Why we don't need more women in tech... yet
jolieodell.wordpress.com
jolieodell.wordpress.com
And yet, as pointed out in the article, the percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women is going down, which I think is an acceptable proxy for the presence of women in tech. Yet numerous other "male" fields have been entered and in some cases dominated by women. The very same women who were raised on Barbies and ponies.
Is the only theory that fits the facts that somehow, virtually uniquely across all the fields into which the women have come streaming in, despite equal if not at times greater solicitation for women to come in to the discipline, computer science has somehow escaped the incredible dominance of political correctness on campuses and managed to create this fantastically and uniquely hostile environment for women, and therefore has some sort of major responsibility for changing itself? The only hypothesis?
What about this one: In an environment where a thousand voices are shouting for the women to come study $X, it doesn't take very much of a natural disinclination towards a certain discipline for it to very, very rarely be the top choice for a woman. It's not as if there aren't disciplines unbalanced every bit as much in favor of women, and for the same reason; it doesn't take much natural disinclination, for whatever the reason, for a field to very, very rarely be the top choice for the man.
Every year that goes by like this, every year that the STEM initiatives get even more strident and better funded, every year that women continue streaming from our very-politically-correct lower schooling systems into our very-politically-correct higher schooling systems and choose not to study computer science, I find the hypothesis that computer science is somehow deficient that much less compelling. If computer science were any more solicitous of women we'd have to draft them.
(Note: For once I do not necessarily mean "politically correct" as a slur. For the purposes of this message, I merely mean that the idea that primary or higher education has been systematically structured against woman for the past twenty years is absurd. The suspicion of sexism in this environment, in this timeframe, is enough to end your career advancement, if not your career itself. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to consider a hypothesis other than the "deck is stacked" hypothesis that we've been using for something like fifty years now and consider just for a moment some other hypotheses, in the interests of science.
I am also confining myself to the question of the education time; even if the workplace is somehow hostile to women today, the ultimate solution to that problem is graduating more women into it; between that and the copious and rather strong laws on this front it'll work itself out after that.)
What "natural disinclination" do you think women have, exactly? They don't like math? Women received 47% of math undergrad degrees in 2002 and that number has been stable for 20 years. They don't like computers? The physical sciences use computers pretty heavily, and women received 42% of undergraduates degrees in those fields in 2002, compared to 28% in 1983. They don't like the geeky sci-fi image? 42% of astronomy degrees went to women in 2002, compared to 25% in 1983.
Engineering degrees are still male dominated, women only got 20% of those, but that's still 7 points higher than the 1983 number. The percentage of computer science degrees that went to women decreased from 36% in 1983 to 27% in 2002, to 18% in 2008.
At least we can agree that there's something unique about computer science that it goes against the trend.
Is tarring thousands of people with the charge of rampant sexism really the only hypothesis we can discuss every time this issue comes up?
You ask me what "natural disinclination" I think women have, but you're getting the logic backwards. I'm suggesting that if you look at the data that it may suggest the idea that maybe there is a natural disinclination, not that I axiomatically assert that there is one and therefore it is the explanation. Can we at least consider that hypothesis, rather than implicitly and rather frequently accusing engineering of being somehow the sole holdout of troglodytes and evilly conspiring to hold down the little girls, who have somehow managed to transcend all the other evil conspiracies in all the other fields but just can't seem to shake this one?
I'm not sure that that is what you are trying to convey, but that is about the clearest argument I can read from what you wrote. If this is indeed your argument, then it sounds like you are in violent agreement with the author of the article. The major difference appears to be that you argue the gender discrepancy is just women's preference whereas the article posits it to be a consequence of gender mores (an admittedly subtle distinction).
If I have misunderstood, I'd be interested in clarification.
I didn't hunt for post-bubble figures.
Here is a possibility: women got into CS in the 80's and 90's for the money. Now that CS is not a path to quick dotcom riches, the women (and men) who were chasing the money have gone back to business.
As for astronomy, there were 276 astronomy majors nationwide. I think if you pick one of the smallest fields and draw conclusions from it, you should at least admit you are cherrypicking.
I guess you could claim that gender-balancing the field is undesirable, which is strange, or that it is impossible, which is an interesting claim but I'd need more evidence. But otherwise you'll need to look at the little girls and work from there.
I guess part of what I'm saying is that at this point I reject the idea that the burden of proof is somehow on the field to prove that it is open to women or that girls are somehow being excluded in a special way, after these decades of work. I'd say the burden of proof at this point is on those to demonstrate that somehow computer science has specially somehow failed to solicit woman in a way that the other fields didn't, in an environment in which this stuff was becoming cliche even by the time the women entering college today were being born.
Twenty years from now, are we still going to be having this exact same conversation and making the exact same accusations of entire fields, if it does indeed turn out that women of their own free will don't want to go into computers on average as a career?
Fixed that for you.
Of all the women I know personally, only one other works as a programmer. The others seem to have no interest, and not because of some social pressure or stereotype, or the long hours, or some perceived gender bias, but because the work itself just doesn't interest to them. So I don't see why it should be a big deal that they're not doing something they don't want to do.
I guess the question then becomes could/should the industry be made more appealing to women? Maybe. I have no idea how that could be accomplished, though.
Maybe it's not the industry that's the problem, but the lack of exposure to it. Mothers are big role models for little girls, and with less women in tech to begin with, there aren't as many of them to spark that interest in their daughters. Maybe more encouragement from female teachers and geek dads would do the trick.
I was a perpetual tinkerer as a kid, always building, creating, experimenting, and what have you. My father encouraged it. He kept me in a steady supply of lumber and nails, bought me chemistry sets, erector sets, a telescope, radio kits, helped me build my first computer and bought me programming books. By high school, I was a licensed HAM radio operator who was writing programs, designing circuits, wiring houses, and training search dogs.
I guess I never did fall into the stereotypical gender role I was supposed to, but it was never pushed upon me, either, nor was it discouraged. I simply followed my interests and was encouraged and allowed to do so. I try to do the same with my own daughter and, yeah, she's a bit of a geek in the making.
Anyway, this is getting kind of long and rambling. I'm not sure where the problem lies, but I'm still not convinced it's as big a problem as it's made out to be. It's kind of like asking why there aren't more 20yr olds in the folk music industry. Answer: because they don't want to.
Now granted this is just one data point. But, for me at least, it opens the door to a different hypothesis:
1. Women have a significantly different nature of the work / salary trade-off from men. 2. Reduced interaction with people is a put-off for women. 3. Thus, only half of society is really willing to do the geekiest tech-sector jobs, which puts a premium on the salaries for those jobs.
I absolutely _don't_ spend 8 hours just interacting with a computer. I won't argue that there aren't any jobs in the field like that; and, in fact, entry-level positions do tend more towards "just implement this spec". But I think it's misleading to give people the idea that there is no human interaction involved in our jobs.
I think that kind of upbringing helps, heck it's crucial. However, a lot of social signals can easily curtail it - peer pressure for not being girly and being called names etc (never happened to me, but I know others it did happen to).
I was actually teased/bullied a lot as a kid, particularly around age 11-12, but it was more about my disability (I'm legally blind) than the stuff I was into. I kept a low profile at school and most of the kids doing the teasing didn't know me well enough to know my geek ways. I come from a long line of stubborn, though, so it didn't really have a lasting impact.
John Romero, for those who don't know (or used to know, before his name faded into obscurity over a decade ago), was at one point best known for his work on idSoftware and his creation of several milestone games such as Doom. He then split off to release his own game, Daikatana, a move that garnered a particular amount of hype. The message at the time in 1997 seemed to be, "Video games are cool. So maybe making video games is cool?"
As a young high schooler in 1997, reading about John Romero in the late 1990s basically made me want to be a programmer. He was the proverbial "rock star," right down to the ridiculous hair and outfits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romero_3designers.jpg).
By now I've probably jogged your memory and you know the end. Daikatana flopped and Romero ended up with so much egg on his face he pretty much faded into obscurity. The rock star programmer died as a concept (only to be resurrected 8-10 years later in job descriptions for companies wanting brilliant 25 year olds willing to solve all their problems and work for peanuts).
I believe an alternate reality exists, where John Romero succeeded, Daikatana was a smash hit, and the art of programming truly entered pop culture celebrity. Romero's dizzying fame and fortune soon found him in dizzying benders in Vegas. His successors continue on the trail he's blazed, bedding supermodels and entering rehab in six month intervals. Smash hit video game after smash hit video game is released, their programming teams rising in notoriety, and a Hollywood exec glances over a spec script and thinks, "hmm, maybe we should make that show about programmers." The working title is changed to "Turing's Anatomy" and then it's released, featuring Dr. Meredith Turing, who works as the principal engineer for the Seattle Grace Gaming Company, where she heads a team of programmers in solving software problems with unorthodox diagnostic approaches, while struggling to prevent the expectations of her genius grandfather from overwhelming her.
Is that reality better than what we're dealing with now? I have no idea. I do know though, that in that reality, women make up 50% of computer science students.
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Courses/ILT/ILT0010/Ambientbe...
The dumbed-down version is here:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/star-trek-keeps-wo...
In short, it appears that CS has a serious grassroots marketing problem.
But it certainly doesn't have to be that way--there's no reason why people can't get more engineering-oriented toys for female children as well, and I'm sure most people who read HN would be more likely to get toys along those lines for their children, regardless of gender.
The issue becomes, then, convincing society at large that this is an issue that needs attention, and that the typical gender roles and toys only reinforce inequality (like representation in tech). That, unfortunately, is difficult, when some (very vocal) people refuse to acknowledge that there is any discrimination in society, and many would think that changing culture around toys is "just being PC."
Such a large change would take a massive effort. While the STEM initiatives going on today, especially those directed at minorities, are a step in the right direction, for them to be effective, I think they'd have to get a lot more mainstream awareness--right now, some people are aware of them, but the majority, in my experience, are not, and even among those that are aware of it, not many a) think it's a good idea and b) care.
Perhaps if a bunch of celebrities got behind it, ads were taken out online and on primetime TV, and politicians started caring? Maybe calling politicians to support STEM initiatives, especially minorities, could help?
Case in point is David Reimer, who received the first ever sex re-assignment surgery conducted on a developmentally normal child at age 22 months. David became Brenda.
"At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refused to play with dolls and would beat up her brother and seize his toy cars and guns."
I don't think that Reimer's case disproves what I say--I was dealing more with the roles which the genders often play, and the fields to which men vs. women are more likely to enter, while this case deals with gender identity. Gender identity is likely not something which is affected significantly by environmental changes, but it is far more likely (I unfortunately don't have numbers and don't know where to look--does anyone know of a relevant study?) that gender roles could be significantly affected by upbringing.
There's no natural reason why women shouldn't go into tech, other than that it's a male-dominated field and that women are, in modern society, often encouraged to avoid such fields.
It's probably both cultural and biological in this case, I'd imagine. (it could be that he'd learned that dresses were associated with females through cultural conditioning, but he mentally knew on some level [maybe subconscious] that he was male, or something along those lines.)
That case is interesting, but I'm not sure it proves anything. There are natural-born girls who have a similar aversion to girliness. It's just not the norm. The life story of one person (particularly someone with a family history of mental illness) just doesn't seem like valid grounds for such a broad conclusion.
The constant sexism starts at day one.
With effort you can smoothen the edges, you can encourage communication skills and caring among small boys, and you can encourage risk-taking and outgoing behaviour among small girls, but gender neutrality is an illusion, there will be differences.
Programming is fun, but programming jobs suck. At least the vast majority of them. Save for starting my own business, my hopes are close to zero to find a fun programming job in the future.*
Maybe women are just better than men at figuring such things out and going for jobs that are more fun.
This would also explain the decline of women in tech since the eighties. I suppose cubicles and all that only appeared around that time.
* I would like jobs like Data Mining for Backtype or TheSixtyOne, but jobs like that are rare. I also don't have the required portfolio yet.
What sane person would want to spend their time with emotional children reinventing the wheel and following every fad that comes along? Instead you could work in pr, or management, or even cabinetmaking.
So why don't we have women in tech? Because they have more foresight than us.
To most sane normal people, it's factory work. Mindless monkeys churning out code, working on their own hunched over a computer until 3am.
Women are social. That's the main reason IMHO that programming doesn't appeal to them.
Parents may say that they have raised their child gender-neutral, but that is to some extent impossible since gender-norms are all around us, often unconsciously so. When they see their child craving gender-specific toys, it's more likely an indicator that they have not been as successful as they would wish to be.
Maybe if you could pull it off for every single family in the country.
Many women in eastern Europe seem to be in tech, maybe that is worth looking into.