An open letter to women in technology | Hacker News Reader

An open letter to women in technology

reprage.com

15 pointsclinton13 comments

Honestly, society's gender roles are a result of our biology and not just dogmatic stereotyping. The truth is that women are biologically more interested in social occupations. It comes down to the way humans evolved and the attributes which make a good mother. Men are biologically more interested in thing based occupations which is why there are so many men in science and technology.

Note the behavioral effects of autism which is known to be the result of an extreme male brain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12039606). The ratio of women born with autism is 1 to every 4 men. By simply measuring traits that indicate the levels of testosterone during gestation they can even accurately predict SAT scores (http://www.livescience.com/7290-finger-length-predicts-sat-p...). There was an interesting Norwegian documentary which covered this topic pretty well (http://youtu.be/AZoRihmI1Ug).

Then let's make STEM look more social when career choices are made.

Isn't that what conferences, hacker/maker spaces, 'women in STEM' lunches are doing? My sister who was interested in math and physics in high school had a female teacher/mentor that had competitions and math clubs. Half of the participating students were female (including me). That was a major encouragement that got me into computers. It took until I was done with a degree in history for me to realise that humanities don't pay (well), and I like computing. Neither my sister or I are very social (she has autism and I have social anxiety). What would have helped is less 'social' and more mentoring and available resources, which I am seeing being more and more available than what I had in high school.

Going out on a limb here but are both your parents high-achievers? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2064478/Autism-lin...

Not particularly (as hard as it is for a child to say about their parents). My mother has ADHD, and only diagnosed 2-3 years ago, which caused issues in school and work and any other ambitions. We're pretty sure my father has autism, but getting him formally diagnosed would make no difference. Due to him being in finance during the recession, he had trouble adapting to the new career environment.

I think they are doing a pretty good job of that currently and not only that but they offer a huge amount financial incentives through grants and scholarships for women. Anything related to STEM will require a huge amount of alone time in order to learn the required skills. The idea of sitting in front of a computer writing code or solving math problems all day is probably about as appealing to them as any type of customer service or child care would be to me.

> Almost instantly, society began to bombard her with images and objects

As we abandon religion, we always seem to replace it with another omnipotent entity. Government, society, media... The problem with those is that we also like to believe that they can be influenced and their power used for our ends -- finally, a god who listens.

And so while everyone pays lip service to science and evolution, actual belief in an uncaring universe shaped by mutation and death remains as rare as it ever was.

Preferring a less brutish world is not the same as believing in religion. And history demonstrates that society can be influenced to that end.

"I realised that those six young women in my university class, who had managed to make their way into a lecture theatre filled with other hopeful engineers, were probably the most remarkable of all of us. The guys had it easy: we were actively encouraged by society into these pursuits, and nobody blinked an eye when we walked into that lecture theatre."

This sort of generalization is totally fallacious and completely ignores the fact that various groups of men too, (for example, those belonging to certain minority groups) are also seen as outsiders in technology. This pervasive attitude of "oh yeah, you're a guy, you probably have it very easy" can be extremely damaging towards their development and self-esteem.

[Anecdotally, during college in the US, the women I knew in engineering were there because they liked it, and so were the men. I don't recall anyone expressing surprise that there were women in the class, it was more surprise that there were so few of them. So I would actually argue that the reform needs to happen mainly outside the classroom -- in society as a whole.]

If you want to be inclusive in tech, (which is a good thing), be completely inclusive -- men, women, and transgender people of all communities are welcome. Some of them have had it easy, others have had it hard. This can be due to a variety of socio-economic factors. Telling one group "you are special and remarkable" and saying that "the others had it easy" are over-simplifying the situation and trivialising the problems faced by other groups.

I agree with this. This blog post just feels like this guy is saying "Good job! You exist!". I'd rather be praised for my effort and hard work than my gender.

Thank you! Your hard work, and desire to be recognised for your efforts rather than your gender will make it just that little bit easier for my daughter to follow in your footsteps (if technology is her chosen vocation).

Yes, thankfully it will also make it easier for many underprivileged male and female children to participate in tech and be recognized for their efforts.

An important thing to note here is that "I had it easy" is a different story from "all of us guys had it easy". How easy you had it is a general consequence of your socioeconomic background, among which gender is a factor. Do you know for a fact that the guy on the other side of the class who worked three other jobs to put himself through the CS program also had an extremely smooth path through college because he was male?

"Women in tech" is a gender problem, and I think that there should be some separation. Nothing negative of course. For example - we could praise then them for their bravery (fact).

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