Why do we let sexist creeps pervade the software industry?

I think that the answer there is probably yes, and I think that if you talk to enough female engineers, they'll tell you that the sexism and insensitivity is a turnoff to them. It obviously doesn't push every woman out of the field, but it's pretty hard to imagine that it doesn't discourage at least some women from pursuing a career in software.

Getting to 50/50 gender equality isn't the goal; the goal is to not have women discouraged from doing a job that they'd want to do because of the (often unconscious) sexism of their potential coworkers. If we did that and the field was still 70% male, then okay, but can anyone say we're honestly at that point yet, and that no one is turned off by this stuff?

And it's not most, or even many of the guys I've worked with, but it just takes one or two to complete ruin an environment. Had a had a child when I had planned to, I can almost guaranteeing that I wouldn't have bothered returning to software development.

It's better now - I don't know if it's because I work in a different city, with different people, or maybe I'm just older and the younger women deal with the same old crap. It'll still pop up from time to time - and I'm getting better at seeing the warning signs that someone is going to be that person, deal with it before it saps any of the remaining enjoyment I have for the field.

  Perhaps women just don't want to get into computer science.
  And no amount of bending over backwards and trying to
  appeal to female programmers will get us to a situation of
  50% female developers.

If you're going come up a controversial answer, you better have some solid evidence backing you up.

If you're implying that programming just isn't work that most women are interested in, you'll have to more-precisely indicate what it is about programming that puts them off, given that accounting has no such problems.

Every accounting department I've ever seen is at least half female and many have a female majority.

Surely there are different skills involved, but many overlap in type [1] and it's a bit of a stretch to imply accounting is any closer to stereotypical female-dominated fields like social work, sales or health-care.

[1] Technical, precise, largely impersonal -- there's even database, script and simple application work

Just because we can fight doesn't mean we should have to...

My fundamentalism is better than your fundamentalism http://blog.fawny.org/2010/07/28/stubbornella/

Bear in mind that the author is not a computer scientist, and views narrow-minded geekery with some distaste. But he raises quite a few interesting points. I quote:

>“Underrepresentation” is an insulting concept. Who exactly gets to decide how many women should hold down jobs in a certain field? Who then gets to decide when too few women hold down those jobs? In short, who says women are underrepresented in technology? Who sets the quota? I don’t exactly hear complaints that men are underrepresented in kindergarten teaching and nursing. (Actually, there are men in nursing, but many of them are gay. So are lots of male teachers. Perhaps that explains why this is a topic women’s advocates do not want to discuss.)

>“Merit” is a misnomer. Hence “women[’s] being unable to compete on merit” means nothing. But the airy dismissal of merit as a real issue incurs collateral damage. There isn’t any dispute that typical female brains differ from typical male brains, though the extent of the differences is disputed. Susan Pinker, in The Sexual Paradox, characterizes the differences as significant, while Lise Eliot, in Pink Brain, Blue Brain, argues that within-sex differences dwarf between-sex differences.

So the big obstacles to women in a lot of professions are social norms (like sexist behavior, people refusing to hire you because you're not the kind of person they expect, or career structures that force women to choose between work and having children) and stereotype threat (fear of one's conduct reflecting badly on the group to which one belongs).

To take the real estate agent example: the business may have a lot of sexist jerks (I imagine they're better at pretending not to be though, since they are selling stuff) but there are plenty of good norms (e.g. real estate agents generally have very flexible schedules). And there's no problem with stereotype threat -- women aren't widely considered to be bad at talking to people and selling houses.

TV shows have a huge impact on stereotype threat (and probably norms as well). E.g. there are plenty of shows on TV that show women being successful doctors and lawyers without failing socially. (These are also, to some extent, professions involving helping people and communicating -- which women are stereotypically good at.) The same cannot be said for software development (which isn't portrayed much on TV, and when it is stretches credulity).

I think that there's one thing I can say for certain: the reason sexist jerks are prominent in the software business is that they're allowed to be. There's no question that if more women were in the industry there would be less tolerance of sexist jerks, but getting women into the industry is probably as much a problem of addressing stereotype threat, tokenism, etc. as it is combating norms.

Meanwhile, sexist jerks aren't helping. So call them on it.

Because a greater diversity of life experience leads to better design, usability, and implementation. Women are users, too, and when women devs have input into interfaces intended to be used by women, the product can be much better for it. Obviously there are other ways to incorporate women, children, the elderly with user acceptance testing and usability reviews, but why wouldn't you want that kind of diversity and insight on your team?

It's more likely that they learn not to like it from an early age due to sexist gender stereotyping.

http://www.7wonderlicious.com/2/post/2010/12/girls-stem-and-...

One of the most disgusting things I read when this conversation comes up are the remarks and arguments from the apologists. Their common thread is that "we shouldn't be offended." It's a completely asinine position to take and any reason they offer for why is equally laughable. The problem is that as these ideas persist, they reinforce gender stereotypes and contribute to the aforementioned problem of young girls having to choose between being stereotypical girls (and thus accepting all the baggage that entails) or being smart (and accepting all the baggage that entails).

Such a choice is a hard one to make. That it persists is one of the great injustices of the world that women suffer. And the great tradgedy is that ignorant male assholes who want to avoid being pegged as a sexist ignoramus will argue blindly that women are equal, that it's okay to objectify them, that everyone should relax, that maybe women just don't like tech otherwise there would be more of them in it.

Wake up.

Anyhow, if all humor that made fun of someone or something were banned, there wouldn't be much left. That's the basis of most of it, and they continue to find it funny to make fun of some things, but not others.

Everyone should stop being offended on behalf of people who aren't like them. Seriously. If you're offended because it affects you, I'm all ears. If you're offended because it's rude to do that to someone else, but you have no stake in it... Shut up. You're making the situation WORSE.

If it were something on an official Google page (which seems to be how some people in the comments are taking it), it would be downright offensive.

As something in a "serious" article - it bothers me - not enough to be 'outraged', but it is indicative of a lot of the issues women have in technology. There are times where it's just not appropriate. It's fine to like looking a big breasted + attractive women, but also realize that women are made uncomfortable when they're put into environments where they feel like who we are/what we can do is second to what we are. Photos like that create such an environment - and take away from the article.

Where these men were truly snickering at the fact women were speaking? Correlation does not always mean causation.

I don't know what would be snicker-worthy of women speaking. I can think of several reasons why attendees might snicker at a speaker regardless of their sex.

Frankly, that picture is a bad example of the rampant mysogyny which does actually exist in our field.

Secondly there is no issue with treating women with respect in the workplace and have fun with them after.

Are we talking about a boss frequently asking an employee on a date, despite the power difference, and the employee saying no several times? A co-worker making crude and embarrassing remarks, using sleazy pick-up lines, pulling pranks, and other crap? Or is it like asking someone, "hey, so ... would you like to go on a date sometime? I'm free this Saturday, would you like coffee" once or twice. One of these things is not like the others.

You are allowed to ask a co-worker on a date, in most jurisdictions. Even if you aren't, you are only likely to be accused of anything if someone feels really pissed off at you. You aren't allowed to behave in a way that is making someone feel harassed.