
Why we don't need more women in tech... yet - jolie
http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/women-in-tech/
======
jerf
I'm not sure this argument stands up to the facts. Women have been pouring
into every discipline over the past twenty+ years. That's a significant number
because we're now talking people born in the 1990s, which can not be said to
be a decade untouched by feminism. Women are graduating with more degrees then
men now, women are the majority on campus, and the proportions are rising.
Every discipline, engineering and computer science no exception, has been
soliciting for women and minorities for decades now.

And yet, as pointed out in the article, the percentage of computer science
degrees awarded to women is going _down_ , which I think is an acceptable
proxy for the presence of women in tech. Yet numerous other "male" fields have
been entered and in some cases dominated by women. The very same women who
were raised on Barbies and ponies.

Is the _only_ theory that fits the facts that somehow, virtually uniquely
across all the fields into which the women have come streaming in, despite
equal if not at times greater solicitation for women to come in to the
discipline, computer science has somehow escaped the incredible dominance of
political correctness on campuses and managed to create this fantastically and
uniquely hostile environment for women, and therefore has some sort of major
responsibility for changing itself? The _only_ hypothesis?

What about this one: In an environment where a thousand voices are shouting
for the women to come study $X, it doesn't take very much of a natural
disinclination towards a certain discipline for it to very, very rarely be the
top choice for a woman. It's not as if there aren't disciplines unbalanced
every bit as much in favor of women, and for the same reason; it doesn't take
much natural disinclination, for whatever the reason, for a field to very,
very rarely be the top choice for the man.

Every year that goes by like this, every year that the STEM initiatives get
even more strident and better funded, every year that women continue streaming
from our very-politically-correct lower schooling systems into our very-
politically-correct higher schooling systems and choose not to study computer
science, I find the hypothesis that computer science is somehow deficient that
much less compelling. If computer science were any more solicitous of women
we'd have to _draft_ them.

(Note: For once I do not necessarily mean "politically correct" as a slur. For
the purposes of this message, I merely mean that the idea that primary or
higher education has been systematically structured against woman for the past
twenty years is absurd. The _suspicion_ of sexism in this environment, in this
timeframe, is enough to end your career advancement, if not your career
itself. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to consider a hypothesis other than the
"deck is stacked" hypothesis that we've been using for something like _fifty
years_ now and consider just for a moment some other hypotheses, in the
interests of science.

I am also confining myself to the question of the education time; even if the
workplace is somehow hostile to women today, the ultimate solution to that
problem is graduating more women into it; between that and the copious and
rather strong laws on this front it'll work itself out after that.)

~~~
alsomike
Here's actual data: <http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/cwsem/PGA_049131>

What "natural disinclination" do you think women have, exactly? They don't
like math? Women received 47% of math undergrad degrees in 2002 and that
number has been stable for 20 years. They don't like computers? The physical
sciences use computers pretty heavily, and women received 42% of
undergraduates degrees in those fields in 2002, compared to 28% in 1983. They
don't like the geeky sci-fi image? 42% of astronomy degrees went to women in
2002, compared to 25% in 1983.

Engineering degrees are still male dominated, women only got 20% of those, but
that's still 7 points higher than the 1983 number. The percentage of computer
science degrees that went to women decreased from 36% in 1983 to 27% in 2002,
to 18% in 2008.

At least we can agree that there's something unique about computer science
that it goes against the trend.

~~~
jerf
I think you think you are disproving my point with those numbers, but I think
it reinforces it. In what exact manner has the computer field failed to be
accepting of women in the way that somehow math and the other physical
sciences haven't? In the strongly-politically-correct environment that all
women entering college have grown up in (and I reiterate my parenthetical in
my first posting for those who may have forgotten), can someone show me
exactly what it is that computer science and engineering have somehow failed
when the evidence clearly shows that efforts to reach out to women have been
very successful on the whole?

Is tarring thousands of people with the charge of rampant sexism _really_ the
only hypothesis we can discuss every time this issue comes up?

You ask me what "natural disinclination" I think women have, but you're
getting the logic backwards. I'm suggesting that if you look at the data that
it may suggest the idea that maybe there is a natural disinclination, not that
I axiomatically assert that there is one and therefore it is the explanation.
Can we at least _consider_ that hypothesis, rather than implicitly and rather
frequently accusing engineering of being somehow the sole holdout of
troglodytes and evilly conspiring to hold down the little girls, who have
somehow managed to transcend all the other evil conspiracies in all the other
fields but just can't seem to shake this one?

~~~
nocipher
I think you misunderstand. Your point is that computer science, as a field,
has done many things to attract women and that it has still been unsuccessful.
Furthermore, since so much effort has been put forth in this pursuit, the
computer science community cannot be held responsible for the gender
inequality.

I'm not sure that that is what you are trying to convey, but that is about the
clearest argument I can read from what you wrote. If this is indeed your
argument, then it sounds like you are in violent agreement with the author of
the article. The major difference appears to be that you argue the gender
discrepancy is just women's preference whereas the article posits it to be a
consequence of gender mores (an admittedly subtle distinction).

If I have misunderstood, I'd be interested in clarification.

~~~
demallien
Um, I _think_ that jerf is trying to say that your figures can be interpreted
another way. For example, maybe back in '83, computer science was
comparatively friendlier towards women than other maths-oriented degrees, such
as engineering, medecine, and astronomy. But as these other degrees have
become less mysogynistic, they have successfully taken women away from maths
disciplines that had previously been comparatively friendlier to women. It
would be interesting to know how the percentage of women choosing maths-heavy
degrees has evolved over the same period.

~~~
sesqu
According to the link above, there were approximately equal amounts of
24-year-old men and women getting bachelor's degrees in 1980, but
undergraduating men proportionally outnumbered women in natural sciences and
engineering 2.66:1. By 1998, bachelor's degrees had increased by 34% for men
and 85% for women, but in NS&E the increases had been 23% and 110%, leaving
the proportional gender ratio of NS&E undergraduates at 2.14:1. Notably,
engineering degrees for men fell by 21%, which had a larger impact than women
entering.

I didn't hunt for post-bubble figures.

------
kellishaver
As one of those elusive women in tech... I don't know. I have mixed feelings
on the whole issue and usually try to avoid it, mostly because I just don't
see it as a big deal. I've never felt like an outcast or that I didn't belong
in this field because of my gender, nor have I ever been made to feel like the
center of attention because of it (thank goodness). It just is.

Of all the women I know personally, only one other works as a programmer. The
others seem to have no interest, and not because of some social pressure or
stereotype, or the long hours, or some perceived gender bias, but because the
work itself just doesn't interest to them. So I don't see why it should be a
big deal that they're not doing something they don't want to do.

I guess the question then becomes could/should the industry be made more
appealing to women? Maybe. I have no idea how that could be accomplished,
though.

Maybe it's not the industry that's the problem, but the lack of exposure to
it. Mothers are big role models for little girls, and with less women in tech
to begin with, there aren't as many of them to spark that interest in their
daughters. Maybe more encouragement from female teachers and geek dads would
do the trick.

I was a perpetual tinkerer as a kid, always building, creating, experimenting,
and what have you. My father encouraged it. He kept me in a steady supply of
lumber and nails, bought me chemistry sets, erector sets, a telescope, radio
kits, helped me build my first computer and bought me programming books. By
high school, I was a licensed HAM radio operator who was writing programs,
designing circuits, wiring houses, and training search dogs.

I guess I never did fall into the stereotypical gender role I was supposed to,
but it was never pushed upon me, either, nor was it discouraged. I simply
followed my interests and was encouraged and allowed to do so. I try to do the
same with my own daughter and, yeah, she's a bit of a geek in the making.

Anyway, this is getting kind of long and rambling. I'm not sure where the
problem lies, but I'm still not convinced it's as big a problem as it's made
out to be. It's kind of like asking why there aren't more 20yr olds in the
folk music industry. Answer: because they don't want to.

~~~
zeteo
A close friend of mine recently graduated from college. She was quickly
offered a couple of programming jobs, but turned them down. After a while, she
altogether stopped applying for any programming jobs. Finally, after one year
of searching, she found a (non-programming) consulting job that she jumped
onto. When I asked her why she avoided programming so much, she said that
spending 8+ hours a day interacting with just a computer was close to her
personal idea of hell. She likes to interact with people, meet new people etc.

Now granted this is just one data point. But, for me at least, it opens the
door to a different hypothesis:

1\. Women have a significantly different nature of the work / salary trade-off
from men. 2\. Reduced interaction with people is a put-off for women. 3\.
Thus, only half of society is really willing to do the geekiest tech-sector
jobs, which puts a premium on the salaries for those jobs.

~~~
kscaldef
This sort of thing also tells me that people have an incorrect notion of what
our work is really like. As a senior developer, I spend quite a bit of time
interacting with people: discussing the problems our customers have; how we
can make our product better; how I can make other coworker's jobs easier; how
my systems will interact with other components; reviewing proposals, feature
requests, and requirement documents and providing feedback to help refine
them; reviewing other developers' code and mentoring junior members of the
team.

I absolutely _don't_ spend 8 hours just interacting with a computer. I won't
argue that there aren't any jobs in the field like that; and, in fact, entry-
level positions do tend more towards "just implement this spec". But I think
it's misleading to give people the idea that there is no human interaction
involved in our jobs.

~~~
zeteo
Yes, but when you first take the job you'll spend at least a couple of years
dealing mainly with just the computer.

------
nhashem
I blame John Romero.

John Romero, for those who don't know (or used to know, before his name faded
into obscurity over a decade ago), was at one point best known for his work on
idSoftware and his creation of several milestone games such as Doom. He then
split off to release his own game, Daikatana, a move that garnered a
particular amount of hype. The message at the time in 1997 seemed to be,
"Video games are cool. So maybe _making_ video games is cool?"

As a young high schooler in 1997, reading about John Romero in the late 1990s
basically made me want to be a programmer. He was the proverbial "rock star,"
right down to the ridiculous hair and outfits
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romero_3designers.jpg>).

By now I've probably jogged your memory and you know the end. Daikatana
flopped and Romero ended up with so much egg on his face he pretty much faded
into obscurity. The rock star programmer died as a concept (only to be
resurrected 8-10 years later in job descriptions for companies wanting
brilliant 25 year olds willing to solve all their problems and work for
peanuts).

I believe an alternate reality exists, where John Romero succeeded, Daikatana
was a smash hit, and the art of programming truly entered pop culture
celebrity. Romero's dizzying fame and fortune soon found him in dizzying
benders in Vegas. His successors continue on the trail he's blazed, bedding
supermodels and entering rehab in six month intervals. Smash hit video game
after smash hit video game is released, their programming teams rising in
notoriety, and a Hollywood exec glances over a spec script and thinks, "hmm,
maybe we should make that show about programmers." The working title is
changed to "Turing's Anatomy" and then it's released, featuring Dr. Meredith
Turing, who works as the principal engineer for the Seattle Grace Gaming
Company, where she heads a team of programmers in solving software problems
with unorthodox diagnostic approaches, while struggling to prevent the
expectations of her genius grandfather from overwhelming her.

Is that reality better than what we're dealing with now? I have no idea. I do
know though, that in that reality, women make up 50% of computer science
students.

~~~
hvs
I highly doubt that the failure of one company caused all women to give up on
software development because it wasn't cool any more (Carmack was equally or
more of rock star). Especially since _working_ for a game company is one of
the most grueling experiences in the software industry. On top of that, as
"famous" as he may have seemed, I challenge you to find someone who didn't
play computer games that even remotely knows who he is.

------
chc
I'm usually wary of this topic, since it's both overplayed and has a very poor
signal-to-noise ratio, but Jolie's posts are what it _should_ be like — high
on facts, low on melodrama, and coming to an actual, pragmatic conclusion.

------
smokey_the_bear
This clearly isn't the heart of the article, but are transgendered people
really underrepresented in tech? It's anecdotal, but I'd estimate that 90% of
the transgendered people I've met have been in tech.

~~~
ams6110
All kinds of social outcasts seem to be over-represented in tech. It's like
that one lunch table in school where everyone who wasn't popular sat.

------
treeface
There was a journal paper about a year ago by Sapna Cheryan called _Ambient
Belonging: How Stereotypical Cues Impact Gender Participation in Computer
Science_ that you can read here:

[http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Courses/ILT/ILT0010/Ambientbe...](http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Courses/ILT/ILT0010/AmbientbelongingHowstereotypicalcuesimpactgenderparticipationincomputerscience.pdf)

The dumbed-down version is here:

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/star-trek-keeps-
wo...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/star-trek-keeps-women-
computer-science/)

In short, it appears that CS has a serious grassroots marketing problem.

------
joshzayin
I think that, apart from a slightly misleading title, this article is really
well done, and gets to the core of the matter. By and large, I think, society
starts conditioning for gender roles very early-girls get dolls, guys get
erector sets. (in general)

But it certainly doesn't _have_ to be that way--there's no reason why people
can't get more engineering-oriented toys for female children as well, and I'm
sure most people who read HN would be more likely to get toys along those
lines for their children, regardless of gender.

The issue becomes, then, convincing society at large that this is an issue
that needs attention, and that the typical gender roles and toys only
reinforce inequality (like representation in tech). That, unfortunately, is
difficult, when some (very vocal) people refuse to acknowledge that there is
any discrimination in society, and many would think that changing culture
around toys is "just being PC."

Such a large change would take a massive effort. While the STEM initiatives
going on today, especially those directed at minorities, are a step in the
right direction, for them to be effective, I think they'd have to get a _lot_
more mainstream awareness--right now, some people are aware of them, but the
majority, in my experience, are not, and even among those that are aware of
it, not many a) think it's a good idea and b) care.

Perhaps if a bunch of celebrities got behind it, ads were taken out online and
on primetime TV, and politicians started caring? Maybe calling politicians to
support STEM initiatives, especially minorities, could help?

~~~
jpark
I'm not entirely convinced that "society starts conditioning for gender roles
very early". You'd have to show me hard data. On the other hand, there is
fascinating evidence to prove the reverse:

Case in point is David Reimer, who received the first ever sex re-assignment
surgery conducted on a developmentally normal child at age 22 months. David
became Brenda.

"At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refused to play with dolls
and would beat up her brother and seize his toy cars and guns."

<http://www.slate.com/id/2101678/>

~~~
joshzayin
Hm, that's an interesting story. (Somewhat weird and immoral that they would
change someone's biological gender before they have the ability to understand
what's going on, much less consent, but we can look at the case.)

I don't think that Reimer's case disproves what I say--I was dealing more with
the _roles_ which the genders often play, and the _fields_ to which men vs.
women are more likely to enter, while this case deals with gender _identity_.
Gender identity is likely not something which is affected significantly by
environmental changes, but it is far more likely (I unfortunately don't have
numbers and don't know where to look--does anyone know of a relevant study?)
that gender roles could be significantly affected by upbringing.

There's no natural reason why women shouldn't go into tech, other than that
it's a male-dominated field and that women are, in modern society, often
encouraged to avoid such fields.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
As sad as the story is, I find it a bit of a stretch that a boy would
"naturally" tear off a dress at age 2 either, since children of both sexes
were dressed in such manners for many centuries. It seems much more likely
that he'd picked up cues that he was supposed to be male and was rejecting
things that his culture told him were female.

~~~
joshzayin
It's entirely possible that he did. Wikipedia
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Formation_of_ge...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Formation_of_gender_identity))
says that "studies estimate the age at which gender identity is formed at
around 2-3."

It's probably both cultural and biological in this case, I'd imagine. (it
could be that he'd learned that dresses were associated with females through
cultural conditioning, but he mentally knew on some level [maybe subconscious]
that he was male, or something along those lines.)

------
Tichy
I have been a professional software developer for 10 years now. Today on my
way to work I have realized once again that in all those years, I have not
held a single job that was any fun at all. (Not for want of switching - the
longest I ever lasted at one company was one year).

Programming is fun, but programming jobs suck. At least the vast majority of
them. Save for starting my own business, my hopes are close to zero to find a
fun programming job in the future.*

Maybe women are just better than men at figuring such things out and going for
jobs that are more fun.

This would also explain the decline of women in tech since the eighties. I
suppose cubicles and all that only appeared around that time.

* I would like jobs like Data Mining for Backtype or TheSixtyOne, but jobs like that are rare. I also don't have the required portfolio yet.

------
jfager
I largely agree with the conclusion, but where are all these people who claim
that women working non-tech jobs in tech companies magically count as tech
jobs? This is the first time I've ever heard the issue framed this way. I've
_always_ heard it framed as a problem with the number of women choosing CS and
math degrees and making it out to industry.

------
spitfire
Why aren't there women in technology today? Probably because they're smart
enough to stay away. Technology today, particularly startups, is an ego
driven, fad chasing death-march.

What sane person would want to spend their time with emotional children
reinventing the wheel and following every fad that comes along? Instead you
could work in pr, or management, or even cabinetmaking.

So why don't we have women in tech? Because they have more foresight than us.

~~~
TheSOB88
That's pretty sexist, isn't it?

~~~
aphexairlines
Trashing the field isn't sexist. Bitter, maybe.

~~~
brownleej
I think the implication was that it is sexist to imply that women have better
judgment than men, and that this causes them to stay out of tech. It's the
first part that's sexist, not the second.

------
Tichy
I've heard many stories about people who tried to raise their girls like boys,
only to find that eventually they would still crave for pink stuff. Edit: pink
== girly, I didn't mean explicitly pink

~~~
nagrom
Those stories may be correct, but they are inevitably misguided. The blue-for-
boys and pink-for-girls convention seems to be a 20thC invention:
<http://histclo.com/gender/color.html>

~~~
Tichy
I am sure it is somehow culturally induced, but it might not be in the control
of the parents to prevent it? There is other environment besides the parent's
home.

~~~
nagrom
I absolutely agree with you that it is cultural influence - that's my point!
There is no specific relation between gender and colour, it is entirely
culturally-induced.

Parents may say that they have raised their child gender-neutral, but that is
to some extent impossible since gender-norms are all around us, often
unconsciously so. When they see their child craving gender-specific toys, it's
more likely an indicator that they have not been as successful as they would
wish to be.

~~~
Tichy
It's not so easy to change culture, though. Also I think at least some parts
of culture have evolved because of biological differences between the genders.
I don't think women will ever be exactly the same as men - unless we all
converge on some new androgynous type.

------
xmmm
[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883](http://www.smbc-
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