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NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders
gollum123 writes: Back in the day, computer science was as legitimate a career path for women as medicine, law, or science. But in 1984, the number of women majoring in computing-related subjects began to fall, and the percentage of women is now significantly lower in CS than in those other fields. NPR's Planet Money sought to answer a simple question: Why? According to the show's experts, computers were advertised as a "boy's toy." This, combined with early '80s geek culture staples like the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, as well as movies like War Games and Weird Science, conspired to instill the perception that computers were primarily for men.
As I recall, it was more that, in movies and TV, women found romance working in business, and rarely in computing.
Computing meant anti-social. Business meant meeting attractive men in business suits with lots of money and power.
Geeks only had time travel in bad looking vans.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The only thing responsible for a "lack of women coders" is that fewer women than men are interested in software development as a career path. So what? I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to why this is a problem, why this is something to be concerned about, or why millions of dollars are being thrown around in an attempt to change the situation.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
How many smart people are swayed by advertising?
Or salespeople?
Rhetorical of course. Advertising and salespeople only sway stupid people.
...they're constantly finding new reasons why there's no women 'coders'?
There has to be, what, 12 different reasons now?
Men started to outpace women at an accelerated rate when the highly personal learning style of "having a pc to play on" became an option. Given that we see more and more of an imbalance in favor of women in group learning environments (college and even moreso in graduate programs), maybe this is just something very obvious, and a good thing for men, as men can excel in solitary study which they can tailor to their own interests and pace. As my wife, a school psychologist said, girls tend to learn better in groups, and don't typically like to work in competitive/solo situations given the choice, whereas boys often do. I'll take the advantage on this one, gladly.
When computers were viewed as toys, it was acceptable for girls to have them. Once they became tools, however, they were only for boys.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
FFS, enough with the concern trolling. We get it, there isn't a 50/50 ratio of men and women in tech.
I fail to see why we have to try and forcibly "fix" that and can't just accept that women, for whatever reason, don't want to go into tech.
You don't see anyone complaining about the lack of men in nursing or as elementary school teachers or the lack of women garbage collectors. Stop whining about the same thing in tech.
the thing is that computer science was transformed to during the 80's and not the same thing it was before
previous discussion about this
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Who cares! Coding is on average a dead-end job with long hours. Why not talk about good long-term careers for women instead, rather than high burn-and-churn jobs? Coders happen to be demand right now, but we've seen bubbles before, and will probably see them again.
Table-ized A.I.
In before someone uses "SJW" as a pejora--
Oh.
I am by no means a feminist; but this sounds like patronizing, paternalistic bullshit. News flash: woman have brains and they do what they want. They don't want to code. Deal with it.
Here's an idea: instead of using this just to pin blame, why not try and see if it's true by spending money on showing the girls of today how awesome they can be with the power of programming! Then in 30 years we can blame those ads on the declining interest boys have in computing and circlejerk some more.
So all big wigs made it a boys toy for sales in 80s and now its society and evil patriarchs fault not enough girls find interest. But now we know the truth. Its their fault
My mother used to be one of those programmers working for IBM. These women where nothing more then secretaries with a glorified title.
They punched the holes for the programs the real programmers wrote.
Back in the day, computer science was as legitimate a career path for women as medicine, law, or science....
I'd really like to seen some substantiation for this assertion, as it is so important for the validity of the other assertion that there has been a change since then.
I read a post about this article somewhere else the other day and someone pointed out that there was a drop in CS majors at the same point for males as well. Possibly due to more varied degrees which involved computers being offered. So there may not have been a real drop in female CS majors at that time, just an overall drop.
80s ads are probably the reason for the lack of male nurses, too.
If 80's pop culture had that much lasting influence, every college student would still be majoring in kicking commie ass and breakdancing.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Madonna wore a Boy Toy tee shirt. Does this explain the lack of female pop singers today?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
what is social justice? something that weak-minded pieces of shit require?
In before SJW brigade comes in demanding everyone involved apologized.
Nope, only the white males--the source of all evil in the world. Any other group may use their "Victim of Evil White Male Oppression" card in lieu of an apology.
There were many other things going on during the '80s. The country was in the middle of a deep and prolonged recession. Women were given hiring preference in most technical fields. Comp Sci programs became more competitive. Maybe 0.1% of coeds ended up in other fields for various reasons.
That might be the same article that mentioned that Cosmo used to push the idea of women programmers. Do they still do that or did they stop doing that in the 80's.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
Nerds are the tail end of the problem. You're expecting them to wag the dog when it's the greeks and the jocks that control all of the really relevant media outlets.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We have a great reason, in fact I read it the other day and said "Wow, this is brilliant!". What is this reason? People are making too much money as developers so people are trying to drive the market price down. The same issues we talk about for women programmers are used for getting kids interested in programming, and the same reasons we are seeing all this hype to increase the H1B numbers for developers.
I know, I know.. it's really hard to believe that big businesses would collude for nefarious purposes because all of these businesses are purely altruistic and have never harmed society. It's probably harder to believe that the Government would be in on this collusion, because our Government has never harmed it's own people either. (if the sarcasm is not obvious I can't help you)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Assigning guilt/blame to a group of people based on a characteristic outside of their control tends to do that.
And the results in most IT offices being a f'in sausage-fest.
Whilst I have no aptitude for HR or marketing, I'd urge any undecided young person out there to fully consider.
the computer establishment was shown as Big Brother and all the tech workers were depicted as mindless slaves. All shown in dull black and white footage.
Then comes running a feisty young woman in colorful athletic clothes. She hurls a hammer and destroys the system. Lesson: girls hate computers and break them!
I'm now the parent of both a young boy and a young girl, and already I'm starting to see the social cues kick in. My wife, who's incredibly smart and finance-minded rather than IT minded also confirms that the separation of roles starts very early and parents really have to work against it if they want to avoid pigeonholing. Even now, in the 2010s, the idea of girls being swept away by handsome princes is still drilled into girls' heads right from the start. Same thing goes for girls being conditioned to think of nothing but their wedding day for the next 20+ years. Boys don't have this same relentless pressure for whatever reason...they're still steered towards harder subjects in school, and conditioned that they will be the breadwinner someday. It's been a while since women would go to college solely to find a husband, but the messaging is still there.
But...one of the things that isn't mentioned is the fact that I think women self-select out of the profession as well. Regardless of gender, you have to put up with a lot of crap in an IT or development job. Being a woman makes it worse because of the potential for sexual harassment, the perception of women not being able to contribute as much due to their childbearing responsibilities, etc. If I were a woman, I sure wouldn't want to work around some of my colleagues, whose behavior and attitudes toward women sometimes make me uncomfortable. (And I can deal with a lot -- I'm far from some PC feminist.) I work for some pretty conservative companies too, I can't imagine the environment at a Web 2.0 startup where most of the management are the founders' hand-picked fraternity brothers.
what is social justice? something that weak-minded pieces of shit require?
Well, in this context it is a label some Americans use against anything they don't like, as liberal, socialism, scientists. For others it is part of the founding values of modern America after SJWs abolished slavery. And from a pure self_interest economic point of view _ it is thoroughly documented that social justice drive economic progress:
I am by no means a feminist
You don't say.
In the dawn of computing, women were largely typists, inputting data.
Data entry was part of CS.
Now, that's long gone. The degrees you typically see women actively and passionately pursuing relate to social welfare / being social / large community involvement.
Management and teaching are such areas. IT, being entirely solo or part of small, tight knit group? Not so much.
**I am NOT saying there is no place in IT for females, it just that the females I've talked about pursuing IT careers don't care much about the job itself, but more about the salary and as a way to slide into a management roll. I've yet to find a female who gets as excited that a new processor or software X is being released.
Women don't make good computer code. They just can't do it.
Satya
...so today are women ndividuals who can do anything men can do and are perfectly capable of functioning in modern society to wit, choosing the career path that they want to follow out of interest, talent, and education?
Or are they intimidatable, wilting violets incapable of exercising free will, intimidated by the faintest approbation, and unable to choose a career because some shitty 1980s movies didn't ACTUALLY show "girls doing data entry"?
I'm just trying to keep track here. I need to know if I should treat them like plain old people, or tread delicately around their fragile sensibilities?
-Styopa
Barbie is just as much to blame. So many girls raised to believe that beauty was more important than anything else to have a successful life. Beauty means getting to marry a rich man that you can stay at home, cook, clean, and raise the kids for. "I'm just a girl, tee hee hee".
The dominance of computer's as something for men in 80s pop culture was probably reflecting the trend rather than causing it. The timeline seems too short for so few pop culture things to influence.
The market for coding evolved at first primarily from 'data entry', which required nearly no training. Women of the time (disadvantaged or disinclined from training depending on your opinion) could take those jobs and men who needed to 'provide' sought higher trained jobs with higher pay. Basically straightforward data entry started to become 'advanced data entry' that started incorporating things like formulas and continued on from there. Perhaps because it started to demand more and more skills, narrowing the labor pool and driving up compensation, enticing men to start participating more heavily and an overall male-favorable social bias started to take effect. Or perhaps the nature of the work fundamentally changed enough in a way that drive a different male/female interest. Or some other factor, these are all guesses.
I just doubt that a handful of 80s movies changed the entire landscape of female participation in the market basically within a couple of years of the first movie's release, and there's a lot of alternative explanations that are quite viable.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Hear me out. There are many reasons for women not being coders but one is games. Myself and other male friends who are "good with computers" had to do all kinds of stuff like make custom boot disks with virtual memory specifically targeted for one DOS game*. We did this as we were 9 and just wanted to get a game to work. All of that trial and error led to understanding things like variables and If/then decisions. In just a few years we had confidence to try things like programming whereas people who didn't get into the guts of their computer were more timid and didn't know the difference between a memory and storage space. Therefore making the task of learning to code more challenging.
*Why girls didn't play games is another issue. I think many of the same factors like NPR points out.
Not quite. If abolitionists relied on SJW techniques we would still be reading internet rants about abysmal plantation conditions for female slaves and how male slaves are over-represented in houseboy roles.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
wah wah wah
cry more you poor baby
Assigning guilt/blame to a group of people based on a characteristic outside of their control tends to do that.
Ok, so they group of people being assigned blamed here is advertising executives, but I gather you meant that another group felt guilty?
Overall, there's not that many women in any of the STEM fields. Can't blame the lack of women in chemical engineering on advertising, although the computer tech field is probably worse than most other STEM fields.
My wife has an electrical engineering degree and has been developing software for about 20 years, and in my time knowing her I can say she's worked with some real ignorant, arrogant, and possibly sexist men. Her ideas are frequently ignored when she states them, but listened to when a man states them. She approaches problems from different angles and many people she's worked with refuse to stop their single-mindedness to look at the problem from a different direction. IMO it's issues like these that drive women from engineering more than anything else. There's a culture that is almost hostile for women, and it is certainly harder to get anywhere in our field as a woman.
I admit I suffer from this at times when we are working on a problem together. The difference is I actually care to hear her input even if I have to force myself to shift gears. It isn't easy but her view is so alien from mine, but it has ALWAYS been valuable. Her view either directly leads to a solution or sets us off in another direction for the eventual solution.
It's not that women can't do it, but imo it really seems like men don't want them in the field.
One of the worst shows on NPR if you ask me.
The corollary to that is a bunch of virgins and douchebags sitting around complaining about SJWs and generally demonstrating themselves to be clueless fuckwads like yourself.
When you get punked like the whiny bitch you are, do you have to sleep on the cum stain?
That might be the same article that mentioned that Cosmo used to push the idea of women programmers. Do they still do that or did they stop doing that in the 80's.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
Nerds are the tail end of the problem. You're expecting them to wag the dog when it's the greeks and the jocks that control all of the really relevant media outlets.
Your preconceptions are showing. The "perpetrators" here (if your want to view socioeconomic issues through such a simplistic filter) are the advertising people. But I agree, they are generally denigrated, especially by nerds.
I knew all that "the Jews control the media" antisemitic stuff was bullshit. Glad to hear I was right and it's actually the greeks.
They were built by people that submersed themselves in the field. Fucking feminists have no fucking clue who to blame and fail to see the limits of their own minds.
Or, it could be, that this is complete nonsense:
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
The entire field had the same bump. It wasn't just women. The percentage of women in the field has never risen above about 35%
I'd argue that's when the field was new and exciting. Then it tapered off and remained stable until the internet bubble... and tapered off again.
I think that, if anything, this shows women are savvy. They saw a new tech, took advantage of it. After the industry became less flashy, and the best jobs were harder to get they moved on. Then when the realities of the industry started to sink in and the industry collapsed they again left.
It might be that they are intimidated by my stylish wardrobe furnished by TJ Max.
In the dawn of computing, women were largely typists, inputting data.
I was doing computer work in the 1980s. I worked with women who were programming, doing VAX & mainframe admin, and performing actual rigorous systems analysis.
The claim that women are not interested in technology or computing is just false.
At least his grammar isn't like a baby's.
Good work! I *knew* this wasn't a complex problem with multiple related causes spanning decades. Now we know The Truth: One cause, from a small span of years. IN YOUR FACE, everyone else!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Is this trend apparent in other cultures what were not affected by 80's Western marketing?
Say, for instance, is there a 50/50 split among woman and men in computer science in China, India, and Africa? What about South America?
I have a feeling this is not as simple as the author is making it out to be.
This, combined with early '80s geek culture staples like the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, as well as movies like War Games and Weird Science, conspired to instill the perception that computers were primarily for men.
I had no clue that "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy was a popular book in 1984. My Apple ][ class in middle school at that time was split down middle between boys and girls. Some teachers must have read that book, noted the errors of their ways, and pushed the girls back into the typewriter class thereafter. Well, duh.
Not quite. If abolitionists relied on SJW techniques we would still be reading internet rants about abysmal plantation conditions for female slaves and how male slaves are over-represented in houseboy roles.
ok, so you don't really mean social justice (which anti-slavery surely is), you are angry at women's rights. It is interesting how some males -- in a society where a significant majority on *any* power metric (house/senate/politicians, legislation, corporate executives, legal, law enforcement, wealthy, etc) are male -- are able to feel they live in a woman-ruled society that is unfair to them as males. Quite fascinating.
You heard it folks, women won't get into programming, unless they are tricked by advertising.
That might be the same article that mentioned that Cosmo used to push the idea of women programmers. Do they still do that or did they stop doing that in the 80's.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
Nerds are the tail end of the problem. You're expecting them to wag the dog when it's the greeks and the jocks that control all of the really relevant media outlets.
I wonder what this portends for the future of programming.
Because if young women are turned away, indeed discouraged by anything not completely positive, it means that Programming and all of the other Tch type careers will have to be completely revamped.
Case in point, I went for a tech career. I wanted it, and I gave not a flying fig what anyone thought about whether it was cool, socially uplifting, or fashionable. I was not in any way shape or form discouraged by my meekness, nor the portrayals of tech people on Television
All of the females I worked felt exactly the same way.
All of the males I worked with felt exactly the same way.
And we worked hard, put in a lot of hours because that is what we wanted to do. And we did it.
Now it appears, that we must change. We must adapt our requirements toward people who are easily swayed out of this carreer path. We must, in the name of equal representation, educate and employ people who are highly susceptable to social approval by others.
Hey - we'll need good luck with that. I've always said that the only way to get gender balance will be to force young women into Tech jobs.
Or perhaps Tech isn't a job for everyone?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
back a few century ago nurse were men, same with teacher, and less and less entered in the profession and now it is not exclusively but at least crushing majority of women. And yet nobody is complaining about "t's that "fewer women than used to, where every other intensely medical and teaching field has had the opposite trend"(this article)".
I see a dangerous tendence : if women have an disadvantageous inequlity, it is fought against. If men have a diadvantageous inequality it is glossed over, ignored, or mocked. There are many example of this , to take one at random, for willing men, how many do you think get the children guardianship during a divorce with visiting right to the mother ? And how many father get visiting right and guardianship by the mother ? That is a problem.
I used to be a feminist 20 years ago when it meant fighting for gender equalkity in both direction, when we used to recognize that only fighting for women equality without fight for men's would generate much higher resistance than fighting for both equality. Sadly that is nowadays less and less true for vocal feminist. In fact you rarely see that mentionned, except as a token when feminist debate MRA (which I think are a bunch of idiot which do more negative against their cause , but it is a theme for another discussion). But if you look at the detail, feminist nowadays do diddly squat for men's equality, and that sadden me. I consider myself not a feminist anymore but an gender-egalitriste.
And I think with time it will even be worst.
I wonder how many of these folks trying to peel the onion of female tech empowerment are actually in the fucking industry. Seriously, blame the 80's? How about blaming parents that don't teach their daughters the realities of the career prospects for Art History major or Marine Biologist. Technology in America is the ultimate democracy. Anyone willing to truly master a skill set that is in demand in the industry can have their shot given enough talent and persistence. The only segment you could really say gets shut out is anyone who cannot for whatever reason pass a background check. One of the things that keep us honest in this industry is being free to speak our minds, so people need to cut out the "boys won't play nice" rhetoric. If women need men to change their attitudes before they are willing to participate it will be a long road to progress.
Yeah, let's have more women coders. I can't wait for the "Say Yes to the Dress" app!
...that women act like lemmings?
Actually that's part of the problem.
Women frequently don't like being fawned over by unattractive men. Usually when women get "chased off" by nerds it's that very "would kill for more women to be interested in this stuff" attitude that does it.
Most egregiously, the sexism study shows that women dominated fields scar newcomers so much that if they then join a more accepting male dominated field they may overreact. It's not the computer field that's chasing women away - it's their previous experience working with many women.
The PNAS.org study is fundamentally flawed. The premise is to hire someone for a math task. In most countries, men do better in math. Yes, it's a simple math task that anyone could do, but the study shows that men are most often hired. I contend that is as reasonable as typically hiring a woman to babysit - even though either gender could do the basics.
I can't find a guy in college that has seen Die Hard let alone remember an ad from the 80s. This is probably the stupidest thing I've heard and Slashdot has been digging up a whole lot of stupid lately.
Apologies are cheap. And they don't come with implied commitments. I don't mind apologizing for being a rich white male so long as I can continue laughing all the way to the bank.
Honestly, I really am sorry that I have more money than you do. I wish you the best in obtaining similar money. Thanks for the chat, see you later!
The ads showed computers as toys for boys because that was what the market was like and not the other way around.
In the mainframe days most people only met a computers in their college days. Some would become more interested in them than what they were supposed to be studying (physics, biology, whatever - computer science courses were pretty rare back then) and would end up becoming programmers. It was mostly men, but there were a reasonable number of women (a lot more than today in relative terms, fewer in absolute numbers).
The microcomputer revolution happened because a certain kind of guy (as far as I know, no women participated in the Homebrew Computer Club meetings, for example) wanted to have his very own computer even if it was completely useless. Normal computer people looked down on those weirdos, but they soon hit it big. As prices came down it was possible to give a kid a computer as a toy. Practically no girls were interested (and those that were tended to be discouraged by parents and friends) but most boys were also not excited about calculating Fibanacci sequences or typing in Basic listings to draw mazes. It was a rather specialized market and that is what the ads aimed for.
The computers in the 1980s ads simply were not interesting for the general public. This changed in the early 1990s with the home office - a computer with disks and a reasonable printer and compatible with the one you had at work and changed yet again in the late 1990s with the Internet. That brought its own set of problems (which the Raspberry Pi was created to address) without killing the "computers are toys for boys" image that had been created.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
My experience exactly. Some female representation is a good addition to the workforce. But they do need to be aligned toward a Tech outlook. And no, that is not the stereotype of the ass grabbing testosterone fueled Techie, becaue maybe 99.9 percent of Techs are painfully shy.
No, as I recall, it takes a lot of hours, a lot of caffeine, and junk food sitting at a computer screen.
And unless we change that little bit of ground truth, we are not going to attract the young women who are more interested in other careers at the present..
Instead of the increasingly vicious attacks on geeks, perhaps the young ladies need to adapt just a little?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Why do the editors keep accepting these bullshit stories? War games and Weird science chased women out of CS, seriously?
http://hugelolcdn.com/i700/235...
I love NPR. However, Planet Money is a glib and superficial show. Just because they talk about money doesn't mean that the host or its researchers correctly understand technology or how it is affected by social/media events from over 30 years ago.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
The article is not saying that nerds are not welcoming women. But.. there are some really bad examples of women in technology being treated really badly. Look at some of the latest gaming activism against female game journalists. If you really want to look behind the surface on what happened, it is thoroughly disgusting.
On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
That's creepy (j/k, sort of).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, that's unfortunate. Because, try as I might, I've yet to find a way to make my team more attractive. I guess I could hire some male models, but they generally make pretty shitty coders.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Conspire is a pretty strong word...
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
If you listen to the NPR segment, they have a couple of women who were former compsci majors give accounts of how the men in their classes denigrated them and mocked them for missing some knowledge. I'm not certain it's motivated by a "no girls allowed" attitude. I think there's a broader culture of elitism in compsci that motivates people to try to bolster their own egos by jumping on perceived weaknesses in others.
It's important to note that to focus of the segment was on university compsci courses in the 80s, not women who get employed on professional teams. Generally people are a bit more mature in the workforce (generally). These are 18-22 year old males. They likely were a bit ostracized as nerdy in high school. I think they just get overzealous once they find themselves in a world where athletic prowess is no longer the ultimate display of dominance. they make bad decisions.
They might even be simply showing off. I think i've tried to impress nerd girls the wrong way. Where i thought i was communicating, "hey look at how good i am at this!", i really was saying, "OMG YOU ARE A STUPID GIRL". I certainly wasn't very good at communicating with women in my late teens and early 20s. i'm only marginally better at it 20 years later.
Let's hunt down and execute those chauvenist bastards!
Seriously, obviously the ads existed, and depicted a male-centric environment. They are a piece, but not the whole answer.
In case that got missed - I don't think he was *actually* referring to people from Greece, but rather to people from "Greek Life" - ie well-connected fraternities. The accusation is against the wealthy, not those from Greece.
In before SJW brigade comes in demanding everyone involved apologized.
wow, you anti-SJW people really got your knickers in a bunch don't you. Leave it to America to came up with stirring anger against social justice, and use it pro-actively as a straw-man in any debate.
Hmm. That seemed shallow and not well-thought-out. The common usage of "SJW" is pejorative by definition. From Urban Dictionary:
"SJW: Social Justice Warrior. A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation."
Early programmers were typists. Somebody came up with the calculation (a mathematician) and someone else typed it into the computer (a programmer).
Now programmers come up with the algorithms, do the math, and type the stuff themselves (software engineer).
If you want to blame it on anything in the 70s or 80s, blame it on making typing class mandatory. Once everyone could type, there was little need to hand over a program to someone else to enter into the computer.
So why were early programmers predominately female? Because typing pools were predominately female.
Am not really sure about this, as a male I've been given shit plenty of times when I screwed up as a student. I even had one of my lecturers give me the 'women are better than men' speech once.
Funnily enough I didn't leave the course/sue him for sexism or demand a feminist blog cover my plight.
Dude, you're quoting Urban Dictionary as a source? You realize that *anybody* can put in a definition, unedited, unreviewed, unsubstantiated, for whatever they want the term to mean?
Well, that's unfortunate. Because, try as I might, I've yet to find a way to make my team more attractive. I guess I could hire some male models, but they generally make pretty shitty coders.
Yeah, and if you found a boss or colleague fawning over you for none-work-reasons, you would be totally fine with that?
An aside: When the last tech boom happened in the 90s the media (certainly here in the UK) was full of articles about a lack of women coders & how women are missing out on this amazing career.
Then the crash happened, along with outsourcing & wages for programmers dropped (along with social status). Hardly any articles then about 'We need more women!!!'
A few years later the recent social/apps boom starts, wages go up and... 'Coding needs women. Now!'
So what is happening? - when coding is seen as a way of earning lots of money is easier to attract female applicants?
Or... as wages go up companies feel the need to push wages down by vastly increasing the applicant pool?
They missed a big one:Revenge of the Nerds. Who wants to be associated with that kind of Nerd/Computer culture?
This is a very bad sanitation of how it is.
Fact, SJWs Identify as SJWs. It is not a pejorative. it is an accurate description of the group targeted.
SJWs are a very small minority of people which use very abusive techniques to attack people because feminism. They are very easily swayed and used as a weapon. Get accused of something? Claim Misogyny. it doesn't matter if you're a white guy, just claim that they are attacking women and the SJWs will swoop in to start clawing.
How many women are entering the IT field TODAY?
If you assume that the women who were influenced by 1980s pop culture stereotypes were 10-20 years old, they're now in their 40s or older now. That might explain the dearth of women in more senior IT positions, but what about women entering IT now, ie, women who were too young to be influenced in the 1980s?
Despite the fact that most young women have smartphones and are heavily influenced by their own peers to use them, there's probably some other narrative that tries to explain away women's lack of involvement in IT.
It is simply not good to not recruit from the whole potential talent pool.
So it's also the 80s movies to blame that women are not interested in careers like soldier, spy, pilot, policeman (apology, -woman), archaeologist, exorcist, karate fighter,...
Has anyone ever looked closer at the 80s? The 80s were not a geek decade. The only movie I can remember where geeks were not just the comic foil (ok, even in that one they were) was "Revenge of the nerds". The whole "engineering geeks" were no role model in 80s movies, and even less so in TV series. Whenever they were in some prominent role, they were the little sidekick of the actual hero. Be it Automan's creator Walter, who was mostly a comic sidekick (ok, the show wasn't that memorable, but the special effects were great for its time) or Street Hawk's Norman who was some timid, beancounter-ish scaredy-cat. The geek roles were at best meant to make the hero shine some more.
Actually, the only engineer role I can remember that was allowed to be superior in areas to the hero and be more than a nuisance to him was that of Bonnie in Knight Rider.
A woman.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This one goes against the stereotype: Youtube
This one features a female computer operator: More Youtube
IBM ad showing neckbeard nerd devian- ah, no it doesn't : IBM
This is a very bad sanitation of how it is.
Fact, SJWs Identify as SJWs. It is not a pejorative. it is an accurate description of the group targeted.
SJWs are a very small minority of people which use very abusive techniques to attack people because feminism. They are very easily swayed and used as a weapon. Get accused of something? Claim Misogyny. it doesn't matter if you're a white guy, just claim that they are attacking women and the SJWs will swoop in to start clawing.
If they are a very small minority, how come so many people want to mention them at every chance they get? It seems for some outspoken Americans, feminism is taking on the same enemy-definition as liberal, socialism and scientists. It is interesting that this is happening in a society that every objective power metric is male dominated.
This is crazy. I programmed PC's way back in the TRS-80 days. Yes, there was social stigma - the "nerd" archetype. The crazy part is it WAS discouraging but directly aimed towards us geeky guys who were doing it! Why is this now interpreted as something that specifically affected woman? MEN who had interest in programming were stereotyped and depicted as lifeless, sexless, unattractive, socially awkward, physically weak, and all-around laughable. (See characters in old films like "Revenge of the Nerds"). Is it supposed to be that men are happy to be characterized disparagingly and woman aren't?
Really, I never once considered what was going on in hollywood when I started playing with computers in the late 70s, nor did any of my friends. The women I did know who got into it got into it for the same reason they got into chess and maths and DnD and all other geek activities.
Die in a fire, you anti-plutocratic faggot.
"I think there's a broader culture of elitism in compsci that motivates people to try to bolster their own egos by jumping on perceived weaknesses in others."
Sounds like the perfect environment for women to thrive. How have they not caught on yet?
Seriously though most tech guys are fine, if not a little awkward but then again most tech women are too. It's not an extroverted profession. Some people try to one up or put down others. Introverted guys can feel threatened by a pair of boobs and feel safe in a crowd of penises. Someone will have to jump the comfort zone.
That said there are many women in tech thriving and honestly if you're good at your job the guys who aren't socially inept around the opposite sex will be fine with it. Just please come into this with some thick skin/patience. There will be nerdy jokes and they are also used to being around only guys so it's probably not the most professional environment compared to a legal office or hospital. Also prepare to talk about shit like comics and magic cards and dr who.
Embrace the nerd in yourself and the nerd may embrace you back ;) and he might get a contact boner too... Whoops how did that happen?
This thesis is laughable. If you believe advertisements in the 1980s are responsible for a perceived shortage of female programmers today, then you are an imbecile.
and self reliance and self definition? It is always the larger world that wronged someone, or coerced them to act in ways they never would have on their own? Maybe just maybe we need men and women looking at themselves and deciding for themselves what and who they want to be without societal influences bending our wills one way or another. If it is societies fault/influence does it matter if a man or women isn't coding or breast feeding? They've lost the only battle that matters which is free thought.
It is possible that eagerness drives off the ladies.
"If you listen to the NPR segment, they have a couple of women who were former compsci majors give accounts of how the men in their classes denigrated them and mocked them for missing some knowledge. "
That is not sexism. Guess what? They did the exact same thing to males in the class.
I have read studies that show that women do better in all women schools because men tend to compete and display while women tend to co-operate.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Hell yeah! I would love to be fawned over and flattered, and have people help me with my work and buy me free sodas. My colleagues and subordinates are more than welcome to do that for me any day!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's creepy to be nice to the people you work with???? WTF kind of place do YOU work at?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Just his entire "thought" process.
You "worked" females? Die in a fire, you rapist faggot.
Prove me wrong!
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
Replace the word "nice" with "creepy." The problem with the unwashed coding masses is that they have no idea how to treat women as people, learn how to communicate in the their language, show any interest in what they like, etc.. Instead they try to find women who are just fantasy versions of themselves, but with boobs.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Hell yeah! I would love to be fawned over and flattered, and have people help me with my work and buy me free sodas. My colleagues and subordinates are more than welcome to do that for me any day!
And you have no concept of different people perceiving this differently? If they don't react like you it is their fault?
I didn't really claim it was sexism. i guess when i described the situation i was thinking it was obvious that the mocking is part of the culture regardless of gender. I didn't get the impression that TFA laid the mocking out as the sexism either. TFA was more focused on the idea that the sexism was marketing computers towards boys as toys.
That is not sexism.
Yes, but it is something that disproportionately affects women for whatever reason. Part of Harvey Mudd College's efforts to encourage women to enroll/continue in computer science was to actively discourage that kind of ego/elitism (partially by having a separate "honors" intro course for all the egoists to clump into). It greatly reduced drop-out rates for women, while I'm sure plenty of men also benefited from the less toxic environment.
The point is that "tech culture discourages women from participating" != "tech culture is sexist and anti-women". The latter may be true in cases, but explicit sexism is pretty well frowned upon, so the former is worth focusing on.
Yeah I would say "OMG YOU ARE A STUPID ____" is endemic to the tech industry. I'm definitely guilty of it. Within half an hour you can have two people do it back and forth in half jest. But it's also true of nerdy girls in school and nerdy boys. Nerds are generally the victim of mocking so to be superior gives them an opportunity to take it out on others. It's not helpful--but it is understandable.
Ok, why aren't there:
- more men in fashion design ...
- more men in nursing
- more men in hair dressing
- more men in
I don't see an outcry over professions that have typically been dominated by women wanting more men in them, why is that?
Oh, it's money!
See, there's a lot of money in the tech industry and not a lot of women so there's an outcry. The thing is, there's plenty of money for anyone who is good at what they do, whatever that might be. Trying to systematically push women toward a career choice so an industry's demographics look better is bullshit!
Getting equal pay for equal work is the underlying problem, and that extends way beyond the tech industry for women. Let's stop trying to push people into jobs they would rather not do and work on getting the pay structure fair for eveyone.
Without looking I can guarantee this "study" was conducted by a female SJW. How do I know? Because the premise assumes the conclusion - a hallmark of SJW worldviews. Specifically, that the proportion of women in the IT field doesn't match the population distribution of women is a "problem" and this problem has a cause.
NPR: "vapid women subject to images in media don't apply to CS programs"
Surprisingly, the women that start in CS tend not to wash out. Guys were washouts a lot.
I grew up in the 80s . When I was 5 my parents bought a computer, ostensibly to help my father with grad school but the rest of the family used it much more. They also bought various books with computer programs that you were supposed to type in, but I read them instead because we didn't have the extended memory module required.
As a pre-teen I played edutainment games that included logo level programming and logic circuits. I went to a high school that had programming courses - and took them. By the time I hit college I had a lot of experience with computers. I also had a role model as my sister majored in computer science. Most of the other women at my school went into engineering majors where the starting position was more level.
So yeah, these things matter. Buy your daughters (and sons) raspberry pi's, arduinos, anything they can hack on - tablets, phones, and most PCs these days don't count. Maybe they decide not to play with them, but at least give them the opportunity.
Well who can stand being around a total Maxxinista?
Nothing posted to
I prefer the term "mangina"
Wow, look at the stereotypes in Wargames (came out in 1983) - shows the coder guy already nerding out. Just to say the trend was firm in the 80's.
As a child of the times, yeah it was guys wanting to shoot. TRS-100? TI 99/4, TRS-III, etc. Then apple II hooked some young women, but the basic of the day just killed.
Wow, not only is this wrong, it's stupid. Home computers were aimed at FAMILIES, especially Commodores. Apples were ubiquitous in education, and I don't remember girls being asked to leave the room while the boys hacked on BASIC and LOGO. Were there male-oriented ads? Yes, but I don't remember any unless you count Shatner's-- and that would be only if you were some ironic sexist who thought Star Trek wasn't for girls. The author provides a biased sample by digging up two that happened to feature boys in them-- and they still have girls present. If I felt like slogging on YouTube for an hour, I could probably find ten that had girls and women prominently involved.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
NPR doesn't know jack about anything anyway. It's a wonder they still exist.
I'm sorry, but wtf is your point? Are you saying that we should be hostile to women instead of nice, or nice instead of hostile, or that we should completely ignore them?
You say that men who are mean to women chase them off. Then you say men who are nice to women chase them off. And I'm pretty sure you would say that men ignoring women would chase them off. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SUGGEST?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So ... here's an article from the Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com... .
Research first reported in Science Magazine regarding the contribution of women to the collective intelligence of a team garnered worldwide attention, particularly the studies highlighting the performance of women when tested on tasks relating to brainstorming, complex problem-solving and decision-making. The findings confirmed that a group’s collective intelligence was strengthened by the inclusion of women and their enhanced capacity for listening, collaborating and intuitiveness. The CIA is one example of an organization that made a notable transformation of its culture by not only ensuring women had greater representation in senior positions, but also explicitly recognizing that it was women on their team who discovered the location of Osama Bin Laden, allowing for him to be captured.
You want men and women working together. Simple as that.
The business case goes like this:
The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.
Credit Suisse is not exactly some radical feminist organization out to overthrow patriarchy.
he problem with the unwashed coding masses is that they have no idea how to treat women as people, learn how to communicate in the their language, show any interest in what they like, etc.. Instead they try to find women who are just fantasy versions of themselves, but with boobs.
Now who's stereotyping?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
>as self-loathing as they are
um, you're projecting again...
they only cooperate if there are no men around
Guys like porn and video games; girls not so much.
Computers were made for porn and video games.
If you listen to the NPR segment, they have a couple of women who were former compsci majors give accounts of how the men in their classes denigrated them and mocked them for missing some knowledge. I'm not certain it's motivated by a "no girls allowed" attitude. I don't think y there's a broader culture of elitism in compsci that motivates people to try to bolster their own egos by jumping on perceived weaknesses in others.
I think any woman who entered the elite architectural and engineering schools in the eighties could have told you that "No girls allowed!" was the message broadcast loud and clear from Day 1.
Compsci was not the only offender.
If I were working on a serious project in which I needed no distractions, I would not be pleased at the idea of anyone being nearby, man or woman. I code best when I lose myself in the project and ignore everyone and everything else.
God, this stuff is cringe-inducing. Heard a story on NPR the other day about feminists subjecting other feminists to litmus tests.
I'm all for civil liberties, all of them, but mainly for the free speech ones. I think society done wrong against both donald sterling and brendan eich, but this is the world we live in and the first amendment can't protect us from each other.
I read some of these "SJW" rants, and i just think to myself... your struggle doesn't seem genuine, this is not your crusade... men and women who have undergone oppression, treat it with more solemnity, more respect. I wish they wouldn't treat it so... cheaply.
Don't be mean to women and also don't go out of your way to be excessively nice to them. Both of those things can make someone feel uncomfortable, just treat them like everyone else.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
At least it isn't yet overrun by effeminate SJW types insisting everyone should be as self-loathing as they are.
Are we reading the same page here?
anyone who has a collection of computer magazines from the 80s knows this is pretty much bullshit. Girls are plastered all over Ahoy, Compute! Compute! Gazette, Family Computing, and every magazine of the era. Women features as programmers and artist. http://www.bombjack.org/commod... is a great archive and you can use google to find more. There seemed to be an effort to be inclusive of women... What will you not find so much? Black people. Here and there, but for the most part missing.
And I think of the keeping up with the commodore commercials... They all had women and girls in them. The vic20 commercials with shatner had a boy and a girl.
There were pieces about software designers, like the woman who was part of the team that created archon. Women featured in the computer art contests and programming contests.
The problem lies not with advertising. It lies with schools and the fucked up social system of the status quo.
Yes, it is creepy to go out of your way to be nice with a subset of the people that work there.
Learn to love Alaska
That you're a stupid cunt who can't accept that people gravitate to what makes them happy, regardless of gender. Socially undesirable to who? What the mainstream media told you? Ah yes, another mind controlled idiot.
It sucks that humanity has nothing else better to write or complain about. But when 99% of the people in the tech industry are estrogen filled males I can see why you're all such whiney assholes making excuse after excuse for whatever situation you perceive is wrong.
wah wah wah cry more you poor baby
Waaah, poor "brown skinned people", as if you didn't create your own problems.
Now it appears, that we must change. We must adapt our requirements toward people who are easily swayed out of this carreer path. We must, in the name of equal representation, educate and employ people who are highly susceptable to social approval by others.
The problem with memory is that we often see the past not as it was, but as we want it to be.
Software development is usually done in an anti-social way. You chunk up a release or backlog or whatever into features, each dev takes a feature and goes off and writes some code. Later there is some collaboration in testing, code reviews, troubleshooting, etc.
But that is a TERRIBLE way to do it. The wrong code gets written way too often. Designs are bad because people aren't contributing along the way. Requirements get missed because the developer makes an assumption that s/he didn't know was an assumption. The more eyes on the code at all times the better. Devs should be constantly communicating with testers and people who understand the business case (product owners). One way to do that is pair programming. It sounds like a waste of time, but it is actually faster. Silly mistakes get caught right away. Debugging goes faster. Another way to do that is to chunk the work into very small pieces and constantly communicate to integrate your tiny piece with the other devs' tiny pieces. This leads to clean interfaces and modular code.
The Cowboy Superhero model of software development only makes sense if you are the only one developing a project. And remember in that case, your code dies when you get hit by a bus (or kill your wife and go to prison).
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
You say that men who are mean to women chase them off. Then you say men who are nice to women chase them off. And I'm pretty sure you would say that men ignoring women would chase them off. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SUGGEST?
How about treating women like you treat everyone else, so that they feel like people instead of walking tits?
(And no, I'm not an SJW, I'm a fat hairy nerd.)
weinersmith
Whatever your feelings on the subject, I wouldn't want to be treated like that. And, although I admit my evidence on this is anecdotal, I don't think most other people of my acquaintance would either.
It becomes particularly problematic when those doing the fawning think that providing free sodas and whatever creates some sort of reciprocal obligation on my part. (And honestly, if they don't think that, then why are they doing it?)
Where i thought i was communicating, "hey look at how good i am at this!", i really was saying, "OMG YOU ARE A STUPID GIRL".
You can be held accountable for what you say, or what you intended to say. You can't be held accountable for what someone else decided to hear you say.
Women like attractive men, and they choose work where they'll come into contact with attractive men, dressed nicely, well groomed, etc. That's not in IT. It's in banking, law, real estate, sales, and so on.
If the computer industry was where all the good-looking dudes were working, then women would outnumber us in a decade or less.
"Don't be mean to women" "treat them like everyone else"?
MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
Treat them just as you'd treat your non-female co-workers. Of course, then you'll end up with an Adria Richards type who thinks your mentioning of a dongle is sexual harassment.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Die in a fire, you anti-hellenic faggot.
But wouldn't faggots be pro-hellenic, or are the stories I heard about 'doing it like Greeks' incorrect?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
That is always the central, consistent message from every study/interview/book/doco/conversation ever.
Replace the word "nice" with "creepy." The problem with the unwashed coding masses is that they have no idea how to treat women as people, learn how to communicate in the their language, show any interest in what they like, etc.. Instead they try to find women who are just fantasy versions of themselves, but with boobs.
Excuse me, what you mean is -- "no idea how to treat women as WOMEN."
There IS NO "treating people as PEOPLE." We always treat people as if they are men, (and men have their own culture,) then as if they are women (and women have their own culture.)
When men treat women as if they were men, the women HATE it. The cultural norms are entirely different.
Treating women as WOMEN -- that's what you're looking for.
Now it appears, that we must change. We must adapt our requirements toward people who are easily swayed out of this carreer path. We must, in the name of equal representation, educate and employ people who are highly susceptable to social approval by others.
The problem with memory is that we often see the past not as it was, but as we want it to be.
I actively worked in recruitment and retention of female tech workers, up to the time I retired, a couple years back. Perhaps 2012 is recent enogh to pass your validity test? What have you done to support women in Technology, and retention of women in Technology?
If I might go so far down the line as the "Take your Son's and Daughters to Work" days, almost none of the young ladies ever expressed an interest in Technical field or engineering. The young ladies were tending toward lawyers, and MBA', and those of a more science based career tended toward Medical doctors or Veternarian fields.
These were young ladies who were largely daughters of Engineers and Tech workers.
Now if you just figure I'm some senile old dotard, you can stop here. I'm going to give you my assessment of why the situation exists. It might just conflict with your worldview.
In the mid 70's, the first large group of women entered the professional workforce. They came into it in many fields, and there was a mix of professions.
Then over time, they sorted things out, Many found reasons to gravitate towards some professions over others. .
And quite frankly, how is being a coder or other computer science worker, going to compare ot being an MBA, or a Veterinarian, or even a lawyer?
If you want to be a coder, you had better be prepared to work a lot of extra time, and not extra time like say, the MBA's do. Veterinarians have irregular hours, but in most cases there is one on call at any particular time. I certainly worked more than my share of 80 hour weeks, and some number of 100 hour weeks, and seldom ever less than 55 hours. My better half deserved a medal for putting up with that, or at least bringing me in achange of clothing If I got a 5 O'clock surprise. Plus, I was paid very well, but that reflects on the time I was willing to put in. Those who couldn't be bothered, made a lot less.
Same with Engineers, and scientists.
Point in fact, it is not all that desirable a profession, unless you really want to do that as a profession.
Finally, a person who gets into coding today doesn't have much of a job outlook in the US.
So other jobs with better pay, less hours, and more respect, versus long hours, little respect, and a future of diminshed earning potential - and people are saying it's because guys in Tech are pigs? Tempting, I suppose, if you want a sound bite answer, but I'd bet that if the work situations were similar between Tech jobs and the more popular careers for women, we would see a lot more women in tech jobs.
After all, I trust that youre not so naive to suggest that there is no sexism in the Law,, Veterinarian, or Business environment do you?
If sexism kept women out of fields, you wouldn't see one female MBA..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
...so today are women ndividuals who can do anything men can do and are perfectly capable of functioning in modern society to wit, choosing the career path that they want to follow out of interest, talent, and education?
Or are they intimidatable, wilting violets incapable of exercising free will, intimidated by the faintest approbation, and unable to choose a career because some shitty 1980s movies didn't ACTUALLY show "girls doing data entry"?
I'm just trying to keep track here. I need to know if I should treat them like plain old people, or tread delicately around their fragile sensibilities?
In your case, you may just want to avoid them altogether.
1) Just earlier today I saw a *different* posting saying that female involvement in CS peaked during the '01 .com boom. Which is it? The '80s, or the .com boom? The conclusions were similar, though, men oppressed women out of the field.
2) If you are a woman and you apply to a CS program, you're MUCH more likely than a man to get in. At the top schools, they get fewer female applicants, but the matriculants include many women.
3) If you are a woman, you are much more likely to get an NSF GRFP.
4) Once you get to that big faculty stage, you're more likely to get hired, because they need to pad out the number of female profs.
5) Companies will bend over to hire you. The top companies are seeking female coders.
6) You get all kinds of school programs to help you get into coding.
Still, I'm supposed to feel bad for you because fewer women go into CS. I'm supposed to put *my* career on hold and let less-qualified applicants through because they are female. That isn't to say, being female made them less qualified. That is to say, because we need more people who have vaginas in this field, I'm supposed to let you get the job, and hey, fuck me, I have all of this "privilege."
Excuse me if I think that this is bullshit, and, while I'm at it, fuck you for your bullshit.
I remember those days well. What's your point? Are you trying to say that the reason we have toxic and thin drywall is because of Hispanics? That's the dumbest thing I've heard all week!
Movies are to blame for why more men aren't nurses, news at 11.
Oh, this just in, movies from the 80s are also to blame for why the NBA is mostly black, news at 11:05.
Seriously, different groups of people have different aspirations. Let it be. If this was on CNN or something fine, but every 2 days on Slashdot it's "this is why women are oppressed and it's the tech industry's fault." Wtf.
I found an interesting graph. Why is there no uotcry about the declining number of men getting degrees in the following discaplines? Biology, psychology, communications and journalism. And no outcry about the historically low levels in the following fields? Health professions, public administration, education, foreign languages, English, and Art and performance.
Isn't /. and reddit a great example of how you can get pounced on in this industry. Or go post a slightly less than optimal answer on SO and see how quickly you get slapped into place. And that is how they treat someone that could be their brother, that looks just like them.
It's the SJW ninnies that are trying to pretend that nerds are the perpetrators here when they are generally powerless and denigrated.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
Actually, sorry to break it to you, but "OMG OMG OMG it's a female programmer she must be a nerd like us OMG OMG OMG AWESOME" is going to be very scary to most women. It is mal-adjusted and creepy. That it feels like a positive reaction to the guys who respond that way doesn't make it any less scary, it just makes it more difficult to correct. And any unusual behavior that is based on gender is going to be "unwelcome," it is not only intentionally unwelcoming behavior that is unwelcoming.
That there might be a co-worker who would "KILL" over having her around is... exceptionally unwelcome.
It is creepy to be differently-nice to some people based on their gender, yes. WTF kind of place do you work at where nobody has ever mentioned it?
It is actually a bit of a "no-brainer."
In the 1980s, the boys that were into math and science and (especially) computers were also getting their asses kicked on a regular basis by the popular kids Perhaps the girls were smart enough to not want any part of that.
Or at least they'd rather follow other interests than be associated with something or a group of people who were at the bottom of the social scale.
do() || do_not();
80s ads are responsible for the lack of male shoppers at shopping malls because the merchandise in stores appeal predominantly to women.
Really, it all comes down to marketing. The mens' clothing I see in stores have zero appeal to me because women are usually in charge of purchasing at clothing stores and they stock colors and patterns that are too effeminate. Not to hard to see a parallel with computers as they simply LOOK like mens' tools. Next time you see a woman using a palmtop or cellphone, note the accessory(s) that are matched to her wardrobe.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
This has been my observation as well. If anything women are typically treated better by their male coworkers.
Or perhaps Tech isn't a job for everyone?
Whoa nelly, hold your horses please. I am all for enabling more women to go into cs&tech!!
Do _whatever_ it takes to make sure that women make up 50% of tech careers (as they are in the population)
I am a coder, been working in IT and my own companies for almost 20 years...self taught and I love this stuff & and I am naturally awesome at it! ...
but it has run it's course for me, and I want to do something different now -- and since as a society we are correcting these
'obvious' inequities I simply cannot wait to be a NBA star!!!
as a short white male I am ready now to step up and fill the void (NBA has very few, if any, short white males -- certainly nowhere near the representation in the population). does anyone know what the NBA is doing to give me, a short white male , a hand up in getting one of these NBA positions? I don't even need a fancy position -- i will play power forward or whatever you got available, but yeah. I simply need the chance to have the job and get paid well. don't worry about my performance, after all, as humans we are all equal and equivalent.
These are 18-22 year old males. They likely were a bit ostracized as nerdy in high school. I think they just get overzealous once they find themselves in a world where athletic prowess is no longer the ultimate display of dominance. they make bad decisions.
Men's brains are still developing a lot until 25-ish, whereas women's brain development stops about when college starts. This is the flip side of girls developing faster than boys. The reason young men compete so ruthlessly in college CS classes and other difficult studies is because skill matters and their skill is still being developed. Removing the competition from CS culture will just result in fewer experts and lower overall ability.
and then it is voted on my 1000s of people to come up with a commonly acceptable & agreed definition.
it's actually the closest thing we have to a real time social dictionary
perhaps you should try to understand sth before bashing it -- unless you were trying to be an idiot. if so, nvm, carry on
why the fuck are you assuming a feminist would have any interest in applying logic to the situation! silly man...
Oh I am aware that bigots and ideologues find logic to be inconvenient. Nothing new there. I just find it useful to find the central fallacy in their running stream of bullshit so that when they pop up again with the same old crap... I can bop them on the head with logic and then go back to doing whatever.
In the case of this branch of feminism...
The killer point is that women are either inferior and in need of our aid as the big strong men. Or they are our equals and as adults able to manage their own lives can handle it on their own.
Next issue. :-)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Women who choose to major in "Women's Studies" instead of something STEM-related are the reason there aren't as many female engineers/mathematicians/coders/etc as there ought to be. You weeded yourself out of the field due to your own pre-existing lack of critical thinking.
Indeed. Many of you will get into cuckolding and say blatantly anti-male things in hopes that for the second or third time in your life a woman will show interest in seeing your penis. It's the saddest fucking thing that I've ever had to watch.
Ok, so you have 1000s of idiots voting on it. Doesn't make it any more official.
The boys playing with computers were nerds when nerd was an epithet. It's as simple as that.
Girls innately tend to do less "not cool" things. Now that computers are socially cool, this dumb article is a lame attempt to rewrite history and cast the culprit as anything but girls hewing to the norms they helped mold while growing up.
I'm all for civil liberties, all of them, but mainly for the free speech ones. I think society done wrong against both donald sterling and brendan eich, but this is the world we live in and the first amendment can't protect us from each other.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from criticism or from people giving or withdrawing support to you based on what you say. That is their freedom. This is not new, it has always worked like this. The Mozilla employees, contributors and users who thought that Eich represented a figurehead they didn't want to support obviously had the right to voice this opinion. They said that they wouldn't want to continue support of Mozilla because of this, which is their right. The Board decided that keeping their support was more important for the organization.
I read some of these "SJW" rants, and i just think to myself... your struggle doesn't seem genuine, this is not your crusade... men and women who have undergone oppression, treat it with more solemnity, more respect. I wish they wouldn't treat it so... cheaply.
But if they are a small ranting fringe-group, as multiple posters have said here. Why are people so incredible preoccupied with them? When we by any objective measure live in a society where males dominates power, wealth, law, government, business, etc. (and I'm not ranting that we should change this, it is just an objective fact)
The article is not saying that nerds are not welcoming women. But.. there are some really bad examples of women in technology being treated really badly. Look at some of the latest gaming activism against female game journalists. If you really want to look behind the surface on what happened, it is thoroughly disgusting.
I think that's more to do with the fact the main pusher of that doesn't know shit about games and is talking out of her arse and any gamer can see it. But because her videos have some half decent production values and lots of big words everyone else eats it up. And we are all accused of sexism when we try and point it out. Yes there are some bad apples helping to prove their 'point' but that is true of everything.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
I'm sorry, but wtf is your point? Are you saying that we should be hostile to women instead of nice, or nice instead of hostile, or that we should completely ignore them?
You say that men who are mean to women chase them off. Then you say men who are nice to women chase them off. And I'm pretty sure you would say that men ignoring women would chase them off. SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SUGGEST?
Treat them as people.
Isn't /. and reddit a great example of how you can get pounced on in this industry. Or go post a slightly less than optimal answer on SO and see how quickly you get slapped into place. And that is how they treat someone that could be their brother, that looks just like them.
And Reddit is also the most male dominated major social site on the internet, a whopping 74% of Reddit users are male.
Actually CS classes were what engineering boys in the 1980s enrolled in if they wanted to meet girls (also they very easy subjects for the first two years). In 1987 the introductory CS subject at the university I attended was just over 50% female. Less than 1% in engineering.
I don't know how many of that 50% ended up finding a job related to CS. I suspect it was very few of them.
On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
This has been my observation as well. If anything women are typically treated better by their male coworkers.
You don't see that this is the problem? Don't go "out of your way" just because one of your co-workers are female. Behave normal, treat people as people. You might think you are acting nice, but it is very often perceived differently by the object of your exceptional niceness.
It's just the people that are utterly feral about the situation that need to change. One medical example is a city where all the orthopedic surgeons had played Rugby and for some reason nobody who hadn't passed the requirements for the medical specialty. Even the woman that thought she could get around the unspoken qualification by being a match doctor at state level games didn't pass despite high scores. So no girls or weedy nerds allowed.
We've got similar shit festering in IT and it's dragging us down by creating monocultures where it manifests.
So it's not about change unless there's counterproductive unwritten rules that probably need to be changed.
I find the idea that nerds would ever chase off women particularly amusing. Hell, most of us would KILL to have women around. If women are electing to not pursue the field, it's certainly not because they're unwelcome. On every team that I've ever been on with women, the guys went out of their way to be nice to them.
Anecdotal counter-'evidence': ... you know the drill). Computers and programming from there on out. I'm also quite good with women. A late bloomer. like most of us, I've gotten the hang of it in the last decade. I dance Tango and have had a measure of affairs since roughly the age of 35. And I enjoy the embrace of a cute women very much. It's also fun to learn how nerdy and insecure women themselves are! And sexually frustrated in just about the same amount as men! ... Only better at hiding it. :-) ... anyway:
I'm a programmer and IT expert. Regular 80ies computerkid (zx81, Sharp PC 1402, Basic, Peek & Poke, etc. growing up in parallel with microcomputers
I also run into female IT and Tech experts. Sadly not that often, for the known reasons, but occasionally I do. On at least two occasions I've caught myself being slightly disrespectful to women in tech, albeit with no bad intent. Once was explaing my tango partner - a women in her late 20ies on her way to a PHD in electronics - how I would use a dual-cinch-to-3,5mm jack audio adapter to hook a player to loudspeakers. Roughly 20 seconds in it dawned to me that, if anything, she would explain to me how to do it. I inmediately appologised and we resolved the awkward situation with some humor.
It was embarrasing none-the-less.
On another occasion I was basically explaining my smartphone in very simple terms to a female PHD in CS with expert Java knowledge - a team-lead. It was an Android phone. She'd actually just wanted to know which Android version it was running when she asked "What is that?". With a cliche computer guy or male web-hipster asking it, I might have caught the gist. The simple fact that she was quite young and good-looking had triggered male dominance behaviour in me and had me look like somewhat like a jerk. Again, I noticed it about 10 seconds in, but by then I'd already done it. She handled it very professionally, but I felt like a total douche. Still do actually, when thinking back.
Bottom line:
You may think you're treating women respectfully while you're actually appearing quite condescending. Observe yourself if you get the chance - I've alway thought the same as you did, but since discovered some fine-tuning requirements in my behaviour towards women in our profession. QED.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
when it's the greeks and the jocks that control all of the really relevant media outlets/quote?
The Greeks are not even capable of controlling their own budget, let alone all media outlets...
Women dont want to be around the freaks and geeks. If the guys in the room will wet themselves when a woman talks to them, they wont want to be around them. CS programs need to p90x so the fatties lose weight. This is more likely to grt women to code. The guys also need to be required to bath daily
They assume anyone care about ads - or did in the 80's. I don't think so, the majority is merely annoyed by ads.
If they are a very small minority, how come so many people want to mention them at every chance they get?
I'm making efforts to remind myself that they *are* a minority (it gets tricky to remember on the net these days), and they are a very, very 'vocal' minority. Vocal, and generally full of shit.
It is interesting that this is happening in a society that every objective power metric is male dominated.
See? Lind of like this one.
The article is not saying that nerds are not welcoming women. But.. there are some really bad examples of women in technology being treated really badly. Look at some of the latest gaming activism against female game journalists. If you really want to look behind the surface on what happened, it is thoroughly disgusting.
I think that's more to do with the fact the main pusher of that doesn't know shit about games and is talking out of her arse and any gamer can see it. But because her videos have some half decent production values and lots of big words everyone else eats it up. And we are all accused of sexism when we try and point it out. Yes there are some bad apples helping to prove their 'point' but that is true of everything.
I have followed the game controversy to some degree, and I have not seen anyone being accused of sexism just from voicing your two first sentences in the manner you do here. That is perfectly valid opinions, voiced in a rational manner. It doesn't even involve gender at all.
What I have seen is a lot of people making their gender the main point of attack, and very aggressively spreading very specific rumors that these female game journalists where whoring around. Many claimed to have evidence of this, but when pressed they are just parroting each others bullshit, no evidence. The female game journalists have received rape threats both directly and on forums, threats from people trying to hack them and publish personal information and pictures, etc.
Your criticism above here is gender neutral, their sex has nothing to do with what you are talking about and doesn't need to be brought up at all, but a lot of the attacks clearly are making their gender the main point and have a strong angry tone of misogyny.
Treat them just as you'd treat your non-female co-workers. Of course, then you'll end up with an Adria Richards type who thinks your mentioning of a dongle is sexual harassment.
Yes, and you will always have male colleagues that overreact to something as well. I've been a people manager in IT a long time, and males can come up with a staggering amount of drama in the workplace.
People becoming programmers then are retiring now.
There have been a few generations between that period and now so what accounts for that??
My question is what events WHENEVER has led the people running NPR and shoveling out stuff like this to have the thinking power of fresh water clams...
Or peer pressure patterns ???
the westboro baptist church is a very small church (pretty much 1 family) yet they get brought up as a representation of Christians all the time
posting anon due to modding
is she cute??? if so yes
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
If they are a very small minority, how come so many people want to mention them at every chance they get?
I'm making efforts to remind myself that they *are* a minority (it gets tricky to remember on the net these days), and they are a very, very 'vocal' minority. Vocal, and generally full of shit.
It is interesting that this is happening in a society that every objective power metric is male dominated.
See? Lind of like this one.
So, men are in strong majority across political positions and law makers, judges and supreme court, business leaders, rich people -- eg. the people who run the society, In what powerful positions in the society are women in majority in your view?
Replace the word "nice" with "creepy."
Keep in mind, that if an attractive male is nice to a woman, that's "being nice". If an unattractive or otherwise undesirable male does the same, it is "creepy". Not in every case, but in far too many of them.
It is true that the stereotypical "nerd" may not have the most developed social skills and might come on too strongly, and that certainly won't help things. But I've observed far too many cases where a truly geeky guy with some good social presence will still get called out as "creepy" only because the woman he talks to doesn't like him.
captcha: contempt
So no special recruitment programs for women then? No maternity leave? Just treat them exactly like men. Got it.
SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU SUGGEST?
Step 1: be attractive
Or otherwise, roll well for the Charisma bonus.
Treat them as people.
...people who require special recruitment and retention programs, get maternity leave, won't do any physical labor, will sue over sexual harassment or discrimination at the drop of a hat.
Yep, just another one of the guys.
I'm sorry, but I'm not a tightrope walker. I'd rather just be nice to them and take my chances that they'll be scared away by us not being mean enough.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yes, it is creepy to go out of your way to be nice with a subset of the people that work there.
Intent is always relevant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Replace the word "nice" with "creepy." The problem with the unwashed coding masses is that they have no idea how to treat women as people, learn how to communicate in the their language, show any interest in what they like, etc.. Instead they try to find women who are just fantasy versions of themselves, but with boobs.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my fantasy women were all invented by Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, or Piers Anthony. I'll readily admit that's still quite sophomoric, but at least it's beyond infantile.
I also can't speak for anyone else, but part of the attraction to computing for me was that it is a solitary activity. Not necessarily because I want to be solitary, but because I don't have as many social skills as many other people. My mother was depressive and my father was depressive and absentee, so they had nothing valuable or positive to teach me. I was moved away from my peer group right at the end of elementary school and never recovered socially. So that supports your theory, if not your vitriol.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But wouldn't faggots be pro-hellenic, or are the stories I heard about 'doing it like Greeks' incorrect?
Not all homosexuals have buttsex, although the logic there escapes me completely. I'm pretty sure that if I were gay, I'd still want to fuck. In any case, the ancient greeks didn't believe (overall) that women and men could have equitable relationships of any kind, so women mostly hung out with women and men with men. They wrote a lot more about male-male sex than female-female because it was mostly men doing the writing, and they were extremely self-centered, but apparently there was a lot of female homo sex going on too.
I think they should return the Olympics to its original condition, though permitting females to participate. That would really liven things up...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I seem to recall an SNL skit from a few years ago that dealt with this (IIRC, Tina Fey was in it). A handsome guy showed up to work wearing nothing but his underwear and the women called him "playful." An ugly guy said hello to one of the women, and they called in a complaint on him for sexual harassment.
As much as I have looked into the general subject of why women don't "Y" and why men don't "X." People keep wanting to believe that it's "male domination" and completely forget about the functions of our bodies and how they drive and support our behaviors.
If it were a cultural issue, there would invariably be some example somewhere of an exchange of roles between men and women on earth SOMEWHERE. There really isn't.
At the core is essentially a way of devaluing ALL people (both male and female) by removing their significance and importance in any given role. This serves to further weaken families and other structures which invariably compete with other control structures like... uhm... government.
Sorry, but when someone, no matter their gender, asks me a question as vague as 'what is that' while pointing at my phone I'm not gonna assume they're asking which version of Android the phone is running. Instead I will assume lcd status of the questioner in regards to the object in question.
Perhaps Women in Management positions.
Most "coders" are entry level positions. I have been working in my field for 15 years now, and I grew up in the 1990's really. If you grew up in the 1980's you might still be or do coding, but most would be at a high level position now. Ad's from the 1980's would have little effect.
Now you might make the argument that, most of those Managers would do the hiring and have a preconceived idea about hiring Women VS Men. However you could pretty much use the same argument for any field of work, none of which has anything to do with stupid 1980's ads.
Given that it's supposed to be men earn 1/3 more than women, that's a FUCKING HUGE thing.
DOES NOT MATTER if it's 12c a decade more, IT IS NOT LESS THAN MEN.
Care to take the actual news as it is, rather than assume that since it's not a lot more, that it means you can continue to claim women earn a lot less?
You're gish galloping away from the point.
Women are under-represented in the coal mining industry.
BUT NOWHERE IS THAT MADE TO BE A PRIORITY TO FIX.
Why?
Women equality is only wanted where women would be advantaged by it.
You're ALSO wanting men to be killed, because if women were taking those jobs, then there would be fewer men in there and therefore fewer male deaths.
Why?
Men aren't worthy of consideration.
Of COURSE you don't see it that way, but that's because you're bigoted. Just like the old wolf-whistling lout of the 1950's-80's, who just never knew their attentions were disturbing to some.
And when we do that, we're told we'rebeing mean to women, scaring them off.
When all we're doing is the normal male bonding of joshing around to assert the hierarchical order.
So we treat them like everyone else == we're aggressively scaring the women away
We treat them better == we're creeps.
Where is there a winning formula for men here?
Who's to blame for the lack of men being secretaries? A lot of these discussions are pointless. People will do what they want to do. If that means breaking social norms, be my guest. Good for you.
Computing would not be the same without women in tech. Fuck, the original concept of programming in a machine was done by a woman.
Token mentions to Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper (she made the first fuckin' compiler for fuck's sake)
In general, women tend to prefer situations involving lots of moving pieces, and the relationships between them, while men are tend towards activities involving a single, tight focus. We're different, we tend to be better at different kinds of things. Programming a computer requires your mind to build a mental model of the logic, and then execute it internally. That's a very good example of a single, tight-focus task, that women often find unpleasant. A woman might enjoy talking about complicated relationships with a friend on the telephone, at the same time that she is watching a television show about complicated relationships. As a man, I would this task to be impossible, and certainly unpleasant.
--- wad
Men are men, women are women. As much as we want everything to be equal, it's not. It never will be. Do we need to address sexual harassment and discrimination, absolutely. All of this other stuff we read about unequal numbers of men and women in the workplace being a problem is rubbish. Men and women are geared differently, have different brains that are influenced by different hormones. As equal as you can get within those facts, is to say that men and women have different strengths, weaknesses, and interests that somehow they balance out over all.
This broad stoke stereotype does not define all women, but for many there is a lot of truth in this statement. Many women are not geared towards being analytical people. Many tend to do very well in social skills, which can be as valuable to a person than being analytical. There are always exceptions to this. We've mostly all seen analytical women, and men with good social skills that aren't analytical. Those are exceptions though.
So what am I trying to say? You can't measure anything about a field's respect for women based on employment percentages. It's a dumb and useless measure. Let people do what they enjoy. It's borderline ignorant to say that women aren't treated fairly because interest in a subject isn't equal across all men and women.
As for the ads and movies targeting men, well they target men, because those things interests more men. Advertising and entertainment target audiences based on who will be most likely to consume it, not on sexism.
Perhaps if you spent more time away from tech news, and more on current issues about nursing, you would realize the irony in your statement.
You can't be serious!! I was into computers back in the TRS-80 and Commodore 64 days. I built my own computers and coded in Basic, Fortran, Pascal and a number of other languages and never heard anything like this. I was a super big fan of the Zenith/Heath Do-it-yourself electronic kits. I was a math & physics major but I loved gadgets and programming/coding was like crossword puzzles to other people. So, from my own perspective, I never heard anything of the above and actually thought the field was more womanly and that guys who were in this field on the soft side (as opposed to the real man side).
I'll second this for many shops I've worked, but those actually tend to have a good male/female dynamic anyhow. On the other hand, the workplaces that did *NOT* have a good dynamic,often had guy who, yes, tried to be nice but really came off creepy or giving a used-care-salesman type vibe. Sharing weird material, and sharing with other male co-workers after discovered a female c/w's previous "modelling" career was particularly uncool. That the CEO was also early 20's and most of the women tended to be of a certain age/appearance demographic may have also contributed (not that people can't be smart/productive and attractive at the same time, but experience in that environment did indicate that it was a primary contributing factor).
Thankfully, I can honestly say that particular workplace was an outlier, and that most workplaces I've had seem to promote respectful and have good interpersonal relationships.
Except that in many shops "like everyone else" means odd jokes with a certain amount of sarcasm, and things that interpreted a certain way may end up as a trip to HR...
And these days, I *am* seeing more female gamers (though often more casual etc).
Many guys I know started with computers/coding because they wanted to replicate the stuff they played on in younger days. Perhaps we'll see more young girls who grow into women with similar aspirations, which may be a feedback loop resulting in more cross-gender-friendly games.
strippers and bartenders ;)
This makes no sense whatsoever. The article claims that *marketing* had a bright idea along the lines of, "Hey, I know how we can cut our consumer audience in HALF!" Yeah, right, marketing departments do that all the time, because, hey it's more important to support patriarchy than make money, right?
Might it just be possible that those marketing execs were thinking more along the lines of, "Hm, our audience is primarily male, set's market to our primary audience."
There's no conspiracy here, people. Nothing to see here.
Where is there a winning formula for men here?
The only winning move is not to play.
I just listened to this story and one of the key points was that male college freshman had been given computers as toys and already had several years of tinkering with them before college while the profiled women had not had that experience. They posit that this disparity was due to computers being advertised as toys for boys in the early 80s. The one woman also implied that the college professors were expecting that the students would have that computer experience before entering the program.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
I'm sorry to SOUND misogynistic, but whenever I hear a rant like; "It's there fault, and they should be more X, but on the other hand not too anti-X," I interpret what they are saying as "Blah, blah blah, DO ME, blah blah blah HARD, blah blah-blah NOW."
I could pepper this comment with a lot of psychology, thoughtful hemming and hawing, or some sort of shared responsibility. I am after all a feminist and I think Gloria Stein is awesome. But the difference here is that men recognize when they just need to get -- SomEthing eXactly appropriate -- and are OK with admitting it.
At NPR, they are all sponsored by companies they formerly used to challenge with cutting edge investigations. Now their legacy nod to anything Liberal is to whine about issues that Liberals used to champion. It's got to be difficult coming up with material that pretends to challenge the status quo -- but in acceptable ways inside of the "free speech zone" they've been quarantined in by sponsors and overly sensitive donors. I'm not Professional, but I'm willing to bet that everyone at NPR is in dire need of SomEthing eXactly.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The real reason is that the perception of coders went from respected professionals to the 90 hour a week work all night asocial geeks. The media, including NPR profiling of Silicon Valley, have to take some blame
The thing is that in the 1970s and 1980s computers WERE boys' toys. There were barely enough boys even interested however - it was the nerd's nerd type of toy. Most boys were interested in cars and the "outsider" boys were into computers. Boy's clearly were just about the only 1-in-1000 of ANYONE interested. Girls? Not even above the noise floor back in the day. Those of us who were into computers also were into slide rules, chemistry sets, guns, making explosives and blowing up small animals, etc. We didn't like sports much because we sucked at them and computers were the one area we excelled at and could get respect for - though never from anyone "normal" or mainstream in interests or values.
Back then also, women's lib (which is what "feminism" was called back then) was still über-new and not at all universally valued or respected even by most women. It was in the 1970s when I was told I wasn't allowed to take a cooking elective course that was nominally open to all simply because I was a boy and the class was intended for women/girls only. People today either don't remember this or weren't alive to know how things really were.
The short and sweet of this is the article is pure revisionist bullshit based on utter ignorance of history or the times. Not even relevant or remotely accurate.
(Someone who lived through the ENTIRE PC revolution starting in the 1970s!!)
So, now "they" want to blame nerds for being focused inward, since many in society outwardly rejected them.
And any nerd who dared to creatively express some drama wrapped in technology is a "sexist" for doing so.
Ad agencies that rationally targeted campaigns at the people who were most interested in the purchase and use of computers are somehow "to blame" for being rational. ....got it.
Holy cow, the nerds just can't even enjoy a moment of personal victory or broader celebration for actually MAKING COMPUTERS and applications and devices that are miraculous and innately a-sexual.
The concern-trolls are effing useless nags.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY had in their head the intention or agenda to suppress or hinder or nudge women away from technology. Holy crap, if a woman had joined our computer club we would have been beside ourselves with glee. It would have sent tectonic shock waves through our world. We were repellent to women.
These absurd, "progressive" litigations of history are pointless - and typical of an ideology that indulges in wallowing in temporally displaced victim-hood.
I'm uninterested in haute couture - and I have not a smidgen of resentment about the fact that countless fashion magazines, novels, movies, TV shows, books, clubs, and entire industries didn't roll out the red carpet for me - as a straight male. Bless all who seized the day. Good on them.
As a nerd growing up, it doesn't bother me that recruiters were not aggressively trying to get me a football scholarship. I'm 100% sure I can never, ever dunk a basketball in real life on a regulation court.
I made choices, freely, based on the capabilities of my brain and body.
The nectar of Popularity and ubiquity finally baptizes nerds and then instantly indicts us for the accomplishment.
Eff this, right in the face.
We call this.....freedom.
Please someone dowmod the troll that posted the "fucking troll" post.
Women make up for around half of the mathematicians, and a solid percentage of economists, biologists and chemists are women.
Why do women avoid CS and engineering programs? I don't know, but it is the wrong question:
Why does it matter?
Faux diversity like gender and race is not something to aspire to. Finding students who have the aptitude and interest is far more important than meaningless demographics.
In my undergrad and graduate experience and working in industry women tend to fall along the same curve as men.
Very few are great, most are average and some suck.
The great female programmers bring nothing different to the table that the great male programmers bring. The female CS students that were great were naturally interested in the field and were self-driven into it. I have yet to meet anyone who was talked into majoring in CS that wasn't an abysmal failure.
So what does it matter if fewer women are interested?
I am far more concerned about universities dropping weed-out courses than faux-problems like attracting more women. CS and Engineering programs need to stop graduating substandard students, and instead these students should be booted out of the major and forced into brain-dead nonsense like business and communication.
It wasn't that long ago that the undergrad program I went through had 4 weed out courses(2 were CS courses and 2 were math), you had to complete it with a B- or better to pass, and you only had 2 chances at it. There was also a weed out written and programming exam that needed to be passed to get promoted to a upperclassmen and take 300 or 400 level courses. All of that is now gone.
Every course in my graduate program started with a qualifying exam, which you had to take the first or second day of class and you got dropped from the class if you failed it which meant you might as well drop out because it was a small program and each course was offered once a year. It was a masters program and not a PhD. program but less than half who started made it to the point where they could start their thesis or project and less than half of those made it to and passed the defense.
This isn't a "I had to walk 10 miles in the snow both ways" whine, this is a specific reason why CS graduates suck today and why it doesn't matter what the demographics of CS majors is.
That is the sort of thing that needs to come back, not a senseless drive to try and force women into careers they aren't interested in.
I was a CS student in southern California in the early '80s, and about a third of the students were indeed women. But the reason was because we had a large group of Vietnamese and Laotian students who had emigrated to the US in the '70s following the Vietnam war. Slightly over half of this group were women, and they had no cultural bias against computer science. Most of this group would have started college by the mid-80s, and of course the emigration was a one-time event because of the war. The percentage of native born US women was much lower, probably not any higher than it is today.
The link referenced in this article also postulated that boys had experience with PCs by the '80s, and colleges assumed students had a basic grasp of CS by the time they got to college. This wasn't true before 1983 -- my intro CS classes assumed no prior knowledge or programming skills.
This may be off topic, but I HATE the term, "coder". I find it insulting and demeaning. Yes, developers, engineers and architects write "code", but that doesn't make them "coders" anymore than your doctor is a, "knee-whacking, tongue-depressing, ball-grabber".
Think your lawyer would enjoy being called an, "arguer"?
How about calling judges, "gavel-whackers"?
I know that soulskill didn't intend to offend, but now you know.
Yes, it is creepy to go out of your way to be nice with a subset of the people that work there.
Intent is always relevant.
Well, the intent of a stalker infatuated with someone is to go out of his way to be super-nice.
Replace the word "nice" with "creepy."
Keep in mind, that if an attractive male is nice to a woman, that's "being nice". If an unattractive or otherwise undesirable male does the same, it is "creepy". Not in every case, but in far too many of them.
It is true that the stereotypical "nerd" may not have the most developed social skills and might come on too strongly, and that certainly won't help things. But I've observed far too many cases where a truly geeky guy with some good social presence will still get called out as "creepy" only because the woman he talks to doesn't like him.
captcha: contempt
It depends on how you define "attractive". I've seen many times guys that on a photograph would be called good looking being perceived as creepy because something is off in their social skills. And the other way around, normal looking guys that have a likable behavior becomes "attractive". Social skills is a good word btw because these are skills. As with all skills people have different starting points, but all can learn to improve. The problem with some geeks is that they seem to revel in not approaching this as an improvable skill.
Yes, it is creepy to go out of your way to be nice with a subset of the people that work there.
Intent is always relevant.
Well, the intent of a stalker infatuated with someone is to go out of his way to be super-nice.
No, the intent of a stalker infatuated with someone is to insinuate themselves into their life, and being super-nice is a tactic they use to do that. But there are other reasons why you might be very nice, and what you are suggesting is that nice equals creepy. Congratulations, you're part of the problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hi nice soft respectable feminist male.
In the past girls were married at 6 or 7 or 8 or 9.
Even snow white was noticed at that age in the original version.
Girls didn't have to wait forever to be a handsome man's pet.
and they were still girls when it happened.
Your cunt society which is bombing the few cultures that still allow that is the problem. You took away men's freedom to marry girl children.
(Also allowed in the old testament (deuteronomy 22 28-29), even rape)
Fuck You.
Well, that's unfortunate. Because, try as I might, I've yet to find a way to make my team more attractive. I guess I could hire some male models, but they generally make pretty shitty coders.
Yeah, and if you found a boss or colleague fawning over you for none-work-reasons, you would be totally fine with that?
Um, yes....would you not? Bear in mind that these are the same type of people who are saying they would love for more women to be interested in their field so they would have more women around. After they got over feeling terrified that they were about to be made fun of by said female, I am sure they would be loving the attention.
Maybe women need to adapt to tech culture instead of tech culture adapting to women.
BTW it is not all women it is some individuals that are discouraged and those are both male and female.
So now equality is just not good enough?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Intent is generally unknowable. So people err on the side of caution, and all "nice" is "stalkerly".
Learn to love Alaska
Treat them just as you'd treat your non-female co-workers.
If I say something wrong in a software discussion, my male colleagues are going to mercilessly deride my bad ideas faster than the pale artificial office light bouncing off their faces can reach my retinas. And I'm OK with that, because that's how it typically is in software (and I'm guessing it's not much different for sysadmins). Software developers are prone to brutally direct honesty. Throw in a predilection for religious preconceptions for/against various technologies (C++, LISP, OOP, FP, Windows, GPL vs. BSD, an so on, ad nauseum), and you have an intrinsically tough environment. You might call it "toxic"; I call it "candid".
The problem is, if I were to treat my female colleagues the same unfiltered way I treat my male colleagues, most of them wouldn't handle it well emotionally. That's not because there is anything wrong with them, but men and women, broadly speaking, are a bit different in some ways. My wife is damned good at what she does (not tech by a long shot) and she's no wilting daisy (she used to work in construction), but she would come home crying at least once a week if she had to work in an unfiltered tech environment. I've been involved in contentious relational database schema debates that would have had her taking a couple of "mental health days" off work, yet for my colleagues and me, once that sort of thing is settled, we simply move on to whatever is next.
To be clear, I've worked with women who can handle the candor of the environment, and that was great, but they seem to be statistical outliers. As many other posts have noted, the environment probably started changing in the early 80s, became entrenched once client-server was the norm, and has remained that way (or grown more so) since. To paraphrase a sports cliche, "There is no crying in software".
- T
In any event, I think we can agree the AC is a moron.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Why is no one fretting about this?
Okay, but seriously I think there's a legit cultural issue here with girls and all things technical in general. But this thing with laying it all on the media got old in the '80s. Yes media influences. But the assumption that we're all so weak-willed that we make life choices as heavy as careers we follow based on it is downright cynical, bordering on offensive. Let's focus more on baby boomer dad not buying gen x Suzy a computer when she showed some genuine interest/aptitude and the assumptions science and math teachers don't even know they have about girls when they teach them and less on ads and media and games which everyone keeps excitedly shouting girls are playing plenty of. Because if you're legitimately interested in this stuff, that shit on the idiot box/screen is not going to be a factor for you.
I personally don't have a problem with the idea that feminism as a movement is still necessary. I just wish the movement had less appeal to people with poor logic skills.
And granted it lacks clarity in headline and it's a bit wish-washy in focus (is it just a synopsis of the podcast?) but movies/ads are given very light mention in a paragraph. The most interesting idea to me is that girls fell behind in personal computing at about the same time they fell behind in computer science. And that makes a lot of sense. I knew no girls who spent a lot of time on Atari 800s and Commodore 64s and the early IBM PC compatibles outside of a classroom.
We can probably lay some of that at the feet of baby boomer dad's gender issues and the assumptions math and science teachers have about girls that they don't even realize but I also suspect there's a more general cultural problem with young women not being taught how to handle failure well. Because learning/doing anything new beyond just being a non-power user in technology is 90% failure. You try and try again until it works. Academia is different. They have problems to solve and they'll show you the solutions. You can copy those down, memorize them and always have them ready. Whether you succeed is often largely about whether you have any aptitude for it and whether you studied.
One thing I remember a lot of girls saying even in high school in the late '80s/early '90s was "I'm just not a <fill-in-the-blank> type person" and then they'd quit whatever discussion/problem they had just been exposed to. It was easier to to redefine their identity to a more limited narrow view than it was to try something and maybe fail at it.
Even my own wife who is brilliant, creative, a very successful artist, has borderline photographic memory, and can do math in head as well as I do swears that Algebra 1 was a horrifying experience for her. Says she just "can't handle the mixing of letters and numbers." She had to take a stats class recently to wrap up a long-delayed degree and aced it. Hated every minute of it but she attacked it and rote-memorized and got through but couldn't tell you a thing about stats a year later. And it's the same with technology. Any time something doesn't just work as well as it probably should she gets so frustrated she can't even think through what the problem might be or a potential workaround.
If she could do that, she'd be great at it. She's the kind of smart that could be great at anything she lets herself get interested in. But she's not a "that" kind of person. Men put themselves in boxes too but never to that degree, IMO. And I think that's at least in large part probably a cultural thing, but absolutely crippling for women facing tech problems once they carve any aptitude for it out of their identities like that. It should take more than one asshole teacher to dissuade you from an interest.
That was when the movies and TV started to portray technical people as being wierd and unappealing. It made a great joke and sold tickets, but it slandared the real Techs and Engineers.
I think it was partly because many of the corporations were taken over, about that time, by former salesmen and lawyers. The were afraid of the Techs because they didn't understand them, so they tried to "cut them down". And were able to make it stick, until we started to have problems because too many corps were run by salesmen.
Now it's beginning to change, but change is slow...
Kids, remember, if someone tells you not to act smart because it's not "cool", they are -not- your friend. They are just trying to sabatoge you, so they can continue to be lazy. 8-)
I was told I was too good at math by my professors. A man would never be told that by his professors. It is an absurd statement which I've railed on if I'm worth a cent.
Women computer scientists who worked on the Eniac weren't invited to the the celebratory dinner...they got sent home.
Ada Lovelace ... women do code.
My dad was a rocket scientist. My mom discouraged me from studying math and computer science. Maybe she was right that the environment in CS is not super women friendly (engineering and physics the same) - hell my dad made grown men scientists cry routinely - I'm a hell of a lot tougher then they were because I think that old school attitude is normal. I've been the only woman and the only American in the room often; there are cultural discrimination sometimes also.
The Cosmo crap remarks are crap.