Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the women in those places notice that even if it's behind their backs.
You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear to be true
And I'd argue it's a pretty bad proxy. Because the field might be growing (or shrinking) and percentages don't mean anything. 23% of 10k is less than 20% of 5k, for example. The percentage numbers don't really indicate whether someone will stay in the field, it's just a number that's highly dependent on a lot of variables and a very bad indicator for "people are staying in the field". I'm happy to be corrected, it's just how I read this.
Additionally, if your assumption is that 23%>20%, that would kind of mean that it's capped at 23%, right? Once more the CS degree quota is higher than 23%, following your logic, that would be an indicator that women are more likely to leave the field because it naturally gravitates towards 23%. But that's not based on anything, you could argue just as well that it's an indicator that more women are starting to take interest in CS as a career.
Top earning fields (+most fields) were rife with strong resistance to hiring women. For women who'd managed jobs in top-earning professions (<pay) - this was constant, persuasive pressure to stay where they were.
source: grew up around professional women born early 1920s (budget analyst, peace corps, navy intel, usvp sec).
That's for a myriad of reasons, but the main one being that men gravitate to tech more, so even if they're not a huge talent they still might choose a career in tech, whereas women might prefer a different career unless they have a very strong calling.
Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Classifying these challenges by sex ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness for one career or another, or lack there of.
More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech or any other career (tech might be saturated), encourage them to learn how to interview aggressively, and how to ask for raises. Encourage them to be fearless.
And do the same for your sons.
Have you faced sex based discrimination, intimidation or othering in your workplace?
> ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness
The issue is that the capacity of women is backgrounded to the point that they have to do more to be seen as talented as their male counterparts. I'm sure every woman in tech would love to focus on skills instead of sex but that's just not the world they're presented with.
> More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech
More than this teach your sons about bias against women, how to have empathy for historically marginalised groups, how to give space for quieter voices, the broader cultural norms that lead to inequality etc
You can teach generations of daughters whatever you like but the weight of solving these issues is far from resting only on women, and the idea that it is is ironically hostile in itself.
I've spoken with many women about this and volunteered alongside many others on various projects aiming to help tackle these issues such as Women in Tech Netherlands. The women I've encountered have universally recognised the importance of allyship. Who are the women you spoke with who laughed?
You can read about that's importance of allyship here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-tech-why-allyship-impor...
You might disagree with what she says but you'll struggle you convince me that I should give more weight to your views on this than the actual women involved.
My mother retired in the 2000's earning more than 2M / yr running her own business. That's net, not gross. A single mother of two. My earliest memories are in a homeless shelter. It's not a competition to know someone. While not a woman, I earn in the top 1%. I credit my mom for that.
It's obvious that people who focus on what's in their control, tend to produce results.
Ally groups are great for networking. It's just not what I'm talking about.
And many people get heaped additional challenges by virtue of their birth group - challenges that are commonly supplied by people whose birth group started at the lowest difficulty level.
Everyone has countless reasons to fail. Sex is by far among the smallest of those reasons.
By smallest you mean over 50% of the population.
Giving everyone a dollar is the same as giving no one a dollar. -Econ 101
Compare that with say, severe anxiety, inability to take tests, low IQ. Or even just lack of interview experience, and never asking for a raise.
These last two dramatically affect income and are true of a strikingly large number of women compared with men.[1]
Is it possible that women aren't asking for raises because everyone keeps telling them that they need "special" help (implied inferiority)? That they won't get raises, so why bother?
I think it's a factor. I think your argument, while well intentioned, might be causal in preventing women's success.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/women-are-still-not-a...
We won't care about men being under represented, but colleges may worry that they are losing out on customers if the male population of college buyers swings that low. That may prompt marketing campaigns to try and attract men into college.
I mean, it is not like we care about women being under represented either. Nobody is ever bothered by just 5% of firefighters being female. Tech was only ever concerned about women in tech because the industry was desperate for a larger pool of workers and women looked like an untapped source of people.
This is called whataboutery. The fact that we are still de-railing conversations about women's representation to centre men's issues shows exactly why there's still so much work to be done.