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Comment by patmcc | Hacker News Reader

Good post in whole, but part of #3 really caught my eye:

>>When I go to Kindergarten Moms Night and someone asks what I do, "computer programming" usually ends the conversation

I don't this is specific to women - I run into exactly the same thing talking about my tech job with friends, family, strangers, etc.

There's also always an underlying question that gets avoided in these types of articles - what's the "correct" percentage of people of a particular gender/race/whatever in a profession? Obviously we should aim for a society where no woman is pushed away from programming if that's what she wants to do, but is there any reason to think every job should match society demographically?

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As a web devloper from a relatively small town, I run in to number 3 quite a lot. I usually answer questions about my job saying "I make websites". Even then people take me as a wizard of all things electrical and ask me general computer questions.

As for the correct percentage of gender/race/whatever in programming, I don't think that really matters. I think a certain amount of people in general have the mindset to be a programmer and think the way a programmer does, and I don't really see anything like gender or race playing a part in someones ability to be a programmer.

What we know is there's a lot of unfair factors pushing jobs away from being demographically evenly distributed. We have no evidence that something other than that is "natural", so until then, yes, I think we should assume the correct percentage is demographically even. Especially given the centuries of history where we ignored the opposite and were totally, ridiculously, hideously wrong about all sorts of things.

> what's the "correct" percentage

Whatever numer of people that, barring societal interference, in an isolated vacuum with neutral exposure to all professions, choose the profession based only on personality and aptitude.

Maybe some market pressure towards in-demand professions, but that should be mostly extrinsic to someone in their developmental years until after they are exposed to most possible career paths.

Like the OP mentions, it isn't something that the software industry alone can solve, and IMO, all the affirmative action only does the inverse draw that doesn't actually attract those with a passion, but those for the easy access or money. It require society collectively to get over itself and stop thinking you can't do STEM without a Y chromosome, and it needs to stop demonizing the intellectually curious girls. But that is hard, because the parents of those girls were raised the same way.

I think people are unnecessarily scared of affirmative action. In the 1960's, law was 95% men. Sandra Day O'Connor could only get a job as a secretary at a law firm despite graduating third in her class at Stanford. After aggressive affirmative action, today the mostly even gender ratio in large law firms is completely self-perpetuating.

I think that teaches us two things:

1) It's foolish to jump to conclusions about the "natural number" of women in programming. If you equalize the ratio and it sticks when you remove the affirmative action, that's the natural number.

2) Affirmative action can work when it comes to gender issues, even if it has been less successful for race issues. I think that's because gender doesn't have heritable socioeconomic status like race. A girl is equally likely as a boy to be born into a family that can say afford college, but that's not true of say blacks and whites.

Agreed. I always wondered whether one of the main reasons why there are less female than male programmers is that, well, most women simply prefer other professions.

I wish we were more specific though. It's not just 'male' programmers. I've lived in American cities with large African American and Hispanic populations, yet the vast majority of the programmer demographic I've worked with or have worked under or have met are white males with some limited degree of representation of Asian men.

And it's not that I don't care about women's issues, but I feel annoyed when I get grouped with other men just because I'm a man, despite the fact that race could also play a role in opportunities.

I completely agree. Gender is the easiest to measure, of the diversity metrics, and it's an accepted conversation in our political climate. Talking about race is far more uncomfortable. Which probably means it's a bigger problem.

While there are few women in programming, there are a lot more women than Hispanics or people of color. In my opinion this is even worse than the gender disparity. Are the reasons the same? I suspect so, especially #3.

I didn't mention race in the original post, because I'm white. I have no credibility there.

Thank you for bringing it up.

Simply prefer? That's a rug under which you can sweep quite a bit.

Suppose that 200 years ago you took a poll and most women "simply preferred" not to vote. What does that tell you about whether the womens' suffrage movement was right or wrong?

The comparison doesn't seem applicable here. Women's suffrage was about gaining a right that was, at that time, forbidden. Preference shouldn't play a role in basic rights, but it certainly plays a role in an individual's choice of career.

Voting is a basic right now, but apparently it wasn't then. That might tell you something.

But if you really can't get the point without a more specific analogy, try doctors. Or going to college.

>Suppose that 200 years ago you took a poll and most women "simply preferred" not to vote. What does that tell you about whether the womens' suffrage movement was right or wrong?

A better comparison would be if most women didn't vote even though they could. (Because of thugs at the booth perhaps?)

The suffrage movement was certainly right. As is encouraging women (or for that matter, any person, regardless of gender/race etc.) to become programmers. I'm just saying that we may have to accept the fact that different genders, while deserving equal rights, may simply have different interests.

> simply prefer other professions

Women are pushed away from CS because of sexism. A culture of sexism you contribute to with this comment.

If it is normal for women not to want to do programming then the corollary is that women who do enjoy programming are 'abnormal' and 'not like most women', perhaps you could call it 'unfeminine'. Given that attitude, readily demonstrated by half of HN here, how could girls possibly sense an external pressure not to be programmers?

I don't know where you got that. I never said that it's not normal for women to want to do programming. I only said that it may be that most women prefer other professions. Just as most men prefer other professions than being, for example, accountants (most accountants are women). That being said, there are quite a few women programmers I really admire. Bodil Stokke comes to mind, for example.

Even if that's the case, I can't help but wonder what contributions they could have made to the state of the art if they were interested to begin with.

From my (poor) understanding of neurophysiology, it seems to me that women should actually generally be better than men at jobs like software development and engineering. So the fact that women are generally less interested in these things is alarming to me.

If that's so, then we have a major social stigma around technical interests that is preventing all but white and Asian men from gaining even a basic interest in these fields. And this is a travesty of the highest order.

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