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Tech's Gender Gap Started At Stanford
JCallery writes: The New York Times has an in-depth look at the gender gap in tech through the eyes of Stanford's class of 1994. The article surveys the culture of the school and its attempts at changing the equation on diversity. It also examines Stanford's impact on the big companies (Yahoo, PayPal, WhatsApp, Stella & Dot) and big names (Peter Theil, Rachel Maddow, Brian Acton) that came of age during the pioneering era of the early web.
any proofreaders aroind?
"A group of British researchers have analyzed data from the Darwin Awards and found that men are more likely to engage in life-threatening risky behaviour than women."
The term "idiotic" is used a lot in the quoted article, but it is a genetic fact that males are more willing to take a chance. The outcome is a gender gap. Women should stop their shrill haranguing, get their hands dirty and be more "idiotic".
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Really how could anyone think a piece with that title is anything but a biased bit of garbage not fit to line a birdcage with ?
There is reporting and then there is agenda reporting. It's pretty damn clear that the NYT is agenda reporting to the point it would make Hearst blush.
It was started by a MAN named STAN, obviously a male chauvinistic pig school.
Number one, they're looking at the extreme high end of achievers, who - guess what - aren't representative.
And then the TFA has this gem:
"Dozens of women stayed in safe jobs, in or out of technology, while they watched their spouses or former lab partners take on ambitious quests."
Does anybody see what I see there?
News flash:
Not everything in this world is going to mimic the real demographics of the planet. If they idea is that we're all special snowflakes, we're sometimes going to find some people better suited to certain things than others. Unless there is evidence that the best person isn't being hired for the job, there is no gender gap. A gender gap is an artificial construct made by people who can't get past gender in the first place.
Step 1: Stigmatize the traits that lead people to excel in tech fields, men posessing those traits, and anyone in tech
Step 2: Watch as that stigmatization isolates and ostracizes people in tech as "nerds" "dweebs" "dorks" "losers" and so on
Step 3: "WHY AREN'T THERE MORE WOMEN IN TECH?!!!!"
Tech fields aren't some fortress designed to keep women out, they're a ghetto that unattractive or non-conforming men were shoved into. That's why the "neckbeard" stereotype is pushed so hard these days, nobody wants to give up bullying these people but they need to find some way to JUSTIFY it that also covers for the fact that bullying is exactly why the gender gap exists in the first place. So they invent this massive straw misogynist "neckbeard" caricature and start pushing it everywhere. Now it's not just that nerds are losers, it's that they're misogynist losers and that's why it's totally ok to bully them because it's all their fault anyway.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
...in vapid, stupid conclusions based on flawed initial premises.
First I noticed was that "coding" is a superpower.
Second is that tech's gender gap began in 1994? Seriously?
So before 1994, women were nearly equally represented in computing? HAHAHAHA.
It's not even worth refuting, it's such an asinine premise.
Hint to the author: the world began before you.
-Styopa
That summary is a total superficial read of the article.
It seems to me the point of the article was that 1994 (the web 1.0 boom of silicon valley) seemingly should have been more women friendly, but the valley was already being run by money from the previous booms in silicon valley and for a multitude of reasons which they list (e.g., male dominated venture capital firms), was unfriendly to women as chronicled by the biographies of the class of '94 from Stanford. One of the reason they cited was that women seem to gravitate towards "safe" jobs (e.g., law, finance, medicine) and a new "boys-club" mentality of the startup culture (specifically mentioning Paypal which was a Stanford dominated startup).
These same trends were most certainly true both before 1994 and after 1994 and not exclusive to Stanford... TFA didn't say techs' gender gap started at Stanford. TFA used Stanford as emblematic of the issue.
So much for the freedom part. But sure lots of air, mostly hot.
Stanford has created a meritocracy that doesn't work with the rest of the world, but a mini-meritocracy: if your in the club and well liked it works great. If you're out of the club, it doesn't--no such thing as a meritocracy in most universities nowadays. And guess what? That's no different from any club in an Ivy league school.
But then again, I have not hear the arguments about the patriarchy and misogyny for a while so at least it's different agenda based reporting.
Society does not have enough turmoil, so we have to invent and spew more...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's not just "Tech's Gender Gap" that started at Stanford; Silicon Valley itself started at Stanford (see Francis Terman, William Shockley, Fairchild Eight, etc.). So while it's technically accurate to say the gender gap started at Stanford, it's just as accurate to say CD-ROMs or Pets.com or anything else Silicon Valley-related started there. Silicon Valley is the genesis of digital technology, and Stanford is the genesis of Silicon Valley.
That's what 'Spring Break', 'Cinco de Mayo', 'Saint Patrick's Day', etc were for?!?!?!
America likes to invent gaps, - bomber gap, missile gap, and now it's gender gap.
By 1994, the gender gap in tech was already well-established; it wouldn't become much greater until the .com crash. And it didn't start at Stanford, it was at least a national phenomenon. My second-rate east coast state school showed the same trends.
...up until 1984. Interesting story about the culture which helped shaped women out of the field, or at the very least, class them out.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding
But then again, I have not hear the arguments about the patriarchy and misogyny for a while so at least it's different agenda based reporting.
Society does not have enough turmoil, so we have to invent and spew more...
Here's an article posted three weeks ago about a woman in STEM that (for once) contains no clickbaiting headline, libel about entire groups committing discrimination & misogyny & harassment, nor the usual thinly veiled, anvilicious feminist agenda.
It was just an honest and interesting account of life at CERN, with a woman at the center of it. It garnered barely 30 comments. Who wants to bet this thread will end up with three times that?
(I can't mod you up, alas.) The stats match what I've seen before, so I'm not trying to cast aspersions (I believe you're correct), but for the sake of completeness, could you provide your sources for those stats? This thread would be 10x nicer with long-term trend graphs.
Women are first held back by their much lower fertility cut-off age. This causes the world to crowd in earlier, wanting babies, marriage, and relationships, distracting and rushing them so they find it harder to take the time and effort to pursue uncertain and uncommon paths.
In a different way women do it to themselves, avoiding founding the big universal services, instead starting companies that sell mainly to other women: fashion, children's products, jewelry, cosmetics, craft, and journalism targeted at women. This indeed applies to the Stanford woman featured in the article. Have women been forced into this ghetto by misogyny, or are they just smartly going where there's little male competition?
In the eye of the beholder, one's genius is often the waste-of-oxygen of another.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Just once I'd like to see a discussion on /. where women's experiences aren't discounted.
Maybe women have experiences men don't have and that we can't understand? Maybe us men shouldn't poo poo statistics just because they haven't "seen" discriminatory actions in the same way I shouldn't don't say there's no "racial bias" in policing just because I haven't experienced it personally (and probably won't).
But maybe I'm hoping for too much. Has /. even had a female on staff ever?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
IT is all going to be offshored anyway.
I am sorry, what data does it have?
Oh, you mean it has unsupported assertions that match your desired worldview?
Let me make my own suggestion:
Pre mid 90s, CS was a rather unpopular course, generally filled with people who had a true interest in it, and in quite low numbers.
Therefore it tended to have a moderately (more) balanced gender participation, although that does vary quite strongly depending on location.
During the later 90s, the 'tech boom' made it a much more popular course for a lot of people who through it could be a path to 'success', the
content was watered down, the attendance went through the roof, and more of a male bias was seem.
HOWEVER, what to know where the opposite happened? business courses, MBAs, Laywers, Doctors.
Thats right, women CHOSE to avoid tech because they saw a larger payout in other areas - and women in general are better at long term planning.
Women went for the established, known risk long term payout of those kinds of course (at least as viewed at the time), whereas Men tended to bias more
towards the 'excitement and risk' of tech, with a lower probable payout.
But history meant a few of the tech people ended up making it big - so not its 'unfair' that more women didnt choose that path, and its the mens fault.
Get real, CS, and other tech courses, were most certainly NOT sexy in the early-mid 90s, and women were not excluded - most people who took them
were looked down on by much of the rest of the faculty.
Or, should we perhaps look at the current gener in bio-research, and advanced medical? a HUGE bias to women - who is screaming out about fixing that
equality? yes? please? no one? thought not.
Its just more of the usual - if something does well, women want 'equality' inforced there, but if it doesnt, they are happy to ignore it.
Or should be be trying to fix the gender gap in trades and manual labour areas? more women working in mines and fabrication?
Thought not..
I think the peak of women in technology majors was in the late 80s or early 90s. But in the late 70s, there was ONE woman in any and all of my computer classes at UCLA (likewise in several math classes).
Oh, they're talking "post internet" because Ms. Kantor (the article's author) must think of "dot com" as the tech world. Being born in 1975, she probably entered college around 1993. As an adult, she's always had "the internet" available.
"The Internet was supposed to be the great equalizer" she quotes.. Why would this be so? The people "doing" the internet were largely male, and they're going to have the biggest voice, by sheer numbers, if nothing else. There's nothing about the internet that would tend to equalize the genders, if anything, it could exacerbate the problem, as any mob situation can.
There is no such thing as "tech". And there never has been. And Stanford has never been the center of it either.
Stanford and the "Silicon Valley" area may be the center of "media attention" and startups giving each other $20 billion dollars, but the "real world" uses technology ever day to get things done, is quite automated and standardized and rarely uses much produced in "Silicon Valley".
Entire corporations on the IT side of things get things done every day without using anything Google, Yahoo, Facebook or Apple ever was involved in.
Media attention doesn't equal reality. The Silicon Valley area is guilty of being the "Cult of Self Importance" --- like the Plutarchs in the Hunger Games. But it doesn't make it true.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I find it odd that they equate "early web" with "high tech". This was the point in time when computers basically dumbed themselves down, and any company throwing up a web page claimed that they were high tech in order to get funding. Before 1994 the engineers at Stanford, men and women, were instrumental in building up the state of the art in computer science and they came from engineering disciplines completely distinct from the MBA program.
The gender gap that exists is not necessarily in the business end of these companies but in engineering side, and in particular the IT computer support groups. Yes there is a gender gap in the upper management layers but this is true outside of tech companies as well. When people note that there's a gender gap in STEM fields the "E" does not stand for "entrepreneur", and yet the large media companies can't seem to figure out the difference.
Who has worked at Stella & Dot for over 3 years (which makes me one of the oldest tech employees there) I find it strange anyone would consider it a big company. Maybe there is a bunch of Stanford folks there I don't know (maybe 250 employees total, I'd wager 75 or something in the bay area at the most). I don't pay attention to what schools people go to.
Also don't get why people care about the gender gaps, but whatever.
posting as AC since I don't have an account and I post maybe once every 3 years (though this maybe my 3rd post this year I think)
FFS... when they say there's a gender gap in IT when enrolling into tech degrees is a matter of choice is as moronic as saying that there's a gender gap in human ability to become pregnant (where there's no choice in wish gender gets pregnant).
Well, in my university and pretty much every university I know of here you'll find this true: most students in computer science are males and most students in biology are females; Even in the same department with different degrees, such as physics (my own) you'll find that physics engineering (my degree) has more males than females, but pure physics will have more females (noticeable, but it'll still have more males than females). This has been true for pretty much all the universities I know... taking into account that people are free to choose whatever the degree they choose to try to enroll I would say that the choice of those degrees by the female population simply isn't appealing, and gender gap is something obvious but it's also something that some people try to take out of context and blow it out of proportion. You can say that there is a bias for management types, but it's stretching by a moonshot when someone say there's a bias based on gender for tech roles when there is actually a demographic gap, huge and by option of each gender, on such roles.
Going further back than university degrees, in high school here we have different paths we can choose (preparing to a future enrollment in a college degree or professional degree) and I went for computer science. My class had 4 girls, in a total of 23 students in that class... there was no grade criteria that would put any gender in disadvantage to enroll to that class because at that point the average is what counted, not if it was specific to math or history or whatever, no it was the average.... girls simply didn't found appealing to enroll in such courses. And of course, if that is any example of a future IT demographics more man than woman will fare better basically because probability says so, that simple.
In IT there's no "gender gap", simply females are not so much represented, by choice! Now, if they would argue about bias towards management position, whatever the company business, that would be a different discussion.
...it is gender bias that most women don't become plumbers either?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
have all been massive failures.Well Virginia Rometty hasn't been a massive failure, but she hasn't been a success either.
Face it, smart kids were mercilessly teased in school since a long time before 1994. But being socially awkward, these kids stick to what they ARE good at, like tinkering with computers. This provides an escape for them, since they don't have a clue how to be accepted by others.
Girls tend to mature socially earlier than boys. They DO understand how to relate to others socially, and they don't want any part of the kind of treatment they see their smart male friends enduring. So...they do the smart thing...they stay away.
Is this all a terrible injustice? Probably. But we shouldn't be blaming the men. They are the ones who stuck with their quest despite the pressure. If there is anyone to blame, blame Hollywood, which (at the time) produced movie after movie reinforcing the "nerd" stereotype.
Women were the first programmers.
That is how it was.
In early 1994 I was writing technical reports with a pen and giving them to a typist. By the end of the year it improved, I could type them up to save on a floppy disk to give to typists who would adjust them to the organisations style and then print them out, then I would glue photographs onto the reports and they would be distributed. I'm not sure if we got email in that year or in 1996 - that's for a group of engineers and scientists supporting electricity generation and distibution for an entire state.
So that's a bunch of university graduates, let alone undergraduates, that did not have email. We'd heard of email, we'd seen email, and I knew people who had email in the late 1980s and was jealous - but we did not have access to email at the start of 1994. Even quite a few University CS departments only gave staff and postgraduate students email access.
White males had more options to follow the money, and when the money started turning up in IT they squeezed the women out of the profession.
It's a cultural thing which we are perpetuating where employment is by the "best fit" instead of by ability. That's how we ended up with programmer pits filled with chest beating little boys in the shape of men acting like the stockbrokers that geeks used to make fun of - stupidly toxic testosterone culture of gun nut "alpha males" that could barely survive a camping trip.
A bit of diversity stops such fucking stupid oneupmanship and makes the workplace a bit less feral. If you have nobody to respect apart from someone exactly like yourself you get stagnant. A few older people, people from completely different fields, people with different upbringings etc keep you out of a rut - and a gender mix stops the place from degenerating into a drunken toga party.
It is nonsense to say women can not take risk. Where we get all the hardware -people generated? From the risk taking mothers – women. Historically, using religion and politics, men isolated them, kept them uneducated- like Taliban wants now for the Muslin world, but Madam Curie, Hopper et al., came to forefront by coincidence when no men could do those kinds of sacrifices. We want, sisters, wives, mothers, grand mothers, and daughters but not bright women colleagues because we are afraid of them, it hurts our ego. While no one wants 50:50 ratio, 40:60, 45:55 should be fine. But third rate corporate management and ignorant politicians will never allow women to become top-notch anything. Some dude wants permission from male to have abortion when the jerk did not have himself a womb. Anyway, men have insecurity, too much pride rather will not have well rounded female partners or colleagues. Women movement also had gone in the wrong direction and fighting with establishment, they have destroyed all the progress. Equality in the family has to be based on negotiation and not based on so called "norm". Our uneducated (just paper degree holding) politicians who can not think clearly and lobby controlled robots are destroying the nation created by thoughtful founding fathers. The founding fathers never expected that their great.... grandsons will take us back to the Roman times and destroy all the progress we have made so far. Founding fathers did not put an amendment as to the heinous crimes of corruption as they never imagined that their pro-genies will destroy this wonderful democracy in the world. Degrading women is part of the scheme of the selfish grandsons. What a pitiable condition in the most admired country. Others are emulating us using us as an example.
post-1990 - something goes completely wacky in the industry and women are driven out of computing in large numbers; younger women don't even enter the field.
So, since you seem to be a younger dude perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that happened 1990-2000 that made the field so undesirable to women.
The internet happened. Online venues (like slashdot) became places where self-selection happens. Being mostly male to begin with, that's the direction online forums went. More and more pure. This is where people exploring an interest in technology go, and learn it's a field where it's acceptable to say the kind of shit that gets up-moderated here. Fewer women enter the field. Online forums become more pure. Rinse and repeat.
Whenever I scan a document or an article and the word 'Diversity' pops up ... sigh!, yet another useless Political Correctness piece of crap!
The theme is always the same --- no matter if it's tech, or business, or wealth, or whatever-you-can-think-of, their basic argument is that someone has been _WRONGED_ and we must do everything to right the wrong, to make sure that the disenfrenchised party is disenfrenchised no more !
The 'common theme' is 'GAP', and the adjective can be 'racial', or 'gender', or 'wealth', or whathaveyou
They never care to address the WHY, they only want to talk about the "injustice"
The society is not going forward if every time they come up with something new the rest of us have to stop everything in order to 'help the disenfrenchised'
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
More 'gender equality' bullshit. Are you sick of it yet?
Men and women, in general, are different, and have different interests. This is all about making sure that WHITE women don't have as many children as they used to, because they're chasing a stupid dream of being 'like a man' and doing the same jobs men do - all of them. It's called GENOCIDE.
Either force women to join the tech industry by law or there will always be a gender gap... oh unless you lobotomize men so they can't even do it if they want to do it.
Short of that... gender gap is forever. Women don't want to do it - so they don't.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Tech's Gender Gap Started At Stanford
No it didn't. It started when tech started, at which point males and females had already been different from each other, on average, for millions of years. Might as well talk about the mammoth-hunting gender gap.
Gender discrimination, now, that's something else. But I don't think that started at Stanford in 1994, either.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Why take it personally when the problem is the peer group?
trust anyone from Standford, work for them, or hire them.
microsoft & amazon together do qualify for the plural use of "corporation"... ;-)
Gap gender in nurses, kindergaten, teachers and hairdressers. Fuck this sexism and the fake political correctness.
Let us put men and women together, see which one is smarter,
Some say men, but I say no, women got the men like a puppet show.
It ain't me, it's the people that say, men are leading women astray,
I say, it's the women today, smarter than a man in every way,
That's right the women are smarter, the women are smarter that's right.
Little boy sitting in the corner and cry, big man come and ask him why,
He said "I can't do what the big boys do", the man sat down and he cried too.
It ain't me, it's the people that say, men are leading women astray,
I say, it's the women today, smarter than a man in every way.
That's right the women are smarter, the women are smarter that's right
Ever since the world began women been imitating the ways of men,
But listen cause I've got a plan, give it up just don't try to understand.
It ain't me, it's the people that say, men are leading women astray,
I say, it's the women today, smarter than a man in every way.
My advice to you is to lay back and think of England. The women will do whatever they want to do, and the men need to just relax and stop trying to fix the world for the women.
did you know, that 100% of all mothers who have given birth, regardless of marital status, are Female?
The patriarchial system is obviously at fault here. Or the matriarchial system. Or something.
cuz Bias and outrage, yanno.
The gender gap was evident in 1984 when I got to college and there were only three females in my Comp. Sci. program.
My Heart Is A Flower
Sometimes people are discriminated against based on race/gender/whathaveyou
Do you realize that you are replying to a comment from Taco Cowboy and that fella is a Chinese?
If there ever was any discrimination against the Chinese don't you think Taco Cowboy has already tasted __that__??
Where did I do that? Oh it's the strawman in your head.
No mention of rapists and whatever "muh soggy knees" is supposed to mean, so once again strawman in your head.
It appears I don't have very much to do with this discussion so why don't you carry it on with yourself offline instead of the stupid fucking cowardly and childish strawman shit in my name?
Also WTF was "Why don't you take it back to jezebel" supposed to mean and WTF did it have to do with either my post or the one above - was it a reply to the strawman in your head again?
Not the strawman this time, sounds just like you and your rant doesn't it?
It's a pretty sad case when saying something positive about Marie Curie is considered rabid feminism. Would that make me gay if I mentioned Charles Darwin?