

Why aren’t there more women in tech? I’ll tell you why I’m not (2012) - nreece
http://www.sarahmoran.com.au/2012/why-arent-there-more-women-in-tech-ill-tell-you-why-im-not/

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grownseed
This is interesting, but I honestly don't see why this has to be gender-
specific. I had very similar experiences as a male, from primary school all
the way to university. I don't think it's fair (or honest) to expect other
people to take care of "the transfer of knowledge" as if the duty were one-
sided. I personally learnt pretty quickly that if I wanted something (learning
included), then the responsibility and the motivation were mine and mine only.
A teacher, or school, is a mean to an end, but by no mean an end in itself.

There is one point in this article however that somewhat confirms an idea I've
had for a while. I too have been wondering for a long time what drives women
away from tech (or not drive them in). After many a conversation, the only
half-decent conclusion I came to was that many women see a lack of creativity
in the tech sector. It's true that a lot of sciences are pretty dry on the
surface, but at the same time, so is learning classical music (for example),
and that doesn't seem to deter women nearly as much (I don't have any numbers
for this mind you).

I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to get at here. I guess I'm just
wondering how the dryness is somehow more appealing to men and less so to
women, or maybe how genders perceive/experience creativity.

~~~
sunir
For this author, it wasn't the creativity, but how social the field that
motivated this author.

From the article:

SOCIAL VALUE

"This added a social element to maths that I really enjoyed. Most of these
kids then moved to other schools, and particularly to the local school that
opened a class for bright kids. But I sure as shit wasn’t leaving my friends!"

"But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from
friends."

"In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in
science. It was social suicide, but luckily I fell in with some amazing women
in the year above me and always sat at the back of the class which eventually
leant me to (almost) social acceptance across both grades."

"It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent
(yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social
resume."

"So: after so much discouragement, social outcasting and lack of appeal to my
introverted self, my pre-tertiary education beat the passion out my left brain
entirely."

"Socially, the path to becoming a female tech pioneer from here on out could
be a struggle for me personally."

"it was painful to be good at something, love it, but to then be punished for
it in the schoolyard. I’m a social butterfly, dammit!"

CREATIVITY

The only time she says non-math was creative was, "My English classes were
creative: my maths classes were often silent." But if you read on, it was
still because creativity was social. "People talking at me, rather than
nutting things out with the person next to me, drove me crazy in my maths
classes."

Nevertheless, the author found self-creativity in computing:

"I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called)
when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn’t take the project seriously,
and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn’t challenging and
technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn’t want it
fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would
say “Write a better brief, dude.”"

FURTHER CONSIDERATION

It's reaching to extrapolate one person's life to the whole population.
Nevertheless, while there are numerous theories of why gender differences
persist in STEM, education, etc., I personally am convinced significant
statistical improvement in the gender balance in STEM could be made by
emphasizing the social value of STEM fields.

If you are interested, others have claimed the social quality to be the
_dominating_ factor in the female participation across all undergraduate
degrees. For instance:

“Research has shown that women tend to gravitate towards fields of studies and
career paths where they can have a positive social impact and work with
others, often collaboratively,” says Linda Basch, president of the National
Council for Research on Women (NCRW). “This is why you see so many women in
the fields of health care and education. When women do gravitate toward the
sciences, it is usually the life sciences.”

Source (with interesting statistics of top 10 degrees by gender as well):
[http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-
women...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-women-forbes-
woman-leadership-education.html)

------
dguaraglia
Much of what she lines out isn't necessarily related to gender. Any kind of
creative type will find dry CS classes boring. As someone else points out, the
fact that the teacher that almost failed her was a male is completely
tangential to the story.

A better title for this article would be "Why aren't there more people with
similar interests and motivations as me in tech?".

------
Gustomaximus
I'm a bit tired of this discussion. I personally don't see women being
excluded from tech other than their interests lie elsewhere and have not
chosen to pursue this career. As far as I see, the door is open and techie
personas tend to be some of the most open minded and less judgemental
departments.

I want good designers/programmers, male or female, not someone that is there
to prove a point. And if so important why is this discussion so dominated
across tech jobs. I rarely see articles deriding the lack of men in nursing
and never for HR departments. The latter I find amusing as HR are often the
department driving this campaign when their department has to be the most
gender skewed in every company I have worked for.

------
Mz
Excerpt:

 _I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called)
when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn’t take the project seriously,
and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn’t challenging and
technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn’t want it
fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would
say “Write a better brief, dude.”_

I hope it generates discussion.

~~~
wisty
Teachers (male and female) typically reward boys for technical competence, and
girls for "effort" (polish, pink unicorns, etc).

~~~
tekalon
My sister and I (mathematically and technically inclined) would always get
this. I would always think that this was to help those that were not academic
still get points for effort.

------
thekevan
tl;dr: The culture of tech was boring compared to other areas.

~~~
parennoob
This aspect of the problem is underrated compared to others. Thankfully, there
are a lot of strong admissions about it in this article, which is
unfortunately not seen too often.

"But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from
friends."

"It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent
(yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social
resume."

"In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in
science. It was social suicide."

I have stressed this on HN before in articles about "why aren't there more
women in tech" \-- one of the major un-addressed problems is that younger
women don't think of tech as a cool thing to go into. Younger men don't mind
being social outcasts as much, and tend to deal with the solitude that results
from such activities, because they are often socially isolated _anyway_. If we
want to get more women in tech, we have to make it socially _cool_ , not just
socially acceptable.

I think this also explains why a lot of men have knee-jerk negative reactions
to "we should do more to get women in tech" articles. They believe that
suffering through all that social ostracism at school was the price they paid
for getting into tech.

~~~
Houshalter
Except that has nothing to do with gender. It's just as "boring"/"uncool" for
boys too. Boys are also discouraged from going into tech. Being good at
math/science/technology skill are stereotyped as "nerd" and considered low-
social status by our culture. I think this is even moreso for boys than girls
but maybe it's both.

~~~
parennoob
My hypothesis (although it is not proven by any means, it is somewhat
bolstered by the social experiences of many men and women I have talked to
about this) is that men prefer to take the social hit of being ostracized,
since they work alone on their pursuits anyway, more often than women. (e.g.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-
wome...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-women-prefer-
working-together-and-why-men-prefer-working-alone/278888/))

Totally agree though, that both men and women do face this social ostracism,
and that eliminating it would be hugely beneficial. I think we differ in the
belief that it is the primary reason for the low number of women in the tech
sector.

