The Hidden Engineering Gender Gap

ifindkarma writes "Joyce Park, CTO of invitation site Renkoo.com, has written a two-part essay exploring why there is no pipeline of self-taught female engineers entering the tech industry via Open Source or other individual efforts. In The Hidden Engineering Gap, she asks why there are so many self-taught male software engineers in startups, but no similar pool of women. In A Modest Proposal, she discusses a potential short-term fix to the problem: a one-year, co-op, certificate-granting program for women set up and sponsored by Silicon Valley companies."

Comments

facial hair

[User 956]

Joyce Park, CTO of invitation site Renkoo.com, has written a two-part essay exploring why there is no pipeline of self-taught female engineers entering the tech industry via Open Source or other individual efforts.

There are, but they don't look much different from the men, if you know what i mean.

Re:facial hair

[Penguinshit]

I've known some gorgeous female engineers with ... huge tracts of land.

Re:facial hair

[badboy_tw2002]

Please, its a compliment: Who would you rather trust your system with? The clean-shaven guy from ITT Tech who knows how to install Windows and that's pretty much it? Or the bearded overweight dude from his mom's basement from whom Linus stole the original source code (or so he claims?) Bearded dude for the win!

Re:facial hair

[KoldKompress]

In a Dwarven way.
"It's true you don't see many Engineering women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for engineering men!
And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no engineering women, and that engineers just spring out of holes in the ground!"
(Blatant Two Towers Gimli reference)

Re:facial hair

[paniq]

please, it's not stealing if you make a copy!

Re:facial hair

[x2A]

Boobs & Control. That's what it comes down to. Men - easily controlled by boobs. Even when not on a full "control" level, chemicals released in the brain increase chance that the man will act/react favourably when there's a hint of boob. Computers - see, they're not so bothered. Even when they're pushed right up against the screen, they just go "they're not gonna work on me, now enter the correct license key or I'm shutting down". So men, they like computers because they can control them. Women, they can control men without even trying, and controlling people's much more fun, so why'd they need computers?

Maybe if we could get computers to recognise and respond to boobs, some kind of "boob input device" or something, more women would be interested in working with them? After all, if men can be controlled with boobs, but computers could be controlled with boobs, keyboard AND mouse, then computers could be controlled much better than men - who lack the keyboard and mouse interface - then the computers are going to be much more fun!

I'm a genius!

Re:facial hair

[paniq]

the drive to rock!

Hidden?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's hidden about it? I am a heterosexual male who just recently finished my B.S. in computer science and I can certainly say there were almost no distractions whatsoever in any of the engineering classes I took. The gap does not qualify as "hidden" in my opinion.

it's all configure's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

julie@ElRambo:~/src/omgponies-0.3# ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking for g++... g++
cheking for penis... ERROR: Penis not found.

Re:it's all configure's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Close, but you've got it wrong:

julie@ElRambo:~/src/omgponies-0.3# ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking for g++... g++
checking for omgponies-0.2... YOU HAVE A YOUNGER VERSION INSTALLED?!? IS SHE PRETTIER THAN ME?
checking for *****... ERROR: if you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you.

Re:it's all configure's fault

[Aehgts]

It's not all config's fault,
they also need man page!

$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

$ man man works fine though!

Re:Better question:

[quenda]

Do computers designed by women run quicker?
Does software written by women take up less memory?
Do processors designed by women emit less heat?

No, no and no.
But they do come in a wide choice of clours, not just beige.

Re:Why do women need preferential treatment?

[raehl]

Why do women need special treatment?

Because they're not as smart, duh.

Re:Don't paint engineering pink!

[feepness]

Or, in other words, men make the bulk of the wealth in the world, even though i find it highly unlikely that this is solely based on merit (

And walking through the nearest shopping mall it seems that, at least on a personal level, women spend the bulk of it.

So what you're saying is....

[raehl]

Steve Jobs is a woman?

Re:Excuse me, but how to take women seriously when

[Ironica]

Have you ever been in a discussion where women have a deep analysis of a subject?

Um, yeah, all the time. And I'm the female end of it.

It comes as no surprise at all to me that women don't want to have serious conversations with you, though.