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Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

> One of our goals at Dev Bootcamp Chicago is to change the ratio of women in software development: we want a 1:1 ratio in our cohorts.

Why?

That's a serious question.

My hobbies include writing, blacksmithing, cooking, and ceramics.

In writing, around half the people are women.

In blacksmithing perhaps 3% are women.

In cooking probably 90% of the blogs I read and people who take classes are women.

In ceramics it's again 90% female.

I have absolutely no desire to increase the percentage of women blacksmiths...and I have absolutely no desire to decrease the percentage of women pot throwers.

Why should I want to change these?

Why do you want to change the ratio in web development?

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I'm sorry, but "why?", by itself, is never a serious question.

Except in cases of extreme naivety, it's a challenge, or worse, a roadblock, posed to force a reexamination of the underlying assumption.

In this case, the underlying assumption is that the field of web development would be enhanced by a more equal ratio of women to men.

Your "why?" implies a host of reasons, bounded only by imagination, why this might not be the case — why we might be better off leaving this to the men — but luckily, you don't have to actually voice any of them.

So no, it isn't a serious question, and doesn't deserve a serious response here.

> I'm sorry, but "why?", by itself, is never a serious question.

I asked my question crisply and respectfully, taking the pro-diversity folks as serious and being people of goodwill.

I think it's disrespectful of you, not to mention logically deficient, to immediately start your attack by asserting that my question was not intended in good faith.

If you can't muster up a simple, respectful response to a simple respectful question, it doesn't speak well of your self examination on this topic.

The problem with asking "Why?" is that you leave yourself open a retort of "Why not?". Unless your argument managed to cover that possibility (which yours didn't) it's not a meaningful question.

This response seems a bit harsh for the question being asked. The poster went out of his way to outline 4 other hobbies that had unequal male-female ratios and that noone seems to be demanding blacksmiths include more women.

You seem to be saying the reasons behind having a 1:1 ratio are self-evident. And not saying that nicely.

The question of 'why' is an important one, indeed. For example, I suspect that the disparity in cooking and ceramics is not due to a [perceived] unwelcoming culture, or a [perceived] pervasive attitude that men who are entering the field are inferior by default. It might be that women are considered inferior in blacksmithing; I'm not a blacksmith, though, so I don't know. I do know one woman who is a blacksmith, however, and from what I've heard from her--women involved in such a hobby tend to be well received.

People who work professionally in STEM fields in the US tend to be straight white males. This is okay, so long as the reason for the disparity is not that the culture in these fields tends to disparage members of the community who don't fit this profile. If we agree that women and men are roughly equally qualified when it comes to development, then the disparity in terms of participation is worth being investigated. This sort of statement (1:1 ratio) implies equality which will hopefully resonate with the community and ultimately tend towards a zeitgeist wherein people--regardless of gender or any other irrelevant criteria--are welcomed based on their merit.

An interesting question comes from the fact that not all STEM fields are "straight white males".

Take a look biology. Back in the late 1990s, the majority of biology graduate students were female. When I was in industry, the number of females working on biology was also very close to 50%.

So why have women felt comfortable entering the field of biology when it used to be dominated by males?

There are lessons to be learned here.

> People who work professionally in STEM fields in the US tend to be straight white males.

I don't know about the US but in Europe this is not true. There are quite a few gay males (5% to 10% which is what you'd expect) in the courses that I took in maths, physics and computer science, and there are a lot of women in fields like biology. The number of women in mathematics and physics is also higher than in computer science, although still less than 50%.

Well that's nice. When it comes to technical fields you assume that there are not many women because the men are arrogant assholes. When it comes to a soft field you assume that there are not many men because, well, you don't know. You are a sexist.

Neither the OP, nor a woman, but I'll take a shot at this one since it's a fair question respectfully posed. I think that one aspect of this problem is that, due to a combination of cultural factors, women do not feel welcome at industry events, and do not feel like their input is valued, and that's absolutely something that should be addressed.

I agree that it's a problem. But I'm not convinced that merely attracting more women to web development is the solution.

As you said, the problem is that women are discriminated against in the industry. I don't think attracting more women will necessarily solve that problem. The problem is with the attitude of many of the men. Attracting more women might even make it worse. Men might start resenting them.

Fixing the attitude problem might attract more women--or it might not.

This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

Back to the topic: I love the welcoming attitude, though. The intention is good, if a bit misguided. If more men adopted the same attitude as Dev Bootcamp, "Women, we value your contributions and will treat you as equals," then the problem would be solved.

Getting more representation from people being kept out due to sexism isn't mutually exclusive with talking about sexism critically within tech industry. They go hand in hand with making sure that people who want to program and be a part of tech aren't kept from doing so.

> This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

To begin with, the people who are underrepresented in tech are already treated differently on the basis of gender, race, etc. Knowing that and aiming to make sure that you include those people at some ratio isn't unjust. In the case of dev bootcamp chicago, they knew it would be easy to sell seats to the wider dev community that consists mostly of men, so they made a conscious effort to get the word out in spaces that inhabited mostly by women before going to their usual sources. That is most certainly fair considering that had they not done so, it was likely that men would greatly outnumber the amount of women attending.

> I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.

The status quo is what's unjust. Do you agree? If so, how can correcting for that be unjust?

Having a discriminatory policy is unjust. So changing who you discriminate against is not less unjust.

> So changing who you discriminate against is not less unjust.

I disagree. Discrimination is not always unjust depending on the motivation and the outcomes of it. If the motivation is to correct for existing systemic discrimination, and if it is successful in doing so, I do not see the injustice.

This is the argument in favor of "Affirmative action". Minorities have been discriminated against for 100 years, and so we need a period of time where they are discriminated for to make up for it.

I can see both sides of that. But ideally, you want to fix the systemic issue not just try to correct for it, because your correction is almost guaranteed to add more unfairness to the system not reduce it.

Outside of the fact that there have been studies that show having more women on a team increases productivity and communication, I don't think just knowing a change needs to happen is enough for a lot of people. A few men I've worked with have been completely oblivious to women's issues and wouldn't otherwise make an effort to do anything about that. Just having a woman on the team can adjust perceptions about capability as well as make some of the issues we deal with more "real".

Why? Because I know personally very talented women who want to, and are capable of learning web development, and the mere current ratio of males in the industry is intimidating them.

Web development is a profession, not (just) a hobby, and if women move away from it just due to the fact it's already a high ratio of males then it's a problem

Why do we not have the same goals for automotive mechanics? I don't personally know any women who'd want to be mechanics (but then neither do I know any women who want to be developers in any form), but I'm sure they exist. Are they also reluctant to start their dream job simply because of men? If so, that's a problem. (It also seems oddly sexist to me...)

I’d actually guess that this is because we aren’t automotive mechanics.

I’d bet there is at least a small group of automotive mechanics that are interested in increasing diversity in their field.

> Why do we not have the same goals for automotive mechanics?

A lot of industries that have issues attracting certain kinds of people don't have explicitly diversity goals as a part of their makeup. But that doesn't mean that people aren't trying to break into those industries and have a career there.

Keep in mind that the kind of work you do isn't just influenced by your hobbies and likes, but also by what is considered acceptable for a certain person based on gender/race/etc., stereotypes about kinds of work, and classism (among other things).

"...what is considered acceptable for a certain person..."

Then perhaps it is society that needs changing. But from the inside out. This patching from the outside in is never going to significantly affect the roots of the problem.

Making sure people are represented and that we challenge and critically look at sexism and social attitudes towards things go hand in hand.

There are dozens of claims that it is good for women - STEM is a desirable field - yet artificial barriers to entry are created by gender roles.

Further, women in technology and leadership positions has been correlated with business success: http://reclaimingleadership.com/why-you-need-women-leading-i...

Or maybe business success leads to more women in leardship positions.

That is definitely not true, as women are underrepresented in business leadership positions, esp. at higher leadership levels.

You would generally want to "change the ratio" of something if you felt there was untapped potential or interest that wasn't being expressed, often due to some systematic or structural barrier.

As an example, I can tell you, I go to a lot of startup events and they are often centered around activities like ping pong or beer drinking. I know many women interested in entrepreneurship and try to get them to go with me, but they tell me they don't like ping pong or would feel uncomfortable. And, at the events themselves, there are typically only one or two women who actually came.

Changing the ratio would involve creating an atmosphere that would encourage women who already have an interest to act on it and thus be better represented.

Some more answers from the recent thread on Etsy:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177994

1. "Even science recognizes that diversity is important: research from both the Kellogg and Sloan Schools suggest that cognitively diverse teams perform better on hard problems."

2. "Beyond that, though, hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."

3. "A number of studies, like one from CMU, have shown that people perform better in math and sciences if fifty percent of the participants are women, so gender distribution was a key metric in future Hacker School classes."

Women can bring different skills to the table; for example, they tend to possess more developed language skills and to be far more engaged in social media. Women are also more likely than men to talk through problems. Those seem like valuable skills, especially in a money-strapped startup environment where everyone wears several hats.

"Women are also more likely than men to talk through problems."

Citation required.

Positive stereotypes like this create just as hostile a work environment as negative ones.

Source: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-ways-m...

The author cites several studies to back up those assertions. Agreed on the positive stereotype bit, though--I think people rely far too much on anecdotal evidence simply because the way that people talk is difficult to distill and quantify.

Tech/IT is already starved for qualified employees, and the 'Startup Visa', even if it is signed into law anytime soon won't completely solve that.

In the US, more degree earners are women now than men, so that is one large untapped talent pool for the tech industry. We ignore it to our detriment.

> In the US, more degree earners are women now than men,

Not in STEM, which constitutes the vast majority of the degrees relevant to Tech/IT.

Probably another symptom of the same problem, and all the more reason to fix it. We not only want more women in web development, but all of STEM in general. There's no biological reason why there shouldn't be a roughly equal proportion of women in STEM, just social anachronisms.

> There's no biological reason why there shouldn't be a roughly equal proportion of women in STEM, just social anachronisms.

That's an assumption. We don't know. :-)

I don't know that future neuroscience is going agree with that statement. The male and female brain do differ on average, and it would seem that these differences may be related to the types of thinking that STEM encourages. Math maybe not so much, but engineering? Maybe. We don't know for sure yet. A lot of people love to think that there's no difference between men an women, but science chips away at that idealism every decade.

But there's no reason to treat men or women any differently with regards to STEM, true. We just have to remember that there may be some base-level biological self-filtering that happens. And if it does, that's OK.

I want to change the ratio in web development because my goal in life is to unleash latent human potential. It pisses me off when people don't, or can't, live up to their potential. I believe that the gross underrepresentation of women in software represents a ton of latent human potential, because I also believe that women a) are capable of creating great software, and b) want to.

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