You Can’t Be What You Can’t See: How to Get More Women in Tech | Hacker News Reader

You Can’t Be What You Can’t See: How to Get More Women in Tech

thedailymuse.com

16 pointsacav8 comments

"Even people who don’t know what a computer scientist actually does would recognize the quintessential stereotype of one: a pale, sweaty Star Wars fan hacking into the Pentagon from his gadget-filled basement.

Indeed, “hacker” culture is frequently described as overrun with techie boys who care only about computers—not a place for extroverted girls with passions ranging from healthcare to education to business to fashion."

WHAT THE FUCK? I don't know a SINGLE pale, sweaty, overweight programmer (ok fine this 50 year old I know has a bit of extra weight on him). And 80% of programmers I met are HIGHLY social. And 80% of programmers I know are engaged in tons of sports and physical activities, and enjoy them quite a bit, much more than most people go to the gym. In fact most people fitting those categories are in the bad programmer category. Smart people care not just for their minds, but their body and happiness. The description above is a world of warcraft player.

If I was to describe a programmer stereotype it would be:

"Usually a physically fit person, who frequently cares more about self-improvement and enjoys an intellectually stimulating discussion regardless of topic."

That's from your perspective inside the industry, to be fair.

However, it does annoy me when articles make broad, sweeping cultural generalizations without any support.

Well said good sir. I want a developer writing this stuff. The "Lighten Up" is a post I can respect, as it points out a REAL problem, not a media hyped one that we read about every other day.

The writer of this article seems to be a developer or at least is trying to present herself as one.

"Media depictions of computer scientists only serve to further alienate women from the profession. When I watched Revenge of the Nerds as a child, it was hard to relate to a nearly all-male cast.

Turns out, I’m not alone."

Also I worked in laid back, and corporate environments, and my observation stands for every place I worked at. The more laid back the more fit and lively and sociable the people are.

They said it was the stereotype that they were trying to bust, not that it was an accurate representation of the culture.

Marissa Mayer is hardly the best role model out there for computer scientists, in the classical sense of the word "scientist". There's a very clear distinction between programmer, hacker, and scientist which the author may not be aware of (or has completely forgot to mention).

IMO, role models for female computer scientists would be Grace Hopper [1], in whose name there is now a scholarship for graduate students, or someone like Barbara Liskov [2], who won the Turing award recently. Though perhaps less popular than Marissa Mayer, I feel these are the role models that should be better known among young women about to choose a career path.

/pedantry

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_hopper [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Liskov

It can't be just about making women more visible. The girl scouts did a study and the most common reason high school girls didn't want to study STEM fields was because they'd have to work harder than men to be taken seriously. Seeing other women can help, but even more helpful would be seeing men take those women seriously and publicize their work day-to-day, instead of just when trying to encourage girls to consider their field.

Right now, young girls may be accurate in assuming that entering the field will suck more for them than their male friends. It's not like there aren't plenty of alternatives: digital archiving and computational biology, for example, are non-male-dominated programs coding-inclined women can pursue instead.

If we want rational people to join our field, it has to be the best choice out there.

Has there been any study showing that fields that went from being dominated by one sex to having a more balanced ratio benefited in any significant way. No seriously...

For instance, has there been an explosion of new ideas and research in the legal or medical fields since women started being more prominent in those fields that could have only come from women? The underlying belief in these types articles seems to be that women have a lot to offer the tech industry _just by virtue of them being women_.

While not at an industry level, which I agree would be interesting analysis. There is some research indicating at the group level, in general, women do have a beneficial influence: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100930143339.ht...

But I think there are two aspects of including more women, or any other underrepresented group, in tech. One is what you mentioned in regard to pushing the state of the art, but the other is providing service to different sectors of the population.

If the primary thing you need as an entrepreneur is to understand the needs and wants of your audience, there's only so far I can go before it's at best a purely intellectual understanding. Same thing with small startups, if they are growing out of scratching my own itch, the lack of women means needs specific to them are much less likely to be addressed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com