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 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.

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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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 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 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 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 __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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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 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 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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Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
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.

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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-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

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!

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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Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.

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: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.

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.

--
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.

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 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!

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