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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The cold reality is that the way to increase the gender ratio is to hire more women. That's what happened in the legal profession: law schools made it a point to get gender-balanced classes, and law firms supported that by hiring gender-balanced classes of new associates.

I think one of the hardest things for people in tech to admit is that an uneven gender ratio is by itself a deterrent to talented women considering the profession. You can say that people shouldn't care about same-gender mentors and co-workers, etc, but at the end of the day, people care about fitting in and they don't want to have to ride against the current their whole career. A bright young woman considering law school, where she'll be in a 50-50 environment, or engineering school, where she'll be in a 20-80 environment, has a natural disinclination to choose the latter.

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We can see the same problems in the psychology profession, with a 80-20 distribution in the work environment, and classrooms that often has over 90% female students.

To quote nytimes: Some college psychology programs cannot even attract male applicants, much less students. And at many therapists’ conferences, attendees with salt-and-pepper beards wander the hallways as lonely as peaceniks at a gun fair.

It seems eerily familiar, and the reports from male student feeling excluded seems to echo the exact same statement we can find in the tech profession from female students.

What is not similar in the article is how the tech profession look at the result from gender distribution. The nytime article states that: the impact on the value of therapy is negligible. A good therapist is a good therapist, male or female, and a mediocre one is a mediocre one.

" A good therapist is a good therapist, male or female, and a mediocre one is a mediocre one." - I disagree. As a male, I would prefer to see a male if possible as I would feel they could better understand and relate to men's issues. It's similar to how my wife prefers to see a female doctor.

This attitude makes me crazy.

Women dominate PR, Nursing, Child care and Therapy? No problem, women are better at these jobs anyway

Men dominate engineering? Patriarchy!

An unequal gender ratio in, say, therapy is a problem, but it's much less of a problem than the one in engineering. The reason that's the case -- and should by no means make you crazy -- is that not all inequalities are equal. When people study gender and race biases, the first thing you should consider is the question of power: is there a group that is under-represented in certain seats of power?

The tech industry is considered a much more significant source of power than psychotherapy (this is probably objectively true, but even if it weren't, being considered to hold more power makes it so), and so the underrepresentation of women in blacks in that industry is much more concerning and much more important. It's also the reason why the under-representation of whites in basketball is less concerning than that of blacks in Congress. Whites aren't marginalized away from power by being mostly absent from basketball, but the same cannot be said about blacks in politics.

Its actually a much large problem in therapy or nursing, since the patient may be considerably more comfortable with a same-sex service provider. Postgres doesn't care.

But I guess actual consumers don't count.

Further, your talk of power is silly. As obamacare demonstrates ("mental health parity"), therapists and such do have power.

OK, then, a different kind of problem. One is a problem for many separate individuals, while another is a problem for society (or large groups within it) as a whole.

And I wasn't saying therapists don't have any power. But I think even you will agree that Google, Apple and Facebook have a lot more power over the world than a psychiatrist. Note how in tech, power can be concentrated in a few corporations, while in therapy, power is a lot more distributed. Also, in therapy, teaching, and nursing, most central authorities are often democratically elected, and in any case are a lot more open than private corporations. It's a more diffuse kind of power.

Also, the mention of nursing, education and even psychotherapy (though the last may be different) is a little disingenuous because a major reason for the under-representation of men in those fields is also sexism -- Those professions aren't considered "manly" -- rather than any discrimination against men.

Finally, my talk of power isn't silly, but in line with the humongous body of research done on the subject. In other words, it's informed.

...while another is a problem for society (or large groups within it) as a whole.

Unless you can articulate why something is actually bad for human beings, as opposed to "society" or "large groups", it'll be pretty hard to convince thinking people that there is any reason to care.

Note that the political theory that society should unify and govern to benefit the "corporates" (power groups) and that the individual is irrelevant went out of fashion a long time ago. I'm deliberately not using the name of this theory since it provokes strong emotional reactions in people.

For any reasonable definition of power (which you haven't provided), Google has more power than an individual therapist. So what? You might as well say that any individual Google engineer has less power than than the AMA or other medical lobbying groups. That's also a true statement.

If you really believe tech companies have power comparable to the medical establishment, can you name the last time tech orchestrated a giveaway of other people's money comparable in scale to "mental health parity" (to name one example coming out of medicine)?

I'm sorry, but as much as I'd want to, I can't give a whole course in history here in a couple of HN comments, but I think you should at least try to understand what I'm actually saying. E.g., I'm not saying that "the individual is irrelevant"; where in God's name did you get that? And I most certainly wasn't comparing the power of Google to that of an individual therapist. But the APA's (or the AMA's) power is, in fact, a lot less concentrated than Google's, it's a democratically elected body, and happens to be headed by men.

And I don't understand what your personal political opinions about taxes and private property have to do with sociology. The discussion about access to central power in a democratic nation is an interesting one, but irrelevant here.

And I most certainly wasn't comparing the power of Google to that of an individual therapist.

But I think even you will agree that Google, Apple and Facebook have a lot more power over the world than a psychiatrist.

Literal much?

This is a canard frequently thrown out by MRAs. It's not true. Nursing and childcare specifically seek more men, as does teaching in general and primary school teaching in particular. It's an utter myth that the gender imbalance in those fields are ignored.

I dropped out of a teaching track to switch to hard math and CS because of the cliquish behavior and their constant negative comments about men creating a hostile environment - much the same complaints women make about the tech sector.

Saying that the fields are recruiting men is no more to the point than saying CS departments are recruiting women: it doesn't matter if you don't address the toxic social environment as well.

It does, however, counter the parent, who said "No problem, women are better at these jobs anyway". People do think it's a problem, and there are efforts trying to counter that problem, same as with women in technical fields.

I can't say I have ever heard of a male conference or affirmative action ever being suggested to solve the gender distribution in the therapists profession. No one is creating male-only therapists schools. No feminist politician is dedicating budgets in order to fix it.

Yes, people do think its a problem, but the efforts to counter that problem is not even close as with women in technical fields. It easier to just put the blame on men, claiming that they do not want to do those jobs.

Well, therapy is an absolute minnow compared to 'tech', 'teaching', or 'nursing'. It's not a very visible profession, and most people outside that profession can't relate to it (and are even a little scared by it)

Speaking of minnows, I can't say I have ever heard of a female conference or affirmative action ever being suggested to solve the gender distribution in the commercial fishing industry. No-one is creating female-only commercial fishing licences. No politician is dedicating budgets in order to fix it. Commercial fishing is a bigger and more lucrative profession than therapy, yet there's no work towards affirmative action there.

So what does it mean that we can find specific, small industries here and there that don't have explicit action in these areas? Shall we continue to base arguments on the minnows, avoiding the larger stories about the bigger fish?

At almost every tech company, the applicant pool is mostly men. To get a 50/50 employee ratio, you'd have to vastly lower hiring standards for women. In most countries that's illegal (discrimination in hiring on the basis of sex), but even ignoring that, you'd be creating a work environment where the average woman was much less capable than the average man. Is that really what you want? (And likewise for universities.)

No, you wouldn't have to lower your standards. There are plenty of capable women out there. The issue is hiring them and hiring less men as a result, which is what you're not comfortable with doing.

This is wrong. Most tech companies find it difficult or impossible to meet their current hiring needs. There are already slots left empty.

Does it not occur to you that they find it difficult because they are subconsciously ignoring worthy female candidates?

This seems a bit naive.

In my time at university, I have never seen a female computer science major have trouble finding opportunities, even if they were miserable coders. The fact that they bring "balance and diversity" to a team apparently is already enough of a qualification for some companies.

That definitely has occurred to me! I would even broaden it to say that I (or my company or my industry) might be subconsciously undervaluing lots of candidates that don't fit the white (or asian) male nerd stereotype.

That being said, I think the undersupply of programmers is so severe that even if this subconscious bias was corrected it wouldn't increase the supply of people enough that it would necessitate "hiring less men as a result."

"Most tech companies?" That may be true for SF (idk) but it certainly isn't a universal truth everywhere.

You're comment is nonsensical. Women compose 12% of recent CS graduates. Even if all of these women are as good as the top quarter of men, they would still be outnumbered nearly 2 to 1 for a given job. If we wanted to reach equality by your standard, the industry would have to fire men (not fill the slots) while simultaneously hiring every woman in sight.

I'm not suggesting that in the least. Hiring more women is easy. Hiring 50% women is EXTREMELY difficult, if not impossible at this point.

But that doesn't mean that the solution is to do nothing.

The solution is to higher more women and at the same time taking steps to destroy the gender roles that stop them from going into STEM fields and encouraging them to join STEM fields.

Measures like this really have to start at the university level. There is no reason for only 12% of recent CS graduates to be women: http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor.... Women receive 40-50% of the degrees awarded in the physical sciences, math and statistics, and business, versus less than 20% in computer science and engineering. And the less than 20% in computer science is down from 35% in the 1980's.

Women receive a lot of biology degrees and math-ed degrees, which make up a disproportionate fraction of science degrees. In the math-heavy science degrees women are underrepresented.

There is a very good reason for at least part of this (read the tables not the titles):

http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941

Is it really true that there are enough highly-skilled but unemployed women in tech that we can fix this problem by just "hiring more women"? I thought the problem is that there aren't enough highly skilled women at this point in our history, but I could be entirely off-base...

Looking at the demographics of my CS degree I'd say it certainly looks like women aren't well represented at UG level.

When I started my UG in CS there were 4 women in class of 110.

By the time we finished the degree, there were no women.

And yet tech companies are now being told that in order to bring about equality, they must hire the comparatively tiny number of women making it through these courses over similarly qualified men, simply for the sake of doing so.

How many employed programmers have a CS degree?

Can't find anything cite-able on it unfortunately.

> At almost every tech company, the applicant pool is mostly men.

Man, I wonder how we're managing to hire so many competent female engineers. It must be rough for all you poor companies that women don't want to apply to.

This snark isn't necessary. Many tech companies have trouble hiring qualified candidates of any sex/gender to fill every available role.

Can you concretely state what actions the legal and medical professions have taken that engineering/computing has not, and why you believe they made the difference?

I think one of the hardest things for people in tech to admit is that an uneven gender ratio is by itself a deterrent to talented women considering the profession.

It is indeed hard for activists/SJWs to admit that women's choices and intolerance of difference are partly the cause for women being underrepresented. But I suspect activists aren't the group you were referring to.

Anecdotally I also don't think you statement "people care about" is correct, at least w.r.t. gender/race. Most of the white and asian men I know are far more likely to have a problem joining a group of Windows users or IDE users than a demographically different group.

> an uneven gender ratio is by itself a deterrent to talented women considering the profession

I agree, but law and medicine weren't always ~50% male/female and the comment you're replying to was suggesting we [tech] learn from them. So you can't dismiss it as an unsolvable problem that feeds itself (there aren't many female developers so it deters women to become developers) since this has been solved in law and medicine.

Medicine had female nurses before it had female doctors, so maybe that helped?

I don't think so. It's (almost) like saying law firms had female secretaries. AFAIK most places have trouble recruiting enough male nurses (and probably secretaries?) -- so it's not like the gender balance is uniform across "legal" or "health".

I'm thinking of the case where for example a female nurse encourages her daughter to become a doctor because it is a more aspirational career in the same field.

OTOH a male doctor is probably not as likely to encourage his son to become a nurse because that is generally perceived as a step down in terms of prestige and pay.

Or, the labor market in both tech and law is working perfectly rationally. Tech labor market barrier to entry > law industry labor market barrier to entry.

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