Is there any evidence to show that men in general are working to keep women out of the tech sector? From what I've seen, any woman who wants to commit to learning and getting a job has been completely free to do so. For example; my sister, who's a software engineer because I got her into it years ago. And from what I've seen; nothing has stopped her. It just seems to me that women in general aren't interested in the field, and I'm not sure of the specific reason for it at this point.
Yes. I suggest doing a google search for why there are so few women in tech; you will plenty of articles, including some that point to recent studies. For example:
It’s also interesting that your sister’s experience is reflective of the findings in various studies. Would your sister have pursued tech without your support?
I've worked in companies both in the mid west and in Silicon Valley. I think this culture is much more pervasive in the valley. In most other parts of the country where normal people work, women are accepted just as well as men. In fact, every company I worked for in the mid west had a reasonable amount of women, whereas the Silicon Valley companies had very few if not at all.
Looking at the public and complete data from Sweden we see that gender segregation is very universal human behavior. There more freedom a person have the more biased their choice is to groups that share similar traits to themselves.
A now few years old government study on gender segregation, they cited a older study that found that being in a minority makes a person less confident when faced with a challenged compared to being in a majority. Not massively so, but adding up every small and big challenges a person face in life while being a student, to finding a job, to being a professional for several years, and the results is a significant higher risk of leaving a field where one is a minority.
The big issue with this kind of research is that we don't have any gender to blame. It is equally male and female behavior, and the result is almost unbelievable similar results where in Sweden 88.6% of women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated fields. The 12.5% that work in non-gender segregated fields, where no gender is bigger than 150% than the other gender, is a shrinking minority and there is no evidence to show either gender being behind it.
Would that not argue for a more proactive policy approach? Just because something is "universal human behavior" does not mean society should accept it: violence is universal human behavior too.
Yes, a proactive policy approach that address the underlying human behavior. Those 88.5% should preferable not reach 100%. Segregated professions is often also often severely undermanned since by limiting recruitment to only one gender effectively cuts the available pool in half.
The question is what policy to apply. We could use a progressive affirmative action based on the severity of segregation, but that would mean for example a complete stop of new hire of midwifes that identify as female as that profession is the worst gender segregated profession in Sweden with over 99.9%. It is also the only higher education program currently that is 100% single gender. Last summer the government even had to cancel vacations on a national level because they could not otherwise cover minimal standard of health care. Its a professions that would greatly benefit by recruiting from the whole population, but its very unclear how to reach such goal.
They could do a tax based incentive to encourage individuals to go beyond their own comfort levels and give progressive higher tax cut based on the severity of gender minority status you have in a profession. With Swedish taxes and gender segregation that would mean a male midwife could get up to 100% tax cut and increasing their wages with about 33-50%. A female programmer would get a tax cut around 25-50%, translating to a 10-25% pay raise.
Alternative one can try to lower the difference in confidence between those in a majority group vs minority. Mentoring programs are great for that and has shown good results for professions that have average gender segregated. This work nicely on a per company level, but I have not seen any policy action on a national level to encourage such programs. It doesn't however address the initial choice when a individual select a higher education program, so the leaky pipe model still apply.
Yes, there is. It is often, but not always, less active and purposeful than you seem to be imagining, but even things like "believing a company is a meritocracy" and "believing that the most important thing is to hire smart developers" end up in practice leading to discrimination against women, who are less likely to be seen to be "geniuses" with innate talent or leadership potential and more likely to be seen to be hard workers.
Then again, I saw a woman get put on a PIP the week after she filed a sexual harassment complaint, because the (major tech) company would rather pay a big severance than tell the dude programmers to stop sexually harassing their coworkers, so there are also explicit dynamics that play into the alienation of women.
On the whole, though, it's about disproportionate impact. "You are welcome to join this sexist work environment" is a selling point to far more men that women, so we end up with more men than women. This isn't rocket science.
The author of this post is doing a huge disservice to the almost 600 tech experts listed.
She is clearly suggesting that we should invite these experts not because they are experts but because they are women.
How acceptable is that ?
Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ».
Okay then , can we have the same thing for female dominated industry ? Sociology , Education , Nurses ? Where are the articles complaining about those sectors being crowded with the opposite sex ?
Why on earth do we have conventions with « Women who codes » but not «Women Carpenter » or « Women BrickLayer » etc... or those jobs degrading or something ?
Tech is the only sectors that believes it is so ahead in terms of values that it’s « okay » to choose people based on criterias like gender or ethnicities similar to google hiring scandals[0], and call that « Progress », and « Inclusiveness »
Sometimes I wish I was in the valley to work for top companies , then this type of articles pops up and it reminds me that I would have an arguments with nearly every co-workers on this topic almost every day.
An expert should be invited because he has dedicated a portion of his career studying a problem in depth and has come up with solutions or concepts that help elevates the debate , of which he is willingly to share this knowledge with an audience.
An expert should never be invited because of his or her gender or other criterias outside of his/her work.
As infuriating it is to read your comment, because it showcases immense lack of understanding on the topic only thing I can say is that from your end of the table what you write seems logical - but reality is much different. I cannot blame you for not experiencing a walk of a woman, a life of a woman and the journey of women in this world for the last (at least) 200 years - across different countries and cultures. Only thing I can ask you is to look at relevant research and reports that constantly show women are being discriminated against and looked over. Yes, in tech. Yes, in construction. Yes, at home with families. It's not about our choice only. It's about a clear existent barrier that is perpetuated over and over. Think of Saudi Arabia and position of the women in that society. Think of Sweden on the flip-side. Our lives might be very different, but if you dig below the surface you will find many commonalities - one being that women till this day do not have ownership over their bodies, let alone their journeys.
I hope one day you will listen to some experiences of women around you and read necessary literature. And I hope you develop empathy for the journey, but also understanding why highlighting women who are doing something in predominately male industry should be lifted to visibility - especially if its people of color, immigrants and other groups that have it even harder.
> Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ».
Perhaps, if many people in a community complain, you should assume that they have a reason to do so? And you might listen, in order to learn the source of the upset and what can be done to fix it?
Do you take the same attitude with your customers, clients, and users? It's an example of "It works on my computer:" "I don't see why they think the software is slow. So I'm not going to investigate to learn why they say the application isn't working, and I certainly am not going to try to improve its performance."
Because men fundamentally suck at writing code and creating great software products.
Women put rocketships on the moon, cracked code (WWII), oh yes and invented programming languages. The algorithm Google's built on? Discovered by a woman.
Men gave us Ad based platforms and a bunch of cheesy bro products to rate hot chicks. Wow. So not impressed.
Software is a pink collar profession. If you want male-dominated to the roots, go into hardware.
By the way, male nurses and teachers get affirmative action and there are female trade groups.
I'm not sure why there's a problem with inviting a bunch of women to get together and talk about their areas of expertise. Given the history, we'll likely solve some interesting problems.
So I heard about this comment thread in one of my forums for women in tech. I think the main gist was sigh. We think you are either trolling for dollars or stupid.
Factually, historically, and socially you're incorrect. So I took one for the team and corrected the record.
After many years of discouraging women and other underrepresented minorities in tech, those groups have a clear disadvantage and creating groups and other ways to help them catch up is what we need to balance things out.
You are right about one thing, this isn’t only a problem within tech, there are many other industries and careers where women and other underrepresented minorities haven’t been given a chance to succeed and show their capabilities. But it has to start somewhere and with tech being so important for everything we do in our lives everyday, it just makes sense to be louder about this in this community to pledge for a change.
Experts become experts after years of experience, coaching, support, and having people who approve of them and their knowledge all of the time. Women and minorities lack that support, like I said, we are just playing catch up now.
Your assumption that these women aren't being invited right now because they are less qualified than the men who are is not supported by any evidence you've offered.
How is it you think event organizers build the list of people to invite? Do you imagine they start with a list of all 7.5 billion people and then sort by presentation skill? You are just being a defensive ass when it is pointed out that the current lists are all affirmative action towards men. Your belief that men can't compete if compared to women does men a disservice: surely men would like to know that they are being selected from a list of all the most qualified speakers, not that they got their slot only because no women were considered.
> Hence , I will never get why tech industry believes so much it must be so « inclusive ».
Because being exclusive on the grounds of race, gender or age is against the law? All of those are illegal in the UK where the speakers are based.
More diversity in the workplace also makes them more enjoyable places to work. They may also bring different experiences and points of view in how a site or piece of software may be most useful, leading to more success in the market. A market where women occasionally buy things too.
Same for conference speakers. I want to hear perspectives that I cannot have had. There'd be no point going if everyone had my white middle aged male point of view. I want to understand and see the opportunities I'd otherwise miss, the UX, marketing or expectation differences between generations, gender or regions.
I'm surprised we still have this conversation, sadly.
Got any proof on that market success? I still haven’t seen any. There are plenty of fields that do just fine without explicitly encouraging a balance of women while still being inclusive to women who show merit.
“McKinsey’s research found that diversity has the most obvious impact on financial performance when it is found in executive teams and roles that are directly in charge of generating revenue.”
Here are the ratios of men to women in the boards of directors in the top three companies by market cap in the world:
Yeah you know what is not a great body of objective evidence? 40 years of women being told we have an equal chance of success at anything we want to do, and yet, in October 2017 discovering that actually the vast majority of us have encountered some gross shit from men we work with.
Please, for a moment, imagine the time and energy it might take to fend that off. How it might make you timid about taking meetings, asking for more, it might just wear you out.
TLDR I’d like to see the study that controls for sexual harassment, that many male partners expect women who work to also be the primary caregiver for children when home, the fact that being incompetent but confident is not viewed kindly in women as it is in men, etc.
Sexual harassment and having babies are separate issues, so please don’t try to discredit what I said with something completely unrelated. In any case, women aren’t alone in having to deal with arseholes on a daily basis. It’s a fact of life. No one seems to be making anywhere near the same amount of fuss over the number of boys and men who have their penises mutilated against their will or are bullied or raped in schools, prisons and work on a daily basis.
What I said is that I have still to see any proof that the encouragement of gender balance in any field, and in particular in programming, contributes to market success in that field.
It is contradictory for a woman to say that she wants to be treated equally to men, and then say that she expects to be given an advantage in hiring based on her gender. It is a very feminine point of view to believe that one has intrinsic, objective value.
By definition, the current state of the market at least in programming implies that gender balance does not provide any benefit.
Given that the merit is a game of language and is completely subjective, if a woman believes that most randomly chosen companies would benefit either from increasing gender balance or hiring solely based on her own definition of merit, then it is up to her to show this through her actions, such as starting, or participating in the management of a company following that spirit, rather than lobbying the government to enforce her own or others’ subjective beliefs around hiring or merit.
" It is a very feminine point of view to believe that one has intrinsic, objective value."
I think you need to take a while and consider why you believe that statement is true, and how it might be impacting the rest of your view on this topic.
Have you contemplated that you might be in the wrong here, and that your approach on this topic is very, very heavily based on your first person view?
It's extremely hard to control for the success of corporations vs. any single factor, much less "gender balance". For example, more male-founded startups get funded - but it's been shown that's in large part because they're male (not to mention their investors usually are), not because of any inherent merit of their business. Similarly, consumer startups often have an easier time getting funded because they're easier for partners to explain the rest of their firm, but it doesn't actually mean they're better investments than an niche enterprise play that's harder to explain to a layman.
More starts = more exits, more role models => more male founders and more all-male startups. Nothing in that cycle actually proves that that men are better at founding or running tech startups, and say "show me the data" is a poor response, given that we don't have an alternate universe where there's no gender bias feeding into those patterns.
I’ll assume that you agree that objective value is not possible to define and that therefore no one has objective value. Are you taking issue with my view that women are conditioned to believe that they have inherent, objective value? Why do you think Instagram is so popular with them, where it is sufficient just to post a photo of oneself to be valued?
Also what do you mean by inherent merit? It doesn’t exist, just like objective value. It doesn’t matter that a study has shown that men are hired or receive funding because they’re male over inherent merit, when the study has already necessarily failed at defining inherent merit.
You’re either being intellectually dishonest, or you need to read what I wrote again.
Yes, I completly disagree with your sweeping characterizations of entire genders, on both sides of that discussion.
A key part of the problem is that society often propogates such sweeping generalizations to children, reinforcing existing biases based on stereotypes rather than individual merit. This is part of what diversity policies are intended to address.
Language and the market are generalisations. These are the only ways in which humans can interact. The market is neither right nor wrong. It is the status quo. Women put more selfies on Instagram than men. It's a generalisation and also a fact.
You're still propagating the idea that individual merit exists and can be defined. It can't. If you think that hiring based on your subjective, generalised idea of merit would lead to grater gains, it's up to you to show it with real results. You clearly stand to make a lot of money. Until then, the status quo remains.
I'm not surprised you don't think you've seen any evidence...because women AREN'T AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF BUSINESS IN ANYWHERE NEAR A NUMBER THAT IS REPRESENTATIONAL OF THE POPULATION!!!!!
This is like Trump saying climate change isn't happening because it's really cold in the United States.
Also re: being contradictory...I am beyond asking for equality. The fact that that was even a debate at one point speaks to how fucked up things truly were.
What I am yelling about is that people like you need to stop for a second and consider that even though the world has slowly awoken over the past 30-40 years to the idea that women can be smart and have careers and might want to do things beyond take care of your home/kids, we still have nowhere near the number of women achieving at the highest levels of business. A good scientist would wonder why that is.
If you just think it's because women aren't smart enough or aren't trying hard enough...you are being lazy.
Lastly on the topic of femininity and intrinsic value, please take that up with Thomas Jefferson:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….”
If you want to hear a perspectives that you do not have, find a person that is furthest from your social economic class. Stop and talk to a homeless person on the street.
Whilst I would occasionally do that when my commute often walked past some, it's rather ridiculous to suggest in a technical conference or work context, unless they also happen to understand the project we're working, or were booked to speak at the conference.
If a conference want to invite speakers that has different social economical backgrounds then they can just as easily do so as with different genders. The article is about people conferences could invite.
There are people here on HN that has been homeless. Its far from "ridiculous", and suspect some of them would feel a bit offended with that suggestion.
Okay how about this needmoretea: Close your eyes. Now imagine every male coworker you have is actually female. They are used to only working with mostly women, so you are an oddity. Kind of entertaining. They just hope you can be cool and be “one of the girls”, you know?
I was advocating for more diversity and equality in the workplace if you read my grandparent post, which got the absurd response of "if you want diversity go and talk to a homeless person", I responded to as ridiculous.
I'm in favour of any increasing in workplace diversity and am thankful the UK workplace is very different to the HN zeitgeist that's more akin to UK attitudes of late 70s or 80s when these discussions crop up. I'm also in favour of the root post's idea of getting more women speaking at conferences. So as ever those views were downvoted here.
The thing is that nurses, for example, don't defend their field so actively and loudly like, for example, you do. And that's the reason why fighting sexism in IT is so important.
To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball game in the 4th grade.
I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time.
After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.”
This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl.
Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way.
For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.)
On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?
> “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” ... "women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things"
No one has said that. Please assume some good faith that when people say they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender, it means they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender. There is not a single comment under this article that has said or implied that there are difference in the ability of men and women to perform skillfully with technology tasks.
> On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do.
Sure, lets bring in a universal affirmative action law that dictate that any industry that has more than 60% women or men must apply affirmative action for any new hire. I would enjoy to see that experiment. For reference, the top 3 most gender segregated professions (99.4% or higher) in Sweden a few years ago was midwife, dentist nurse, and stone layer. Engineers didn't even breach top 50, and is pretty average in gender segregation.
In a perfect world people would succeed based on merits and not identity, their parents, how much money they have growing up, etc.
We do not live in that world. We have clear structural challenges to having women succeed at the highest levels of business in the United States, and the tech industry is particularly disappointing because it grew up as women supposedly had equal access to the idea that they could have a career, as opposed to being their spouse's property.
If you think the answer to that is just continuing as is to maintain unimpeachable fairness for you...I disagree.
Why would you expect her to assume good faith of men arguing against her inclusion? Especially when we know that men from white nationalist groups have purposefully infiltrated technical spaces in order to fight the inclusion of women and underrepresented racial minorities? (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuc...)
These men are making a political argument, not an intellectual one. They are arguing that nothing should be done in the face of obvious injustice. If they cared to read it, there is significant peer-reviewed work that says they are wrong, but because they are making a political argument not an intellectual one evidence does not matter. Expertise does not matter. Has any one of these guys offered a shred of evidence for their beliefs? Have any of them offered the credentials that qualify them to opine on this topic?
Someone who comes in and says "you shouldn't use C because it is slow as shit" wouldn't be taken seriously or treated as though they were arguing in good faith. Neither should these obviously-wrong dudes.
Just like with Holocaust deniers, engaging with these people only legitimizes them and their politically-motivated beliefs. (See for https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subre... effective strategies to engage with people who are arguing for political reasons.) To do otherwise demands that women participate in their own marginalization, which explains why most of them don't bother and just quit, creating an echo chamber where men can keep reassuring themselves that these political beliefs are more important than facts. Frankly, it is a disgrace that Hacker's News is willing to host this tired bullshit, and YC should seriously consider the impact doing so has on their brand.
When it comes to gender segregation we are all marginalized in one place or an other. That is what 88.6% gender segregation for women and 88.4% gender segregation for men means in raw Swedish data.
There is no data to support that affirmative action is an effective strategy in dealing with this problem. There is also no support to the idea that a failure with inclusions is the reason why 88.6% women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated professions here in Sweden. The very little of real scientific data, in the several research studies I have read, is ones that simply say that people feel more confident being around people who share the same trait as themselves. Multiply that effect with every challenge a person goes through from selecting a professions to being a student to graduation to seeking a job to staying in a professions for several years and what we get is a significant increase risk for members of the minority group to not select the profession or quit.
A solution need to fit the problem. 88.5% of the population has ended up gender segregated in Sweden. Is the method that the article suggest an effective strategy for that goal, and if so where is that evidence? Someone suggested that gender difference in preference is the cause but similar the data I have read on preference differences are not significant enough to explain such extreme segregation that exist here. The parent posts here suggest misogyny, which then would imply misandry to explain why an equal amount of men do not end up in professions dominated by women, but that seems poorly supported by peer-reviewed work that looks to explain gender segregation in general.
But as I suggested above, I would not mind seeing a experiment where people tried applying affirmative action as a general solution to fix gender segregation. Similar ideas has been tested before in smaller scales, like Sweden when it tried to do it in higher education. They had to scrap it because a court deemed it discrimination to give benefits to individuals based on gender, even if they were a minority. Norway is currently testing a different version, which will be interesting to see develop. I do expect it to run foul of the same issue as here in Sweden but they do have different laws and their relation with EU laws is complicated.
Some data for you: 100 years ago, I couldn't vote in the United States. 50 years ago, my best shot at not living in poverty would've been marrying well. 25 years ago, starting and running a company would've been preposterous.
100 years ago, could you vote? 50 years ago, could you pursue a career and succeed on your own merits versus seeking a spouse? 25 years ago, were men starting companies?
Do you think perhaps that history contributes to the "failure with inclusions"? Do you think women ended up dominating careers like midwifery and nursing because they all just happened to realllllllly like that? Or because that was available to them to have some agency over their lives?
100 years ago men were forced at gun point to put on a military uniform, and fight and die in wars. The agency of individuals during world war 1 and world war 2 was nothing like today.
Womens right to vote in the United States was largely pushed around 1910 because the government ran out of men to send to the frontline and wanted to create a draft for women. In order to do so however the argument went that it would not be fair to force women to fight the war unless they also had a vote. If I remember the dates right, in early 1914 the changes was put to the house of representatives but the decision but was postponed and then the war ended. The discussion of a draft for women ended, but the right for women to vote continued and in 1920 the nineteenth amendment was ratified.
If I lived 100 years ago and had a choice between voting and being forced at gun point to the trenches to die, I would not pick voting. Dieing in war is not my cup of tea and the probability of survival was not great during world war 1. A mans life a 100 years ago was that of extreme variance where we remember the few individuals that had many children and lived a long life, and the rest died horrible with no agency and is long forgotten.
I would include Magda Jadach, Raspberry Pi Foundation software developer, speaker at various conferences regarding teaching kids how to code: https://www.linkedin.com/in/magdalenajadach/
If you aren't aware, usually a significant portion of speaking slots are filled because organizers reach out and solicit speakers. Indeed, I don't know of many conferences that could fill their schedule if they relied exclusively on inbound speakers, and doing it that way would be a recipe for having the same twenty dudes speak each year, which isn't going to create the best possible event for attendees.
