Isitapipelineproblem.com
isitapipelineproblem.com
isitapipelineproblem.com
> Because of the high attrition rate for women working in tech, teaching more girls and women to code is not enough to solve this problem.
Well that’s not true, because it’s pretty easy to imagine that once we get more women in the field through the pipeline, the environment becomes better for them (as they will represent a higher % of the “environment”) so the attrition rate should naturally drop.
Also AFAIK in general women leave fields more than men, because it is more typical for the woman to stay at home once they have a child. I would like to see the numbers relative to other fields.
The burden shouldn't be placed on the women entering a bad environment to put up with it until they gain sufficient numbers to fix it themselves.
My understanding of the author's motivation is that it was in response to positions others are taking in saying that the root cause was the pipeline, and the central premise of the site (clearly by its URL) was that even if the pipeline was 100% fine, there are more significant issues that are the causes of the problem that are not taken as seriously as they should when people present the pipeline as being the central problem. Not sure who's making that claim so maybe some straw from the original author of the site as well. Strawmen all the way down sometimes.
Maybe isitONLYapipelineproblem.com might have been more clear.
That's like saying that Jim Crow laws weren't "good or bad" because a majority of people supported them at some given time.
The plain truth is that many work environments including tech are worse for women than men. The cause of that reality is the behaviour of some men in that environment, as a result of the larger culture having a significant degree of misogyny that has only gradually being eroded through massive effort over decades.
Cultures evolve and it's bullshit for men who are not faced with the disadvantages in the workplace to avoid responsibility since it doesn't affect them directly. Everyone should have the humility to acknowledge that even though they may feel that they have good intentions, that they as an individual component of the larger culture, may to whatever degree be contributing to the problem and conscientiously think through what role they can play in improving it.
The only honest alternative position is to either hold the belief that there is no actual problem at all, or to be openly misogynist and think that the existing inequality is the way things should be.
I'm also not looking to argue really. I just find it frustrating when women raise what strike me as some pretty valid points and it gets shot down immediately (such as this original post being flagged and having pretty defensive/dismissive comments immediately).
The original link has a references link for each point, which point to things such as the National Science Foundation rather than personal opinion blogs. Nothing on that page is a big rant about how all men are evil, etc., and I think the sources provided are pretty solid. The reaction is telling and as another commented noted, does to some degree prove the point.
In my experience, boys and girls start out equally interested in male and female fields. But the number of girls/women is slowly whittled down until you reach the discrepancies you have e.g. in tech [2].
One factor I rarely see discussed is that technical / natural science fields are "default" study choices for young men. My male friends who didn't know what to study chose physics or computer science, my female friends mostly chose something else. It's funny that I saw an opposite whittle-down effect during my physics studies: the gender ratio became much more balanced as time went on, from just a handful of women when we started to about 1/3 when I was in grad school. I think the reason is that we have a high quitter's fraction (I think 40% in the first two years), and all the boys who chose physics because they didn't know what else to take were pushed out, whereas all the girls who started were talented and interested to begin with.
Another factor is that it seems to be uncool to be interested in math and science as a girl (even more so than for boys). I did some outreach / ask a scientist events, and when girls asked a question, they often got really strange looks and rolled eyes from their peers. It's the same social pressure that prohibits boys from doing "girl" things (and the same reason I never learned an instrument. The music club was mostly girls, the kids considered it "gay" to join, and I was not confident enough to join anyway).
[1] I suspect "it is a pipeline problem" is just a codified figure of speech meaning "I think there should be no women's quotas or affirmative action". Which is of course silly, there is a leaky "pipeline" due to a multitude of social pressures, and one way to fix this is to steer against and have quotas or formalized procedures to make sure you don't discriminate further against women. Ideally give women a second chance to not fall through the leaks, and to become a role model - because the kids need to see role models.
[2] Another problem is the "boys club" mentality, especially in higher management. You can give girls all the tech education you want, it doesn't matter if women are excluded from relevant positions. This is not an either-or (e.g. "pipeline" or "sexism"), you have multiple mechanisms that contribute to the gender bias we have.