
Solving the Women-in-Tech Pipeline Problem - FredBrach
http://annekejong.blogspot.ca/2012/04/solving-women-in-tech-pipeline-problem.html
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csense
It isn't obvious to me that women being underrepresented in technology fields
is a problem, any more than women being overrepresented in early childhood
education.

Let me be clear: I don't have a problem with women in programming, computer
science, regular science, or any other tech field. I don't have a problem with
a lack of women in these fields either, as long as it's not due to
discrimination.

Discrimination is crappy -- but it's not clear to me that it's the cause of
the disparity. This isn't the Victorian era or the early 20th century when
women were expected to stay at home; based on personal observations, sexist
workplaces are few and far between, at least in our industry. And the free
market should solve most discrimination problems neatly: If all the companies
in the world are terrible sexists who never employ women, then someone can
start a startup with a saner hiring policy, snap up the un-utilized surplus of
girl talent, and eat their competitors' lunch.

From the article:

> Teach computer science to middle school girls

I'd change this to:

> Teach programming to middle or high school students

A lot of schools' computer offerings are limited to "learn to use MS Office"
type courses.

True, not everyone is cut out to be a world-class programmer. But
understanding what's going on "under the hood" really helps you figure out
computer problems; the logical thinking skills you develop from debugging are
quite general; and being able to write simple scripts is occasionally useful.

