>> "Why are there so few women developing software?"
You don't need permission to develop software you know... Just go ahead and do it. If you get good enough at it and make some cool stuff, people will hire you.
You don't need permission to develop software you know... Just go ahead and do it. If you get good enough at it and make some cool stuff, people will hire you.
I think it has a lot to do with the software-development culture. And I think that the comments that these women made back up that position. Software development -- especially in startups -- has developed a "macho" culture. And that's a shame because it excludes.
How many girls spend their 13-16 years hunched over a home computer hacking away?
Personally, I don't think there's any issue with the culture. It's a matter of what girls like doing, and what boys like doing. At early ages. We shouldn't try to 'fix' things that aren't broken.
My daughter loves dancing dressing up and singing. My son likes playing cars and power rangers. Those aren't learnt things, they're instincts people are born with.
"The sexes are hard wired totally differently."
The thing is, I can get behind this statement. If you zoom out further, and say, "Boys are different from girls." you can even say, "duh".
I'm pragmatic; I would accept biological evidence suggesting that men are more biologically inclined to be programmers. But how likely is it that that gap reflects the gender ratio that we see in software developers today?
It's possible, but I think it's unlikely.
I think that a much LARGER force is the perpetuation through behaviors like this presentation that developing software is a "boys only" club. If women want to play, they have to "man up". Creating a female-unfriendly culture is still gender discrimination, even though there's no one person doing it.
Lack of role models at the young age is a more likely cause imo. Who do young girls in the 12+ age group have to look up to in our industry or in pop culture? In the comedy "Big Bang Theory" about 4 male Nerds, the female lead character is the dumb blonde next door.
Just like a hunter, you're alone, competing with several other lone programmers/hunters.
I'd say roles that Women excel at in Tech are PR, design, managing communities, etc where art, communication and caring are more important.
In general Women are far better at communication than men IMHO.
http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Wainy_Days/Season_1/6AWomansTou...
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-ho...
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/26812/gather/cgi-bin/messages/...
If you'd rather pretend we're exactly the same, up to you :)
If anything the gatherer was a role that could be done in a solitary fashion, even today woman usually take the solitary role of staying home to care for children while the male associates with his peers in the workplace.
So why aren't woman more suited to the solitary roles?
Also correct me if I'm wrong but historically, art has been a male domineered field, only recently (past few hundred years) have famous woman artists shone through. So why would art/design be a female role and not a male role?
Perhaps one of the reasons that there are more male coders is the same reason that in general men are better at map reading than women.
Once you start stating things like this though you run the risk of people getting offended. The fact is though, men and women are very different creatures, often suited to very different jobs.
A male (Charles Babbage) came up with the computer but a female (Ada Lovelace) came up with how to communicate with it. Men and Women are not so different at all.
There are several such results...
>> "One of the most interesting differences appear in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc. In all these tasks, women and men are strikingly different, as they are too in the way their brains process language."
I don't know how you got into hacking, but...