We've had some excellent gender articles on here in the last few days (especially http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm), so I thought it would be interesting to see how the community breaks down.
I'm an introvert and a nerd before I am a female, so I am of course drawn to Hacker News because it's a great place to find other over-sensitive folks who take themselves, their questions, and other peoples' questions very seriously. As others point out again and again, the quality of discourse here is just really high.
Secondarily, but still present, I like Hacker News because relative to other community sites it's very female-friendly. HN is mostly based on ideas, not status/gender/age.
I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here (I've pretty much learned to just not even click threads about the ideal age to get married, what's more important relationships or programming, etc) but even when things make me sad, they're at least not crudely written. Basically HN keeps it pretty civil.
Anyway, you folks are great, HN is great, and I think more females will gravitate here for a variety of reasons, most having nothing to do with gender.
I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here (I've pretty much learned to just not even click threads about the ideal age to get married, what's more important relationships or programming, etc) but even when things make me sad, they're at least not crudely written.
I feel the same way about comments advocating the use of PHP or Java.
"Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad?..."
Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's pretty context dependent. First of all, outside of HN, I'd be much less sensitive to stuff I feel is off-base, after all, that's why I'm at HN, it's different, a refuge from a world I'm used to feeling out of place in. (Don't mean to make that sound so dramatic/emo. I like plenty of things outside of HN, but in terms of general-subject tech news, it's pretty unique.)
I guess it stings more at HN because there are many people here I highly, highly respect and am inspired by, and a few posters here who I try to follow very closely, as if their HN posts were a feed I subscribed to. When these folks say certain things, it makes my heart sink a little, because in my fantasy, I want to imagine there's room for somebody like me in their view of the world.
I wrote something related above,
" when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at."
I don't want to change the tone about my overall feeling about HN. I think it's great. It's my extremely high opinion of it that gives it the power to make me feel sad sometimes.
"When these folks say certain things, it makes my heart sink a little, because in my fantasy, I want to imagine there's room for somebody like me in their view of the world."
Interesting. So let's invent a measure called "distance from text", if such a thing does not already exist.
Let's say a five on the scale equates to, "I view comments as documents handed down from on high from people who cannot change or who I cannot change."
And let's say a one on the scale equates to, "I view comments as an invitation to improve someone else's schemas."
I'm guessing you would be closer to a five on this scale, whereas I would be closer to a one. Of course this scale is just made up off the top of my head, but it would be interesting to find a similar concept with some validity and then go out and measure people.
I guess it stings more at HN because there are many people here I highly, highly respect and am inspired by, and a few posters here who I try to follow very closely, as if their HN posts were a feed I subscribed to.
Why would you think they are talking about you in particular? People who excel will always stand out no matter what group they come from. So why do you care about what people say about other members of your group?
Group identity. Just like you (or some of "us") get figgidty when people make fun of techies/hackers.
Update: I should clarify that "group identity" is strong when that identity is formed around an "out-group" (a minority or marginalized group). An "out-group" is just a group who is threatened in some way (as perceived by the group).
Heh. No, your description does make sense, and made me laugh. Never do I feel more validated than when reading a Paul Graham essay, ("Guess who's not crazy?? Me!").
As I said above, I freely admit I'm oversensitive, something I probably share with many HN users. Maybe one reason I wince here at HN more than elsewhere is because I'd otherwise consider HN somewhat of an intellectual refuge, with peers. So when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at.
Anyway, I like your description of how it feels to read HN, pretty right on :D
I also feel out of place: Although I'm male, I'm old, have a family, I have tech credentials, but not in programming--in fact, I feel like I'm forever the novice. My tools aren't "cool," but they were new to me (OOP-Java, web scripting-PHP; in fact, they were berated in this very thread) so I "learned" them.
But I'll tell you a secret: edw519 has it exactly right. In fact, his attitude is the single, predominant trait I've seen in successful CEOs (or other group leaders). "They don't like * because they don't get it yet" is a very useful mindset for dealing with rejection ("why aren't they buying my product?"). They vary widely in their other personality traits; some are outgoing, others introverted, etc. But CEOs/leaders that convey that attitude to the group keep the whole team up. And feeling up is far more productive than feeling down!
As I write this, 4.55% "of those that answered" are female. That seems surprisingly high to me, so I think you could be right. It will be interesting to see whether the relatively high number of women will help keep the conversation civil and respectful.
I'm wondering this because in the UK it's understood that mixed schools are better for boys because they behave better in the company of girls, however, it's worse for girls because the boys still muck around enough to distract from education; girls on their own do better.
well said. i initially avoided hacker news because i still viewed "hacker" in the "old school" basement programmer meaning, which i associated with immature, ego-centric aggression. also, even knowing lambda calculus, the 'y' in y-combinator still struck my as rather male-oriented.
don't not read a book because of it's cover. the emphasis on intellectually interesting articles and discussion, as well as culturally and directly moderated civil discourse, is awesome. it makes anyone's presence here more about content than gender or immaturity.
there are certainly comments that make me cringe, but i doubt that is primarily a gender thing.
EDIT: I've actually seen this in action. I spoke up about it, and got complete incomprehension in return. People really, really don't notice that they have these sorts of attitudes, and it stinks.
Off-topic, I asked the same question on another thread without a response. Other then generic attitude issues, have you ever seen a case of a woman programmer being discriminated against? In my experience, due to their rarity and the environment they tend to be treated very well, both professionally and socially.
This is a mine-field, and personally I think you can't win, you can't break even, and you have to play the game.
In my experience women programmers are treated very well. However, there's a school of thought that being treated well is being treated differently, and that's what some find so off-putting.
I've seen a woman programmer turn up at a meeting and have someone bustle over and say "Gosh, hi, welcome! Nice to see you!" In contrast, everyone else is given a generic "Hi!" and then ignored until they join in. It's that different treatment that can irritate.
Something I've heard is "Why can't I just be treated like everyone else?"
Perhaps treating everyone very well should be the norm. Too much to hope for, methinks.
Exactly. It's little things like the "Hi" above, or like having to bludgeon people with geek talk because - despite your thinkgeek t-shirt and dubious personal hygiene - they still think you're in Marketing.
I do. People often ask about the number of female founders we fund. It would be interesting to know whether it's low because of something about startups, or just a reflection of the larger pool from which they're drawn.
Actually, when a magazine interviewer asked Jessica about the percent of women among ycombinator-funded founders, I was very interested in her answer. Not because I suspected YC of bias - I didn't - but rather because I thought this percent would say something about the risks and rewards of small technical startups as perceived by women. Being a technical woman working on a startup idea, this information seemed useful to me: a possible glimpse into my personal future.
I think it may have more to do with the latter. A quick Google Scholar query of "why is computer programming dominated by males" provides some interesting results, including an abstract with the key finding that "men had more confidence in using computers than did women even when statistically controlling quantitative ability. In fact, female CS majors had less computer confidence than did male non-majors." (Beyer et al., 2003)
i believe tolerance and respect require concerted attention to counteract cultural ignorance and bias. treating differences with equality is not about not caring or not thinking about differences--many racial and gender prejudices result from not questioning or investigating preconceived notions. it takes work to sufficiently care about ones interactions with others and thus conscientiously react to and surmount differences.
it may be that you know as many or more female hackers, founders and entrepreneurs as male, and that your cultural norm is completely surprised by the notion of gender inequality in this context. in that case: cool. your experience validates the irrelevance of gender in these roles.
or it may be that you are ignorant to inequality. whenever i want to blurt out "who cares" or "why do people care", i try to stop and think about other people's perspectives. i guess the short answer is: equality is often useful.
I like Erlang fine, I just don't think it has anything to do with gender. And if I'd seen Erlang articles in recent days instead of articles about gender, I would find this poll rather odd myself. As it stands, I think the question is apropos.
We should care. We like to believe that all our differences do not make a difference, but fortunately and unfortunately they do.
For example if YC funds more startups with women you will not see the impact in the next 2 years. But 10 years from now those veterans would have encouraged several younger women to get into technical fields. Everyone will benefit from that.
I have had the chance to meet and work with a couple of female programmers, and although I am not a coder I was most certainly thrilled.
YC may consider diversity in their portfolio a positive trait. They may also consider the PR value of female startup founders (which is worth considering...it is quite high). And, they may consider their reputation as a forward-thinking, out on the edge of progress, sort of investor. Maybe it's a trend, and maybe they want to be ahead of it.
I don't think one needs to look at what good could come of it in the future to consider investing in female-led startups a good idea.
Well, quite frankly, I'm glad YC look at other criteria. Positive discrimination is a terrible thing. Imagine being a woman funded by an investor making an effort to focus on female-led startups. The world knows you were only funded because of your chromosomes. Self-esteem is a big enough problem as it is!
I think a venture firm that privileges woman ran startups with a focus on women-markets would be great. After all who does most of the spending in a household? Remember that web apps represents only a tiny tiny fraction of consumers' expenditures.
If we're playing the household card, then there are plenty of women-led kitchen table startups that will never see, nor need, venture funding. There are also plenty of women-led startups that don't focus on female markets, and male-led startups that do, inadvertently or otherwise (time for a quote about how most car purchases are down to the woman in the household).
What exactly is "forward thinking" about funding startups based on biological traits of the founders instead of their skills, aptitudes, and achievements?
Simultaneous optimization of multiple functions is impossible in the general case. But if there is one function being optimized, then there is some trade-off being made, so that--to some extent--one parameter is being selected for instead of another.
pg has said they fund as many great groups as they can find. So, if that's correct, then giving an additional point or two for being female founded, while assuming some base level of competence and dedication, is not "instead of" it is "in addition to".
Note that we're all speculating here. We don't actually really know anything about YC and female founded companies (except that the number of female founders amongst YC companies is strikingly low, but is representative of the applicant pool).
Because PG has finite time, there are two fundamental possibilities at work here:
(1) PG can find more "great groups" that he would want to fund than he has the time to work with. This, I expect, is almost certainly the case; PG then has to determine which amongst these groups of founders with whom to work. The question becomes, what function of the group of founders selected should be maximized. If you "give an additional point or two for being female founded" then the function you are optimizing is not just a matter of competence and dedication--either you aren't actually altering your behavior towards female founded groups, or there is some sufficiently pathological example of groups being very similar in which there is a female founded group that is slightly less competent/dedicated than a male only group competing over one remaining slot, and the slot is given to the female group. If no such example ever occurs in practice, then there is no point in giving female founded groups "an additional point or two" since it never altered the decision.
(2) PG has more time available than "great groups" with whom to work. In this case, taking on additional groups simply because they are female-founded, in addition to being discriminatory, seems likely to be a net negative, assuming the original meaning to the term "great groups" was set to be at whatever level is necessary to have positive expected outcome.
Looking at this dichotomy another way, we can think of PG's time as a market resource. In the first case, it is scarce, and should sell to the highest bidders (those with highest expected value, measured as utility for PG). In the second case, it is abundant, and every consumer gets what they need/want. In reality, it is probably either directly scarce (falling into the first category), or made scarce by the presence of other high utility alternatives (e.g., spending time with his family).
In summary, there is no "in addition to" as far as criteria with respect to which you want to maximize. There can only be "instead of", or a (possibly zero) conversion factor.
As a side note, in another comment on this page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591537) PG noted that they don't ask the gender of founders when considering funding.
OK. So, what's actually far more interesting to me is how much attention my idle ramblings about why a company like YC might (not that they do) encourage or even prefer female founders have gotten. I didn't realize reverse discrimination was such a sensitive area amongst the technical elite, particularly since males have had a dramatic lead for as long as technology has existed (a more pronounced lead than in pretty much any other field in modern first world economies).
Part of what makes this sort of thing a touchy subject for so many people is that, in the event of this sort of process being practiced (1) men who aren't selected feel angry about the nature of the process instead of feeling that they need to improve themselves to improve their chances for the next round, and (2) women who are selected are sometimes (often?) demeaned by men as needing additional assistance in order to make the cut (this is contrary to a common view I have encountered; that this sort of thing is fundamentally victimless). People subject to either of these circumstances (or close to such a person) are likely to have strong feelings on this subject.
As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.
As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.
We're all more alike than we are different around here, aren't we? I've been working on, and not enjoying, some PHP code all weekend long. Procrastination is the mother of silly arguments on the Internets, it seems.
YC should fund startups that have a chance to succeed. If women entrepreneurs come in with unique perspectives to target the under-served community of women on the intertubes, then great. Otherwise, it is a waste of money that doesn't benefit YC which hurts other startups and ultimately the startup community as a whole.
I take it you don't. Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes? Really, give this a shot: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm.
"Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes?"
I agree with the GP, but not with this comment. Obviously there are meaningful differences between the sexes. But there are other ways to group people, as well:
- Gender (already covered, here)
- Age
- Nationality
- Ethnicity
- Sexual Orientation
- Political Orientation
- Religious Orientation
- Number of Older Siblings
- ... the list goes on
All of these factors are significant in the sense that they help to establish our unique identity, and there are meaningful differences in each category. Should we poll for each factor? At some point..... well, I can't say it more succinctly than the GP:
Certainly, we've had polls for some of these (I remember age specifically) in the past, and we'll probably have them again as the user base changes. With the context of an increasing number of gender-related articles, I think this information is valuable.
I agree that if the data can't be applied, then we're satisfying only trivial curiosities. Like if I asked about your gender - who cares? But this data can be applied. Here we're testing the hypothesis of the above-linked essay. It's a poor test, though I think that HN users are better behaved in voluntary online polls.
More importantly, it lets us know how our community stacks up. Genetically-encoded risk-taking aside, many of us want to see equal proportions in this poll, or would like to imagine that this poll would come out more equal than not. Yet it currently comes out 20:1, and this matters to me. (As a consequence, I'm probably going to make an effort to recommend this site or its discussions more often to women that I know.)
I said that I would recommend this site, not that I would attempt genetic modification. The linked article is descriptive, not normative. If women might, due to genetic differences, be missing out on a lot of great information because of a 'male' or risky (startups?) or socially transient (discussions only last one day?) climate, then we should try to remedy this.
Sure, I'd definitely recommend it to women who are into hacking, but the number of women who are into hacking is low. Success rate is probably going to be similar to women recommending a site about fashion to male friends.
I agree with making sure people are aware what they can do, what is possible etc, but trying to make everything a 50/50 split between sexes is an unachievable waste of time IMHO. Lets embrace and celebrate the differences between the sexes rather than pretend they don't exist.
Why must it be? Who is to say not having equal proportions of men and women in engineering is bad? If women choose not to go that way and instead choose what they like, who are we to judge that it is wrong? Being ourselves is more important than any artificially imposed equality. And recognizing and celebrating this uniqueness is in no way a 'bad idea'.
And attentiveness to fashion is not merely a 'cultural difference'; in every culture in the world, the female gender on an average gives more importance to such concerns than the male. Cultural differences do exist, but they form only the base level; the females deviate positively from it more than the males.
>> "Attentiveness to fashion is a cultural difference, not a gender difference."
In my experience, and on average, to boys, what they wear doesn't matter one bit. It's irrelevant. Girls like nice colors etc from the earliest ages - before any culture can play any part.
There are more gay men in the fashion industry than straight men. Do you think that's also a 'cultural difference' rather than something biological? Is being gay a 'cultural difference'?
>> Girls like nice colors etc from the earliest ages - before any culture can play any part.
Are you basing that on research or personal experience? From what I gather we like to give babies that are female different stuff than males, so pretty much right of the away babies are being influenced culturally. Or has there been a controlled test done that I'm unaware of?
>> Is being gay a 'cultural difference'?
Is it with any certainty possible to answer that question, as far as I know, we have no idea. Or have I missed something?
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm nitpicking, I'm genuinely curious.
Of course the responses to this voluntary response poll will not yield a reliable picture of the break-down of the whole community, for reasons well known to statisticians.
Yet certain parts of the news media treat them like proper statistical polls.
Your statement is correct, and that is a regrettable fact about errors among some news media workers. The local TV station I watch most for TV news usually posts polls without any warning, but is pretty good about announcing that their results are "unscientific" after the polls close.
I didn't realize it till I was writing this, but that may help explain why there are so few female startup founders. I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that only 1.7% of VC-backed startups are founded by women. The percentage of female hackers is small, but not that small. So why the discrepancy?
When you realize that successful startups tend to have multiple founders who were already friends, a possible explanation emerges. People's best friends are likely to be of the same sex, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared.
I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male.
I don't find this hard to believe.
I've been working as a startup hacker for 10 years and can count the number of female programmers I've worked with on one hand. The population IS skewed.
The population probably is that skewed. Males gain a far larger evolutionary advantage from excellence than females, due to their lower direct reproductive investment; consequently, there are strong evolutionary incentives for males to adopt high-risk behaviours.
While that obviously happens, I personally very much doubt that explains the difference. Evolutionary rationales are far more compelling to me. Even childhood conditioning/environment is more compelling.
To the extent it is true, or at least that the behavior exaggerated in that comic is true, I'm always curious what we're supposed to take from it. Being a guy, I don't have a knee-jerk hatred of myself just because I relate to sex in a different way from women. I don't find myself morally repugnant because I can be attracted to women before I've found a deep, meaningful connection with them. I don't hate myself because a woman showing up on IRC suddenly becomes powerfully interesting to me.
Guys aren't evil. They're different from women. If you don't know this, try reversing the situation. Imagine if a guy showed up in an IRC peopled entirely by girls, and they started paying all kinds of attention to him, and making sexual comments about him. Would he be traumatized? Aside from the usual contrarians, most honest guys would say no. In fact, most guys would LOVE it. This would hold even if they showed up in a typically "female" domain, such as a class on midwifery or home economics.
Society feels that it needs to enforce the notion that the way men relate to sex is wrong and the way women relate to it is right. I think the arguments for that are reasonable, but I personally opt out.
Sure, ellyagg, there are other reasons. And to be honest any female with half a brain doesn't go into a tech community proclaiming her gender. But there are definitely attitudes and comments that you get when people know you're female that don't really encourage you to stick around and become a member of the community.
Assuming a woman overcomes whatever other social/educational/evolutionary factors enough to start participating in the first place, it really doesn't help the balance that she's driven off due to the behaviour of apes with keyboards.
Of course, as I allude, most of us have learnt to let the gender thing stay under wraps and, when it does come out, are used to the general comments caused by JGGIFT. But there are plenty who get really upset by such things and won't hang around.
However, I'm not sure if keeping the 'gender thing under wraps' is the best approach. It yields this mentality of 'well, I never see women on the internet being intelligent and competent, therefore, there must not be intelligent and competent women on the internet.'
There is some basic info of the breakdown of users including gender on Alexa, though it only provides info for users with their plugin: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com
It will be interesting to see how that data compares to the poll results.
The parenting networks that I hang out on even more than I hang out on HN reliably have female majorities in their posters and their readers. Men are quite conspicuous on such groups, so much so that I tend to assume everyone is female, even if the screen name sounds very male, until I'm told otherwise.
if any of you know of online discussion sites with a more balanced ratio of male and female participants. I didn't get any answers the last time I asked. The most balanced site I participate on is College Confidential,
I can think of two small targeted communities that had a pretty good m/f ratio.. Probably only <3000 members each though. Neither of which exist anymore.
One was targeted by location/religion/age -- and the other was kind of similar. So hitting a small niche - High School aged Buddhists in Iowa - means that you identify nicely with the niche whether you are male or female.
EDIT: Just remembered a site I stumbled upon one time.. Don't know the full details but seems to be pretty evenly split: http://www.themarriagebed.com/boards/
My guess is that some of the various Yahoo! communities are pretty well balanced (certain mailing lists, flickr groups, etc.), but I don't participate in any of them so I have no idea.
Since we're here, if there are women in the SF bay area who want to get together for a bring-your-project-and-work-on-it afternoon/evening, contact me.
Do you really need a poll for this? Just like every other tech site it's a bunch of 18-35 year old dudes sitting around clicking reload every 20 minutes.
I think you underestimate at least the top end of that age range. I am quite certain that a number of folks on HN are well above the age of 35. PG is in his 40's, and I'm sure he's not the only one here in that category (and I wouldn't be surprised to find hackers older than that here -- perhaps much older).
I just wanted to say I love Hacker News.
I'm an introvert and a nerd before I am a female, so I am of course drawn to Hacker News because it's a great place to find other over-sensitive folks who take themselves, their questions, and other peoples' questions very seriously. As others point out again and again, the quality of discourse here is just really high.
Secondarily, but still present, I like Hacker News because relative to other community sites it's very female-friendly. HN is mostly based on ideas, not status/gender/age.
I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here (I've pretty much learned to just not even click threads about the ideal age to get married, what's more important relationships or programming, etc) but even when things make me sad, they're at least not crudely written. Basically HN keeps it pretty civil.
Anyway, you folks are great, HN is great, and I think more females will gravitate here for a variety of reasons, most having nothing to do with gender.