Yes, actually, when women are not doing things, historically that's usually men's fault. Like women not having jobs, women not having bank accounts, women not having a higher education...
I'm not saying that's the case here, but society and patriarchy are very complex. Women, and yes men, are not 100% autonomous, and are, in fact, influenced by the society and socialization they received. It's not as simple as "women should be doctors", or whatever. We also need things like representation, outreach, what have you.
If you substitute, say, "being president" for "designing programming languages", then the answer is a pretty obvious yes.
After the US revolution, some places in the US allowed voting for men and women of all races. White men quickly adjusted things so that only white men could vote, deploying violence where necessary, and building a system that excluded other people from the economic resources, education, and social power necessary to change things. It is only in recent decades we have started to undo that, and by no significant measure have we succeeded.
And it's not just "being president"; it's provably true about many, many areas. Some men set things up to exclude women, and then the rest of the men went along with it. One of the ways we go along with it is by accepting a disproportionate share of the power and not using it to fix the system that gave it to us.
Is "designing programming languages" one of those areas? I don't know enough about the topic to say. But I've talked enough women in software generally to know those same patterns apply to software development, an so I'd be surprised to find that "designing programming languages" is somehow an amazing egalitarian exception to the industry norm.
In the last paragraph, I did specifically answer the question. I even started that paragraph with the question so that people wouldn't miss it. But I'm not obliged to directly answer questions with wrong assumptions. If you think people are, tell me whether you've finally stopped beating your wife.
Being the president of the USA requires other people’s approval. Designing a programming language does not. What specifically is preventing a woman from designing a programming language right now?
Notice how many of these were created after 2000, when efforts to get women into IT were already in full swing (certainly at my university).
Women have had two decades now to demonstrate that it was the fault of gatekeeping that certain parts of programming remain almost exclusively male (with the giant asterisk of MtF-trans being an oddly prevalent archetype, and thus, really a false signal).
It's sad, but the feminist perspective is to start from the assumption that sexism is the cause, and work backwards from that.
As someone else pointed out: there is no substitute for just doing the work, especially in a field where all you need to do is show up and publish. The barriers couldn't be lower, compared to virtually every other field, but that objective measure is irrelevant because the motivation is to validate a subjective feeling of collectivized mistreatment. The implication is that we are sorely missing out on some unique insights and contributions, and yet, everyone would welcome those insights, if they were there.
If you go look, you can find endless casual declarations about how women are better at communicating, empathizing, judgement and taste... but if there is even a single thing that it would appear men are always going to be better at, then that's treated as a Problem to be solved by complaining about it. This mainly serves to attract attention and resources so they can turn complaining into their job, or at least, a lucrative source of leads and income.
The feminist perspective is rooted in the massive amount of sexism and misogyny that necessitated the development of a feminist perspective.
If you'd like to know about CS in specific, here's a good paper from one of the few women who made it through to be a CS professor: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7040
I happened to meet her at the 20 year anniversary of the paper and asked her if she was planning an update. As I recall it, she said that not much had changed, so she didn't see the point.
The idea that nothing has changed is by itself pretty preposterous. The gender ratio of college students is a big one, for instance, which keeps shifting in women's favor.
Plus, we just came out of a decade and a half of focused and persistent activism. If none of that changed anything, then a big lesson ought to be not to listen to the activists or their suggestions.
If you look at the outline of the paper, something should also stand out. Despite the fact that this claims to be science which examines the nature of how men and women are treated in CS, the ultimate focus is purely on confirming the pre-existing conclusions:
- that when women and men are being treated differently, this is always biased against women and in favor of men
- that it is the fault of men and male attitudes
- that is never the fault of women or female attitudes
In fact, feminism has a great sleight-of-hand that they consistently use for this. When they can blame men, they blame men. But if logic and evidence would require them to blame women, then it's suddenly the fault of "society", "unconscious biases" and "attitudes" whose origin is a mystery.
Just one example. While the paper dedicates a lot of ink to the ills of the "male environment", it does note that women communicate differently, e.g. with more "hesitation", "excessive qualifiers" and "excessively polite and deferential".
If you then go look at what the paper's recommendations are for women to "build confidence" it is to:
- attend classes with other women
- find female role models
- join women's groups
At no point is it considered that maybe women in a masculine environment should instead start acting and talking more like men, if they want the men to include them in their discussions and feel like she is one of them.
So yeah. Not much has changed. Not much will change. Because they keep entering a field full of people who are not like them, and expecting that mere complaints will feminize the whole lot.
I don't really see this as a productive perspective.
AS the paper says, there is no overt sexism and misogyny. Computer science lacks social appreciation in general. All you need to do to experience this is be a male software developer in Germany. Germany is a horrible country to be a software developer in. The silicon valley types and maybe the new yorkers have a strong prestigious tech culture, but go away from these tech hubs and you will encounter that software development is pretty much low status work. The envy comes from cherry picking the most successful men working in the most successful locations. A lot of men get into software because they play a lot of video games and want to make their own video games. They don't get paid very much, because they trade passion for less money. These days men get harassed for playing video games. They get harassed for their primary motivation to sit in front of the computer.
The paper also goes into the fact that men are pressured to perform and be successful. They don't have the luxury to sit things out because things are biased against them. If there is bias, then they are expected to overcome it through their own strength and to not rely on others. Take parts like this
"Singly, these behaviors probably have little effect. But when they occur again and again, they give a powerful message to women: they are not as worthwhile as men nor are they expected to participate fully in class, in college, or in life at large"
This seems incredibly outdated. These days things are swinging the exact opposite. Men are not considered as worthwhile as women, nor are they attending college and life at large as much as women, but here is the thing. Men are supposed to figure it out and face adversity themselves, whereas women often simply ask for help and support and they can often count on it. This means the pressure to perform simply isn't as high. Calling this "a bias" is essentially the same as begging for handcuffs and forced labor. The rat race must develop to a higher level.
