
Why Aren't There More Women Programmers? - gebe
http://blog.jessitron.com/2013/08/why-arent-there-more-women-programmers.html
======
patmcc
Good post in whole, but part of #3 really caught my eye:

>>When I go to Kindergarten Moms Night and someone asks what I do, "computer
programming" usually ends the conversation

I don't this is specific to women - I run into exactly the same thing talking
about my tech job with friends, family, strangers, etc.

There's also always an underlying question that gets avoided in these types of
articles - what's the "correct" percentage of people of a particular
gender/race/whatever in a profession? Obviously we should aim for a society
where no woman is pushed away from programming if that's what she wants to do,
but is there any reason to think every job should match society
demographically?

~~~
Sandman
Agreed. I always wondered whether one of the main reasons why there are less
female than male programmers is that, well, most women simply prefer other
professions.

~~~
wpietri
Simply prefer? That's a rug under which you can sweep quite a bit.

Suppose that 200 years ago you took a poll and most women "simply preferred"
not to vote. What does that tell you about whether the womens' suffrage
movement was right or wrong?

~~~
mindrag
The comparison doesn't seem applicable here. Women's suffrage was about
gaining a right that was, at that time, forbidden. Preference shouldn't play a
role in basic rights, but it certainly plays a role in an individual's choice
of career.

~~~
wpietri
Voting is a basic right now, but apparently it wasn't then. That might tell
you something.

But if you really can't get the point without a more specific analogy, try
doctors. Or going to college.

------
rayiner
So I went to an undergrad for engineering, and my freshman class was 72% male,
28% female, and my major was probably 85% male, 15% female. At my first job,
we never broke two women out of a team that was maybe a dozen engineers by the
time we left. At my second job, there was briefly one woman but the rest of
the time it was zero out of 8-9 engineers.

My law school class was 55% male, 45% female, and my firm was pretty close to
even.

My experience makes me believe that the reason that there aren't more women
programmers is mostly that there aren't more women programmers. I think men
and women, generally, interact socially in different ways. By the time I left
engineering, I found the fairly homogenous and almost exclusively-male mode of
social interaction rather tiring. It was refreshing to be in an environment
with a diversity of people who had different ways of interacting socially.

I don't think most of the typical canards really matter. Yes, programming is a
nerdy profession that rewards people who can work solitarily for long hours on
detail-intensive work. But so is law, so is medicine, so is accounting, and
those fields have almost even ratios of men and women. I don't think there is
anything about the work that deters women.

~~~
SubuSS
Most of the good programmers are here by choice. Even if this choice meant
being the nerdy kid in the room through school / life. To be fair - no one
thinks of a doctor/lawyer as a geek, but our job comes with that distinct tag.
It is just that we have learnt to ignore / live with it.

This is going to sound ignorant - but: Is it difficult / different for a woman
to ignore that tag and still do cs (assuming she wants to)?

~~~
rayiner
You don't need to be the nerdy kid in the room to be a good programmer.

------
jlees
I'm not sure on #2. When I was a teenager I had no idea about tech
conferences, open source figureheads, and I barely noticed the gender of
writers. Do boys? Mom not programming, and not having any female
friends/relatives who do, seems more of an issue - and leads into #3.

I'm not arguing #2 isn't a problem, though. Sadly, I'm not in tune with how
kids get role models these days to have any useful suggestions how to fix it.
I was a mentor for Technovation, teaching high school girls Android
development, but by that age perhaps it's too late.

I think there's also an aspect of not realising what programming _is_ , so not
thinking you can do it because it seems a lot scarier than it really is.

------
skwirl
It's also difficult to make progress when you have certain self-aggrandizing
individuals who are out there falsely claiming that software development is a
den of misogyny. If you were a young woman considering going into software
development and you read Jezebel earlier this year, you might be led to
believe that female developers are subject to a constant barrage of sexual
dick jokes and are fired if they complain about it.

------
krstck
My entry into programming was through making website layouts as a teenager.
This was back in the days of geocities, expage, angelfire. There were lots of
girls around my age doing this kind of thing, making personal pages, fanpages,
CSS templates for other people. Then livejournal appeared, and now tumblr.
Some of us made the transition from CSS to learning Ruby on Rails, but not a
lot. I don't know why. But I don't think it's fair to say that girls aren't
interested in code.

~~~
3rd3
Well, the exact numbers on the right-hand side are still unknown:

    
    
        [girls interest in code] = [interest induced by predispositions] +
                                   [… by unalterable social pressure] +
                                   [… by alterable social pressure] ± chance

------
unimpressive
I remember when I went to interview to get into a computer repair class at the
nearby trade school. Right before the interview a girl walked in and the
instructor (who was herself a woman) immediately said "Oh my god, a girl!" (Or
something else that was similarly disparaging. It's hard to remember now.)

After the interview I asked why she said that, and her reply was something to
the effect of 'I have to prepare her for how the boys will act.'. It was a
significant factor in my decision not to go.

------
kamaal
The problem of representation of women, isn't just in our industry. Nearly all
branches of engineering are the very same. In fact I find software to be a far
more attractive profession for women than other engineering branches.

In my total 4 years of engineering course. The branch with the least
representation of girls was mechanical engineering, I say this because in all
4 years I didn't see a single girl take up mechanical engineering, same with
civil engineering. Electronic and Communication was a little better, the best
was Computer science, which seem to have only girls.

But that's sort of understandable, in the first year of engineering we had
this subject called 'machine shop', you basically would have to build models
with metal pieces, then there was a good enough amount of sheet metal work.
You had to learn to use the hack saw, welding, soldering etc- there was also a
good deal of carpentry. To give you a clue, even boys(most of them geeks and
nerd types) from my branch(Electronics) found it exceedingly difficult to
finish 40% of the models we were supposed to finish. They would be very
physically tiring exercises, which we were never subjected to. Girls couldn't
manage even 10% of them, in fact many of us helped them personally so that
they could get passing marks.

Now I understand why no girl would ever want to get into things like
mechanical and civil engineering. You have to work in male dominated cultures,
where the work is almost designed such that a man could excel doing it- while
you struggle to catch up. And you will be facing outright physical
limitations. Now imagine doing this for years, Its a deal breaker to even
begin with.

Coming to programming, the problem begins only when the going gets tough. I've
seen a good deal of representation of women in large companies. The problem
starts when you get into the rockstar culture, where you are expected put 16
hrs/day + traveling as a norm. When you start depicting whole night 'hackdays'
as a sign of coolness. When learning new stuff needlessly happens just because
its new etc. Now you are setting up a culture which is difficult for most
women who have kids and family.

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joyeuse6701
Make it appealing to girls. Before it was independent career woman. The
general appeal today is successful female entrepreneur. Next may be passive
income hacker? Just need one show/movie to glamorize a self made woman via
engineering and bam, you'll get more interest, though it may be superficial.
Who knows maybe you will never get the numbers you want because it is simply
less appealing to women, much like nursing and grade school teaching may never
appeal as much to men.

~~~
smtddr
Well, just don't make this mistake...
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA)

------
NamTaf
This is just a subset of the broader question of "why aren't there more women
in tech?". I honestly think, in no small part, that the answer is "because the
tech hobby community is so toxic to women". Note that I don't mean the
professional industry, but rather more generally that women who may be
interested in computers / tech in general get zealously singled out and
demeaned. This drives women away from exploring their interest and in turn
cuts off any chance they'd have taken at turning that interest in to a career.

It's sickening how toxic the community is to women. Misogyny is often a
cornerstone of 'internet humour' (e.g.: comments about getting back in the
kitchen) and people act surprised when women are marginalised and driven away
from indulging their interest in technology as a hobby. It's so normalised
that even other women repeat the misogynist comments. I'm sure there's a
fascinating psychology paper here on 21st century stockholm syndrome.

I really don't understand how people can be surprised women are systematically
driven from the tech industry when their exposure of it is so constantly
toxic.

An excellent case in point:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Sarkeesian#Kickstarter_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Sarkeesian#Kickstarter_campaign_and_subsequent_harassment)

preemptive edit: Just to repeat, I don't think that the professional industry
is systemically misogynist. It's the hobby community centred mainly around the
internet (which is, let's face it, the primary medium through which interest
in tech and programming especially is explored) which kills any interest in
the field before it can reach the stage of becoming a possible career option.

~~~
lutusp
> This is just a subset of the broader question of "why aren't there more
> women in tech?". I honestly think, in no small part, that the answer is
> "because the tech hobby community is so toxic to women".

I don't think that's the barrier you seem to think. If women really thought
programming was a worthwhile way to spend their time, they would create their
own software companies/clubs/whatever and enforce any behavioral and attitude
rules they cared to have.

Can women program? Absolutely -- at least as well as men. Do women want to
program? Apparently not.

> I really don't understand how people can be surprised women are
> systematically driven from the tech industry when their exposure of it is so
> constantly toxic.

Women are not being driven out of the tech industry, they're being driven out
of male-dominated enclaves. Women don't like the testosterone-drenched parts
of the business, and they don't care to create a more congenial atmosphere for
themselves as they have in many other professions. No one knows why, but it's
misleading and counterproductive to explain that women can't produce
technically successful companies and environments because men won't let them.
Men don't have that kind of power any more -- the only thing stopping women is
women.

The bottom line is that gender equality is not something men give to women, it
is something that women take, because it's their right. The only question is
whether women will choose to do it.

------
pjbrunet
Maybe it's our prehistoric roots. You could compare programming to hunting: no
talking.

~~~
jacalata
I'm pretty sure hunting a mammoth involved an unbelievable amount of teamwork
and communication, actually. Whereas picking fruit can be done very easily
without talking to the other fruit-pickers at all.

~~~
pjbrunet
Mammoth has ears. Fruit don't.

------
dibbsonline
Why aren't there more <gender> <roles>? female bricklayers male seamstresses
and on and on and on.

Is it really a problem? People do what they want, less women want to program,
I see no problem with this.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> People do what they want, less women want to program

Fewer women want to program because they're taught from a very young age that
they can't.

As a result, we're losing out on a bunch of great programmers, which I think
is a loss. I also think it's sad that girls are made to feel like these things
are off-limits to them. I think the world would be a better place if every kid
thought they could do whatever job they wanted to.

~~~
yelnatz
Whose teaching them they cant?

~~~
pjbrunet
I don't know. My programming teacher in high school was literally on his knees
begging the last two girls to continue to the next level.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It sounds like you're suggesting that since one teacher is encouraging two
girls to program that therefore everyone in every girl's life is just as
encouraging to them as they are to the boys.

~~~
pjbrunet
Is that true for anyone? If someone I really respect is encouraging me, that's
very persuasive but there are so many forces at work when choosing a career, I
don't think there's any way to quantify that decision. But of course teachers
make a big difference, for better or worse. This particular teacher, I know
one of his female students is a successful 3D graphics engineer, another
classmate works at Intel, etc.

------
graycat
Because maybe a lot of women know some things the OP does not!

Before we ask women to charge into programming, we should be quite clear on
why there are so few women in programming now and just what will happen to the
women who go into programming based on our encouragement based on our guesses
of what the situation will be like and what the results will be.

It took me a very long time to get some understanding of women. A first lesson
is, in both obvious and deep ways, they are not much like men. In a word, they
are _different_.

Be careful.

------
chacham15
I agree with point #2 "seeing people like me do it" but even taken down a
notch to exclude the difference in gender. Personally, I have two sisters both
of whom do programming after seeing my dad and I both do it. The other
variables in their cases are just like everyone else in this community which
has the same percentage of women in cs than other places (i.e. not sv).

------
milliams
*female

'women' is a noun, 'female' is an adjective. We wouldn't say 'men
programmers', we say 'male programmers'.

------
ddellacosta
There's a lot that can be said about this but I want to give a personal answer
to a question that has come up in this thread already, and that comes up often
in these kinds of discussions.

It's usually framed as something like, "why do we care if there are more women
in the programming world or not?" Here are a few answers that are true for me.
Maybe these will resonate with some of you.

\- I often meet women or read accounts written by women who struggle to simply
exist in the world of programming without feeling like they are being called
out as women all the time. This includes everything from being assumed to be
ignorant of concepts to losing out on opportunities to being sexually
harassed. As a male programmer, this makes me uncomfortable and unhappy as
well--I want my female colleagues to feel welcomed and to equally "own" the
identify of "computer programmer" (or software engineer, or what-have-you).
Having more women programmers would help this, in many ways.

\- I think it is possible we are missing out on some brilliant programmers
coming into this field who could contribute things we haven't yet conceived
of. Having more women programmers is not going to upset the balance in a zero-
sum game; it's more for everyone. So having more women programmers could
potentially help the world as well as provide all of us with more excellent
colleagues.

\- I would like to have more women colleagues because I enjoy the experience
of working with women. Yes, I think women are different from men--but this is
obvious if only because women will always experience the world differently
from men. So I think having this perspective can only enrich a project and
provide a more fertile ground for a successful project or team to grow.

I want to add one more thing. I get the sense that a lot of male commenters on
HN feel immediately defensive about this subject, and feel like somehow they
are going to lose something if they acknowledge that there is anything wrong
or anything that could be fixed, or at worst, acknowledge that there is
something that they could have handled better in the past.

But consider this: working in development, a concept that comes up again and
again is software having a "smell." It seems obvious to me that the constant
issues that come up relating to sexism in the industry is a very strong smell,
albeit within the social fabric of the larger programming community. And it's
equally obvious that the defensive, knee-jerk reaction is not productive.
Consider, how would you approach this if it was a bug, and just wouldn't go
away? If you were a good developer, first you would spend serious time trying
to understand the problem and dig into it deeply, before you started writing
code willy-nilly, right?

------
pjbrunet
Maybe my statuesque coder arms need some sexy recursive algorithm tattoos to
flex in her general direction ;-)

------
georgiecasey
oh great, it's this thread again

~~~
wpietri
If you are a looking for a name for that feeling, it's "entitled". As in, "As
a guy, I am entitled not to be bothered by the problems women have getting
into programming."

To which I say: so what? Does it all have to be about you?

Me, I have a cousin. She's 7. At the family reunion, she saw me using a
screwdriver to take something apart. She immediately elbowed her way into the
seat next to me, and politely insisted on me giving her the screwdriver. She
then helped me take apart, fix, and reassemble the broken thing. She's a born
engineer.

With God (or, our local equivalent, Paul Graham) as my witness, I declare: I'm
getting her into tech. She's a natural, and I want to learn about anything
that might keep her from a STEM career. Anybody who thinks that isn't relevant
on a site called Hacker News can fuck right off.

~~~
cousin_it
If you want to prove that fewer women than men become programmers because of
obstacles, it's not enough to point out the obstacles faced by women, you also
need to argue that the obstacles faced by men are less severe. I think you'll
have a hard time arguing that, considering how nerdy guys are treated in
school by both girls and other guys. Girls who go into programming don't take
such a big hit in attractiveness.

~~~
wpietri
Why would I have to prove it?

Given that "fewer women become X because of societal obstacles" has been
proven true for many professions over the last couple of centuries, I think
the burden of proof is on somebody who wants to claim that programming is some
strange special exemption.

~~~
cousin_it
I don't think programming is an exception, it's probably similar to many other
jobs where we haven't proved that societal obstacles are the reason.

------
beachstartup
why aren't there more women ironworkers?

roofers?

plumbers?

auto mechanics?

machinists?

coal miners?

underwater welders?

oil riggers?

merchant marines?

~~~
minikomi
I was just thinking along the same lines, but with pilots.

To flip the question somewhat, what is an industry which managed to
successfully turn around its gender balance? From mostly men to a somewhat
more natural ratio. What can we learn from that industry?

~~~
harryh
Medicine & Law

