NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders

All the movies had women in business by WillAffleckUW · 2014-10-21 07:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --

Re:All the movies had women in business by xtal · 2014-10-21 07:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

Computing IS anti social!
You get good at programming by staring at a screen and figuring things out. For thousands, and thousands, and thousands of hours. There is no getting around that fact.
The more complicated it gets, the more "anti social" it is. What does that mean anyway? Do we all need to sit around and code by committee?

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..don't panic
Re:All the movies had women in business by ShanghaiBill · 2014-10-21 08:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

Computing IS anti social!
Not before the 1980s.

You get good at programming by staring at a screen and figuring things out.
In the 1970s, you got good at programming in a big noisy room full of other coders, reading over each others printouts, and then modifying your card deck, before submitting it to the operator at the window to the machine room. Then you sit around and socialize while you wait for your job to run. It was a very social activity.
Then personal computers came along, and all that changed. Coding became an isolated activity that you did in a cubicle, or in a bedroom at 2am. Computer screens were harder for collaboration than paper printouts. Fast compilers left no time for socializing.
Re:All the movies had women in business by phantomfive · 2014-10-21 08:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Computing IS anti social!
You have no idea how much I wish that were true. For me, it would be a perk.

Instead, I spend plenty of time in meetings, coordinating with fellow programmers, working through issues like their code sucks (and for some reason I can't figure out, they think my code sucks), strange emotional attachments they feel towards Visual Studio (even though it costs over $10000 for the full version). And that's only fellow programmers......figuring out what customers, management, vendors all want is another issue (and it's important).

I just want to sit down, get my job done. Let me program. Instead I end up talking to a bunch of people.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:All the movies had women in business by LesFerg · 2014-10-21 08:30 · Score: 2

And yet at the same time the majority if cowboys depicted in movies etc. were male, but girls still wanted a pony.

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If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Re:All the movies had women in business by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 08:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think that all programmers think all other code sucks. Seems to be inherent to the field.
Maybe because it's such an intractably complex activity and there's so many ways to skin the proverbial cat?
Re:All the movies had women in business by internerdj · 2014-10-21 08:36 · Score: 3, Interesting

For all the talk about the differences in socialization, I know just as many introverted women as I do men. So the question for me is the problem with associating computing careers with being non-social or is the problem telling women they are broken if they aren't social.
Re:All the movies had women in business by durrr · 2014-10-21 08:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

Women are the reason there's no women coders. I'm getting really tired of females being allowed to externalize all their problems while males are not.
Re:All the movies had women in business by Aighearach · 2014-10-21 09:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually you underscore the lack of socialization during programming. Your attempted counter example shows your social meter is differently calibrated than average people. You accept a very tiny bit of edge dialogue as a replacement for continued socialization all day in typical office jobs.
The loner might not be a hermit in the mountains, it doesn't change that the job is primarily solitary, even when coordinating with a large team.
Re:All the movies had women in business by StripedCow · 2014-10-21 10:04 · Score: 2

No it's just that all other code besides mine sucks
Do you think the same way about the code written by the guys who wrote your compiler?

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If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Re:All the movies had women in business by rtb61 · 2014-10-21 16:57 · Score: 2

That likely relates to your own psychological profile and your perceptions of time, rather than the actual flow of time. The times when you are coding and are in the 'zone' when the flow of tasty brain chemicals is just right, well, that time just flows on by without you even really noticing it all that much. Of course when you are out of your zone when that flow of tasty brain chemicals dries up and just like any other drug addict you go into withdrawals, well, that time drags on by, your perception of it far exceeds the reality of it.
So it is a matter of selecting the job and the company that best suits your psychological profile, that profile when met, allows for the highest flow of tasty brain chemicals and keeps you from going into withdrawals. By the way those tasty brain chemicals I am talking about are naturally produced ones and not externally sourced intoxicants.
Of course for other people, the opposite could hold true, where interactive social activity promotes the flow of tasty brain chemicals and being isolated in front of a computer screen cuts them off and pushes them into withdrawals. For humanity evolutionary speaking in the distant past, this likely reflects the difference between being a hunter in a hostile environment when communications are kept to a minimum and silent in the zone stalking is the rule versus the sustained social interaction in the village spent gathering and processing the results of that gathering.
Over time the changes in human 'social' evolution the main drive in our evolution, this difference in activity alters and so the psychological difference between the sexes alters. Baring of course the currently still enforced difference of pregnancy and the altered social roles brought about by that difference. This is in addition to 'specialisation' inherent within the human species, allowing different roles to be fulfilled by persons of different biological psychological social make up, those most genetically suited to specific roles will fulfil them the most effectively and the society that most effectively incorporates that specialisation will evolve most effectively. Capitalism of course creates a huge psychopathic distortion where different roles are rewarded differently (greed vs need) far, far out of proportion to their benefit to that society, holding and trapping people in roles they are unsuited to in order to sustain a perceived lifestyle. In fact being a lying cheating douche bag preying upon the society they are a part of is rewarded the highest under psychopathic capitalism. Of course evolution occurs across thousands of millennia and short term distortions across centuries are really neither here nor there, apart from of course species extinction which can occur in a very dramatically short time indeed.

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:All the movies had women in business by rioki · 2014-10-21 19:57 · Score: 2

Accounting IS anti social!
You get good at accounting by staring at a screen and figuring things out. For thousands, and thousands, and thousands of hours. There is no getting around that fact.
The more complicated it gets, the more "anti social" it is. What does that mean anyway? Do we all need to sit around and do accounting by committee?
Re:All the movies had women in business by AmiMoJo · 2014-10-22 00:04 · Score: 2

Mods, how can this unsubstantiated and extraordinary claim be "insightful"? It doesn't even mention what women are doing to cause this, let along provide any evidence or data to support it.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC

Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by ShaunC · 2014-10-21 07:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

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Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!

Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-21 07:16 · Score: 5, Informative

It's a problem because it's clearly fucking systemic, and caused by social factors.
It's not just "fewer women that men" enter the career.
It's that "fewer women than used to, where every other intensely technical field has had the opposite trend"(this article)
It's that People are more likely to pick men for mathematical tests that both genders are proven to do equally well on, even when in the test cases where the specific women are known to outperform the specific men
It's that sexism is actually cited by women leaving the field
It's that gender based social norms enforced on children clearly influence their likliehood to enter a sex-typical field
These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-21 07:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

And I'm reminded about someone who objected to this line of reasoning saying "who cares if its social and political, let people make their choice".
And while I let that vacuous line of reasoning slide before, I'm going to nip in the bud here and point out that if you don't care about that, you also shouldn't care about us people trying to effect social and political changes.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by alexander_686 · 2014-10-21 07:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Coders (well, STEM jobs in general) will build the future. The more coders that we have the faster we will reach a bright future.
We are discouraging large chunks of people who have the intelligence to train as coders, thus our future is dimmer.
While I have not read the article, I suspect the article is being too simplistic. Culture is pushing away girls (As Barbie says, "Math is hard!") to woman. Most women pick careers that are "family friendly" or offers a good life / work balance.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 07:24 · Score: 5, Informative

Egalitarianism
Wage gap myth:
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
Majors by Gender: Is It Bias or the Major that Determines Future Pay?
There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap
The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth
Gender pay gap is not what activists claim
Equal pay statistics are bogus because they don’t compare like with like
Fair Pay Isn’t Always Equal Pay
Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists
5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die
The Wage Gap Myth
Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap
The pay inequality myth: Women are more equal than you think
Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces
Labor force participation rate for men has never been lower.
Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low
Women In Tech Make More Money And Land Better Jobs Than Men
Female U.S. corporate directors out-earn men: study
Female CEOs outearned men in 2009.
Women between ages 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men’s wages.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, single women between 22 and 30 years old earn an average of $27,000 a year. That’s 8% more than comparable men.
Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women on Top
Young Women’s Pay Exceeds Male Peers
The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men
Women aged between 22 and 29 earn over £10 per hour on average, compared to men their same age who earn just under this amount.
Young women now earn more than men in UK
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by unimacs · 2014-10-21 07:26 · Score: 4, Interesting

As a person who hires coders, having so few women in the field limits the pool of good candidates. As a parent, I don't want my daughter steered away from a career that might be a rewarding one for her.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by pla · 2014-10-21 07:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.

We "clearly socially and politically influence" people to hold down a job, not smoke, refrain from promiscuous sexual behavior, and a wide variety of other behaviors.

And yet - We all still have the right to live under a bridge, smoke, fuck anything that moves, yadda yadda yadda.

When women want to go into tech and can't, we have a problem. When women don't want to go into tech... Hey, start your own marketing campaign like Google has done, but lose the guilt-tripping SJW faux indignation BS.

Thanks.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 07:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes women tend to outperform men over all in math but it's irrelevant because we are looking in the top percentile and if you look at the category men outperform women. Same as there are most men in the lowest percentile.
So to look at the averages when what is interesting is the top just creates disinformation.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by nctritech · 2014-10-21 07:45 · Score: 4, Informative

There is no excuse for this being modded down Troll, especially sinec i kan reed's three-link reference post is Informative. Agenda execution detected.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by bmajik · 2014-10-21 07:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

In your view, is it a problem that men are nearly 10x as likely as women to die on the job?
What systemic factors should we address so that the number of women dying in mine cave-ins rises to equal the number of men?
Oh, this isn't a priority for you? Why not?

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My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 07:55 · Score: 2

The more coders that we have the faster we will reach a bright future.
No, the more coders we have, the faster the average wage for a coder drops.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by jklovanc · 2014-10-21 07:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's that "fewer women than used to, where every other intensely technical field has had the opposite trend"
By lumping all physical sciences together the graph hides a lot of information. Here is a much more detailed graph. Notice that bachelors for females has declined in almost all fields.

It's that People are more likely to pick men for mathematical tests that both genders are proven to do equally well on, even when in the test cases where the specific women are known to outperform the specific men

The bias is attributed to the fact that men brag more. Maybe bragging is seen as a measure of confidence.

It's that sexism is actually cited by women leaving the field
You didn't read the study you quoted. Here is a quote from the abstract;

The evidence points to the existence of a “scar effect” of previous work in the female field, which hinders women's opportunities in the male sector and ends up increasing the likelihood of exit.
The study is about "scars" from work in a female dominated job effecting the next, male dominated, job. It has nothing to do with sexism in the male dominated job.

It's that gender based social norms enforced on children clearly influence their likliehood to enter a sex-typical field
Yet another misinterpretation.

Motivation and self-esteem help girls aim higher in the occupational ladder, which automatically reduces their levels of sex-typicality. For boys, however, self-esteem reduces sex-typicality at all levels of the aspired occupational distribution.

Why do girls need to be motivated but not boys.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by i+kan+reed · 2014-10-21 08:02 · Score: 2, Funny

I forgot that the point of links was to have a certain number, and not to support a point you're making. That retroactively means I lose all debates.
Darn.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by lgw · 2014-10-21 08:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

Where the Hell do you work? Sounds like a terribly crappy company - name and shame! Then change to a less crappy one (which may involve learning not-Ruby). I've been a dev for 20-mumble years in 4 states, and I've never seen a culture like that.
Or was that a list of imaginary problems?

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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by nctritech · 2014-10-21 08:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Your post already provided the necessary context and the links in that post are references that refute what you've said. Declaring that it's not valid or is "a crappy post" doesn't make it so.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by ray-auch · 2014-10-21 08:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

It is because women are smarter than men, and are making more informed career choices.
Back in the days of punched cards and computers the size of a whole data centre now, and memory that didn't got away when the power went off (yeah, I know, that one's come around again now), programming was a 9-5 family friendly (as much as any job was) day job. Programmers and operators were often women (my mother was one), if not mostly women - seriously, just do a google images search for "mainframe operator 1960s" (just for one example), those images reflect the number of women working with computers that you'll see in printed material from that era too.
Somewhere around the 80's - 90's with the personal computer revolution, and gaming, and continuing with the dotcom boom, programming turned into an aggressive deadline-driven first-to-market ship-it-yesterday career, with a long-hours work-till-it's-done culture that spread from startups out to entire parts of the industry (see gaming...). And the women stopped coming.
To pick a couple of other industries / careers I have some (UK based) knowledge of: in roughly the same time scale, in medical and veterinary, professionals went from being on-call all-hours (junior doctors infamously worked a standard 120hr week) to having out-of-hours contracted out and on-call hours counted into the limits under EU working time directive. Every programming job I've had has required me to opt out of the working time directive, but doctors don't. Now take a guess on two professional careers in the UK which are (or soon will be) majority female... medical (doctors) and veterinary. That is where all the smart women went, and if you want to know why just look at the culture changes in those professions and in programming.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by DoofusOfDeath · 2014-10-21 08:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.
Perhaps, but just about every choice we make is affected by social and political influence.
What am I having for dinner tonight? That's affected by externalities that affect my income (via career choice and and food prices), tastes (what was affordable when I was a kid), and who's doing the cooking (is my wife running errands when dinner needs to be made?).
What clothes did I put on today? That's affected by my personal tastes, but also by the tastes of the buyers at Target a few years ago, and on the economics of trans-oceanic clothes production, and the governmental policies of the U.S., China, Vietnam, and Thailand.
Why am I a programmer? Well, my Dad did electrical engineering, so we spent more time talking about computers than perhaps a lot of families did in the 70's and 80's. It also meant we could afford a Commodore 64 for me to start playing around with. And I was a little socially awkward as well as introverted, so programming in my basement had more appeal compared to socializing in some cases.
If the goal here is some kind of self-realization of every individual, without the influence of external factors, I just don't see how that's going to happen. I don't see any viable way to actually eliminate "unacceptable" influences, especially indirect ones.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Fwipp · 2014-10-21 08:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

Every time a company *does* start an initiative to get more women in tech, Slashdot has the exact same outrage that they do here. Seriously, go click on any of the articles, and you'll see people complaining:
"No it's just the ~natural~ way of things"
"women are stupid and bad at coding! "
"but now men are being discriminated against :("
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-10-21 08:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's a problem because it's clearly fucking systemic, and caused by social factors.
Can you now spout off some more righteous anger about that fact that male veterinarians are rapidly becoming extinct? I'll wait for your answer. Are young men being kept away from the field by social pressure and estrogen fueled sexual harassing female vets? Or is that just the way it needs to be because women are better than men?
Equate the two situations, is your challenge.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Fwipp · 2014-10-21 08:17 · Score: 2

"Inversely, where is all the screaming and yelling from the nursing or day-care industry that is traditionally dominated by women?"
You've never run a day-care, have you?
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by 0xdeadbeef · 2014-10-21 08:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

These aren't just whatever, "it's just people making choices". It's clearly social and political influence.

you also shouldn't care about us people trying to effect social and political changes.
We're not supposed to care about your deliberate interference, but you're allowed to care about the choices women make, because society got in their heads and made them make the wrong choices?
Normally I don't care. But people like you are not trying to eliminate the sexism (probably because your assertions of it are vastly overstated), but trying to change the nature of the field to make it more friendly to stereotypes about women, without any consideration as to whether these changes will actually improve the field and the skillset of CS graduates.
Read this article about one presumably successful effort.
And let's look at the assumptions these efforts make, and their solutions.
"The first class you take is a weed-out class, and they are shocked by the fact they don't get any women at the end."
CS is too hard for women because, despite growing up with computers, they never learned how to program before. Lighten the intro courses to be less "weed out".
"Know-it-alls in any section are told to cool it so no one is intimidated."
Women are intimidated by knowledge and enthusiasm. Don't show off. It's too... manly.
"Along with changes to the introductory courses, Mudd works hard to keep women interested in the field."
Women need to be pandered to to keep them interested.
"Women and men work through problems in very different ways"
Women's brains are different. But still, ignore those troglodytes who said women are naturally less inclined to be interested in abstract machines.
"They bemoaned middle and high school math teachers who didn't engage or inspire."
More pandering is the solution. Nevermind the boys who never got that encouragement either. (High school CS curriculum was a joke twenty years ago, and it still is.)
Is coddling women going to make them better programmers? Who knows, maybe it will. But don't pretend you aren't coddling them.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by __aaclcg7560 · 2014-10-21 08:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Where she will be subjected to daily microaggression from male coworkers who know they will get away with it because the bosses are all male?
Based on my professional experience in Silicon Valley, the pressence of a female into an all male group causes the guys to clean up their acts and behave appropriately in a hurry. Any "microaggression" is taken care of within the group. If anyone does get out of line, it's a long visit to the HR office.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 08:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

>Why do girls need to be motivated but not boys.
In STEM? Maybe because society (in the US, anyway) spends a lot of time, directly and indirectly, telling women they aren't cut out for this kind of work and should focus on being "hot" and be quiet? Remember the furor a few years ago when Mattel released a talking Barbie which said, "Math is hard!"?
Women get pushed around a lot in our culture, overtly and covertly, and many people (mostly men) are only comfortable when women are in very limited pigeonholes. Things are better since the entrance of feminism (really, it's humanism: the idea that women should be treated as people) into our culture since the 1960/70s, but it's still a problem. If you don't see that, and don't see how that is a big part of lack of women in CS specifically and STEM generally, then either you are a) stupid b) intentionally obtuse or c) blinded by your neurosis about women.
I got raised by smart, educated, strong-willed women (mom, aunts, great aunts, godmother) who had professional lives in the 50s and 60s when that was rare. I see what women can do, and I also see how much women today STILL have to fight just to get listened to in a meeting, let alone how they have to be able to put up with a myriad of small indignities.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by alexander_686 · 2014-10-21 08:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Let's extend your argument and look at doctors. What if we cut the number of admissions to medical colleges by 1/2? By reducing the number of doctors we could boost the wages of all doctors! Wouldn’t' that be great? Would that not make our future brighter?
Probably not.
You are talking the same position as the old guild members, fighting to keep their privileged position as more productive factories raise productivity and living standards for everybody. I mean it is great that you beat everybody else in the great land rush, but I don't think you should close the gate behind you. I am not even sure you can as I look at India, China, etc. Give them 25 years. Don't focus on short term gain but on long term greed. You will benefit more from vibrant economy than a stagnant one.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by bmajik · 2014-10-21 09:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Well, I'd say "fewer men should die" if I were going to make that statement.
It turns out, actually, that certain jobs are dangerous and unpleasant, and men seem to self-select for these jobs more often than do females.
There are a number of interesting possible explanations for this, but none of them are terribly surprising unless you've thought for most of your conscious life that the two genders are truly and completely identical, and any differences are only the result of social conditioning.
Of course, this is absurd.
Biologically, men are expendable and women are not. Biologically, the humans of today come from a narrower range of paternal ancestors, because human breeding was selective. Men who had power, prowess, ambition, and ruthlessness passed on their genes AND shaped the socities that men and women lived in.
In considering distributions of male size, strength, intelligence, and so on, the distributions are wider than when considering females. The smartest men appear to be much smarter than the smartest women; the dumbest men appear to be much dumber than the dumbest women.
Males simply have higher expressed variability.
Men need less sleep than women; men are not as attuned to empathy as are women; men engage in much riskier behavior than do women, and their neural reward and risk center works differently than it does in women.
You can continue to pretend that gender is a social construct, or that male and female distributions and outcomes should be identical, but here on the real world, they aren't and they won't be.
In the event that any public entity (e.g. a government) has a policy that would prevent an individual woman from doing some job merely on account of her being a woman, we should repeal that policy.
In the event that any private entity (e.g. a business) has a policy that would prevent an individual woman from doing some job merely on account of her being a woman, we should think that business owner is a jerk.
Individuals in a free society should be free to do as they like.
But what we should stop assuming is that men and women are interchangeable and will have broadly identical social preferences and outcomes.
They won't, and that's not because anything is standing in their way. They're just different.
By Nature.

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My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by PopeRatzo · 2014-10-21 09:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

A womans contribution requires 9 months, during which time any distraction, disruption or stress can cause the "person creation" process to fail catastrophically.
If that were true, the human race would have become extinct long ago. Pregnant women are actually pretty robust and remain capable of just about anything (except becoming pregnant again) for the great majority of the 9 months.

At the end of the day, the problem is people like you...
That's not the best way to start a sentence in which you care to make a point.

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You are welcome on my lawn.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by AK+Marc · 2014-10-21 11:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Fixing it when the children are 3 is easy. But "invasive" to have children raise their children right.

When my son was 3 his favorite color was pink. It was bright and fun. When he was 5 and headed to school soon, he picked out his bag for school. He had the choice of Wiggles (Blue) or Dorothy the Dinosaur (pink). He picked the pink one. I let him, as it was his choice. When he got to school, the children made fun of him for having a "girls bag" (the exact same bag as the other, but different color).

Now, at 8, pink is his favorite color again. It took a few years to convince him that the opinions of others don't matter for that, and they were wrong. Every color belongs to everyone.

But beating "pink is a girls color" into him at 3 would have been easier and saved him a teary day or two at school, but at 18+, he'd be raising his children to be like the mean kids at school.

Similarly, fixing the sexism by parents (and others) as the children grow up is easier at 3 than 18. But in college, they are already 18, so the "fix" is much more obvious and extreme.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt CS to work harder at being inclusive. Women are run off by jackasses. And men into computers are more likely jackasses. Women will change jobs more readily to get away from bad people. So naturally, they'll change majors for the same reason.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Fwipp · 2014-10-21 11:10 · Score: 2

Male coal-workers don't die because they're male, they die because they're coal-miners. If you're concerned that certain normally-male industries are terrible (A point I'll agree with), then you should argue that protections for coal-miners are insufficient. The solution to "too many men are killed" isn't "kill women instead," unless you're a misogynist.
Female coders are discouraged from entering software development because they're female, not because they're coders. So yeah, if you want to address the disparity, you need to address issues of sexism.
If we found that, among coal miners, the men are particularly likely to die, then yes, we need to address that. Perhaps their equipment is not properly designed for a male body, the tunnels are too small for their larger frames, or they are unproportionately selected for the most dangerous tasks, or they take too many dumb risks. But again, the GP framed the issue as "how can we kill more women." If you care about men dying as coal miners, *address coal mining*. If you only care about scoring points against feminists, then carry on.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-10-21 12:45 · Score: 2

I read where the vets are about 50/50 now, but with more women than men in vet schools. Used to be 80% male. Large animal specialties are still male. But is there a disproportionate number of female vets now?
Ermagherd! Finding this in my research. http://avetsguidetolife.blogsp...
It turns out that even the disparity between women and male veterinarians in female's favor is also because men are pigs!
But yes, there are a lot more female veternarians in school at the moment. Certainly in my area, they outnumber men by a large margin. After this group graduates, we'll see how the ratio ends up. Our Vet's office is around 15 females (not all vets), and one male, a technician.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Fwipp · 2014-10-21 12:47 · Score: 2

"The way we should address this, is by destroying the notion that men are inherently more suited for these "tough jobs" because of their manly stubble."
That's my solution to make coal-miners less male. If you want to ensure that women die instead of men, that's what you should do. If you want to reduce male coal miner deaths, it's likely more effective to strengthen coal-mining safety regulations.
This is not an either/or proposition; we can and should do both.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Aighearach · 2014-10-21 13:29 · Score: 3, Informative

With that many links they won't refute anything because nobody is going to click them. It is an obvious troll.
If there were just 3 or 4 links, then a person might think, "Oh, somebody researched it and found something contextual." If it is a giant list of links, it is more like, somebody did a search and pasted it. Which is just trolling, we all know how to do an internet search on our own. With that many links, I'll bet half of them repeat each other's language because they're repeats of the same source documents.
And the high percent of tumblr and youtube links makes it even more clear it is not serious information.
The vastly most likely answer is that it is pasted from some anti-feminist list.
I did check a couple of them and they were absurd crap, not anything relevant to this discussion, and not anything that a reasonable person would confuse with being relevant here.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by phantomfive · 2014-10-21 13:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

Read this article about one presumably successful effort. [npr.org] And let's look at the assumptions these efforts make, and their solutions.
What bothers me about the article is how little they talk about actually enjoying computer science. They talk about editing Darth Vader's voice, or having all the answers to a quiz be 42, but......what about the actual subject? If you don't enjoy it, maybe you should go to a different field. Because I can tell you, once you've graduated, the real world isn't going to be gamified.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-10-21 14:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem is that men are intimidated by the presence of women, according to the article. But in my experience, men are afraid to be in a "women's profession" because it makes them look feminine. Those are different issues, but it happened with nurses and teachers before.
Any male who is foolish enough to be a teacher today is considered a pedophile. You mean that kind of scaring away? These are not the male pigs saying this stuff: http://www.mamapedia.com/artic...
Read this stuff, including the links. These are women who are pre-declaring all males to be pedophiles Ther are women who are really concerned that their babysitter has teenage sons. And you say its because Men, find aspects of jobs too feminine? This is just as bigoted, as declaring you down't want to leave any white women around black males because you know, they'll all be raped. Bigotry knows no specific gender.
But oddly enough, this blatant in your face hatred of men and assumption that all males are pedos is just "smart mommying". We've been trained that way.
http://online.wsj.com/articles...
Dude was attacked by a women for rescuing two children from a burning car. A guy who was stalked and acosted by a woman for restocking little girls underwear. A guy who won't have contact with children not his own because of the presumption he is a pedo.
http://www.boston.com/communit... Just for general reading of the bigoted stereotyping and hatred directed towards males.

Once women are "allowed" in large numbers, the men run off.
Reading the above links perhaps it is not "feminine" jobs they are concerned about.. Who wants a job where so many women assume without any good reason, that you are a criminal? I suspect before too long that many women will be just as concerned about taking their dog to a male veternarian because.... well.... you know.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by AmiMoJo · 2014-10-21 23:34 · Score: 2

Okay, we can all use Google, and clearly no-one is going to refute every link you posted. I'll just point out some bullshit in one of them though, so you can understand why simply reposting links you found on Bing isn't "research" and doesn't refute the GP.
WSJ article
This article mentions that unemployment rates are 1% higher for men, and then states that labour force participation for women is 12.1% lower. In other words, fewer women are out of work because they tend to simply drop out of the labour market. It also doesn't differentiate between type of work (part/full time, skill/wage level).
It then goes on to claim that men and women simply choose different types of work, so the differences in pay can be explained by that. We know that isn't true though, because firstly women tell us that they want to go into certain fields but are put off or leave due to sexism/harassment, and secondly because there are plenty of studies showing that equivalent work is often not paid the same when the job is dominated by one sex or the other.
Instead of spamming us with so many links why not make an argument with a few links to studies and data that support it?

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by AmiMoJo · 2014-10-21 23:59 · Score: 2

If that's true then yeah, it's a problem. Even bigger is the lack of male teachers in schools, particularly primary level. Young children need male role models, but very few men want to each the 4-7 year old range. Many more used to, but over the last couple of decades endless paedophile witch hunts have put them off.
There's probably some gender stereotyping going on too. Men really need to get liberated like women did in the 60s.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by serviscope_minor · 2014-10-22 00:33 · Score: 2

CS is too hard for women because, despite growing up with computers, they never learned how to program before. Lighten the intro courses to be less "weed out".
Oh, so you mean that CS should only be a course for people who already know how to program, and that people going to university to learn should just be weeded out. Including the guys. Brilliant plan!
University for learning? Whoever heard of anything so insane!
Women are intimidated by knowledge and enthusiasm. Don't show off. It's too... manly.
You are intentionally being an idiot (I hope it's not natural). A "know-it-all" is not a manly thing, it's annoying. And dickish. And puts people off. Most know-it-alls don't in fact know it all.
And jeez, why are you showing off in class, specifically an introductory one? That sonuds like a douchey thing to do.
Women need to be pandered to to keep them interested.
Stop pretending it's a gendered issue. No one likes boring courses. If you put off everyone who isn't 100% dedicated from the get-go then you've just lost out on a lot of talent.
Women's brains are different. But still, ignore those troglodytes who said women are naturally less inclined to be interested in abstract machines.
The only thing missing from there is come cod-evolution based explanation centreing about gathering versus hunting and nurturing babies or somethine.
I can't be bothered to quote anymore. Basically this is one of these feminism issues that when fixed will magically make things better for men. Not everyone who turns out to be a good programmer is a raging neckbeard who has been hacking since they were 5. Women are often pushed away from that so if you are hostile to non-raging-neckbeards then you will wind up with no women. But the thing is, not all guys are either.
So if you are putting off good women you are certainly also putting off good men too.
But yeah who ever thought uiversity should be for learning. We should just have it as a shitfest where raging neckbeards can show off to each other continuously so no one who didn't happen to wind up on that path early in life could possibly want to continue.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-10-22 01:53 · Score: 2

Not just veterinarians, also medical doctors, dentists, judges and lawyers are now more often female than male, even though all of those professions were dominated by men fifty years ago. Apparently women simply make different choices.
Bingo. The elephant in the room about women not choosing tech jobs is that no one seems to notice that the young ladies are making a choice of careers. No one (broadly speaking) is refusing to allow them in tech careers. And the concept of the nerds being so sexist and aggressive that they keep out of the field is silly, because the comparisons to fields where they choose careers include some pretty sex fueled environments.
In fact, in the academic environment where I was, a female in a tech field was actively groomed for rapid advancement. It still came down to how much she wanted to do the work, though. It's supposed to be all about choices.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? by Uberbah · 2014-10-22 04:35 · Score: 2

Maybe because society (in the US, anyway) spends a lot of time, directly and indirectly, telling women they aren't cut out for this kind of work and should focus on being "hot" and be quiet?
On some other planet where you don't see governments and schools pushing the "empowerment" of girls, nevermind that girls are more likely to graduate from college and have always graduated high school at higher rates? Where girls are overdiagnosed with ADHD and overmedicated instead of boys?

Women get pushed around a lot in our culture, overtly and covertly
By other women.

I got raised by smart, educated, strong-willed women (mom, aunts, great aunts, godmother) who had professional lives in the 50s and 60s when that was rare.

As those aunts, great aunts and godmothers what it was like to be drafted into Korea or Vietnam.

Maybe it's learning style? by digsbo · 2014-10-21 07:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:Maybe it's learning style? by greywire · 2014-10-21 07:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

If we're looking for a reason, I think this is the best one I've heard so far.
The thing about the media being the cause I think is wrong, that was just an effect.
The cause I think is spot on, that males are competitive and in general more solitary (damn that testosterone), and females are more apt to be concerned with social aspects. In the late 70's and 80s computers became much more accessible to those competitive loners (nerd stereotyping here).
Which is to say, its not that females can't do it, or that males are better at it (insert whatever you want for it), its just that they are quite possibly just not interested as much. Before the advent of Personal Computers, computing was mostly prevalent in an academic setting, which is more social..

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-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Re:Maybe it's learning style? by digsbo · 2014-10-21 09:55 · Score: 3, Interesting

The cause I think is spot on, that males are competitive and in general more solitary (damn that testosterone)
As soon as I read this I thought of the under-recognized phenomenon of dominance within a cloister. Obviously I wasn't going to be dominant in stickball, BMX biking, or gym class; few of the other computer nerds were. To a large extent our need for dominance resulted in conquering territories we were successful in. So for me, being a guy who was cracking copy protection on video games in 1987 made me like the varsity quarterback of the computing circle.
It only makes sense that in a world where available areas to express dominance are already taken, a new subtype forged into the territory available because of the advent of the PC. Women, wired differently, would not value dominance in the new arena in the same way.

Toys vs tools by paiute · 2014-10-21 07:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

When computers were viewed as toys, it was acceptable for girls to have them. Once they became tools, however, they were only for boys.

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If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine

Re:Toys vs tools by swillden · 2014-10-21 08:40 · Score: 2

When computers were viewed as toys, it was acceptable for girls to have them. Once they became tools, however, they were only for boys.
Then explain why a high percentage of programmers were women back when the only computers that existed filled rooms, cost millions of dollars and were clearly anything but toys, but once microcomputers were widely available in homes and used for playing games as much as anything, the percentage of women began to decline.
I think you may have the right concept, but with the genders reversed.

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Enough with the concern trolling by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 07:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:Enough with the concern trolling by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-10-21 07:46 · Score: 2

Do remember that 'women in tech' has some very vocal friends among employers of techs.

This is not to say that nobody involved is genuinely concerned; but it should be remembered that complaints about the labor market can come from either side, with the supply side generally having the numbers and the demand side generally having the influence. (And, at times, they even shift remarkably quickly: just remember how fast getting women into heavy industry became a national cause during WWII, and how fast encouraging them to keep house in the suburbs become one afterwards.)

not the same by Kkloe · 2014-10-21 07:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

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...

What? by halivar · 2014-10-21 07:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

Re:What? by itzly · 2014-10-21 07:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

And men are discouraged from becoming fashion designers, and yet some of the best fashion designers are men. Yes, it's harder to succeed in technical careers as a woman. Deal with it. Start your own business.
Re:What? by sinij · 2014-10-21 07:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

Neckbeard/RTFM culture passively discourage everyone, regardless of gender, from pursuing that career. If you don't believe me, just read a random Linus rant. Lots of encouragement to work elsewhere in every reply.
Re:What? by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 07:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

Are you saying that they're such delicate little flowers that even the most mild discouragement stops them? Well then--we big, strong men must put a stop to this at once and step in to help protect these weak little creatures! Left to their own devices, without us men to protect them, they would surely fail.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:What? by ErichTheRed · 2014-10-21 07:39 · Score: 2

"Neckbeard/RTFM culture passively discourage everyone, regardless of gender, from pursuing that career."
^^^This this this!!! If I hadn't commented elsewhere I would mod you up for this. I've worked with plenty of smart people across different industries, and by far, the best people I've worked with have been a combination of scary smart and approachable. Not to self-promote, but I feel I fall into at least the smart category, and have been told by colleagues that they enjoy working with me precisely because I'm not the neckbeard type.
These days, it's getting more difficult to find the basement dweller stereotypical nerd, and they tend to cluster in organizations where they don't have to talk to customers on a regular basis. This is simply because unless you have a particular skill set that employers can't find elsewhere, no one wants to deal with someone with serious personality disorder issues.
Now, back in the 80s, neckbeard culture dominated in programming and IT circles, simply because few people understood the new technologies and things weren't as accessible. I think that, more than TV ads, was a main driver-away of just about anyone, _including_ women.
Re:What? by jedidiah · 2014-10-21 07:54 · Score: 2

The entire freshman year of your typical engineering program tends to actively discourage slackers.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Re:What? by serviscope_minor · 2014-10-21 08:46 · Score: 2

They don't want to code. Deal with it.
Apparently they do, but find a massive sausagefest offputting!
http://www.pcgamer.com/how-gam...
So tell me, is an incredibly skilled female coder getting put off by a massive gender imbalance[*] "patronizing, paternalistic bullshit" or in fact evidence that being the odd one out is massiely unappealing to humans and hence putting women off programming?
[*]She only joined the project after it turned out it wasn't all men on board.
News flash: woman have brains and they do what they want.
News flash! Women are humans and humans are herding creatures. Pretending otherwise is not helpful.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:What? by serviscope_minor · 2014-10-21 09:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, perhaps you should learn to read, or perhaps learn to ont read things which aren't there. But ayway your "argument", that is more or less:
feminism is anti feminism because it implies women are weak and therefore we shouldn't actually be doing anything
is crap. Women are human. Humans are herding creatures and on the whole hate being the odd one out. Therefore a big gender imbalance is offputting.
Does that mean humans are weak? Possibly. Does that matter? No, not really.

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SJW n. One who posts facts.
Re:What? by Livius · 2014-10-21 10:06 · Score: 2

Women don't want to code the same way men do. That's a reality borne out by statistics.
We don't know why.
Maybe they are discouraged by systemic factors, maybe not. That is a good reason to find out why. It doesn't tell us yet whether there is a problem to fix.
Re:What? by slimjim8094 · 2014-10-21 12:09 · Score: 2

Hang on a second. One of the smartest things I ever read on the topic had nothing to do with tech - it was a female psychologist who also happened to be a private pilot, and she was talking about getting more females interested in flying. (I don't think somebody could write such a candid article about tech, unfortunately.)
Her basic premise was that females need more encouragement from other women who've "been there" in order to feel comfortable taking that path. Basically, the "odd one out" thing you mention. But males are more apt to do something even in the face of active discouragement. I've certainly observed this in myself and other males, barely (if ever) observed it in females, and it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint as well (intuitively - I don't know if there are any studies that explicitly show this, but if risk-taking is on a bell-curve like most traits, in general the standard deviation in males is greater than in females). In professional flying, there's a lot of discouragement - it's hard, pretty thankless, the pay is crap for a long time despite needing a lot of expensive training just to start, and you're away a lot. Most pro pilots I know are in it for some version of prestige, which we know motivates women less than men.
In other words, to use your language, women are "herding creatures" to a greater extent then men (though I'd probably say "social creatures"). Men are more likely to find a niche in which they can excel, while women are more likely to stick to a "tried and tested" path. Note that I said "more likely", not "will always" - there are plenty of men who go into some boring average field, and plenty of women who don't, but on a societal level the averages and characteristics are important. And I don't think either of these characteristics are necessarily bad, or desirable to change. Both approaches to live have substantial downsides, and it's probably better to have a mix.

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I don't accept the premise by QuietLagoon · 2014-10-21 07:18 · Score: 2

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.

Data may not be valid by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 07:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

Re:Data may not be valid by duranaki · 2014-10-21 08:21 · Score: 2

I was curious about this, also. Basically anytime shows a graph that's supposed to compare men and women, yet actually graphs women vs. some other factor (like time) is suspicious to me. (Btw, this isn't a man/woman thing, just a data correlation thing.) I found at least this site which has some data on majors and you can actually break it down by men, women, or both.

http://benschmidt.org/Degrees/

I'm not drawing too many conclusions, but there's clearly a peak for both genders in 1985. Yes, it seems a sharper decline for women (dropping from 3% to 1% over 10 years, vs. men who fell from about 5.5% to 3.2% in the same time). More interesting than the decline in the 80s to me, which seemed fairly uniform between genders, was the short peak of women returning to the major in the early 2000s, where men surpassed the high point from '85 (5.5%) to go up to 7.5%, while women never recovered to their high point from '85 (3%) and maxed out around 2%.

TLDR; maybe someone should make a study trying to figure out what happened during the revival in interest in CS in the early 2000s and stop blaming the 80's.

Oh bullshit by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 07:19 · Score: 5, Funny

If 80's pop culture had that much lasting influence, every college student would still be majoring in kicking commie ass and breakdancing.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Boy toy by goombah99 · 2014-10-21 07:21 · Score: 4, Funny

Madonna wore a Boy Toy tee shirt. Does this explain the lack of female pop singers today?

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Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.

Re:Boy toy by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 09:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Any time a woman points out a cognitive capacity in which women have supposed superiority, women applaud loudly.
Any time there is even a male suggestion that gender differences include cognitive differences, that man is shouted down.
It's silliness.
Next thing you're probably going to try and justify women's chess teams and women's chess leagues. It's because women feel "safer" there, right?
Mangina everywhere here.
Re:Boy toy by frank_adrian314159 · 2014-10-21 09:41 · Score: 2

Does this explain the lack of female pop singers today?
You're noticing a lack? If anything, the market seems oversupplied to me. Or maybe it just seems that way because the quality is so spotty.

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That is all.
Re:Boy toy by ahaweb · 2014-10-21 11:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

How does the lack of interest in something that geeky boys like in any way fall under the responsibility of those geeky boys, who have no influence over what non-geeky boys are interested in? It obviously does not, and that is why claims that it does fall under their responsibility sound absurd to us geeky boys.
Re:Boy toy by davydagger · 2014-10-21 11:45 · Score: 2

your missing the point.

the media sold the computer scene as a bunch of anti-social men who didn't know what to do with a woman. So women avoided the tech scene.

In mainstream pop culture, woman are sex objects who are more or less sold by advertisers to the "winners" or men who are able to afford the most amount of their products.

Rampant sexism comes from mainstream culture.
Re:Boy toy by dbIII · 2014-10-21 17:12 · Score: 2

I suspect the reality was that as wages in the sector grew the women were squeezed out.
As late as 1987 I was in a CS class with just over 50% women. Today I see more women in mining and heavy industry jobs, literally at the coalface instead of just in the office, than in IT. Pretty weird isn't it for something that was dismissed as "women's work" to the extent where I couldn't even do a class in typing at high school because that was strictly girls only.
Re:Boy toy by AmiMoJo · 2014-10-21 19:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh stop playing the victim. This is bullshit and you know it. It's a straw feminist argument, backed up by a few screaming morons on the internet who either say or claim to have been told these things. It's in no way the mainstream view.

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Boy toy by Shortguy881 · 2014-10-22 02:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

There are obvious cognitive differences between men and women but we as a culture refuse to acknowledge these differences. This stems from decades of civil rights movements toting that everyone is exactly the same. That just isn't true. People are different, but different isn't bad. We should've focused focused on that decades ago and celebrated our differences.

Unfortunately, we've backed ourselves into a corner where even the suggestion that one group of people is different than another is politically incorrect and even taboo.

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Re:Boy toy by mjm1231 · 2014-10-22 04:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

There are cognitive differences between any two men you might select too. To what grouping will you attribute those?
There are also many cognitive tasks where the range of difference within a gender is greater than the range of difference between genders. Given that, in what way is it useful to attribute difference to gender (or other grouping, for that matter)?

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Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by jedidiah · 2014-10-21 07:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.

We have a great one! by s.petry · 2014-10-21 07:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

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)

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Re:1..2..3 before SJW by sinij · 2014-10-21 07:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

Assigning guilt/blame to a group of people based on a characteristic outside of their control tends to do that.

No it was Apple in 1984 by Spy+Handler · 2014-10-21 07:30 · Score: 5, Funny

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!

Systematic bias, but also something else by ErichTheRed · 2014-10-21 07:30 · Score: 2

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.

Re:Systematic bias, but also something else by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 08:09 · Score: 2

Ha, my wife tried to fight it too. The boys ended up making guns out of the dolls she gave them. Just bend old Barbie over, grab her torso as the stock, and BAM, you've got yourself a Barbie Dream Pistol!

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:Systematic bias, but also something else by frank_adrian314159 · 2014-10-21 10:35 · Score: 2

The question is which end of Barbie they shot the bullets from - that is just so crucial.

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That is all.
Re:Systematic bias, but also something else by Shados · 2014-10-21 13:10 · Score: 2

Boys still have the relentless pressure. There's just less of a social trend to try to change it, so people don't even see it. Act a little weak? Get ready to be tossed in the trash can. Interested in books instead of football? LOL!. God forbid your favorite color be pink. And it also starts very, very early.
It comes from everywhere. Advertisement, TV shows, friends, school... you can't avoid it. And then there's probably SOME biological factor...at the end of the day we're just very complex chemical reactions-based machines, but machines just the same. No sane woman would agree to go through giving birth without some pretty strong biological programming/instinct.
I think the "trick" isn't to fight it, but to embrace it with some steering. There's a lot of unisex toys and crafts that will fall into the silly gender bucket, but steer them toward more diverse options. Think Lego Mindstorm for example. And if they like dolls, get them both the ones advertised to them and action figures (if you try and only buy "boy toys", it backfires because they want what they cant have...but if you get everything, they'll stop caring about the difference and make their own choices...). If they like cooking, you can encourage them to experiment, which ends up being chemistry.

Wait, wait, trying to keep up by argStyopa · 2014-10-21 07:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

...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?

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-Styopa

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 07:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Or by Charliemopps · 2014-10-21 07:49 · Score: 3, Informative

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.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by halivar · 2014-10-21 07:50 · Score: 5, Funny

It might be that they are intimidated by my stylish wardrobe furnished by TJ Max.

They've cracked the case! by sootman · 2014-10-21 07:52 · Score: 3, Funny

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!

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Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-10-21 08:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

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?

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.

Re: 1980s by ericaheitke · 2014-10-21 08:04 · Score: 2

I'm a woman. I was born in 1979, so I grew up during the 80s. We got our first computer when I was 2 and I wrote my first program at 7. I was a girly girl in the sense that I liked frilly dresses and pink. I still love fashion. I also grew up with Star Wars and Star Trek! I still love Sci Fi. As a kid I enjoyed playing with Legos, robotics, and star wars toys. I didn't care for barbies, but did like my rainbow bright doll and strawberry shortcake doll. I get excited about programming! I never saw my career choice as a way to get into management. I just love to code and don't care for working in a group. I find I like to be social, but not while I'm working. I also love gadgets and get excited when new ones come out. So while I'm a rare girl and I think other girls need to know that you can be girly and into software and gadgets all at the same time! I'm a Senior Software Engineer who enjoys C#.NET and have been for 12+ years.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 08:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 08:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by shadowrat · 2014-10-21 08:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 08:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

80s movies? Really? by Opportunist · 2014-10-21 08:36 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by LWATCDR · 2014-10-21 08:57 · Score: 3, Informative

"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.

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Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Princeofcups · 2014-10-21 09:06 · Score: 2

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.

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Re:1..2..3 before SJW by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 09:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

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?

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by NotDrWho · 2014-10-21 09:38 · Score: 2

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?

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Ryanrule · 2014-10-21 09:54 · Score: 2

they only cooperate if there are no men around

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by amRadioHed · 2014-10-21 10:29 · Score: 2

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.

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We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by AK+Marc · 2014-10-21 10:40 · Score: 2

Yes, it is creepy to go out of your way to be nice with a subset of the people that work there.

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Learn to love Alaska

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-21 11:30 · Score: 3, Funny

"Don't be mean to women" "treat them like everyone else"?

MAKE UP YOUR MIND!

Re:1..2..3 before SJW by Rinikusu · 2014-10-21 11:35 · Score: 2

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.

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If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai

In the 80s, "nerd" wasn't fashionable like now by devphaeton · 2014-10-21 13:18 · Score: 2

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.

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