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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Now that doesn't mean the underlying problem isn't worth dealing with. It absolutely is! I think that the world of programming could be much more interesting if more women were part of it. I wish I knew how to make that happen. If I find out, I'll be the first to champion it.

This may get me a ton of down-votes, but I'm genuinely curious: is the gender gap in programming actually a problem? If so, why? In what ways would the world of programming be more interesting if it was more evenly split between men and women?

I'm not trying to sound misogynistic or anything, just haven't thought much about this topic and I'm not sure I understand why it's considered a big problem. Would love to hear people's views.

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Maybe initially things are fine--the balance is skewed, but it happens to reflect the individual choice, regardless of gender, regarding what field to go into. It becomes a problem when an environment is created that perpetuates the situation--when a subtle attitude shift interrupts promising careers. If women who would enjoy programming careers are made to feel uncomfortable and subsequently leave the field, the world suffers.

Imagine you are purple.

You are in a room filled with green people and a green lecturer. The lecturer's presentation is nothing but slides of purple people making goofy faces. All evening, everyone who approaches tries to get you to tell a joke. You try and show your new project off, but no one seems to take it seriously.

You object in private conversations afterward, and the green people all tell you they weren't offended--what's the big deal?

I think the gender imbalance is a symptom of a larger problem that affects competent programmers of both genders: An industry that doesn't take competent women seriously, doesn't take competence seriously.

There were a lot of threads a few weeks ago about "what to do about all the incompetent programmers". The two problems are related.

It's a problem because in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out. The problem isn't that there isn't an even split, it's that an entire population of might-be geniuses and innovators is being left out of the game.

I agree it suggests a systematic bias.

But like DHH, I don't think it's anything to do with male programmers. They act no worse than men in other fields, maybe better.

And I don't think this problem is programming specific. It also happens in math, physics, and a variety of other fields.

So, where is this bias coming from? Who teaches girls to take up girly interests? I think it's primarily their mother.

This ought to change. http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/

> It's a problem because in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out.

There is another option: programming hasn't done a good job of appealing to women. It's entirely possible that it's not a case of women being shut out, but rather they haven't been sold on the profession to begin with. In short: an image problem.

I know this doesn't apply to the situation we have here with this ruby presentation full of porn, but as long as we are generalizing this specific instance into the "why aren't there more women in CS?" question, I thought I'd throw it out there.

It's not like programming is the only profession with this problem. As a male, I haven't been particularly sold on being a nurse either, despite the fact that (in my area) it pays roughly the same and the few male nurses I know love the flexibility to move around the country almost at will. I just never considered it for a career because of the gender bias regarding that profession held by society, not by the members of the profession itself.

in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out

It might simply mean that women enjoy a comparative advantage

http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...

at doing something else, whatever the something else is, and they are happy to live in a world in which they trade their ability to do what they do to enjoy the benefits of modern computer technology developed mostly by males.

Philip Greenspun's comments on women in science

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

may not be completely apropos, because programming as a career isn't exactly the same as research science as a career, but those comments illustrate that simple guesses about what the problem is just might be mistaken.

So, women have a comparative advantage at being teachers, nurses, and paralegals whereas men have a comparative advantage at being principals, doctors, and lawyers? This argument could very well be made in the 60s and 70s, but we would see it as the sexism it is today.

There's a woman I work with who was a programmer for years, but now works as a technical writer because she was tired of dealing with the cultural problems she had at multiple companies. I've worked with other women programmers who had to deal with bullshit that I'd never accept due to my white male privilege.

If we assume that men and women are identical when it comes to intellectual pursuits (which I don't really believe) and that men have chosen and continue to choose the jobs they perform the best at and enjoy the most, then the gender imbalance is a sign that there are women who would enjoy programming and be good at it if there weren't sociological issues in the way.

In my opinion, the problem isn't with the people in the field of computer science. The problem is with the pipeline. There are fewer girls than guys who explore computing when they're 12. If that can be "fixed", which assumes that it's something to be fixed in the first place, that's probably where it needs to happen.

"he problem is with the pipeline. There are fewer girls than guys who explore computing when they're 12."

Is that really the pipeline? If you go in to a 1st year CS/IT class, how many have been tinkering with programming for years? That's a genuine question. I don't know. I just suspect that it's a minority. Possibly as big a minority as business students who have tinkered in business or biology students that have tinkered in biology.

I think you're mistaken in expecting similar ratios. Everybody has a computer, but not a set of Erlenmeyer flasks.

Your right. I was just trying to illustrate a point. The story of the 12 year old pulling apart a junked Pong console, may be slightly over told.

at the age 12 there are very few girls tinkering with computers. Later in life this translates to much less girls going to CS. not everyone doing CS started at 12, but if you start with more, you end up with more...

Many of us enjoy meeting women.

Go outside, or to a coffee shop, or the beach, or...you get the idea.

> actually a problem

I agree. This is really one of those places where I think to myself, so what?

The only real problem I see is that a guy who goes into the field is going to be surrounded by other dudes, which is one of my biggest regrets with this profession.

I prefer working in an environment that's a mix of men and women, and I think that's fairly common. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I chose to go to a liberal arts school rather than an engineering school because I didn't want to go to a university that was 80% men.

I'm curious why you consider that embarrassing to admit? It's completely natural for human groups to seek gender balance.

Very few engineering schools let themselves get to such an extreme gender imbalance, but if you really were picking between an 80/20 split and a liberal arts school, I'm highly confident that you are much better off for having picked the liberal arts school.

CalTech is 72/28.

ugggh, that's gay... Some of the local Universities here in Ontario, Canada, have the opposite ratio :)

>It's completely natural for human groups to seek gender balance.

Is it? I see evidence of quite a few groups that are all-female and want to stay that way.

http://tripletsdad.blogspot.com/2008/10/at-home-dad-banned-f...

Actually, that's one reason to support public education at the college level. We need more good state school engineering departments.

More women will get into engineering, because of exposure, high salaries, and employer demand.

Likewise, Male engineers will actually meet women.

At Pitt, where I went for undergrad, the count for Computer Engineers/Electrical Engineers was something like 525. Only 38 were women.

On the other hand, if you were well adjusted, you had no problem meeting women outside the engineering building.

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