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Comment by bufordtwain | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for posting the data/results. Only 2% of the respondents are female. Wow.

Why was this voted down? I was fairly shocked too. I mean, I know we're in the minority at HN but not by this amount.

Not sure what conclusion you can draw from that - it was a self-selected sample. For example I didn't vote because of the non-existent "academia/research" option.

I think if you wanted to get a better handle of how many women are in HN, a poll entitled "Are you female" with the options of yes-no-it's complicated- will give you better traction.

> I think if you wanted to get a better handle of how many women are in HN, a poll ...

You mean: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749617 ? There, female was about 6%.

Both groups are self-selected, though one of the samples is larger. But I've no reason to doubt the numbers--they seem to be in the right ballpark. In a competitive, technical community like this one, 2-5% women is about what experience tells me to expect. Fighter pilots are a similar, if more extreme, example: http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/fighters.html

The phenomenon simply is what it is -- I do not know or speculate on the cause. But I find it fascinating that many people feel compelled to quickly invent stories to explain it away. A little encounter with heresy seems to provoke a defensive rush into mythology.

I think a little cognitive dissonance, a little acceptance of heretical fact, a little uncomfortable admission of ignorance, is good for intellectual hygeine; I welcome and cherish odd little phenomena like this, even if--in fact, especially because--they run so counter to my beliefs and expectations.

Not sure what the point you are trying to make - there is a huge difference between 2% and 6% (factor of 3 to be precise). I personally would think it would be 5% at least, so I chose to believe the poll that confirms my preformed opinion :-)

It's probably an overestimate too, because if you look at the dataset a lot of the 44 women are fake (i.e. have improbable ages such as 407,407,99,95 and are pre-high schoolers). People filling out the survey for the lulz would choose as different a profile from the typical HN-er as they could, and that includes making a female respondent.

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