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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

Another partial explanation I've heard (and that rings somewhat true starting in the early 1980s): early personal computers were very attractive to people on the Autism spectrum, and those who spent their time programming them and hanging out were known as unpopular computer needs/geeks in school.

The social association between computer programming and social ineptitude meant that a lot of folks (men and women) who would have been great programmers didn't want to get involved.

But since Autism disproportionately affects men, the nerd groups were predominately male, and thus the new crop of programmer applicants from the 80s onwards was disproportionately male.

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As a young male gamer I consciously avoided majoring in computer science or applying to software jobs because of this stigma. It took a few years before I became a software engineer anyway and admitted that it is a career I enjoy. Social pressure sucks and must be that much worse for women.

I was heavily involved with programming in the 70's on many of the large systems of the time (including analog computing). If there were women programmers, I never met one. I worked in the aircraft manufacturing industry in engineering. I suspect that women could have been programming in other industries, but I never really made note of it at the time.

Around that time,only on the other side of the world, it was mostly women who operated the first computers.

I tell this to my wife and she finds it hard to believe.

This might help: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#:~:text=T....

Frankly, people who succumb to social pressure are weak. Unless there is an acute barrier to something, if you want to do it, you just should. I relish any opportunity to do things I like that others dislike- making this comment for example.

... unless social acceptance is their goal?

As social creatures, humans derive significant life satisfaction from their place in their social environment. In fact, I'd argue that having good friends has a much greater positive effect on life satisfaction than where you live.

To your point, teenagers are often not wise enough to realize pursuing their career and life goals should take some priority over avoiding social stigma at that stage in life -- since most of their peers will be out of their lives in 3-5 years anyway.

But antisocial behavior for its own sake never yields lasting rewards.

Sounds like a lonely existence.

Newer studies consider autism's sex ratio to be 3:1 m:f, which still doesn't explain why even a field that is specifically appealing to autistic people has such low numbers of women.

Sure it does! 3:1 is enormous in terms of creating a social pressure of adhering to gender norms which would likely exaggerate the existing bias.

Found the second-order-effects thinker.

Yeah this is totally at play both in entering STEM as well as women getting autism diagnoses. Regardless of which one we are talking about- if it is more of a "male thing"- women may "conform" to roles as nonprogrammers and nonautistic.

Increasing numbers of women have been getting diagnosed.

Autism may occur in even distributions but doctors have been biased for a long time to view autism as "hyper-male-ness" while girls regardless of functioning are expected to be highly sociable and emotionally aware (traditionally thought of as signs one is not autistic)

Breaking the barrier to STEM is a bit harder than changing preconceptions as you have an industry staffed with "hyper-male" people who have never been pushed to be more sociable or empathetic, and making women who have been taught a lifetime of sociability and empathy compete with them on performance metrics that are largely antisocial.

Anecdotally, the ratio of STEM-interested high school students (even not narrowing to the socially inept) was far tipped towards guys among my peers in high school.

I was in a TIE program (tech, innovation, engineering) with about 15 other students in high school. We had 1 girl in the class... she was a great addition to the class (not at all socially awkward) and we would have liked to have more, but the interest among girls was low. The only requirements to join are pictures of previous projects, teacher recommendations, and answering essay questions to gauge interest.

All the socially awkward girls I knew of had no interest in computers... one of them went into the army, others got liberal arts degrees in college.

It's hard to draw broad themes from one's own personal experience, but I never was aware of forces aligned to tip the scales in any direction (perhaps because of my own lack of social awareness, haha).

I'm not quite sure autism plays out the same way in men and women...

I do feel like a lot of these things are naturally self-perpetuating. To give an artificial example, if you're drawn to green, and I'm drawn to purple, and you outnumber me 3:1 in some domain, that domain will be overwhelmingly green, and I'll go elsewhere. That sort of thing translates into all sorts of choices we've made in many domains.

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