Getting Girls Into Programming, One Children’s Book At A Time | Hacker News Reader

Getting Girls Into Programming, One Children’s Book At A Time

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7 pointsibsathish19 comments

> There are just not enough women in the pipeline starting from as early as K-12 schools.

This is the statement that loses me. The author seems to state it as if it's a given. But who is deciding there "aren't enough"? What is this supposedly ideal number ("enough") based on? Serious question.

I think the assumption is that, all else being equal, we would see a roughly 50/50 split between men and women in technology. In some countries (particularly non-Western cultures, but also in some Scandinavian nations) the gender ratios in science and technology are more balanced.

I guess that seems intuitive at first glance. But I doubt that there really is a natural 50% split in the different gender's inclinations to certain tasks. It feels to me like a naive bias towards a round number.

The core belief is that if it weren't for gender socialization, approximately equal numbers of boys and girls would want to be programmers, but instead the numbers are skewed by how we raise children and steer them toward pursuits along gender lines.

To think otherwise holds an implicit assumption that somehow our gender so radically alters our brains that it determines what professions we pursue as adults - not an unpopular opinion among the internet's legion of armchair evolutionary psychologists. Given your use of the term "inclinations to certain tasks" I assume you are more in this camp, but since you seem genuinely curious I wanted to provide the opposite perspective.

You can also consider how the medical and law professions used to be entirely male dominated, and no doubt many people said this was because women were biologically unsuited to fill these roles, yet now the numbers of graduates in each field are swiftly becoming equal. The goal of promoting women in tech is so that in 20 years we will see similar equal numbers in engineering.

I'd clarify my position but that's much less interesting than the point you brought up:

> The goal of promoting women in tech is so that in 20 years we will see similar equal numbers in engineering.

Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a creepy way of manipulating society. It reminds me of how we would create lakes and rivers for practical purposes. Except in this case, the only reasons given are purely philosophical and ideological.

We'll probably settle for 40% as well if that seems like a natural distribution.

The thing is that these initiatives aren't born out of thin air; they're in response to a lot of women coders expressing that it took a lot of dedication to overcome the societal stigma of women coders.

Can you imagine anybody ever saying to you as a kid: "You're programming computers?? But you're a guy!"

Virtually every girl that codes has heard this numerous times.

What I heard as a kid:

- Nobody likes programmers ("computer nerds") and nobody will befriend me

- Nobody will ever date me because I'm into computers ("boring") and I'll always be alone

- As a programmer, I will live a very unfulfilling and boring life

- Because I'm into computer programming, I'm not normal.

But you're right, nobody ever said to me: "You're programming computers?? But you're a guy!"

Indeed; every geek/programmer already faces quite a bit of societal pushback and being a women adds even more on top of that.

I don't believe that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very sympathetic to anyone who is facing oppression. Any kind of oppression, especially that which is systematic and encouraged, should be done away with.

I just don't believe this whole narrative that's been given lately. Call me a skeptic, but it looks like there are a lot more variables and moving parts to this story than just the typical female-oppression factor.

What exactly don't you believe though?

That it's harder for women to thrive in tech than men? That more girls would get into tech if it was as less of a "boys thing"?

Or perhaps more interestingly: What do you believe?

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, et cetera, et cetera.

(Kinda off-topic, I'm aware. But I'm too tired. Good night.)

I don't get it.

Do you mean that you actually believe that all this women in tech stuff is nonsense and the reason there are so few women in tech has nothing to do with culture but is due to innate biological differences but that you feel that your opinion is not given space in modern day discourse and hence you're forced to toe the party line; just like how your parents made you recite this prair which you grudgingly went along with but actually didn't believe in?

It's the only interpretation I can find, although equating a belief in gender-distribution in tech being non-cultural with atheism seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

Whatever it was; sleep tight.

Nope. It was just a really sleepy half-joke, where "what do you believe?" is answered with something that starts with "I believe in ..."

(Now that I'm not so sleepy, I'll try to answer this better.)

It's much more probable that males and females experience fundamentally different kinds of pushback against learning programming. It seems naive to say that females experience a simple superset of what males experience. In which case, it stands to reason that they probably don't necessarily have a harder time getting into it, just a different set of social obstacles.

But I'm no professor of sociology. I don't know these things for a fact. I'm just saying that I approach this topic with a bit of skepticism when someone else (who also is not a professor of sociology) comes out claiming that females have more social obstacles to getting into computer programming than males do.

That's a perfectly valid perspective and it's more than likely that there are indeed both differences and some amount of overlap in the obstacles.

What we observe however is that:

* in various countries the gender distribution in tech is quite close to 50/50 (-> probably little innate difference)

* in the US and Western Europe there are much fewer women in tech (-> probably some cultural difference)

* women in tech indicate encountering a lot of social obstacles (-> probably in the form of these self-reported mechanisms)

Those observations together make operating on the assumption that the social obstacles for women in tech are stronger than those for men (and working on improving it) a reasonable thing to do.

I agree that formalizing that as a 'goal of 50/50' is wrong but the underlying goal, which is the one that is actually getting support, is for the (systemic forces that give rise to) the gender gap to be reduced to an acceptable degree.

There will always be things to improve of course as Eastern European countries for example already have much more women in tech than here, but are dealing with stereotypes which steer women towards QA and men towards development.

Here we're not at the point yet though, so currently we won't do much harm by letting our main focus can still just be on increasing participation of women in tech, period.

Agreed. What about all the other professions where women are under represented. I don't see a lot of Teach Girls Construction or Get Girls Sniping in Afghanistan. And I don't mean that in a snarky way. The Soviets actually found that female snipers were superior due to steady hands, better perception at distance and a significantly lower incidence of colour blindess. They even had a complete female sniper platoon. The inverse of this is interesting too. You don't see anyone saying "There aren't enough men in healthcare" even though it's roughly 80% female. Women are a majority in universities, advertising, human resources and insurance along with a slew of other awesome fields. This imagined lack of opportunity is well intentioned but ultimately like 40 years too late and at this point in time, without merit. If anything needs to be addressed with regards to women's careers, it's that they don't get paid the same as men and that's a real problem. Get worked up about pay parity first. People self select for what THEY WANT to do. Stop blasting your personal definition of equality onto cognizant humans with phrases like "there just aren't enough".

The argument you may hear in response is that many don't have an opportunity to self-select because of gender biases which prevent them from being aware that they have the power to.

Not a direct article comment:

I'm asking this to anyone who supports the activist approach to the women in tech problem. a) If you had to put a number on it, what would you deem the percentage chance that this school of thought is actually wrong, and b) what are the consequences if it is?

While not gender specific: I think this[1] is the worst case possible consequence of focusing on getting 5 - 7 year olds of any gender involved in programing: it turns into the awful system that is math education many countries.

    A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds    
    himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. 
   "We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly 
    sound-filled world." Educators, school systems, and the state are put 
    in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees 
    are formed, and decisions are made — all without the advice or 
    participation of a single working musician or composer.
    ...

[1]http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsL...

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