When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc.
Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work.
If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds) from equal participation in this industry.
One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.
I've heard this hypothesis a lot, but there's something that bothers me about it.
If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let microaggressions stop you from doing that thing? I mean, being a programmer is not exactly a high status thing for white males either. If I tell people I'm a programmer, I generally am competing with the perception that I am socially awkward. People assume I'm like some Big Bang Theory character until I prove otherwise. I don't like that stereotype, but it never stopped me from learning to code, or even was a thought that crossed my mind.
Also, how many other industries are or have been actively hostile towards women and still have plenty of females in it? Show business is an obvious example.
I'm not saying that things can't or shouldn't be improved, but I feel like the argument that goes "well the nerds are making women uncomfortable" is just a cartoon with very little evidence other than anecdotes.
I think “microagressions” is a bit of an understatement. Also not sure that being stereotyped as “socially awkward” is comparable to experiencing or even just witnessing sexual harassment.
All I see in that link is a VERY vague assertion that some women have received “unwanted physical contact”, which doesnt really mean anything without specifics. That could mean something creepy, or it could mean someone tapping them on the shoulder, or a saleswomans obnoxious insistence on high fiving all the time. And then some persons quoted opinion.
If someone touched me in any physical way at work I'd say it would be unwanted. It's pretty reasonable to not want other people to touch you, no matter the specific "kind" of touch it is.
Every now and then my boss gives me an overly-friendly shoulder pat. It really annoys me, I guess I'm a victim of physical harassment. Should I leave the industry over that?
It quite often means something creepy. You shouldn't assume that actual aggression aren't happening just because you have the privilege of not experiencing them.
>If I tell people I'm a programmer, I generally am competing with the perception that I am socially awkward. People assume I'm like some Big Bang Theory character until I prove otherwise. I don't like that stereotype, but it never stopped me from learning to code, or even was a thought that crossed my mind.
People thinking you're socially awkward is different from people sexually harassing you at work.
If the issue was as simple as women being sexually harassed it might not be easy to fix but itd be straightforward. But all the evidence suggests its a very nuanced and complicated issue. I don’t think just caricaturing and oversimplifying the issue helps anything.
I think you did exactly that here and I agree that it is an unhelpful contribution
> If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let microaggressions stop you from doing that thing?
> If you've ever been passionate about something, something that's hard and takes a lot of effort and practice to become good at, would you really let microaggressions stop you from doing that thing?
Yes, actually, people do this all the time. They find new things to be passionate about if being passionate about something is too painful.
It may come as a shock to you but some people have multiple passions in life. Besides, your arguments reeks of the classic gamer 'women are not really into it' take
the second part wasn't about what you said, but an example of how the claim "if a person gives up something, then they weren't passionate enough" is nonsense.
to give you a better example: since guido van rossum gave up leadership of python, does that mean that he wasn't passionate enough about it?
absolutely not. but how he was treated destroyed his passion, and he couldn't handle it any more and burned out. this is the argument above. women leave despite their passion they got more pain than they could handle. just like guido.
How did it destroy his passion? Did he quit all of CS entirely, including coding as a hobby, and took up shit like fishing instead? No? Then it didn't destroy his passion. He quit Python but Python isn't his passion. It's just a manifestation of it.
If you really love knitting then you're not gonna quit it altogether because you once had a shitty experience with a knitting group. You're just gonna find another knitting group or do it alone. But if you do quit, then you never were passionate about it. That's my point and that has nothing to do with female gamers or whatever juvenile bullshit GGP is currently interpreting into it.
Your hypothesis regarding harassment or being made to feel unwelcome is reasonable and always needs to be explored. But it is not the only hypothesis, and other factors are probably also in play. I disagree that there "is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry" and I suppose the argument would then hang on the word "obvious".. are the other hypotheses obvious? Perhaps not to people who don't study evolutionary psychology.
There is evidence that more freedom and equality for everyone to be in any job they want leads to even less women choosing STEM careers (https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...) That might be because of social issues you mention (harassment, under valued, talked over, underpaid, stalked, etc). It might also be a result of natural selection causing women and men to differentiate in useful ways wherein women were more attracted to nurturing roles, and men more attracted to technical challenges.
I don't think it's useful to pick one reasonable hypothesis and ignore other reasonable hypotheses. Let's explore all the useful ideas and recognize how little we actually know for sure.
I would want any analysis theorizing a difference rooted in biological dimorphism to work with sex as a multidimensional distribution, as that's what it is.
If you want to do one on gender, you would go in for self-reported gender, and have 3+ selection options (m/f/o).
If you're going to talk about natural selection resulting in career preference, you should talk sex, not gender.
I agree gender is irrelevant here. I'd even go so far as to agree that there may be more than two sex states on individual bases (multiple X or Y chromosomes, different levels of testosterone, hermaphordism, chimerism etc). But these are neither particularly common nor genetically transmissible and thus do not exert pressure on the nature of sexual dimorphism. Sex can be modelled quite accurately with a single binary bit even in individual cases, and entirely accurately for species in evolutionary terms. Distributions and multiple dimensions have not shown themselves to be useful. If you disagree I'd like to see references to the relevant research papers.
I don't mind recognizing any individuals uniqueness or their socially less-privileged situation for social or political purposes, but it shouldn't have any affect on the science of sexuality which should just reflect nature as it is.
Sexual dimorphism in animals can be dramatic. The male angler fish is a tiny parasite, the dramatically larger female does all the angling work. And we aren't seeing non-binary angler fishes. If none of the other species are coming up with non-binary specimens, why should we assume humans are any different?
Ah, if that's what you're getting from what I'm saying, then I don't think you getting what I'm saying.
If your theory is that biological factors drive differences in behavioral outcomes, then I'm saying you should measure those biological factors, and you should do so on a more detailed level than genitals. I'm not arguing that sexual dimorphism isn't a thing. I'm arguing that a simple m/f measurement of it is insufficient, particularly if you're trying to correlate it to behavioral outcomes. As for your science paper request, I'll just go with this, instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism_measures
If your theory is that gender (how society treats you) affects this, then measure /that/; which itself is more complicated than a simple binary. A masculine woman and a feminine man are treated very differently by society than a feminine woman and a masculine man. Although it's a lot more reasonable to go with a binary here, since basically all of society will put people into that binary, I'd definitely want some measure as to how well or poorly that category fits the person in question. It would make for a much more compelling case to see that the outcome isn't affected by that second measure.
> When people go and talk to women who started out in the tech pipeline but left, many say that the reasons they left are that they felt unwelcome in some way: they were harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc.
That "many" sounds anecdotal. Since we're doing that: In my experience woman don't go into tech because they enjoy other, more social, jobs more.
> One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.
There is an obvious reason. Autism-like traits are more prevalent in men.
> I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal.
There's a very strong inverse correlation between a country's gender equality and female representation in STEM. I.e. countries like Algeria and the UAE have much higher female participation in tech than countries like Sweden and the Netherlands.
That doesn't necessarily mean that women in tech don't face discrimination or harassment. But it strongly suggests that discrimination isn't the primary driver of female under-representation in the industry.
> But it strongly suggests that discrimination isn't the primary driver of female under-representation in the industry.
I don't see that it does. It's entirely possible that in less egalitarian countries, women are just less likely to leave tech on account of discrimination or harassment. I can think of several reasons why this might be the case:
- Women in poorer countries might be more likely to endure mistreatment for financial reasons.
- Women there might just be more accustomed to mistreatment.
- Tech might be less hostile to women relative to other fields in those countries. Eg. in Western countries, it's "normal" for women to become teachers, but somewhat less normal for women to become programmers. In more misogynistic countries, it's considered abnormal for women to be teachers or programmers, so there would be less to differentiate the options.
Maybe. It's possible. But it's not a finding in isolation. Another recent finding is that gender equal societies tend to have larger personality differences between men and women. I.e. women in Sweden tend to have much more different personalities and preferences than men in Sweden. Whereas in Saudi Arabia the two genders tend to be more similar.
Overall the general theme of these findings is that gender parity is not a good proxy for gender equality. Equality is a very important goal that we should strive for. But the reality is that increasing equality may paradoxically result in larger divergences among the genders in terms of behavior, life trajectories and modes of expression.
In my opinion if there is a tension between equality and parity, than gender equality is a much more important goal. And that's what we should be measuring, not parity metrics like representation percentages.
I think that in Algeria and the UAE if you have spent the amount of money it takes to get a STEM education you don't divert into a different field even if the conditions are difficult, in the developed world the calculations are quite different.
This is something I can attest to personally to a certain extent.
Yeah. I'm pretty sure being harassed, under-valued, talked over, stalked, underpaid, etc. are universally true.
I've encountered at least two at every single one of the 15 or so jobs I've had prior to this one. Most of them weren't in tech and I'm a man. Having a shitty job isn't exclusive to being a female in tech.
Perhaps men and women in tech face different challenges, and the challenges that women face are unique to women and related to their sex/gender expression.
> Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.
Maybe because it was considered mostly a secretarial job and they did not have a lot of other opportunities. Once given the choice to get into more fulfilling careers they took it. It's only because there's money in what is thought as "easy white collar job" that some women try to do it. And it is only because coders cost a lot that there is a push to get more women doing it as a way to lower wages. Even if they don't want to.
> It's only because there's money in what is thought as "easy white collar job" that some women try to do it. And it is only because coders cost a lot that there is a push to get more women doing it as a way to lower wages. Even if they don't want to.
This is the kind of unsupported claim that makes these discussions unwelcome on hn.
Too many women choose to leave not because they didn't like the work, but because they didn't like all the bullshit they were implicitly asked to put up with, in order to do the work.
If very few women expressed these sentiments; if the tech workforce pipeline was a safe and fulfilling place for everyone, then at that point, I think it's fair to question whether 50/50 should be the goal. But we're not nearly at that point, and IMO it is counterproductive to talk like we are. For now, the numbers imbalance is a simple and obvious way to measure and talk about the cultural factors that exclude women (or certain ethnicities, or backgrounds) from equal participation in this industry.
One reason 50/50 makes a fine straw goal is that there is no obvious reason that men should be more successful than women in the tech industry. It's not like the NFL, where well-understood human sexual dimorphism is relevant. Women were heavily involved in the early days of computing and built some of the early foundations of the field, like the first compiler.