
Hire More Women In Tech - kgunette
http://hiremorewomenintech.com/
======
opendais
> "Only 11% of all engineers in the U.S. are women, according to Department of
> Labor. The situation is a better among computer programmers, but not much.
> Women account for only 26% of all American coders." \- Wired

and

> Track the gender of your applicants, not just the hires.

> "You need to be aiming for a 50/50 men-to-women ratio." \- Allison Sawyer,
> The Wall Street Journal

> *NOTE: aim for this ratio in these early days, as we try to build towards a
> more equitable system.

This pretty much invalidates itself. You can't have a 50/50 ratio if only 26%
of the population of programmers is women. You, at best, can hope for a 74/26
split.

Also? Gender bias in hiring is illegal, regardless of direction. In fact,
employers are generally make the "gender identification" and "race
identification" portions optional for liability reasons in this regard.

If your objective is 50/50, you need to encourage more women to enter the
field [programming] rather than complain it isn't 50/50\. 74/26 makes it
mathematically impossible for every company to hire a 50/50 split.

~~~
arrrg
Literally no one was arguing to not hire based on qualification. Why is it
that, whenever this comes up, everyone starts babbling incomprehensibly about
qualifications as if that’s relevant?

The link presents several non-qualifications-based ways of not hiring more
women. Another one I think might work (that has already been very successful
in increasing the number of women speakers at conferences) is to actively
approach women and ask them to apply and talk to them about the job if they
say they are not sure whether they are qualified.

The actual selection process between those applications can and probably
should still be blind, but the pool of applications will be a better mix.

Yeah, it’s more work, but nobody says this is easy.

~~~
epochwolf
Because there are places that will loosen qualifications to attract people of
a specific race or gender because they can't find enough qualified candidates
of that race.

One of the universities I attended had a lower set of requirements and
scholarships for those that identified as "black". (The region was 96% white
at the time so not really a surprise. Diversity was lacking and the admissions
department was desperate.)

~~~
darthgoogle
Some commentators like Thomas Sowell, who is himself black, believe that
"affirmative action" is in fact bigoted because it basically says that a
certain group of people are not capable of getting a job or an education
unless they are given special help.

~~~
omegaham
More nastily, it leads to the actually competent people of that group being
forced to "prove" themselves.

Additionally, it leads to increased failure rates of people who get into the
program / position. Advocates like to think that it's just these racist old
meanies in admissions and hiring positions who are dictating unfair
requirements, and it's bullshit. Often, requirements, especially very
selective ones, are well-founded. Saying, "If they get in, they'll succeed" is
a bad idea.

~~~
darthgoogle
Looks like advocates of identity politics aren't going to stop until they
bring back discrimination based on race and not merit:

March 2014

[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230380210...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303802104579449522929568060)

 _" In 1996, California voters approved Prop. 209 to block public
institutions, notably state universities, from discriminating by race. Asian-
American freshman enrollment at the University of California's 10-flagship
universities has since climbed to 40.2% from 36.6% and to 47% from 39.7% at
Berkeley."

Prop. 209's ban on racial preferences has helped Asian Americans by forcing
admissions officers to focus on such academic qualifications as high-school
grades and test scores.

Liberals argue that race-based admissions are necessary to increase black and
Hispanic representation, but minority enrollment has increased since 1996 at
the University of California. Hispanics now make up 28.1% of the UC system's
freshman class, up from 13.8% in 1996, while black enrollment has ticked up to
4% from 3.8%."

...the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on Michigan's Prop. 2, which is based
on Prop. 209, and liberals hope this will provide grounds for a new lawsuit to
overturn California's ban on racial preferences.

...Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris and Governor Jerry Brown have
both argued for its repeal." _

------
MPetitt
The biggest thing that I feel like these initiatives always miss is that the
onus on fixing the problem of gender equality in tech shouldn't be on the
companies at this point in the game (not to say that won't change), but on
getting more women interested in tech in the first place. Overwhelmingly women
don't seem to care about the technology field. We need to focus less on
bending over backwards to find appropriate female candidates from such a small
pool, and focus more on what organizations like Girls who Code[0] who are
trying to get more young women interested in technology. Once there is
actually a sizable amount of women involved in the field, then maybe the
conversation over discrimination or lack of diversity may be worth having. But
until then I cant just make female engineers poof into the interview room like
magic and thats not for lack of trying.

[0] [http://girlswhocode.com/](http://girlswhocode.com/)

~~~
acbart
This is a chicken-and-the-egg problem, so you can't narrow your focus, but
instead approach it from multiple angles. Women aren't encouraged to get
involved in tech because they can't find good role models, and there are no
good role models because women aren't being encouraged to get involved with
tech. It's important to have initatives like this to get more role models so
we can encourage more women and get more role models to encourage more women
...

~~~
gfodor
Citation needed. If I was going to go out on a limb, I'd say a large part of
the reason women aren't drawn to tech at a young age is because it requires
you sit alone in front of a computer talking to _it_ for long stretches of
time instead of interacting with other people, but I have as much evidence as
you do that it has to do with a lack of role models. (I got into programming
well before I knew any famous programmers.)

~~~
Arnor
Surely both of these are factors. I would suggest:

1\. That at an early age, _programming_ role models in particular aren't as
important as _STEM_ role models in general. It's certainly anecdotal, but I
moved towards programming as a practical job that somewhat satisfied my
broader interest in science and engineering.

2\. It might be beneficial to girls and boys alike if technology was taught
more socially. Certainly tinkering and reading alone is important, but maker
clubs and the like are an extraordinary way to get young people involved. As a
bonus, they help with teamwork which is another big issue for (many) tech
companies.

------
jasode
> "You need to be aiming for a 50/50 men-to-women ratio."

This advice is completely ignorant of other forces outside of the hiring
managers' control. For example, women only account for ~12% of the graduates
in computer science and computer engineering.[1]

As for the job description rewrites such as:

"We are committed to understanding the engineer sector _intimately_." "
_Sensitive_ to clients’ needs,"

Sorry, but that is ridiculous goop.

I can't believe that any woman of substance requires new-age touchy-feely
rewrites to respond to job descriptions. In my opinion, it's patronizing and
underestimates the _technical reasons_ that may attract women to the job.

As an analogy, if only 1% of kindergarten teachers are male and we wanted to
"fix" that ratio, please don't rewrite job descriptions with sports metaphors
such as " _we 're recruiting teachers to keep kids from fumbling the ball and
get them across the goal line._"

[1][http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree...](http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CS_Degree_and_Enrollment_Trends_2010-11.pdf)

~~~
KuraFire
“I can't believe that any woman” — stop right here. Whenever anyone on HN ever
says this, they're really showing themselves to:

1) lack imagination 2) lack empathy (egregiously so) 3) generally be wrong
about whatever follows next

What you're doing here is saying you think all women who would have an
interest in tech are exactly the same. This is IDIOTIC and you're revealing
yourself to seeing women as "a demographic" rather than as 3.6 billion unique
individuals who each have their own unique personality, interests, etc.

Also, you're revealing your massively shortsighted perspective and utter
inability to educate yourself a little on the matter before chiming in with
your assertions, but let me help you improve perspective and learn something
new:

Study: Women Do Not Apply To ‘Male-Sounding’ Jobs
[http://time.com/48578/study-women-do-not-apply-to-male-
sound...](http://time.com/48578/study-women-do-not-apply-to-male-sounding-
jobs/)

You Don’t Know It, But Women See Gender Bias in Your Job Postings
[http://www.ere.net/2013/03/01/you-dont-know-it-but-women-
see...](http://www.ere.net/2013/03/01/you-dont-know-it-but-women-see-gender-
bias-in-your-job-postings/)

> A scientific study of 4,000 job descriptions revealed that a lack of gender-
> inclusive wording caused significant implications for recruiting
> professionals tasked to recruit women to hard-to-fill positions
> underrepresented by women.

So, your assertion that it's "ridiculous goop" has actually been proven
(repeatedly) by scientific studies, and is a tremendously stupid assertion to
begin with (it hinges on the assumption that all women are exactly the same).

Perhaps next time, before opening your mouth, assess whether you actually have
any fucking knowledge of what you're about to assert.

~~~
jpgvm
Wow, calm down political correctness police.

Firstly, he didn't assert shit. He said he believed things to be a certain way
- at no point did he state any of his -opinion- was fact.

Secondly. What he had to say was really not that sensationalist. If you strip
away your political correctness glasses you will see that he was just saying
that he thinks women would prefer to be hired (and attracted to a position) by
their ability, not some specially crafted touchy-feely job description.

Whether you agree or not is another thing entirely but seriously back of the
the PC Police attitude, it doesn't do you any favours.

The "you clearly know jack shit" assertion is just outright offensive though
and doesn't belong anywhere let alone here.

~~~
dang
> Wow, calm down political correctness police.

Personal attacks are not allowed here. Please don't.

~~~
jev
Please explain how it is a personal attack to imply their tone needs work. Or
is this just tumblr-style rage against "tone policing"?

~~~
dang
"Calm down" is patronizing; "political correctness police" is pejorative. This
is language one uses not when trying to have a civil, substantive discussion,
but when trying to skewer an adversary.

I called it a personal attack because it's needlessly personal: it implies
that the other person is an overwrought ("calm down") fanatical ("political
correctness") bully ("police"). If that doesn't meet your definition of
"personal attack", I'm happy not to quibble. Either way, though, it doesn't
meet Hacker News' definition of civil, substantive discussion, and therefore
is inappropriate here.

------
nawitus
>The premise of “We Only Hire The Best Candidates.” >The idea is not to hire
women just because they're women. Hire women that are amazing at their jobs.

Okay, so should you pick a female candidate who is estimated to be 1% worse
than a male candidate? That answer just sidesteps the whole question.

I think the best candidate should always be chosen, as that's fair.

EDIT: >"You need to be aiming for a 50/50 men-to-women ratio."

That's seems sexist. Since the majority of tech students and tech graduates
still are male, the non-biased ratio shouldn't be 50/50.

~~~
bellerocky
> I think the best candidate should always be chosen, as that's fair.

I'm not saying that companies shouldn't hire the "best" candidate, where
"best" has some vague, unclear and subjective definition. But whatever best
may mean, I doubt it is "fair" unless inherited wealth and traits also fits
into your definition of "fair". Question of "fair" totally sidesteps the
bigger problems. I think what this post states is that not having a
monoculture may have a greater benefit than hiring a subjectively "best"
engineer.

As an anecdote as an example of larger issues of fair being a weird thing to
think about, I have an example. I have a 6 year old daughter in chess class.
All last semester she's been too shy to raise her hand to answer chess
questions from the male chess teacher. He's a great teacher, great with kids
but I noticed he predominately encourages the boys to answer his questions,
and sure enough when I finally convinced my daughter to raise her hand on the
last day of class he totally never picked her.

She was raising her hand for almost every question and this teacher sometimes
even ignores the hands up and asks the same boy he's been asking all day, even
though that kid didn't have his hands up, and even though this kid sometimes
yells out answers without raising his hands even when the teacher says not to
do this. My daughter was so dejected by this experience, of raising her hand,
finally being ready to answer a chess class and this guy totally doesn't even
see her. She was crushed, and I was too. We're still going to go to this chess
class, but if this teacher doesn't change I'm going to talk to him. This is an
example of why "best" and "fair" are hard. A few generation of teacher
tracking encouraging boys over girls makes me sceptical that the produced
"best" was fair in the first place.

~~~
pervycreeper
A child doesn't get picked _once_ , and that's evidence of institutionalized
bias?

~~~
sp332
What bellerocky described _is_ institutionalized bias. It only takes one
incident like that to discourage someone.

~~~
pervycreeper
>What bellerocky described is institutionalized bias.

No, it's _confirmation bias_ , not to mention sampling, and entitlement
complexes.

~~~
sp332
Entitlement, sure. But the boy's entitlement was confirmed while the girl's
wasn't.

~~~
pervycreeper
The parent's entitlement.

~~~
bellerocky
I thought about this, and because I worried of coming across as an entitled
parent I didn't say anything to the teacher. If I keep seeing it, whether it
is my child or any of the other girls I will say something though.

------
sremani
The reason why Women, Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in tech boils
down to the pipeline. Hiring in tech is the end of pipe-line, if people do not
enter the queue i.e. get some form formal or semi-formal techEd they are not
going to make it to the other end.

Real efforts should be focused there. There is huge myth there is mono-culture
in tech. No, actually White and Asians make up significant chunk of
Engineering population and Asian component is very diverse and conveniently
neglected in the narrative.

Groups that are under-represented in Engineering do a little bit better with
their share in management except for Asians - they were, in Yahoo's case 51%
of Engineering share and 17% of Management share.

So once you start social engineering an environment based on Gender, Race etc.
may be there are positive effects, but there will be unintended consequences
because of unorganic fiat regulations or assumptions.

Large companies should strive better but I think some Gender or Race based
initiative will not solve a thing, it makes us more conscious of things that
we did not choose (our race and gender).

~~~
danilocampos
"The reason why Women, Blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in tech
boils down to the pipeline."

Oh yeah? Then how come with blacks taking 10% of CS degrees and Latinos taking
8%, their representation at Google and Facebook is only 1% and 2%?

Meritocracy?

~~~
sremani
Google and Facebook are kind of extreme cases - I would not be hired by Google
in spite of my Master's degree - in most of these companies one may have to
look at the CS degrees from Elite Universities. An A.S degree from Collin
County Community College or BS from TAMU-Commerce is not same as Stanford or
UT-Austin.

You can cherry pick the data all you want, are there biases - apparently not
White Engineer Bias for sure, if there is. I do not know all the variables,
but I prefer uneven organic growth over over-curated even growth that sucks
resources and energies from vital parts of the company.

------
john_b
Note that the job descriptions the site labels as "better", and which it
presents as neutral, are those that are explicitly labeled as "feminine" in
the source it quotes. If you want to recruit an even ratio of men to women,
use actually neutral job descriptions. The original source [1] notes that the
experiment only tested female aversion to the masculine job descriptions, and
not the other way around. Treat these examples as the ends of a spectrum and
shoot for somewhere in the middle.

Also, if you do want to recruit using more feminine job descriptions, please
don't be as vague as the feminine descriptions given as examples here. Unless
you want your female candidates to not know what they are supposed to do.

[1] [http://www.ere.net/2013/03/01/you-dont-know-it-but-women-
see...](http://www.ere.net/2013/03/01/you-dont-know-it-but-women-see-gender-
bias-in-your-job-postings/)

~~~
kgunette
i did edit from "masculine" and "feminine" to "average" and "better" as i
found masculine/feminine ultimately problematic. this reference is simply a
few examples of what a change in language can do. they still describe the
exact same job and functions.

------
doctorfoo
I always feel slightly bitter about stuff like this. As a male, I don't ever
recall being encouraged to work in tech. Any geeky pursuit made me the subject
of ridicule. There was always a battle with my mother as a child to even be
allowed access to a computer. Bleh.

~~~
purringmeow
Not to mention the mocking most of us had to endure from the _cool kids_. I
was systematically bullied, because of being a geek, who loved tech.

~~~
doctorfoo
And yet... we still did it. Is it simply a matter of having enough aggression,
or something, such that we continued anyway?

In which case, it would certainly be nice to see more sensitive people of
either gender encouraged to take up the subjects they are truly interested in.
There's a pervasive culture of social shaming of people who don't fit the
norm. Will it ever go away as a whole, or is it a unchangeable component of
society?

~~~
purringmeow
Sadly, I doubt it will go away anytime soon, people just dislike the
different, which isn't a bad thing in every case. Sometimes it fuels
constructive criticism and discourse on a topic.

There is a reason why less women than men are going into tech, but I don't
want to elaborate on that, since I am going to be downvoted into oblivion(and
no, it's not intelligence).

------
Arnor
I'm really impressed with this post in general. I understand that these
concepts are beyond the scope of this page, but I hope to hear more from OP
about getting more women prepared as candidates for engineering/software jobs.
I agree that there is a gender bias in hiring practices, but I think it's a
symptom of the more systemic problem driving women away from STEM fields.

I was disappointed in the "Re-evaluate your job post descriptions" section. It
had the potential to be a really good point, but the descriptions were
contrived. The "Average Description" was a straw man, and the "BETTER" seemed
wishy washy. I'd prefer real world samples rewritten in OPs recommended voice.

~~~
kgunette
fair enough re: "re-evaluate your job post descriptions" \- i did not draft
those descriptions. nothing on the site is original content. i find the
descriptions could use some work, but do a decent job of illustrating the
point that language matters.

------
vezzy-fnord
I'm going to have to contest the complaint on "gendered wording". Ironically,
this is coming from the same people who will often berate you for "tone
policing" them, judging by the ideological dispositions of several of the
linked resources in the footer.

I don't have time at hand to analyze the study (which is never directly
linked, even in the supplied article, by the way), but there's a reason why
companies use the supposedly "gendered" wording, in place of the "neutral"
wording: _it conveys a different meaning_. "Strong communication and
influencing skills" and "Proficient oral and written communications skills"
are two different things. The latter is much looser and removes the
implication that one should be a decent manipulator.

Indeed, the implication that women _cannot_ have "strong communication and
influencing skills" and that the very wording repels them, actually reinforces
traditional gender roles quite neatly. The ones that are allegedly to be
abolished here. At least, judging from the ideology of the web page's authors.
I'm making assumptions, I know, but gender politics and theory as a whole is a
clusterfuck these days.

But there's also a wider belief being pushed on eradicating "harmful
language". I'd agree, but I have a different interpretation of it. Language is
harmful not when it has a negative or potentially offensive meaning, but when
it has _no_ meaning. Examples are the words "socialism" and "liberalism" which
have become so diluted in public discourse, so as to be meaningless in of
themselves.

So while I can't contest the end goal, the methods being used to achieve it
are less than stellar, to say the least. Finally, the need to aim for a 50/50
men-to-women ratio is simply unrealistic. It really depends on one's goals. If
you simply want to neutrally deliver a product, getting yourself involved in
someone's identity politics crusade is of little meaning. Not everything
revolves around that, you know.

------
mjfl
I'm not going to change the wording of my job postings to "make women more
comfortable". That's bullshit. Women are adults too, we should not do them the
disservice of coddling them. It is much better to let them rise to the
challenge. Many do, and many do very well. As noted in the article, and
something I agree with, companies do better with women in management. However,
this is not due to babying them.

~~~
oddevan
I think the point of the job postings was to point out how those postings can
be seen as biased even when they weren't intended to be.

------
onetimeusename
I object to the part about gender coding the language. I think people should
be able to speak and write the way it comes naturally to them. It gets to a
point where being friendly to women is so strenuous that it becomes hostile to
men. Apart from that, the "better" descriptions were vague and unclear as to
what the focus was. "understanding the engineer sector intimately" sounds like
it is actually NOT an engineering position.

~~~
BSousa
I'm a man, I support having more women in tech (thought I don't agree it is
the companies responsibilities for this) but I can honestly say, her rewritten
job descriptions would make me NOT want to apply (maybe that is the goal?).

1) 'We are a dominant engineering firm that boasts many leading clients'

2) 'We are a community of engineers who have effective relationships with many
satisfied clients'

First one makes me think of a solid company with many clients, second one just
makes me think they are a hippie community living in the woods foraging for
food and no showering while coding.

~~~
darthgoogle
The problem is that social activists have discovered computing. Now they are
trying to force their world view into the tech domain because they have failed
to impart change in the real world.

Hence the faux moral outrage over gendered words.

Hence the hounding of Brendan Eich for his personal views which had no bearing
on his technical competency.

Hence the Gnome foundation running out of money because they diverted all
their funds to a women's outreach program instead of focusing on software
development.

Right now, in the real world, scantily-clad women in bikins are draped across
magazine covers, sporting events segregate the sexes, and in many Islamic
countries women are treated like slaves... yet somehow “The tech industry may
have a problem with women"?

~~~
mkr-hn
The process has to start somewhere. People in tech like to call themselves
egalitarian and progressive, so they should be open to encouraging more people
from different backgrounds to enter the pipeline.

------
splintercell
Boy, I hope I never get hired in a company because they needed to hire more
Indians.

~~~
aristus
Boy, I hope tired horseshit like yours goes away someday.

Seriously. The OP took the time to make a reasoned, step-by-step argument for
hiring more women in order to build a better company. Grow up.

~~~
splintercell
You are implying that because I don't wanna be hired just because the company
needed more Indians, that means I am completely against building a better
company.

Sorry to break it to you, but you don't build a better company by hiring a
minority just for the sake of hiring a minority.

From the article: > Fortune 500 companies with at least three female directors
have seen their return on invested capital increase by at least 66%, return on
sales increase by 42%, and return on equity increase by at least 53%.

You may not realize this, but this actually shits over the accomplishment of
those women.

Imagine if my employer who hugely benefitted from my work for them goes out
and says "Hire more Indians, we hired an Indian and our sales went up by 43%",
I would walk out of it so fast. Mostly because they need me as an
individual(and wouldn't just replace me with another Indian guy) but they
don't treat me as an individual.

~~~
aristus
Using fake outrage at a hypothetical situation as an excuse to maintain the
status quo is not a valid response.

A woman, asking companies to look at how they hire and giving specific
examples of _how their hiring is biased_ is not shitting over the
accomplishments of women.

------
IanDrake
As a husband to a female minority executive in aerospace and a brother to an
engineer/executive in green tech, I have to say this is focused on the wrong
issues. From what I have seen, qualified women get hired and get promoted. The
biggest problem that remains is one of conduct by male employees on the job.

Also, for the life of me, I just can't understand why people want to take a
census and say ok, our population is 50%/50% male/female, 50%/20%/15%/5%
white/black/hispanic/asian, 80%/9%/9%/2% straight/gay/lesbian/transgender, so
let's make sure those magic ratios are equal across all home makers, software
developers, the rich, the poor, etc... There is no end to it and it's folly.

------
McDoku
> Wealthy white women are not the most disprivileged class <

If we are considering equality. A native american man is way more
disprivileged then a caucasian univerity educated woman. I mean name one VC
backed start up with a Native American CEO?

I am Metis (Native American) and frankly the low employment on reserves could
be mitigated by remote work. Having more coders and startup from
reserves/communities could be an amazing way to help many of the cripling
social issues.

We could have a Native American Steve Jobs... and then have him played in a
film by Johnny Depp :)

TL:DR > It is not really fair to almost exclusively focus on the most
privilidged dispriviledge class.

PS > Also those are some big numbers for ROI with no sourcing. Sceptical me is
skeptic.

~~~
kgunette
PS. there's absolutely sourcing for those ROI numbers. Here are a few of the
sources for the studies linked to directly below the ROI metrics (Anita Borg
Institute), and pages 11-12 of that report detail all of the sources and
studies. Here it is, in case you missed it on the site --->
[http://anitaborg.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Case-
for...](http://anitaborg.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Case-for-
Investing-in-Women-314.pdf)

Those metrics are based on studies by: Cristian Dezsö at the University of
Maryland, and David Ross at Columbia University Business School; Cedric
Herring, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of
Illinois at Chicago; Cindy Padnos, founder of Illuminate Ventures, who
compiled data from 100 studies on gender and tech entrepreneurship; The London
Business School report, Innovative Potential: Men and Women in Teams; the
September 2013 research report, Innovation, Diversity and Market Growth by The
Center for Talent Innovation (CTI); Professor Anita Woolley, an economist at
Carnegie Mellon; Cumulative Gallup Workplace Studies; and McKinsey & Company's
annual series "Women Matter."

------
rpsw
Maybe I'm just more drawn to the average descriptions cause I'm male, but some
of the language feels off in the "better" descriptions.

> We are committed to understanding the engineer sector intimately.

Intimately sounds wrong here to me. Intimacy is something I would associate
with things of romantic nature.

> Strong communication and influencing skills. vs > Proficient oral and
> written communications skills.

They sound like descriptions for different jobs. One sounds like a job where
you need to be able to close deals or lead people the other sounds like a
generic soft-skill that everyone says they have.

Turning "Direct" to "Support" also gives a different meaning.

The descriptions feel like the position is more entry-level or wishy-washy.
I'd imagine the "better" descriptions would approachable to both genders, as
they don't seem they demand as much or need people to be assertive/confident.

Maybe this works out well in practice, as maybe you lose a lot of suitable
candidates to effects like impostor syndrome. They just feel like they are
advertising two different jobs.

------
jgrahamc
Every time this comes up I'm dismayed at the responses on HN. No wonder some
women don't feel encouraged to enter the tech. world.

~~~
xrctl
People who belong in tech don't need to be spoon fed. The barriers to entry
are some of the lowest for any professional field in history.

------
wil421
I think you could say train more women in tech and you would have a better
staring point. The 80s and 90s were graduating more females.

From Wikipedia:

In the United States, the number of women represented in undergraduate
computer science education and the white-collar information technology
workforce peaked in the mid-1980s, and has declined ever since. In 1984, 37.1%
of Computer Science degrees were awarded to women; the percentage dropped to
29.9% in 1989-1990, and 26.7% in 1997-1998. Figures from the Computing
Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that less than 12% of Computer
Science bachelor's degrees were awarded to women at US PhD-granting
institutions in 2010-11.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing)

I graduated with an Information Systems degree and we probably had something
like 30% - 35% females that I walked with.

------
vampirechicken
I don't understand what makes those average wordings gendered and the 'better'
wording not gendered.

From my readings of Dr. Deborah Tannen, (who writes books on the topic of the
differences in male and female communication styles, and their possible
cultutral origins) they both seem like they are gendered, with the 'average'
wording being an example of masciline-ish speech (my interpretation, not hers)
and the 'better' wording being more feminine-ish.

I'm happy to learn how I've misinterpreted it, but I'm not seeing it. Can
somebody please enlighten me?

~~~
kgunette
it's tricky, and agreed - simply an example (by ERE) of how changing language
may increase the pool of people interested in the job posting.

~~~
vampirechicken
I see that, but the examples were introduced as examples of removing gendered
speech. I was expecting the bad examples to be the kind of jobs that are
posted to the techcompaniesthatonlyhiremen tumblr, pepperd with 'he', 'him',
and 'goto guy' kinds of language.

Given that they weren't, I think that calling them 'gendered', but not
explaining the specific connotation of 'gendered' in that context is what
caused my confusion.

------
mbesto
> _It’s tough to prove gender bias._

followed by

> _Re-evaluate your job post descriptions. Excerpt from "You Don’t Know It,
> But Women See Gender Bias in Your Job Postings"_

I admire the OP's "take action" stance, but this isn't the right root cause of
the problem. I don't see any evidence of employers not wanting to hire women
because they're women. What I do see is that many women aren't qualified
enough (yet). Let's focus on that first.

------
omegaham
The wording changes in job descriptions strike me as treating a symptom rather
than a cause.

Ideally, your job description should accurately state what the position's
responsibilities are. If you're working in a high-pressure, high-stress
environment with a lot of individual responsibilities, it would be absurd to
represent it as a laid-back happy environment. Would a roofing company be able
to attract women with a conciliatory job description?

------
K-Wall
I am confused with the section about job descriptions. A firm must not have
gender biased descriptions is the OP assertion yet the ere article that was
cited specifically states the "BETTER" descriptions are feminine.

So to solve the issue of low representation of woman in tech the industry must
introduce a bias towards men?

~~~
laurenbee
I'd vote in favor of removing gendered language altogether. The descriptions
listed are vague and kind of meaningless.

For example, in the "masculine" company description, the words "dominant" and
"boasts" are just fluff. Plus, who cares if you "are determined to stand apart
from the competition"? Isn't everyone? And the "feminine" description is so
passive and unclear that it makes me think the company could be an engineering
support group and not an actual engineering firm.

I would suggestion something like, "We are a leading engineering firm with
clients including X, Y, and Z." It's short and to-the-point. This way, it is
clear that the company is an engineering firm, and hopefully clients X, Y, and
Z are illustrious enough that they speak to the firm's capability/status.

~~~
kgunette
i replied to a few threads about this re: "re-evaluate your job post
descriptions" \- i did not draft those descriptions, they are linked to the
actual original content by ERE. everything on the site is not original
content. i find the descriptions could use some work, but do a decent job of
illustrating the point that language matters, especially when the goal is
simply to expand the pool of people that respond positively to your post.

------
buckfitchesget
what a bunch of bullshit, you'll never hear feminists lobbying for hiring more
women in dangerous fields like off shore oil drilling (pay is great btw) or
campaigning for equal pay for male pornstars

"We want equality! But only in x,y,z you can keep a,b,c lol"

~~~
Blackthorn
That's because men are not systematically discriminated against in the way
women are. These "won't someone please think of the men?!" arguments are tired
and not good.

~~~
McDoku
Unless you consider, homelessness, suicides, social stigma regarding being
sexually assulted, mancession, acceptance of physical abuse in public.

I mean no one is advocating we get the sucide rate to 50%. If you want parity,
you can't cherry pick and that means recalibrating society as a whole.

Which means questioning bad ideas like an equal. There are way to many people
intresting in thought stopping for the sake of PR.

------
bcassedy
I'm disappointed by the reworded job descriptions. Many times in the examples
the entire meaning was changed rather than just being painted in a more gender
neutral light.

There's a huge difference between "Direct a team" and "Support a team".

~~~
kgunette
i replied to a few threads about this re: "re-evaluate your job post
descriptions" \- i did not draft those descriptions, they are linked to the
actual original content by ERE. everything on the site is not original
content. i find the descriptions could use some work, but do a decent job of
illustrating the point that language matters, especially when the goal is
simply to expand the pool of people that respond positively to your post.

------
ps4fanboy
"A diverse workplace is proven to get better results" citation needed

~~~
kgunette
it's actually linked in the point
below:[http://www.fastcoexist.com/3028227/here-are-all-the-
quantifi...](http://www.fastcoexist.com/3028227/here-are-all-the-quantifiable-
reasons-you-should-hire-more-women)

~~~
ps4fanboy
[http://anitaborg.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Case-
for...](http://anitaborg.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Case-for-
Investing-in-Women-314.pdf)

While the study does point out that successful companies have more women it
fails to provide causality. Do successful companies hire more women or does
hiring more women cause you to be more successful?

------
peter303
MIT students are 45% female. But they have a pool of 12 applicants for very
seat. (fewer than that for female and minority)

------
josu
This is the person that made the site:
[https://twitter.com/kgunette](https://twitter.com/kgunette)

Karen Schoellkopf

