Melinda Gates' new mission: getting more women in tech
backchannel.com
backchannel.com
When I was in school in the 1980s, women got about 37 percent of computer science degrees and law degrees then. Law went up to 47 percent now. In medicine, we were at 28 percent in 1984. That’s gone up to 48 percent. Computer science went from 37 percent to 18 percent.
Why are you spending so much time trying to think of an argument against it? Is it really so hard to consider that women are now leaving programming in droves (particularly in the few years after college), in no small part due to the overwhelming number of men who tell them, day in and day out, that they need to accept the fact that they're "psychologically different" and that's "just reality"?
We encourage women to go into STEM fields and then make them feel like freaks a few years later when they actually try to make a career of it. Especially as they start doing more advanced work in the company, being promoted (and especially in specific IT fields), it becomes much easier to just throw their hands up and say "I'm so done with this shit. Peace." than to be BOTH a great programmer and a constant target/poster child of gender politics (both well-intentioned and otherwise). It's a positive feedback loop.
Are you suggesting there aren't any psychological differences between men and women? Because testosterone has been shown to cause people to be more competitive, assertive, and violent. That's a pretty good indicator of a difference in psychology. We are of course talking about trends here. There are of course individual exceptions to the norm.
You don't think it's worth at least looking at why that is? What does "psychologically different" mean? If we're saying they are genetically less disposed to enter tech as career then no, I doubt there's a lot we can do. But something tells me that isn't the case at all.
What if they're "psychologically different" because our education system and culture drives them away from engineering-y, logical careers and into more personable, "soft" industries? Shouldn't we be able to take a second look at that culture and that education system?
Note that this goes both ways. How many boys out there would make fantastic fashion designers, carers or teachers, but are dissuaded from those careers because they're not "masculine" enough?
Honestly, the only reason I see this being done is so the labor pool for tech workers can go up(and thus pay would go down).
And you're OK with this because it helps ensure you have a high salary?