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Why Women Devs Are Hard To Recruit and Even Harder To Keep (windowsitpro.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The results of a recent survey conducted by GitHub sheds light on the issue of why women developers are hard to recruit and keep in the business of tech. Windows IT Pro reports: "The 2017 Open Source Survey 'collected responses from 5,500 randomly sampled respondents sourced from over 3,800 open source repositories on GitHub.com, and over 500 responses from a non-random sample of communities that work on other platforms.' Although the survey focused on open source and asked 50 questions on a wide range of topics that were in no way focused on gender issues alone, some of the data collected offers insight into why the developer industry as a whole has trouble recruiting and keeping female devs. Indeed, the severity of the gender gap in open source is substantial. In the survey, 95 percent of respondents were men, with the response rate from women at only 3 percent -- a degree of under-representation that's not seen elsewhere in this study. Other groups show numbers that are more proportionate to their numbers in the general population, with 'ethnic or national minorities' representing 16 percent of the respondents, immigrants at 26 percent, and 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, or another minority sexual orientation' at 7 percent. The problems that women in tech face are pretty much what you might expect. Twenty-five percent of the women surveyed report 'encountering language or content that makes them feel unwelcome,' compared with 15 percent of men. Women are six times more likely to encounter stereotyping than men (12 versus 2 percent), and twice as likely to be subjected to unsolicited sexual advances (6 vs 3 percent)."
"The problems that women in tech face are pretty much what you might expect. Twenty-five percent of the women surveyed report 'encountering language or content that makes them feel unwelcome,' compared with 15 percent of men. Women are six times more likely to encounter stereotyping than men (25 versus 15 percent), and twice as likely to be subjected to unsolicited sexual advances (6 vs 3 percent)."
So basically males are 0.88 times as likely to not be stereotyped or made feel unwelcome and 0.97 times as likely to be not hit on and that is supposed to be the crucial difference in recruiting and keeping employees of both sexes? By the way...
six times more likely ... 25 versus 15 percent
...what?
Ezekiel 23:20
The problems people experience with open source projects are very broadly felt. Just as one example, 70% of people reported a problem with rudeness and name-calling. That dwarfs the issues with stereotyping, which was reported by only 10%. What's up with that? We should let the data guide us to what needs to be focused upon. Sure, issues with women in OSS need to be fixed, but I bet if we get better with the 70% issues it'll go a long way towards fixing the 10%, too.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The lead researcher (Anna Filippova) just completed a PhD on the role of conflict expression in shaping distributed teams. She has also studied the collective user experience with privacy management strategies on Facebook, how to crowdsource history, and Twitter brand sentiment following crisis communication campaigns.
I'm too lazy to dig further, since the last time slashdot did a puff piece on women and minorities in tech, it wasn't even by scientists and ... I just don't care enough anymore to try to stop being jaded.
The biggest gap is here: "In the survey, 95 percent of respondents were men", even though an on-line open source collaboration is the perfect place for a female developer to be judged purely on the quality of the code rather than gender. Just pick a gender neutral alias and start coding.
BeauHD:
Never one to disappoint. You always bring us the best women are repressed slant pieces written by women's studies students, usually self-published on facebook or medium, and then slathered with the barest hint of academic credibility to try sneaking it onto peoples' eyeballs as credible news.
This is your second time in the last two weeks.
New York has a law preventing male daycare workers from changing diapers.
However in my work environment and my department it is nearly 50/50 male vs female in IT. The difference is the following.
1. I am on the east coast. There seems to be less gender discrimination there.
2. I work in IT but not in a tech company. I have found for the most part woman seem to gravitate towards IT jobs with the focus on supporting the greater good vs trying to be the greater good.
3. I work with an older workforce. This has a few differences.
A. Less horny young men trying to hit on woman.
B. Woman who get hired have already had and raised their kids to a point they are self reliant and they feel comfortable on maintaining their career.
C. Experience is the driving force not looks.
4. A work culture that takes diversity and sensitivity seriously. Harassment just isn't tolerated
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How is that law not gender discrimination?
This may seem a bit sexist, but still...
Nobody on the internet knows you have a penis. Nobody knows you have a vagina. You only reveal that when you blab about it.
Pretty much all FOSS work is done in such impersonal settings, over the internet. Unless the developer uses an alias that is super female sounding, like "KittenLove_xoxo" or something, there is nothing to suggest that she does not have a penis. If she can roll with that, and can work in a male dominated environment, there is nothing to prevent her from being just as successful in the group as any other member, assuming her code quality is good.
Nobody sees your tits through IRC, Email, or the like. You might get outed by teamspeak or something, but impersonal digital communications that are the norm for programmer communication? Not so much.
Even if you need to use a real name when doing development work, you dont need to say your name is "Tiffany McCoder", you can use "T. McCoder" instead. Nobody knows if that is "Tim McCoder", or "Tyrone McCoder" or "Tristan McCoder".... or any other name starting with T. There is no reason to out yourself and get the flood of "OMG! A WOMAN! UNPOSSIBLE!" that is sure to happen.
Why is it better not to out yourself? Is it because I think you should just buck it up and accept abuse? NO-- it is because I think you should not set yourself up for abuse. If you happen to be a very rare magical unicorn, outing yourself in front of a bunch of naturalists is a good way to get collected as a type specimen. (note, that means you get killed, and collected for science. Probably something you dont want.) Similar things will happen if you out yourself as a woman in a very male dominated profession, because you are so damned rare. Now, if more women did this, and did it stealthfully, and ended up becoming a more normal demographic, the "Magical unicorn! WOW! AMAZING!!" thing would not happen, and it would be safe to say, "Yes, I am a female developer."
That is to say, if magical unicorns were as common as grasshoppers or normal horses, scientists would not really be all that excited about them, and showing off your magical rainbow unicorn farts in public would not be an issue. Nobody would care, nobody would notice, because rainbow unicorn farts would be everywhere. It is only when magical unicorns are rare that the "OMG! ITS REAL!!" phenomenon happens.
Female developers are rare. Outing yourself as one will cause you only misfortune in this environment. It has nothing to do with sexism. It has everything to do with novelty and rarity. Avoid the temptation to out yourself. Just be another programmer. Make it or break it on the quality of your code. That's all you need to do.
So men are coming on to women more often then women come onto men? What a shock, something needs to be done about this.
and twice as likely to be subjected to unsolicited sexual advances (6 vs 3 percent).
FFS just get over it. Men are expected to initiate relationships. It's called life. It's not a problem. If you don't like it you might as well kill yourself now.
It's not a problem *for you*. Because you're a man and don't have to deal with it every single day. And precisely what authority do you have to determine what is and isn't a problem for other people? Why is it so hard to imagine that it might be an issue to get unwanted attention from a physically larger potentially threatening person, or a person in a financial position of power over you?
Why does bullshit like this get published? It's a non-random survey. It provides no useful scientific evidence. It doesn't even bother to compare the numbers with other industries. But you can be damned sure people with an agenda link to it.
Just another day in Paradise
Who says it isn't? Remember, discriminating against (white) males is always OK.
If a project needs a Code of Conduct, I don't want to be part of that project.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why is it so hard to imagine that it might be an issue to get unwanted attention from a physically larger potentially threatening person, or a person in a financial position of power over you?
That's not hard to imagine, but plenty of women do want attention from tall rich guys, and are waiting for them to make the first move. How are you going to tell the difference ?
You be respectful, move slowly and actually listen to the feedback. The attitude "oh these stupid women complaining about me offering my virile and high-quality sperm" doesn't gives me much confidence that that happens.
Despite the assumption of the "men's right's" contingent of slashdot, women are not in general trying to get offended, or damage your desperately fragile ego. It's not actually fun to do that. But when you're faced with this sort of 'offer' every day, when it's a common occurrence to be called a "frigid bitch" by a stranger because you don't want to be chatted-up on the bus, well you can imagine that your attitude to future encounters changes, can't you?
The parent poster's point is legitimate, but somewhat crassly expressed.
We live in a social sphere with literally centuries of cultural tradition of men initiating intimate relationships with women. This pattern is ingrained and reinforced throughout our culture, and changing it is an evolutionary process that can take decades and more than a generation to evolve. Further, I think there's an evolutionary biology component to it that makes it resistant to change.
It also suffers from what I would call a bargaining imbalance. Usually in a negotiation, the first person to make an offer bargains from a position of weakness -- they expose their bargaining position and expose themselves to rejection. Thus it seems likely that women generally do not want to give up their default bargaining position, further ingraining the default position of men as initiators.
There's also a signaling problem, which is probably the most complex aspect of this. Should signaling be up front and literal, or should it be subtle and ambiguous? Given that women would want to retain their bargaining advantage, they have have an incentive to keep relationship signaling subtle and ambiguous because it provides them with an advantageous information asymmetry. This further weakens potential partner's bargaining ability because they are both unsure of what terms are acceptable *and* unsure if the partner is even receptive to an offer.
The last complication is the icing on the cake, the growth in general promiscuity. As a culture we've become quickly accepting of low-attachment sexual relationships.
So, why is it women get unwanted sexual advances? Men know that there is some possibility that a woman will be willing to engage in low-attachment sexual relationships. Women are ambiguous in their signaling as to their receptiveness to intimate contact. Men have internalized their role as initiators, and also know that since they are bargaining from a position of weakness, they face a high probability of failure. But since they know there is some chance of success generally, they know they have to make a lot of offers in order to achieve successful bargains. Intermittent reinforcement is a very powerful reward mechanism.
In my opinion, women just need to be more vocal in stating their unambiguous disinterest in intimacy. Don't be subtle, it only confuses the person into believing that you are engaging in bargaining somehow.
There is no gender barrier to starting open source projects on GitHub. There is no barrier to recruiting talented women into your feminist collective femputer software project. If women are just as interested and productive in open source as men, they wouldn't need the munificence of men in order to have them work on male-dominated open source projects, there would be lots of open source projects run by women where women could go to feel welcome.
The lack of women-run open source projects, female developers, etc. is a simple consequence of straight women being statistically much less interested in starting or participating in such projects. (Note that, despite facing discrimination and prejudice, gays actually are overrepresented among GitHub open source developers.)
But you're assuming that women are picking those things because they want to be made to feel good.
But if they already perceive the environment as hostile, anti woman, sexist, misogynistic, etc, then what they might be looking for is evidence that it won't be tolerated rather than an environment that makes them feel good.
I can't see there's any way to distinguish which, if any, interpretation is correct based on the data in the survey.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
You be respectful, move slowly
Are you sure that that isnt the problem?
When you, as an IT guy, "move slowly", you become this creeper thats always hanging around but never asking her out.
This then causes an animosity that she feels towards you.
The slower you move the stronger that feeling of animus will be, and if that animus becomes too strong then your next move, asking her out, is sexual harassment under the current accepted definition.
As a young man you hopefully learned that the best way to get a date is to ask girls out. Lots and lots of girls. It doesnt matter how good looking, awesome, pathetic or ugly you are as you will always increase the probability of getting a date by asking another girl you.
Thats the nature of it. "Moving slowly" isnt natural and creates all these problems. If Bob had asked Yan out on the first day, he would have gotten either a yes or a no. If the answer was "yes" then it would have been a mistake for both of them to "move slowly" and if the answer is "no" then it was also have been a mistake for things to "move slowly." Moving slowly affords no advantage, only disadvantage, to both parties. These disadvantages accumulate into the observed "problems" that are exactly the result of what you are asking for.
"His name was James Damore."
> If a project needs a Code of Conduct, I don't want to be part of that project.
If you find the very existence of a Code of Conduct objectionable, then not being part of the project is probably best for both you and the project.
But no whining if there's a dearth of co-members who are actually pleasant to work with.
work culture that takes diversity and sensitivity seriously
I can't take either of those things seriously. I only care about ability and that one has sufficient business communication skills. That's it.
As a male who's worked in several majority-female businesses I can't count the number of times I've been "unwelcome" but I don't really care. Nobody's ever surveyed me or asked me what I feel about that, which is a good thing because I'd have told them they're being ridiculous. I return niceness with niceness and impoliteness with the same. If I'm supposed to get over it so can everybody else. I actually had to transfer a man from one location because he was tired of hearing things from the females there--things that, had the gender roles been reversed would certainly have been considered harassment by modern standards. He wasn't interested in filing charges though, he just wanted not to put up with them. That was an easy request to grant trust me.
Women who wonder why some men ignore them in the workplace pretty much have to understand that lately harassment has been dumbed down to "a male who a woman doesn't approve of noticing she exists" and, on rare occasions, a woman making something up because a male she wants to notice her refuses to, so I can't take that seriously either. Does harassment exist? Yes, actual harassment in the traditional sense exists, just not in the numbers people would have you believe. It's toxic to the workplace and shouldn't be tolerated. I've had to deal with that too. Not by counseling, not by sensitivity training, but by showing the idiot in question the door. It's the only way to deal with that, just as it's the only way to deal with overly dramatic personalities in the workplace as well.
That's what the most vocal feminists say, sure. Strangely enough, I've never met a vocal feminist in the combat arms, and the overall figure for women is around 1%. Were the draft to actually be instituted, and applied to women, I suspect you would hear these brave justice warriors singing a much different tune.
Reverse discrimination is like unicorns. Often spoken about but never seen.
Actually, more like air. Spoken about, but so pervasive you stop even noticing it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Many of them would probably argue against the draft, but they'd argue against it for both men and women.
In any case, the draft is irrelevant ... conscription isn't compatible with the needs of a high-tech military.
Yes, precisely; they don't mind saying they're in favour of an "equal draft" because they know it's unlikely to be used, and they know that in the case that any government were thinking about using it they could just protest it in it's entirety. And having women registered for the draft would make it even more difficult for a future government to actually put it into effect.
We can look at other inequality metrics though. How often have you heard feminists bemoan the lack of female coal miners? How vocal have they been in addressing the incredible overrepresentation of men in workplace deaths?
Sure, feminists will pay lip service to these things, just as they do to the inequality of the draft, but that's as far as it goes. It costs them nothing to say "yeah that's really unfair and we would like it changed". But they do nothing to actually address those issues because they're quite happy when it's men on the losing side of the bargain.
Or you could just grow up and act professionally at work.
Please cite the New York law. I believe some daycares might have that policy, and it's probably illegal because it's sex discrimination.