> One of our goals at Dev Bootcamp Chicago is to change the ratio of women in software development: we want a 1:1 ratio in our cohorts.
Why?
That's a serious question.
My hobbies include writing, blacksmithing, cooking, and ceramics.
In writing, around half the people are women.
In blacksmithing perhaps 3% are women.
In cooking probably 90% of the blogs I read and people who take classes are women.
In ceramics it's again 90% female.
I have absolutely no desire to increase the percentage of women blacksmiths...and I have absolutely no desire to decrease the percentage of women pot throwers.
Why should I want to change these?
Why do you want to change the ratio in web development?
I'm sorry, but "why?", by itself, is never a serious question.
Except in cases of extreme naivety, it's a challenge, or worse, a roadblock, posed to force a reexamination of the underlying assumption.
In this case, the underlying assumption is that the field of web development would be enhanced by a more equal ratio of women to men.
Your "why?" implies a host of reasons, bounded only by imagination, why this might not be the case — why we might be better off leaving this to the men — but luckily, you don't have to actually voice any of them.
So no, it isn't a serious question, and doesn't deserve a serious response here.
> I'm sorry, but "why?", by itself, is never a serious question.
I asked my question crisply and respectfully, taking the pro-diversity folks as serious and being people of goodwill.
I think it's disrespectful of you, not to mention logically deficient, to immediately start your attack by asserting that my question was not intended in good faith.
If you can't muster up a simple, respectful response to a simple respectful question, it doesn't speak well of your self examination on this topic.
The problem with asking "Why?" is that you leave yourself open a retort of "Why not?". Unless your argument managed to cover that possibility (which yours didn't) it's not a meaningful question.
This response seems a bit harsh for the question being asked. The poster went out of his way to outline 4 other hobbies that had unequal male-female ratios and that noone seems to be demanding blacksmiths include more women.
You seem to be saying the reasons behind having a 1:1 ratio are self-evident. And not saying that nicely.
The question of 'why' is an important one, indeed. For example, I suspect that the disparity in cooking and ceramics is not due to a [perceived] unwelcoming culture, or a [perceived] pervasive attitude that men who are entering the field are inferior by default. It might be that women are considered inferior in blacksmithing; I'm not a blacksmith, though, so I don't know. I do know one woman who is a blacksmith, however, and from what I've heard from her--women involved in such a hobby tend to be well received.
People who work professionally in STEM fields in the US tend to be straight white males. This is okay, so long as the reason for the disparity is not that the culture in these fields tends to disparage members of the community who don't fit this profile. If we agree that women and men are roughly equally qualified when it comes to development, then the disparity in terms of participation is worth being investigated. This sort of statement (1:1 ratio) implies equality which will hopefully resonate with the community and ultimately tend towards a zeitgeist wherein people--regardless of gender or any other irrelevant criteria--are welcomed based on their merit.
An interesting question comes from the fact that not all STEM fields are "straight white males".
Take a look biology. Back in the late 1990s, the majority of biology graduate students were female. When I was in industry, the number of females working on biology was also very close to 50%.
So why have women felt comfortable entering the field of biology when it used to be dominated by males?
Well that's nice. When it comes to technical fields you assume that there are not many women because the men are arrogant assholes. When it comes to a soft field you assume that there are not many men because, well, you don't know. You are a sexist.
> People who work professionally in STEM fields in the US tend to be straight white males.
I don't know about the US but in Europe this is not true. There are quite a few gay males (5% to 10% which is what you'd expect) in the courses that I took in maths, physics and computer science, and there are a lot of women in fields like biology. The number of women in mathematics and physics is also higher than in computer science, although still less than 50%.
Neither the OP, nor a woman, but I'll take a shot at this one since it's a fair question respectfully posed. I think that one aspect of this problem is that, due to a combination of cultural factors, women do not feel welcome at industry events, and do not feel like their input is valued, and that's absolutely something that should be addressed.
I agree that it's a problem. But I'm not convinced that merely attracting more women to web development is the solution.
As you said, the problem is that women are discriminated against in the industry. I don't think attracting more women will necessarily solve that problem. The problem is with the attitude of many of the men. Attracting more women might even make it worse. Men might start resenting them.
Fixing the attitude problem might attract more women--or it might not.
This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.
Back to the topic: I love the welcoming attitude, though. The intention is good, if a bit misguided. If more men adopted the same attitude as Dev Bootcamp, "Women, we value your contributions and will treat you as equals," then the problem would be solved.
Getting more representation from people being kept out due to sexism isn't mutually exclusive with talking about sexism critically within tech industry. They go hand in hand with making sure that people who want to program and be a part of tech aren't kept from doing so.
> This is a good example of why I think "diversity" initiatives are missing the point. The point isn't to have equal proportions of races/sexes/nationalities/etc., the point is to ensure that they are all treated equally and justly. Many diversity movements do the exact opposite and treat people differently based on their sex or skin color. I think this is unjust and can often make problems worse, not better.
To begin with, the people who are underrepresented in tech are already treated differently on the basis of gender, race, etc. Knowing that and aiming to make sure that you include those people at some ratio isn't unjust. In the case of dev bootcamp chicago, they knew it would be easy to sell seats to the wider dev community that consists mostly of men, so they made a conscious effort to get the word out in spaces that inhabited mostly by women before going to their usual sources. That is most certainly fair considering that had they not done so, it was likely that men would greatly outnumber the amount of women attending.
Outside of the fact that there have been studies that show having more women on a team increases productivity and communication, I don't think just knowing a change needs to happen is enough for a lot of people. A few men I've worked with have been completely oblivious to women's issues and wouldn't otherwise make an effort to do anything about that. Just having a woman on the team can adjust perceptions about capability as well as make some of the issues we deal with more "real".
> So changing who you discriminate against is not less unjust.
I disagree. Discrimination is not always unjust depending on the motivation and the outcomes of it. If the motivation is to correct for existing systemic discrimination, and if it is successful in doing so, I do not see the injustice.
This is the argument in favor of "Affirmative action". Minorities have been discriminated against for 100 years, and so we need a period of time where they are discriminated for to make up for it.
I can see both sides of that. But ideally, you want to fix the systemic issue not just try to correct for it, because your correction is almost guaranteed to add more unfairness to the system not reduce it.
Why? Because I know personally very talented women who want to, and are capable of learning web development, and the mere current ratio of males in the industry is intimidating them.
Web development is a profession, not (just) a hobby, and if women move away from it just due to the fact it's already a high ratio of males then it's a problem
Why do we not have the same goals for automotive mechanics? I don't personally know any women who'd want to be mechanics (but then neither do I know any women who want to be developers in any form), but I'm sure they exist. Are they also reluctant to start their dream job simply because of men? If so, that's a problem. (It also seems oddly sexist to me...)
> Why do we not have the same goals for automotive mechanics?
A lot of industries that have issues attracting certain kinds of people don't have explicitly diversity goals as a part of their makeup. But that doesn't mean that people aren't trying to break into those industries and have a career there.
Keep in mind that the kind of work you do isn't just influenced by your hobbies and likes, but also by what is considered acceptable for a certain person based on gender/race/etc., stereotypes about kinds of work, and classism (among other things).
"...what is considered acceptable for a certain person..."
Then perhaps it is society that needs changing. But from the inside out. This patching from the outside in is never going to significantly affect the roots of the problem.
You would generally want to "change the ratio" of something if you felt there was untapped potential or interest that wasn't being expressed, often due to some systematic or structural barrier.
As an example, I can tell you, I go to a lot of startup events and they are often centered around activities like ping pong or beer drinking. I know many women interested in entrepreneurship and try to get them to go with me, but they tell me they don't like ping pong or would feel uncomfortable. And, at the events themselves, there are typically only one or two women who actually came.
Changing the ratio would involve creating an atmosphere that would encourage women who already have an interest to act on it and thus be better represented.
Women can bring different skills to the table; for example, they tend to possess more developed language skills and to be far more engaged in social media. Women are also more likely than men to talk through problems. Those seem like valuable skills, especially in a money-strapped startup environment where everyone wears several hats.
The author cites several studies to back up those assertions. Agreed on the positive stereotype bit, though--I think people rely far too much on anecdotal evidence simply because the way that people talk is difficult to distill and quantify.
1. "Even science recognizes that diversity is important: research from both the Kellogg and Sloan Schools suggest that cognitively diverse teams perform better on hard problems."
2. "Beyond that, though, hiring for diversity will set up better recruiting opportunities. Consider Harvard’s graduating computer science class: forty-one percent of the students are women, and an inability to hire talented females will start to significantly impact your ability to recruit altogether."
3. "A number of studies, like one from CMU, have shown that people perform better in math and sciences if fifty percent of the participants are women, so gender distribution was a key metric in future Hacker School classes."
Probably another symptom of the same problem, and all the more reason to fix it. We not only want more women in web development, but all of STEM in general. There's no biological reason why there shouldn't be a roughly equal proportion of women in STEM, just social anachronisms.
> There's no biological reason why there shouldn't be a roughly equal proportion of women in STEM, just social anachronisms.
That's an assumption. We don't know. :-)
I don't know that future neuroscience is going agree with that statement. The male and female brain do differ on average, and it would seem that these differences may be related to the types of thinking that STEM encourages. Math maybe not so much, but engineering? Maybe. We don't know for sure yet. A lot of people love to think that there's no difference between men an women, but science chips away at that idealism every decade.
But there's no reason to treat men or women any differently with regards to STEM, true. We just have to remember that there may be some base-level biological self-filtering that happens. And if it does, that's OK.
I want to change the ratio in web development because my goal in life is to unleash latent human potential. It pisses me off when people don't, or can't, live up to their potential. I believe that the gross underrepresentation of women in software represents a ton of latent human potential, because I also believe that women a) are capable of creating great software, and b) want to.
I'm not sure this has anything to do with attracting women to web development. These women were already attracted to web development -- or they wouldn't be in Girl Develop It or any of those other groups, right? This is about DevBootCamp patting themselves on the back for meeting their quota.
And regardless, this whole "invite women first" thing doesn't really address the basic gender imbalance problems in the industry.
In my experience (and I'm aware that this is perfectly anecdotal), the problem with getting women to be professional web developers has more to do with the industry's attitude toward women and less to do with inviting them in. It does no good to invite 60% women to a conference if they're all going to be treated badly or like sexual objects the entire time.
I have two female friends that I am mentoring in web development, and they are super ecstatic to have this extra skill, and they're actually pretty good at it (better than some of my male coworkers, if I'm being honest). But most often they go to conferences and get dismissed because they're women or get harassed because they have boobs (even though some of these men have bigger man-boobs).
I hear this over and over again: they don't feel comfortable at industry events or even in the workplace
TL;DR - I don't think it's about "attracting" women so much as making the industry gender-agnostic. It shouldn't matter whether I'm male or female, so long as I put out good code.
Great response. At RailsGirls PDX they asked how everyone had found out about the event. I'd found out through a female dev mailing list I'm a part of, but I was really happy to learn that many - if not most - of them had been encouraged by male co-workers, friends and significant others who knew the girl had an interest in dev or just tech, but were intimidated (even by other female developers) and thus didn't take part in existing communities.
There's definitely some "patting ourselves of our backs" going on here. I was surprised and proud that we surpassed the ratio that we set for ourselves. I figured I'd share what worked for us.
Getting more women to show up may be the easiest part of "changing the ratio". We have lots of other work to do in order to make this stick, which includes working with employers to ensure our students, regardless of gender, are successful after they're hired.
One of the best comments on this topic I've seen was by a girl at Stuyvesant on learning computer science:
"Before taking the mandated Intro class last year, when I heard 'computer science,' I pictured nerdy boys, who turned into nerdy bearded men, slouched over huge computers and click-clacking out codes that meant nothing to me. There’s nothing wrong with nerdy boys, comp sci just didn’t seem like something I would ever be interested in.
"This image was quickly shattered in that first intro class. Computer science started to resonate with me when I worked on my first project, creating a simple animation of a string quartet using Netlogo. It was while I was working on this that I realized comp sci isn’t about nerdy boys sitting at computers and coding out nonsense that turns into violent video games and complicated math problem solvers. No, comp sci isn’t this at all. Comp sci, as I have found in my classes at Stuy, is a medium for expression, a place for creation and creativity."
Wow. Now I wonder why it took me so long to see this answer, it's so obvious in retrospect. Of course women don't go into CS in large part because they consider male nerds unattractive. Though male sexism is an important reason, I always suspected that it's not the main reason.
This explanation sounds offensive, but to me it's quite uplifting. Instead of giving women gifts to compensate for our "creepiness", we need to become non-creepy, and women will come. It's a winning proposition for everyone, no?
You aren't creepy. This particular issue is reverse sexism. But heaven forbid it should ever be seriously discussed while there are all those 'neckbeards' out there to point fingers at.
Hmm, it doesn't seem to be prejudice against all men, but negative stereotyping of male nerds in particular. Many men are guilty of it too, unfortunately. Even many of those who try to get more women into CS.
I think you guys are missing the point. She's just a high school girl talking about 'boys' the way high school girls do.
What I'd hope people key in on is that computer science is a medium of expression, creation, and creativity. I don't think anyone here would disagree with that, but it's apparently not so obvious to everyone, and worth driving that point home when selling the field, particularly to women who may value that aspect of a career as much or more than men.
> I don't think anyone here would disagree with that
Why, I disagree. In the majority of programming jobs that exist in the world, any attempt at creative expression will be shot down.
In fact, if the feel-good stories are true and women are indeed better than men at communication and creativity, that might be already sufficient to explain why there are so few of them in programming jobs, writing Java beans to automate payrolls and such. If you had such strengths, would you want such a job?
When I lived in NYC two years ago, nerdy bearded men were in vogue. And everyone in every demographic was slouched in front of a computer for a large portion of the day.
Pairing an activity with another highly-gendered activity will most definitely change the gender ratio of your combined activities.
Here 'yoga' is playing the role 'pizza and beer' does at most hackathons - I know there's tons of exceptions, but generally speaking, women like yoga more than men, and men like eating pizza and drinking beer more than women.
I bet you could adjust the gender ratio even more if you mixed in more female-leaning activities - for instance, you could bring in a pedicurist.
The social engineer in me wonders what our profession would look like if every technical course over a couple of decades was followed by getting your nails done and a wine tasting.
I'm going to be the jerk that says using yoga and pedicures as a means to bring women in might actually be more alienating than welcoming to many of us. I have no interest in any of those activities intermingling, and I think it sends a message that we need to "genderize" things to make them relevant or appealing. Now, even though I'm theoretically being targeted, I feel even more like the odd [wo]man out.
Sell me on the fact that I'll be leaving with a product I want to make - something generic like a blog or a store or a social media site. Sell me on the fact that I will be able to know how to design it, maintain it and expand on it by graduation. Sell me on the fact that I'm also going to be around total novices and where gender ratios are equaled out. Show me success stories of men and women alike.
Everyone has ambitions and dreams. Not everyone wants to do poses and color their nails.
I agree with minicole that "female" activities like pedicures are off-putting even insulting. I am watching my girlfriend, who is an accomplished artist, move into web development. She has a whole different set of values and weighting of those values than I do or do the male developers I work with. I firmly believe that there is a huge benefit in letting women apply their values to projects and letting them know that their values are appreciated. My experience is that this results in a more cooperative collaborative environment.
Not being a jerk at all. If it's alienating, it's alienating.
Although it's interesting, because I like being targeted. If someone organized a nearby tech event that was accompanied by a big rack of ribs and an evening of firing off guns into the desert, I'd sign up for that sucker in a heartbeat.
Perhaps that's because I would never think 'oh, the organizers of this event are just putting these activities together to attract more people like me' - the social engineering wouldn't be obvious to me, and if it was I just wouldn't care.
I wonder why the organizers didn't just say 'okay, this event has 50% tickets for men and 50% tickets for women'? That'd certainly be the simplest way of getting to the ratio they wanted, and it wouldn't involve mixing in other gendery activities.
Totally with you on that last point. I think what set off my alarm with yoga in particular is that while it is a fantastic meditative and healthy activity, it's often very sexualized.
In reading more about it on their site and an AMA someone did about their experience five months ago, it's a mandatory morning activity they've been doing for awhile now and there don't seem to be any complaints (though a blog, http://newbietoruby.wordpress.com/, says that while he enjoys it, it took two hours out of his day and sometimes stressed him out).
Well, their stated goal is a 1:1 ratio of men to women. While their actual result of a 40/60 men to women ratio is closer to their goal than their estimated 85/15 ratio, they still didn't reach it.
If having a predominately male crowd at a hackathon is a bad thing, doesn't it also follow that having a predominately female crowd is bad as well?
N.B.: I wouldn't call 40/60 predominate, so to me, it seems like their methods were nearly good enough.
Male crowd, female crowd, whoever the organizers want at their event is perfectly fine by me - after all, it's their event. I'm just interested in the tools they use to get wherever they want to be.
> The social engineer in me wonders what our profession would look like if every technical course over a couple of decades was followed by getting your nails done and a wine tasting.
Parties would have classy wine that people better understood and everyone's nails would look fantastic. Plus, rough cuticles from keyboard usage are a thing of the past.
I was also expecting something different, but I like the overall tone of "Women are welcome here, and they're welcome to speak." I think a lot of tech companies get the first one right, but they don't know how to communicate the second point. With study after study showing that women speak less when surrounded by men, promoting the event woman-to-woman sends a powerful message.
I thought the title was 'Learning how to attract women with web development', so the article wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but still a great (if short) read.
Could you elaborate further on what you did exactly to get the male attendants percentage to decrease and the effect you think it had?
I'm assuming that you expected the female name to draw attention to the fact that a woman was in charge, or something similar, but I will however note than on the second Tweet posted, there were more comments from Males than Females.
Looks like the set out to do this, and succeed with just a few simple changes to the marketing plan and adding Yoga to the days line up. The last seems like a nice technique to me as it sends the message that "women are welcome here" while not saying that in the materials (As such explicit marketing to a particular demo tends to change the feel of the event for everyone else).
On the whole quite simple - and in their case effective.
I would agree that technology (development) is a field that is not always friendly towards women. Being a male dominated field (like construction, auto mechanics, airline pilots, doctors, lawyers, politics are all male-dominated as well) means that ideas from women are sometimes dismissed simply because they are from women, or unnecessary sexual or sexist comments are made that make women not feel welcome. I think that's an area this industry needs to improve upon, being more welcome.
But that's not to say it needs to be 1:1. (There's no high-paid profession that is 1:1, is there?) I think it's valid to question that we need to have an equal ratio, although I agree we have to improve a lot.
I'm exhausted by this ironic and sexist, never-ending debate of the why and how to get more women into tech. If we* want to treat women equally, why is it our duty to provide support structures and incentives?
*we as in the general HN audience, which is safely assumed to be largely male
If I wanted to take up a hobby or skill that I felt was sort of "woman's only" thing, like knitting, I would be uncomfortable joining a stitch 'n bitch group initially, and I'm sure a lot of women would have reservations about a guy popping in to their knit nights. I'm sure some would be thrilled that a guy would take an interest, but it would be a novelty. I would happily learn on my own through Internet tutorials, but I wouldn't have a support community to learn from and bounce ideas off.
I think the same sort of feeling would surround women trying to break into a male-dominated activity.
I try to think about what might convince me to take steps into a knitting program (assuming I actually wanted to learn). If I expected that it would be completely women I would be more uncomfortable, but if it was more 'professional' and less casual, I would probably be less anxious. I think a professional environment with a sort of "we're here to learn, not chat, not network" would make things easier because there's less social pressure, it's more focus on the task.
Likewise, I think a "Beer and Pizza knitting workshop" would be as much a turn-off. I think it's just the idea that it's an emphasis on the social side of it. I know what I am doing is socially different, and the more social and friendly the atmosphere is the more awkward it is to picture.
For instance, if I'm going to a class, and the image I conjure is a row of desks or something, someone teaching a technique, maybe coming by individually, helping with a difficult process, answering questions. That's pretty neutral, I can picture myself there. If the image I conjure is a bunch of guys standing around the tailgate of a pick-up truck drinking beer, eating pizza, belching, and talking about their colorwork and cast-on techniques, I'm going to feel uncomfortable. Not only that, I'm going to feel patronized by the class.
Now, obviously regardless of the circumstances, the class is not going to be at all like either of those images in my head. But what would cause me to choose to sign up or not has far more basis on that picture.
I think if you want to encourage women to join your class, advertise it in a way that makes it look like it's not judgmental, like it's not patronizing. Something that's not some apparantly watered down "web design for women" class. Keep it professional, respectful, and above board. Include women in your advertising material.
If I wanted to learn to knit, and I came across a class that wasn't billed as a sort of chatty woman's group but instead just a class on techniques; if it made it apparent in their description that men were welcome; and it wasn't directed at specifically ignorant men who wanted to learn so they could say they can do it too; then I would be comfortable going. Past that, I would have to know it exists, so if there was some sort of men's knitting mailing list that I was on, it would be a good place to send it.
Why?
That's a serious question.
My hobbies include writing, blacksmithing, cooking, and ceramics.
In writing, around half the people are women.
In blacksmithing perhaps 3% are women.
In cooking probably 90% of the blogs I read and people who take classes are women.
In ceramics it's again 90% female.
I have absolutely no desire to increase the percentage of women blacksmiths...and I have absolutely no desire to decrease the percentage of women pot throwers.
Why should I want to change these?
Why do you want to change the ratio in web development?