I think it takes a kind of ideology-fueled willed self-ignorance to ignore that men and women have different aptitudes and preferences and to completely neglect it as an explanatory factor.
Men clearly have a greater affinity for systems than women, women clearly have a greater affinity for people and living things, although one shouldn't exaggerate it to caricature and dichotomizing.
Additionally, men have a higher variance on intelligence, which means that you will have more very smart men at the cost of having more very dumb men, and so you have two barriers that more men that women will tend to get across--a high intelligence floor compared to many professions, and an affinity for systems over people. The caricature statement to avoid there is "men are smarter than women"--not the case, only that it seems like you'll get a larger pool inclined to the profession out of men by the way the distribution of intelligence works.
Not that rolling the latest CRUD app is rocket science, mind you, but it'd be silly to pretend that intelligence doesn't make a difference, and that intelligence distribution doesn't make a difference with sex concentration in the field.
I'm with you Tim, I've tried yelling "THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR YOU TO NOT BE IN TECH" at every woman I've encountered for the last ten years but they just aren't joining the ranks
I don't even think we there need to be an excuse for the fact that there are less X in Y.. Maybe an explanation would suffice?
My pov, not that it matters: I went to public school, roughly 50% of what looked superficially to be female (these days, you must not assume).
We had LAN parties in our spare time, no girls, they were invited, they were told about it, they didn't think sitting up all night in front of a computer sounded like a good time, fine, whatever.
After public school ended I went straight on to technical college, first day: 0 people who didn't somewhat resemble the male gender, at least superficially.
There were no events in between, no females or female-like people ever applied.
Third school experience (university college) was the same, only female interaction outside the secretariat was one of the teachers. No females ever applied.
They weren't rejected, excluded or harassed or anything, they simply were never there to begin with.
It's almost as if the females chose to do something else..
There’s no good excuse for lack of women in tech in their freshman year of college. But the reason there’s fewer women in tech in their sophomore year in college can be traced to the number of women in tech in their freshman year of college… keep working backwards through the pipeline.
The problem I see with programs like First Robotics is that the female participants I’ve interacted with are typically children of female engineers. It doesn’t seem that they’re dramatically increasing the funnel to pull in female engineers who wouldn’t have normally gone on to the STEM fields.
> There’s no good excuse for lack of women in tech in their freshman year of college.
Have you seen how woman in CS departments are treated? The amazing amounts of creeper behaviour and stereotypical nerd crush BS? Those are actually really good reasons for not being in those departments. There's also the standard roll model and ability to look at what research groups look like that act as good signals to anyone starting out that they aren't welcome.
I've seen this claimed online, generally by people with no actual connection to university CS programs who are just repeating what they read on Tumblr/Twitter/etc, but I've never witnessed it in real life.
Sometimes I wonder how much faster we could end the gender gap if instead of giving a megaphone to everyone who had a bad experience at some point, we instead told girls in middle school and high school the uncomfortable good news that they'll probably never have discrimination impact them in any significant way and that literally every single school, scholarship, corporation, conference and governmental organization is trying to recruit more women, and that their resume will always go immediately to the top of the pile, they'll win every "tie" against a male candidate and any deficiencies in their resume/CV can be made up for by diversity goals.
If you want more women in tech, maybe step 1 is telling pre-college girls "you'll have a good life if you pursue a career in tech" instead of constantly indoctrinating them with the doom and gloom?
It seems like we could simultaneously fight against sexism if it happens around us, without discouraging the next generation by making the problem seem more likely to impact them than it really is.
Good for you for finding a truly sexism free university.
However I _do_ have experience in CS departments, as both a student and as a tutor/TA, and I have had multiple women in classes I TA'd complain to me about how some of the men in the classes are behaving.
The other thing to realize that those women who complained were not alone in the labs or classes - there were plenty of other people in those classes and no one intervened. So either people in those classes and labs did not noticed the harassment as it occurred, or they did see it and chose to do nothing. I'm sure that there was plenty of creeper nerd obsession that was occurring while I was present and didn't notice - I certainly didn't notice in the case of the people who explicitly told me they weren't feeling comfortable in classes I TA'd until they told me and I deliberately paid attention to behaviour of the people involved.
I want to be really clear here: If you are not the victim of many of these behaviors you are unlikely to notice it, because what to you might be an occasional weird comment for the victim is often continuous, because by definition they are there for all of the behaviour that they're subjected to.
For people who do do the obsessive nerd crush: ask them out, or move on. If they so no, then move on. They subject[s] of any obsessive "nice" behaviour aren't going to generally say explicitly "stop it" as the rest of their life experience tells them that doing so can be directly harmful - my back up here from plenty of friends of mine they have experienced negative consequences from saying "no", I'm a white dude so haven't had to deal with anything similar so can't provide first person pov here - everything I have is second hand or me seeing/hearing people making sexist (and racist) comments about other students in my department.
> The other thing to realize that those women who complained were not alone in the labs or classes - there were plenty of other people in those classes and no one intervened. So either people in those classes and labs did not noticed the harassment as it occurred, or they did see it and chose to do nothing. I'm sure that there was plenty of creeper nerd obsession that was occurring while I was present and didn't notice - I certainly didn't notice in the case of the people who explicitly told me they weren't feeling comfortable in classes I TA'd until they told me and I deliberately paid attention to behaviour of the people involved.
Or they're just non-omniscient 18 year olds who aren't consciously aware of other people's lives. They're not parents or teachers. You shouldn't hold them to the standards of mandated reporters. They have a right to be indifferent to events that don't affect them, whether they notice it or not.
> I want to be really clear here: If you are not the victim of many of these behaviors you are unlikely to notice it, because what to you might be an occasional weird comment for the victim is often continuous, because by definition they are there for all of the behaviour that they're subjected to.
This is a solipsistic and unpersuasive view of victimhood. "Weird" is different for everyone. What might be "unacceptable" for one person is not necessarily for another regardless of one's being a spectator or receiver of such comments. It's impossible to determine how one will react in advance. They're might be women in those classes who appreciate the "weird" comments, but those won't be ones reporting to you. You're holding the male students to the standard of the one's who are complaining, not the standards of their actual behavior as individuals.
A school is a melting pot, not just of people and thought, but also of peeves and annoyances. It's impossible to know what'll set off one's own family member, leave alone the the difficulties created by differences in culture, socialization, religion, sex, etc among adults.
> For people who do do the obsessive nerd crush: ask them out, or move on. If they so no, then move on. They subject[s] of any obsessive "nice" behaviour aren't going to generally say explicitly "stop it" as the rest of their life experience tells them that doing so can be directly harmful - my back up here from plenty of friends of mine they have experienced negative consequences from saying "no", I'm a white dude so haven't had to deal with anything similar so can't provide first person pov here - everything I have is second hand or me seeing/hearing people making sexist (and racist) comments about other students in my department
For many 18 year-old male computer nerds in the United States, college is one of their earliest or only "real" social experiences. They're just getting their feet wet with the emotional discomfort and social interactions that students in less rigorous majors have already endured through middle and high school (when these boys were likely to have been loners). "Nice" comes from a sincere and unassuming belief in the summation of "received wisdom" acquired from parents, teachers, childhood female friends, movies, etc. in their descriptions of/expectations for acceptable and romantically desirable behavior. These boys-now-men seek to apply the advice (naturally) only to be given ambiguous if not negative results contrary to what they've been promised. Some will by one circumstance or another succeed, some will persist fruitlessly until they bow out in frustration, and some never learn.
Your advice is correct. Rip the bandaid. However, it's not immediately evident to people who've likely lacked the opportunity to be comfortable enough with themselves to get to that point. And so long as you remain in your post, these situations will repeat themselves every year as a new batch of naive and unassuming teens matriculate into adulthood.
> Or they're just non-omniscient 18 year olds who aren't consciously aware of other people's lives. They're not parents or teachers. You shouldn't hold them to the standards of mandated reporters. They have a right to be indifferent to events that don't affect them, whether they notice it or not.
That was literally my point. In this and other similar posts we have numerous people talking about how they have not witnessed any harassment, and then stating that because they are unaware of it, it doesn't happen, or isn't actually very common.
> This is a solipsistic and unpersuasive view of victimhood. "Weird" is different for everyone. What might be "unacceptable" for one person is not necessarily for another regardless of one's being a spectator or receiver of such comments. It's impossible to determine how one will react in advance. There might be women in those classes who appreciate the "weird" comments, but those won't be ones reporting to you. You're holding the male students to the standard of the one's who are complaining, not the standards of their actual behavior as individuals.
..yes? just because everyone else in a class or work environment is ok with sexist behavior doesn't mean that it is therefore ok. That's literally the whole problem.
> For many 18 year-old male computer nerds in the United States, college is one of their earliest or only "real" social experiences. They're just getting their feet wet with the emotional discomfort and social interactions that students in less rigorous majors have already endured through middle and high school (when these boys were likely to have been loners). "Nice" comes from a sincere and unassuming belief in the summation of "received wisdom" acquired from parents, teachers, childhood female friends, movies, etc. in their descriptions of/expectations for acceptable and romantically desirable behavior. These boys-now-men seek to apply the advice (naturally) only to be given ambiguous if not negative results contrary to what they've been promised. Some will by one circumstance or another succeed, some will persist fruitlessly until they bow out in frustration, and some never learn.
Ah, they haven't learned not to be a creeper and semi-stalker, therefore it is acceptable behaviour? We'll just ignore that creeper/obsessive nerd is sufficiently well established that it occurs in TV shows and movies.
But more to the point, even if you take the behaviour as being perfectly acceptable, it quite clearly is an unpleasant experience that pushes women out of tech. It even happens in the work place, and again because of the baseline treatment of women in tech, they do not complain, they just leave the field.
> Your advice is correct. Rip the bandaid. However, it's not immediately evident to people who've likely lacked the opportunity to be comfortable enough with themselves to get to that point.
Ok, I'm not sure I understand this. My advice was not rip the band aid, my advice was for the person with a crush to ask someone out and move on if they say no, along with a very clear explanation of why the subject of their crush is not necessarily going to "rip the bandaid". The concept of being "led on" because they haven't explicitly been told no is BS.
> And so long as you remain in your post, these situations will repeat themselves every year as a new batch of naive and unassuming teens matriculate into adulthood.
I don't understand what you're saying here? What do you mean by "staying in my post"?
> a new batch of naive and unassuming teens matriculate into adulthood.
The /vast/ majority of people, including nerds, seem capable of not being creepy and/or obsessive towards women. If everyone else, again including other nerds, is able to understand the basics of how you interact with and treat others and people of different gender why does one group get a pass?
Reading this reminded me of a comment I saw on HN ages ago and that I quite liked as something to personally live my life like. Not claiming others should but I think it's a good recipe for me to follow
> You know what stopped me from becoming a professional programmer? It wasn't the fact that I didn't get to study CS in high-school, nor that I didn't have a PC until I was a university student, nor the lack of Internet access at home until I was 20+ years old, nor the language barrier (English is my third language), nor being limited to free resources by my finances.
> Nothing. Nothing stopped me from pursuing my interest.
i have. they're treated well. and no, never in my uni years I heard any creepy behaviours done in our department by our students. oh, and it should be noted that half of our students are women (iirc almost all of them graduated in time).
I was thinking that there is a strange lack of Women composers and conductors. Tons of women virtuoso musicians, and quite a few song writers. But movie scoring??
I googled "female classical composer" and was blown away at how many there are. A lot.
BUT other than the first two being married to male classical composers everybody has heard of in modern times, you'll probably never learn anything about any of the rest of them in music class at school. Or anywhere else unless you look specifically for them.
There is a good reason. In countries with genuine gender equality women naturally gravitate to certain fields and tech isn’t one of them. It’s probably biology but we can’t be certain.
Right. Who would've thought that different people have different preferences? Why this insane push to try and treat all people as fungible economic units? (I already know the answer)
..because women are specifically paid less for the same job? equivalently qualified women applicants are more likely to be skipped, and when they do get offered they are given less favorable terms.
No one is _forcing_ women to enter tech, the issue is that if a woman does want to have a tech job it is harder for them to enter the industry, and they get lower compensation for the same job. This has been found across every single study of the industry.
To believe that there isn't a significant problem with sexism and gender oriented harassment in tech is delusional at best.
> This has been found across every single study of the industry.
Would be highly interested in a link to one of these. Specifically one that directly tackles the “less pay for the same job with the same hours” issue.
> and they get lower compensation for the same job.
Okay, so let's assume that instead of $250,000 per year that a male makes they are offered $200,000 per year for being female. In response they choose a $50,000 per year job in healthcare instead?
Which suggests that pay disparity isn't the source of their decision making. After all, if they are simply trying to spite tech for not paying them as much as men doing the same job then they would do the same in healthcare where you indicate men are also paid more.
>because women are specifically paid less for the same job?
Not true when looking at
education level, continuous years of job experience, hours worked, etc. When you take those into consideration women make comparable income.
Only difference between same work I have heard is that men push harder in negotiations. But I think that explains rather small difference. Otherwise the compensation is pretty much the same. And likely desirability of minorities is used as leverage too, but without asking.
Does the USA army have 50-50 split in combat roles? Shouldn't they aim for that by forcing enough females there so that eventually those can build career and enter officer ranks with 50-50 split too?
They are, it's just that the place where you can look at objective and comparable data (graduation vs job offers, salaries, terms for initial offers, etc) at scale is business, tech, etc and other similar industries.
For press coverage it's also a matter of what the big industries of the era are. Currently it's tech, in the 80s it was things like the mining companies - Apple is also one of the single largest companies in the world so when its CEO says something that's always going to get press coverage.
Tired argument, redirecting the topic. It's possible for more than one thing to be inequal at once. Also, the National Association for Women in Construction [0] and the women in auto care organization [1] would disagree on your first points. Lumberjacks slightly different, but even there I've found axewomen which is an organization/family promoting female lumberjacks (lumberjills as they call them) as a career [2].
Men clearly have a greater affinity for systems than women, women clearly have a greater affinity for people and living things, although one shouldn't exaggerate it to caricature and dichotomizing.
Additionally, men have a higher variance on intelligence, which means that you will have more very smart men at the cost of having more very dumb men, and so you have two barriers that more men that women will tend to get across--a high intelligence floor compared to many professions, and an affinity for systems over people. The caricature statement to avoid there is "men are smarter than women"--not the case, only that it seems like you'll get a larger pool inclined to the profession out of men by the way the distribution of intelligence works.
Not that rolling the latest CRUD app is rocket science, mind you, but it'd be silly to pretend that intelligence doesn't make a difference, and that intelligence distribution doesn't make a difference with sex concentration in the field.