

Here Are No Women On StackOverflow… Or Are There? - phwd
http://www.banane.com/2012/06/20/there-are-no-women-on-stackoverflow-or-are-there/

======
droithomme
We have had article after article claiming it is obvious women are being
oppressed in the tech industry. Every week there is one of these. Many make
bigoted claims about male engineers, enforcing stereotypes of male geeks I
have never actually seen in industry.

Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of
contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming
absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?

~~~
ktizo
_Where are the technical contributions?_

A selection of some of the major early contributions in chronological order;

first programmer - Ada Lovelace

foundational paper for computerized algebra - Grete Hermann

original programmers of the ENIAC - Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Fran Bilas,
Kay McNulty, Marlyn Wescoff, and Ruth Lichterman

first compiler written - Grace Hopper

first person to use a computer in a private home & first developer of an
operating system (LAP) for the first minicomputer - Mary Allen Wilkes

And all of this was done before Mary Keller became the first American woman to
earn a PhD in Computer Science, in 1965, and it wasn't until 1989 that IBM had
their first female fellow, Frances E. Allen.

If you are claiming to be finding it hard to find technical contributions to
computer science by women and that you see no evidence of discrimination, it
means you are being willfully blind, at best.

~~~
Produce
Wil van der Aalst – business process management, process mining, Petri nets

Hal Abelson – intersection of computing and teaching

Serge Abiteboul – database theory

Samson Abramsky – game semantics

Leonard Adleman – RSA, DNA computing

Manindra Agrawal – polynomial-time primality testing

Luis von Ahn – human-based computation

Alfred Aho – compilers book, the 'a' in AWK

Amos Nuwasiima – PHP Programming book

Frances E. Allen – compiler optimization

Alexander Scaranti – Image Processing, Image Retrieval

Gene Amdahl – supercomputer developer, founder of Amdahl Corporation

A. Annerl – multidimensional processing, computational complexity theory

Andrew Appel – compilers text books

Bruce Arden - programming language compilers (GAT, MAD), virtual memory
architecture, MTS

Sanjeev Arora – PCP theorem (Hahaha. Right, I want to see who came up with
Ketamine theorem.)

A. E. Hugo - parallel computing on heterogeneous multicore
architectures[citation needed]

John Vincent Atanasoff – computer pioneer

Ali Aydar - computer scientist and CEO of Sporcle

Leonard Ayunar - Computer Programming Enthusiast, 1997 - At Present Software
Developer

That's just surnames beginning with A. -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_scientists>

~~~
ktizo
I wasn't trying to find a massive list, droithomme asked _"where are the
technical contributions"_ by women in computing, not _"who has the biggest
list"_. Really, all I needed to write down was Grace Hopper. Compilers being
fairly useful in the field.

~~~
Produce
Did everyone miss the point of that comment? Most of the names on my list are
not women.

~~~
ktizo
I know they are not. I was commenting on that. I assumed that you posted a big
list to demonstrate the lack of women in CS.

[edit] reading over, I could have been a lot more clear. I should have said
_"which group"_ rather than _"who"_

------
codenerdz
I for one dont care who answers my question, man, woman, member of long lost
indian tribe from amazon or a teapot, as long as the question is answered and
i can get on with my work.

In fact, I fail to see the point of this article. Even its title fails to make
a point. It does succeed in producing headline-baiting effect which implies
sexism in StackOverflow community.

~~~
streptomycin
If the goal is to get the most and best answers, and you're not engaging all
demographics, then you can get more and better answers by doing that.

~~~
codenerdz
It seems that there are 3 types of people answering question on StackOverflow:

1) People genuinely wishing to share their knowledge

2) People that are chasing gamified elements of the reputation system

3) People that belong somewhere between #1 & #2

I dont see anything that prevents any demographic from participating as long
as fall into one of these 3 categories. And i dont see how being of a
particular gender or race or ethnicity precludes one from sharing their
knowledge on StackOverflow

~~~
streptomycin
Then you're not paying attention to the society around you. You really think
women and men have equal proclivities for engaging in public competition?

------
MiguelHudnandez
This article is interesting because I had never considered gender to be a
component of the community at StackOverflow. To me, it is about questions and
answers, both of which are measured for quality. It seems to be a pure
meritocracy.

In the end, I don't think it matters what the gender of the participants is.
But if for some reason the site could better serve people of either gender,
it'd be interesting to know what tactics could accomplish that.

~~~
sp332
It's important to have a diverse group of people asking and answering
questions. If the diversity is so low that the site can't even attract a non-
minority like women, that doesn't bode well for the quality of the community.

~~~
cantastoria
Why? If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex
"diversity" in and of itself bring to the table. Should I feel extra good
about getting a quality answer from a black female programmer over a white
male one? If so why? It would seem to me that using diversity to assess
community quality on a programming Q&A site is a poor measure given it has no
bearing on programming ability. Unless of course one is purely interested in
aesthetics.

~~~
sp332
_If I'm able to get quality answers what advantage does racial/sex "diversity"
in and of itself bring to the table._

I think this is a wrong assumption. Qualitatively, it should be obvious that a
diversity of perspectives and backgrounds would yield more answers. (Also a
larger group of contributors can post more content to the site.) Empirically,
multiple studies have shown that diverse groups are better at creative problem
solving. Example:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=685821...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6858215)

~~~
cantastoria
It's not obvious at all unless you're talking about a diversity of programming
backgrounds in which case I agree. C++ doesn't work differently when it's used
by a black or female programmer. Same goes for programming perspectives in
general. I don't design my classes differently because I grew up in the inner-
city (nor would I need to tailor an answer for someone who did). I think your
taking an argument usually reserved for social environments that are more
dependent on interaction and group dynamics (e.g. a classroom) and trying to
apply it to a more static engineering one. And while that study did find that
increased diversity improved performance on "business measures", it did not
find a causal link that specifically pointed to diversity as the reason,
although I'm not sure it would have much bearing here anyway. Being creative
in a broader business/social context is not the same as solving the type of
specific engineering/programming questions generally found on SO. Programming
skill is completely divorced from race/gender/class and that's something we
should all be happy about.

------
kristofferR
I honestly think that a lot of the perceived sexism on anonymous places, like
the supposed gender downvotes in this instance, just is the Internet being the
Internet.

Okay, this may be a little sexist, but my impression is that women take
negative stuff on the Internet (wether it's a mean comment or a downvote) more
personal than men does. It may be because the emotional part of the brain is
more developed in women's brains or just because they often don't have the
same Internet experience as many men does. Stack Overflow can be a tough and
ruthless place, but that doesn't make it sexist at all, even if some women are
turned off by it.

Anyway, by looking for a meaning for something that doesn't make sense, like
the downvotes in internet communities like in this case, you'll most likely
find something (but often not the real reason). It's easy to "see" ghosts -
that doesn't make them real.

Sexism is real and should try to be prevented, but unfortunately sometimes it
seems to go a little bit overboard - either by actively looking for it (and
finding it everywhere) or making it sound like there aren't any differences
between men and women.

~~~
crazygringo
I think you make a good point, I don't know why you're being downvoted.

After all, the author of the article specifically mentions: "They don’t want
the grief of getting downvoted (because they are a woman)"

But the constructive question this leads to is: suppose the
upvote/downvote/karma/etc. model is fundamentally "competitive" and men find
themselves more comfortable with it than women do. (I'm not saying this is the
case, I'm just saying "suppose".)

Then, is there an alternate model that could be used which women would find
more rewarding, and participate more in? That would still promote good content
and behavior, and be able to counteract negative influences like vandalsim,
garbage answers, etc.?

I don't have the answer, but would love to hear insights.

------
breadbox
"StackOverflow is a meritocracy, therefore women should feel just as welcome
as men." Some women tell you that it's not. Is your first reaction: [a] we
should honestly try to listen to their feedback , or [b] publicly hypothesize
that they're probably just whining because they can't take the heat? One of
these answers leads to change, the other demonstrates how an egalitarian space
turns unwelcoming.

Sick of hearing how sexist Internet forums are? Good! Let's keep working to
change that. Other than discouraging people from pointing it out I mean.

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
To whom are you responding? I cannot find your quotation anywhere else in the
discussion, but I used the word "meritocracy" and I'm worried you interpreted
my comment elsewhere in the thread as hostile.

~~~
breadbox
Not at all. It's a rhetorical quotation; I'm not responding to any one person.
(I suppose that's part of the issue: it's rarely any one person that's
behaving badly; it's the cumulative effect.)

------
modarts
I'm starting to get tired of the hand wringing around the issue of an anti-
woman bias surrounding the software development/tech space.

Out of curiosity, does the same standards of equal representation exist for
predominantly woman dominated communities in the case of men?

~~~
kelseyinnis
Men tend to do better than women in female-dominated fields, it's been called
by some the glass escalator:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-o...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-
obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/)

------
cantastoria
_So there’s good news, there are women on StackOverflow. The visible ones are
far below the representative % of women in the industry._ So you can safely
determine that it’s an unfriendly-to-women place.*

Oy vey...

------
chrislomax
I know I shouldn't feel this way but I never see the poster of questions or
answers as women? I'm not saying at all that I think the value of a woman
programmer is any less than a mans, I just do not encounter women in
programming, full stop.

I actually started reading that post then as if it was from a man and I
thought they were making a sexist remark about "are my women here". When I
discovered it was a woman, I read it again in a different context completely.

I don't know what other peoples regions are like but whenever I encounter a
programmer anywhere, they are male?

~~~
gms7777
Wow, at all? That's surprising. Certainly there are more males in tech, but
that's still unusual. If you don't mind me asking, what region are you from?

Sadly, even as a woman, I myself am often guilty of assuming other programmers
are men, if I don't have any evidence to the contrary.

There was a new york times article recently about the same problem in a
different, and far more gender-balanced, field: medicine.
[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-
doctor...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctors-a-
he/)

~~~
chrislomax
I have never in my years encountered a woman developer, ever. I live in UK
near Manchester.

I have encountered my fair share of female SEO's but never actually a
developer?

I don't think from my point of view it can even be classed as stereotypical
when it's just the way it appears to be? (Where I am at least)

I don't think it matters either way but it is equally something that I have
ever thought about.

~~~
ktizo
One of the best coders I know is female. She left the UK to work out in the
far east where she is considered less of an oddity.

~~~
chrislomax
Well as I was writing that post I got to thinking, woman (in my opinion)
generally have a better idea of logic. Organisation and planning come second
nature to a lot of women I know, where men (in general again) it takes more to
get the planning right.

This makes me think that women would be better at programming, as a
generalisation.

This obviously cannot be applied to all people but in my opinion and
experience women are more logical and organised.

------
codenerdz
Lets put this all to rest:

@spolsky says that 24% of SO visitors are women

<https://twitter.com/spolsky/status/215906113470742528>

------
karinqe
If most of the SO community was female but you didn't know about it, would
your observations somehow differ from these? Would you notice?

------
maybird
This might be a crazy idea, but if more men posed as women, women would feel
less intimidated to participate, and douchebags would have less effect on the
actual women in the community.

~~~
sj4nz
If more men posed as women online, they'd know how bad men are to women
online.

~~~
codenerdz
define online plz

There are plenty of venues where this is true, i just dont believe SO is one.

------
hexagonal
Typo in title.

Here -> There

