

How to attract girls to the tech industry - ambuj
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24537621

======
easytiger
When the article tries to deal with Lovelace:

> Ada Lovelace was coding in a time when few men did

Really? Even such an obtuse statement indicates a complete ignorance of what
she did weakening further any point they have to make. Not helped by the fact
they have not indicated the IT interests and acomplishments of the girl whom
is the subject of the article. Some of the worst (Male) employees we have ever
hired as developers had either 1st class BEng or even PhD level
qualifications. Degree programs in IT in the UK are approaching worthless for
the most part.

This article is infuriating, a complete abomination and demonstrative of
everything which is wrong with the approach to girls in technology. The topic
is now approaching a level of dullness that makes me wonder if anything will
ever change.

Issues with the articles assume external factors actively opressing the
abilities of girls. Abilities cannot be suppressed. They can only fail to
exploit them in the light of other social roadblocks. There is no indication
of any understanding in the article as to why girls don't pursue jobs in STEM.
There is an inferrence that a patriarchy is responsible and is actively
seeking their exclusion. Applications of statistics in this area fail to
illuminate but at all any useful causal link. The reason being polical
correctness refuses people\ who might be willing to propose logical reasons
for the gap an audience due to the refusal to listen to what is perceived as
mysogeny.

How many women are there in other industries who have to, on a daily basis, do
highly competative problem solving. There are plenty in Science and Humanities
PhD positions. How does that differ from seeking actively problem solving
roles in IT?

I'm so fed up with the whole thing.

~~~
lotsofcows
You employed IT grads? I haven't seen one for years. Or do you mean that
you've employed CS grads only to find out their IT skills are poor?

~~~
easytiger
Apologies, I meant CS of course.

------
didgeoridoo
> Mrs Lovelace was coding in an age when even few men were

It's even better than that. Ada was coding before there were COMPUTERS.

Also see Bret Victor's rant on creating the future: "In 1968 — three years
before the invention of the microprocessor — Alan Kay stumbled across Don
Bitzer's early flat-panel display. Its resolution was 16 pixels by 16 pixels —
an impressive improvement over their earlier 4 pixel by 4 pixel display. Alan
saw those 256 glowing orange squares, and he went home, and he picked up a
pen, and he drew a picture of a goddamn iPad."
[http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

~~~
delinka
Your link is worthy of its own submission. Found it here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6325996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6325996)

------
cheshire137
I'm a woman and a programmer. I don't know why they aren't more female
programmers. Going through school up through high school, I always had the
impression that of my fellow classmates, the girls were the best in class.
Pre-calculus was the highest math course my dinky high school offered, and
there were a couple girls in there with me out of maybe eight students total.
It was only when I came to college that I started seeing way more men in my CS
and math classes, and lost the impression that guys were just apathetic about
school. The only girls in my classes were Indian or Asian, and there weren't
many of them. One other white girl I knew told me she went into CS because she
thought that was the right field for becoming a secretary. I've never had
problems with guys harassing me because of my interests or jobs, for which I
suppose I'm fortunate. I wish I knew why there were so few women in my college
CS classes, and why I rarely meet other female programmers in my town now.

------
spindritf
The title is actually _Why tech needs a makeover to attract girls_ but the
article doesn't say why. _Technology is at the forefront of the economy and
women have a vital role to play_ feels rather empty.

And while I'm sure Brazil and India can offer insights and be on the forefront
of improving policies, those are not really very enticing models to emulate.
Let's be honest, women in India work in IT to get ahead because India is poor.

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation,
commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study
painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

Hipsters are living the dream. Most people don't want to slave away at the
keyboard.

~~~
mzahir
Engineers and doctors are held in high esteem by Indians (not to mention a lot
of other Asians) so no, the women in India do not 'work in IT to get ahead
because India is poor'

------
tmp312
Obligatory Kate Beaton comics:
[http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/lovelacesm.png](http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/lovelacesm.png)

------
antocv
Lets attract girls to construction and building jobs, and attract men to
nursing and child care jobs as well. What can we do about that?

These issues go hand in hand, they are the same.

In my opinion it is bad taste to focus only on the tech industry. Go all in or
go home.

~~~
liedra
And perhaps over on the "nursing news" website they are actually doing this.
We're in tech. Let's sort our own back yards out before pointing fingers at
others'.

~~~
antocv
It wasnt my intention to point fingers at others, it was to point to the
thread article that the problem is more widespread and thus general than for
the tech industry, and any good solution must be founded with such an analasis
in mind that is applicable for all.

------
cjoh
Step 1: stop referring to adult women as "girls"

~~~
daviddoran
I think they're trying to interest actual girls (read "from 7 to 22") in
technology and coding.

~~~
cjoh
People who are 18 to 22 are not girls. They are adult women.

~~~
V-2
Most of these adults can't even buy a beer in the US : )

~~~
CmonDev
But can they die for their country as soldiers?

~~~
Tichy
Not if they are girls, I suppose.

------
crusso
The article has the answer of why women aren't in tech fields:

 _Choosing computer science is an unnecessarily tough choice and one you aren
't going to make unless you are one of the stubborn girls like I was_

Women in western countries have a lot of life choices that don't include
working at an office job. The article talks about IT tracks conflicting with
drama tracks... I was thinking "wtf?". If you have drama as one of the main
reason for going to school, then you're not really worried about having to
earn a living some day. Must be nice.

For men, getting a career to earn a living is what's beaten into you from a
very young age. I chose IT as a study and a career because it intersected with
the sets of "things that can earn me a decent living" and "things that
interest me".

The article goes on to say that the solution is to do more advocacy to
encourage women to get into STEM; but that does nothing to really address the
root cause... as though it could or should.

~~~
Tichy
"If you have drama as one of the main reason for going to school, then you're
not really worried about having to earn a living some day. Must be nice."

 _Bingo_

------
return0
The only thing an industry can do to become more attractive is to increase the
wages. I hardly doubt a "makeover" or a pink keyboard will make the work more
attractive. Also, the insinuation that people some how "must be lured" or even
"can be lured" is rather ridiculous.

------
sethlesky
I must get too much spam. I first read this as "in", instead of "to". Darned
priming.

------
Tichy
Incredible, that article seems to get by without blaming men at all. Did I
miss something?

In another note, the whole A-levels system seems rather stupid to me. I've met
several people in the UK who weren't able to study what they want because they
had the wrong A-levels.

I guess ultimately it is questionable in general to deny people the
possibility to study what they want. Why require some silly school
certificate?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _I 've met several people in the UK who weren't able to study what they want
> because they had the wrong A-levels._ //

Presumably you mean weren't able to access the particular course+institution
they wanted. Could you give some more details?

It's a balance I suppose, either allow for early specialisation and get a head
start or retain a broad spread and retain greater choice. That said I was able
to do some Art History at Uni off the back of science and maths A-levels and
could, with effort, have pivoted to an Arts degree.

~~~
Tichy
I admit I don't really know how the system works. My impression was that
people can only study subjects they also had for A-Levels (or maybe related
subjects, as defined by a university)? The people I met were all from UCL, so
perhaps it was just that they wanted to get into specific universities and
that made them compromise?

Are the A-Levels really giving much of a head start? When I studied maths, it
was really much more advanced than the maths we did in grammar school (in
Germany). The maths from grammar school was occasionally mentioned as a
special application of the "real" maths.

~~~
joshvm
Disclosure, I'm a science postgrad at UCL.

You're a bit limited with A levels, 'normal' load is 3, most undergrads in top
institutions take 4 or even 5. I took a standard physics/engineer's load:
double maths, physics and chemistry. I also took AS computing, but it bored
the pants off me quite frankly. An ideal loadout for A level would be maths
plus any two other subjects. I would be willing to be that most courses may
overlook anything else, but maths is usually the bare requirement.

For science courses, you almost certainly have to have taken the pre-requisite
A level. For non-science subjects, you don't need any particular
qualifications besides a set of A levels at defined grade points. Some
exceptions are for music, languages and arts where you'll probably have an
entrance exam of some type. Oxbridge make applicants sit entrance papers for
almost all subjects these days.

Point being - you only have to make compromises if the university you set your
heart on forces it. Even Oxford and Cambridge generally don't specify subjects
unless you're going for a science degree.

Maths/Further Maths was incredibly useful and coasted me through the first
year of my degree. Most universities compensate for the fact that not all
schools teach further maths (hence why first year physics is a cakewalk if
you've done it). Standard maths is basic calculus, bit of series, that kind of
thing. Further maths is much more advanced and introduces matrices, complex
numbers, differential equations and higher levels of statistics and mechanics.
Particularly for physics, knowing about matrices and complex numbers was a
massive head start. At college you're still in rote-learning mode where
someone shoves 100 equations in front of you and says "Solve". Most people
don't have that kind of motivation at university, but it is incredibly
effective at drilling in knowledge in something like maths.

The physics I learned at that time was fluff, chemistry and biology was
memorisation. I can't speak for humanities, but languages seemed fairly
rigorous and a big step up from secondary school.

------
clienthunter
This stuff infuriates me.

> But then last year I spoke at a conference and I heard that the numbers of
> women in technology was in decline and I thought, 'That isn't right.'

It is not right nor wrong! It just _is_. To make a statement like this is to
give legitimacy to the idea that the equipment you've got tucked between your
thighs is in some way relevant to your ability to do the job. _Who cares?_
Just do the damn job and if you encounter some closed-minded fool who thinks
your sex lessens you, then beat them down with logic.

Trying to kludge the world into fitting your own little vision of how it
should be is a recipe for misery.

> Technology is at the forefront of the economy and women have a vital role to
> play. When my daughters are born I don't want them to feel like the odd ones
> out.

Then teach them how to thrive in the face of adversity. God knows they'll find
it useful.

~~~
TomGullen
I don't think you're fully appreciative the hardships minorities in certain
environments have to endure from the brazen level to the subtle and hard to
isolate incidents.

~~~
Tichy
I am willing to bet that there are no special hardships for women who want to
enter IT. Quite the opposite really.

------
CmonDev
Can't understand if she is employed as a "coder" or opted for a PR/charity
path.

------
VLM
I'll propose a theory which will probably not be very popular, that IT jobs
are one of the few "male" support jobs that are marginally socially
acceptable, causing intense demand for them by men and crowding out the women
who have other opportunities.

If a woman wants a low status / long hours / behind the scenes / support
career there are a variety of socially acceptable job fields to enter.
Secretary, nurse, day care worker, elementary school teacher, social worker...
If a guy wants a similar job there is what, a small amount of jobs ending in
-tech like large diesel engine tech aka mechanic, which are rapidly
technologizing anyway into "IT plus some grease" and of course IT. And thats
about it. So the girls can do anything including IT, but all the guys are
stuck in IT.

I would theorize that if you made male nurses, male day care workers, male
social workers more socially acceptable, the logjam of male IT workers would
decline and you'd approach 50:50 both inside and outside IT.

If every frustrated male nurse / male secretary / male schoolteacher crowds
into the IT classes, its going to overwhelm the small number of female
exclusively IT students.

I may be off on the root causes but I think I'm onto something with the
mechanism of male concentration. Maybe the root cause is a desire to enter an
extremely agism oriented field, or a desire for the drama of always being on
call and only being visible during disasters sort of a policeman/fireman job
for nonathletic people.

Maybe rephrased the general wider class of humans that might like IT or a
related field, is sorted by sex such that all the guys get stuck in IT but the
women are free to choose, so "naturally" the concentration of maleness in IT
is very high in IT and low in other related fields.

~~~
ksk
Interesting theory, but do you also account for the tiered nature of IT jobs?
(Tiered w.r.t domain/difficulty/etc)

~~~
VLM
The general public unthinking consumer type is of the opinion there exists
only one type of IT person. We all are experts on removing viruses from their
windows machines and purchasing the "best" PC or phone, etc.

Career decisions are usually made by kids who are legendary for poor decision
making in general and are (intentionally?) not very well informed. It would be
interesting to compare the choices made by kids who decide they're going to
"do computers" at age 6 vs adults retraining at age 35 (as if on average
someone that old will be hired, but I digress)

~~~
ksk
But surely, an adult who makes a conscious decision to enter the CS/IT field
knows about the different domains in a much more real sense. Why would a woman
not choose a CS career path in that case? She would know the difference
between a technically challenging programmer position vs a support desk job.

~~~
VLM
The humans I've run into who didn't choose a IT career path definitely know
nothing about the difference between programmer, sysadmin, and helpdesk, not
even that the differences exist. If I didn't have an uncle in the biz I
wouldn't even know there's a categorization of rough/structural carpenters and
finish carpenters. I don't think most people make career decisions based on
extensive rational data gathering of the whole human experience of work before
picking a career.

------
jlebrech
Women are doing pretty well in management, there are a few women in IT and
it's because they like not because they are there for the career progression.
Women have a better success rate than other industry.

------
jheriko
We need an article on how to attract girls if you work in the tech industry...
I suspect thats always the real problem here.

Everyone should quit being so sexist. Women are allowed to be different :/

------
speeder
WOW, this article is bullshit after bullshit.

For example, Ada Lovelace coding in a time when few mem did... That is
obvious, she was the first programmer, by definition she did before anyone
else (male or female).

Or saying that Brazil has lots of female programmers and people assume that
women in suits are in IT... That one is beyond wrong.

If you see a woman in suit (common where I live, that is São Paulo), their
most likely job (beside being a secretary) is being a lawyer (we have a
obscene amount of lawyers anyway).

Every day I cross by lots of female lawyers, had lawyer GFs, have lots of
lawyer female friends...

Now the average woman dislike IT, not because it is a thing of men, when I am
talking about IT wit ha friend for example and a women is bothered by it
(happened a couple times), or impressed by it (also happened a couple times),
what they say to me is that IT deals with machines and that is too
complicated. (when I was younger I tried to teach them and whatnot, and I
became sad when they just said it was complicated and refused to learn, now I
see is that they don't want to bother).

I DID met some women working at IT, including had female co-workers... One
interesting thing on them was that most were doing it for the money, because
IT is well paid, women that suck at lawyering or other humananities end
joining IT instead. I've met one women in IT that was in IT because she truly
wanted to, her husband was a engineer, and she decided to have the same career
as him, and work in IT as a hobby (she was very clear to our boss, that if
work got in the way of taking care of her children she would quit because her
husband money was enough... this was when the boss started to demand excessive
overtime after badly created schedules)

Also by the way, when someone DO act sexist, is usually, women against women.

I have a degree in Game Design, on my campus there was also a course in
Fashion Business (and several other design courses, and architecture).

My class had zero females. The other class in my year had one, that quickly
became infamous (because she openly exchanged sex for people doing homework
for her, specially with dumb guys, then she PROMISED sex, had the guy do the
homework, and then dumped him)

Yet, several women became friends with us, and thought of moving to our course
(some actually did), and people that joined after my year also had a bunch of
women (I think the record was 25%)

Those women (that were officially in our course, or were friends and hanged
out with us) were frequently attacked by women in other courses.

Most common attacks: "You are fat and ugly and want to hang out with nerds and
otakus to have sex" (this was the most common, easily) "You are ugly and this
is why you cannot work with fashion" (this came from fashion business
students) "You are not a woman, you want to be a boy" "You are poor, not good
enough for us" (Fashion Design students usually drove to university with Audi,
Mercedes, etc... that in Brazil are crazy expensive, reaching in the six
figures easily, Game Design students usually went walking or using bus, and
most struggled to pay the tuition, sometimes you would recognize a fashion
student on the bus stop, and frequently their reaction was to get instantly
deep red and hide behind other people...)

After university, I kept seeing this same sort of behavior. (ie: other women
attack IT women for not being lawyer, or medic, or PR...) although not as much
as they attack full-time mothers (or those that state they want to drop their
careers to become full-time mothers).

------
eddyparkinson
Role models: I heard the uk office of national stats has numbers that show a
working solution, I.e. role models going to schools and talking pupils. but no
one will fund it at scale.

------
galapago
Why do we have to "attract" them?

~~~
hackula1
Discouraging 50% of the population from contributing just seems a bit
inefficient to me.

~~~
V-2
But not discouraging someone is not the same as encouraging (aka attracting)
:)

Also, since the number of women (or girls) is finite, you can't encourage them
to pursue careers in the tech industry without discouraging them from whatever
career choices they make instead now.

------
peterwwillis
> "Some schools, often girl-only schools, simply don't offer ICT [information
> and communications technology] at A-level and the girls wanting to do it
> have to go to a nearby boys school to learn it," she says.

For what it's worth, I went to a public magnet school for computers, AND a
private school in which every person had a laptop. I learned nothing of tech
in either school, and I taught myself everything I know. (They wouldn't let me
take the classes I was already studying at home)

> And among girls who carry on and study science at university, two out of
> three don't go on to Stem-related careers.

How many people actually get a career in what they got a degree? Probably half
of the people I know do something different than what they studied in school.

\--

This kind of article has me thinking more and more about assigned gender roles
and societal expectations. A lot of people are really concerned with getting
women into the tech industry. Years ago, people were probably really concerned
with getting women into etiquette school, or getting them to learn a trade
such as seamstress. How is our modern imposition of what a particular gender
should do any different than the old impositions?

People claim to be pushing for these "new" gender roles as a way to fight
inequality, or because women need help getting into the industry. But how
necessary is it? For nerdy/geeky people who are really inspired and curious
about the stuff, there is little stopping someone from learning online via
tutorials and books geared towards beginners.

That said, I think there is an urgent need for more female-centric online
help. The male-dominated chat, mailing lists and forums can be horrible for
anyone to browse, though they're particularly hostile towards women. But I
don't think this is an industry thing, I think this is a general cultural
thing. Find American boys or men anonymously online and they'll probably be
doing some really horrible shit, a lot of it directed negatively towards
women.

I think we all want a quick and easy fix, so we look at just the tech
industry. We decide that we only want to fix our own little corner of the
world and ignore the larger problem. But realistically, the lack of women in
tech is probably a larger societal issue, and it won't ever be resolved until
you address the bigger picture.

~~~
Tichy
I think IT just gets a lot of press and coverage of people who got rich.

Computers are nice because you don't need a huge factory to start something.
However, let's take an archaic example: sewing. I think you can also get rich
sewing, for example by designing a popular fashion line or creating a popular
brand.

I am not even sure it is easier to get rich with computers than with sewing,
or if more people are getting rich with programming than with sewing.

It seems possible that by the time women have been successfully coerced into
tech careers, some completely different technology will be in the limelight. I
don't know what - perhaps bioengineering? Then there will be a big lament why
so few women are in bioengineering.

~~~
peterwwillis
Curiously, most of the bio-researchers I know are women... but apparently we
should get them to drop out and start writing Javascript.

(This is just one more danger of trying to push people towards a subject - you
risk alienating the other subjects they would have naturally been attracted to
and possibly enjoyed more)

------
menubar
I just show them my ripped coding muscles.

Yeah baby, you like that don'cha.

