Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

>My explanation for this? In general, men are simply more interested in computers than women.

to a degree possibly but the extreme skew in engineering disciplines makes that hard to believe. In almost all other fields with a gender bias that could be put down to preference there's usually still a sizeable amount of the opposite sex. In psychology where women outnumber men it's like 30-70, even women in the national guard on active duty are more common than in CS departments. Even other adjacent STEM fields like maths usually look more diverse than CS.

And in the workplace compared to academia it arguably gets worse. Just from personal experience in software development jobs, I put a lot of it on culture. Just look at how 'boys summer camp' like startups are run, with frequent stories of drinking at the workplace and stories that sound more like out of a fraternity than an actual job. Emily Chang wrote a good book about, 'Brotopia'

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/brotopia-silicon-val...

I had a CS Prof who ran a bunch of Women Who Code type meetups. His observation was that the idea that in order to be a software engineer, you have to devote your entire life to it was the biggest turnoff to many of the women. You have to always be working on a side project, always going to meetups, engross yourself in the geek culture in order to feel like you can do the job. For many women it was just too much of a hassle.

He advocated for tearing down some of these cultural norms as the best way to be more inclusive.

Interesting. Where do these cultural norms come from? I think it is true that to be truly great at something you have to dedicate your life to it, whether you are a man or a woman.

How do doctors and lawyers get by, without spending most of their waking hours learning?

Law and medicine are professions which require a certain number of continuing education hours per year. For example lawyers in California have to complete 25 hours every three years. Everyone knows that going in. Most do little more than the minimum.

> He advocated for tearing down some of these cultural norms as the best way to be more inclusive.

But what about those for whom that is the draw? I mean is there any gain if women join but a lot of geeks leave?

Can’t we have both? Do you have to be singularly focused on writing software to work in this field? I think we can have people who think of this as a career and people who are obsessed and they can work did by side.

> Can’t we have both? Do you have to be singularly focused on writing software to work in this field? I think we can have people who think of this as a career and people who are obsessed and they can work did by side.

I don't think so, it can really effect the nature of a team. I remember when we had a vegetarian join our team and it really ruined steak sandwich Friday. You either lose the tradition, or they come and feel awkward, or you lose having the whole team there. Things like that can really mess with the vibe of a place. For the record, I thought very highly of the vegatarian... but I definitely liked the sandwhiches more.

So if you have people that aren't as passionate you won't be able to use newer techniques or newer technologies and other perks of highly a highly skilled team.

I honestly don't understand. If people do side projects and programming in their free time then how is that not an expression of interest? What about the inverse? If someone is not willing to do that then how is that not a sign of disinterest? Someone who only does their job and nothing else is not exactly someone I would call highly motivated or highly interested. There is this misconception that there is an upper bound to how interested someone can be. As if you are either interested or not.

Well, what if the idealists convince many of the men in the industry that the culture is terrible, but instead of trying to "tear down the cultural norms", they simply leave? I mean, what if people say "yes, this is true, this is all correct, the geek culture sucks, and I can simply walk away"? Who is going to reform it then? Did those who left do the wrong thing?

Aren't nursing and teaching essentially 90% female?

teaching is 60-75% female depending on what country you're looking at. For nursing you can make a pretty strong cultural case. One of the founders of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, insisted that men's hands are too "hard and horny" to be a nurse, in the UK male nurses were not even admitted to schools until the 1960s.

In character the job of a proffesional nurse these days is not much different from that of a physician so gender differences are probably less of an issue than class. Nursing for a long time was simply a 'women's only' job, by cultural norm rather than free choice. Male nurse rates are actually rising pretty fast.

I'm talking about the united states, but if we are talking global shares:

Early childhood education is over 90% female teachers. Primary school education is 70%-95 female teaechers. Secondary education is 60-75% female teachers.

Source: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EAG_PERS_SHARE...

I don't know Florence Nightengale has to do with this discussion.

As a percentage of new nurses it is true that more males are going into nursing, but many of the traditionally male working class jobs have disappeared in the United States. This alone could account for the increase in male nurses over the last 10 years, though I do think it is also cultural to some degree. The numbers we are talking about are like 15% of new nurses being male instead of 5%. I would be surprised if this growth doesn't level off in the next decade and hold steady for decades to come.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com