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Google's Diversity Chief: Mamas Don't Let Their Baby Girls Grow Up To Be Coders
theodp writes: Explaining the reasons for its less-than-diverse tech workforce, Google fingered bad parenting for its lack of women techies. From the interview with Google Director of Diversity and Inclusion Nancy Lee: "Q. What explains the drop [since 1984] in women studying computer science? A. We commissioned original research that revealed it's primarily parents' encouragement, and perception and access. Parents don't see their young girls as wanting to pursue computer science and don't steer them in that direction. There's this perception that coding and computer science is ... a 'brogrammer' culture for boys, for games, for competition. There hasn't been enough emphasis on the power computing has in achieving social impact. That's what girls are interested in. They want to do things that matter." While scant on details, the Google study's charts appear to show that, overall, fathers encourage young women to study CS more than mothers. Google feels that reeducation is necessary. "Outreach programs," advises Google, "should include a parent education component, so that parents learn how to actively encourage their daughters."
Disgusting straight white cishet male shitlord here.
My parents, particularly my dad, discouraged me from pursuing any kind of work with computers. He wanted me to go into trades (blue collar, not Wall Street) like he did, specifically to follow in his footsteps and continue his one-man business as a painter. Then you've got the whole NEEERRRRD thing from the jocks in schools. In short, many males aren't particularly pushed into STEM either. They take it upon themselves, under their own agency, to pursue those goals. I wonder how so many boys who got bullied for their STEM related interests throughout their young lives managed to stick to their interests and goals. It must be the penis.
Except that women who enter STEM (to actually WORK in a field) are in the same boat. They see past any discouragement from their families/pees, and they ignore all the "I deserve a free-ride into the field" rhetoric from gender ideologues, and they put in the time and effort to become proficient with whatever it is they want to do. Granted, there's fewer of them than men ...BUT DON'T YOU EVEN TALK ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY THAT EACH GENDER MIGHT HAVE DIFFERENT CAREER PROCLIVITIES.
You have to be intelligent to code well, and it is a very specific form of intelligence that often comes with weakness in other areas. So is it genetics or nurture that is responsible for that particular gift/curse? I say it is genetics and that it is also probably x-linked therefore more males are affected by it in the same way they are far more likely to suffer from x-linked disorders too. Why had this not ever occurred to people before I do not know but if you can have an x-linked disability there is the same chance that you can have x-linked abilities that are exceptional. Why are autism spectrum disorders correlated with programming skills and with being male, because they are both x-linked!
For the record my oldest girl can code like a kid twice her age can, sure I encourage her because it is a form of literacy that scientists need but she will never be somebody else's "programming slave", she will use the skill as just one facet of her projects.
Can I claim credit where others have received blame from Nancy Lee? No, my kid is just very intelligent and that is as much or more her mother's fault and if you say otherwise you are being (how ironic!) sexist.
(Full disclosure: I am neither female nor a parent; I'm a male who studies physics.)
There are too many links in the summary. The most relevant one is the google study, which has some interesting data and is fairly neutral. I don't think the study supports the flamebait headline, but instead paints a complicated picture. In particular, see the charts on page 5 of the study.
The story headline is in the same style as this interesting article titled "Papas, please let your babies grow up to be princesses". That article makes the case that interests in "girly" things are not mutually exclusive with interests in STEM fields. There are anecdotes in the above comments about girls being pressured by parents into STEM activities (like robotics clubs), and how it often doesn't work. Perhaps this is because some parents push STEM at the expense of "girly" things rather than simply encouraging STEM without taking a hostile stance towards "girly" things.
Just a thought.
The problem with this is that companies don't really pay that well for the labour, skills, experience, talent and education necessary to succeed in IT.
"IT" is a crap career no one should enter. Answering calls on the helpdesk? No thanks - well, better than starving, but so are a lot of things. But we were talking about software development
Why would girls want to sit in front of a computer for hours on end, sometimes, even evenings and work also on weekends in order to launch etc.?
Check out the hours lawyers work, or the oncall duties as a surgeon (or a vet - but dentists, that's the job!). It's not the hours that's the problem, it's the lack of dignity of the profession. When the field was doubling every few years, that meant most software developers were in their 20s, and management could get away with treating all of us like college students. My work environment is more like a dorm room or college lab than a professional office environment - that's what we need to push back against.
As far as pay, after your first 5 or so years in the field, jobs that pay well are there for the taking, though you may need to move to where the work is. If you're past your apprenticeship in the field and you're not making at least 1.5x the national median income, you're likely at a bottom-tier employer: shop around. While we may top out lower than the doctors and lawyers, they don't hit peak earning potential until later in life - a doctor or dentist is typically in his 40s before lifetime earnings net of school costs put him ahead of a plumber or other skilled tradesman.
Personally, I think many women are put off by the limited social interaction involved in the job, or at least that's my theory for why so many female software developers choose career advancement into management or product management over the dev tech track.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
India has Bollywood, yes, but Indians seem to have a much more realistic grasp of what career paths are actually feasible and which aren't. Of course, there's also a huge number of middle-class (for India) Indians, since their population is enormous. Finally, I've never heard of sports being a big thing in India. They have cricket of course, but I don't think it's like the sports-mania we have here in the US.
China, having an authoritarian government, probably does things to strongly discourage too many people from wasting their time on dead-end career paths like acting. Here in the US, it's easy to get student loans or even scholarships to go to college for theater. I knew a girl who did this not that long ago; she had a full-ride scholarship, and what did she blow it on? Theater. Did she get a job in theater? Nope; she moved towards make-up and costumes in her senior year thinking that would be a more realistic career path, graduated, and ended up working at a hotel in customer service. A complete waste of a degree. I wouldn't be surprised to find that China doesn't allow silliness like this with student loans or other public funding.
As for Africa, that's hard to say, because Africa has no industry at all to speak of. I can't imagine that software engineering has much prestige there because people probably can't think much beyond life in a mud hut. Even if you go to South Africa or one of the Arabic northern countries, there's not much industry there either, and not much employment for programmers.