There is nothing about programming computers that is gender specific; in fact it seems kind of weird and awkward that we have to discuss this at all.
Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constructs that brought this about.
Its not about programming. Or anything to do with the profession. Its has much to do with the culture.
In my first project near impossible work conditions and deadlines were placed on us. Most of us had to make extreme sacrifices(health wise, socially and in many aspects)- The other option was being out of the job. The problem is you need a supporting family. Here in India, its difficult for women at least socially and even in your own family to justify working whole nights, weekends and late hours consistently. You can try to fight that when you are single, it gets near impossible to do that after marriage and kids. Plus women have to take breaks in their 20's and 30's for maternity reasons.
At the other end, super success in software depends on all this start up culture which is very hard on most women.
It's very simple for me: From 20s to 30s most women are having babies, because it's the only time on their lives when they can do it safely. They can go startuping later.
Male coders on their 20s are mostly coding and brofounding because they don't have a better thing to do. IMHO It's even not such a good idea to go having babies at this age for a male because you are mostly broke all the time and you are still a teenager.
When people talk about Female founders or coders I think they mean young pretty female founders. There are few, and for good reasons.
I see no shortage of older females in software managament or software arch. positions and many moms are just fine doing startups on their 50s.
Please note there are age related discrimination problems in our area of work. And frankly speaking when you talk of management you are talking of glorified desk supervisors and when you talk of architects you are talking of UML-drawing clueless people in semi-managerial roles.
Almost anything that requires solving hard engineering problems like scalability, quality you will again get back long hour working engineering culture.
The competition is fierce from younger people. Also the level of learning you are required to do to just 'catch-up' with existing trends in technology in simply too much.
In all the problems look very similar to that in other branches of engineering too. Mechanical engineering for that matter sees too little enrollment from girls, same with civil engineering.
It is worth noting that it is very common for women to be 'promoted' out of technical roles into managerial or administrative positions, often before they have been able to develop true competencies or career plans.
>>those conditions would suffice for a class action against the employer.
What good would that do?
If you pass laws that make it difficult to start and sustain a competitive company, next time around you will see such companies would be starting up in some other country.
you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees? I know a lot of companies that are the best in their business and never have to.
It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.
>>you mean to run a "competitive company" you have to abuse your employees?
Not at all, but to be a "competitive company" you have to be "competitive" which is essentially doing better than your competition. The issue is someone is always willing to put more effort than you/your company. This is where it all breaks down.
This is exactly what makes our profession so much sought after. Because at some point you can make money non linear to your effort, and if you compress that effort into a small period of time you can make a fortune.
For every person that is happy to go back working 4 hours a day, there are people to put in 16 hours a day.
>>It is just unfortunate for India that our so-called IT Industry is just marketing itself as cheap and easy-to-abuse labour.
IT professionals in India are not cheap. Compare it with any other profession in India, even engineers. We come out easily as better paid people here.
And even a cursory look at the start up industry across the world, not just in India will tell you what kind of a fierce competition it is.
>> I sometimes wonder if HN commentors ever think that maybe their comments might leave them open to legal liability in some future case
While I agree with advising caution, and disagree with the gp sentiment, I don't think that mild gender insensitivity and poor communication skills are as of yet civil or criminal offenses on comment sections.
The other comments here are talking more about the work-life balance issues that might be causing the gender gap... but I personally just think it's to do with parents/relatives, role models, and the time between grade 1 and grade 12.
I myself am a coder because I loved modding games when I was younger. I do like creating things regardless, but I got to that point because a childhood friend shared PC games with me (games that his uncle shared with him)... and then you end up spending a large chunk of your childhood on the computer, so it's natural to progress down that path. But I know both guys and girls that played games like me and chose not to do a career that is computer-related.
It'd be great to have more gender balance in computer science, but actually in all fields too. I found in my art history classes in college that the class was around 80-90% female, for every class I took. This was basically the opposite of my computer science classes...
Man though, it's tough to judge society in the present lol.
I think for a long time programming has been presented as very hostile to work life balance, I had read about examples in high school like horror stories of crunch time. I think this does a lot to discourage women and men. My brother in law is doing programming at the same University that I did and the class sizes are 1/5th what they were when I was there.
Really? I would imagine it's exactly the opposite - it's one of the rare professions that can earn you a livable salary without working overtime/two jobs. Though, maybe if one extrapolates about the entire profession from the few famous startups (and movies about them), you're quite correct.
Well, with the combined factors of WWII keeping the men busy, and the general conception around that time that "computing" was boring data-entry work -- and so, fit for women -- the fact that those handful of pioneering women (Hopper et al) were alive around early/mid 20th century isn't coincidence. The last real "wave" of women programmers has long been over..
@poorelise - I admit that I'm ignorant of modern figures in programming who are women. What I meant with "wave" is that the famous women programmers that are often mentioned/taught about, cluster around a time period where we can identify a trend.
What's weird is that people assume that this has to do with programming specifically, instead of the larger workings of gender as a social construction and hierarchy (laid upon the material reality of sex dimorphism). Discussing gender isn't weird, men (and many women) just aren't very literate about the thing.
Actually most men who program are just interested in it. Same with the ladies. Discussing gender is irrelevant to this forum. This new age jargon will have a short shelf life once the truth gets out. Those who sow seeds of discord will soon have to reap their crops.
There's a gender imbalance in the programming field. This, to many, is worthy of thought. If you think you really know what's relevant to be discussed on Hacker News, you should shoot pg an email volunteering to moderate, see how that goes
Cherry picking incidents involving the actions of disturbed individuals to attempt to smear a multifaceted movement is intellectually dishonest. That's like claiming all Muslims are terrorists because some Muslims are.
That is not to say there there is no benefit to considering the rights of men or the problems that men face with issues like violent attack or custody disputes.
"Disturbed individuals"? Did you read the articles? The people being describes are the leaders of the "movement", like Elam. The "movement" obviously encourages the behavior being described -- meanwhile, groups like CAIR work hard to address the popular image of the terrorist Muslim. Where is the CAIR of "men's rights" I wonder
There are some Muslim leaders that express disturbing things as well. Once again, this does not make them the voice of mainstream Islam. If you actually visit a large men's rights community, like http://reddit.com/r/mensrights, you'll find that some women participate in discussion as well and the men are not the rape-happy bugaboos that many paint MRAs in general to be.
Mainstream segments of the movement, if you will. The mainstream of any movement is where a sense of tribal identity emerges that's likely to engage in partisan disparagement of other movements seen as opposition.
I read the first article you linked to, but couldn't find any reference to rape threats by Men's Rights Advocates. That some women receive rape threats on the internet is an entirely different matter. There have also been episodes of feminists faking such rape threat comments. Let's stay on the sane side.
In any case, I only know Karen Straughan (Girl Writes What), who seems very reasonable to me. Not sure how she is associated with A Voice For Men, but she did call for donations for them recently.
And, let's step back a moment: did animus9 write any death threats to women, or did he indeed write anything about men's rights before being accused of being an MRA member? Then why are we having this discussion again?
Your label, not mine. I don't believe in the MRA movement or whatever you call it. I am opposed to off-topic gender politics articles (which are becoming more frequent here) as I believe they are divisionist and ruin the spirit of this forum. This is Hacker News NOT Gender Politics News.
I didn't say there was anything military right-wing in them? I said his posts had the rhetoric of a militant cult.
Some exmaples:
> "An all boys class sure would be a breath of fresh air: it might be possible to focus on the actual education for once. Voluntary segregation seems like it would solve a lot of problems and eliminate our favourite scapegoats."
> "This new age jargon will have a short shelf life once the truth gets out. Those who sow seeds of discord will soon have to reap their crops."
> "The only thing suspicious is the propaganda machine which is creating this never ending list of gender-tech articles and their associated divisionist jargon."
Your statement is about as intelligent as saying feminists are indistinguishable from trolls. The men's rights movement, like feminism, isn't monolithic.
It is reactionary, i.e. its MO is to paint "feminism" as monolithic and dangerous. If these men really cared about gender inequality and the problems they face as men, they would see that many branches of feminism, like radical feminism, offers solutions where everyone comes out the winner. But that's not what "men's rights" is for.
This is coming from a man who has learned a lot by listening to women instead of constructing male echo chambers.
There are men's rights practitioners that support the egalitarian aims of feminism. Equality is what reasonable MRAs and feminists want. Unreasonable MRAs and feminists, however, are more interested in having someone to blame.
The popular understanding of feminism is that it aims for equality between men and women. You've more or less said "you don't understand feminism" without explaining how, exactly, feminism doesn't aim for equality. Not very useful if your aim is to increase understanding of your viewpoint.
Nothing about the 1s & 0s themselves, but most of the environments & presentations where it happens? Those tend to lean stereotypical-male-centered[1][2].
The only thing suspicious is the propaganda machine which is creating this never ending list of gender-tech articles and their associated divisionist jargon.
Social construct theory is dead. Girls who have a genuine interest in technology couldn't care less about the sex of their coworkers (because if they did then they would be sexists).
I have watched the manipulation of online forums in real time by a specific group with a specific political agenda. Hacker News might very well be the next victim.
It used to be about technology. What place does subversive gender politics and social construct theory have amongst hackers and lovers of technology?
Before the dotcom era and the mainstreaming of geek chic, programming used to be considered pretty uncool. Men and women who went into it were seen as nerds. For women, more so than men, finding a mate has been seen as part of being able to survive comfortably. So women stayed away from the stigma of programming, lest it lessen their attractiveness. Now, after things reversed and geek chic became mainsteam, the profession's seen as cool. Other professions seen as less cool (trades for example) don't seem to be the targets of the diversity lobby.
Given that so many of the foundational figures of the field ( Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, etc. ) were female, the fact that programming and IT became an almost entirely male-dominated profession is suspicious, and should make us question the attitudes and social constructs that brought this about.