents how leave should be distributed.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/28/swedish-fathers...

rather than pushing for extended maternal leave in the U.S., we should be pushing for equal paternity leave.

In the US we have equal paternity and maternity leave (namely none).

Here's another crazy idea: disproportionately more women than men enjoy being stay at home parents and make choices based on this preference. Can you think of a way the world would be different if this theory were true?

> Women are the de-facto consumers of housework - the party most likely to care if it's done or not.

Bachelor pads have a reputation for a reason. Introducing a woman into a dwelling tends to reveal a host of categories of housework that must be done that were previously entirely unknown, and at enormously higher frequency than ever conceived by the bachelor.

Then again, many men (myself included...) would probably be alright if we were allowed to still live in a cave and curl up at night with a flea-ridden aurochs pelt...

In the society that we live in now you're right. And you can either see this as an inequality that's been socialized or as essential to the female sex -- equivalent to saying that girls are born caring more about housework.

The fact of the matter is that being a stay at home parent is extremely isolating. Women who stay at home are significantly more likely to have mental problems [0][1]

"Researchers also found that most of the women in the highly suicidal group held jobs before becoming mothers – a significant life changing experience where they left behind their working identity in a predictable and controlled environment where they felt competent, to the unpredictability of caring for a newborn. This dramatic change could have been enough to catapult them into severe post partum depression." [2]

And there is also a disproportionate push for them to stay at home. The narrative around motherhood suggests that women who stay at home are better mothers.

I stayed at home for a few months while my partner went back to work. It's something I would never do again. It's unbelievably isolating, stressful, and in many ways (especially in the early months) unrewarding.

A way the world would be different would be we wouldn't have people making decisions against their own self interest due to societal pressure. You wouldn't receive polar opposite answers from women around other people and in one on one scenarios regarding their experiences as a SAHM.

[0] http://www.gallup.com/poll/154685/stay-home-moms-report-depr... [1] http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/12/working-moms.... [2]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163854.h...

off topic: bloom filters are my favorite data structure and I enjoyed reading your blog post :)

As my husband always reminds me, if he doesn't clean I'm the one who will be judged!

- signed, a messy female

> you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare per kid

That's true. But as it happens, engineers do make a lot of money. Many of us even make enough to support one-income families. You can't just assume senior engineers leave tech because of childcare costs, when most of us make well over the amount where you "might as well just stay home."

I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics being quoted.

For example, how does this compare to other trends for female jobs in other sectors? How do the figures compare when you separate the population between those with children and those without?

When someone wants to make a claim like: "These numbers reflect two problems: 1) the percentage of women who work in tech is low, and 2) women are leaving tech jobs in droves."

I would expect more analysis than simply: "In 2014, 26% of computing jobs were held by women – and that’s down from 36% in 1991"

I think there are a lot of bogus statistics/conclusions being drawn when it comes to many social issues, female equality being one of them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc).

I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest.

> I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest.

It's not academically dishonest, it's the application of a reasonable epistomological presumption: we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity.

It's not that people are unwilling to acknowledge biological differences between genders. Nobody argues that women have as much upper body strength as men. Rather, people are aware of the longstanding practice of chaulking things up to biological differences, and adopt a presumption against such explanations. You can see that clearly in this thread, where people are arguing that women might be biologically predisposed to being primary caregivers without any concrete evidence backing that up.

> "we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity."

Ummm...the first part is fine, the corollary reasoning is what is academically dishonest. Prima facie is not academically acceptable when determining causal relationships in statistics. The illustration of this is why the power of Hypothesis testing is centered around rejecting the Null hypothesis. Failure to reject the null hypothesis doesn't confirm/prove the null hypothesis as true.

The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter. What else could it be?

Also, what is acceptable for proving a causal relationship in a statistical sense is not coextensive with what's academically honest. In the real world people have to make decisions and set policies based on imperfect information. Requiring premises underlying those policies to be proven with scientific certainty before condoning political action just establishes a default policy of preserving the status quo.

>>The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological.

Nature/nurture argument is not a dichotomy. It isn't either/or. It can be both to varying degrees, i.e. biological dispositions can be nurtured/reinforced by environment and upbringing.

You're right, dichotomy implies sets are mutually exclusive. "Jointly exhaustive" is the phrase I was looking for.

> If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter.

Your presumption seems to favour the sociological explanation. Why do you not say, "If you presume it's not the latter, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the former"?

It's not really reasonable to take as a strong prior (or null hypothesis if you are that sort) that two distributions are equal. Why would they be?

Further, lets think of all the distributions where we can easily measure - upper body strength and height are two examples. The male/female distributions are, in fact, not equal. Same for the distributions of mathematical ability.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary https://www.jstor.org/stable/2889145?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941 http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf

It seems like you want to simply assume your pet hypothesis to be true - with no real evidence for it - while demanding a high level of rigor from those you disagree with.

See Scott Alexander's excellent takedown of this fallacious rhetorical strategy here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands...

We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed.

The people with the pet hypothesis here are those who assume without causal evidence that there is a difference in cognition between men and women. Neuroscience is converging on the fact that sex specific differences in the brain are minimal. [0] Differences in the brain have been observed between taxi drivers and the general population. We clearly wouldn't assume that they were born to be taxi drivers, we would place the causation on neuroplasticity. Even then, neuroscience is a very immature field. Neurobollocks is an entertaining read.

[0] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/is-the-brai...

I agree it's not easily observed. What I'm disagreeing about is the idea that if two numbers are not easily observed, they must be assumed to be equal.

Similarly, it's unreasonable to assume that the number of dollars in my wallet is equal to the number of dollars in your wallet unless someone can come up with p<0.001 proof otherwise.

Also, on this topic, I don't trust any pop-science writing (such as Scientific American) or journalism about science papers. I don't even trust the abstracts of science papers. Take a look at my citations about mathematical ability - unless you look at the data tables, you won't actually realize that those citations provide strong evidence of significant differences in math ability between men and women.

For example, consider the article with the title "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance", while the first data table shows a variance ratio of 1.11-1.21 and the second table shows the result of this in the right tail.

Unfortunately scientists need to tread very carefully and obscure the "wrong" results - loudly proclaiming these results is a career limiting move.

> We know that there are sex specific physical characteristics that differ between men and women. Nobody is arguing that's not true. Extending these to mental differences however is a stretch and not easily observed.

Yes, it is easily observed and has been extensively studied. Wikipedia has several articles about "Sex differences in ..." on different topics. For example, see "Sex differences in intelligence" [1] or "Sex differences in human psychology". Lots of studies are linked. One that I recall is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" [2]:

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. [...] 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.

Another example is "Sex differences in parking are affected by biological and social factors" [3], which found that men are better at parking cars:

> The stereotype of women’s limited parking skills is deeply anchored in modern culture. Although laboratory tests prove men’s average superiority in visuospatial tasks and parking requires complex, spatial skills, underlying mechanisms remain unexplored. Here, we investigated performance of beginners (nine women, eight men) and more experienced drivers (21 women, 27 men) at different parking manoeuvres. Furthermore, subjects conducted the mental rotation test and self-assessed their parking skills. We show that men park more accurately and especially faster than women.

Another known result is that male IQ is higher on average has higher variance than female IQ. The intelligence study "Sex differences on the progressive matrices: a meta-analysis" [4] concluded:

> Results showed that there is no difference among children aged 6–14 years, but that males obtain higher [mean IQ] from the age of 15 through to old age. Among adults, the male advantage is 0.33d equivalent to 5 IQ points. These results disconfirm the frequent assertion than there are no sex differences on the progressive matrices and support a developmental theory that a male advantage appears from the age of 15 years.

"Brother–sister differences in the g factor in intelligence" [5] claims that male IQ is not higher on average, but has "substantially greater variance". If male IQ had greater variance, this means we would expect that there are more men than women with very high IQs (as well as more men with very low IQs). The section about current research in [1] has more.

These are just a small sample of peer-reviewed research articles examining mental differences between men and women. There may not be consensus on all topics, but there is on some, such as the higher variance of male IQs, and it's being actively studied.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300...

[3] http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/biopsy/papers/Wolf_Ocklenburg2...

[4] http://www.uam.es/personal_pdi/psicologia/pei/download/Lynn2...

[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606...

The mobile/face study has not been reproduced. Researchers who tried again, making the study gender-blind (i.e. dressing the babies in gender neutral outfits and not looking at the names) found that there was no significant differences. [4]

[3] is thoroughly conditioned into women [5]. Not only do people say that males are more visually intelligent, boys take part in more activities that develop spatial reasoning and coordination, namely sports and video games. This difference starts at a young age, with boys receiving more functional toys that develop logic and hand eye coordination, while girls receive more dolls, dollhouses, stoves, strollers, etc.

[4] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000110...

[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21876159

The abstract of link [4] says the following:

> Gender differences were found [] due to an increase in girls' gaze behavior. Girls also made more eye contact in female–female dyads and in the second interaction over the first. Boys' behavior remained unchanged over time. The data provide evidence for gender differences in mutual gaze in a younger sample and wider context than previously demonstrated.

This seems to reinforce the claim that there are gender differences, doesn't it? (I don't have access to the full paper and can't see the result you're referring to)

> This difference starts at a young age, with boys receiving more functional toys that develop logic and hand eye coordination, while girls receive more dolls, dollhouses, stoves, strollers, etc.

Did you know that a monkey research study examined toy and play preferences of male and female monkeys? Like humans, male adolescent monkeys prefer to play with wheeled vehicles, while the females prefer dolls. "Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children" [7]:

> Sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough and tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys. Thus if activity preferences shape toy preferences, male and female monkeys may show toy preferences similar to those seen in boys and girls. We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females.

[4] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000110...

[7] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

The abstract is phrased in the way that it's most sensationalist to the neuroscience community, unfortunately. The authors said that they found effects in a follow up study, but in the initial study that replicated [2] they found no significant results. Leeb and Rejskind's analysis suggests that the expectations of the experimenters influenced the study in the previous example.

The thing is, talk to girls -- they don't actually like to play with dolls. Many of them envied the lego sets and toy cars of their male peers.

I'm losing steam. I might flesh this out tomorrow. I've been arguing with people far less reasonable than you all day.

Spatial reasoning does seem to have strong male/female correlation. Give a hundred men and a hundred woman a map and an address to reach, and guess which cohort gets there more easily? Or give the same groups a Lego set and the instruction booklet (especially the tediously piece-by-piece modern ones), and see which population completes the set more quickly and more accurately.

> we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity.

Wouldn't it be better to cite studies comparing women who do and do not care for children as proof that there is some other cause, instead of asking everyone to accept that assumption?

Casual studies of that scale are not common. You'd literally have to document a person's entire life.

we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity.

This is a textbook circular argument.

Is it? I think it just means you need evidence of biological differences (or lack thereof) from things other than disparities in outcome - from outside the circle.

If I say "Women aren't as fast at sprinting as men, and it's biological, as evidenced by the fact women aren't as fast as sprinting as men" I agree that's a circular argument.

But if I say "Women aren't as fast at sprinting as men, and it's biological, as evidenced by these studies of testosterone levels and their effects" that's a non-circular argument.

I agree with the last part. But here OP said "we presume X is not a factor", and then goes on to conclude X is not a factor.

OP requires evidence for biological differences, but requires no such thing for the discrimination theory.

Throwing around "epistomological presumption", "corollary"' and "prima facie" does not make this a scientific argument.

In reality there is plenty of evidence for biological gender differences (and for discrimination). Pinker's "Blank Slate" is a good start if you have time to read 600 pages.

And to say that people are making their decisions in a vacuum is intellectually dishonest. Unless of course you just assume that women have different brains, that make them too intellectually feeble to have interests in computing, engineering, machinery.

I don't have an interest in forwarding the notion that one gender is superior to the other in anyway shape or form. But neither are both genders identical.

For example, the video I linked above, there is a brief observation made about how more female doctors drifted towards pediatrics than men. I don't think that says anything about the potential of either gender, but I would possibly describe it as a gender preference.

And ultimately, I think we should aim for freedom of choice. And if we do that, I don't think we can expect to split our population up by any characteristic, examine flat participation percentages and think that anything other than 50-50 is caused by prejudice.

>"But neither are both genders are identical."

I'm going to take a step back and substitute gender for sex. Saying that the two sexes are not identical is a very interesting, and strong stance. Especially seeing as it is impossible to prove with socialization and neuroplasticity.

I don't doubt that there are preferences based on gender. Gender is the word that we use to describe a set of sex-stereotypes that we project onto members of our society.

Aiming for freedom of choice makes sense sans socialization. I overuse this example, but imagine Douglas Adams' cow that was raised to be eaten -- if we raise girls with the notion that they should love children, be self sacrificing, value helping others over money, not be selfish, and raise boys with a completely separate set of traits, is it reasonable to not apply a critical lens to these choices when they cause a detrimental effect on the quality of life of one group, and the set of available experiences to both groups?

Is raising a cow that chooses to be eaten any better than raising one that doesn't? Is it even worse?

Equating liking children with the suicidal urge to be killed and eaten is on the overdramatic side.

What's so "detrimental" about women's choices? Is becoming doctors and lawyers so much worse than becoming programmers?

Think about this: How do you know socialization is responsible for these differences, and not inherited personality and interest (average) differences?

What would be observably different in a world where our species worked that way?

I'm not saying it's true that biological sex creates certain predispositions, but it's also not unreasonable. The people who dogmatically deny it outright are as bad as the people who strongly affirm such differences despite lack of evidence.

Would you say the same about any other causal relationship? Are there any implications of it that don't perpetuate the idea that women are intellectually inferior? That don't shift the burdens of emotional labor and child rearing onto children? The idea is so obviously sexist...

How do you mean? A common stereotype is that men are aggressive while woman are kinder and gentler (the former true to some extent because of testosterone). Surely that's a good trait, so not all stereotypes disfavour women? Point being, recognizing differences between the sexes (which it exists in areas such as the aforementioned aggressiveness, or in kids where you can see boys are more restless and prone to suffer ADHD, but almost certainly not in intellect like you suggest) is not "so obviously sexist". It's the reality.

Actually testosterone studies have shown that it increases aggression in men who have anger problems. Estrogen has been shown to have similar increases in aggression in women. Too lazy to find on mobile but I'll edit later.

Boys are held to a lower standard of behavior than girls. "Boys will be boys" is a societal mantra.

It's worth noting that these "inherent" traits vary across societies. For instance Italian culture believes that girls are more violent and boys are kinder and more emotional.

Women being kinder is a sex trope not a neurological reality.

Also both of your examples are perfect fits for what I was talking about. Women being kinder means that kindness is expected of them. Also that they are available to be emotionally dumped on.

"Men being aggressive" excuses male violence. "Boys being hyperactive" means we have low standards for their behavior.

TFA isn't a position piece intended to argue the point. It was saying, "hey, this is a problem, here are two numbers indicating the scope of the problem, and here are some people who are working on it." Not "This is a problem, and here are statistics to prove it to skeptics." The data on why women leave tech is out there if you're genuinely interested.

In general, complete data on population trends is very lacking. So if you have a source I would genuinely be interested in examining it.

But I guess where you and I disagree is whether or not the problem identified actually is the problem. Which I think makes creating essentially sexist sub-networks/organizations questionable. If the crux of the issue isn't some sort of gender discrimination (nefarious or not, structural or cultural, etc.) then the proposed solution doesn't actually address the underlying issue leading to the observed macro trend.

We do, but we also get pushed to move to places where making a six-figure salary in USD still means you need to have a roommate. Where I am (Dallas) that isn't true. Not coincidentally, the gender ratios in this industry are much better here than they are in the Valley.

Actually quite a lot of tech isn't making bank. Some do, but usually this is spread within certian niches and locations.

I've never been pregnant myself (yet).

But I have friends who are new mothers, who say they can't imagine leaving their newborn child, who they carried for nine months. It's a special bond, and most of them wanted to be stay at home moms after.

Only a few went back to work because they had financial issues due to costs from delivery complications.

I think/hope that remote friendly engineering companies will help with this.

I'm working at a fully-distributed startup, and while it's all male currently, 50% of the team are dads with young kids and don't have to make the tradeoff of never seeing their kids to advance their career.

I am not sure if that is the right mind set:

"So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home."

The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as needed), instead of making the choice based on poor future earning opportunities vs their male peers.

>"The 'you' can be the other partner."

Our culture's acceptance of stay-at-home dads has not neutralized in step with its acceptance of working women. As relationships link people into social units, social costs imposed on men can counter-intuitively harm women.

Do we know that that's the reason that more women are deciding to stay home? This looks like a big conclusion to draw when the data only _may_ correlate.

Where's the survey of double-income family moms working in tech where they specified the reason why they chose to stay at home?

There are a lot of reports coming out that look at numbers and say what may be the reason, but I've yet to see anyone go ask women the reasons why they left jobs in tech.

Oh, I've done this, let me tell you why:

1) People in tech are assholes to women. I don't think most of them realize they're doing it. Sending images of swimsuit models over slack or otherwise sexualizing your work environment is an awful idea, and you shouldn't do it even if you don't have women on your team. My partner gets asked out by coworkers regularly, even while pregnant.

2) No really, people in tech are assholes to women. I've heard women give presentations where people talk over them the whole time, and then critique them for not being prepared afterwords. Nah pal, you literally stopped her from presenting information. People do not take suggestions of women as seriously wrt technical problems.

3) Kids. State of paternity leave in the U.S...

4) Being pushed into management. Women are pushed into management at a disproportional rate -- while some see this as a success metric, it can also be seen as an extension of point 2.

5) HR problems. Using HR sucks when you're the only woman on the team. Having someone else call HR sucks when you're the only woman on the team because everyone assumes it was you.

6) Culture, combination of all of the above, lack of a critical mass of women to make actual change, etc.

I'm not at all saying that I don't believe you, but we're at the point where we need to leave anecdotes out of this and start gathering good data. As much as I've seen your examples, I've also seen all of the counter examples (except to point 3 because that's just how it is in the States).

I spent the first few years of my working-life in female-dominated industries/workplaces and almost the entirety of my tech career in female-dominated or equal workplaces. I've yet to work somewhere without pay-parity (actually the hedge fund I worked for paid women more). From my anecdotal perspective, the world out there is wonderful.

But I know that's not true. I have a strong filter against toxic work environments - I simply would never end up at a company like that.

I'm just asking for good data that can speak for itself. This is what our industry does.

Aside: frequent surveys/studies show that more than 50% of participants have engaged in an office romance, equally across genders. I've never done this, but it's a big stretch to say that asking out a coworker is asshole behavior at this point. It's much more about the how.

I didn't mention pay parity anywhere. The majority of pay disparity between men and women in the U.S. is due to job/field selection imo. The questions we have to ask are ones that determine why people choose certain fields, what social pressures are there, etc.

Which is why I agree that we need good data, but the best I can do is actually talking to women and seeing their problems, and they're remarkably similar.

That office romance bit might be different in a situation in which you have an equal number of male and female coworkers. But when you bring in a disparity of 5:1, asking out your coworkers, you're literally just having people being pestered all day.

And honestly, you're referring to a study that disseminates itself via an ad carousel with no methodology I can find. A survey of 2000 people with no published methodology is hardly reliable.

There's a reason you've never done it, and most women I talk to cringe at the idea.

These are startup problems. Larger mature tech companies (there are many of them) shouldn't be that hostile. I work at one with 1000+ employees and while it's not 50/50, I can't imagine it being that bad.

Also, I'm a black person. All of the horror stories they say about POC in tech, I have never experienced one. I've had individual jerks but, I haven't had things like the company passing me up or ever felt that I wasn't getting a promotion, ever.

So, mapping that to what they say about women, I would say it's unlikely to be as bad as they say. Now, that's completely and utterly subjective but, attitudes concerning your perceptions of how others treat you is subjective.

> Also, I'm a black person. All of the horror stories they say about POC in tech, I have never experienced one. I've had individual jerks but, I haven't had things like the company passing me up or ever felt that I wasn't getting a promotion, ever.

One thing interesting about the company I worked at from 2012 to 2014 was that, despite it being an abusive startup with dysfunctional management, it was the single most ethnically-diverse place I've ever worked at, and I'd never heard about a single problem related to race there (while I'd heard a lot about the company's other problems). This was all despite the company being a tiny startup that never exceeded 15 full-time employees when I worked there (augmented by a handful of contractors and part-timers, so a little more than 15 on the payroll at a few points). To wit:

I'm Jewish, as were both of the co-founders. We had three Indian employees (though not at the same time). We had two black programmers, one of whom is also an albino and legally blind. Our lead content people were a woman of Cambodian descent and a guy of Iraqi descent who's an actual Assyrian Christian. We also had a few part-timers, including an Asian guy and a summer intern from Sicily (technically white, but I'd still say she's a minority because her accent stood out). WASPs were very much a minority at that company.

Also, I'm transgender, and so was one of our contractors, but that actually did cause issues (not with my employer, but with our landlord, who went out of their way to make life difficult for me because I'm trans).

Most of these anecdotes are from women at big 4 companies.

Not to shit all over other peoples' career choices, but those and fresh startups are exactly the sort of places that hardly ever pass my shit-test for work environment.

The absolute best places to work, I've found, are in (non-tech or tangentially tech) businesses that have a solid tech team but aren't in the Tech Co Echochamber. Surveying my friends and colleagues seems to point to the same.

Want to be seriously valued and friends with everyone at work? Be the person that asks questions, sees their problems and then makes the magic happen. You're not going to do this at Google or Facebook and you're not going to do this at DeathMarchOnwardNextFundingRound-ly either.

Tech-bro shenanigans not flying in the "traditional" business world is a huge bonus.

> 4) Being pushed into management.

Do you have a source for that?

The dominant narrative I've heard is that women are passed over for promotions, not accelerated.

Probably depends on the kind of company.

At a small, technically-focused company where "manager" also means "tech lead", it's very unlikely that being disrespected is synonymous with "being pushed into management", but at a big, bureaucracy-heavy company that follows the Dilbert Principle where people perceived as incompetent are routinely kicked upstairs to get them out of the way, I can see that happening.

So when the same is done to males it is not being assholes for some reason?

You may have literally never looked because it's really easy to find those studies on google.

Ensuring fair pair wouldn't allow either partner to be the home support. Why? Because woman desire their partner to make more money than them.

Even if she makes the same salary as her peers she will statistically be married to a man who makes more money and so the economic pressure will be on her to be the stay at home partner.

Now to find women who want their husbands to stay at home looking after the kids while she works, good luck with that. And to be clear unless 50% of the coupled women out there commit to this you wont see any meaningful change in how society perceives stay at home dads, which currently is "lazy"

I considered moving from Sweden to England for a job a while back. If we did so, the cost for day care and school would be significantly more than my wife's potential salary, so she would probably have stayed at home. That would have been completely absurd living in Sweden, I don't know any stay at home moms, barely even in my parent's generation.

Of course culture, role models, mentors, etc are very important to some, but economic factors establish the baseline for what is actually reasonable and possible for most.

As an example, to diversify the police force in Sweden, one method was to have more opportunity for remote studies at the police academy. It turns out women (for various reasons) have a harder time getting away from their families frequently, so when they could have remote classes that helped.

Very US-centric view. In many places daycare is heavily subsidized and it makes financial sense to stay at work with 2-3 kids.

To my knowledge none of these groups who champion women in IT seem to talk about maternity leave. It mystifies me to be honest. The situation with maternal leave is very problematic because it is available to women only in most countries.

Women get about 10 years into their career and decide to have families. In high tech, my experience has been that maternity leave benefits are common. So women often take up to a year away from work. This puts them at a serious disadvantage. Even if their job waits for them, in the high tech industry, everybody moves on (not sure what the average attrition rate is, but I remember at one point people would change jobs every 2-3 years). So you get back to your job and everything is different. Essentially you are a new hire and you have to work your way back into the political spectrum.

Then imagine that you have a spouse who works in the IT industry. Not only did they not take the year off, but they are plugged into everything thing that's happened and have made relationships with all the new people who have shown up in the last year. It is just natural that those people will be better placed for promotion.

Also I have yet to meet a woman, after spending a year away from work to look after their new born child, who thinks, "I'm so happy to be able to hand my child over to childcare while I'm at work." Naturally you worry -- especially for your first child. Naturally you feel guilty. Naturally you don't want to give up what you have (looking after your child is an awesome job!). If you happen to have enough income coming in because your spouse works, is there really a serious argument for going back to work?

This is fixable. 6 months maternity leave followed by 6 moths paternity leave. Make it a law that spouses have the right to that 6 months. Limit the amount of maternity leave so as not to punish women in the work place. This allows the family to hand over the child to the non-childbearing spouse for 6 months so as to ease the transition of the mother. Then after those 6 months the mother has been back at work and it is the other spouse (very probably male) who has to make the hard decision of whether or not to go back to work. Also, each spouse has taken 6 months off from work and each suffers on the work side equally.

Not to mention that it really sucks that men in our society rarely get the opportunity to interact with their young children simply because they don't have the hardware to gestate a baby.

2 birds, one stone and all that.

P.S. I struggled to write in a way that would include all family styles, but if I unintentionally missed one that you care about, please accept my apologies and consider the idea anyway.

> This is fixable. 6 months maternity leave followed by 6 moths paternity leave. Make it a law that spouses have the right to that 6 months.

This is similar to how it works in parts of the EU. You have maternity leave, paternity leave, and parental leave. The latter can be taken by either parent. The amount of time allocated to each category varies from country to country.

Leave must be requested (I think) 21 days in advance, and an employer that punishes you for taking parental leave can be taken to an employment tribunal.

interesting point, you're advocating making the maternity leave transferable somehow?

Actually, while I wouldn't be opposed to that, I'm not sure it's the best idea. So if a woman is entitled to 12 months, she can take the first 6 and then transfer the rest to her spouse. I think some countries work that way (possibly even my home country of Canada, but I haven't lived there for a long time, so I'm not sure... I know some of my friends have done something similar).

However, I worry that there will be pressure for women to take the entire leave and not transfer it. I think it would be more beneficial to offer a reasonable leave for women to recover from childbirth and to spend that very important initial time with their child, and then after that is finished the spouse can take a leave. Since it is something added, then I think it would encourage more people to take it. I may be wrong about that, though.

The main thing is that I think since women are forced to take leave in order to have families it puts them at a disadvantage. Because it is beneficial for the child to extend that leave as long as possible, they end up sacrificing their careers for their children. I think that's perfectly acceptable, but I think it would be better to make it a reasonable and realistic option for the spouse to make that sacrifice instead.

Can they compare it to rates for countries which are more supportive of mothers (paid maternity/paternity leave, pay for daycare, etc.) Apparently US is the only country which doesn't have this should the data should easy to obtain.

It is undeniable that women in technology face greater challenges than men and it becomes hard for them go get through certain hoops that men get through effortlessly. Congrats YC! This seems like a good move.

Is it just me or does anyone find these type of groups too career oriented? Don't get me wrong, I am a female dev and I'm all for equal opportunity and working towards supportive environment for any gender or non-gendered, sexual orientation or no orientation. I don't really find these organisations really that helpful in bringing everyone together. I'm a nerd by nature before I knew computers existed and becoming a coder just came naturally to me. Obviously it's not because I'm unique and amazing. I just grew up in an environment with a lot of freedom as a child so I wasn't limited to think or act in a certain way. Anyway I wouldn't be comfortable in a group like wwcode because looking at the blurbs on the site it's just too career oriented. I wouldn't fit in at all but that doesn't mean I don't have the same problems these women have. Just because my sex is female I get treated differently even though I don't necessarily feel either female or male inside and I'm a pure thoroughbred nerd. I don't feel like climbing the career ladder because I enjoy being the lowly dev as long as there's a bit of freedom in how I solve problems and problems are not too terribly boring. All this, yeah you're a woman, yeah you deserve to get promoted etc kinda puts me off a little bit. I'm sure it's all with good intentions but if I'm feeling like this (a woman) imagine all those males who feel threatened by us. That's why I think these type of organisations, even though they have good intentions sometimes fall short at bringing everybody together. Because in the end we all need to come to an understanding and accept our differences to have a truly harmonious society. Also a side point about people comparing computing jobs with nursing or bin lorry operators. You are comparing apples and oranges. There are factors such as money, status, education levels to consider and are different. No one is blocked from becoming a bin lorry man/woman and as a kid no one dreamt of becoming one. They add a lot of value to the society though maybe even more than some developers but that's another discussion. Ok rant's over. :)

I feel like what they're doing is good in general but at the same time not my scene for a lot of the same reasons that you mentioned.

I suspect that women-oriented tech organizations lean that way because a large number of people who are women in tech AND who show up to meetups are women who don't have programming jobs and want them.

I also think there's a culture that pushes women into lead positions/managment because that will have a very obvious benefit to women who work in tech that work under them.

There's been a couple of initiatives that are more about the passion-side of tech that are oriented towards women. Double Union was a pretty good group for that when I was in SF.

As a programmer and nerd (who happens to be male but it's not really relevant in this context) I can relate to the expectations of career advancement meaning moving into management and away from the joys of diving deep into the technical aspects and solving technical problems.

I just want to be a great programmer, and would've loved a way to signal advancement of career without moving into people management or sales. Not so many work places support this beyond "senior developer/sw engineer", though.

This is a great post! My workplace is about 65/35 male / female and I have this crazy approach to working with women - treating them like normal people! I've never been the type to make sexualized jokes or engage in that stereotypical 'male' office behavior, so censoring myself has never been an issue but it's really just about not assuming things about someone before you actually know them.

It works pretty well, I've met men that aren't particularly experienced or talented as programmers and women - it's stupid and shortsighted to presume things about people you don't know.

It's interesting nursing is always brought up in these discussions. My wife is an RN on her way to being a NP and I've noticed that it's an incredibly hostile field for newcomers despite being dominated by women. Partly this is a result of abusive patients (usually men, but their families as well) - since the ACA hospitals are paid in part based on their patient satisfaction ratings and these people seem to assume nurses are there to be part concierge, part maid, part entertainer - not medical professionals there to monitor your health and keep you alive. A nurse can actually threaten her hospital's revenue streams if she responds in a hostile manner towards the sexual harassment they are likely to receive from patients and their families.

It's also a result of bullying from more senior-staff which takes the form of shitty patient assignments, undesirable work schedules, and a general hostility and casual disrespect from doctors, residents and PAs (this is where some more misogyny enters the picture).

Another interesting thing is the education required to enter the field. Nursing was once an occupation you could start with an Associates degree - in many areas that is no longer the case and a BSN is considered the minimum. At Johns Hopkins School of Nursing a solo BSN isn't even offered anymore, all new students need to enter on a BSN + Masters course path. The result has been a significantly higher barrier of entry into the field and I haven't heard any major news outlets discuss it at all.

Despite the prevalent attitudes towards the difficult work environment in Tech, I don't know any other field that offers the combination of high salaries and a relative disregard for your formal education. That seems to me incredibly empowering for individuals who are actually interested in the work and yet it's never really mentioned either.

Are you actually complaining about an increased societal focus and push for women's success at work? What exactly is "too career focused", and what would you rather see from assemblies of people who are trying to bolster women's place at work -- or would you simply rather not see such assemblies at all?

I am not saying that I would rather no see such assemblies at all. I know people have good intentions but I wish there is a bit more holistic approach to this rather than, it being just for a type of woman. It should include male, female, non-sex, people who wants kid and people who don't want kids, people with different aspirations in life, not necessary the traditional path set out such as school, work, marriage, kids etc.

beepboop2045 made a good point though about women working under female leadership. We do need role models. I just wish there are other paths being considered and talked about.

This is likely going to be 100% ignored since I'm late to the party on this but my wife's experiences have been that true discrimination and difficulty doesn't rise until a female engineer tries to enter management. When she was "just an engineer" things were great and nothing went wrong.

When she tried to level up into management, she faced these difficulties:

- competition from other female managers who had transitioned into the role from product management. They often times felt immensely threatened by her technical acumen and played politics to stop her.

- Lots of pretending from engineers (never the ones she's led, oddly enough) that she "doesn't know anything"

- Her current manager recently demoted her on his second day and told her "she should do engineering because he believes she'll do great at it and, if she can prove herself, she might be put in charge of a project and have a chance at leadership in the future."

The last one still has me pretty irked since it's recent.

isn't this a challenge for every software engineer?

it is practically a stereotype for other engineers to criticize someone else's code

it is practically a stereotype for senior software engineers to face a career plateau

and you think this was uniquely sexual discrimination? so lets give you the benefit of the doubt, of the things you described, these are issues all software engineers face.

The reality is that women face presumptions about their technical incompetence at a much higher rate than men. This is well documented and researched. [1]

Obviously male developers also get undermined by their coworkers and face career plateaus. That is reality, but it is not a binary action - simply because some men face similar problems does not imply that it is an equal problem for both genders.

[1] http://www.uchastings.edu/news/articles/2015/01/double-jeopa...

Yeah I'm going to stick to what I said earlier, the way you phrased it almost tries to put a shield around any rebuttal.

He could have completely not mentioned the idea of gender being a crutch and it would have sounded like a gender neutral problem known to engineers.

You do have a point. I do have a male friend who is also facing a similar situation. When I commented I was emotional since it was more recent and while she was demoted without regards to performance the dude promoted 3 white guys he brought in. ಠ_ಠ

It's an honor to be a part of YC S16! As an organization, we've been committed to making sure our members stay in tech and excel in the industry.

We are excited to work with our Partners at YC and further enhance the Women Who Code experience. :)

Congrats Zassmin and Alaina, what you've accomplished so far is very impressive and looking forward to seeing how things scale!

Do you agree with the recent diversity and inclusion effort at github which noted that (6) some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women?

http://www.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-whit...

I'm not sure I agree with it, but there may be a point there that upper and middle class white women playing the victim card discredits it for those who have had more serious barriers to entry.

Hey Zassmin, congratulations and your organization sounds awesome! Would this help a woman with an h1b visa and a masters in cs get hired as a software engineer? If so, what's involved to make that happen? Thank you!

I wonder how much of the balance difference is due to boys liking tech more than girls. I'd say that if you ask 10-15 year olds, who hardly think about their future, about what they do in their free time you will find equal balance on the reply "gaming/stuff on my PC". Most girls don't like it, that translates to later stages in life I guess. Never see the reports for other fields where females excel in acceptance rates. Teachers, daycare, psychology, there are plenty really.

Mind you, I'm not saying women are treated equally once they _have_ the job, I'm just not sold on this whole "only x% of tech is women!" Thing. We can probably learn a thing or two on how to treat our female colleagues, but please stop trying to fight for 50% should be women kind of causes. There are other fields where it is completely the other way around and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.

> I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.

every time the gender imbalance comes up on HN someone makes the same comment you have.

Did you try Google? Because those programmes are trivially easy to find.

People will often make a similar comment about the lack of programmes to get women into construction or mining. But those programmes are really easy to find too.

I wasn't hinting at other programmes for women. I was hinting at programmes where men were at a disadvantage and fought for equal rights. Or even better, where women acknowledged the fact that only 20% of psychology, teachers, or whatever are men. There suddenly it isn't a problem to have the imbalance? Should we favor men in those categories over women? Just because we have fewer male teachers? So unfair! To think that women are better with children and thus hire them faster.. (Just to be sure: im exaggerating)

I do curse the fact that women who found a job in tech are handled differently but in return I would love to have front fighters for women equal rights drop the whole "we have so few women in tech" statement. I think most of that is due to the difference in what men or women have affinity with, not hiring process or disadvantages.

In other words, stop confusing amount of women in tech with equal women's rights. These are not casually related.

> I was hinting at programmes where men were at a disadvantage and fought for equal rights.

That's exactly what DanBC was referring to. There are such programmes for nursing, teaching, and many other fields. (Although the situation with nursing is complex, as male nurses are not getting paid less than their female counterparts.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-mor...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07conted-...

Well clearly they aren't as common as ones for tech, or else OP would have seen them.

If both types of programmes have the same presence it is vanishingly unlikely that OP would not be aware of them.

So either he is a liar or your overestimate their presence..

>Well clearly they aren't as common as ones for tech, or else OP would have seen them.

Obviously false, since OP has more interest in tech and most likely reads tech-specific sources of news (like this website).

> and I don't see people fighting there for equal rights.

Perhaps because you're not in those fields?

It's also a symptom of systemic sexism. Men don't dare fight for their right to be stay-at-home dads or to be nurses or whatever else is traditionally seen as female. It makes them look too much like ... you know ... not men.

If you look at the broader internet, you'll see there's been a lot of fighting happening for that too. Men asking for paternity leave without harming their careers, for instance.

But I digress. The most likely reason you haven't seen people fighting for equal rights in other fields is that you're not in those other fields and aren't exposed to their echo chamber.

Hey @Alaina from Women Who Code here. We are thrilled to be joining the YC community and I'm happy to answer questions.

> Women Who Code is an international 501c3 non-profit organization that works to empower career-aged women to excel in their technology careers.

Is there any relationship with the Girls Who Code organization? Because of the similarity of names it sounds as if it's a similar concept targeted at an older female audience.

Great question.

We focus on making sure our members stay in their engineering careers and excel in them!

Girls Who Code focuses on getting high school girls interested in STEM.

Our members often mentor Girls Who Code members.

i have trouble accepting the idea that fewer women in tech is a problem. it's not that i want to discourage women -- or anyone -- from going into tech. i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. i'd appreciate it if someone can persuade me that the hype is true so i no longer need to feel like a black sheep. but..

for one, the fact that there are fewer women than men in any field, computing or otherwise, is neither good nor bad. the disproportionate number of women in nursing is not seen as a problem, but somehow it has become one in tech.

two, as we flood more people into professional computing, the good pay -- one of the reasons given on the wwcode website for encouraging women to enter the field -- will decrease, due to the increased supply of workers. tech is reduced to Yet Another Job, and Women Who Bgurp becomes the next YC startup.

three, the wwcode website argues that diverse teams perform better by increasing collective intelligence -- measured in what units? and when it claims that organizations with the largest representation of women leadership have a higher return on investment, how is that measured? this seems super hand-wavy to me.

lastly, the website's statement about women investing 90% of their income in their communities "when [they] make more" is not only unlikely, but is predicated on the long-term availability of good pay in professional computing, which, as i mentioned earlier, will decline at a rate proportional to the frequency with which we encourage people to enter the field.

> for one, the fact that there are fewer women than men in any field, computing or otherwise, is neither good nor bad. the disproportionate number of women in nursing is not seen as a problem, but somehow it has become one in tech.

I don't agree. I think the gender disparity in nursing is just as much a problem. I think it's a significantly less tractable problem though, because I don't think the monetary incentives are there for men to enter nursing.

As for your economic arguments, I think they're oversimplified. We really don't know what the job market is going to look like long-term. We do know that the computing job market has quadrupled in size over the past 20 years, and it is a good bet that the job market can quadruple again over the next 20 years, without any loss in median salary.

Back to monetary incentives. The median salary for software engineers could be reduced by 25% and it would still be a good career choice. So there's no real reason not to encourage more people to enter the field. Nursing has a substantially lower median salary.

> The median salary for software engineers could be reduced by 25% and it would still be a good career choice. So there's no real reason not to encourage more people to enter the field. Nursing has a substantially lower median salary.

That's not accurate, at least when controlling for location. Going by BLS data, the difference between RNs and software engineers is less than 25% in LA, NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Jose and probably many other places that I didn't check. In San Francisco, RNs actually get paid more on average.

It's not useful to control for location without controlling for number of jobs available. What I'm really trying to approximate is "How difficult is it to get a job making at least a six-figure salary as a nurse or a software developer?" In SF for example, there are at least twice as many software developer positions as nursing positions. So while the median may be higher for nurses, it's still harder to get a high-paid nursing job than a similarly paid software job.

http://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/occupationalemp...

I agree with both of you, in some regards. But just thinking about it...maybe it's okay to have an uphill battle to get into a field that's prized. "Natural selection" of sorts...or survival of the fittest, etc. The field being dominated by males at this moment, might simply be a temporal problem that will automatically change in time without much specific effort.

> I don't agree. I think the gender disparity in nursing is just as much a problem.

What makes you say that? An argument could be made that women, in general, are more nurturing and that role fits them better than men. I know in that environment I'd prefer a woman taking care of me over a man.

One reason nursing has a substantially lower median salary is that it's largely women. You might be interested in the median salary of male nurses.

>i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy.

There are plenty of women who would enjoy being a developer but it wasn't presented to them as a realistic option in their childhood, or it wasn't a welcoming atmosphere for them when they started learning about it.

You could swap the gender and career with just about any field in either end of this list[0] and have the same argument, but there is a razor focus on this one specific field/gender combination.

[0]: https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chal...

You could, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion. Other fields have a similar problem, and are either unaware or don't consider it a problem.

I consider it a problem in the software/tech industry regardless of whether other professions do.

It's a reference to the GP's suggestion that maybe this isn't the correct problem to solve.

This is a tech site. Is it any surprise that there aren't a lot of discussions about getting men into macrame? There are no discussions of macrame, period, on HN. More's the pity -- it involves lots of cool knots. But somehow on a tech site it's just not of primary interest.

Nursing is brought up on everyone of these threads about gender, though. I haven't yet built the threatened autoposter about efforts to get men into nursing and the premium that men in nursing are paid over women in nursing, but both of those are well-documented.

I think the reason so much emphasis is put on attracting women to tech is the same reason so much emphasis is put on female politicians: tech people - especially startup founders - have the opportunity to have an outsize impact on the lives of everybody else in society. Encouraging more men to become kindergarten teachers may be great for the kids in their classroom but it's unlikely to have the impact of the next Twitter or a Facebook.

And the majority of the fields leading up to tech, excluding a few outliers like Sales reps, fall under categories in which men have an undeniable advantage as employees. Computer Science and other STEM fields are not limited by physical capabilities.

Also, I'd be interested to see if the rates of women in AE/IE are going up, holding steady, or if like CS they are declining. The declining rates of women entering our field is truly worrying.

So what? That's not any kind of rebuttal to doing this.

Being a developer was not presented to me as a realistic option in my childhood either, mainly because most of the many schools I've attended did not have any sort of computer science curriculum until the senior year.

Nor did I have anyone in my circles interested enough in programming until I've already picked my major.

Does that mean I now qualify for some special victim treatment just like those women?

Let's be honest here. If you want your argument to mean something, it can't have anything to do with gender. If it does - then the whole basis of it just boils down to "let's give women more handouts"

There are plenty of outreach efforts in the US targeted at students who might not get exposed to coding in school. I guess I wouldn't consider them special victim treatment; after all, golf and tennis also have outreach efforts to communities that don't have golf and tennis in school. Is that special victim treatment? It is often framed as charity as well as a way to popularize the activity in question.

Should all attempts to expose people to coding cease? Or are they ok if we only target people like those currently in the industry, perpetuating the status quo of 2016 but not 1984?

I notice you ignore the "welcoming atmosphere" part of the parent.

Yes, because your childhood and socialization is the same as the countless women who were raised to think that their value is an extension of their sexuality or partner. You did not face the same sets of problems that women did. Presenting your "analagous" situation is entirely disingenuous.

If you want your argument to mean something, it can be related to gender. It can be related to a critical analysis of the way that our society treats and raises boys and girls and the implications that this has on their lives and livelihoods.

1. When it becomes a systemic problem, i.e. women earn a significantly lower amount based on their job choices, there is an issue. The narrative of the pay-gap has largely been framed around pay for the same job, when in reality the consideration we should be making is pay-gap based on profession.

The reason being that it exposes a flaw in the way that our society is socializing young women. The idea that we have that women go into non-profits at an absurdly high rate because they have some inherent biological difference just doesn't make sense based on the neuroscience research that we have today.

A huge proportional difference in any field that does not have a physical limitation (i.e. if women were 1% of lumberjacks I would not see that as a problem) is worrisome.

The large proportion of women in nursing is emblematic of a problem -- it's a field with ridiculously long hours, high rates of injury, and entirely focused around caregiving.

While a higher number of available candidates in a field will decrease our salaries, is that a valid reason to keep women out of high-paying fields? You could say the same for any other engineering profession.

I agree that the wwcode claims are nebulous.

I don't doubt that women who make more invest more in their communities, I do doubt that it's 90%, but in a way I feel like this is also part of the problem, and I would be saddened if women invested 90% of their income in their communities. It would mean that the problems I'm talking about above are not solved, and are rather being financially and socially perpetuated.

Meh

Women earn lower because they choose to earn lower. Men face more pressure to earn a higher income than women, so naturally men dominate the high income fields. Then, once married, it makes more sense (economically) for the lower earning partner (the woman) to become the primary parent further widening the pay gap.

Want to fix it? Tell women to instead (statistically, as a group) start marrying down in income. Then men will face less pressure to earn a high income (and be able to, like women now, marry up for economic security), so will have more freedom to choose, and pay gaps will equalize.

The reason women go into non-profits is that it doesn't significantly effect their sexual selection. A man who does so would be significantly limiting his sexual opportunities. You don't need neuroscience to explain it. Men face every economic pressure that women do AND a sexual pressure. So naturally men earn more.

I would also be hesitant to try and fix it because the entire human endeavor is built around the male's desire for high status, which is fundamentally sexually motivated. Fix it and humanity stagnates.

> When it becomes a systemic problem, i.e. women earn a significantly lower amount based on their job choices, there is an issue.

I disagree. E.g. in the Netherlands, many women (mothers) choose to work part-time (4 hours) to be able to spend more time at home (presumably with their kids). I think it's great that the governments supports this choice, more governments should follow!

(You could use the same argument for other job choices; maybe more women choose to be e.g. teachers despite the lower salary, because they enjoy working with kids!)

Sure, they earn (much) less, but in exchange they have a higher quality of life, so I see it as a perfectly valid choice/tradeoff.

One other comment on your comment of many female nurses (among other professions, great graph here showing that surprisingly few professions are even close to 50/50 mix: https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chal...)

Keeping it simple and assuming that the economy needs a stable amount of nurses + coders, for every girl who decides to be a coder instead of a nurse, you are saying a boy should be a nurse instead of a coder! But as you say, I don't see a big push for boys to do other things, which is exactly what would have to happen.*

*I understand price substitution effects occur, but the general idea is still correct.

> the good pay -- one of the reasons given on the wwcode website for encouraging women to enter the field -- will decrease, due to the increased supply of workers

As women enter a field, the pay decreases faster than can be explained by just "increased supply", because the job becomes perceived as "women's work" which is systematically undervalued.

> just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy.

Great. What about the women working in tech now who feel isolated and held back, and the women who leave tech because of it?

(i.e. the people this initiative is supposed to help)

Also, should we really be pushing anyone into a field known for social isolation, long hours, depression and suicide without making a seriously strong effort to resolve those problems as well?

it may be known for that because those are societal problems that plague men. Sadly no big push to solve those for men.

suicide (proxy for depression) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide Hours : http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/time-spent-working-by-full-...

Sad thing is by introducing women it will dilute the averages making it seem like everything is aok.

Introducing a higher percentage of women to the field would likely directly improve several of those problems due to statistics alone.

It might be harder to solve either problem in isolation than it is to solve both at the same time.

I spend a lot of my time and personal money to encourage high school students to pursue a field in STEM (specifically robotics), however, lately I've been having trouble convincing myself to continue due to the long term prospects of a career in STEM. As a professional software engineer at a well known software company, I can only see it as a dead end job with low status and a small shelf life due to age discrimination.

I'd be interested to hear from others who are interested in inclusion how they feel about potentially painting too rosey of a picture.

I share your feeling. I am actively seeking of moving away from the tech field. I am still trying to figure out how to do that (maybe PT MBA will help not sure). My wife who is a software engineer will also exit the tech field in few years, so will my sister.

Interesting and worrying. Could you give more details on the "low status" and the "small shelf life"? Especially as it relates to gender (if indeed it does - forgive my ignorance).

It's a solid starting off point for a range of other roles. Basically the Upwind section of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

I find a lot of professionals used to be programmers.

I'm in the same boat. I switched to data science / ml.

I would be interested in the number of men or women who leave tech because the next promotion effectively is a promotion out of tech and into management.

What is the record like with tech companies with engineer tracks vs normal up or out? How big is the male female divide in those cases - and is the diff significant?

Half of the women who leave (so roughly 25%) leave tech fields altogether.

The numbers are fudged such that women in management are still considered as in tech. Most "women in tech" numbers that you see include PMs, POs, IT workers, Support Engineers, etc.

The male female divide is actually quite large in management. Women are promoted to management disproportionately (hypotheses include "better people skills" and a distrust of their technical ability).

"We find that senior technical women are significantly more likely to be in a manager position (36.9%) than are men (19%); conversely, men at the high level are significantly more likely to be in an individual contributor position (80.6%) than are women (63.1%)." [0]

"45 percent of women technologists felt like women were being “pushed” into execution roles, and 42 percent of women reported that women do not have equal access to technology creation roles." [0]

[0] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...

Thanks.

If anyone from WWC is reading:

Is there a cutoff age (age > n) for participants or members?

The average age across our entire community is 30, but people of all age are welcome. We've had people from kids and teens to people with more than 30 years of experience join.

is it really true that women don't get promoted in engineering as much? that's a honest question, the only few I've met did not aspire for higher and higher positions intensively, rather enjoyed what they were doing (that could be said about most of the guys too).

I am all for equal situations for both genders, but my assumption was that we already +-have it in western societies, thus such a move would make guys actually in a disadvantage and thus be unfair.

IT is not a very cool job to non/tech people outside few top companies like facebook or google, somewhere along accountants maybe. naturally, more ambitious ones will go for jobs like lawyers (if they have no heart :)) or medicine as my fiancee did. IT is just not that sexi.

another point - if you are in your 40s, it's hard to be just developer. people move up to architecture or management, which I consider both boring as hell - endless conf calls, producing never-ending stream of powerpoints etc. not exactly why creative people came into IT in first place.

I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it.

http://i.imgur.com/reUNxYu.png Definitely something odd going on in computer science.

The inflection point is right about when consumer PCs (personal computers in general, not wintel specifically) became a thing. What are consumer PCs used for, when they aren't being used productively? Gaming, and kids who like games trying to learn how to make their own games (particularly in the pre-web 2.0 era... Web 2.0, remember that?). And ultimately, who was the main consumer of PC gaming? 12-25 year old boys and men.

Then you've got a decline in the wake of the Dot-Com bust. One has to wonder if the gains in the other fields of study cannibalized high-aptitude women who might have gone into CS.

>I admit other branches of engineering might look differently, no clue about it.

I'm a materials engineer I work at a large scale industrial plant (1000+ employees). Our diversity statistics are probably even bleaker than amongst software/IT type engineers. There are woman in engineering management positions at my work. Not a lot -the number probably reflects the overall workforce makeup. I'd estimate my workplace is greater than 95% male.

Some areas of the company are much more diverse than engineering, notably HR, Accounting/Finance and relevant to this topic our IT department.

My Sister is a mechanical engineer she works in government planning. Previous to this role she worked at a power plant. According to her the public sector much more diverse than private.

how exactly are they helping women? I am on their mailing list and it is not particularly useful. Once got interested in a "free" scholarship, contacted them, and the person tried to sell me a course for almost $10K.

It's impossible for a woman after 35 to get back in tech

How does VC funding for a non-profit work? How does YC exit or recoup their investment?

It's a charitable donation - https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/

Congratulations Alaina!

What would people think if the genders were reversed and this institution was discriminating against women and only helping men? Women have a far larger presence in other fields like biology and education, but you don't see new organizations popping up every other month to change that in favor of men.

Discrimination like this should be illegal.

You have a point. From the article,

“One member, Erica Stanley, had a Masters in Computer Science but felt held back because she wasn’t confident in her skills as a public speaker. WWCode presented her with the opportunity to step up and lead WWCode Atlanta’s programs, including technical events and hackathons.”

I know this sounds a bit glib – but I'm aware of several men (including myself, an Asian person of color) with higher degrees who feel held back because of a lack of confidence as a public speaker. Where are our support groups and opportunities? (Seriously, if you have any, my email is in my profile).

I spent a few years teaching math and I think that made public speaking rather easy for me. If you're looking for a supportive group to help improve your public speaking skills then I recommend you checkout your local toastmasters group. I've not attended myself, but I've heard from several members that it was life changing for them. Just like most every other group, they don't discriminate based on race or gender - so you should be very welcome.

If there's a technology you really like working with, then you might want to look on meetup.com to see if you can find some like minded people and look for an opportunity to present something. Some of the meetup.com groups discriminate based on gender or race, but the vast majority do not and are very welcoming :)

http://www.toastmasters.org

The reason women dominate in certain fields is that those fields were generally seen as less important, so women were pushed into them. E.g., doctors were men, women were nurses, and there was an enormous pay and prestige difference between the two. (Hint: it did not favor the nurses.)

If you're interested in learning more, researching "pink ghetto" will get you started.

Its actually the other way around. Men face more pressure to earn a higher income than women, so more men enter higher paying careers.

1. Women prefer to marry a guy who makes more money than her. So there is significant sexual pressure to become a high status ($) man.

2. Men (statistically) can't marry up large income gaps. So they know that what ever lifestyle they want, they have to be solely responsible for it.

Women on the other hand have more freedom to do what they desire since men care far less about their partners income, and women have the economic security of being able to marry a higher income partner.

Men also end up working in far more dangerous jobs, which pay more. The gap in workplace accidents and deaths affecting men vs women is staggering. Over 90% of workplace deaths are men.

"Men face more pressure to earn a higher income than women, so more men enter higher paying careers."

Citation?

That sounds good, but, it's mainly retrograde sexist bunk. It also ignores the long history of women fighting for access to those professions and being actively denied.

Which you presumably know as well, which is why you created a new, anonymous account rather than owning your words.

That is a theory that can explain some fields. However, so many exceptions exist that it can't be the whole story. For example, women dominate

* Clinical psychology

* Veterinary medicine

* Biology

All of which are important, fulfilling, well-paying fields. In all of them it's hard to say women were "pushed" there, rather women were very interested in them, and arrived in larger numbers than men.

I don't recall saying it was the whole story. It's a big world. I'm just telling the "OMG discrimination" guy that it's important to understand the history.

But if you'd like to claim those as important exceptions, you'd have to show that those fields are important and well-paying relative to other options available to those women.

This is a little weird comment to me. I have lots of friends who are nurses that make 90k and higher on the east cost, and have way more prestige,class, respect from other people than me a software engineer.

Ok?

I am not denying that, but I'm not seeing how it's connected to me telling the "OMG helping women is sexism" guy that there's a history here that he should pay attention to.

In particular, the historical comparator to nurses isn't software engineers, it's doctors. Take a look at the gender distribution of medical school graduates:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SwyK7qFvLaI/AAAAAAAAL_...

You can see it take off with Title IX, which banned outright institutional discrimination by gender.

A lot of women with interest in and talent for medicine who wanted to become doctors instead became nurses, which fed that historical imbalance. We've fixed the schooling, but we're still working on the outcome; the gender distribution of doctors is still not great: 66% male in the US.

So when this guy whines that there are no organizations helping men become nurses, my reply is that the reason women have historically dominated that field is not anti-male barriers to dudes who really want to be nurses, but previous anti-female barriers in the higher-status profession of doctors (and other things they could have done).

Why do we have to work on the equality of outcome ? Isn't equality of opportunity enough ?

My friends who are nurses wanted to be nurses, they didn't want to go medical school. They didn't want to wait to make money until their 30's, they considered career paths in relation to having a family. As long as they had the option, I don't see why forcing outcome is important here.

As for helping men into nursing, if diversity is good in one field its probably helpful in another. Men might want a male nurse who can emphasize with male concerns. Being a woman, I'm just taking guesses here, like prostate issues, balding, infertility, and whatever else.

Maybe we should help men get into fields like nursing and teaching. So boys and girls both have role models in lots of fields.

I get the historical context, but I don't think forcing an over reaction in the other direction is better. I think we all benefit from choices and freedom.

We don't have to force an equality of outcome. But it behooves us to be suspicious when the outcomes aren't equal. For centuries we had unequal outcomes in terms of doctor gender; one defense was "women don't want to be doctors". But when we finally removed the barriers, we see medical school admissions run about equal.

I'm all for men going into nursing. You can work on shifting that ratio if you like. But I'm not personally going to work on that because I don't think it is a result of oppression in the same way that keeping women out of medicine was.

I'm also fine with a little bit of what looks like overreaction in the moment, because that's how we find out where the balance is. People thought Title IX was an overreaction at the time, too.

Two wrongs don't make a right. All throughout history rich men AND WOMEN of all races, colors and creed tortured the poor.

The real issue isn't color, or gender. Its Class.

I disagree with your notion that in all the world there is only one real issue.

well that's fair.

but why do you think the over reaction is ok, which punishes innocent people not the people who created the system.

again two wrongs don't make a right, all it does is continue a negative cycle.

The people who created the system are dead. But the people who benefit from the broken system are still alive. (I am one of them.) And pushing the system toward fairness is not actually punishing them.

Loss of privilege feels is definitely experienced as loss, so I can see why people would see it as punishment. Note all the rich people who cry rivers over having to pay their fair share or taxes. But reducing injustice is not punishment.

Two wrongs don't make a right. But allowing a harmful system to persevere is what continues the negative cycle.

I struggle to make a living,and I am a human being too. just because you made it doesn't mean we all have that middle upper class male privilege. The harmful system is not pursuing equality the right way. As you phrase you views, I have Less sympathy to help women because its clear this is not about equality,and I know I'm not the only one.

80% of people working in PR are women. Is that a pink ghetto as well?

And PR is not very well paid.

Definitely.

So you mean if you totally changed the context? Gee, for this completely different situation that really has little to do with this one, yes people would be offended.

But, you know, the context and implications are so completely different. What's your point?

Reversing the genders is not totally changing the context. It just shows that it is discrimination based on gender.

Unfortunately fighting discrimination purely by working to eliminate instances of it and revert to a gender-neutral (or race-neutral, or sexual orientation-neutral, etc) method of operation does not work. You must counter discrimination by elevating the oppressed group i.e. giving them privileges the already-privileged group does not possess. This is the basis of affirmative action, for example. It works because we care first and foremost about the net privilege one group possesses over the other, not that they have one particular privilege that another group does not (though obviously the long-term goal is to eliminate that as well). And, in case you were not aware, there remains a significant "privilege gap" between the genders and it is in favor of men. Once that gap no longer exists, we can talk about rolling back these programs.

What if the "privilege" you think you see is actually a difference in average ability or preferences between groups of people that are in fact different from each other?

Affirmative action does not help the groups it is directed towards, it simply handicaps them further by preventing them from being properly matched to their level or ability.

Clarence Thomas recently wrote about this in detail... Slaveholders argued that slavery was a ‘positive good’ that civilized blacks and elevated them in every dimension of life. A century later, segregationists similarly asserted that segregation was not only benign, but good for black students. Although cloaked in good intentions, the University’s racial tinkering harms the very people it claims to be helping

If you'd like to learn about the unfortunate real outcomes of affirmative action then I strongly recommend researching Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell.

Promoting university enrollment for disadvantaged students really, like fucking really, is not the same as enslaving them. Likewise segregation was bad for a host of reasons among which was social isolation and misappropriation of resources (i.e. whites-only schools were well-funded while blacks-only schools were left to languish), both of which affirmative action is designed to remedy (and objectively does remedy based on fifty years studying the effects of these policies).

Clarence Thomas is a pretty shitty Justice tbh. Recommendation rejected.

There was an interesting Intelligence Squared US on Affirmative Action

http://intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/1...

The side arguing against affirmative action basically claimed they're for the idea of fixing the inequalities but that affirmative action with colleges is actually a net negative. In other words it's not making things more equal it's making them worse.

Their argument was basically that most kids inserted into top schools by affirmative action fail because they aren't at the level of the other students. Because they fail they don't become the things we want them to be come (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc) and so the circle of inequality continues.

Where as if instead they went to a school with more students at the same level they'd more likely graduate, get the good jobs, and their kids would then make it to the high end schools. A win-win.

I don't know if it's true or not. They claimed to have lots of studies to back them up. But regardless it was interesting food for thought.

I'd love to have a more diverse workplace both in race and sex. I don't know the best way to get there.

But isolating/segregating with women-only groups like this is good?

I hope your dislike of Justice Thomas is just because you don't agree with his politics. I think your use of profanity is inappropriate regardless of your reasoning.

Perhaps you would like economist Thomas Sowell better. Or perhaps you're unwilling to give honest consideration to other views.

Nice subtle accusation of racism, person-who-literally-thinks-that-some-races-are-inferior-to-others.

You have that backwards. If you don't believe that some races are inferior then there are no reasons for things like affirmative action.

> If you don't believe that some races are inferior then there are no reasons for things like affirmative action.

"affirmative action" is short for "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin".

Please explain how belief that some races are inferior is necessary to the belief that affirmative action is necessary. (Affirmative action often includes action directed specifically at addressing ways in which processes which might superficially seem neutral are, in effect, taking race indirectly into account because of circumstances resulting from the material effects of past discrimination and segregation, but that's a disadvantage of circumstance, not inherent inferiority.)

I already laid out the case for affirmative action which has nothing to do with any inherent racial ability whatsoever. Your reply:

> What if the "privilege" you think you see is actually a difference in average ability or preferences between groups of people that are in fact different from each other?

...is the textbook definition of racism (and sexism). Moreover it criticizes affirmative action precisely on the basis that there are inherent differences of ability among different groups, by race or gender, etc.

Initially I gave you the benefit of the doubt, assuming for the sake of argument and also in the interest of fair discussion that you probably didn't mean what you said, exactly. It is clear now I overestimated you.

In case anyone is wondering what the "textbook" definition of racism is:

the belief that "ALL" members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

The belief that races may be different in average ability with respect to certain characteristics or that members of certain races have their own preferences is not racist. Some people like to use the term racist as some sort of a perverted trump card to silence an opposing view rather than engaging in an actual debate. Good luck trying to have a civil conversation with someone like that.

It is changing the context. I don't know if you know this, but there are a lot of existing gender-based influences in the world already, they aren't inventing the concept.

I don't understand this constant fight to have 50%.

There are capable women who climb ladders successfully. The other women who couldn't, simply couldn't, just like many men who couldn't.

Also, pregnancy and breastfeeding cannot be done by a man. A woman who aspires to be a mother will have to compromise on other things to be a mother, which probably will include a compromise in career.

A man who aspires to be a father will have to compromise on other things to be a father, which probably will include a compromise in EVERY OTHER FACET of his life ensuring he has a job to pay the bills for the woman and children.

Why is motherhood such a stigma? Why is career the all-important thing that EVERY woman has to pursue? Let the woman choose herself what she wants to do.

So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world?

Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child?

Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child?

Why is motherhood viewed in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood.

>> So you think that there are more incapable women than men in the world?

Incapable of what? Never once did I say women are incapable of either career or motherhood. Women can efficiently do what they choose to. Juggling many roles on the other hand is hard for any human being (regardless of gender)

>> Women are capable of working in fields like tech through pregnancy. We have breast pumps and formula. If you're going to complain about maternity leave, why is the man not taking paternity leave to help his partner and bond with his child?

Who said that man doesn't want to take a paternity leave? Every single recent father I know wants to take time off to bond with the kid. Unfortunately, he can't without a cut in pay (in the US). Get this law in and you'll see so many fathers doing it.

>> Why does it have to be the man making all of these decisions? Why can't both partners work together ot support a child?

It is always a partnership. Only a partnership works. More often than not, partnership == compromise from all parties involved to WIN.

If you were a basketball watcher, you'd know that not everyone can play point guard even if they want to. Only one person plays that role and the remaining support that person. Why? So that the team wins.

In a baby-making situation, WIN = produce a healthy baby and have enough resources for its upbringing and the mother's safety.

With this definition of WIN, a man/woman who only wants selfish desires and doesn't care for the partner or the kid is a subhuman being. Sorry. You both need to be less selfish here for the sake of the kid.

>> Why is motherhood in the ridiculous, rigid way that we see it today a given? The thing is, given attitudes like yours (which are emblematic of societies) you're presented a false dichotomy of "career-woman" or the martyrdom of modern motherhood.

Fine. Do both jobs half-heartedly. Anybody who has been a successful mother knows that it is HARD. If you think it just "happens" you're badly mistaken.

>"There are capable women who climb ladders successfully. The other women who couldn't, simply couldn't, just like many men who couldn't." There are fewer women, proportionally, who "climb ladders" successfully. This implies that there are fewer capable women than men in the world.

>"Who said that man doesn't want to take a paternity leave? Every single recent father I know wants to take time off to bond with the kid. Unfortunately, he can't without a cut in pay (in the US). Get this law in and you'll see so many fathers doing it."

The mother being present is not required for a child to be exclusively breastfed anymore. Pumping is quite effective. The only argument for only the woman to be taking the time off and making these career compromises is one that views women as the only capable caregivers.

>"It is always a partnership. Only a partnership works. More often than not, partnership == compromise from all parties involved to WIN."

And this can't be done with both partners sharing in childcare responsibilities and working? The data is out there (see my other posts) to show that SAHM are significantly more angry, depressed, etc. than their working counterparts. Is this a win for the mother and the baby?

Do you think that women are incapable of "playing point guard", i.e. providing for their family?

>"Fine. Do both jobs half-heartedly. Anybody who has been a successful mother knows that it is HARD. If you think it just "happens" you're badly mistaken."

I've stayed at home with child. I know that it's hard. Being a successful PARENT is hard too, and the reason that motherhood is even harder for the majority of the people that I know is their sole responsibility as child-rearer.

>> There are fewer women, proportionally, who "climb ladders" successfully. This implies that there are fewer capable women than men in the world.

Or, they make different life choices.

>> The mother being present is not required for a child to be exclusively breastfed anymore. Pumping is quite effective. The only argument for only the woman to be taking the time off and making these career compromises is one that views women as the only capable caregivers.

Fine. Don't be a good parent. Women are not the only capable caregivers. Men can be equally good. Women can be equally shitty. Unfortunately, law treats women specially. Get this law to treat women the same as men.

>> And this can't be done with both partners sharing in childcare responsibilities and working? The data is out there (see my other posts) to show that SAHM are significantly more angry, depressed, etc. than their working counterparts. Is this a win for the mother and the baby?

Do you think that women are incapable of "playing point guard", i.e. providing for their family?

No. Women certainly can play point guard. But when was the last time you saw a woman date a deadbeat? No woman wants to date a man who sits at home....implicitly, men who are going to become a parent work (or have to work).

Women can play point guards when they start having families with deadbeats.

>> I've stayed at home with child. I know that it's hard. Being a successful PARENT is hard too, and the reason that motherhood is even harder for the majority of the people that I know is their sole responsibility as child-rearer.

It's not the mother's sole responsibility. But at least one partner has to take more care of the kid while the other partner sacrifices their social life for work. You can have men sitting at home taking care of the kid, but I don't see many women married to men like that. Care to set an example?

>>Don't be a good parent.

Nice to see where this is going.

>>Get this law to treat women the same as men.

Wrt to parental leave, that's what I've been advocating for throughout this thread. I think that the social and legal status quo sets up women as the caregiver defaults, which is harmful to women.

>>Women can play point guards when they start having families with deadbeats.

Or, men could leave their jobs and let women return to work at a more reasonable rate. You're again assuming that the male has to be the provider. Why can't a man sacrifice his current career path while his partner continues hers?

>>You can have men sitting at home taking care of the kid, but I don't see many women married to men like that. Care to set an example?

I think you've missed the point. This is exactly what I did. Both my partner and I have CS degrees from a top 10 university, and we decided that her career looked more promising.

> I think that the social and legal status quo sets up women > as the caregiver defaults, which is harmful to women.

That's quite sexist claim.

Not really. Laws in the US default to women as caregivers.

- Women get maternity, men don't - Women get default custody of child in divorce, men don't - Women get to adopt easier than men - Domestic violence on men is ignored/laughed upon, presumably because men are not caregivers but violators by default - Women don't have mandatory military conscription, men do (presumably because men have to be fighters and women have to be caregivers by default)

> Laws in the US default to women as caregivers.

Mostly, they don't.

> Women get maternity, men don't

Well, by definition, its only "maternity" when the mother gets it, but the federal requirement for unpaid, job-protected family leave in FMLA applies equally to parents of both genders, as does (for one example) the California state requirements for job-protected unpaid family (CFRA) and paid family leave (PFL)

> Women get default custody of child in divorce, men don't

There is no legally-specified default custody in divorce; women get custody in divorce more often because they are more likely to request it. Men get custody more often when it is contested between the parties.

> Women get to adopt easier than men

AFAIK, that's true for single women vs. single men in practice, but not an example of a default in the law, since its a result of the practices of private adoption agencies, not a result of a difference in legal requirements.

> Domestic violence on men is ignored/laughed upon, presumably because men are not caregivers but violators by default

Again, to the extent that's true, that's not an example of the law treating them differently; as a matter of law, domestic violence is equally prohibited when a male is the victim.

> Women don't have mandatory military conscription, men do

Well, no, since the draft ended and the all-volunteer force was established, no one has had mandatory military conscription in the US. Men are required to register in preparation for any potential change in that policy, though, so while overstated, this seems to be the single valid example of a legal preference in the direction you suggest on your list.

> There is no legally-specified default custody in divorce; women get custody in divorce more often because they are more likely to request it. Men get custody more often when it is contested between the parties.

> Again, to the extent that's true, that's not an example of the law treating them differently; as a matter of law, domestic violence is equally prohibited when a male is the victim.

You are onto something. The laws seem to treat men and women the same.

So why is there a need for an organizations like "Women who code"? The law, on paper, treats both men and women the same right?

If your answer is that the laws are unfair towards a particular gender, then you yourself contradict the above mentioned points.

else if your answer is that "in practice" women get treated unfairly despite equal on-paper laws, that is exactly what I meant by "US laws default to women as caregivers". Men get treated unfairly in domestic and family issues.

Written law and law as it is enforced and practiced is very very different when it comes to gender issues.

> So why is there a need for an organizations like "Women who code"? The law, on paper, treats both men and women the same right?

There are many social reasons that the situations women face in the programming might be different than those faced by men that have nothing to do with differences in law, either on their face or in practical application.

> If your answer is that the laws are unfair towards a particular gender

But its not, so that's okay.

> else if your answer is that "in practice" women get treated unfairly despite equal on-paper laws

But my answer is not that they in practice get treated unfairly in the execution of the law, either.

>> I think you've missed the point. This is exactly what I did. Both my partner and I have CS degrees from a top 10 university, and we decided that her career looked more promising.

This.

You come from educated backgrounds. Most common folks don't agree with this. A non-working husband will be called a loser.

>The mother being present is not required for a child to be exclusively breastfed anymore. Pumping is quite effective. The only argument for only the woman to be taking the time off and making these career compromises is one that views women as the only capable caregivers.

True that it's not required, but I suspect that when a child is in physical contact with its mother during nursing their are other benefits. For instance, the release of beneficial hormones during this type of bonding is well documented. Do you know of any studies on the impacts of bottle feeding breast milk vs nursing? (hoping I don't sound oppressive)

The two sexes are not identical. Boy are you going to be surprised about what pants are hiding.

Please don't post glib comments on divisive subjects. Comments here need to be civil and substantive; yours was neither, and this is a particularly bad choice of thread to further degrade.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11826451 and marked it off-topic.

You know exactly what I mean. Arguing for the idea of "brain sex" is essentialist and ridiculous. There's nothing that makes my wife or the average woman a less capable programmer than anyone else in the field other than a consistent problem with socialization.

Men and women have been subject to different pressures throughout the evolution of our species. Its seems unlikely that this would not lead to some differences either on average or across the populations.

If you can provide me with any well-done research showing that evopsych is anything besides the modern phrenology I'd be surprised.

Wow, that's a really good question. I'm fairly certain you've done a great deal more research on this than me. I had to start by finding the definition of two of the words you used. For the benefit of others who might not be as well versed...

evopsych - psychological traits are evolved adaptations

phrenology - the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities

My previous post was based on information from a recent study on Y-DNA which indicates a high differential in reproductive rate between men and women, with men reproducing at a much lower rate. This of course means that reproductive competition is much higher amongst men (at least in terms of successful reproduction) and might have lead to the aggressive pruning that we see in the y-chromosome. I'm also aware that competition has a heavy influence on evolution and that the sex chromosomes are not really isolated to gender specific anatomy.

Here's that study: http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/4/459.full

I found another study (link below) on differences in personality traits across genders and culture. The authors found gender differences to be most pronounced in cultures that minimize traditional sex roles. Does this study fit your criteria?

http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~ssj/Genderdifferences%20in%20persona...

With respect to phrenology, I'm aware of studies linking brain size to intelligence. The meta-analysis (linked below) confirms this and actually notes a higher correlation among women.

http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-...

From your previous post, I'm guessing you might have reason to discard this type of study. Could you please elaborate and share your thoughts?

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