Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Only 2% of kindergarten teachers in the UK are male (1). Further, the overall number of male elementary school teachers in the UK has fallen significantly in the last 30 years (2) - men have been "bailing out of primary education" for decades.

Are the majority of cases due to bullying or being "forced" out of the role? I doubt it. It's more likely to be related to opportunities and different types of people gravitating to what sort of jobs suit them best. I suspect if women are crashing out of IT, it might be because it's not a particularly appealing or novel career anymore (back in the 90s it was portrayed as super high paid and "cool" - far more appealing than the very sexist financial industry at the time) and women have better opportunities to do other things than ever before (e.g. finance, management, legal) whereas males in IT are probably there because they picked it from the start as a calling rather than a career.

Update: As one of the respondents says, yes, let's make IT more inclusive. But let's not 1) assume IT is a special case, or 2) go OTT by doling out blame or restricting the largely innocent (i.e. "men" as a group) by redefining acceptable behavior to be a tiny gamut of unnatural neutrality and inoffensiveness.

1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7838273.stm 2: http://www.askamum.co.uk/News/Search-Results/Current-news/Pr...

Yes, clearly the female kindergarten teachers are discriminating against them!

Thanks for bringing this up. I've seen so many articles and discussions complaining about the lack/decrease/discrimination of females in stereotypically male fields/roles. And yet when the shoe is on the other foot, it's never treated like it's some conspiracy or sexism. It's treated like, "Oh, well that's just an obvious gender difference thing. Duh!"

I am so anti-crying-sexism it hurts, but your logic and the OP's logic make no sense.

Ask those male kindergarten teachers if they WANTED to stay in the industry, and if so, why did they leave?

I think there are lots of women who leave IT because it's a nasty, brutish and short industry, with less job security/respect than most intellectual professions, where you must constantly work in your off-hours to stay up to date, and where you're likely to be upstaged by a 16-year-old who's willing to sleep under his desk because he has no social life or responsibilities except code.

The theoretical sexism is just the icing on the cake.

That's probably why women are flocking to bio engineering, etc., while dropping CS. It was true in the day of the Microserfs book and still true now: where a degree is a true requirement, you are insulated against 16-year-old upstarts.

I think women, on the whole, are more "reasonable" than men with their pursuits. Whether that's a good thing depends on who you ask, and from what perspective you look at it.

(Oh yeah, and I'm a woman.)

Compare "I doubt this is a problem" with "Alarming if true. How can we determine whether this is really a problem?" Both are expressions of skepticism, but one shuts down further inquiry and the other encourages it.

I think we should be careful not to get too defensive over this issue. I don't think most women are bullied out of their role, but neither do I think there are gender differences that account for the full disparity between women and men in IT. If there is a way we can make the IT field more inclusive, that is a good thing.

If there is a way we can make the IT field more inclusive, that is a good thing.

I agree. I'm no fan of discrimination, because we all have characteristics that could be discriminated against by our colleagues and most of us know that being hated on sucks.

That said, I have two issues: 1) that IT is a radical edge case of men-vs-women, when, really, the majority of industries have this issue, and 2) the male armchair feminists going OTT with the dehumanizing "men must never say or do anything a woman could find vaguely uncomfortable" attitude.

Frankly, I don't think we are that far apart in our thinking, yet we are reaching very different conclusions. I should admit my bias... I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for men.

I should stop here and mention that the counter is true with many careers. You mentioned elementary education as one example. I would add nursing to the list.

My father went to school to become a nurse. My grandfather was ashamed. When asked what his son did he would say he was a medic in Vietnam, but never mention the fact that he later became a nurse.

It cuts both ways, but neither is right. We should make the extra effort to make women comfortable. To welcome them to the field so that in the future this is not an issue.

I have a two year old daughter. She means everything to me. I hope that if she were interested in pursuing a career in computer science there would be nothing to dissuade her. Unfortunately, given the lack of women in the field, the perception is that this is primarily a career for men.

I have a one year old daughter, but I think my bias is one of a gritty commoner brought up surrounded by gritty, strong London women. Whatever my daughter ends up doing, I'd hope she can fight, drink, argue and cuss any of her male compatriots who dare piss her off under the table.

Most of the women I know and respect in our field are ass kickers. They have strong personalities (even if they're not outgoing) and speak their mind - most don't freak out about gender issues, even if they've had problems in the past, they nip things in the bud. I love these guys not because they're women or "feminine" but because they're being themselves, getting on with life and not using their gender as an excuse for doing anything differently.

Given this, I don't think we should make an extra effort to make women comfortable. We should make an overall effort to make people comfortable (I suspect most men don't like the bawdy "manly" behavior either), diminish the concept of gender and gender roles, and be more tolerant of each other.

Why do you think it is that most of the women in the field are "ass kickers"?

They're just the sort of people I fraternize with - I don't mix with weak people.

I dare say there are plenty of weak people in the industry having problems - it just looks like gender discrimination because men are less likely to complain about or leave the industry over such harassment due to pride and lack of options.

Merely trying to make the industry more appealing to women (rather than "people" generally) is like trying to make Detroit more appealing to the rich. Until harassment and BS is stamped out for the people already in the industry, the people who have a choice whether to enter the industry or not aren't going to be easily persuaded. The garden should be weeded before we plant more seeds.

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