
Enough women in Coders at Work? - mqt
http://gigamonkeys.com/blog/2009/09/22/women-coders.html
======
icey
I have an honest question, I hope this doesn't get taken the wrong way. Is it
possible that women just aren't as interested in writing software as men are?
I don't think that there's some kind of artificial barrier preventing them
from getting in to it; I think if anything, most male programmers would _love_
having some women around.

I mean, there are women doctors, lawyers, politicians, executives,
accountants, etc etc etc; don't you think it's possible that there aren't many
women in this industry just because they're not all that interested in it?

I personally think it's a little intellectually dishonest to insist that both
genders have the exact same preferences, wants and needs. We understand the
differences in gender in every species in the animal kingdom (including the
times when there aren't differences), but we refuse to apply a modicum of
critical thought to ourselves.

~~~
wglb
I recommend this video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ObAgkqicQ> to
everyone here. Note she was interested in programming from a young age, but
nobody encouraged her to be an engineer.

~~~
tc
No one encouraged me to be an engineer either (doctor? yes. lawyer? yes.
engineer? no.). I'd wager that many people here were actively discouraged in
some way from going down the path of technology or entrepreneurship.

Most nontechnical parents who see their son _or_ daughter spending countless
hours on a computer just think that he or she is wasting his or her time.

(That last sentence would be a good place for those mythical gender-neutral
English pronouns.)

~~~
saikat
Your parents aren't the only ones responsible for encouraging you. I'm sure
your interest in technology originally came from some inner drive. But a
hacker can only get so far without a community of peers, whether it be your
colleagues in college or others at meetup groups or friends on IRC or others
on Hacker News. These communities become the crux of not only your technical
development, but also your motivation. I've seen more than a few girls in
college give up on computer science because it was harder for them to make
friends in class or join a group to do problem sets with. There is definitely
SOME problem here.

------
ChillyWater
My kid has been in day-care for four years now and has been cared for by at
least 25 different teachers. Not one of them was male. How can we correct this
egregious disparity?

~~~
misuba
That disparity is pretty egregious. Modeling for children that men can also
give care is actually pretty important.

~~~
hughprime
I agree, the lack of male teachers is a far more serious problem than the lack
of female coders. Too many boys nowadays grow up without fathers. If they
don't have any male teachers either, they'll hit puberty before they meet
anyone whose behaviour is worth emulating.

~~~
maryrosecook
How about if they just emulate the female role models in their life?

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frossie
_My experience is that people, starting from when we are kids, do notice
gender and that the path of least resistance is to do what other people of
your gender are doing. So if you’re a girl interested in programming and you
see very few other girls and women programming, that’s going to be a obstacle
for you to overcome._

For what it's worth, I think it is important for children of either gender to
see role models of either gender - i.e. I think it is good for girls _and_
boys to have female geek role models, male primary school teachers and so on.
I think it promotes a certain amount of gender blindness, which is a good
thing.

That said, the author beating themselves up about this is unnecessary - I
don't think tweens/early teens (when such exposure seems to count the most)
are the main audience of his book.

If you ask me, one real problem is the fact that many female geeks chose
gender-neutral or male pseudonyms online. I understand why they do it, but
this reduces the already-small visibility of the gender further.

~~~
mdemare
There are hardly any pseudonyms in this thread that _aren't_ gender-neutral.
frossie? boggles? roundsquare? dandelany?

~~~
frossie
Well that's my point - since most people here are male, failing any other
clue, a person could assume everybody is male and not be proven wrong.

For what it's worth, of the examples you listed: I am not posting under a
pseudonym, it's my real name (trivially googlable) and not at all gender-
neutral in my culture - and personally I don't think Dan Delany is _that_
gender neutral :-)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
No one knows if your name represents you though - I could be
"redbloodedmale17" and still be a 40 year old woman. I thought dandelany was
from "dandelion", possibly feminine, even if it is Dan Delaney then Dan could
be for Danielle (f), Daniel (m), Danika (f), Dante (m), ... on the internetz
know one knows your a dog.

Woof!

------
jerf
You can't ask "Do I have enough of X?" without first defining "enough".

So... what's "enough" women in programming? Anyone want to cross that
minefield?

If you're not, then you should be aware that you've started something you
can't finish, asked a question you've written into the preconditions that you
can't answer. That's not necessarily useless, but it's less useful that asking
questions you at least _might_ be able to answer

I don't have an answer. But I wanted to ask the right question.

As with all definition questions, there are multiple valid definitions of
"enough". I am seriously interested if you think you have one.

I think this is actually a very important question to ask, despite the third-
rail nature of it. If we have a "goal" of "more" women, how will we know when
we've succeeded? If we can't succeed, it isn't much of a goal, and if we can't
tell if we succeeded, then how can we measure progress (objectively or
subjectively)?

~~~
silencio
Is the question really about how many women programmers there are compared to
men? I was hoping it was more of a "what can we do to make people in general
feel like programming is less intimidating/closed off to them, and not just a
niche subject?". Not just to women or to young girls, but to everyone. I
suspect the number of women interested in programming would rise if we address
that, and that would also attract the men that felt like programming was
interesting but just not possible for them for whatever reason. Hell, it'd
address the gender imbalance _and_ issues with (or the complete lack of) good
CS education starting from kids at a young age to college and beyond at the
same time.

A lot of times I feel like a statistical fluke being a female coder, but I go
to a gym with lots of classes for kids, and I have their parents and the kids
themselves (a fairly even mix of girls and boys) ask me how to get started
programming and learning more about computers. They don't have the resources
to learn this in their schools. Their parents don't know anything. They don't
know where to find anyone that can be a mentor besides me. It doesn't always
have to do with gender. That imbalance might just be a side effect of a bigger
problem.

~~~
jerf
"Is the question really about how many women programmers there are compared to
men?"

I don't know. Is it? My post just riffed on "enough", and briefly mentioned
"more". There's no hint of a measure. That was by design.

If it isn't, what _is_ the goal here?

(I'm not trying to be a jerk, or really addressing you specifically. I'm
trying to Socrates the conversation up a bit, except unlike Socrates I don't
really know where I'm going. This conversation just goes in circles with too
many people saying "What we have is bad!", but that's not, well, to borrow a
word from another culture, _actionable_.)

------
boggles
The trend is not a reflection on Coders at Work but on the industry as a
whole. No need for apologies.

~~~
mtrichardson
Saying "That's the way it is, no need to worry about it" is a great way to
maintain the status quo and not promote any change.

~~~
discojesus
and saying "there aren't enough [insert gender/race/other meaningless
criterion] in here, so let's add some" is a great way to be full of shit.

~~~
starchy
What you've done here is to create a straw man by asserting that gender and
race are always meaningless criteria. Adding more developers who don't happen
to be white and male to the workforce and to books like these helps to
_create_ more developers who don't happen to be white and male to the
workforce, which aside from being good for those particular people can only
lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool, which can only be good for
those of us who care about ideas. That would be those of us reading this site,
unless I've missed something.

~~~
gloob
_can only lead to a wider variety of ideas in the memepool_

That's rather a weakish argument, I would think. I suspect that people coming
from different cultures would be far more likely to think differently about
things than someone who comes from the same culture but happens to have a
different set of genitalia.

Mind you, I'm just pulling this out of my ass myself, so it's entirely
possible I'm wrong. Haven't run across any studies about this sort of thing in
my casual perusals of the net, though.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Mind you, I'm just pulling this out of my ass myself, so it's entirely
possible I'm wrong. Haven't run across any studies about this sort of thing in
my casual perusals of the net, though."

Still, this is common enough reasoning put forth to have "diversity" in
programmer squads and gatherings.

I recall looking at a picture of the Clinton White House staff (I think, or
cabinet maybe), where the intent was to show the range of sexes and skin
colors. Look, diversity!

Yet, as a read the names, I was thinking "lawyer, lawyer, lawyer, not sure,
lawyer, lawyer, ..." and wondered where, exactly, was the diversity?

What is the argument that a geek with black skin will have different geek
ideas to offer than a geek with white or yellow skin? Or that genitalia
confers a unique technical point of view?

I prefer to be among a technical group where there's a diversity of informed
opinion, but I'm skeptical that such diversity has a correlation with sex and
race.

I'd prefer to hang with a mixed crowd of Lispers, Smalltalkers, PHPers, and
embedded system developers, than a Rainbow Collation of nothing-but-Java
developers.

~~~
ilyak
Modded up, but please no PHP.

------
jimfl
I have been fortunate enough to work in an environment where fully half of the
developers were women. It was in state government, which is to say, outside
industry. My strong suspicion is that sex bias has little to do with the work,
but much more to do with the attitudes of corporate software development,
which are (inanely) time-to-market driven.

------
known
Women have different and distinct priorities in life.

