
Girls Who Code - yurisagalov
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/12/girls-who-code.html
======
overgard
When I hear about this being a cultural thing, an important aspect people
leave out is that men aren't exactly encouraged to be coders either. Writing
code has pretty much no social cred until you're out of school, and pretty
much automatically gets you tagged as a nerd. No coder I know started coding
because it was cool, they just sort of enjoyed it and accepted the social
consequences.

I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. Yet
I rarely hear about the cultural problem of not having enough males in
nursing, or how we can encourage more male nurses. Same goes for elementary
school teachers. Why is that?

Just because there's a gender imbalance doesn't necessarily mean anyone is
keeping anyone out. And if a few insensitive comments can keep you from doing
what you want to do in life, maybe that's something you have to deal with --
there's always going to be haters no matter what you want to do.

~~~
parennoob
Yep, and a series of uncomfortable truths about how things work against men
(specially Asian men) who are trying to learn to code:

1\. At school and such, no one tries to _encourage_ you to code. People
naturally think, "Oh, male and Asian, screw _him_ , the world doesn't need
another Asian dude coding. Let's try and teach Rails to that cute girl -- we
need more of her kind."

2\. People _assume_ you are better at coding, math, and suchlike, and are more
strident in their criticism of you when you fail to live up to their
standards. I have had people tell me "yeah, if you can't understand this, you
might not be smart enough". Think of the brouhaha that would result (gasp!) if
someone said that to a girl.

3\. You are naturally left out of all of the outreach events. Everyone is
trying to get more women into coding, for some yet-as-undefined goal (getting
exactly 51% women, maybe?). But you -- you are just another male nerd, and you
have apparently had a red carpet laid out for you to the world of coding, so
you must be privileged.

There are tons of jobs that are female dominated. Nursing? Teaching? Fashion?
Yet no one's complaining that there aren't enough men on the editorial staff
of Cosmopolitan magazine, or starting movements for "Men Who Are Interested In
Fashion". Draw your own conclusions from this.

~~~
judk
Are you joking? The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent
couple of decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff.

And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education world,
especially with respect to the need to provide male role models for kids of
single moms.

~~~
parennoob
> The fashion world has massively outreached to men in recent couple of
> decades. Axe and chest shaving and all that other metrosexual stuff.

I mean men _working_ in fashion, not being marketed to. And Axe is not
fashion, thank you very much.

> And the lack of male teachers is a persistent concern in the education
> world...

Show me the equivalent of "Rails Girls" or "Girls Who Code" for male teachers
or fashion designers. For example, the list of sponsors on this page
([http://www.girlswhocode.com/about-us/](http://www.girlswhocode.com/about-
us/)).

~~~
0x20
As well as girlswhocode there are also many non-gender-specific organizations
aimed at helping young people into computer science.

Instead of asking whether gender-specific orgs for young people exist in the
fashion or teaching world, you should also be asking whether non-gender-
specific orgs exist in those fields as well.

The possible lack of "Young Male Teachers" organizations doesn't make much of
a point if there's also a lack of "Young Teachers" organizations.

------
gfodor
I have to thank Valleywag for doing me the favor of helping me prune people
who lack reading comprehension from twitter. I'm still kind of amazed how so
many people un-ironically cited valleywag in their tweets.

It's pretty obvious what pg was saying in this particular "smoking gun" quote:
that figuring out a way to get _more_ girls interested in programming at 13 is
an incredibly important and hard problem. The willingness for people to
quickly swallow and parrot a 1-dimensional narrative of "Paul Graham, sexist
pig" based upon a few quotes taken out of context in a highly edited, 3rd hand
rage-blog by fucking _Vallywag_ is the type of behavior I expect from
political spinmeister hacks trotted out on the 24 hour news channels, not from
smart people who I respect.

~~~
owenwil
Right, but when he had a chance to comment _again_ to defend his statements,
he instead went after the angle of saving himself rather than addressing the
issue at the core.

He could have talked about the work he's doing to help girls learn to code. He
could have talked about others' work to help girls learn code. He could have
talked about how he is _not_ biased towards men.

Instead, he just attacked journalists in general and didn't bother to address
the root problem. It's all about saving oneself.

~~~
philwelch
The root problem is that when he tried talking about the root problem, his
words were taken out of context and used against him. There's no way to win
with character assassins and tabloids, and calling them out as people who
don't discuss issues in good faith is the best you can do.

------
codex
In a far off land, bounceyball was the national sport. A funny cross between
basketball and volleyball, it was hugely popular, and to be a professional
player was considered the most prestigious occupation.

A minor scandal erupted when was noted that there were few women in the co-ed
national league, and a huge about of effort was made to recruit female
players. Every family wanted the prestige, fame, and fortune that came with
having a daughter in the league. Male players wanted more females playing so
it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating
(for some odd reason, most male bounceyball players were surprisingly
unattractive).

Eventually it was suggested that the problem lay upstream, so major efforts
were made to recruit teenage girls for the middle and high school leagues,
which were also coed.

However, for some reason this attempt also failed. Finally, an anonymous
poster on the Internet noted that, as a broad generalization, taller
bounceyball players were more suited to the game, scoring more points. Perhaps
a gender difference in height was to blame, discouraging female players and
hurting them in the draft. The poster tracked down these differences in height
to a disparity in average male and female birth weights, and suggested that
perhaps a cocktail of experimental prenatal hormones (primarily testosterone),
continued until age 15, would do the trick.

The anonymous poster was promptly downvoted and the discussion turned to
topics of sexism, discrimination, and cultural bias in the bounceyball
leagues. Various horror stories were recounted by female bounceyball players
and a new round of self-flagellation began among those in the industry.

~~~
philangist
I don't necessarily agree with this metaphor, but it was entertaining and a
fresh approach to the girls in tech problem. I especially thought 'Male
players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest
all the time, and to help with dating' was hilarious.

Anyway, my major problem with your assertion is that we know that the number
of female bouncyballers has been going down significantly over the last few
decades. It's not as if women have gotten significantly shorter, or men have
gotten significantly taller in that time period, so the difference in
participation rates can't be explained entirely with biology.

~~~
yetanotherphd
It could be that the industry has become more flexible and meritocratic. The
top post in this article mentions IBM and other big companies being more
minority-friendly. But they also represent an older management style. The
current industry with its focus on innovation and getting things done, may
actually be more meritocratic.

------
danso
One of that impresses me, and kind of amuses me, is how PG will talk these
issues out, even though the danger of being misquoted or misinterpreted is
much higher than the chances of being appreciated, especially for someone in
his position. The phrase _" God knows what you would do to get 13 year old
girls interested in computers?"_, as a standalone statement, is ripe for
ripping apart. But I think in its context, it only expresses his frustration
at the problem, which is much, _much_ better than the apathy expressed by
others. It's a problem with much more societal and institutional inertia
behind it than just VC men looking down on female entrepreneurs, or even tech
companies being discriminatory. He's absolutely right to say that the focus
should be on early education, and if anyone knows the best way (on a timetable
that would satisfy current observers) to implement that, then they should
speak up.

In terms of current harmful perceptions that can be stamped out in the short-
term...I think the belief that females aren't genetically cut out to be
programmers is one. The "world's first computer programmer" was a woman and
COBOL, of course, was invented by Grace Hopper. These women were pioneers in
early computing at a time when women were still struggling to be recognized as
equal citizens. To argue that women can't make it as hackers is like arguing,
post-Jackie Robinson, that blacks can't develop professional baseball skills.
The lack of women computer scientists and programmers today more likely point
to institutional/cultural problems rather than genetic ones.

~~~
tptacek
Once again: after establishing bona fides by saying "fuck Vallywag and
everything they stand for", I feel like I need to say that Graham wasn't
hugely distorted.

He was asked whether YC discriminates against women. The obvious subtext of
that question is that there's a large imbalance between men & women among YC
founders. He could have said "no, we don't discriminate; I don't know why the
imbalance among YC founders exist or exactly how to correct it, but here are
some reasons I don't think our process is what creates it". He does not say
that.

Instead, he composes a small essay about the roots of gender imbalance in the
industry off the top of his head, and that impromptu essay manages to
reinforce a lot of young- white- male privilege. "If women were going to be
good coders", he seems to a reasonable reader to be saying, "they would have
found coding on their own". But that's not true: it conflates affinity and
aptitude with opportunity and support. It also conflates "living and breathing
technology" with "ability to masterfully execute a role"; the correlation
between living the life and ability to execute is dubious at best.

It does not help that Paul Graham has said other things in the past that also
reinforce privilege.

"Privilege" is a dirty word on HN (I guess it makes me some kind of "nth wave
feminist" to use it), but it isn't an indictment. Nobody is saying privilege
needs to be rooted out and eliminated. How could you ever do that, anyways?
The point is not to brand young white dudes with the word, but simply to
recognize that it exists, and be wary about attitudes that reinforce it and
allow it to feed on itself. That's the concern I have with the interview The
Information published.

~~~
gfodor
I'm not sure this is a fair assessment. The (admittedly likely butchered at
this point) quote:

> If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found
> it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this
> is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What
> that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us.

In the very next sentence pg states that the lack of interest in young girls
at age 13 is an _actual problem_. If he had some inherent belief that "girls
just don't like computers" thing (ie, the great "male tech misogyny" strawman)
he wouldn't cast it as a problem to be solved.

~~~
tptacek
Once again: misogyny is a specific thing. It connotes an overt bias against
women. That bias, while definitely present in our industry (and for some
reason especially well-represented on HN) is rare. I would be shocked to find
out that Paul Graham was a misogynist: it would not fit the rest of the
picture that I have of him from what he writes.

But the absence of bias against women is inadequate innoculation against
gender imbalance in the industry. It doesn't correct for bias _towards men_.
That bias is pervasive. It's easy to see why: it involves saying nice things
about people who do good work, and then simply generalizing it out a bit. The
end result is a system of privilege for people who "fit the mold" for
successful startup hackers.

~~~
gfodor
It sounded to me like you took pg's quote to mean he felt was blind to the
factor opportunity takes towards gaining affinity for a subject. If this were
true (and his next sentence seems to invalidate this) it would mean he felt
that women were less capable, inherently, of appreciating computers and
programming. At the risk of splitting hairs, this would be a misogynistic
viewpoint. This is the narrative these clowns want people to believe anyway,
that someone like pg is a 1-dimensional cartoon villain who thinks "girls'
brains can't code, what am I supposed to do about it?!"

~~~
tptacek
It's easier at this point to just say what I do and don't actually think. I
don't think Paul Graham believes women are intrinsically less capable than
men. I do think he has a blind spot regarding privilege and specifically the
way his reputational energy reinforces privilege, and another related blind
spot about how that fortified privilege impedes the progress of women in our
field.

Another way to put it would be, if Paul Graham acted personally as the hiring
manager for every YC company, I wouldn't be too concerned. But he's not: his
thoughts about capability and aptitude are filtered through the brains of
hundreds of (mostly young, male) nerds.

~~~
drewblaisdell
> I do think he has a blind spot regarding privilege and specifically the way
> his reputational energy reinforces privilege, and another related blind spot
> about how that fortified privilege impedes the progress of women in our
> field.

I don't know whether I agree or disagree with this (mostly, I just don't know
what Paul Graham thinks about what he hasn't publicly spoken of), but this is
a pretty serious claim to extrapolate from, as you wrote, an "impromptu
essay".

I want to see meaningful change in the gender distribution/bias of this
industry, but it's a shame that conversations about this frequently seem to
contain detailed analyses of a reasonable person's "controversial remarks". It
feeds a fire that shouldn't be fed.

------
newnewnew
I don't think we've come anywhere close to rejecting the hypothesis of some
kind of innate personality and ability differences between male and female.
Men are higher represented in diseases like autism, which involve lower social
functioning/higher affinity for the abstract. Men score higher on Math SAT[1],
despite the school system being tilted more and more in favor of female.

More women than men graduate from college and women have flooded into
traditionally male majors in the sciences. There are plenty of female
biologists and doctors. But they have not penetrated the most mathy majors,
like engineering or Math itself.

Maybe men and women aren't interchangeable cogs, and some combination of
difference in interest and average ability will always mean that the way to
get females into your tech company is by having a big non-software department.

[1] [http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-
hug...](http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-huge-gender-
math-gap-persists-with-a-33-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys/)

------
Alex3917
Apparently the definition of sexism is now just not telling women what they
want to hear. The vast majority of the criticism of pg's answer that I saw
wasn't even claiming that he was wrong, but just calling him sexist because
his answer wasn't masturbatory enough. C.f.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840377)

~~~
reinhardt
Pretty much. The definition of sexism also involves endless discussions about
the almost last job category still ruled by the evil patriarchy - computer
engineers - among the 15 projected to grow the most over the next decade [1].
For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I
somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight templars.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-
end-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-
men/308135/?single_page=true)

~~~
velis_vel
> For the record, the only other male dominated job category is janitors but I
> somehow doubt it faces similar outrage by the gender equality knight
> templars.

I'm really curious where you got this information because it doesn't agree
with anything else I've read. Among other things, about 75% of US doctors are
male[1].

[1]
[http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1078/](http://www.hschange.com/CONTENT/1078/)

~~~
TheCoelacanth
That's of the 15 job categories expected to grow the most over the next
decade. Doctors likely aren't one of those high-growth categories.

------
pnathan
In tech, saying anything about gender is an opportunity to be lambasted
vigorously. But I think I can contribute something.

Having read what I could over the years on the academic side of "women in
tech" (i.e., academic research studying the matter, rather than opinion
pieces), the consensus seems to be that the early teens are the time where the
decision is taken to move away (or not) from STEM fields. That is part of why
the Girls Who Code initiative & others like it is such a big deal.

There are a lot of different factors and stereotypes playing into the decision
to exit STEM tracks, but among them are - "unpleasant male geeks",
"programmers work alone", "girls don't need to know math", "boys figure things
out" and so forth. ( _Clearly_ these are a subset of examples, and also
clearly not all of these are 100% influential for any particular person,
place, time). So the stereotypical 13 y/o girl and her interest in STEM is
actually the target of a lot of research and policy efforts.

There's also a self-reinforcing aspect to this: heavily gender-coded places
aren't typically presenting a welcome to people of the other gender. I read a
academic paper on this in the last several years, but can't recall the
experiment in detail or the citation. The implication is that a workspace
festooned with seriously masculine widgets often tells many women that, "hey,
man cave here. not so welcome".

For the interested person, the academic experiments are usually well done and
their results, while not always surprising, clearly quantify certain sexist
aspects in the tech world.

~~~
ama729
If you have some links to the studies you have read, I would be really
interested to read them.

Thank you

~~~
pnathan
I apologize, I do not. I read widely and generally do not maintain an
annotated bibliography of what I read. Perhaps I should.

~~~
girvo
I try to, surprisingly it's quite useful even outside of this small use-case.
Evernote or OneNotes clipping functionality is perfect for it. Give it a try,
even if only for a few weeks, it's super useful IMO!

------
kn0thing
What great timing. BTW, thanks to all of you who backed my crowdtilt to bring
BlackGirlsCode to Brooklyn! [https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/no-sleep-
till-brooklyn-f...](https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/no-sleep-till-
brooklyn-for-black-girls-code-ny)

~~~
loomio
I am so, so glad to see a much more high quality discussion (thanks in large
part to lkrubner's insightful top comment) going on here today than the
travesty that accompanied your post about Black Girls Code. The reactions that
provoked made me feel sick. I guess the important think is your campaign is
being supported and funded! But It's always a shock to see the dark side of
this community revealed so starkly.

------
athesyn
> There is a lot of systemic bias in the system against young women taking
> this kind of direction with their studies and their career.

I understand there is cultural bias, but systemic? There are more women
attending and graduating college than men, they're more economically
prosperous in their early twenties as well.[1]

[1][http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young-w...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young-
women-earning-more-men)

~~~
tptacek
Yes, because they are very well represented in the traditional professions:
law, accounting, and medicine.

They are _not_ well represented in computer software. That's what we're
talking about.

Go to a crypto conference sometime. If, like me, you hail from computer
software and not from academic cryptography and mathematics, you will probably
be surprised at how much better women are represented there than in software.
The technology of cryptography is more demanding than computer software, but
very similar in spirit.

What is it about the field of computer software development that keeps so many
women out?

I suspect some of it has to do with the way we take observations about what
successful developers have looked like in the past --- young white dudes ---
and create fast paths for those people. People who "fit the mold" have an
easier time making progress in our field. People who don't fit the mold have
to contend with more interrogation, more doubt, and slower progress. It's true
of other minorities (relative to software development demographics) as well,
particularly older people.

~~~
Sssnake
>They are not well represented in computer software

Are they "well represented" in any skilled trade? Why is this one specific
skilled trade such a unique cause for concern and inventing crazy reasons to
blame the people in the trade?

~~~
jdunck
Because software is eating the world.

Because entrepreneurship creates jobs.

Because software is the new means of production.

Because people different than you have problems which are different than
yours.

Because dog-fooding is a great way to make something people want.

Lots more reasons, but chew on those.

~~~
Sssnake
Only 1 and 3 are relevant, and I don't believe either of them are true. The
rest of those apply equally to all sorts of other skilled trades.

~~~
jdunck
Thanks for showing your confirmation bias. Keep asking questions you don't
want to think about.

~~~
Sssnake
If you don't have any interest in engaging in a good faith discussion that
don't reply. This isn't reddit, shitposting isn't rewarded here.

------
fiatmoney
No one seems to talk about where these girls are being pulled _from_ , as if
labor shifts don't have two sides. What often seems to happen in initiatives
like this is that all the sectors which decide they need higher female
participation end up fighting over the same pool of "high-achieving" (high IQ,
upper class, family connections) individuals. "We need to shift women from MBA
programs into comp sci master's programs" doesn't quite have the same ring to
it.

~~~
crassus
Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment.
Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average
male.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Keep in mind, too, that female unemployment is lower than male unemployment.
> Your average female in the labor force has more options than your average
> male.

A society which views it as more acceptable for women to opt-out of the labor
force may distort this: when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more
likely to opt-out of the labor force -- since unemployment measures (actively
looking for work) / (employed + actively looking for work), people dropping
out of the active labor force when out of work shows up as lower unemployment,
but it doesn't mean "more options" for those _in_ the labor force.

~~~
erichocean
_when employment becomes less scarce, women may be more likely to opt-out of
the labor force_

We've been in that situation for 5 years in the US. What you're describing did
not happen—declines in labor participation among men still exceed women by a
significant amount.

One explanation I've heard is that since women earn less, but do "the same"
work, it's cheaper to keep them on vs. men. I have no idea if that's correct
or not, or if it is, explains the difference.

------
HaloZero
It sounds like Harvey Mudd's program improves female enrollment but it's just
seems like a good idea in general

The quick program for Harvey Mudd seems to be 1) Make the problems more
practical in application (ie controlling a robot, modelling a disease) 2)
Giving students choices in what problems they are interested in 3) Segmenting
students according to skill set, thus putting people who have been programming
in another course that will match their pace better and allowing students who
are more new to have their own pace.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
I think Harvey Mudd's approach is fantastic. I love the idea of two separate
tracks for getting people to code. It allows people to take an academic risk
which they normally wouldn't be able to take for fear of destroying their GPA.

I think this is a fundamental problem with STEM programs in general. Why have
grades and tracks at all? The important thing is to learn the material, and
not what grade you got on a test at some arbitrary point in time. This is what
is so brilliant about MOOCs like Khan Academy. No grades, and you can repeat
the material until you _know_ it.

~~~
zhemao
The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate. Sure you
can repeat the material until you know it, but how many people actually will?
The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor
or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to
completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests,
assignments, projects, etc.). This isn't to say that MOOCs don't have their
place, but they are not a replacement for the traditional classroom model.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The problem with MOOCs is that they have a pretty low retention rate.

Actually, I think that's one of the strengths of MOOCs (or, at least, a
symptom of its strengths.)

> The benefit of having a physical class is that you can turn to the professor
> or TAs for help if you're having trouble. It's also more difficult to
> completely fall behind because there are milestones in place (tests,
> assignments, projects, etc.).

The MOOCs I've been in EdX and Coursera all have had both milestones of the
type described, and TAs to go to for help.

What they don't have is a large up-front cost to enter, so there's no reason
for people not to try out classes when they aren't completely certain are the
right fit -- and little reason, even if the fit is good, not to drop out of
one iteration and come back and take the course again if other life events
that _do_ have a cost for not dealing with now erupt.

So, yeah, a higher rate of people starting MOOCs and not completing them
compared to traditional courses is to be expected -- and that's a _good_
thing.

------
rokhayakebe
I am a man.

These initiatives will simply not work. Imagine "Men Nurse."

Many women SIMPLY do not code for the same reason many men do not code. Most
of us were not exposed to the science as kids, hence step 1 is to make
Programming mandatory. Note I say programming and not C.S.. I am an amateur
programmer and I can say wit confidence that this is as fundamental as basic
arithmetic. Full stop.

I frankly wish they shut down "Girls Who Code" entirely and all the likes.
Instead we can put our efforts into teaching everyone to code: "We Code."
Because once someone does something as simple as _print (2+2)-(3-2)_ or _print
$first_name + $last_name_ or (my favorite) _< html><h1>The Website of
Me</h1><p>My name is Joanna. This is my first web page.<img
src='..'></p></html>_, once they do this, there is simply no going back for
them.

~~~
tptacek
There are tons of male nurses. 'iamelgringo, a former top contributor here, is
an ER nurse.

Back of the envelope:

There are ~24,000,000 people aged 18-24 in the US. Assume half are female:
there are ~12,000,000 "girls who might code" in the US. Of these, 12.6% are
African American. There are ~1,440,00 "black girls who might code" in the US.

There are ~400,000 people who live in Tulsa.

There have probably been several "Tulsa Codes!" events in the past couple
years, but either way just stipulate that it could happen. A "Tulsa Codes!"
event addresses just 400,000 people. For logistical and practical reasons,
that event locks out an overwhelmingly huge number of potential beneficiaries.

But nobody has a problem with "Tulsa Codes!". Threads aren't full of people
ranting about "third wave feminism" when they do.

~~~
city41
9.6% of all RNs are male [0]

Why is there not a male nurse initiative? Or male elementary teacher
initiative[1]?

I have to admit, I am strongly against things like "Girls who code". If there
truly are issues in our culture that prevent girls from looking into coding,
then absolutely let's get rid of those as best we can. But a girl can look
into and explore coding just as easily as a boy can. There's really nothing
stopping them. I have a few male nurse friends too. Nothing stopped them
either, they simply found nursing interesting and pursued it. There might
simply be fewer female coders because they tend to not be interested in this
profession, same as male nurses.

[0] -- [http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-
statistics](http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics) [1] --
[http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers](http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers)

~~~
gfodor
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. The question you ask is a good one,
though you are jumping to some conclusions. I think it may very well be that
there _should_ be a "male nurse initiative", or at least that the lack of one
doesn't somehow dictate the ethics and obligations of _our_ field.

~~~
city41
Possibly I am jumping to conclusions. I have nothing against females in tech.
I strongly believe anyone should be able to pursue whatever they want.

My local hacker's space hosts coding dojos to teach children how to code.
There is no special treatment given to girls in these. Everyone is welcome and
encouraged. The dojo organizers _are_ conscious of making sure there is a good
representation of female teachers/mentors in the program. That is a different
-- and more effective -- approach to this issue. The difference seems subtle,
yet it's key.

I'm male and I knit. It's something my Mom taught me when I was young and it's
stuck with me. Yet I _hate_ when my gender is made such a big deal here. I'm
not a male knitter, I'm just a knitter. I don't want to talk about my gender
and how great it is I have pursued this hobby, I want to talk about the hobby.
I can't help but think females would feel similar to programs like this.

------
yetanotherphd
One thing that came out of the discussion in the last article on this topic,
was the people who support this kind of affirmative action were very
interested in hearing from HN posters who opposed it (especially men), so they
could understand what our reasons were, and a respectful discussion could be
had. In response to this request, here is my opinion on the matter.

In fact, I think there is truth to what both sides say. On the pro AA side, it
is true that women probably feel unwelcome in the tech industry. Even when men
don't do anything consciously to exclude women, programming culture revolves
around certain attitudes and mindsets that are associated with young men in
our culture. E.g. being interested in science fiction, being obsessive about
one's work and hobbies, . None of these things are strictly related to
programming, and an excessive focus on them makes it harder for women (and
minorities) to enter the field. The fact that male programmers are attracted
to the minority of female programmers doesn't help with this feeling of
unwelcomeness, in fact it adds to the awkwardness (although I think that most
of this is completely innocent and could not be called harassment, and actual
harassment is rarer in our industry than others).

On the anti-AA side, I think that women, due to reverse-discrimination and old
fashion chivalry, are objectively advantaged in every field. Furthermore, some
things that would seem to advantage men like long hours, stressful work, and
being judged on results, are not bad or discriminatory in themselves. But they
will tend to favor men over women because our society provides greater
incentives for men to obtain money and positions of power. When people talk
about work life balance, what they really mean is that the industry should
stop providing people with an opportunity to advance their career by putting
in extra time and effort.

Thank you for hearing my opinions on the issue, and I hope more people who
oppose AA will answer the call to explain their viewpoints.

------
jayhuang
A place I worked at previously had a manager who managed 2 small teams. One
that did analytics, and another that did media/communications, for a total of
about 10 people. On my first week of work, we had a meeting and in the middle
of some discussion, he literally said "girls are better than guys. If I could,
I would hire only girls". No specific reason, just girls are better than guys
(he had 3 daughters though, so I don't know if that was the reason). It still
blows my mind to this day that he said that out loud.

At one point we had a female intern who was on a 8 month work term. 3 months
into her workterm, the manager offered her a full-time position, not
contingent on her graduation (she was in 3rd year and planned to return to
complete school). Now I'm not anyone to judge, but I will say her performance
wasn't particularly impressive, especially compared to other interns on the
team, one of who (male) had already graduated, interned for a total of 20
months, and took on plenty of duties. 5 months into the workterm, she ended up
wiping a ton of live data of a fairly important legacy application,
effectively costing the company a few hundred k. A year later she's working
there full-time as expected, but from what I understand, she didn't end up
graduating anyways. The male intern worked on that team for 13ish months, then
finally got full-time through a different team. All I will say is that this
company is one of the tech giants.

I agree we need more females in the field, but like many other people have
mentioned, lowering the hiring bar in an intentional effort to hire a female
hacker isn't very helpful. The problem is we're not producing enough qualified
women, and overcompensating to fix that is not a good long term solution.
There are plenty of very talented female hackers, and we do need them, but we
also need to fix the root of the problem, and not intentionally skewing hiring
to meet level of acceptable gender diversity.

Women in the field also face other challenges, such as not being as vocal as
males when it comes to promotions/raises, so it's common for them to have
lower salaries than their male counterparts. There are lots of issues females
face in this field, but let's look at fixing the root cause.

------
11thEarlOfMar
This is interesting: Of the 100 top academic authors in computer science
today, per Microsoft, 96 are male:
[http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=2...](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=2&topDomainID=2&subDomainID=0)

The owner of this site appears to be a woman. Again, 20 males:
[http://www.bestcomputersciencedegrees.com/author/2admin/](http://www.bestcomputersciencedegrees.com/author/2admin/)

And there is a preponderance of white males in the annals of computer history:
[http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm](http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm)

Even among software professionals, there is divergence in the types of roles
women take vs. men. Search LinkedIn (3rd & everyone else) for SQA, and you get
about 25% women. Search "Full Stack" and you get about 10% women.

Is this really YC's problem to solve?

~~~
ZoFreX
> Is this really YC's problem to solve?

I think it's up to everyone to do their part. This problem, like all big
problems, is made up of lots of little problems.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
I don't think there is much they can do.

A similar review of Human Resources professionals, also courtesy LinkedIn,
shows about 70% are women.

In another report, in 2013, 41% of college seniors that elected majors in
Physical Science were women. Yet, only 18% of those who chose computer science
or engineering were women. It seems they'd be equally capable in chemistry and
physics as in computer science and engineer. But their major choices indicate
it is not about ability and something else is going on:

[http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college-
class-...](http://www.directemployers.org/2012/08/16/the-college-class-
of-2013-current-demographics/)

I believe that the whole dust up is a matter of gender-based difference in
interests. Nothing more, and not a real problem. Which is why YC is scratching
their heads about how to solve it.

~~~
ZoFreX
> I believe that the whole dust up is a matter of gender-based difference in
> interests. Nothing more, and not a real problem. Which is why YC is
> scratching their heads about how to solve it.

This argument doesn't entirely follow and in my opinion unfairly misrepresents
pg's position. Pg hasn't said that there is no "real problem", what he said
was that he didn't know what he could do to solve it.

Personally I have witnessed a lot of sexism and even discrimination, so I
don't believe there is no real problem. Maybe women are less interested in
computer science than men, but maybe a few of them drop out due to the
pervasiveness of sexism in the field? Or maybe interest would be higher if it
didn't have this reputation?

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
I am certain that a few have dropped out due to sexism and discrimination. And
certain that a few others have tried and found that the social aspects of
working in a team of programmers, even polite, respectful ones, is just not
rewarding.

Can we hear from those who felt kept or pushed out, please? If it is a real
problem, where are the marches and movements and leaders at the podium? I
suppose they don't hang out on HN, but they should be high profile, given that
the media seems to be really interested in this story.

Here's a recent, related article (October, 2013) with a few anecdotes.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out-
of...](http://www.businessinsider.com/7-things-keeping-women-out-of-
science-2013-10)

There is one comment. From a guy.

------
lkrubner
One fascinating aspect of this is how bad the post 1990 startup culture has
been for women. There was something about those big, boring corporations of
the 1970s and 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than
what startups have offered.

You can see female interest in programming change in the charts on these
pages:

[http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-
comput...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/it-careers/21993/women-computer-
science-visual-trendline)

Note that those graphs show raw numbers, not a percentage of the population --
if you adjust for the growing population, female graduation rates in computer
science peak in the 1980s. As it says in the text:

"As a share of all CS bachelor's degrees granted that year, females had
slipped almost 10 points, from 37% in 1984/1985 to 27% in 2003."

A family anecdote: my mom was working on her Phd in urban planning back in the
1970s and her advisor said to her "You know, in the future, many of these
issues of traffic and resource allocation will be resolved through computer
simulations, so you should learn to program." My mom thought that was a good
idea so she took some classes and learned basic programming. She does not
recall feeling like an outsider in those classes: the computer field was still
new and felt wide open.

Nowadays a lot of startups talk about the need for "culture fit". This tends
to limit the diversity of the gender and race and class of who is hired. For
contrast, consider people like Evelyn Boyd Granville, and her acceptance at
IBM.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Boyd_Granville](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Boyd_Granville)

Here on Hacker News we also discussed the story that Raganwald posted, about
another black woman at IBM, though that article is now offline:

[http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-
story](http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story)

If IBM applied a filter of "culture fit" then these women would not have been
hired. But IBM, and many of the big corporations in the USA, followed very
liberal policies that promoted diversity in the work place.

There were some startups from the 1950s and 1960s that broke new ground in
terms of diversity. Ray Kroc built up a small startup called McDonalds and in
a quiet way he made feminist history in his treatment of June Martino. She was
initially hired as the bookkeeper, but she was later entrusted with vast
responsibilities and finally, in 1965, when McDonalds went public, she was
given shares in the company, exactly like any other cofounder of a startup.
This was apparently the first time in history that a woman was treated as a
real cofounder and given stock.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Martino](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Martino)

If you look at the numbers, it seems clear that the emergence of the tech-
based startup scene, in the 1990s, changed things for women. The startups have
not emphasized hiring diversity. The startups tend to emphasize culture fit,
and they were doing so even before that phrase came into existence. Why this
should be, I am not sure. There have been startups in the past that have
emphasized diversity in hiring, so I am not clear why the current generation
of startups cannot do so. But what is clear is that it is not a priority for
them. The big and boring corporations of the past did a better job of creating
spaces for women in tech.

Edit to add: to avoid being overly innocent, we should note how much the talk
of "culture" is sometimes a smokescreen to hide power dynamics. Shanley Kane
said "In Silicon Valley, and the tech industry in general, a lot of people
were giving these talks about what their culture was and it was really
superficial and focused on the privileged aspects of the company like free
food and massages." Here on Hacker News we have already discussed the post
"Google's 'free food' is not free" but it is worth remembering how much the
talk about "culture" is just a negotiating tactic.

[http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/](http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/01/21/notfree/)

~~~
crassus
FWIW, the startup I was at seemed to have a soft affirmative action for
females. They would reject males that didn't do much outside of college work,
but would be willing to consider females with the same resume because "it
would be nice to have more female coders".

Culture fit was about a modicum of friendliness. You could get rejected for
culture fit by, say, looking away from your interviewer and mumbling to
yourself. There could have been some great (and disadvantaged!) candidates
with Eyeball Avoidance Syndrome + Tourette's that were rejected unfairly by
the process, but so it goes.

The company was still 90% men in engineering, because that's what your talent
pipeline looks like. I'm sure they were secret sexists, or something.
Valleywag would write a scathing article about them.

In your example, I bet IBM was still predominantly male despite the anecdotal
hiring of a few women that you mention.

~~~
leahculver
Nope. IBM was >30% women engineers when I interned there in 2004/2005\. About
half the interns were women and there was plenty of racial diversity as well.
My boss was a woman, my mentor was a woman, and frankly it was the most
diverse place I have ever worked.

~~~
crassus
Google is reportedly over 30% women, too. I wonder if it is just something
about startups - higher risk, lower guaranteed reward, worse training
programs, higher pressure. The startup world compares well to the original
California gold rush - a risk for a small shot at a high reward - and that was
mostly male, too.

Also, keep in mind that it's a zero-sum game. If Google and IBM each hire
1,000 female engineers from top schools, that means that startups get less
diverse.

~~~
jfarmer
> I wonder if it is just something about startups - higher risk, lower
> guaranteed reward, worse training programs, higher pressure.

This is explained equally well by inexperienced managers hiring people similar
to themselves culturally, racially, and socioeconomically. Likewise, if I were
a woman, I wouldn't want to work on a team with five dudes oblivious to their
dude-dom.

~~~
hacker789
Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk
averse.

In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech
was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor.

Only _then_ did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different
career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more
than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates than young men
isn't scandalous).

~~~
jmagoon
Do you have any evidence to back up your broad-brushed claims?

And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?

~~~
newnewnew
5 minutes of googling:

"MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" \-
[http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf](http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf)

"Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" \-
[http://www.epjournal.net/wp-
content/uploads/ep062942.pdf](http://www.epjournal.net/wp-
content/uploads/ep062942.pdf)

Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.

~~~
jfarmer
You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such
justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling
next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after
_20 minutes_!

~~~
mistermann
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the
universe.

It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully
define and prove every single piece of content in a comment.

Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

~~~
jfarmer
> If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the
> universe.

There's plenty of room between "justify everything from first principles" and
"perform an ad hoc 5-minute search of the web for research that confirms what
I already believe." I'd also say, the closer one is to the former, the more
justified one is in feeling certain about their beliefs.

> It's pretty difficult to have a serious conversation if you have to fully
> define and prove every single piece of content in a comment.

That's good, because nobody here is advocating that!

> Common sense is getting to be pretty rare around here.

Well, as they say, "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices
laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen."

What's "common sense," here? That women are more risk-averse? I disagree, at
the very least until one defines "risk" and "risk-averse" very precisely. My
"common sense" tells me otherwise. Shucks. Ain't that the problem with "common
sense?"

------
jlees
I'd like to call attention to this part of Fred's post which many of the sub-
threads appear to have overlooked:

 _Instead of turning Paul 's comments into a blogosphere shitstorm, maybe we
would all be better off staring the issue in the face and thinking about how
each of us could help make a difference on this issue_

How would you help a 13-year-old -- of either gender? -- get interested in
programming?

Raspberry Pi? PyGame? Lego FIRST robotics? How can some of these initiatives
be spread more widely to those who maybe don't have supportive family or
communities to encourage their nerdy, high-school-pariah interest in tech?

------
lauradhamilton
I don't understand all this excitement about the magical age of 13.
Personally, I've never stopped learning--whether it's analytics, business,
software development, or machine learning.

I don't think it's any harder for me to learn stuff now at 28 than it was when
I was 13. If anything, it's easier, because I have a much wider baseline of
knowledge that I can use to reference things. For example, I learned set
theory in high school => I can apply that to relational databases today.

I do know some people, both men and women, that sort of stopped learning new
stuff in their twenties, and now they're pretty much stuck. They can't keep up
with technology changes (e.g., how does the router work) and they don't have a
good baseline for learning new stuff. Nor the will.

------
coldtea
> _There was something about those big, boring corporations of the 1970s and
> 1980s that actually gave female hackers more acceptance than what startups
> have offered._

Yes: a 9-5 job mentality and a lack of emphasis on nerdy type hackers doing
their thing.

------
Roboprog
My daughter doesn't code, but she and another friend of hers do a lot of work
to find, get and set up game emulators and related wares.

Motivated to do light "sys admin" work, but not coding, I guess.

~~~
ZoFreX
Does they play Megadrive games? If so I know a really cool nerdy trick:

Sonic & Knuckles was a pretty awesome Sonic installment for the Megadrive that
had a really weird cartridge. On top, it had a flip-open cartridge slot... You
could plug in Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 to play through those previously existing
games with the Knuckles character. Awesome!

So how do you play the games like that on your emulator? Turns out it's really
simple:

> cat snk.bin sonic3.bin > sonic3nk.bin

Or on Windows, as I first learnt it (I had no idea what the command actually
did back then, it was magic to me):

> copy /b snk.bin + sonic3.bin sonic3nk.bin

Suddenly I have a brand new game to play!

How it works: When you plug another cartridge into the top of Sonic & Knuckles
the console sees both games combined as a contiguous block of memory, which is
equivalent to concatenating together the binary dumps of the cartridges.

More details about this are available on this slightly horrific but very
thorough webpage:
[http://www.emulationzone.org/projects/s&k/thesis.htm](http://www.emulationzone.org/projects/s&k/thesis.htm)

~~~
thearn4
Very cool - thanks for sharing!

------
midas007
Mandatory plug for:

 _Free Ruby on Rails workshops [sf] for women and their friends_

[http://sfrubyworkshops.com/](http://sfrubyworkshops.com/)

It's run by the same folks that run the SF Ruby meetup (the huge one)...
they're neat, chill folks.

------
sbt
I hope PG doesn't get too frightened by the press from this and stops being
his usual honest plainspoken self. We need more people like him trying to
portray an accurate map of the territory, rather than being afraid of how
quotes may be spun by cheap journalists.

~~~
philwelch
If he takes his own advice[1], he'd be hard pressed to say anything at all.
When people furiously accuse you of misogyny for not repeating the party line,
there's no good faith discussion possible.

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

~~~
crassus
"Party line" is an interesting choice of words. There's definitely some
unhealthy groupthink going on that's gaining in power. It's never been easier
to have something said taken out of context and have your reputation dragged
through the mud by people who are professional social justice warriors and not
much else (I doubt Nitasha Tiku could program "hello world")

Maybe it's due to the rise of twitter and the ease of taking things out of
context. It seems to fuel tabloid "journalists" like Sam Biddle who sit around
on twitter all day, looking for tweets that he can read X-ism into.

The sad thing is that if Paul Graham were an employee of a tech company, he'd
probably be fired by now[1]. The room for thought and discussion is much
smaller than it used to be, even though we have more tools for self-expression
than ever before.

Moldbug saw this happening and he decided that "America is a Communist
Country". I think that's a bit strong, but I agree that at least the
progressive half of the country is converging on a narrow, extreme Social
Justice ideology.

First they came for the dongle jokers, and I did not speak, because I was not
a dongle joker...

[1] [http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-
badg...](http://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-badgered-
pressured-and-purged/)

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of
them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense
of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to
everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am
presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things,
I am not sure how to react.

What's depressing is how many people get added to that list, some
unexpectedly; I had a lot of respect for Alex Gaynor until he filed that
famous pull request and threw his lot in with that crowd (which he did when he
wrote a blog post that said "if you disagree, you are wrong," effectively
ending the possibility of rationally disagreeing with him).

I want to make things better as a white male, but I am fairly tired of her
group trying to make me regret the situation I was born into. It's not my
fault I'm a white male, I am cognizant of my advantage, and I want to help
other groups in this industry; however, there is no speaking to them. I've
tried. I'm a white male and I am evil to them, the irony of which is not lost
on me given their purpose. I think I partially know how it feels to be gay,
because I didn't choose my situation yet there is an extremely vocal group
that wants me to believe I am doing something wrong.

On top of that, I know several women in the industry, from marketing wizard to
expert programmer with publish credits, who have to tip toe when they go to a
company because men are being trained that all women are like Shanley in the
industry. I have yet to meet a woman that appreciates the efforts of the
Twitter cabal. Some of them won't share that opinion because they're scared to
death of being marked. Just look at historical precedent. Shanley never misses
a chance to go after Sarah Lacy. Zed Shaw is _still_ going after Steve Holden
every chance he gets. Once you fuck up you are followed for life. I bet people
are religiously looking for the guy from PlayHaven to see what he does next.

More apropos, Shanley is now furiously trying to get journalists to support
her anti-HN agenda, and is calling for a boycott of all portfolio companies,
simply based on one comment by pg. That's the modus operandae of these people:
all it takes is one mistake, one out of context quote, anything, and the party
line is now that Y Combinator is misogynistic and represents the active VC
discrimination against women. Some brave soul asked her for proof on Twitter
and got a healthy "fuck you" back after she told him to Google it. That's some
McCarthyesque shit right there. Is that what we are now? Communist hunters?
Because I could have sworn we were smart folks trying to make the world a
better place.

I worry about the outright animosity that is gaining support in our industry.
There is no inclination to work together, only standing around and yelling at
each other. Enough people seem to think that's a good thing because several of
her circle started Gittip accounts and they are cleaning house. I have no idea
what to make of that.

My only recourse thus far has been to keep distance and remember the companies
that foster this animosity by employing those folks and publicly supporting
their ideals. Then I think twice about ever working there. Basho and Joyent
come to mind. On the flip side, I'd be privileged to work at SendGrid, who
publicly took a stand against such behavior.

2013 for me: the US government is now an advanced persistent threat against my
infrastructure and there is also an advanced persistent threat developing
against my career, lest I not suppress independent thought.

~~~
codahale
Watching you clutch your pearls is fucking hilarious, so I've set up a weekly
donation of a fair chunk of change to Shanley's Gittip account.

Keep up the good work.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Unlike most folks, I know who you are (I am not far removed from your social
circle from prior employment) and you'll have to try that on someone else. I
would encourage you to formulate a substantive point, for once, and seek a
rational discussion on this with me but I know from experience that's not Coda
Hale Style.

Last year I donated more than your annual contribution to Shanley's Gittip on
causes for hunger and urban outreach, too. Since 2010 I have done a 50/50
split between my own 401(k) and hand-selected charities, and my 401(k)
contribution is currently 3%. You can do the math. So, you can't hurt my
feelings by tossing your big bad salary at another salaried worker in the
industry in SF instead of, you know, helping people that need it.

Finally, between you and Michael Church I just can't use Scala any more for
fear of remembering that you exist.

~~~
codahale
I'm happy to hear you're donating to charity, but you're missing out on a
great opportunity to reduce your taxable income and save for retirement. The
2013 contribution limit is $17,500, and most financial planners would be
aghast at a well-paid professional like yourself not taking such an easy step
to lower your tax liability. The good news is that if you max out your
contribution either today or tomorrow, you'll still make the 2013 contribution
deadline.

Say hey to the folks we both know for me when you see them.

~~~
johnbm
This is what I believe you call derailing. Like the other person, I'm also
still waiting for substantive points to be made rather than shaming and cherry
picking.

~~~
codahale
I'm not here for debate club, Johnonymous. Like I said before, I'm here for
the pearl-clutching.

~~~
johnbm
No indeed, that would mean not being a self righteous prick. You know what the
effect of people like Kane was in the skeptic community? Female conference
attendance dropped from 40% to 10% in a single year.

Enjoy your self defeating efforts.

------
robomartin
> Paul asks "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested
> in computers?"

(My comment, repeated from the other similar thread that got go superseded by
this one)

The problem of getting anyone, young or adult, interested in a subject --any
subject-- isn't one with a simple solution. Technical subjects have the added
difficulty that they require you to use your brain in non-trivial ways. Given
equal exposure to the subject matter, I fail to see how a male or female
subject would react differently to the idea of learning that subject. This, of
course, assuming that both the male and female subjects got to that moment in
time with a similar educational and perhaps even cultural frame of reference.
If a mother only ever bought a little girl frilly pink and shiny things, well,
it is probably unlikely that as a teenage girl or an adult woman she would
even remotely show interest in learning more technical subjects. She will
probably be a dancer and go into the arts or some other less "brainy"
occupation. That's not to say that there aren't exceptions to this, but they
are probably few and far between.

The same is true of boys. If they are brought-up in front of a playstation,
shooting at things, playing sports, and well outside of more academically
focused areas he will probably grow up to be a jock and then move on to
careers that do well when you use half your brain. Hell, he might even go into
sales! Things are vastly different if you feed your kids a constant diet of
what they should be learning in order to operate at a different level when
they are older. My teenage son finished MIT's CS 6.00.1x course just a few
weeks ago. That did not happen magically. That was a lot of work. For me and
for him! And that also required a lot of work to get to the point where he
could even be shoved into that end of the pool.

My little girl is too young to think about formal learning of these kinds of
subject, but this year she got introduced to Lego robotics and is starting to
like it. Yet, the situation is exactly the same: It requires a ton of time and
dedication on my part --as the designated nerd at home-- to keep her exposed
to such subjects and make it fun. I have to get silly while teaching something
useful. I have to figure out ways to make robotics fun, silly, exciting and
something she wants to do. We don't buy lots of silly frilly things for her.
That said, I have to tell you, it is hard to fight both genetics and exposure
to such things through her peers.

I guess my message is that parents needs to be very engaged and active in
bringing up a child into the sciences and technology. It will not happen by
osmosis. And, I really don't think gender makes a huge difference. It might
change the approach, but I don't think it is the primary determinant of
success or failure. One way I've explained this in the past to friends who
marvel at what my kids are doing is that this is like a Formula 1 car drafting
a car in front of them. You need to drive well and use a lot of effort to get
close enough to be within the zone where drafting happens. Up until that point
you are using a lot more energy to chase the car in front of you. Once you get
into the drafting zone you need less power to maintain the same speed. Yet,
you still need that foot solidly planted on the accelerator.

With kids you have to push, push, push. I have navigated through really
frustrating moments when I've gotten angry because I couldn't understand why
he (my oldest son) didn't just grab that book I bought for him and launched
himself into software development nirvana. Of course, I always reflected upon
these things and never externalized them --not much of a motivator to yell and
scream at your kid about learning something-- and realized that (a) he is
still young and (b) we are not in the "draft zone" yet. It'll take a lot more
effort --and this is different from kid to kid-- to get him into the "draft
zone". Once we reach that zone it will require a lot less energy on my part
and, if interested, he will ultimately need virtually no support from me.

This is where I look at some of the things being said about STEM education and
can't help but think we are just throwing money into a big bonfire. You can't
force people into learning anything. A lot of my kid's friends are, well,
jocks or exhibit no interest in anything at all. They are navigating through
school with no guidance or encouragement in any direction whatsoever. You
can't just throw money at that and expect things to change. For most kids it
requires far more work than can be done during the time they are at school.
Yes, of course, there are a few kids in every sample group that need almost
zero work. These kids get hooked on a subject like programming and just go, go
, go. Most kids are not like that. Just like most successful businesses did
not get launched with a long coding session over a weekend while eating
popcorn.

Going back to my little girl, she is not seriously exposed to Lego robotics.
In fact, our living room table is an official FLL table with the official
field mat and everything. Yes, we are serious about this. I'd rather have a
learning environment in my living room than a fancy dinning room table. As far
as why there aren't more women in tech today. I don't have the answer for
that. I only know that when I was a teenager girls mostly did different stuff.
Not because they were being forced away from tech, they simply showed no
interest in what we were doing. My guess is that it all came from home. So, as
our culture changes so will that aspect of things.

Evolution?

------
dadagaaa
What company has Fred Wilson ever started?

------
davidf18
I am a male who started programming in my early teens on large computers at a
major tech university along with other boys who were passionate about
programming computers (and working on bicycles, in garages, etc.). We tried to
get girls interested but they were not interested in programming computers,
they had other interests which is alright. You do not need computer science
course to start programming. What you need is a passion and what is very
helpful is the assistance of someone who can help you with your questions.

75% of the graduates with PhDs in psychology are women and the fields of
fashion and ballet/dance are dominated by women by you never hear calls for
more males to enter these fields.

IMHO, computer programming, like medicine are fields that one should not enter
unless they have a passion for the field.

Autism research Simon Baron-Cohen speaks of the differences between male and
female brains. Boys are 8 times more likely to be autistic than girls. Autism
(and the related Aspergers) and very good at systemitizing but bad at
empathisizing. Females are more likely to be empathizers than males. Of course
there is overlap and some women are better at sytemitizing than some men and
some men are better at empathizing than some women, but that 8:1 difference in
Autism in boys over girls probably is an indication of the imbalance of boys
over girls who are passionate about programming computers.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory)

These are three on-line tests from Baron-Cohen that help determine your EQ and
SQ (empathizing quotient and systemitizing quotient).

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx)

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/empathyquotient/empathyquoti...](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/empathyquotient/empathyquotient.aspx)

[http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/systemizingquotient/systemiz...](http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/systemizingquotient/systemizingquotient.aspx)

~~~
GhotiFish
is the eye test baiting me?!

INSERT INTO EyesTest VALUES('al', 'Male', 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 0, 3, 1, 2, 2,
3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 0, 3, 2, 2, 3, 0, 1, 1, 0, 3, 2, 3, 2, 22,
'207.216.200.118', '2013-12-30 17:22:41')

I bet you they've long since lost their database.

------
PureApeshit
go girls! :D

~~~
ps4fanboy
Girl Power <3 <3

------
alixaxel
And..? I would be much more interested if the title was "Cats Who Code".

------
NAFV_P
If you want to get girls coding, get Windows OSes out of schools. They kill
interest in computers before you have time to get interested in them.

~~~
hesselink
What a weird comment. How would this be worse for girls than for boys?

~~~
NAFV_P
> _What a weird comment. How would this be worse for girls than for boys?_

I didn't say it was worse. I simply posted it because nobody else has
mentioned it. Teaching computing these days is seen as a joke, much like
learning to code.

