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Here's the problem with that line of argument. What makes programming a masculine field?

Today, 50% of people who get degrees in law, medicine, or accounting are women (up from basically nil in the middle of the 20th century). Is there anything more "masculine" about looking through a hex dump to debug a program than there is about poring through Excel spreadsheets to tie a deduction to an expenditure? It's all dry, analytical detail work at the end of the day. If anything, going by the usual stereotypes, programming is more suited to women--it requires a lot of patience and involves a creative aspect.

Is it a matter of mathematical ability? Possibly, but that doesn't explain the disparities you see. The differential between men and women among people with perfect SAT Math scores is 65:35. At the 700 level, its 60:40. Even if math skills are the most important thing, they don't explain the gender disparity among programmers (though it might explain the gender disparity among Fields medalists). If ~40% of all engineers were women, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

I'm not trying to say programming in it's nature is a 'masculine' thing but the things that draw people to programming tend to be things men seem to enjoy more. There are industries that tend to draw men and there are industries that tend to draw in women (but not exclusively with either).

The article suggests that women are not 'doing well' in the tech industry because men are holding them back while completely ignoring that fact that many, many more men that are interested in tech, than women. Many women are just not interested in the field and never even make it to the scenario the author suggested.

My point is that there is nothing about programming that should make it more appealing to men versus women, given that a very similar field, accounting, has an equal representation of men and women.

Because accounting and law has an fairly even split between men and women then every other field (where physical differences don't come into play) "should" have similar representations too? Are male hairdressers trying twice as hard as their female counterparts to get to the same place? There is nothing about styling and cutting hair that should make it more appealing to women versus men. And yet we see huge imbalances there.

> Because accounting and law has an fairly even split between men and women then every other field (where physical differences don't come into play) "should" have similar representations too?

No, but when fields that are very similar in terms of intellectual demands have dramatically different gender representations, there is reason to be suspicious about what is really driving the disparity.

A good example is teaching. There is no reason teaching should be more attractive to women than men, yet in the U.S. most teachers are women. But this disparity is entirely cultural--in some countries there is not only no stigma against male teachers, but a preference for them. Isn't it valid to ask why social structure is keeping men out of a solid, socially useful career?

Men are about five times more likely to have autism than women, and are also much more likely to have autistic tendencies (mild autism, aspergers, whatever DSM wants to call it).

It seems to be accepted that these characteristics are beneficial for coding.

So why wouldn't a 50/50 split in CS be evidence of discrimination against men?

I'm with you until you get to nature vs. nurture. Societal norms are so ingrained in early childhood education that it's extremely difficult to discern one from the other.

So, while we currently have different interests between the genders (speaking broadly), there's a good chance it's mostly nurture, which means that different attitudes early on could change that in the future.

However, there do exist a number of built-in, biological differences between male and female brains - see, e.g. [pdf] http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toanatj/articles/V002/37T...

While this isn't the whole story, it's important to understand what may be attributed to innate differences and what may be attributed to cultural forces.

Societal norms are so ingrained in early childhood education that it's extremely difficult to discern one from the other. -Agreed

I think there is a possibility that nurture does play a lot into the equation (I played sports growing up, while my wife went to 'lady' classes). My point with the nature vs nurture (and i can't prove it, merely speculate) is that testosterone/estrogen levels in each gender should not be ignored.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Gender-Matters-Teachers-Difference...

And yet, in many cases, nature prevails over nurture. For example, adultery is severely frowned upon (and in many cases punished) by most cultures today. That doesn't stop many people from cheating on their spouses whenever they feel like it.

as somebody who saw ugly side of human nature (war) I can guarantee you that social norms are way weaker than any aspect of human nature. I wish it is different but I have rather big statistical sample to draw upon

To be frank, I don't understand your comment. Even if there is an "obvious difference between men and women," it is clear that there are still social pressures [1] and other problems making it harder for women to get jobs in technical fields — and these are what the article is about, not whether or not women and men have "different mentalities." Even if women are fundamentally less inclined to work in technology, issues of harassment and women being ignored simply for being women are still a problem.

You say "I bring these things up because there are inherent differences between men and women that people seem to forget," but the fact is, differences between men and women (true or not) are emphasized all the time. This holds true for toy advertising [2], discussion of career options [3], or political speech [4]. The idea that men and women are different is hardly forgotten — it's ubiquitous.

I think the question of whether differences really exist is too much to address in one comment and probably off-topic [5]. But I suggest that you consider the possibility that "there will always be a difference in our mentalities because of our gender" is, in fact, part of the problem.

[1]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/01/14/0910967107.full...

[2]: http://youtu.be/oe65EGkB9kA?t=8m56s

[3]: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/01/04/gendering-on...

[4]: http://mediamatters.org/research/2008/10/08/la-times-debate-...

[5]: Though there is certainly evidence that differences are exaggerated. See: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/03/07/the-truth-ab...

> Even if there is an "obvious difference between men and women,"

"Boys are affected with ASDs [autism] more frequently than are girls with an average male-to-female ratio of 4.3:1"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#cite_note-Newschaffer-11

This is just one characteristic that varies by sex of a great many. By saying "even if" there are differences you are ignoring objective reality that there are such differences.

This is a biotruth argument. It is a post hoc rationalization of society and its institutions to say that existing inequalities and problems are justified via biology. Not only does this argument depend on stereotype definitions of men and women that are useless, it also serves to deflect criticism of actual problems with sexism ("It's just nature!").

One of the obvious problems with this argument is that it has been made for every field ever. It has been proven wrong a lot of times. The people making it in those cases were just fooling themselves into believing an answer that was very convenient for them.

Note also the equivalent argument for race was used enthusiastically to justify slavery in the US. If you'd like to see it in action, go read the Cornerstone Speech, or the Texas Declaration of Secession.

You could be right that this time it is actually valid, but I think the burden of proof is on you. And given the company you're keeping with that style of rhetoric, I'd encourage you to set a pretty high bar.

My experience throughout my entire career is that the many females I have worked with could have done anything with their lives, perhaps law or medicine, but chose software engineering/design. I was in school before the Internet bubble popped, and there were tons of women in my courses because there was a ton of money to be made. That precipitously dropped off after the crash.

The majority of men I have worked with, when asked, can't see themselves doing anything else. I have met exactly one woman in my life who has said anything like this to me.

The best programmer I ever knew was an Indian woman. I worked with her for six years. She became pregnant and was a stay-at-home mother for a few years, no doubt in my mind she gave that 100% too. Now she is doing something related to the legal profession and is doing quite well. It is the industry's loss, and will probably be chalked up to sexism when it is included in aggregate numbers. But in the end I believe it's because she had a wide array of options for conventional salary work, and chose something that gave her more money and more social prestige.