As a woman in tech, I've never experienced any hostility, any implication I didn't belong. I was never intimidated by male professors and TAs and lab partners; I saw them as programmers first. I never lacked for role models and heroes because it never occurred to me to ask that they be women. I never had any requirements beyond 'great hacker'.

What I did find frustrating was the obsequious encouragement to stay. Extra scholarships I qualified for. My pick of lab partners. Professional societies just for women. The expectation that enrolling or hiring me would make some bean counter somewhere very happy.

It's frustrating because it leaves me wondering if I'm held to a lower standard. Would my work actually stand out if I weren't a woman? When people tell me I've done a good job, are they silently adding, ". . . for a girl" ? Am I going to get upvotes on this comment just for being a woman, and not necessarily for being insightful?

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of people trying to artificially import women into the field is that sometimes they succeed. There were always women who were there because they got extra attention and extra help. Women who wouldn't shut up about what it was like to be a developer and -- holy crap -- a woman! At the same time! It was, like, worth running a whole blog about!

The more women like that there were running around, the harder I felt I had to work to differentiate myself from them. I don't want to be "second rate, but that's okay because thank God somebody got a woman to stick around." I don't want to be, "wow, that's awesome work and--HEY IT'S A WOMAN, THIS IS FRONT PAGE MATERIAL!" I want to do first rate work and be criticized and compete and fight obscurity right along with everyone else.

There aren't many women in tech. And there are even fewer of them in the really upper echelons. Then again, that's true in general. Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care. It's not a justification for hamstringing the women who are the exceptions--and no one throughout history has ever said it is. But treating it like a problem just makes problems for people like me.

Seriously, just let people do what they want to do and be who they want to be and stop worrying about why they choose what they choose.

It is great to hear that this is possible. In my area, the only way to ensure that women aren't discriminated in a group is to

1) make the group consist of at least 30%-40% women, or

2) have a women as an authority in the group (presenter, boss, teacher, ...)

Sometimes, even that doesn't help. So although you suffer from positive discrimination, I think it is really great that you don't suffer from any negative dicrimination.

> Whatever the reason, women in tough, competitive fields are rare, and the tougher and more competitive and more elite it gets, the rarer they are. I don't know why that is. Frankly, I don't care.

If I understand you correctly, you don't care because you are part of the elite. But what about the women who are just "average" in tech?

As happens in military strategy, worrying about men out-earning women in the future seems an instance of fighting the last war.

http://blogs.eweek.com/careers/content001/wages/young_women_...

Women outnumber men in the workplace:

http://www.electwomen.com/?p=3123

Women outnumber men in college enrollment:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html

(article about implications on dating)

There are a ton more links on Google for each of these.

Computer science and engineering has inherent research component in it. We do our little own discoveries on daily basis while researching annoying bugs.

For research there is much value in diversity of approaches. That't why some people pity severe lack of women in computer science. They believe that this could increase diversity of approaches and give us better solutions.

Also there is no lack of electricians today but the need for computer scientists is exploding. During the war electricians and other factory workers were needed so there was push for women to take these professions. We don't have a war now but soon development of our civilization might be capped by lack of competent people to program our machines. That would be severe waste of time.

The first programmers (in a certain sense, wiring the first calculation machines in certain ways to achieve certain results) in fact were women, but something badly changed since then.

So the missing women in computer science and programming can't be explained that way. This phenomenon is far more likely to be a problem (and also a shame) of our society. We'll have to work hard to fix it.

However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.

You are somewhat misrepresenting what the original job of "programmers" was. The programmer's job was to translate algorithms written in a higher level language (flow charts) into machine code. The people writing flow charts were predominantly men and went by the title "Systems Engineer".

Men were the first programmers, under the modern definition of the term. Women were the first compilers.

The major change since then is that compiling high level code to machine code is now done by a computer program rather than a person. That's not a shame of our society, that's a triumph of computer science.

The systems engineers were doing the job we now associate with programming: turning business/scientific problems into flow charts/other high level representations of algorithms which generate the solution. The programmers were merely doing the work of LabVIEW ( http://www.ni.com/labview/whatsnew/ ) by hand.

Do you consider LabVIEW to be a programmer?

I'm not sure why you're trying to downplay the work these women did, but it's clear from the ENIAC histories and their biographies that they were far, far more than transcriptionists or "compilers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Holberton

See also this piece, which goes into more detail about the actual work done by programmers: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf

edit: sorry - admins, not engineers

It's potentially not a natural phenomenon. To the extent it is unnatural, we should strive to fix it, but most theories behind the discrepancy are conjecture, and when people are blamed for creating an inhospitable environment for others without concrete evidence behind it, nothing constructive will come of it.

I'm curious as to: a) your solution to this and b) whether you intend to implement it to more than just computer science, like say Women's Studies and such.

I'd think it would be really nice to have a 50/50 split of every possible class, especially when women currently make up 57% of grads.

I was taking issue with the assertion that there is no concrete evidence that CS presents an inhospitable environment for women. Yes, it bears more study, but there's clearly an inhospitable environment.

The inference of a particular place being "inhospitable" suggests that there is a large percentage minority at least that is being prevented from engaging in the experience because the current set up forces them to disengage.

I'm not seeing that. And as much as I wouldn't suggest that a class on French Fashion trends not need to over-accommodate the single male that is obsessed with this, I don't see any pressing needs to do this here either.

I suspect if we could find a way to teach kids a little programming in grade school we would to them and society a world of good... but as far as I can tell we haven't yet been able to find a way to teach programming at that level.

I'm not, I'm suggesting that a set-up that prefers those with a natural inclination or enjoyment/ability of a particular field should not be undermined in favour of those with a possible passing fancy.

If the system is detrimental to those with skill/enjoyment/inclination based on a particular set of their shared minority traits, this might be a problem in need of correction.

Unlike French Fashion trends, programming is an important driver of our society,

Whether something is important to our society or not should make no difference in correcting inequities in opportunity.

There's no way of knowing that when most women do not even take an introductory programming course.

The assumption here is that there is a large pool of women waiting to take courses that are being discouraged. I see no evidence of that at all, and that's what I'm questioning.

It's only fine if it's true that women would neither enjoy it nor be good at it.

I'd argue that "programming" in Ada Lovelace's age is more closely related to modern-day science than computer-science. Note also that scientific fields today are in no real shortage of women.

I think the possibility needs to be raised that there's something fundamentally wrong with our field, or at least the people in it - an uncomfortable thought to be sure, but the sheer number of women (growing at that) in every "geeky" field but CS should be an indicator of something.

This reminds me of a conversation I had yesterday...

I'm just going to throw something out there: I know a lot of CS majors, and a lot of science majors. The science majors are a geeky bunch, but are normal, functioning people for the most part. They will just as easily gab all day about some biological principle as they will the latest pop sensation. Their geekiness complements their personality.

Contrast this with the CS majors I know, where their geekiness is their personality. It's almost as if we try too hard to be the stereotype that it is, in the end, all that's left. Not to say all CS majors are like this, but the loudest, most visible ones certainly are, at least where I came from. I know it's a turnoff for me (and I'm a guy), I can't imagine how annoying that'd be for women.

The main social failure that I tend to notice in CS geeks (not all, but some) is complete indifference to other peoples mental states. They don't notice, or don't care, that their conversational partners are not interested in or knowledgeable about what they're saying, they don't seek out a common ground, and they write off any resulting awkwardness as a mere symptom of geek discrimination or (worse) take it as an indication of the stupidity of the other person.

I realize that sometimes this is actually a result of Asperger's, which for whatever reason seems more common in CS than any other field, so I'll always cut a lot of slack to those that have such a disorder. But I also think that a lot of kids that are mentally normal end up getting too deep into the dorking out that tends to happen around computers and lose all interest in social interaction, which is a shame, because it's really rather simple - I know people with Asperger's that have learned to "fake it" well enough to be enthusiastically welcomed in social settings, so people without it have little excuse.

Hobbies are a red herring - you can obsess over Doctor Who, World of Warcraft, or gruesome Internet porn all you want, the issue is whether you can read people well enough to stop talking about them and move on to something else when they are making the conversation less enjoyable for others. For better or worse, most geek hobbies are peculiar to geeks, so when you're around non-geeks, it's usually on you to leave your area of comfort in the name of finding good topics of discussion.

The science majors I've met, and the "science parties" I've been to are full of people of varied interests, just one (or a few) of which are the geeky sort. These are people who are multi-dimensional enough to carry intelligent conversations on topics both inside and outside that of normal geekdom.

Contrast with CS majors (the hardcore ones anyway), and I find that people almost try to be two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of the stereotype. Topics outside of LOTR, Firefly, lolcats memes, etc, are difficult to discuss with anyone.

Again, this is not some way to assign value judgments to hobbies - but rather an observation that for a lot of people in our field that I've met, the "geek stereotype" is all they have. There's no dimensionality to their personality, and it's almost as if there's an active rejection of anything that doesn't fit into the archetype they're trying to project. It's also an observation that, in my experience anyhow, people in scientific fields don't really suffer from this. They're not afraid to do geeky things, nor are they afraid to do un-geeky things. They're just people who like whatever it is they happen to like - which is something I wish our field had enough balls to make happen.

The best hobbies, I think, are the ones where you're creating something, exploring the world, making yourself a better person, or at least getting some exercise. The worst hobbies, I think, are the ones which involve immersing yourself in a narrow stream of entertainment which somebody else has created for you; Star Trek, Firefly, World of Warcraft, LotR, professional baseball. Nothing wrong with any of these in moderation, but when you elevate the consumption of entertainment to the level of a hobby it becomes just plain sad.

(No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)

What the hell, man? Writing fiction is inherently creative, and it's a very challenging, rewarding experience -- and it doesn't make a bit of difference whose world you're writing in. Why the scare quotes around creative? Why do you consider immersion in a fictional world unhealthy if-and-only-if it's somebody else's world? In order to write fiction, you're going to have to immerse yourself in an imaginary world, and most of it will be your own creation, even if you're writing fanfiction.

I'm hearing some off-hand disdain for fanfic from you, but it's exactly the opposite of consuming entertainment. If you doubt this, then try writing fanfic sometime. Consider me vexed at your ignorance, sir.

More damning, I think, are the experiences that many women have said discourage them from being programmers, e.g.: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues

> However, fixing a problem is only possible if you don't deny it.

Yup. I'm always slightly shocked by how eager HN is to find any explanation for the lack of female programmers that isn't societal.

You need a citation (or several) for this "fact".

Please correct me if I misunderstood the parent posting in that regard.

Funny, I've talked to tons of women about what I do, and not a single one has ever expressed that programming is cool, or interesting -- much less that they regret not having done it.

Look at the success of women in all other "intellectual" professions and you'll see the numbers increasing, not decreasing.

(I don't have the data to back that up - yet - so it's worded vaguely).

Anecdotally, I know several adult women who are learning to program and kicking ass at it.

The design, yes. The writing, yes. But to people I talk to, the code is whatever, the invisible shit that makes it work. They don't care.

So why do you think that is?

It sounds to me like evidence that women don't want those jobs! Which would imply that the jobs that people make a fuss about - e.g. programming and other tech jobs - are ones that a significant portion of women do want, and feel discouraged from.

...I'm joking, and yet I'm not. grin

Sexist jokes are the number one way to drive women out of any group, and they are more common than many people realize.

[...]

Sometimes he tells me that it's okay to make a sexist joke if it's true, or it's funny (funny to whom?). What some people fail to realize is that jokes about gender of any sort almost always make fun of women, and will make most women angry, regardless of the context. It doesn't help to first make a sexist joke about men and then one about women.

[...]

your comments and jokes are driving women away. If that's not what you want, then don't make sexist jokes. If you're not sure if your joke is sexist, find something else to say.

[http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/]

(The title suggests that the article is just about LUGs, but it's really about the whole computer-tech scene.)