Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought

itwbennett writes "According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 about 22% of computer programmers, software and web developers in the United States were female. That number comes from the Current Population Survey, which is based on interviews with 60,000 households. But Tracy Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, thinks the number is actually much lower than that. And last month she created a GitHub project to collect data on how many females are employed full-time writing or architecting software. Even at this early point, the data is striking: Based on data reported for 107 companies, 438 of 3,594 engineers (12%) are female. Here's how some well-known companies stack up."

Comments

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.

Who gives a shit?

Re:And?

[ShanghaiBill]

More importantly, this entire "study" is garbage. It is a self-selecting poll. So it doesn't "prove" there are fewer women, it just shows that men are more willing to fritter their time away on some stupid web poll.

Re:And?

[phoenix03]

If by 'social inequality' you mean the increasing attacks on male rights in our culture, I agree.

Re:And?

[thesupraman]

In this particular case (male teachers) it is far more about the painting of all males as child molesters and rapists who cannot be trusted around children.

But yes, the huge feminisation of many aspects of society, including schooling, is a major factor. Most male teachers end up seeing their views ignored,
themselves patronised, and their care values bought in to question on a continual basis, basically to marginalize their position as a teacher.

After all, 'think of the children!'

Re:And?

[phoenix03]

George Carlin has a great quote that addresses your final sentence.

Re:And?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.

After all, everyone knows there are only two kinds of people who love small children: female elementary school teachers and male pedophiles.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks to me like it shows that silicon valley hipster companies attract silicon valley hipsters, who are apparently mostly male.
I suspect that in the real world, we're too busy actually getting shit done to care about someone's attempt to justify their personal persecution complex.

Re:And?

[Hadlock]

Says you. I didn't read anything about a cowboy neal option in this poll you speak of.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I heard the requirements for engineering school were exactly the same across the board.

Re:And?

[amicusNYCL]

I'm more interested in the number of engineers than the percent that are female.

Apparently Reddit gets by with only 14 engineers, Khan Academy needs 24, SnapChat only 13, Flickr needs 42, but then Pinterest needs 105, Etsy needs 149, Dropbox needs 143, and Mozilla requires 500 engineers. Some of those companies are much more lean and efficient than I thought. And others are way more bloated.

14 people at Reddit can manage their entire infrastructure of servers and networking gear hosting all of their forums, in addition to the mobile version, browser extensions, buttons and widgets and whatever else, but Dropbox needs 143 people to manage file uploading, storage, and access. Not to downplay what Dropbox does, but I don't think they offer 10 times the product that Reddit does.

Re:And?

[Jane Q. Public]

"After all, everyone knows there are only two kinds of people who love small children: female elementary school teachers and male pedophiles."

I certainly hope you were being sarcastic. Because if we wanted to take your comment literally, then all fathers would be pedophiles.

On the other hand, it has certainly seemed as though society has been willing to look askance at any male who pays any attention to children. This is a problem in our society that I noticed over 20 years ago.

Hint, folks: treating an entire gender as though they are likely perverts is far worse than discrimination in employment. In fact, I would call that a perversion in itself.

Re:And?

[Stormy Dragon]

Uh no, those 14 people are who Reddit has "writing or architecting software, and are in full-time roles". Presumably there's an entire different pool of people managing their infrastructure of servers and networking gear, etc. IT people are not software engineers any more than your car mechanic is a mechanical engineer.

Re:And?

[HeckRuler]

But... Are there any social inequalities when it comes to female software engineers? Is the man somehow keeping chicks out of coding classes? Is the ol' boys club not allowing cooties to spoil their source?

You're looking at the end result and and claiming that there must be social inequality that lead to it. I understand this line of reasoning when it comes to the military, corporate CEO positions, and professional sports. They have a history of barring or diminishing women.

But engineering? Software engineering? Dude, during my time in academia I saw them bend over BACKWARDS to get girls into their program. Between the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, and general reports like this that stated more women needed to go be geeks. Even culturally, we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.

Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers. There are plenty of counter-examples, but they're a minority. But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations. Breaking them doesn't get you burnt at the stake, but it might raise some eyebrows.

If you want to stop the NFL from being assholes to women, or to break that glass ceiling when it comes to corporate CEO positions, I'm all for that and you have my full support. But if you want to shape culture so that there's no stigma with being a male nurse or a female software engineer, that's getting a little close to the sort of fascism that demands we think a certain way. Your way. Sorry, but you just can't steer culture like that.

But hey, we need more female software engineers, because we need more software engineers. So I'm down with this sort of effort. But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.

Re:And?

[westlake]

Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
Who gives a shit?

As a man, Wiederspan is a rarity in U.S. elementary-school education. And experts say that as boys continue to lag behind girls academically, schools could use more male teachers.

"Having male teachers, boys have a model that it's OK to be male and be in the classroom, he said. "School isn't just a female enterprise. That's what the presence of a man says to kids."

Why Men Don't Teach Elementary School

Re:And?

[Areyoukiddingme]

But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.

I see what you did there.

Re:And?

[amicusNYCL]

I didn't read the article, the table of data just listed "engineers." Network engineers are people, too!

Even so though, my point about the comparison between the various companies still stands. Reddit seems lean and mean compared to companies like Dropbox and Etsy.

Re:And?

[Dynedain]

Not to downplay what Dropbox does, but I don't think they offer 10 times the product that Reddit does.

Why not? Dropbox offers a file storage service that works across a myriad of wildly differing device types and platforms using native platform development. Not to mention they store many orders of magnitude more data than Reddit.

Meanwhile, Reddit only provides community-moderated plain-text discussion threads via a lightweight web interface.

Just because Reddit has more content that is specifically valuable to you, how do you make the jump to assume that what they're doing is on par or more difficult than what Dropbox does?

Re:And?

[rolfwind]

So it doesn't "prove" there are fewer women, it just shows that men are more willing to fritter their time away on some stupid web poll.

Taking an educated guess and replacing it with pure speculation of your own does not a +5 Insightful comment make, and yet here we are.

Re:And?

[yurtinus]

And what "male rights" are you talking about that females wouldn't have as well?

Re:And?

[lgw]

Well, part of the "problem" IMO is probably also the discrepancy between 22% "in the field" and 12% "working on code" - female developers choose or are steered to management by a large margin. I'd say 40% of the development managers I've met in my career have been women, while the 12% number sounds right for coders. I've worked with just one women who was senior on the non-management technical track out of the hundreds of coders I've worked with in my career.

There's definitely something interesting there, but I'm not sure it counts as a "problem".

Oh, I should also point out that in 20+ years and hundreds of co-workers, I've never seen people making sexist jokes who expected women to just "go along to get along" with that. There were a few guys here and there who thought that sort of thing was funny (certainly not the norm), but they all had the basic manners to shut up and look embarrassed if one of the women on the floor happened by. But then, I'm not a brogrammer wring Ruby on Rails, either - I hear the culture is pretty awful over on the web side of the industry.

Re:And?

[msobkow]

There are fewer women in programming for one reason and one reason only: families.

Both in the US and Canada, I worked with a lot of bright young women over the years. And the vast majority of them quit their jobs shortly after getting married with the intent of raising a family. By the time they were ready to return to work, their tech skills were stale, so they took jobs as headhunters and HR interviewers because they had *technical skills* needed to fulfill those roles, even if they weren't current enough for *coding*.

Most of them also ended up making a hell of a lot more money that way than they would have if they stuck with programming.

Re:And?

[yurtinus]

Men may be more suited to worth that involves heavy lifting, but writing code? No way. In the early days of computers, you had a far more even split (if not more women than men programming).

It's more an issue of societal views on gender roles influencing young people. Society gives the impression that men should be the nerds sitting at their computers designing whatever, so women shy away from engineering, math, and sciences. Society gives the impression that women should nurture youth, so men shy away from elementary education.

Suitability has absolutely nothing to do with it. Yes, men and women may "think" differently, and while that may impact an individual's style of code or design, it doesn't have an effect on their ability to do so.

Re:And?

[srichard25]

At some point our society went from "leveling the playing the field" to "drastically changing the playing field to make the end-game scores the same". See, it doesn't matter that millions of years of evolution have resulted in some significant differences between males and females. It doesn't matter that there are already programs/scholarships to place to favor one group over another. It doesn't even matter if they can't find any specific examples of discrimination. The very fact that there are more of X than Y in a specific profession is reason enough to try to slant the playing field even further in an effort to make the end result the same.

Re:And?

[Pheret1]

I just counted - there are 8 engineers focused on reddit.com, and 4 engineers focused on redditgifts.com, and 2 sysadmins. That's the entire technical staff. source: http://www.reddit.com/about/team/ also: i work there too

Re:And?

[Cederic]

I think he's referring to the rights that females have, that males lack.

In the UK those would include retirement age, parental leave, medical care (and life expectancy), equality of treatment in education and the workplace.

Re:And?

[Espectr0]

reddit is basically just a forum. dropbox does storage and lots of it, that means scaling is critical, data consistency / backups and infrastructure should be a lot more robust. that requires more people.

Still, that pinterest number is way too high.

Re:And?

[maharvey]

Yes, although this is eventually true of men too, from what I've seen.

Many males, by the time they're in their 40s and 50s, have moved on from coding to architecture, management, multifunctional roles like customer engineering liasons, highly specialized SWE roles like JVM optimization, or have switched careers altogether. Hard to compete with the young kids who'll work 12 hours a day for pizza.

In other words, by the time the women are ready to come back, the men (of the same age) aren't generally doing that work anymore either. So it wouldn't be appropriate for women to return to that role. The main difference is that men tend to stay with it longer, through the family years, where women bail sooner. And that's good. People gravitate to what they are intereted in, and where there is demand. It is a fact that women are better at raising young kids, and more importantly they want to do it more than men do. We all know it.

The sexes are not interchangeable. They can fill the same roles, because as a rule humans are remarkably adaptable and intelligence goes a long way to compensate for gaps in natural talent. But often, one or the other will be better precisely because of talent or interest. The edge may be small but it is still significant.

For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type roles where there are a zillion little things to keep track of all at once. I don't understand why, but I often see this pattern, and I see that women often to a better job than men do in these roles. Women are better at staying home with small children; if society pushes them in that direction maybe its because there is good reason for it. Men are better at focused attention. You don't need studies to tell you this, it's everywhere, it's obvious to anyone with even a little intelligence or intuition. Of course women can be good software engineers, and depending on individual talent and interest, may be as good or better than men. Humans are varied. Some men excel at things that women are usually better at. And that's all good. But it is foolish and ignorant to pretend that there is no difference, that differences do not exist in the population as a whole.

Talent is extremely hard to measure, but interest and motivation are very easy to see. Personally I think that interest is far more important than talent. It goes back to that large brain thing. We can learn to be what we want to be. And in my opinion, most women don't want to do software engineering. Why should I care? Why they be forced to do what they don't want to do, in the name of political correctness? I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.

As long as the only time they are allowed to be girls if they're dating you. Otherwise, you want them to put up with your sexual, crude bullshit and be "one of the guys".

So it's ok for "girls to be girls" but not ok for "guys to be guys". Nice double standard.

Re:And?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Who gives a shit?

Most Democrats?

Re:And?

[Nephandus]

Uh, neurological differences could easily affect ability, and neurological differences verifiably exist. Not saying one way or the other about the reality of this specific case, but PCness sure as fuck doesn't define its limits. You need to layoff those special pleading backed arguments from ignorance. Granted that means no more "feminist theory"...

Re:And?

[Stormy Dragon]

Okay, then tell the people at your company who aren't actually software engineers to stop calling themselves software engineers. Contrary to common opinion, it's not a term for any vaguely computer related job.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're wanting equal treatment, then being 'one of the guys' is what you get. If they're wanting to be treated like girls, then what that really means is being given all the additional benefits that they've come to expect from other social settings. I think the rude awakening for a lot of girls out there is the contrast between the two. They might see a guy being a jerk to them, when in reality they're probably just getting the degree of interaction/effort that any guy would expect to get in her place.

Re:And?

[yurtinus]

You can't credit non-specific neurological differences and turn around and call my arguments ignorant. Well, I mean, you can, but that's just silly. Fact is, women used to be far more prevalent in mathematics and computing than they are today. It's not that their "puny female minds" can't comprehend the work, it's that society pushes them toward more "feminine" pursuits than computers. Given a depressing perusal of the /. commentary here, I'd say the industry is also doing a bang-up job of pushing them out as well.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked in more than one place that were so desperate to "improve" their male:female developer ratio that they hired a female candidate (sadly, often the only one) despite other candidates being far more qualified for the position.

Case in point: You are approximately two or three times more likely to become a "Code for America" fellow if you have tits.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

People who realize that the reasons for that are social inequality, and such inequalities ought to be addressed.

Ok, that sounds all well and good, except for one important thing: why is it that no one is complaining about the lack of men in elementary teaching roles, or nursing, or day care jobs, or other traditionally-female roles? There's no one complaining about that, or trying to get more men into those positions; in fact, men are shunned from positions involving children (esp. small children) because our society is so paranoid about child molesters.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

See, it doesn't matter that millions of years of evolution have resulted in some significant differences between males and females

That's bullshit (or more accurately, your insinuation that women are somehow evolutionarily less apt for engineering).

Over in China and India, there's tons of females in the sciences and engineering. When I worked at some larger semiconductor companies, there were quite a few female engineers, but they tended to be mostly Indian and some Chinese. I saw the same when I was in college; most of the women (esp. in grad school) were Indian and Chinese.

It's not that women aren't interested in engineering or capable of it. It's that American women aren't interested in it (though other western cultures don't seem to be much better). Apparently, Indian and Chinese cultures don't have the same sexist attitudes towards women that Western (and particularly American) cultures do.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers.

That's exactly what the problem is. In all my years of engineering school and work, most of the female engineers (or engineering students) I've met were not American, they were Indian and Chinese. Apparently, their cultures do not divert women from these jobs the way Western or American culture does.

Re:And?

[Murdoc]

You're right, that's not how you steer culture. This is how.
You encourage, not demand, or force.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

And it shows, though I'm not sure that 'gets by' would be my wording of choice.

They're doing a lot better than Slashdot, especially when you look at Slashdot's horrid new redesign.

Re:And?

[Darinbob]

Unfortunately, this is slashdot. Most of the readers don't care about such things and think women are scarce because they aren't as smart or as interested, and would be surprised if they actually met a woman in real life.

Re:And?

[epyT-R]

No. That is not an accurate translation. That is shaming language, the last resort of those backing the politically dominant yet outmoded popular position for emotional/self-interested reasons.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are fewer women in programming for one reason and one reason only: families.

That may be one factor, but there are some other rather big ones. If you're in software engineering, have you ever noticed how there are many people with interesting personalities there who are extremely capable? What you are observing is the autistic spectrum. Software heavily caters to people who can break problems down into fixed steps, this ends up catering to autism. Men as a group start out distinctly closer to autism than women do, thus they start out with characteristics that help. Often the women you see in software are distinctly further along the spectrum than the men, just it isn't as obvious because this merely makes them closer to the men.

Re:And?

[geminidomino]

Apparently, their cultures do not divert women from these jobs the way Western or American culture does.

I think that's a big assumption. It could equally be that Western/American culture lets females get more for less, in terms of success, so few of them bother to put in the work to make their bones. Or it could be that women are more sensitive to cultural trends that have nothing to do with gender - the devaluing of intellectual pursuits in men AND women, e.g. There are a lot of unknowns here.

Re:And?

[epyT-R]

Maybe, but the demand that there be equal distributions everywhere is also part of the problem. It's a rather childish, simplistic, and dysfunctional worldview to have.. esp when forcing large tracts of society to comply with it via the law. All it does is breed more discrimination against those labeled as the 'oppressors' which in turn breeds actual, real contempt in that group for the protected 'victim' classes. ("She got the programming job? Was it achievement or politics?" instead of "She got the job, ok great I look forward to working with her")

Liberals always like to preach 'tolerance' and 'diversity' when they don't really understand the implications of the terms. 'Tolerance' of difference implies that things won't always be equal, that we are all individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, and so we are not interchangeable square pegs. Liberals are fine with this until it touches on race, gender, or sexual orientation, where we are expected to throw out any rational thought and assume that any imbalance is due to bigotry (instead of biology, or free choice, or life choices or..).. This is as irrational as the 'god hates fags' mantra of westboro baptist.

Re:And?

[__aaltlg1547]

Up through middle school I had only a handful of male teachers. From high school on it was pretty balanced. Most of my teachers of both sexes were very good in high school. In college I had mostly male professors, but that was a function of being in engineering. There weren't and still aren't a lot of female engineering professors.

Re:And?

[epyT-R]

Ah so men should be punished for being 'crude' around women, yet they should tolerate the inappropriate emotional dramacoasters and the passive aggressive, hypergamous behavior of the stereotypical modern female office worker? Yeah, fuck that.

You want to be treated 'equally'? Fine.. Time to break out the thick skin and deal with it. (Healthy) guys don't tolerate that above mentioned behavior for a reason. It completely disrupts productivity. If you're taking every damn quip someone makes personally, you're the one who's lacking. You say guys telling crude jokes are childish boys? What about the childish girl that's always crying when the boys say something she doesn't like? Stop demanding that men walk on eggshells around your princess ass so that you don't have to change. Equality is not demanding that everyone else live up to your priorities and expectations. Equality is the opportunity to measure up in relevant ways. That's all.

If you demand that men roll out the carpet for you, many of them will, mainly because so many of them are pussy beggar manginas/white knights, but the consequence is that they will never respect you as an equal afterward.

Re:And?

[srichard25]

On average men are taller than women. Does that mean every man is taller than every woman? Obviously not. But if there is a job that requires reaching tall heights, you can bet that there will be more men working in that position than women.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
"Boys generally demonstrate superiority over female peers in areas of the brain involved in math and geometry. These areas of the brain mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls, according to a recent study that measured brain development in more than 500 children. Researchers concluded that when it comes to math, the brain of a 12-year-old girl resembles that of an 8-year-old boy. Conversely, the same researchers found that areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills (such as handwriting) mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys."

Re:And?

[Count Fenring]

...we geeks LOVE geek girls.

Kinda the problem, dude. It's not all as simple as avoiding the "he-man women-hater's club" mentality - you also have to accept women as individual people, rather than a fetish object that you're all for because it pings your pleasure centers.

Also - if you think that the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, et cetera aren't necessary, how come the HIGH number here is 22%. I guarantee you, there is not enough biological difference in the world to drop 50% of the population to 22% across a well-paying, intellectually stimulating and high-employment job in this economy.

It's not thought policing to point out social inequity. And all sorts of shit steers culture ALL THE TIME. Culture is nothing if not a sea of competing voices and influences; and it's the basic duty of a rational person to try and push for positive change, rather than whinging about how "It's alright just the way it is, and it's totally awesome that there's a stigma on male nursing because I don't care."

So don't get your balls caught in your jock.

Re:And?

[epyT-R]

You're looking at the end result and and claiming that there must be social inequality that lead to it. I understand this line of reasoning when it comes to the military, corporate CEO positions, and professional sports. They have a history of barring or diminishing women.

See, I don't draw any exceptions to these. If the goal is to eliminate willful discrimination in the selection process, the system can't have 'assumption of bias' in it to begin with. Affirmative action is just as bigoted as the 'good old boys club' stereotype. This sort of thing is not some zero sum game. It's an absolute value. Engaging in it in opposite directions just creates and encourages more of it. Having it institutionalized in the law (eg title 9/vawa etc) magnifies this dramatically. Now, which groups do these laws give 'privilege' to again? Certainly not men. It's the men who pay the price though, financially, personally, and professionally.

The NFL is being assholes to women? It already makes its male players demean themselves by dancing around in pink uniforms for breast cancer awareness month, even when prostate cancer is more relevant for the majority of the viewerbase.. The NFL is about as PC as it gets, sadly enough.

No. We need more GOOD software engineers. Those get-girls-into-STEM scholarships are sexist. The test for this is to swap the gender pronouns. Ask yourself how the feminist groups would respond to a white, straight, male scholarship of any kind. Their heads would explode. If the goal isn't to prop one group up over another, why not just open these programs to everyone who qualifies on actual, relevant discriminators like GPA and hobby work? Now that would be promoting equal opportunity.

Of course if the goal of feminism all along was to turn the tables and keep men under women's' stilettos, then all of this makes perfect sense. Most of the 'sexism' they complain about today is not from 'culture'. It's from biology! For powerful political positions, the vast majority of women vote for a male even when females are on the ballot. Why is that? Because, biologically, women feel the most comfortable with an alpha male in charge.. oh many may SAY "it's a women's world now" or some shit, but they don't actually feel that way.

Re:And?

[Count Fenring]

There are plenty of people complaining about it. Like, say, almost every single feminist who's written anything, for example. It's also worth pointing out that, while the paranoia about molesters is a factor, the dearth of male teachers in the professions at hand predates the molestation scare by decades, and is directly caused by society devaluing "women's work" and attaching a stigma to it.

Re:And?

[Count Fenring]

And you are expert in the ethnography of how many societies across the planet? Or do you somehow feel that being a computer geek has somehow given you the power to make sweeping generalizations in other people's fields without citing sources?

Re:And?

[Macgrrl]

Waiting until college to make them feel welcome is too late - you need to get to them in elementary school or earlier. Look at boys toys vs girls toys to see how we program children from an early age as to gender appropriate pursuits.

There was a great image doing the rounds of twitter the other day of a boy getting a megablocks set that can be built in an infinite number of configurations, programed by computer and a robot, etc... and a girl being given a doll which can... but used as a doll, you can pretend it's a baby but that's about it.

So strangely enough male children stream into STEM and girls go into teaching, nursing and other care based occupations. And guess which of these classes of careers pays better?

I'm a bit of a mutant, I used to steal my cousins mechano as a kid, I'm the one that ended up in IT.

Re:And?

[Mr. Slippery]

They have a history of barring or diminishing women. But engineering? Software engineering?

And you don't even see how your post diminishes women, do you? Yes, the software industry has often carried with it a culture that diminishes women, from "booth babes" to the sort of bullshit we see in this thread.

But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations.

That is social inequality. But you don't see that unequal norms and expectations are inequality, do you?

that's getting a little close to the sort of fascism that demands we think a certain way.

Fighting sexism is fascism. Combating discrimination is demanding that everyone thinks the same way. Got it.

Seriously, guy; your post is such an example of the problem that I half-believe it's some sort of sarcastic reverse troll.

Re:And?

[dbIII]

Is the man somehow keeping chicks out of coding classes?

Back when I was studying the ratio of women to men in the introductory University CS classes was slightly above half - and that's even after a large influx of almost exclusively male engineering students like me that were there to get easy credit.
Nobody was keeping them out of the classes but then when they went looking for work the women were not getting the jobs. Word got around. That's what's "keeping chicks out of coding classes" now.

Re:And?

[CodeBuster]

Complain all you want about the particular way that people try to solve problems, but the idea that we should just ignore biased outcomes under the assumption that nothing is wrong is absurd.

It's no less absurd to jumpt straight to the conclusion that different outcomes must be attributed to bias or discrimination simply because outcomes are different. What about different life choices and personal preferences? Isn't it reasonable to assume that people, when left to make their own choices freely, might experience different and possibly even unequal outcomes? Liberals are far too concerned with equality of outcome and not nearly enough with personal freedom and the right to a fighting chance. They fail to see that by using the power of the state to force equal outcomes they destroy both personal freedom and equal opportunity.

Re:And?

[dbIII]

It has become so.
Most software engineers would not be recognised as professional engineers by the IEEE or similar anyway so it seems very petty for them to be complaining that others are getting their HR monkey granted title. I don't know what catagory you fall into but don't care - I'm simply pointing out the press, HR departments, whatever have devalued the term "engineer" as applied to computers as meaning anyone from the new helpdesk guy fresh out of high school up.

Re:And?

[dbIII]

In fact, I would call that a perversion in itself.

We are creating a very sick society. I'm very happy now that I ignored my parents and went into engineering instead of teaching so that I don't have to deal with the attitude you describe daily. When I went to school more than half the high school teachers were male and not much more than half the primary school teachers were female, while now male teachers are being seen as potential molesters.

Re:And?

[CodeBuster]

A perfect example of liberal hypocrisy as it concerns equal outcomes is professional sports. They don't begrudge the black basketball player who's superior strength, speed and size have enabled him to play that sport at an extraordinarily level of ability, even though this same professional athlete earns hundreds or thousands of times more money than someone not similarly endowed. However, if somebody is born to wealthy parents and inherits stocks, bonds and real estate worth millions, especially if that person is white, they demonize him for winning the "sperm lottery". Liberals give professional athletes and Hollywood free passes when it comes to equal outcomes, but God forbid that you should be a successful businessman or have an inheritance of non-physical assets because that would be unequal!

Re:And?

[CodeBuster]

I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?

Free to choose as long as society doesn't view the choice as politically incorrect it seems. For example conservative women who vote Republican are often criticized viciously by the left as being stupid, unsophisticated and unliberated for choosing traditional family values. These progressives profess tolerance, at least for those that agree with them, but are themselves intolerant of those that deviate from their ideals.

Re:And?

[CodeBuster]

women are scarce because they aren't as smart or as interested

Those aren't the same things. Frankly, some of the smartest people I've met in my working career have been women and let's be honest, coding requires long periods of intense focus and can be a pretty dry subject. This is especially true when working on the day to day nuts and bolts type grinds that makes up large parts of typical commercial software development. When more of the executives and project managers are women and we engineers are still working for them which of us will be considered the smart ones? I wonder sometimes.

Re:And?

[Chrisq]

I certainly hope you were being sarcastic. Because if we wanted to take your comment literally, then all fathers would be pedophiles.

Maybe GP poster is Harriet Harman

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

The GP was referring to the reason given by many trainee male teachers for not wanting to go into primary schools. It's a major problem in the UK, with children lacking male role models. They spend a lot of their young lives at school so it is important.

We have had a long and relentless campaign against paedophiles, lead by newspapers. This is the result - our children are being harmed far more.

Re:And?

[Gronia]

I wonder why such a prejudicy posting gets assesst as insightful.

Re:And?

[bickerdyke]

I've never seen people making sexist jokes who expected women to just "go along to get along" with that. There were a few guys here and there who thought that sort of thing was funny (certainly not the norm), but they all had the basic manners to shut up and look embarrassed if one of the women on the floor happened by.

Just to add to that: I've seen those. But they usually were considered jerks by the other guys, too.

Re:And?

[cyborg_zx]

while now male teachers are being seen as potential molesters.

Not to mention the fact that female teachers aren't despite the stories about it happening. The spin is certainly put on those stories quite differently.

Re:And?

[sFurbo]

There is some indication that at least some of the difference in preference does not come from societal pressure. The preferences of 1-day old babies is influenced by sex. The difference here is not that big, but I imagine experimenting with the preferences of babies that young will always contain a lot of noise.

So, it could be that at least part of the reason we give dolls to girls and not to boys because they usually play much more with dolls, and that some of this preference comes from biology, not from society. However, culture could easily take such a preference and amplify it enormously.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

Actually in the UK gender discrimination is illegal and none of the examples you cite are correct.

Retirement age: There isn't one any more. Perhaps you were thinking of pension age, which is the same for men and women now but remains different for people who started contributing before the change came in.

Parental leave: Equal for both men and women at 18 weeks until the child is 5. Perhaps you were thinking of maternity leave, which is also equal for men and women although typically the women has more because men are biologically unable to get pregnant.

Medical care: Equal for both men and women, men's lifestyles account for the difference in life expectancy.

Equality of treatment in education and the workplace: Really? Women are still not treated as equals, earning on average less than men doing the same job.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

I have yet to see a compelling argument that "millions of years of evolution" accounts for the discrepancy. The female software engineers I know are not mannish or interested in other transitionally male oriented things, they are just ordinary women. One is a mother. There just doesn't seem to be any evidence that girls are simply "not interested" in engineering.

There are plenty of examples of specific discrimination, it's just that people like you hand wave them away as the rantings of deranged feminazis.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

That's a shame. With a little bit of training they could be excellent, experienced software engineers.

This also highlights why we need to support women who want to work and have a family with things like subsidised child care and reasonable maternity/parental leave. I know it's unpopular and seen as giving unfair benefits to those men and women who choose to have families, but if we don't we lose their skills, their tax revenue and potentially reduce the quality of the kid's upbringing. Even those of us who choose not to have children are reliant on others to do so for our future well-being.

Re:And?

[Cederic]

My mother has retired. My father is the same age and can not draw his pension.

Maternity leave is stupidly superior to paternity leave, don't even pretend otherwise.

Every time I walk into an NHS establishment I'm bombarded by posters about 'well women clinics' pre/post natal care, breast/cervical cancer screening. Where are the posters inviting men for cancer screening, offering drop-in opportunities to discuss their health issues, regular healthy checks?

Incidentally one of the things closing the life expectancy gap is the increased strain on women from having to work for a living now instead of being a stay-at-home mother. Men's lifestyle does indeed reduce their lifespan, those 60 hours weeks fucking add up.

The posters I do see that are targeted at men? "Feeling suicidal? Call.."

Finally, the ongoing myth about women's pay. I have yet to see solid fucking evidence that women get paid less than men for doing the same job with the same experience, the same skill level, the same working hours and the same level of negotiation for rewards.

I do see evidence that women working part time earn more than men working part time in the same roles. I do see girls getting better grades in exams because the whole education system switched to a female friendly mode of measurement. I do at every fucking job I've ever had work for women that earn more than me. At every job where a woman has done the same job as me, she's earned more - irrespective of relative capability.

Meanwhile women get specialist career guidance and counselling, the companies I work for have initiatives to boost women, and they still get to take 8 months off to have a baby then decide whether they want to come back or not. Several have not.

In the UK gender discrimination is illegal and yet men get fucked over anyway. Don't give me feminist bullshit, give me equality of the sexes.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

It's not feminisation of society, it's just making it gender neutral. Because men tended to "lose out", in the sense that all the mysoganistic bullshit they were used to doing before became unacceptable, they don't see it that way sometimes. Never the less, that's what it is.

Re:And?

[Agent0013]

Some companies outsource their network admin roles. So the number of engineers might be just the employees and not counting contract people who manage the infrastructure.

Re:And?

[AmiMoJo]

My mother has retired. My father is the same age and can not draw his pension.

Yes, as I explained it is because when they started paying NI it was based on the old rules, and changing them now would be both unfair to them and create a deficit.

Maternity leave is stupidly superior to paternity leave, don't even pretend otherwise.

Care to cite specific examples? Ignoring the unchangeable biological aspect for a moment the father is entitled to equal amounts of time off work after the birth, which is shared with the mother.

Every time I walk into an NHS establishment I'm bombarded by posters about 'well women clinics' pre/post natal care, breast/cervical cancer screening. Where are the posters inviting men for cancer screening, offering drop-in opportunities to discuss their health issues, regular healthy checks?

In the case of pre/post natal care obviously men don't need it. In the case of cancer screening there is no equivalent periodic check for male cancers, beyond self-testing by feeling for lumps regularly. Precisely what regular tests for cancer do you think men should get that they are currently not getting?

The posters I do see that are targeted at men? "Feeling suicidal? Call.."

More men than women commit suicide... What was your point?

Finally, the ongoing myth about women's pay. I have yet to see solid fucking evidence that women get paid less than men for doing the same job with the same experience, the same skill level, the same working hours and the same level of negotiation for rewards.

Start here.

I do see girls getting better grades in exams because the whole education system switched to a female friendly mode of measurement.

Exactly what do you mean by that?

Re:And?

[Cederic]

the father is entitled to equal amounts of time off work after the birth, which is shared with the mother

Yes. The father can take six months at £136/week, while the mother can take six weeks at 90% of full pay and a further 46 weeks at £136/week. Is that a specific enough example for you?

£136/week doesn't even pay my fucking mortgage.

From your European link on gender pay:

the gender pay gap is not an indicator of the overall inequality between women and men

Not the solid evidence I was seeking, is it?

Regarding education, the focus was switched from end of year exams to ongoing continual coursework at the same time that teaching styles adjusted to better suit girls. This was done partly to address the underachievement in schools by girls, but has now led to underachievement by boys.

Neither is good, but since your point was that women aren't treated equally in education, I guess I should concede: They're definitely getting preferential treatment at the moment.

Re:And?

[Ash-Fox]

I work in that industry and I don't push females in any particular direction. I will always prefer the person that has a better knack, gets things delivered sooner etc.

Re:And?

[nitehawk214]

I didn't read the article...

Well there is a big surprise.

Re:And?

[RatherBeAnonymous]

This implies that we should be teaching boys and girls math, science, and language skills separately up until high-school. I have to wonder how many girls get discouraged from perusing STEM classes simply because they compare their early math performance to their male classmates and decide that they are no good at math. Similarly, how much better off would boys be if we taught and tested them separately in reading and writing so they would not compare themselves to their female classmates?

Re:And?

[amicusNYCL]

It has become so.

Not among engineers. A programmer is not a software engineer. If someone can't design the entire application, the development process, and manage the project then they are not an engineer. That's like calling every programmer a computer scientist, which is also not true. There are computer science degrees, and software engineering degrees, and they aren't the same.

Re:And?

[amicusNYCL]

Meanwhile, Reddit only provides community-moderated plain-text discussion threads via a lightweight web interface.

I wouldn't consider myself a Reddit user (i.e. I don't have an account), but from looking at their site they at least have a mobile version, and like I said they maintain browser addons and extensions and various things like that. They also have a store, and whatever reddit.tv and radioreddit are. It's more than plain-text discussion threads and a lightweight web interface. It's a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on who you ask.

Dropbox has several native clients for their service, but all of the heavy lifting is still done on their servers. The clients are just that - clients that connect to their actual services.

Not to mention they store many orders of magnitude more data than Reddit.

That doesn't matter. When my company quadrupled our client base and therefore the data that we store, we did not have to quadruple our engineering staff. A 100GB database does not require 10 times more engineers to maintain it than a 10GB database. We have twice as many servers as we used to, and the same number of engineers (actually 1 fewer person).

how do you make the jump to assume that what they're doing is on par or more difficult than what Dropbox does?

Because I am looking at what they actually provide. Reddit provides a text storage service with multiple ways to access it, with various account permissions and sharing features and interaction between users. Dropbox provides a binary storage service with multiple ways to access it, with various account permissions and sharing features and interaction between users. It's really not all that different. I would not say that Dropbox is an order of magnitude more difficult to implement than Reddit is, but they do have 10 times the engineers.

Re:And?

[serviscope_minor]

Every time I walk into an NHS establishment I'm bombarded by posters about 'well women clinics' pre/post natal care, breast/cervical cancer screening. Where are the posters inviting men for cancer screening, offering drop-in opportunities to discuss their health issues, regular healthy checks?

The posters I do see that are targeted at men? "Feeling suicidal? Call.."

Seems sensible to me. Women get breast cancer more often than men (wtf, eh?) and men commit suicide much more than women. Oh and breast cancer is the most common type along with prostate cancer. You can get screened for that if you wish:

http://www.screening.nhs.uk/prostatecancer

I do see evidence that women working part time earn more than men working part time in the same roles. I do see girls getting better grades in exams because the whole education system switched to a female friendly mode of measurement.

What the heck is a "female friendly mode of measurement".

I do at every fucking job I've ever had work for women that earn more than me.

That's generally the way it works: if you work for someone they'll be earning more. Welcome to the world.

At every job where a woman has done the same job as me, she's earned more - irrespective of relative capability.

Perhaps they were better at negotiating salaries.

In the UK gender discrimination is illegal and yet men get fucked over anyway.

Oh yes, we get massively fucked over. I guess this is why women vastly disproportionately occupy all the most senior positions in society.

Yeah there are things in legslition that are not equal and damn well should be. I agree. On the other hand, women have been the oppressed class for the last few thousand years and that has not yet been shaken off completely. To pretend otherwise is blind.

Re:And?

[serviscope_minor]

Ah so men should be punished for being 'crude' around women, yet they should tolerate the inappropriate emotional dramacoasters and the passive aggressive, hypergamous behavior of the stereotypical modern female office worker?

Ah, classifying all females by the stereotype. Well done.

Besides, if it can't be one extreme it must be the other amirite?

I'm a guy, and I find a old boys club locker room mentality unpleasant too. I also find whiny passive aggressive behaviour unpleasant too. I'm honestly surprised you've never met any passive aggressive emotional dreamcoaster men.

I work with mostly men and some women. Somehow we all manage to be professional and so these problems do not occur.

If you demand that men roll out the carpet for you, many of them will, mainly because so many of them are pussy beggar manginas/white knights

You seem to be consumed with rage.

Re:And?

[T.E.D.]

For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type

This is just complete horseshit.

There might be some genetic predisposition along those lines at the extremities (if nothing else, the prevalence of males in the autism spectrum points that way. But that's a very long way away from being able to generalize away slightly more than half the population of the earth. Women, just like men, have all personality types. About half of everyone (in the USA at least) are introverts, and such people, be they male or female, are not at their best when dealing with large amounts of other people all day.

This whole discussion reminds me of an old newsreel clip I saw about basketball. At the time I guess most of the best players were Jewish. This newsreel reported the accepted rationale for this at the time: that the game of basketball naturally favored being cunning and sneaky (with clips of fast passing around a team)!

Its pretty obvious in hindsight that the clip was saying way more about the common prejudices about Jews back then than it said about why a lot of the best players weren't "normal" WASP people. I'm fairly certain you'll find all this talk about women being natural managers or nurturers or secretaries or whatever the popular stereotype today is (I'm nearing 50, so I have trouble keeping up with the latest fashion in bigotry), is just as much horseshit at that stuff about Jews being naturally awesome basketball players.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

How on earth does that show social inequality? That doesn't even make sense. Women in the USA have to make money to survive just like just about every country. In a country with social equality, women can work in the same jobs as men without being harassed or abused. But in countries with social inequality, women who try to work in "men's jobs" are discouraged from it, and if they do go into those jobs are the victims of discrimination and harassment. Reports of harassment and abuse are rife in Western countries from women who attempt to go into many engineering and IT jobs, however Indian and Chinese women don't seem to have these problems, and aren't discouraged (as American women are) from even going into these professions in college.

Your assertions make zero sense; if women really are less interested, then what exactly are American women doing for money? Marrying men who make more money than themselves is not an indicator of social equality, it's an indicator of social inequality. Every report shows that American women make less than American men, so if there were real social equality, more women would be entering professions that make more money if those professions were open to them and didn't carry a social stigma or risk of harassment.

Re:And?

[SpanglerIsAGod]

Or you can say.

Free to choose as long as society doesn't view the choice as politically incorrect it seems. For example men who want to raise children or teach elementary school are often looked down upon or ignored by conservatives as being homosexuals, pedo's, or just plain overly feminine. Conservatives like to pretend they are tolerant, but they are only tolerant of people who don't deviate from their ideals.

And, that's not even going into this pure bullshit quote from the parent you responded to, "It is a fact that women are better at raising young kids"

Re:And?

[ClickOnThis]

From your European link on gender pay:

the gender pay gap is not an indicator of the overall inequality between women and men

Not the solid evidence I was seeking, is it?

Cherry-pick much? Here's the full paragraph from the link, with my emphasis added:

However, the gender pay gap is not an indicator of the overall inequality between women and men since it only concerns salaried people. The gender pay gap must be looked at in conjunction with other indicators linked to the labour market, in particular those ones that reflect the different working patterns of women. In countries where the female employment rate is low (e.g. Italy), the pay gap is lower than average. This may be a reflection of the small proportion of low-skilled or unskilled women in the workforce. A high pay gap is usually characteristic of a labour market which is highly segregated, meaning that women are more concentrated in a restricted number of sectors and/or professions (e.g. Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland), or in which a significant proportion of women work part-time (e.g. Germany and Austria). Finally, institutional mechanisms and systems on wage setting can influence the pay gap.

You go on:

Regarding education, the focus was switched from end of year exams to ongoing continual coursework at the same time that teaching styles adjusted to better suit girls. This was done partly to address the underachievement in schools by girls, but has now led to underachievement by boys.

So, mid-terms and assignments were introduced in order to help the girls get by? You're going to need to back that up with some evidence.

Neither is good, but since your point was that women aren't treated equally in education, I guess I should concede: They're definitely getting preferential treatment at the moment.

Straw-man. AmiMoJo made no such point at all.

Re:And?

[Cederic]

Sorry, the entire paragaraph you just quoted merely states more thoroughly that the pay gap may be due to a large variety of reasons - several of which I highlight in my challenge to find some reliable evidence that there is in fact a pay disparity of note.

Shit, you've bolded the bit that specifically highlights that market segregation is usually a factor. Women working part time earn less than men working full time? Holy shit, who would have thought that?

That's not a pay gap, that's a number of hours gap.

Women working as cleaners not lawyers in Estonia? That's not a pay gap, that's a difference in professions.

Evidence on education? Here: http://education.gov.uk/publications/eorderingdownload/00389-2007bkt-en.pdf

Look, I can back up my assertions with evidence. Still fucking waiting.

Straw-man. AmiMoJo made no such point at all.

AmiMoJo:

Equality of treatment in education and the workplace: Really? Women are still not treated as equals, earning on average less than men doing the same job.

I addressed the workplace, and I have addressed education, now with evidence.

I'm not asking for an awful lot here. Just equality between the sexes. What's so wrong with that?

Re:And?

[Cederic]

I'm not pretending for a moment that there aren't issues that need to be resolved. So called 'honour killings' are thuggish murder, and some communities and situations do continue to discriminate against women.

That needs sorting. It does not excuse discriminating against men.

I don't care that my boss earns more than me. I do care that women get a ton of support and opportunities that I can't access because of gender differences, despite earning more than me already.

Where's the minister for men?

Re:And?

[ppanon]

Well, the difference is that there are lots of tall people, but only a few work hard enough to develop the strength, endurance, coordination, skills, and situational awareness to become a professional sports player, be it for basketball, football, baseball, hockey, or some other high profile sport with lucrative TV contracts and advertising endorsement. Those positions are highly competitive. However, you can be a couch potato, elementary school dropout with an IQ well below 100 and still inherit billions.

Re:And?

[Grishnakh]

You've got to be kidding. You think all the people who are dishwashers and ditch diggers chose those jobs out of interest? Or even engineers? There's lots of people working as professionals that do it for the money, and would rather do something else like writing or art or whatever, but they picked their profession because it offered a good combination of interest (in case you didn't realize, people can be interested in multiple different things), working environment, pay/compensation, etc.

As for hating going to work, lots of people go into a career thinking it'll be fun and interesting, and end up hating it because of the corporate politics, work environment, etc. You talk like a college student who has never worked in the real world before.

Re:And?

[captainlavender]

>treating an entire gender as though they are likely perverts is discrimination in employment

ftfy

Men and women face the exact same problems: entering professions atypical of their gender is frowned on. Why are we then belittling women's problems to talk about men's problems? They are literally the same exact problem.

Re:And?

[captainlavender]

>But engineering? Software engineering? Dude, during my time in academia I saw them bend over BACKWARDS to get girls into their program. Between the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, and general reports like this that stated more women needed to go be geeks

This is to counter the well-known "boys club" environment and hostility toward women in the IT field. Like most such efforts, it is wholly inadequate.

>Even culturally, we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.

Yes, that is part of the hostile environment. Please stop doing this.

>Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers. There are plenty of counter-examples, but they're a minority. But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations. Breaking them doesn't get you burnt at the stake, but it might raise some eyebrows.

Would you really be willing to raise eyebrows, to deal with the ill-concealed surprise, the condescension, the disapproval, for an entire 50-year career? Very few people can even withstand that. Otherwise, you've hit the nail on the head with this one.

>So don't get your panties in a twist.

Making fun of dudes for being too much like chicks, or making fun of chicks for having too many feelings? Either way, this statement is an example of one that would make many women feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Re:And?

[captainlavender]

Why would this affect women in IT disproportionately? Women in other professions seem to have a sizeable presence despite also having wombs.

Re:And?

[captainlavender]

This might be the most sexism in one comment *I've ever seen*. Holy shit dude, get help.

Let's see:

1) Women cry all the time and have too many feelings, because all women are emotionally just children 2) Making crude jokes is completely harmless and could never be, you know, sexual harassment 3) Being upset is not the same thing as saying things that upset someone else. There is literally no basis for this equivalence. 4) All men make crude jokes and dislike being censored by whiny women (sexist against men, too!) 5) Being made fun of for being awkward or short is exactly the same as being made fun of for being a woman. Or black. Or gay.

tl;dr Have you ever actually met a woman? Maybe look into it.

Re:And?

[david_thornley]

Inequality is at the least worth investigating. If we see massively more women in nursing or elementary school teaching, or massively more men as software engineers, it's good to know why. Maybe there's no systemic discrimination, and everything is peachy, but we've found that false so many times in the past that I'm a bit suspicious.

It's also worthwhile checking out what the groups possibly discriminated against say. Lots of female engineers complain about being treated with gender-based hostility. Doesn't mean they're right, but it's worth checking out. There are lots of situations in which women are not treated with basic courtesy and men are, and this may well be one of them. Also, since sex-based violence is heavily (but not exclusively) male on female, women do have to evaluate situations differently from men, because of issues of personal safety.

If this were a matter of biology, we'd see the same sort of distribution worldwide, but we don't. It could be life choices or something, but I'm not at all convinced.

Re:And?

[OfficeSupplySamurai]

I agree with you. Otherwise, please ignore this comment. I accidentally downmodded you, and I don't know of any way to undo the moderation. Thanks, Slashdot.

Re:And?

[ahabswhale]

You have no idea how software development works and you can't do a simple numbers comparison like that to determine what is lean. Those sites all have radically different requirements.

Re:And?

[ahabswhale]

I'm not gonna lie...your post is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. I appreciate your use of the English language. That said...

"Ah so men should be punished for being 'crude' around women, yet they should tolerate the inappropriate emotional dramacoasters and the passive aggressive, hypergamous behavior of the stereotypical modern female office worker? Yeah, fuck that."

Having worked with female developers, I haven't ever found this to to be a problem. I doubt most women could make it ad developers if their brains worked this way.

Re:And?

[Xest]

"In the case of pre/post natal care obviously men don't need it. In the case of cancer screening there is no equivalent periodic check for male cancers, beyond self-testing by feeling for lumps regularly. Precisely what regular tests for cancer do you think men should get that they are currently not getting?"

To be fair, he has a point here. The NHS is much more proactive in helping to counter female cancers through breast cancer screening and cervical smears and so forth than they are testicular cancer. My girlfriend receives her cervical smear test reminder letter every once in a while, when's the last time you had a letter reminding you to come in for a check for testicular or male prostate cancer?

"More men than women commit suicide... What was your point?"

Why do you think that might be? This in itself is a societal imbalance, it's not that many are any more prone to depression and such than women but that there are more pressures on men - that greater average pay that men receive doesn't come without it's costs, such as longer average working hours.

"Exactly what do you mean by that?"

Does it matter? Surely the fact that females do better in the education system alone is evidence enough that the education system is biased in a manner that benefits females? It could simply be the imbalance between male and female teachers, or it could be something to do with a biological difference between how men and women learn best - i.e. are men better at practical projects whilst women are better at exams for example?

Another area that's grossly biased towards women even to this day is in separation also. Women still do better in both divorce proceedings and custody battles on average than men even where it's simply not justified.

Whilst women get paid less, they also work less hours on average, often being granted more flexible working conditions so that they can for example, collect their children from school - this is a concious choice a couple makes. This is part the problem in simply measuring pay - it doesn't take into account whether the female in a male-female relationship has consciously made a decision with her partner to be the one who works shorter hours to look after the family and hence sacrifice a career as a result. The problem is that those arguing women are discriminated against purely on the pay argument are basically arguing that women should get to decide to be the member of a couple that works shorter hours and goes home to look after the kids but still also deserves the pay and career benefits of a male colleague who has opted with his partner to be the one that works longer hours to pursue a career instead. I agree there's still bias against women in the workplace (though there is bias against males in some workplaces too) but the picture is muddied by the fact that couples themselves are making the choice that the female should work shorter hours and be less dedicated to the job and more dedicated to the family - until the imbalance of people doing that is resolved, until men are equally being chosen amongst couples as the member of the family that's more dedicated to the family and less dedicated to work, it's meaningless to compare career progression and salary stats between the two sexes because it's this fundamental imbalance in attitudes to work/life balance that's the primary cause of it.

I actually agree with what I believe you're trying to get at - that the GPs view that he seems to feel he's hard done by is probably a bit silly, but I think making the point you're trying to make you're taking it a step too far in arguing against ALL of the GPs points which gives the impression you're arguing that women gain no advantages at all. Whilst I agree with your underlying premise that women suffer greater discrimination than men, I think you need to be willing to accept that there are plenty of cases where women do also benefit from imbalances in their favour too. It's definitely not entirely one sided, even though society is slanted towards the benefi

Re:And?

[Tanktalus]

So, you're justifying preferential treatment for women to gain "equality" on... let's see now ... the fact that men and women are different?

Ok, so men and women are different. Remind me again why they should be treated the same?

Instead, I would suggest that we, as a society, should embrace our differences. As long as jobs are given to those who best have the skills for them, who cares if one job category hires predominantly men or predominantly women? And as long as the pay is what the market will bear, which is necessarily influenced (but not dictated) by how difficult it is to procure people with the appropriate skills, who cares if one gender is paid more than the other?

I suggest that by removing quotas and other artificial barriers to people embracing their talents and skills we may end up with a more equitable and happier society, though we won't end up with equal pay across the board because people are different.

By the way, this would also mean that jobs with physical requirements (soldier, police, fire) would not be allowed to have different entrance requirements based on the applicant's gender. However, they can have different entrance requirements based on the job to be performed. A beat cop may require more physical strength than a detective, for example. An analyst may not require any physical attributes, only mental skills, so it doesn't matter if s/he is a 400lb gorilla of a person, as long as they can analyse appropriately as per their actual day-to-day job requirements. And some of those may pay better, and get more women, than some of the more physical jobs. And a firefighter needs to be able to carry a 250lb person over their shoulder out of a burning building, regardless of their height (obviously, taller/bigger people can do this easier, which naturally makes it harder for average women to perform this duty, but that's biological, not discriminatory).

Re:And?

[HeckRuler]

No it's really not. We're disagreeing about the definition of sexism and discrimination.

If someone. sabotages your career, denies you a job, or pushes you away from a field of study, because of your sex, that's discrimination. If they tell little jane that she shouldn't code and should play with dolls instead, that's sexism. Bad stuff. But you're doing more than fighting sexism. You're overshooting. You want more than just a level playing field. Or maybe you just didn't read my post and think that I actually stated that fighting sexism is fascism.

Culture is not the sort of thing you should be trying to control. Those social expectations, and cultural norms. That sort of old tradition that's ingrained into our culture even though we rationally know perfectly well that women are for more than making babies. Trying to control people on a cultural level, yes, that's got an evil edge to it. Trying to control people on a legal level is typically called enforcing the law. And fighting to get those laws in place is a good thing. And it was mighty hard because of the culture of sexism. Anti-discrimination laws? Good. Trying to make the old white slave-owners love the freed slaves? That simply isn't going to happen. And the more you try, the deeper ingrained that sentiment gets. It's like the fight over evolution. Darwin has a great idea here. Trying to "fix" the other side through force or argument isn't going to get you anywhere. Simply be better. Be correct. And their arguments will fade. Culture has a shit-ton of inertial. Steering it is a slow process. Give it time. Be a quality female software engineer and prove those fuckers wrong. And in the mean time, don't get your panties in a twist.

And this isn't really directed at you, but to everyone else that gave me grief for being attracted to geek girls; I married a materials engineer. I got her involved in roguelikes and D&D while she got me into anime. Now she games more than I do and beat me to the orb of Zot and I'm pissed that nothing is ever explained about Titans. I have no idea why being attracted to smart women is considered as contributing to sexism. If you think you have ANY hope of keeping people from being attracted to certain subsets of humanity, your goals are laughably impossible.

Re:And?

[HeckRuler]

This is how. [goldieblox.com]
You encourage, not demand, or force.

WISDOM.

But ugh, jesus fucking christ... Did they really have to do this with pink ribbons?

Re:And?

[HeckRuler]

That's an SMBC comic. Number 1883 I believe.

I absolutely agree that geek mentality is formed way before kids hit college. And plenty of people are smart enough to pick up coding in their 30's even if they've never touched a compiler.

And yeah, fuck that gender stereotyping. Even that stuff like Goldieblocks, which is an honest effort to fix this sort of problem, falls into the role of assuming girls enjoy playing with pink ribbon.

Come on, Legos is gender neutral. COMPLETELY GENDER NEUTRAL. They are square blocks. As long as you don't fuck up the marketing, or do something balls to the walls crazy like releasing a minifig that looks like Barbie, it's a cakewalk for breaking that gender stereotyping pitfall.

But get this: understanding the problem with what toys and how they're marketed to children affects the cultural diversity of the various industries is LEAPS AND BOUNDS different then trying to "fix it". Seriously, now that we collectively know what the problem is, what do we do?

Make engineering toys that girls can play with? Good. Done. We do that. There is nothing stopping girls from playing with Legos and trebuchets.
Market engineering toys to girls? Good. Done. We do that. As long as you don't market exclusively to boys, anything marketed to children fits the bill.
Make and market engineering toys which are exclusive to girls? Uhhhhh.... That's a little weird, but yeah, there's a bit of that. I guess it pushes back against those gender sterotypes. Like scholarships for women. It's sexist affirmative action, but it's for the underdog so it's ok.
Encourage parents to buy toys which break gender stereotypes? hmmmm... That's a bit like trying to steer culture. Some people try to do this.
Force parents to buy engineering toys for their girls? Whoa there. That sounds evil.
Fine schools that don't have a 50/50 gender split in their coding class? Evil. You're attacking a segment of society that isn't even at fault here*.
Rip the doll from the crying girls hands and flog her until she solves soduku puzzles? Nope, stop, you've gone way overboard into evil-ville.

*You know, probably. Hey, there could be that weird CS professor that kicks girls out of his class. Fire that guy. But that doesn't appear to be the problem here.

There's a nature vs nurture debate about which girls will go into engineering and which won't, and if there is anything we can do about that. I dunno the answer. Encouraging the potential engineers to be engineers is a good thing because we need engineers. But once you start telling parents how they ought to raise their children it gets a little wonky. And once you hit the point where you try to raise the children against the wishes of the parent, or start forcing the parents to raise their children a certain way, the end-state better be on DAMN solid ground. I mean, we force parents to raise their kids not to be murderous thieving cretins. Anyone who does do so is held liable for said cretins. Forcing girls to be raised like they're geeks, when they are not, is probably a bad idea.

So what?

[BasilBrush]

Why is there an imperative to increase the number? For sure there shouldn't be sexual discrimination if women want to be software engineers. But if it's simply a case that a fewer proportion on them want to be, so what?

Men and women are different. One or more of those differences may account for the disparity in software engineers. For example women tend to be more social creatures. Maybe they tend to choose jobs that are more sociable than coding?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, telling a story about your mom and pretending that you have a girlfriend really doesn't make you cool. Because with that attitude, I really doubt you have an actual gf (or at least that you will have one for very long).

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Coding requires brains -- lots of them.
Women who have those brains figure out quickly that there are enough boorish misogynist geeks that they leave at a higher rate than men. And quietly snicker at the complaints of skills shortages.

Re:So what?

[scamper_22]

There are a few ways to look at it.

The idea that women are more social and men are more technical is not some law written in stone. Might we have tendencies? Probably. But part of being human is being able to improve oneself beyond one's tendencies. As a male, I have read that I have a genetic predisposition to spreading my seed and raping lots of women. But you know, I, like countless other men, don't do such things.

Now, of course I am fully aware of the bias in this field. I haven't seen any kind of equal push to get men into 'female' fiends like nursing, early childhood education, teaching... There is some, but it's a fraction of the push towards getting more female CEOs or engineers...

Nonetheless, perhaps it is 'better' to get more women into the field so they can grow their technical ability in the same vein as maybe men should take other roles like nursing and improve their caring ability. Hey, who knows, maybe you would really like it more.

The second problem is there is no reason software engineering should not be a social job. Perhaps the only reason it is viewed that way is because you have a large percentage of men with very anti-social tendencies in the field. In this manner, it is very imperative to get more women (but I would also say, more social men) into software engineering, such that the field is not as antagonistic to social people. Granted, many of the anti-social people might be brilliant, but I would suggest that the need for such brilliance is perhaps relegated to the top 5% (at most) software engineering positions.

This is further exemplified today. Even as a male, the field is become too anti-social for me. With contractors, off-shoring, focusing too much on being super-hero code fixers instead of proper designers... it can be tough.

So yes, maybe fewer women want to be software engineers, but the whole point of it all is both females and the software engineering job can and should change.

Re:So what?

[gmhowell]

Why is there an imperative to increase the number?

There probably is some reason as the issue comes up every now and then.

Give me a reason more real than 'clickbait'.

Re:So what?

[gmhowell]

Coding requires brains -- lots of them.
Women who have those brains figure out quickly that there are enough boorish misogynist geeks that they leave at a higher rate than men. And quietly snicker at the complaints of skills shortages.

They probably also figured that the grapes they turned up were pretty sour.

Re:So what?

[Riceballsan]

The issue, stems down to elementery and middle school. Personally IMO I think it is very similar to why countries have specific olympic events they specialize in... IE there is nothing in the biology that makes kenyans faster runners than other countries, it is that kenyans push their aspiring athletes towards running, because that is the field that the culture cheers. Same goes for smarter women and engineering/coding. Personally I think if the problem is going to be addressed, it needs to be addressed at a much younger age than people are looking. The divide of genders in fields starts by grade school levels... Once you are looking at college and above, you are already working with the 10-20% of women who either don't give a darn about cultural stereotypes and won't be discouraged, and some who are doing it for uninteligent reasons (either chose at random, or specifically because it is stereotyped against)

Re:So what?

[yurtinus]

How is software engineering not social? I work as a part of a team and frequently interact with my team to see how my little piece of the pie needs to talk with their pieces. Are there times I need to hide away and crunch some numbers work hammer out some documentation? Absolutely, but by far my most productive time at work is when I'm in the lab working directly with the other engineers.

The whole "anti-social software guy" as the norm is absolutely untrue. I work with a handful of them, and while they generally do brilliant work (they have to, they can't count on the team to help fill knowledge gaps), they are handled carefully and given tasks they can crunch on without much interaction.

I'd also argue that the rockstar programmer is a myth, but that's a rant for another time.

Re:So what?

[yurtinus]

This is spot on, though I did want to add a bit...

My gf, who predictably enough works in education, is absolutely desperate to get more men into the field. As teachers, as volunteers, as just about anything we are willing to do, just to get more interaction between children and adult men. Society is slowly becoming aware of gender gaps in those fields and starting to provide incentives.

As for social aspects of software engineering, I posted about it before I read what you wrote. I think computer-related jobs get that reputation because they are some of the few fields where anti-social people can excel. I think that's great, but that reputation has clouded the view of software engineering, which in general is a very social task requiring a great deal of interaction among the team. To repeat myself, your anti-social programmers are going to be brilliant because the *have* to be. Where I am, a programmer who's merely pretty good but can't work with the team is going to fail.

Re:So what?

[HockeyPuck]

there is nothing in the biology that makes kenyans faster runners than other countries

Actually, there is some truth to why Kenyan's are faster than other countries. It is physiology related to how the African body compares to that of the caucasian body. There was a study back in 2010, that looked into this. Note that since 1968, the world record holders in the 100m dash have all been of African descent.

The conclusion drawn by the study was that humans of African (vs Caucasian or Asian) descent have proportionally longer legs compared to their torso, so this gives them a higher center of mass and allows them to run faster, even faster than someone that is taller, but has shorter legs.

Compare this with a swimmer. The ideal swimmer's body is one with proportionally shorter legs and a longer torso since it is the arms that provide the majority of propulsion. This is why you see humans of Caucasian descent have success in swimming.

Re:So what?

[loonycyborg]

Men and women are different. One or more of those differences may account for the disparity in software engineers.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. The truth is that in order to be effective programmer you need very particular mindset which can be found both in men and women. Whatever statistical differences found between men and women are irrelevant in each particular case. But software development misses out on many talented specialists due to prevalent ageism and sexism. Those exist in part because software development as a job is extremely immature. There are no standards or culture of professionalism. It's still a new profession and most people do it at amateur level, no matter what their titles say.

Re:So what?

[profplump]

So you're aware that there's a bias, and you don't have any explanation for that bias, but you're somehow sure it's not the result of gender discrimination? How does that work?

Women might well be avoiding coding because of the social environment. But why is that a necessary component of coding jobs -- if it's not that's an example of gender discrimination, not evidence against it.

Try framing this issue differently:
All people, regardless of gender, are different and have different interests. Some of them will be more interested in coding than others. But given an arbitrary segregation factor -- eye color, for example -- wouldn't you expect the distribution of the general public to match the distribution among coders? And wouldn't you want to understand why a bias existed if you found one?

Maybe that bias is directly related to suitability for the job; the ability to exchange data with a computer is strictly necessary for coding so people who have trouble with human-computer interfaces are less likely to be coders and we're probably okay with that. But if you don't understand exactly what causes the bias how can you assume it's not discrimination?

Re:So what?

[serviscope_minor]

Why is there an imperative to increase the number?

Because while men and women are undoubtedly different the difference in numbers in this area is far greater than their inequality.

But if it's simply a case that a fewer proportion on them want to be, so what?

I'm sure few of them want to be. The question is why. I dispute your assertion that the differences between men and women alone is enough to explain the discrepancy.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

Because while men and women are undoubtedly different the difference in numbers in this area is far greater than their inequality.

Far greater? How are you quantifying these two things?

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

The idea that women are more social and men are more technical is not some law written in stone. Might we have tendencies? Probably. But part of being human is being able to improve oneself beyond one's tendencies.

I absolutely agree. But tendencies will of course appear in the stats, and that's what we see here. If the story were instead about barriers to women being employed as programmers I too would oppose that. But that's not the story, and it's not what I see. What I actually see is that employers would love to employ more women programmers. If only they had them applying for jobs. And universities would be just as happy, and even will promote to get more women into CS. But they just don't appear to want to in as many numbers as men do.

And I don't see a problem with that. Equality is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

How is software engineering not social? I work as a part of a team and frequently interact with my team to see how my little piece of the pie needs to talk with their pieces.

I never said there was no element of socialising with coding. Just that women may prefer jobs where there is more. There are many jobs where people talk to other people all day every day.

The whole "anti-social software guy" as the norm is absolutely untrue.

I'm not making it up. I've been a programmer off and on since the early 1980s. I know very it's not untrue. Both as a tendency, and a normal part of the job, there are huge swathes of time where coders are not talking to others.

I've done other types of jobs too, so I have comparisons.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

The truth is that in order to be effective programmer you need very particular mindset which can be found both in men and women. Whatever statistical differences found between men and women are irrelevant in each particular case.

What evidence do you have for that "truth"? There's a scientific consensus that men and women differ in their mental skills in many ways. For example women are scientifically proven to be better communicators, and men to be better at spacial tasks.

Who says the pros and cons of all these skill differences balance out and become irrelevant for the role of programmer?

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

but you're somehow sure it's not the result of gender discrimination? How does that work?

It seems to be a comprehension problem on your part. I don't say in my post that there is no gender discrimination. But unlike some others here I don't assume there is either.

Women might well be avoiding coding because of the social environment. But why is that a necessary component of coding jobs -- if it's not that's an example of gender discrimination, not evidence against it.

It's not a necessary component. For example there's pair programming. So where are the women's start-ups that are doing that? There are lots of women doing tech start ups, but the founders don't seem to start off doing the coding tasks as their male counterparts often do.

All people, regardless of gender, are different and have different interests. Some of them will be more interested in coding than others. But given an arbitrary segregation factor -- eye color, for example -- wouldn't you expect the distribution of the general public to match the distribution among coders?

No. Just as I wouldn't expect a dance class to have as many men, or a fishing club to have as many women. Science shows us that men and women differ in their mental skills. For example women are better communicators and men are better at spacial tasks. And experience shows us that men and women differ in their tastes. So why would we expect any specific kind of job to attract an equal number of men and women.

Equality is about equality of opportunity. It's not about trying to make sure that ever category of work is a 50/50 split of men and women. Doing so would push people into jobs they wouldn't otherwise choose.

Re:So what?

[loonycyborg]

I do not say they balance out, but I do say that they matter less than other aspects based on my own experience programming. Certainly not enough to warrant 12-23% percentage of woman developers. I also can say that communication is more important for programming than spacial tasks. Why it isn't dominated by women then? The first programmer was a woman, mind you.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

I gave the spacial/communication aspects as examples. There are plenty more, and tend to favour men for tasks like programming.

http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/2009/10-big-differences-between-mens-and-womens-brains/

And don't underestimate spacial ability for programming. Visualising data structures for example is covered.

Re:So what?

[loonycyborg]

Given issues like http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/11/26/2346258/psychologists-strike-a-blow-for-reproducibility I don't pay much attention to such studies anymore. They mostly start with preconceived notion of what they want to find and find it.The more I live the less I believe that there exists a meaningful difference between man's and woman's mind. Even if there is one it is overshadowed by difference between individuals in practice.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

Well that's just saying you'd rather believe what you want to believe rather than the best science. The approach of creationists, and the quack medicine brigade.

This isn't a case of the odd paper that finds a difference between men and women's brains. It's found over and over again. There is no doubt.

Even if there is one it is overshadowed by difference between individuals in practice.

That's absolutely true. We're talking about normal distributions that partially overlap. No one is saying that no women want to be programmers. Just that there's less of them that want to be than men.

Re:So what?

[loonycyborg]

That's absolutely true. We're talking about normal distributions that partially overlap. No one is saying that no women want to be programmers. Just that there's less of them that want to be than men.

The point is brain difference issue is a red herring. Based on it we can't conclude what gender split will be exactly and thus can't conclude that other factor does not play deciding role, like culture of blatant misogyny widespread in this young profession, or prevalent stereotypes influencing career choice that don't have sufficient grounding in reality, or economic factors.

Re:So what?

[BasilBrush]

That's not what I see. I see a profession that actively wants to recruit female programmers, but are just not getting the applicants. Much as elementary schools want to recruit male teachers, and there aren't enough of those around either.

Men and women tend to have different tastes and desires in so many ways. Career is one of them.

Re:And the pun

[Havokmon]

And the pun in the last sentence of the Slashdot summary is why there are not more.

Why do you say that? She's kinda hot.

Is that a...

[unixisc]

...good thing or bad?

Re:Is that a...

[Gronia]

Bad for the employers who could decrease their employeer's wages through more competitors.

Women in general aren't introverted enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Women in general aren't introverted enough. Most women refuse to live in a dark room with a slot in the door that someone stuffs food through. Without that you can't be a successful programmer.

Re:Women in general aren't introverted enough

[_merlin]

It's a funny thing, one girl developer I know is far more introverted and anti-social than me. She has to be almost dragged to social events, spends weekends in her bedroom gaming, and would rather communicate with a chain of e-mails than do a phone call.

Re:Women in general aren't introverted enough

[CodeBuster]

Most women refuse to live in a dark room with a slot in the door that someone stuffs food through.

Which also requires a degree from the school of "hard knocks".

Re:Women in general aren't introverted enough

[u38cg]

Astonishingly, studies show that men and women have similar rates of introversion. However given the reception they get in the community most of them prefer to fuck off and do something else by themselves.

This is a problem because....?

[phoenix03]

Don't get it. So women don't want to program. That's fine. Why do we feel the need to inflate the numbers? Feminism is an outdated concept by this point - and frankly, it doesn't apply to software engineering.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

Don't get it. So women don't want to program. That's fine.

Do we know that? I sure don't know that.

Maybe its because computer studies, and software engineering is hostile to women. Do I know that? No, I don't know that either.

But if its true its something I'd want to know and correct.

Once upon a time there were no female politicians. Is that because "women weren't interested in politics?" Turns out, no, that was not the reason at all.

Maybe the sciences are the same. Maybe its got nothing to do with science.

Feminism is an outdated concept by this point

The idea that women need to be treated as equals is outdated?

Affirmative action, quotas, and other ugly blunt tools to try to force equality are outdated.. and were never good tools in the first place. But to say feminism is outdated is just ignorant.

and frankly, it doesn't apply to software engineering.

And that's no less ignorant. Many guys said the same thing about women and politics.

It's both arrogant and stupid to think somehow its different this time. Maybe women are genetically predisposed to dislike software/engineering... but that's going to take some more evidence than "because you said so".

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Uloi]

Its rare we get female candidates. White female candidates, never.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[tftp]

"So women don't want to program. That's fine." -- Do we know that? I sure don't know that.

I'd understand if you profess your lack of certainty when we are discussing geology of Mars. But, reportedly, a few women are present on Earth, and since they are sentient you can ask them and get an answer :-) Wouldn't that be the most reliable way to find out what their motivation is?

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feminism has nothing to do with equality, the moment it achieves equality, the feminist cry foul and change the rules. Feminism is a religious cult more than anything else.

When female privilege backfires - watch this.

roman_mir

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Cederic]

it's because of men being sexist pigs, not because women just aren't interested in computers (or video games, or construction jobs, or whatever)

I've never heard a feminist complain that there aren't enough female refuse collectors.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Nephandus]

Considering the top two reasons girls explicitly give are that it's too hard and that geeks(not geek chic hipster poseurs) are icky, they really don't want that publicized...unless they're bashing male geeks as creepy misogynous losers who need to be trained to service any female that bothers to enter the room to whatever capacity your average female chauvinists have pushed (in)equality to now...probably plus whatever new level the radfem/fecademics are gunning for. Depending on the audience and which face is currently talking, of course.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

The genders are different.

Yeah, they sure are in horrifying and amazing ways. But I'm not aware that "inherently not being talented at or enjoying computer programming" is one of those ways.

Simply looking at their participation in computing science is not valid evidence.

You know where ignoring this is causing all types of havok? The military.

Oh, this is going nowhere fast.

Among other things, you are in a company of women on the front lines. Do you trust her to carry 100lbs of gear or to carry you if you get wounded?

I am not in favor of different standards for men and women in the military. If she can carry 100lbs of gear, she can carry 100lbs of gear. There are plenty of women who are stronger than I am.

So what if many female sailors get pregnant during voyages or during a tour of duty to get out of combat duty and go back home and collect benefits.

Not really sure what to say to THAT noise except that men have deliberately injured themselves to get out too. Pregnancy in that scenario is no different from any other sort of self-inflicted condition to avoid service. Men may not have THAT particular option, but there are plenty of others. Not to mention that pregnancy like injuries can also be accidental too.

So what if they affect unit cohesion, we have your fweelings on equality to consider.

Men have ditched service too.

Just because the system isn't producing the results you want, doesn't mean you get to make accusations of unfairness without even examining the dynamics at play.

Except that I was doing precisely what you want. I was suggesting we examine the dynamics at play.

You are the one going off spouting nonsense.

Go play social justic warrior elsewhere where you'd do less damage.

Like software development, you know... the actual topic at hand. What damage are you worried about?

Re:This is a problem because....?

[tftp]

the top two reasons girls explicitly give are that it's too hard and that geeks(not geek chic hipster poseurs) are icky

Those are good reasons for girls to stay away from cube farms. Those are also the reasons why geeks love work. Men are not concerned about ickiness of coworkers or the color matching of their clothing.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Macgrrl]

If you don't think it's hostile, ask three women you know to anonymously count the number of hostile comments posted here.

Sorry, I ran out of fingers for my poor fragile female brain to count on.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Maudib]

This isn't really true though. In the 80s, about 30% of CS grads were female. Its declined to around 12% lately.

The lack of female devs can be traced to Academia and HS. We all know how desperate corps are for devs. You could be a gay nazi transgender alien, but if you can sling Ruby, you will be hired for 100k+. Women aren't devs because women aren't studying CS in college. Women aren't studying CS in college because college emphasizes the wrong priorities, and because their parents didn't buy them legos.

There is a problem, but its not in the industry. Its in the homes and schools

Re:This is a problem because....?

[firex726]

Odd how you never hear about the reverse of these studies. Where is the inequality for female garbage collectors, female oil rig workers, etc...

> The idea that women need to be treated as equals is outdated?

Strawman... What OP was arguing is that we dont need to have special programs to cater to one specific group to try and correct some perceived inequality when there is no evidence hat there is any; which you then argue yourself into a hole by suggesting that we need such programs while also stating we don't know if it even exists in the first place.

If anything OP is being more favorable to equality then you by saying that it's been achieved for this field. Show me one college or company that has anything on the books about discriminating against women? Now shoe me how many have special scholarships, and women only classes to garner their attention?

But I guess you're one of those who insist that a fire dept is being misogynistic becuase they refused to lower the psychical standards tests to increase the number of women on the force even though their biological differences would have made them unsuitable.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[cyborg_zx]

> I've never heard a feminist complain that there aren't enough female refuse collectors.

They only want/care the important and influential and well-paid jobs to be "equal" for some reason. All part of the patriachial conspiracy to keep women down otherwise.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[Agent0013]

Wow, that video was really good! I learned a lot about how what appears to be oppression of women is actually the oppression of the men. When I first started watching it I wasn't sure what to expect and the appearance of the woman with her short cut hair made me suspect it was a feminist male-hater or something. I am sorry that I had that impression at first, but I guess I have seen a few of those types before and knowing the video was about feminism pushed me into that feeling. It is a very insightful video and I recommend everyone interested to watch it. The basic premiss is that women (examples given in afghanistan and china) are given privileges which leads to their apparent oppression when what is actually happening is the men are forced to have obligations.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[serviscope_minor]

What damage are you worried about?

Cooties all over his beautiful code, I presume.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

But I guess you're one of those who insist that a fire dept is being misogynistic becuase they refused to lower the psychical standards tests to increase the number of women on the force even though their biological differences would have made them unsuitable.

Perhaps if you read what I wrote elsewhere in the thread yesterday already already, you'd know that I fully support the same standards as men for women in the military, and I don't see why you'd conclude I'd have a different position for the fire department.

Strawman...

Only if you decide to equate femininsm with quotas and affirmative action.

What OP was arguing is that we dont need to have special programs to cater to one specific group

Only you said that. He didn't.

to try and correct some perceived inequality when there is no evidence hat there is any;

Looking at the rows upon rows of men in my upper division computing science would be evidence that something is out of whack. Not conclusive evidence, but its more than enough to justify the argument that something is up.

If anything OP is being more favorable to equality then you by saying that it's been achieved for this field.

Yes, he's saying that. But gives us no reason to believe it.

"Well there's nothing on the books about discriminating against them, so we're good."

Is not sufficient.

Now shoe me how many have special scholarships, and women only classes to garner their attention?

Now, that's the strawman. I don't think that's the right solution either.

you then argue yourself into a hole by suggesting that we need such programs while also stating we don't know if it even exists in the first place.

Not at all, I'm all for studying WHY there are few girls in computing science. Once we can answer that convincingly we can decide whether something needs to be "fixed".

I figure the problem is cultural and women are indoctrinated against pursuing careers in science in their teens or even before that.

I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong.

But pointing at college admissions books and saying women are free to apply so we're done, is just ignorant.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[nctritech]

Prove it.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

There have been many instances when I felt I was picking up the slack for fellow female soldiers that it put me and my unit in palpable danger.

I don't suggest that doesn't happen. But I would suggest you take a good hard look at the rest of the males in your unit and see if there is any dead weight.

Singling out dead weight is fine; but doing it based on gender is probably misogynistic. Not every woman in the military should be there; some of them are a detriment, but certainly not all of them. Meanwhile there's whole lot of useless fuckwit males in the service too.

Its too bad the army is busy lowering its standards for recruits, because that signals that its not about to get any better soon.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[bingoUV]

Not at all, I'm all for studying WHY there are few girls in computing science

Great. I would be interested in knowing what are your feelings about studying WHY there so few men in nursing, and primary school teaching.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

I would be interested in knowing what are your feelings about studying WHY there so few men in nursing, and primary school teaching.

I'd have no problem with that.

I'd be inclined to suspect women are drawn to careers involving young kids more. Day care, preschool, elementary, etc. There might be some element of a feminine preference to "nurture".

It would be interesting to study.

Unless this is a trick question already with a well known, scientifically accepted reason...

For nursing at least, there definitely seems to be a social stigma attached men to who choose that career. So peer pressure might be part of it too.

For primary school I don't know. I had 2 male teachers K-6. They were both very good teachers.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[bingoUV]

I'd have no problem with that. I'd be inclined to suspect women ...

2 sexes. 2 sets of professions, one each does not get enough representation from one of the sexes. In one case you demand a study before anyone "dismisses" it as an inclination mismatch. In the other case, YOU dismiss it as an inclination mismatch, without a study, of course. But, generously, you'd have "no problem" with studying about the unfair treatment received by other sex in the other set of professions too. Need I say more, or you understood your own double standards ?

For primary school I don't know. I had 2 male teachers K-6. They were both very good teachers.

You are an old man (so am I). Check out some recent statistics.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[vux984]

In one case you demand a study before anyone "dismisses" it as an inclination mismatch. In the other case, YOU dismiss it as an inclination mismatch, without a study, of course. But, generously, you'd have "no problem" with studying about the unfair treatment received by other sex in the other set of professions too.

You are reading more into my tone than REALLY exists. I "demanded" a study before we dismiss the issue in the former case because the OP insisted there was "no problem".

In the latter case, it seemed that you were asserting there was a problem, and seemed to be trying to suggest I might not see it as such. Whereas I think study is called for in this case too -- I didn't need to "demand" we study it, because you weren't demanding there was no problem.

Nor did I dismiss it as an inclination mismatch; I made one observation about hunter vs nurture nature of the genders; but at the same time, even without study I could say for certain that with nursing at least there was definitely a cultural/peer pressure problem keeping men away.

I refrained from speculating on causes for the lack of girls in math/comp sci although I have a few theories. Gender inclination is conceivable, but the 'geek' culture is blatantly mysoginist. While the OP however was asserting there was no problem.

Need I say more, or you understood your own double standards ?

In any case I'm led to the same course of action for either scenario; to do the "right thing" in both cases. So even if I have double standards they are not obstructing progress; and I'm open to the suggestion that I'm not perfect. :)

You are an old man (so am I). Check out some recent statistics.

Perhaps. My kids are both in primary school, and have both had least 1 male teacher so far and there's still a few years to go. I don't dispute the statistics though.

Re:This is a problem because....?

[TranquilVoid]

Agreed - I closed it straight away after seeing her image and the 30 minute length, until I read your response and tried again. An insightful and interesting talk.

Her main argument is;
1. In traditional/poor societies, men have the obligation to provide for women children
2. This leads to strict social roles where men are given control (privileges) to help them fulfil their obligations
3. Feminists interpret this as oppression
4. Giving women the same privileges without the obligations causes problems

My only criticism is that she is mildly unbalanced in painting women as ready to take unfair advantage of the changing social structures and men as only having traditional control out of necessity.

"feminists" only complain about desk jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

when they complain about lack of female loggers and roofers, and farmers and fishermen (fisherfolk?), and taxi drivers and construction workers and miners and linesmen(linespersons?) and welders

then "feminists" might have a point, right now the only men who pretend give a crap are the white knights and those who have women within earshot

Scary

[lazarus]

I read this as "Female Software Engineers may be even Scarier Than we Thought" and I couldn't wait to find out how in the world that was going to be quantified and/or justified.

I love geeks, scary or not.

Re:Scary

[Darinbob]

That's exactly what I read too, and was ready to forward the story to all my female engineering colleagues.

Re:Scary

[mjwx]

I read this as "Female Software Engineers may be even Scarier Than we Thought" and I couldn't wait to find out how in the world that was going to be quantified and/or justified.

I love geeks, scary or not.

It's not that they're scary, it's just that geeks are extremely timid.

Re:Scary

[GrahamCox]

Yup, me too! The word has exactly the same shape, and "scarcer" may even be self-describing.

But let's train immigrants instead..

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously... Zuckerberg and other big wigs from tech companies are pushing to increase H1B1 visas, instead of investing in our own citizens. And now he's sponsoring training sessions for illegals. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/zuckerberg-immigration-ha_n_4138638.html

Fed up with these companies that keep trying to extort cheap overseas labor, instead of investing in their own country.

Re:But let's train immigrants instead..

[Jane Q. Public]

"Fed up with these companies that keep trying to extort cheap overseas labor, instead of investing in their own country."

I've said it before (wait for it; it makes sense): the mistake many German people made which allowed Hitler to come to power, was to think treason meant "disloyalty to government", when what it actually means is "betraying your people or country". A government can commit treason.

If you take treason in its more reasonable and only ethical sense, i.e. to betray your people or country, then companies who push for more offshoring, or more H1B1 visas, are committing treason.

Re:But let's train immigrants instead..

[TheSync]

the mistake many German people made which allowed Hitler to come to power, was to think treason meant "disloyalty to government", when what it actually means is "betraying your people or country". A government can commit treason.

If you take treason in its more reasonable and only ethical sense, i.e. to betray your people or country, then companies who push for more offshoring, or more H1B1 visas, are committing treason.

So really you want H-1B folks to end up like the Jews under Hitler, is that what you are saying?

Re:But let's train immigrants instead..

[Jane Q. Public]

"So really you want H-1B folks to end up like the Jews under Hitler, is that what you are saying?"

Um... NO. That is very definitely not what I was saying.

Misread that

[Atrox666]

I thought it said Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarier Than We Thought.

Re:Misread that

[X10]

I thought it said Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarier Than We Thought.

We are.

Re:Misread that

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

I thought it said Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarier Than We Thought.

We are.

Did anyone else think of the Rudyard Kipling poem?

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Females

[Anonymous Coward]

I draw from this that most females prefer other careers. There is NO problem. NO crisis. They just want to do other things.

Re:Females

[Valdrax]

I draw from this that most females prefer other careers. There is NO problem. NO crisis. They just want to do other things.

Few CEOs or executives at any level are women. Must just mean women don't want to work those jobs. Just like how most doctors are men and how most lawyers are too. No real crisis or problem. That's also probably why they make less than men in the same profession too -- they just aren't driven enough to go for the big bucks.

If that doesn't sound ignorantly dismissive to you yet, try substituting "black people" for women, and the statistics will be just as true and the reasoning just as false.

Re:Females

[Cederic]

Few CEOs or executives at any level are women. Must just mean women don't want to work those jobs.

This may be true. Women like having a family and spending time at home with it.

That doesn't gel well with executive responsibilities or working hours. CEOs don't spend much time with the kids.

Just like how most doctors are men and how most lawyers are too.

In at least 13 European countries there are more female doctors than male.

In the UK the number of women becoming doctors is 30% higher than the number of men.

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.

Re:Females

[slimjim8094]

More doctors and lawyers nowadays are women, actually. Try again.

Re:Females

[Valdrax]

In at least 13 European countries there are more female doctors than male.

In the UK the number of women becoming doctors is 30% higher than the number of men.

This is a US-centric site, and the medical and legal professions are still dominated by men here.

Fair pay

[X10]

Female and male sofware engineers should receive equal payment. Female engineers should get half the total payment, males get the other half. That's only fair, isn't it?

Re:Fair pay

[GodfatherofSoul]

Don't you mean only if she divorces you?

Re:Fair pay

[Maudib]

You are an idiot.

Why should we care?

[scottbomb]

Most hairstylists are women. Should we wring our hands about that too?

Re:Why should we care?

[yurtinus]

Yes, we should. If you see a male hair stylist, what's your first impression of him? What about a man who really loves working with children? We lose out on a great deal of talent by assuming gender roles apply to careers.

Re:Why should we care?

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm better than my wife at cooking. But she's got a PhD and I haven't. Graduate studies impede culinary skill.

Re:Why should we care?

[Dahamma]

I'm not so sure it's total time spent as much as "completely anal-retentive attention to detail". Fewer women on average seem to have that urge to reduce someone to tears because they cut the onion into a "dice" instead of a "chop". (but as a semi-anal-retentive cook - it makes a difference! ;)

Re:Why should we care?

[dbIII]

What about a man who really loves working with children

That's a very recent shift over the last decade or two. A primary school teacher I know is a guy that's six and half foot tall, bearded, strong as anything, loves fishing and hunting wild pigs, and was not out of place as a teacher in the country when he graduated. Now he has to convince a government body every year that he is not a child molester, he's the only male teacher in the school he works at and anyone that doesn't think he's a child molester when he mentions he job thinks he must be the stereotypical gay that stays home to play with dolls.

Re:Why should we care?

[cyborg_zx]

That's a very recent shift over the last decade or two. A primary school teacher I know is a guy that's six and half foot tall, bearded, strong as anything, loves fishing and hunting wild pigs, and was not out of place as a teacher in the country when he graduated. Now he has to convince a government body every year that he is not a child molester, he's the only male teacher in the school he works at and anyone that doesn't think he's a child molester when he mentions he job thinks he must be the stereotypical gay that stays home to play with dolls.

He's a man. It's just deserving payback for the *years* of him clearly working for the patriarchy to keep women down!

In other news only crackers be racist.

Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[westlake]

I

Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
Who gives a shit?

Men and women are different. One or more of those differences may account for the disparity in software engineers. For example women tend to be more social creatures. Maybe they tend to choose jobs that are more sociable than coding?

Computer work requires accountability and taking responsibility, and dealing with reality something that very few women are capable of doing.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[BasilBrush]

Proof? Where's your proof?

Do you actually have a point to make?

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[yurtinus]

I'm guessing he's merely pointing out that bigotry is certainly alive and kicking on /.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[serviscope_minor]

Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought. Who gives a shit?

Plenty of people. The lack of male school teachers is widely regarded as a Bad Thing.

Men and women are different

Not that different. You picked an excellent example. The trend for female doiminated teaching is a very recent thing. It used to have a much stronger male presence. Therefore it is likely that it is due to societal pressures.

Maybe they tend to choose jobs that are more sociable than coding?

The lone wolf rides alone, eh? When was the last time you ran a solo coding project?

Computer work requires accountability and taking responsibility, and dealing with reality something that very few women are capable of doing.

Ah now er get to the nub of the matter. You're basically an idiot.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[BasilBrush]

But he's not doing that. He's not doing anything, because he's said nothing.

Of the 3 quotes only the 3rd is bigoted. If he's actually tried to justify his point we might have seen where his thinking was flawed.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[yurtinus]

Shoulda clarified... Dinosaurs that don't yet know they're extinct.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[BasilBrush]

So you too are incapable of making an actual point. Because you don't have one.

For your information I'm a feminist. It's a long time since I've met another feminist that denies there are differences between men and women. There's little point in denying a scientific fact. It does nothing for your credibility.

Re:Proof that the dinosaurs still live.

[BasilBrush]

Ah now er get to the nub of the matter. You're basically an idiot.

Small problem there. You are replying to 3 quotes made by 3 different people, and thinking they are a single person. Who's the idiot?

I'll answer only to the comment you made on the quote from me.

The lone wolf rides alone, eh? When was the last time you ran a solo coding project?

Today. I'm a mobile developer. But even back in the days when I was working for a big OS company, most of the time people were working on their own. Sat in front of a computer, ear-phones plugged in as a tactic to block out the distractions of other people.

Re:"Scarce"

[phoenix03]

how many bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial native american / tongese dwarf insomniac coders do we have? not too damn many I bet. we need more. let's make that a goal.

I would so work with one of those.

Then again...

[Type44Q]

Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought

In these admittedly "androgynous time" we live in... how can we really be sure who's who?? :p

Re:Then again...

[VortexCortex]

Androgynous? When I was a small boy I began reading all sorts of magazines and finding out things about the sexes. Imagine a 7 year old trying to talk about complex issues like gender or gravitational lensing with moronic adults. Despite everyone telling me what was "normal" for a boy I had different urges -- I wanted to do things that boys aren't supposed to do. In my teens I finally realized that my brain was trapped in the wrong kind of body -- One that could survive the harshness of space. I should have been born a cyborg. You pathetic humans are disgusting.

Re:Then again...

[yurtinus]

Bravo my friend, brilliantly executed!

Re:Then again...

[phoenix03]

well played, sir/computer. well played.

Re:Preference?

[phoenix03]

Maybe we should appreciate the fact that software engineering is one of the last bastions of masculinity.

Data drawn from relatively young Web-facing orgs

[gbooch]

Interesting raw data, but be very careful about drawing broad conclusions from this fascinating but highly-self-selected set of companies: the spreadsheet lists mostly companies that are relatively young and almost entirely Web-facing.

The world of software development extends far, far beyond work that is clustered at the edges of the Internet.

Maybe for "web-based" companies...

[tekrat]

So 10% of software engineers are female, but, the entire list of firms listed are "within the decade", web-based firms that program mostly in Javascript.

Get into the insurance or banking businesses, or anyone that's been computing since the 1960's and you'll find those numbers are different. If we're programming Cobol, I'd have to say that almost 50% of our developers are women.

Women are too smart for that

[Anonymous Coward]

They think ahead a bit more than men, because of kids. They take one look at the dysfunctional, never-ending treadmill that is software and they say "no thanks". Guys are more like kids, they have fun now so they think "this is it".

Re:Women are too smart for that

[yurtinus]

...so they go into education and other fields with lower earnings potential and more work hours?

Re:Preference?

[BasilBrush]

No, it's not just "preference".

How do you know?

There is usually a reason why nearly half of the whole population stays away from some completely normal activity, but not any of (supposedly similar) others.

So what's the reason males tend to stay away from elementary teaching but not high school teaching. It's not because they are discouraged by the school system. Elementary schools tend to want to get some (or more) male teachers.

Let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Have a society where women are expected to be primary caregivers of children.
2) Ensure that daycare for three or more children makes working uneconomical.
3) Demand that all applicants have recent (in the past two years) experience.
4) Act surprised that few women meet that bar after staying home.

Or...

a) Have social activities focused around shoot-em-up games, sports events, or meals at establishments with scantily clad female servers.
b) Either get in a huff at any female who suggests that this isn't fun for them, or just stay silent (or snicker) while a different co-worker supplies the rant, guaranteeing that the women feel like everyone is ganging up on them.
c) Single them out to be on some special panel on how to increase the percentage of females in whatever, rather than giving them the same career enhancing training and experience male workers get.
d) Act surprised when they quit, and change careers.

Just looking in my rear-view mirror...

Why women aren't in STEM jobs has been studied to death. Bottom line: enough men don't want them, and women are smart enough to know where they're not wanted.

Re:Let's see...

[PPH]

Why women aren't in STEM jobs has been studied to death. Bottom line: enough men don't want them, and women are smart enough to know where they're not wanted.

But are all other STEM ratios as bad as that for software specifically? Are we hearing the software crisis here because the Slashdot demographic leans toward software? Is the problem just as bad in other science and engineering fields?

3) Demand that all applicants have recent (in the past two years) experience.

This might be the key. Other engineering disciplines don't chase the fads as rapidly as software. So an absence of a couple of years will really bugger a s/w resume. I have known some quite capable female software engineers. But many of them work with languages like COBOL. Where the job environment is more stable and a couple of years off isn't that big a deal.

Re:Let's see...

[dbIII]

But are all other STEM ratios as bad as that for software specifically?

I've certainly seen more women in technical roles in electricity generation, steel production and mining than in software - and that's coming from a situation where in my year only 10% of the engineering students were women with just over 50% of CS students being women. Assuming we gave jobs to the all the engineers (eventually most did), why did we throw away 40%+ of the CS students? It seems a waste and it certainly resulted in lower enrolements in the years since. Why do a difficult course of study when you can't get a different job to someone that does an Arts degree in something simple?

nothing to do with it?

[emagery]

https://medium.com/about-work/9b14f05a9832 ... even IF its partially assumed on her/their part, the fact remains that as long as women feel this way in the tech world, they will remains scarce.

Re:nothing to do with it?

[phoenix03]

Obvious neo-feminist. Not even worth addressing.

Re:nothing to do with it?

[yurtinus]

Can't tell if serious or... oh god, you are serious.

If this were Jalopnik I'd post an image captioned "Bitch, are you for real?" It would get so many recommends. But alas, this is /., and I gotta say, given though the discussions on tech topics is usually quite enlightening, reading a lot of commentors views on this story is excruciatingly depressing. My only solace is that most of us don't leave our basements and as such don't influence others with our ridiculous world views.

Re:nothing to do with it?

[nctritech]

Ah yes, feminazis are the template of good character and professionalism. My favorite example quote from that link: "Here. Here’s your fucking t-shirt you fucking misogynist pig." Yep, that's exactly the way we should think, because that's not toxic and post-modernist angsty AT ALL.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

What went ye into the wilderness to see? A man clad in fine raiment?

It may be an unfixable problem.

[man_ls]

I'm a male, but frankly I quit pursuing academic and professional computer science years ago largely on account of the same factors that alienate women. "Computer people" are, by and large, just not people I want to spend time around. Exceptions to the rule at an individual level, of course, but everyone more or less knows what I'm talking about. The dark triad with a sprinkling of misogyny.

It turns out that many people, especially women, probably don't want to "bro down and crush code" - and yet, that's where the culture of the industry lies. Especially at the level a recent graduate is going to get involved in.

I know many people who dev web software

[WillAffleckUW]

I for one know many degreed people who spend their time developing, architecting and writing software. Most of them are women.

A lot of them are Biostatisticians, Web developers, and others who are not "software engineers".

You're mixing different population samples.

Maybe it helps if you know what it is you're trying to say, before you leap to conclusions?

Non Traditional Employment For Women

[westlake]

when they complain about lack of female loggers and roofers, and farmers and fishermen and taxi drivers and construction workers and miners and linesmen and welders then "feminists" might have a point,

Women working in the skilled trades make two to three times more than women in traditional careers.

Non Traditional Employment For Women

Re:Non Traditional Employment For Women

[firex726]

Issue that OP and article argue is the total number, not what they made.

Men far out number women in garbage collection but you never see these articles address THAT inequality...

Re:Non Traditional Employment For Women

[serviscope_minor]

Men far out number women in garbage collection but you never see these articles address THAT inequality...

Try visiting a garbage collection forum.

This is slashdot: news for nerds, stuff that matters. Not trashdot: news for dustmen, stuff that stinks.

Where does the discrepancy come from?

[Arancaytar]

Interpretation-wise, both numbers are way too low, and the industry needs to put in an active, collective effort at increasing them.

Statistically, that's a weird margin. Both surveys seem to have fairly sample sizes. How do they manage to differ by 10 percentage points - nearly as much as the smaller number?

I'm wondering why this is news?

[King_TJ]

Scarcer than "we" thought? Who is the "we"? In close to 30 years of working with computers, I can count on one hand the number of females I've run into who actually code for a living.

I think more wind up in some sort of project management position over a group of developers ... but even that's not quite commonplace.

I don't think this has much of anything to do with equality of pay between men and women, nor is it the fault of sexist hiring practices. It's simply fact that very few women get too excited about the prospects of working in a job where you have to sit in front of a computer screen all day, entering lines of code and trying to figure out small syntax or logic errors causing your code not to work properly.

By and large, I find the women I've known to be more interested in creative pursuits (like photography, art or music), or there's an interest in being a little more people oriented (everything from Human Resources jobs to middle management to marketing or sales). Those who really embrace the idea of having a quiet desk job in a comfortable office and would rather solve problems than shake hands and talk to people tend to lean towards accounting/payroll positions.

In fact, I'd say you find a few more women interested in software coding when the task is more creative (Roberta Williams, for example, who co-founded Sierra Entertainment and wrote the King's Quest adventure game series). But the kind of development most companies are hiring for is far from creative, except at a very micro level where few people even appreciate a novel, efficient line or two of code to accomplish some small portion of the overall task.

Re:I'm wondering why this is news?

[khellendros1984]

In close to 30 years of working with computers, I can count on one hand the number of females I've run into who actually code for a living.

Well, what do you mean by "code for a living"? Do you mean women that held an engineering position for that entire 30 year span of time? Most of my coworkers are male, granted, but I'd have to at least include my toes to count the number of female software engineers in the building with me right now.

Re:I'm wondering why this is news?

[King_TJ]

I was referring to the number of women I've known who were actively working full-time doing software development/coding for a living -- without regard to how long they held the position.

I don't know where you work, and for that matter -- I never worked for a company primarily focused on software development, so maybe my personal experiences don't include a lot of situations? But I have worked in I.T. for companies who had software development teams on staff -- and I haven't run into any women writing the actual code any of those teams yet. (We had a female manager in charge of one of the teams, but she technically had a background in database administration - not coding. That was a good fit, tthough, since the custom app they supported was linked to a back end database.)

A buddy of mine used to do QC for a software development firm and I remember him telling me about a couple of female software devs over there. The rest of the employees were male. (As I recall, one of the females was pretty well known for not really being very bright or good at coding either. Unfortunate in such a lopsided industry to further reinforce a flawed concept that "women can't code" ... but it was what it was.)

Re:I'm wondering why this is news?

[khellendros1984]

I work for a dedicated software development division of a large corporation. I think there are perhaps 200 people in the office here, divided among development, quality assurance, product management, support, release engineering, etc. A "spot-check" of the org chart for the dev teams I usually work with gave me about 15% female, but I know that the count among the QA engineers is higher.

I can't say that I've noticed quality problems from the ladies (at least not any more than I do from the men I work with). We've got a couple of "rockstar" guys that really stand out, but I think that's more of a numbers game than anything. I can't say that I'm more impressed with the females than the males, but I'm not less impressed either, for whatever worth my opinion has.

My two cents

[kelemvor4]

All but a few of the companies providing data had miniscule teams. Not exactly likely to be a fantastic representation of the averages.

I was surprised to see that flickr supposedly has 40 developers. They must all be on dilbert style cofee breaks because from a customer's perspective they can't get the site working for beans. Having personally reported significant bugs to them months ago (every one of which is still present), it's extra disappointing. Maybe they're too busy writing encryption to protect datacenter communications in the name of protecting my publicly available information.

Male nannies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one for about seven years. It was the fun I ever had and certainly the most meaningful work, although the comparison is a bit unfair as I only have bookkeeping at a software company in my early twenties and retail work in my teens to compare it to. The great problem is those in your care grow up. Preschool or kindergarten steals them. As for new families, eventually even the most progressive today will reject you. Hiring a male nanny in his twenties is adventurous and forward thinking. Hiring a man in his thirties is another story. It doesn't matter how good your references are. Mine couldn't be better. 31, back in school, pursuing a degree in biochemistry. Pediatrician perhaps?

What about other sciences?

[turp182]

Are women a minority in other sciences?
Based on enrollment in engineering studies they are a distinct minority (17.7% in 2009 per the NSF PDF):
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab2-9.pdf

Given that, I would expect that under 20% of software engineers would be women (in no year did the % enrolled exceed 20%).

An individual, regardless of gender, must choose to go into engineering(software included), usually via a degree program (I went actuarial and then moved into software development - but I had a lot of software development experience previously, into architecture/process optimization now).

As an alternate example, men only represent about 10% of the Registered Nurse population (not sure of the year):
http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics

I see no issue or sexism based on the number of women entering engineering sciences. I imagine the stats generally follow the % by gender that seek such degrees.

At first blurry-eyed glance...

[unitron]

...I thought that said "even scarier".

Small, commercial companies

[DaveAtFraud]

All of the companies listed in the article are small companies that do strictly commercial software development. I don't see any numbers for the really big commercial software companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Likewise, I don't see any numbers for the big aerospace companies like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed, CSC, BAE, etc. Big companies and, especially, big companies that work on government contracts are much more likely to have affirmative action policies and specifically recruit women and minorities. Chances are you would see much higher percentages of women working at these companies and it only takes a couple of 100,000+ employee companies to totally swamp the small fry that are in the current survey.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:In networking is even worst

[PPH]

However, most of these 11 were brilliant and yes, they were all very beautiful.

Russian spies, no doubt. And all servicing Edward Snowden now.

My andecdotal evidence

[ObjetDart]

I have been a professional software developer for 22 years. Over that time I've worked for 5 different companies, of varying sizes, the largest having maybe 100 employees.

Not once in all these years was there a single female software engineer working for any of those companies. Not a single one.

Anyway, from the single data point that is my personal experience, female software engineers seem to be about as common as unicorns. Even 12% seems way too high a figure.

I don't know why this is, but I think it's a shame.

Re:My andecdotal evidence

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I'll add my anecdotal evidence. The place I work at has about 20% female developers. We do device drivers, not web stuff.

Last time I saw a thread about this on Slashdot someone posted what they called the Dave threshold theory: Within any software group there will be as many or fewer female developers as there are people named Dave.

I've been here for 10+ years and we've always been above the Dave threshold (and we do have a Dave).

Re:My andecdotal evidence

[CodeBuster]

female software engineers seem to be about as common as unicorns.

They're uncommon, but not especially rare. I've worked with two so far in my career and I haven't been at this as long as you have.

Re:My andecdotal evidence

[iPaul]

I've worked on projects where half the staff were female software developers. (4 out of 8). I don't speak for any women, and am only expressing my observations. What seemed to attract the female engineers I worked with to the company where:

1) Professionalism - It was not a frat house culture. People dressed and behaved professionally. I've worked in places where the developers were allowed to behave like we were still in college.
2) A strong work-life balance approach. Many of the women I worked with had children or were married and thinking about having children. 12 hour days, six day a week jobs were not what they wanted. This did not mean 39 hours a week, but 8 hours on the job and then maybe 2 or 3 after they put their kids to bed.
3) Strong support. If someone got into a jam the team rallied to help them out. It meant risk taking was not penalized. You could be less than 100% confident you knew how to get it done because someone was always there to back you up.
4) Good communications. Lots of face to face communication, feedback, discussion, etc. It meant that we talked things through before we ran off and write 10klocs of code. We explained our decisions and communicated them to the broader team.

I don't think that these attributes are specific to women, but I think the women I worked with responded well to an environment with these attributes. A lot of times we like to work in a kind of frat house/cowboy culture. If you're a real developer you'll work 12 hour days, slouched down into your hoodie, expect people to sink or swim, and tell people if they have questions to stop being such a bitch and 'read the code.' I think that turns some people off.

While these are certainly not the only reasons women don't get into computer science or engineering at the same rates as men, I think if you do want to hire qualified female engineers you need to 1) not lower the bar because no one wants to be seen as a quota hire, and 2) understand that the environment you create can determine who you attract.

Re:It takes one jerk to ruin a workplace

[UnknownSoldier]

So basically you let them win. :-(

Physics Has Had to Deal With the Same Issue

[pscottdv]

When I was in physics, we had the same problem. In a freshman class of 20 or so students, there would be 2 or 3 women. By graduation there would only be 5-10 men left and no women.

I asked one of the women that started the year after I did why she switched to math. She said that we guys all got together to work problem sets in the dorms while she had to do hers alone (the college offered limited opportunities for men and women to visit each-other's dorms at the time). This surprised me as I always did my sets alone.

This was back in the 80s.

Just last week I had a chance to visit the same college and sit in a senior-level quantum lecture offered by my favorite professor. I was pleased to see that there were three women to six men. Still not parity, but much improved!

Re: Threatened, much?

[Vanderhoth]

It's funny it's ok to assume people using anonymous handles that aren't worried or have a negative comment must be male.

It's not possible Some of these comments could be women trying to troll or reinforce a sterotype for their benifit?

Oh, but it's ok to be sexist against men. Sorry I forgot.

It's because Being Geeky isn't cool

[DSElliot]

There is a very simple reason why more women aren't developers - it's because programmers are geeky and few women want to be associated with that. Think about yourself. You were probably an outcast in high school. Then you discovered computers. And for once in your life you are not judged. The computer does whatever you tell to do. You understand the computer better than people. You fall in with that crowd in high school who host LAN parties and play Doom on a Friday night when everybody else is out dating. Then you get to college and major in Computer Science. Now you meet hundreds of other people just like you! These are people who love Dr. Who and Red Dwarf and know the Hitchhikers Guide in and out. The social deficiencies you had in high school are celebrated here. So you become more and more geeky. Now tell me if that isn't you. If you are a woman, you may be smart, but there is this horrible stigma assigned to hanging out with the guys in the computer club. In America, women are supposed to be pretty, not geeky. So when you get to college you major in Communications or Marketing or maybe Math. You may want to be an engineer, but it just isn't socially acceptable. I'll tell you this: I wish there were more female computer programmers - we are too homogeneous and when you have a homogeneous group, your ideas suffer from groupthink. If everybody is thinking alike - somebody isn't thinking. The real question is how to change it - and I don't have an answer for you. But I'd rather have one Grace Hopper than 10 Mark Zuckerbergs.

Re:It's because Being Geeky isn't cool

[stridebird]

SOME programmers walk around in the "10 types of people" t-shirt and what-not. They are actually hyper-competitive and offensive people in my experience. They alienate men too. Myself, I wasn't really an outcast as you put it. But I could and do appreciate the astounding edifice we are standing on and I was amazed as a child by the various computers I encountered as they appeared in my lives. I wanted, instinctively, to understand how they worked and how to control them if possible, like any machine or system I come across.

But yet, the computer has never really done what I have told it to do. The normal result, of course, is that the program immediately blows up on the next line of code. Sometimes it works; and that is the reward, the micro-reward who's puirsuit I suspect defines a programmer. Sometimes, so rarely, the project bug list is actually emptied. Troubleshooting and debugging code is what makes it hard, tiring work. But the rewards are intellectually satisfying, like solving cryptic crossword puzzles, even if it's as ephemeral as cocaine.

I am sure it's environmental, the actual work involved can be done by woman as easily and proficiently as men. We just have to kill all the nerds first.

Re:oops I read that wrong

[anonymous_echidna]

... but WHAT female would visit this site anyway :)

The female techs like me who really are quite scary, thank you. By the way, you've just demonstrated why there aren't more women in tech.

Fortunately, there's an alternative

[Azure Flash]

MALE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

They're supposed to be equally viable candidates, remember?

Not surprising at all

[Jonner]

I'd never seen a statistic of 22%, which sounds high based on my experience. 12% sounds much more plausible to me.

Screw it

[Velex]

I don't give a damn.

I got called sexist because I was promoted over a womyn-born-womyn I was more qualified than. The feminists called me sexist, even though the person who promoted me was also a womyn-born-womyn.

Guess what? I'm still making shit per hour while she went off and got married, had a seven day honeymoon in Hawaii, and is now a stay-at-home Mother. (Yes, with a capital M.)

We'll get more womyn-born-womyn in STEM careers once we decide that womyn-born-womyn need to have a career that pays more than minimum wage BEFORE we allow them to get knocked up. PERIOD. That's ALL THERE IS TO IT .

"Too dumb to code..."

[beaverdownunder]

It's not the guys who say this, depressingly I've found it's women (at least down here in Australia) that commonly lament that they (feel they) are mentally incapable of tackling programming. =/ Of course, typically nobody challenges those assertions.

I suppose what's needed is a bit of public education. Sure, coding is a logical thing at its core, but a whole lot of creativity goes into producing great code as well.

Maybe the solution is to popularise pair programming more?

I read it as SCARIER....

[Bruce66423]

whoops...

Someone plucked a nerve for sure

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Reading through the comments there are a large number of "who cares" and "why does this matter". The tone and number is interesting. If all these "who cares" people really don't care why did they even come into the comments and post? There's almost a tone of fear to it all.

Re:Someone plucked a nerve for sure

[nctritech]

The topic has been done to death. Women have the ability to choose STEM fields and they largely don't, and that's their choice. This is not a difficult concept. We're tired of hearing people complain about the ratio of genders in various fields. If women don't want to do it, stop trying to steer them into it anyway, otherwise you're trying to make choices for them, which is no different from what we are told is occurring right now in other directions.

Re:Someone plucked a nerve for sure

[Barlo_Mung_42]

There is some truth to that but this is /. Lots of topics have been done to death yet they don't draw this defensive tone. I'm in a company that has 20% female developers and even there I've noticed a "boys club" atmosphere at times. If it's the culture or perceived culture that drives most women away maybe we should do something about that. The women I work with are very good developers and we do the industry a disservice if we are driving away 1/2 the eligible work force. I don't know for a fact that that's the issue but it's worth study and even though the topic may be over done to your mind I'm not sure we're any closer to an answer. "If women don't want to do it" isn't good enough until we understand why they don't want to do it. If it turns out to be us we should want to change that.

Re:So why don't they have proportional # of bathro

[geminidomino]

Better question: Why does my office have one male bathroom and one female bathroom (very small company), when they're both single-occupancy?

Re:"Scarce"

[Count Fenring]

It's scarce relative to the percentage of the population they make up, which is the metric that actually counts. When bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial individuals of native american/tongese extraction with dwarfism make up 51% of the population, that can be a goal.

More for a related reason

[dbIII]

There are fewer women in programming for one reason and one reason only: families.

Yep - the HR monkey or lazy manager sees a female name on the CV and decided that it's pointless training someone to be a good worker if they are going to leave to go off and have kids. It was never fair to begin with and doesn't even make sense now with such a mobile workforce where a man is just as likely to quit as a woman and you don't expect most of the workforce to sit tight for ten years.
So because of that the women couldn't get the jobs in IT in the 1990s despite being half the enrolement and since then it's been seen as a male dominated area not worth getting into, so only the driven ignore their guidance councillers or whatever and do it.

Dropbox is being actively worked on

[dbIII]

Dropbox started as a very dodgy collection of python scripts as a front end to Amazon storage, with a long list of security incidents right up to and including people getting other people's files without needing a password (just username in one case, file hashes in another and a failure to revoke access once granted but looks as if it did as a third). They had an idea but few resources to implement it. To go from where they were to where they are now and where they want to be requires a lot of work which is why they have so many development staff,

Re:Dropbox is being actively worked on

[tlhIngan]

Dropbox started as a very dodgy collection of python scripts as a front end to Amazon storage, with a long list of security incidents right up to and including people getting other people's files without needing a password (just username in one case, file hashes in another and a failure to revoke access once granted but looks as if it did as a third). They had an idea but few resources to implement it. To go from where they were to where they are now and where they want to be requires a lot of work which is why they have so many development staff,

Not to mention Reddit really only has one interface - the web and HTML. Sure they have "web APIs" and all that, but it's still a collection of CGI in the end.

Dropbox not only has to manage storage and all that, but they have clients for all major mobile OSes, as well as clients for desktop OSes. And they own Mailbox or whatever it is as well, plus all the other integration with websites and other stuff. Just all the platform specific stuff and integration of web clients and all that is far more complex, so Dropbox has to have more people as a result.

Technical terms

[dbIII]

You've misunderstood a statement of "then the server went down on me".

Re:oops I read that wrong

[anonymous_echidna]

(Replying to "...but WHAT"...)

I guess you'd be surprised. Female *and* black, here.

Interesting. Stlll, female techs are scary because we tend not to fit the traditional stereotypes. Female *and* black doubly so.

Anecdote

[codeButcher]

I'm living/working in a country that seems to care somewhat less about gender roles in IT than the US. In my career I've worked with various women, and I never detected any sort of institutionalized sexism.

However, a number of women I've worked with tended to gravitate to non-programming roles (Business Analyst seems to be a favorite, others are Testers, Configuration Managers and what not). I've heard a couple of times "programming is too hard". It needs to be noted that these where intelligent people and their programming output, from what I could see personally, was certainly not inferior.

I'm puzzled by it, but I guess in an industry that does not enforce quotas but allows people the freedom to progress as they see fit, what is the harm?

Re:Die in a FIRE, Slashdot!

[Hognoxious]

I did that once and it was rejected. Then about half a day later there was the same article, almost word-for-word, by Roland Niquepaille.

Because there is a severe shortage of good develop

[SmallFurryCreature]

Because there is a severe shortage of good developers. I don't get the outright bile and hatred so many idiots here display about women in the workplace. Afraid they will take you jobs? I could double my income by getting people placed, and getting the bounty for finding them, in companies were they are desperate for GOOD developers, not the anti-social misogynists who want to see the world burn lousy coders who react with such angst to the idea a woman might be able to do their job.

But I don't know any good developers who aren't already making top dollars for their field who want to move. I know a shit load of really bad developers. Oh most of them can code, they just can't for the life of them deliver a project per requirements on time and on budget. Then your code quality don't matter, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

We need MORE people in the field because right now projects are on hold because there is nobody to do them. And that sucks! And to anyone who feels threatened by competition from either immigrants or women in this field must be really bad at their job.

I would not ever consider hiring phoenix03, he is clearly poisonous in the work place. Why is he so afraid of women?

Re:"Scarce"

[cyborg_zx]

When bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial individuals of native american/tongese extraction with dwarfism make up 51% of the population, that can be a goal.

Why?

Why isn't there a goal that these dwarfs also make up 50% of all Basketball players?

Re:Because there is a severe shortage of good deve

[phoenix03]

The idea of me being afraid of women is ridiculous, as you would know if you actually KNEW me. Any assertions you make about me are invalid purely on that fact - you know nothing about me. I happen to treat my girlfriend with a tremendous amount of respect and love. I have nothing against women coders - I work with a couple. They are very talented, and I enjoy working with them. As for me being poisonous in the workplace? My superiors would disagree.

You completely missed the point of my post. If women want to code, then God bless - there's plenty of work to be done. If you don't, great - plenty of other fields for you. Where you lose me is the perception that because women CHOOSE to do something else, it something that has to be addressed. No, no it doesn't. And there are plenty of other comments addressing another completely ignored problem - where are the 'demands' for equality in teachers? or nursing? Don't hear much there. THAT is true equality - when both sexes are allowed to choose the fields that compliment them and their skills/desires, and let the distribution fall as it may.

As for hiring me? I would never in a million years work for you. You sound like a terrible boss.

Re:Threatened, much?

[Ash-Fox]

Why aren't you explaining the reality of the situation then?

It's funny because it's so 'obvious' but apparently nobody here appears to have concrete information one way or another, are you some sort of troll?

Re:It takes one jerk to ruin a workplace

[Ash-Fox]

I still remember when I made that decision: going for a job interview as a programmer and being told that all the guys like making sexist jokes, and that I'd have to be OK with that.

I can understand that isn't a fun environment. On the upside, at least he told you about it before you even started. I suspect some places wouldn't even consider that being an issue.

Some of the comments here show that the culture still isn't women-friendly in a lot of places.

I'm the sort that really just wants to get the job done well with best talent and soon with the least amount of friction from people.

It only takes one jerk allowed to speak their mind to make a workplace unbearable.

As a male, I run into this problem on some projects. Although not generally related to sexism, the person just has an objectionable personality.

Re:Pesky females

[neminem]

That is dumb. See also: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/substantive_adjective
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-substantive-adjective.htm

Re:"Scarce"

[ranton]

When bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial individuals of native american/tongese extraction with dwarfism make up 51% of the population, that can be a goal.

Why?

Why isn't there a goal that these dwarfs also make up 50% of all Basketball players?

Probably because no one believes that more dwarfs would improve the NBA.

Most people believe that more women in STEM fields will improve those fields. If there are a million programmers in the country and only 25% are men, odds are that there are 500,000 women out there who would make fine developers but don't because of . And more importantly, there would be 50,000 more of the top 10% of programmers who actually do most of the work. I work in consulting and we are always looking for more elite IT consultants, and I would love for the number of elite professionals in this field to increase by 50%.

These gender gap figures are only irrelevant if you believe that women are simply inferior to men in STEM fields. Most people don't believe that.

Re:"Scarce"

[cyborg_zx]

Probably because no one believes that more dwarfs would improve the NBA.

Right, because there are certain physical characteristics that just makes that an unsuitable role.

Most people believe that more women in STEM fields will improve those fields.

These gender gap figures are only irrelevant if you believe that women are simply inferior to men in STEM fields. Most people don't believe that.

Which are faith based assertions.

I'm not saying it's incorrect, just that it's clearly not established that it must necessarily be the fault of men or male dominated workplaces that is the fault such that one could say having a short stature is clearly a disadvantage for basketball.

So an arbitrary target such as "50%" because there is approximately an equal gender split is ignoring any actual reasons.

For example it might actually be the case that there should be 75% women in these roles if men were actually conspiring to keep women out!

In short: I hate this sort of simplified gender politics and implication that women can't get up and do the things they want to do on their own. My grandmother seemed perfectly capable of doing so and showing me my first computer so I just don't buy this line unless we're being completely condecending to women.

Cry me a river

[aoism]

Where is it written that men and women have to like the exact same things in the exact same percentages? Has anyone considered that the percentage of women in IT is low because *drumroll* Women find other professions more interesting / fulling? Do you like rhetorical questions? For instance, around 2011, 91% of all nurses were Women. And before you say "well, it's because Women are naturally nurturers", consider only 35% of Doctors are Female (http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/employment_occupations/cb13-32.html, http://www.yalemedlaw.com/2012/05/women-in-medicine-how-female-doctors-have-changed-the-face-of-medicine/). I don't see men launching music videos trying to get boys to put the GI Joes down and be nurses (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/a-viral-video-encourages-girls-to-become-engineers/?_r=0) How about let the women who want to be engineers be engineers without forcing it because you're OCD and can't stand an uneven split in the demographics.

well this is terrifying

[captainlavender]

Yes, a profession dominated by one gender implies either discrimination or huge social stigma. The example of male elementary schoolteachers SUPPORTS this argument. And BOTH of those things are a problem.

When women say they are just naturally no good at programming, what you are hearing is social programming. They didn't just all independently come up with this idea. This idea has been drilled into womens' brains, along with thousands (millions?) of other ideas of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They are not due to "naturally evolved differences between men and women" I mean jesus CHRIST. Do people actually think that?

No, there are not fewer women in this profession because they all quit to have babies. That would just reduce the ratio of women in every profession, which it has not.

I'm also seeing a lot of comments about the "feminization of society" and how men are being discriminated against now that the feminazis are in power. I guess the MRM has a presence on /. as well, since they are really the only group that uses that rhetoric. Truly tragic. I don't really have the strength to tackle the incredible amounts of denial and misogyny inherent in Mens' Rights dogma, but if anyone's interested I'd imagine I can find a takedown pretty fast, given that MRM is considered a hate group.

In conclusion, that's enough /. for me today. Or maybe just enough altogether, if this is the userbase this place attracts.

Re:It takes one jerk to ruin a workplace

[Ash-Fox]

And each and every guy who stays silent while another guy makes sexist remarks, is telling women that sexist behavior is perfectly fine by him.

Assuming you're correct (and I'm not convinced): I wouldn't have expected females to be so judgemental. Personally, I try to avoid conclusions without more concrete information. As we already have business classes on sexual harassment, sexist remarks etc. Perhaps we need a new one on judgement and generalizations? Such classes could help the divide between male and female ratios if they're the root cause.

Who in their right mind would WANT to work somewhere where they can't trust their colleagues not to make their life miserable?

In my experience, there seems to be always one person, doesn't matter if it's in McDonalds or doing consulting work for one of the biggest tech companies. I don't think anyone /wants/ to be in that situation, but I think it's very unlikely not to encounter it.