
Visualization of Gender Disparity in Tech - bjeanes
http://do-better.herokuapp.com/
======
acangiano
It would be interesting to see if a similar visualization for nurses and
primary education teachers would show a similar pattern (with the gender
reversed, of course) or if the gap would have different characteristics and
distribution.

~~~
bjeanes
Indeed. That would be interesting. I haven't looked, but I wonder if the data
is readily available...

------
forgottenpass
Sorry for being so blunt, but I think I'm missing the message here. What
exactly is the purpose of naming and shaming employers for exhibiting symptoms
of such a lopsided talent pool?

Presumably the target audience is not unfamiliar with the gender disparity in
tech. If they are unfamiliar there exists data about the industry in general
that would be better suited to making a point to them. So, this is aimed at
some subset of the industry, but it seems a bit nebulous because...

Is it a call to action? "We Can Do Better"? OK, so who are the "we"? What are
the actions to take towards doing better? (I mean, more specific the obvious
end goal of gender equality in our industry.)

With or without specific calls to actions, why is this broken down on a per-
employer basis? Should deviations from industry average be celebrated and
booed? Is it an attempt to put pressure on the employers, if so to what end?
Or is this just a novel way of reiterating a statistic that the target
audience already knows?

------
didgeoridoo
No idea where the 37Signals number came from... this is the Basecamp team
today: [https://basecamp.com/team](https://basecamp.com/team)

The Basecamp team is 8/43 women - NONE of whom are accounted for here. That's
a huge factual miss on the very first company I recognized & fact-checked.
Doesn't fill me with confidence.

~~~
arbutus
It sounds like this is specifically regarding the engineering teams. The
graphic shows only twenty people at all at 37Signals.

------
mynameisasdf
Who says tech companies do better when there are more women?

~~~
bmelton
I have a hard time imagining that there are many companies who benefit from a
monoculture. Diversity equals truth, or more accurately, increases the
likelihood of finding truth.

If your business makes any decisions, like "how do we capture this market," or
"what sort of features should we add," or "how should this thing work," then
you are embarking on a truth-seeking endeavor.

Unless your product aims to solve a problem that only affects white guys in
the city (which, to be fair, is certainly a non-negligible number of
products), then you're going to have a hard time expanding your base beyond
white guys in the city if your team consists of only white guys in the city.

~~~
ameister14
I don't think that is necessarily true; it implies that we cannot empathize
with people that do not share at least racial and location characteristics
with us.

I think a white man can make a product for black women, and I think a black
woman can make products for white men. For me, it's more about acknowledging
that the world exists outside of white men in the city and less about making
sure your team is made up of every racial and socio-economic variable you aim
to market to.

~~~
bmelton
I do not disagree with that at all, and clearly, we've seen monocultures
succeed at doing exactly that. I wasn't attempting to decry the methodology of
every company with a monoculture, as much as to point out that it's just
easier with actual diversity.

As Vezzy-Fnord points out, a single individual is able to empathize with other
types of people, but that empathy is finite, and also, empathy does not equal
understanding.

------
bottompair
I wonder just how long this discussion is going to go on. To me looking at who
has jobs in tech broken down by gender is flawed from the beginning.

The more interesting sociological question is whether there is a nurture thing
happening here, or just a natural tendency for women to not be as interested
in computers and technology at a young age.

Boxing and MMX have way more men than women - why isn't there a "we can do
better" campaign for these disciplines?

By the way my co-founder CEO is a woman and she's an amazing technologist and
leader.

------
mathattack
I don't follow this chart. If the right (male) side is further to the right of
50%, shouldn't the left (female) side be proportionally to the left of the 50%
too? The average line doesn't line up either.

It's a real issue, but the chart doesn't work well on my browser.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
The center point of the chart is 0%. As a dot moves to either the left or the
right, it shows some number greater than 0% until it reaches 100%. No company
is going to have a dot at each of the edges... as you can not be both 100%
male AND 100% female. The chart made more sense to me when I selected the
"Sort By: Most Equal" option. The top few companies have a 50/50 split by
gender. As you scroll down you will see those shift to the right for a more
male-heavy company (mostly... some are female-heavy as well).

------
Jugurtha
"We can do better" translated to: Let us join the feminist bandwagon please.

What's funny is that, even using infographics and stats to show how "unfair"
it is, stats don't lie: The companies that have more than 18% women are mostly
chick stuff: Fashion, blogging, etc.

Hard core tech companies still employ mostly dudes, and they _will_ continue
to employ dudes. If they change that, they'll get into Gawker club.

I am seeing this stupid trend recently. GE shared an article on their LinkedIn
page, to which I replied with this [0].

Some company is paying teachers to teach girls to code, but they're not paid
when they teach boys.

This is absurd. This is stupid. There's a reason most jobs in tech are taken
by men:

\- Most tech _students_ are male. (So women start to get filtered out way
before there's even a job involved - They pursue other stuff like marketing,
arts, design, etc). There are few girls in Engineering. That's why Engineering
students frequent girls who are not in Engineering.

\- Once they graduate, there are still more men than women applying for jobs
in tech. A lot of women will do something else. There is less an urge for a
woman to achieve something, and less drive, than there is for a man. If you
disagree with me, you are dellusional since you are basically contradictin
History and Biology and Now: How many Fortune 500 companies were started and
are run by women. Thank you.

It is a bit phony that these companies try to "promote" this. I love women.
I've been intimate with more women in a couple of months than the average dude
in a lifetime.

However, let's not start writing crap. Heroku ? James Lindenbaum, Adam
Wiggins, Orion Henry. Three guys. Why isn't there a woman with you ? Is it
that _maybe_ you didn't know _any_ woman who could fill in ?

I ask those guys: When you were in Engineering ? How many girls were there,
and from those girls, how many could hack it.

I'm tired of this stupidity. I'm tired of this leveling from bottom.

Soldiering isn't for everyone. Soon I'll make a petition asking the special
forces to let me in: Why is it a problem for you to let me in, even if I can't
lift a dude and run with him, even if I need a pillow to sleep !? Intolerant
bastards ! Make a rule to lower your standards to suit _me_.

And soon, people who don't bear the sight of blood will lobby to take blood
out of surgery. Would you trust such a surgeon with your life ! Eww, blood !

[0][http://bitly.com/1oKeYZJ](http://bitly.com/1oKeYZJ)

~~~
epistasis
I'm tired of tech missing out on so much potential from those with two X
chromosomes. If tech was more inclusive, there would be far more great
engineers to hire from.

>It is a bit phony that these companies try to "promote" this. I love women.
I've been intimate with more women in a couple of months than the average dude
in a lifetime.

Look at that last sentence. You're young. That's fine. We were all stupid when
we were young. I'm still stupid in many ways. But be careful about the stupid
things that you record for posterity.

~~~
Jugurtha
>I'm tired of tech missing out on so much potential from those with two X
chromosomes. If tech was more inclusive, there would be far more great
engineers to hire from.

I trust female engineers who rock will not have difficulty finding a job, and
if they do, I'm sure they have the drive to start their own company.

>Look at that last sentence. You're young. That's fine. We were all stupid
when we were young. I'm still stupid in many ways. But be careful about the
stupid things that you record for posterity.

I'm 26, quote me on a marble rock if you wish.

PS: I don't like your idea implying that being intimate with women is stupid
and reckless. It's insulting to me, and to the female gender.

Oh, and I upvoted you. Because you voiced your opinion.

