Could a Grace Hopper Get Hired In Today's Silicon Valley? 608
theodp writes "There has been lots of heated discussion on the topic of where-the-girls-aren't, both in the tech and larger business world. Dave Winer broached the subject of 'Why are there so few women programmers?', prompting a mix of flame, venom and insight. Over at Valleywag, Nitasha Tiku pegs 'Culture Fit' as an insidious excuse used to marginalize women in tech. Completing the trilogy is an HBR article, 'Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?', in which Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic concludes the problem is that manifestations of hubris, which occur much more frequently in men than women, are commonly mistaken for leadership potential. So, with a gender and age strike against her, would a Grace Hopper in her prime even land an interview in today's Silicon Valley?"
Female programmers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
There weren't very many female CS students at college with me, and they ranged between worthless (few) to okayish (most) to exeptional (very few). In other words, pretty much followed the same patterns as the male students, albeit being far fewer in numbers.
That said, I gradumicated thirteen years ago. So YMMV.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the same, and I don't understand what is being said about leaders. The women have their fair share of incompetent leaders as well. Well not completely fair, since the women to men ratio is still low, but I would guess the ratio of incompetence female leaders to competent ones is the same as for men.
I can only think of a handfull of male leaders in IT that are more incompetent than Carly Fioni.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
The low numbers, is the fact why it is hard to find exceptional. The population isn't a normal distribution, but shifted a bit.
There is always a bit more worthless then exceptional. However if you increase the population up you find more, but if you reduce the population down then you wil find very few.
The worthless developers tend not to last long, if they do, they kinda just suck your sole as you need to make up for them.
The Okayish you tend to work with fine, and they don't bother you. The exceptional you may not even realize they are exceptional, they do their job and get done. Also women tend not to brag as much as guys do, so there is less self promotion.
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WTF? It surely is. It shouldn't be, but in fact it is.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
That matches my experience. About half are below average.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Funny)
I have a similar metric built after years in business, tech, VC, etc. Its quite simple, totally not politically correct, and very tongue in cheek. But for your entertainment:
Dimensions for analysis:
x-axis factors:
1) Height short -> tall
2) "WASPiness" waspy -> non-waspy
3) Sex "female" -> "male"
4) attractiveness troll -> model
x-axis, (0-N)=1+2+3+4
y-axis factor:
5) Odds of Incompetence likely useless -> potential illuminati
y-axis, (0-N)=5
So it turns out the further away from the origin (0) you get on the x axis, the closer to the origin (0) you get on the y axis. That is, the taller, waspier, more 'male', and more attractive you are the higher are the odds that you are incompetent in every sense of the word. So if you ever meet a short, non-waspy, non-male, unattractive person in a position of power, be very, very careful. They are probably extremely competent. ;-)
This model is clearly US centric, btw, I suspect it wouldn't hold up very well internationally ....
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The one thing i see you are are missing i the X factor, of bloodline.. it can skew that metric all over the place.
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Too late. ;-)
Fortunately the only thing that matters in a hiring decision for me is demonstrable competence. You could be a cruelly mutated sea snail, and if you demonstrate the ability to solve hard problems, have a healthy sense of curiosity (and ideally a sense of humor), and seem likely to be able to work well with others, thats all that matters. The metric above is mostly for entertainment, but I *dare* you to plot some of your business associates. For maximal entertainment, pick folks on the financial
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This is untrue, except in the basest biological sense.
Her ideas live on and will likely continue to live for much longer than the typical genetic line.
See also: Alan Turing. (Ah yes, now I see that you are trolling)
I'm not trolling at all. Do you not believe in Evolution? Both her and Turing were losers in the game of life.
Their words and everything they did will fade from significance, just like the words of every human being who was around 10,000 years ago have done.
Their short term significance is that they were exploited effectively by those who won this round of the game of life, and their offspring.
But, you know... don't let me dissuade you from sacrificing yourself to the education system. If you want to ser
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Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the problem. The pipeline is bled dry waaaay before actual companies try and hire women programmers. There is quite possibly some sexism involved in hiring practices, but the bigger issue is why are there so few women in a position to be hired in the first place? Why aren't many women choosing to study these subjects. Are they being discouraged from studying computer science? Are they graded more harshly? Is it social pressure?
I've been wondering recently if it isn't more to do with expectations. Men are judged very harshly on their career. A man with a crappy job is often unfairly seen as a crappy man. Women are given much more space and encouragement to "find themselves" I find (anecdotal I know....) and can work "lowly" jobs without judgement. This is likely due to the fact that they encounter more obstacles than your average man, so people generally cut them more slack (reasonably). But I can't help but wonder if the lowered expectations isn't also preventing some women from finding their true potential. A more insidious form of sexism since it's based on good intentions.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
why are there so few women in a position to be hired in the first place? Why aren't many women choosing to study these subjects. Are they being discouraged from studying computer science? Are they graded more harshly? Is it social pressure?
Maybe they damn well don't want to.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Wish I had mod points. I have a female friend who works as an elementary school teacher and she told me that 100% of the teaching staff at her school are *women*. So what? Who cares? I think women are drawn to other fields, simple as that.
There are those that will say your statement is sexist...
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
There are those that will say your statement is sexist...
I'm sure there are. More sensible people would simply say that the statement is ignorant and excessively simplistic.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
just that men don't tend to go into teaching
You couldn't have picked a worse example:
They don't now. You do realise that in the within recorded history the last 20 years of female dominaed teaching is a massive anomaly. The thing is you get this thing called "feminisation" where female domiated careers are seen as worth less, and that puts off men. That coupled with the "being the odd one out" syndrome puts off even more.
Teaching was for the longest time a perfectly respetable career for men.
I think therefore we can conclude that the recent trend to women must be a recent sociatal pressure (and not a good one) rather than anything inherent.
However, even if we could wave a magic want and made all that bad stuff go away we're never going to see a 50/50 split in the technology field.
Quite possible, but we're talking here about a 999/1 split, not a 70/30 or 80/20 split. Once it's 999/1, then something is very, very badly fucked up. Men and women are just not that different.
Off all the women I know from childhood, only a small fraction have gone into technology.
And what of all the men? The majority of people--men and women--do not go into computing.
The thing is that computing is very male dominated now and you are in computing. Therefore you see only men who have gone into computing. That's massive, gigantic selection bias.
Another nice point: women were actually much more common in the early days of computing? Why? Dunno, but it shows that it's not an "inherently male" thing.
They didn't choose these fields because they were "pushed away" from programming.
Some of were deeply passionate about programming. Most people in programming aren't, just liek most people in most fields aren't passionate. For many people it's a thing to fall into for lack of any better ideas. This is where subtle pressures start to matter: who's going to go into a second choice field massively dominated by one gender and rampant sexism?
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Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, it sounds easy, you should try it for awhile.
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Sounds to me like the woman in your scenario has a shit husband.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
I work with about 1/3 of a company being female programmers, some didn't even get a college degree when they started (which started to be required after we were sold off to a large company). It also was started and run by a woman for many years before eventually sold off multiple times and now run by a man, though he was recently forced out and will be "retiring" at the end of the year with no replacement announced yet.
That said, I work with a lot of outsourced employees in India and China. In those countries, the ratio is almost 50-50 for male and female programmers that I work with. In my generation in America, it was nerdy to be a computer programmer, so women avoided it. I think that taboo is slowly ending, but it will be a few years before tech-savvy women that grew up in this generation get to college.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
And no, Grace Hopper would not get hired in SV.
She was a woman, and she was already in her late 40's when she started making significant contributions. SV is a haven of ageism.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a 1st grade teacher who was "very concerned" with my math skills. She told my single, working mother, who was also earning a degree in civil engineering, "You know, there are even some girls doing better in math than him."
I remember the way she taught math was explaining a problem, then assigning a few pages of problems in our workbook, and offering candy (Smarties) for pages turned in. Math was right after recess, and the school wasn't air conditioned so she kept the lights off most of the day. Turns out, that at 6 years old I was just more interested in sleeping in a warm dark room after running around than earning candy by doing a bunch of adding and subtracting. Meanwhile, the girls who were talking during workbook time were given a pass, but boys who talked "were unfocused."
That would have been '85 or '86.
Career Paths (Score:4, Interesting)
A hundred years ago, with very rare exceptions, a woman's career was her marriage. The man was expected to participate in the money economy, and provide for her retirement, while the woman engaged in arguably harder and more important work (raising children) that happened to not be part of the money economy.
That, however, was a hundred years ago. Both sexes have to adapt to contemporary realities. It's both a systemic issue of opportunities (which both men and women are responsible for) and initiative on the part of the women to pursue certain careers.
Re:Career Paths (Score:5, Insightful)
Women often worked outside the home, and not only in the stereotypical one-room schoolhouse of the movies. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers all worked in resorts and restaurants, a shoe factory, a comforter factory, canneries, basket factories and a fishing lure factory. They were not uncommon in that regard. The storied life of 'Little House on the Prairie' was just that, a story. In reality the mother would probably have spent a couple days a week at the local meat packing plant or the flour mill.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe for a moment that it's any kind of negative force, such as sexism or bigotry, that's keeping women out of the field. It's just not interesting to most of them. I know it's hard to talk about in today's politically correct world, but men and women ARE wired differently. Exceptions certainly exist, but they are still just exceptions.
We could go on and on about why there aren't more male nurses, and the conversation would be silly if we tried to ignore the fact that guys just tend not to be interested in nursing because they're guys.
As for females in this industry, I've seen all kinds. Some are good, some are inexperienced, some just plain suck, and others are incredibly talented. Just like their male counterparts.
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As a matter of fact, women are better developed than men till their 20's. As you said, it as biology.
Also, as a matter of fact, women have better imagination, a waaaay way better than men, but somehow they are also not accepted in all the architectural jobs for example.
Another fact is that women are better suited for multitasking, waaaay better than men, who could m
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---Actually you are trying to say that differences in biology means worst intellect. Which sounds...funny.
This has been studied, to the extent that IQ can be a placeholder for "intellect". Differences in biology mean differences in intellect. Men and women have the same average IQ, but the curve for women is more sharply peaked, and the curve for men has a longer tail (the jokes just make themselves). So while the average is the same, if you only look at the smartest 1% or so, men will seem smarter.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Common sense! Good for you.
See people, all it takes is actually using your brain and not succumbing to "politically correct" bullshit.
I believe any futher comments in this thread to be redundant (though no doubt someone will nit-pick all the same).
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Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
This is so true, and if I had mod points, you'd be getting them.
What we should be doing, and what gender (or classification of your choice) blind really means is that women should be treated the same as men at the interview and at the annual review. It is true that in many fields there is still a wage disparity between women and men doing the same job with the same skills and qualifications. That is a genuine wrong that must be fixed. What <classification> blind doesn't mean is that job hiring or school admissions should be quota based, as quotas always seem to cause more trouble than they are worth. True equality is on a case by case basis, rather than a statistical measure across populations.
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Informative)
You weren't around during the 'separate but equal' decades of the US educational system, I take it. There were perfectly valid reasons why quotas really WERE necessary. Most places have done away with them now as it's no longer a shock to see a black child in a mostly-white school any more, but the only reason why that is the case today is because it was FORCED down the throats of unwilling school boards across the nation. Quotas have their place, it just depends on the situation.
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There are plenty of fields where a woman will just slaughter a man, for example a female pilot will whup the dog shit out of a male pilot because she can take more Gs and in a fight the one that can push the plane the hardest without having a black or red out wins. Women are better at language, women are better at diffusing tense situations which is why they make better cops and hostage negotiators...the list goes on and on.
It's like feminism never happened.
The whole point is that while men and women are different these kinds of generalizations are bad. When a person walks into a job interview and the person sat behind the desk has preconceptions like those they are not getting a fair chance. The manager who thinks "we need a good communicator to round out our team" and shows bias towards female candidates is part of the problem.
Your suggestion that females have less interest in computing is clearly bogus as well. Computing us
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There are plenty of fields where a woman will just slaughter a man, for example a female pilot will whup the dog shit out of a male pilot because she can take more Gs and in a fight the one that can push the plane the hardest without having a black or red out wins.
Then why do we have so few female fighting pilots?
Women are better at language, women are better at diffusing tense situations which is why they make better cops and hostage negotiators...the list goes on and on.
Then why do we have so few female chief negotiators?
I think, you get it reverse on many things. You see the builder and notice his hard hands and well developed muscles and conclude, that children with soft hands and weak muscles should not aspire to become builders. You don't see the possibility that the hard hands and well developed muscles are a result of a development and not its cause.
Same with the male and the female brain: You see the different br
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You realise that there are all those quotas in the South because it is pretty amazingly racist, right? Whenever I travel there, I fell like I'm in a clichéd rendering of "Gone With The Wind" -- minus the class.
Quotas are a terrible idea, except that they are the only way to break the old-boy cliques... Of course, after 1-2 generation you have to remove them.
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Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty of "women in science and engineering" type programs to try and attract more females- but the girls aren't interested.
Even if classes become 50-50 from now on ( and I'm not seeing any evidence of this) , it would take decades for the numbers in industry to equalise.
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I volunteer with my local engineering association, and gender diversity is something we've been working towards. It's a tough slog, and there's a laundry list of items as long as your arm as to why there aren't more women in engineering. There's no easy answer.
Do you know what the most equal of the engineering disciplines is?
It's Civil, where women make up a lofty 17% (seventeen percent).
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I had a few in mine with a similar experience to you. I always felt that if you took the average of the girls and the guys separately the girls would have a higher average yet the girls always had a lower opinion of themselves.
It is probably at least in part due to fewer women do get involved in computer science. Therefore the ones that do are probably self-selected to be above average. They actually enjoy computer science and/or excel at it. Whereas a lot of guys just get into it because they like vid
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until I the last few years, I would have agreed that women programmers are rare (and they are at most companies). However, I now work for a company with a large number of Indian engineers, and about half of them are women. My conclusion is that the lack of women must be largely cultural (in the US) and nothing whatsoever to do with gender differences in ability.
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I'd argue that it's related to quality of life. First of all, I generally find Asians in general to be a lot more pragmatic than Americans. Men and women alike in America are more about following their hearts; about a vague sense of fulfillment. This is reinforced by popular culture which teaches Americans that most work represents boredom and defeatism. We're only leading fulfilling lives when we're engaged in hedonistic activities like climbing mountains, seeing the world and partying every weekend. Think
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1) Women love being referred to as girls
2) There is absolutely no difference between men and women [wikipedia.org] other than the fact that they have protruding breasts and many of us don't.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Informative)
In the UK, and I would guess in most of the rest of the world, women were "allowed" into IT early on because it wasn't seen as being a career. As soon as money could be made from it, the women were squeezed out. Grace Hopper likely would not have been hired in the 1960s, never mind now.
Britain did have significant numbers of women programmers - ICL used to have an army of "pregnant programmers" who did a lot of its software support while on maternity leave (back in the days of 300 baud modems) and Steve Shirley's company "Freelance Programmers" employed women based at home. And there, I think you have it: until the IT industry is prepared to employ people who want to go home occasionally and have a life outside work, it's going to be more hostile on average to women than men.
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I've worked with a bunch 10 or so, more than half of them hired by me or on my recommendation. They have all been, to a single woman, kind of average at problem solving, system design, bug fixing, optimisation and other key aspects that a virtuoso programmer requires.
However, I still hire most female applicants that come in, whereas only maybe 1/4 men for one reason, dependability. Men screw up the simple tasks because they think they are easy, women will generally give their 100% and get it right every tim
Re:Female programmers (Score:5, Informative)
That's selection bias at work. It's extremely hard for a woman to land a job in this field, and even before that there's a lot of pressure against it (the stupid idea that women can't do maths, the extremely male-oriented lingo and focus, etc.), so only the most persevering, most enduring women make it through.
No it's not. It's extremely hard for an employer to HIRE a woman in this field. There aren't any. I've hired for hundreds of technology positions from data center operations to development, and I've seen thousands of resumes. The women stick out mostly on account of their novelty. I have always hired on merit, but unless a woman was obviously unfit for the position (e.g., experience in a completely unrelated field or no experience at all) we always brought her in because it was such a refreshing change. This is not an advantage any man was ever given. And like the AC above, their skills fell pretty much along the same bell-curve as men: a few absolutely worthless ones, most of them about average, and a few standouts.
Re:Female programmers (Score:4, Informative)
That's selection bias at work. It's extremely hard for a woman to land a job in this field
I completely disagree. I have worked at many tech companies over a thirty year career, and my experience has been the exact opposite. Many companies bend over backwards to hire more women programmers and engineers. I have heard many male engineers say that they would prefer a more gender balanced workplace, and have never heard any say they wouldn't like that. When I have hired women, the male engineers have always treated them with decency and professional respect.
On the other hand, I have never had any problem hiring saleswomen, or even female forklift drivers. The shipping crew at my last employer was 60% female, despite the crude sexism of their male coworkers that complained about too many "bitches" in the warehouse.
I think the dearth of female programmers is simply that women are not attracted to a career that involves sitting in a cubicle interacting with a computer. Women have broken into many male dominated professions. A majority of new lawyers are women. Nearly half of medical students are women. Unlike programming, those careers are perceived to have a lot of human interaction.
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Plus, Grace Hopper has been dead for 10 years. Not even affirmative action can cover for that job seeker fax paus.
Unlikely (Score:5, Funny)
She'd probably miss the job interview on account of being dead for 20 years.
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unlikely (Score:4, Funny)
I've been on teams where dead bodies might smell better too.
Why so few women sanitation engineers? (Score:5, Interesting)
You never see women hanging off the back of a garbage truck. Is this a problem? Why is it a problem that women don't want to be programmers but not a problem that women don't want to be "garbage persons?"
Re:Why so few women sanitation engineers? (Score:4, Informative)
There are a few women working the packer trucks (rear load garbage trucks) in the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). I have seen them.
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For cognitively demanding jobs and careers, we need to attract the best and brightest regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. So if a career path is not pulling from the full population, it is a fair question to examine why. We are faced with a long-term shortage in the supply of nurses. Why don't more men pursue that career?
To compare with a slightly different field: my spouse works in a manufacturing environment, and she's the best engineer there (IMHO). They would like to continue improving
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The US Senate has huge barriers to entry...for everyone. Including all of us reading this. Jobs with the local government have incentives to entry for women.
Why am I not surprised the racism card was immediately played in response to a legitimate question in an attempt to silence debate? Especially when race wasn't even involved until you brought it up?
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Way to prove DNS-and-BIND's point!
You must be one of DNS-and-BIND's shill accounts.
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Senator is not a carrier. Politician is a carrier. There are plenty of black politicians.
Re:Why so few women sanitation engineers? (Score:4, Funny)
Neither of them are carriers. USS Enterprise is a carrier. Politicians may have egos the size of carriers but that seems to go with their career choice.
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Based purely on demographics, garbage trucks is the one that fits best. You could have figured that out if you spent more time thinking and less time ranting.
Re:Why so few women sanitation engineers? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe because programming and tech jobs in general are viewed as high prestige and the cutting edge of technology
Where do you work? I've been in technology for 20 years and programming and tech jobs have about as much prestige as a plumber or mechanic. I actually think that's one of the main reasons women DON'T pursue tech jobs in favor of doctoring and lawyering.
Admiral Grace Hopper (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Admiral Grace Hopper (Score:5, Interesting)
It explains US foreign policy perfectly also. (Score:4, Insightful)
" manifestations of hubris ... are commonly mistaken for leadership potential "
Not limited to tech jobs in the valley.
Re:It explains US foreign policy perfectly also. (Score:5, Insightful)
" manifestations of hubris ... are commonly mistaken for leadership potential "
Not limited to tech jobs in the valley.
Is there any field where this doesn't come into play?
E.g. A big part of a hiring decision is based on how well a candidate presents himself -- I'm deliberately using the masculine pronoun here -- in a resume, interview, and general self-promotion. Someone better at promoting himself will therefore (usually) appear more desirable. Unfortunately, there are only a few jobs where the ability to be interviewed is the primary skill required in the position. So you hire people based on how good they are at doing something else -- not the job at hand. Reminds me of soccer games that end in a shootout: "let's just settle this stalemate by playing a different game to see who wins". Why don't they use jacks, or rock, paper scissors?
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
No chance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because she didn't have a degree in computer science her resume would never be approved by HR. The hiring manager wouldn't even know she applied.
Re:No chance! (Score:5, Funny)
Because she didn't have a degree in computer science her resume would never be approved by HR. The hiring manager wouldn't even know she applied.
Not to mention she wouldn't have 10 years of Java/C#/PHP/etc.. experience.
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It's not exactly analogous. She didn't get a degree in computer science. She helped create the field.
Re:No chance! (Score:5, Insightful)
I see we have never dealt with H.R. before.
Coincidentally, H.R. has the opposite problem - over-representation of females.
Re:No chance! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because she didn't have a degree in computer science her resume would never be approved by HR. The hiring manager wouldn't even know she applied.
Ahh, but she would lie to HR, and ask forgiveness later ;-)
Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:3, Informative)
In the 80's, women made up most of CS programs around the country. When I went in 2000 - they made up a handful of the entire class. But, engineering was the same (for all engineering majors).
There isn't some evil conspiracy to prevent women from entering tech (some of the best innovators in tech I know are women). They simply, for whatever reason, aren't interested in it.
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Nobody is suggesting a conspiracy. They are, however, suggesting certain biases may be responsible -- possibly unconscious, possibly promoted as much by other women as by men.
The idea that men are "naturally" more interested in programming is something that's possible but should be treated with appropriate skepticism. It's not like there were programming contests a million years ago that were evolved into us, and it's not like obvious different circumstances like pregnancy go particularly well with a lot
Re:Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:4, Informative)
Even if you are correct that women are not interested, isn't that in itself a problem?
Girls tend to do better than boys at school, but at some point get turned off STEM subjects. Is it an innate female disposition? The fact that they are good at those subjects suggests not.
What is your theory? Do you have any evidence to back it up?
Re:Why aren't more women in science fields? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 80's, women made up most of CS programs around the country. When I went in 2000 - they made up a handful of the entire class. But, engineering was the same (for all engineering majors). There isn't some evil conspiracy to prevent women from entering tech (some of the best innovators in tech I know are women). They simply, for whatever reason, aren't interested in it.
My stepmother was a programmer in the 80's. She quit and decided to be a homemaker because of rampant sexism in the workplace. Among the things she's told me about that, the one that stands out is that the office would throw incentive parties at strip clubs in order to exclude her from being rewarded for her work. She's a smart lady.. but they would give her the most menial of tasks (mainly testing other programmer's code, and having to very thoroughly document problems or else they would be dismissed as her error).
/. my guess is that lots of things going on in the workplace make it a male-dominated workforce, least of which would be the capability and interest of smart women in doing the work. Instead, you'll find them in the more gender-neutral fields of medicine, chemistry and biological sciences.
One would hope that the same things aren't going on today, but from reading
I was shocked and thrilled that in my first industry job our staff programmer is a woman in her late fifties. That gives me hope that maybe it wasn't this bad everywhere. She's brilliant at her work and has a very strong work ethic. I truly didn't expect to see any women in my workplace after my experience in college.
I know plenty of female programmers... (Score:3)
But they are all Russian COBOL programmers.
But trust me when I say the financial industry has more than you realize -- they just ain't in Silicon Valley, they are in Wall Street.
Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
This article, as well as the source articles are all nothing but professional trolls written for the express purpose of generating page views. What's next, links to articles on Jezebel asking if the average man beats his wife before or after raping her?
plenty of women in the wings (Score:2)
What are they on about now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Women don't often choose tech as a career. But those that do get paid more and find jobs easier then comparably qualified men.
Every company that does any business with government is always looking to hire females/minorities. They are required to. Don't pretend that doesn't have an effect.
She Would Debug the System (Score:2)
Slashdot has grown up (Score:5, Funny)
Ten years ago the comments to this story would have been riddled with crude, misogynistic jokes. In fact, I wonder if the story was meant to elicit such a response from Slashdot. Congrats on rising above, everyone.
Hubris? (Score:2)
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In a way. I think there is a clear difference between hubris and self-confidence. Both enable you to take on challenges that you're not quite sure how you can complete. The difference is what happens when you realize things are going sour, and you need to admit failure and/or ask for help; this also takes certain self-confidence.
Women are better than men when they act like men (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been lots of studies about this, and one of the most telling related self-employed/small business owners based on gender lines, where men and women had relatively equal qualifications. As self-employed individuals, this avoids the potential bias of a glass ceiling or other unfair discrimination. As you'd expect in today's environment, men outperformed women on average.
However, that's not all. The study included a metric to determine the goals of the individuals; money, etc and if you split it up your comparisons based on their goal focus, you found something interesting; men tended to focus on making money, and would sacrifice vacation, schedule, family, etc to do it, while women placed higher priority on a short commute, flexible schedules, family (including child-rearing), and so on. This is all expected stereotype, not at all interesting.
What was interesting is when matched to those women who made money their motivation, men were beaten handily. In fact, once paired with same-motivation/goal, women out performed men almost across the board, achieving a higher success rate, and in general, a higher level of subjective happiness across those metrics. The averages are just skewed because more men choose money than women, and we tend to use money as an objective measure of success.
The salient point to take from this is: Men and women have different goals and motivations, and that can affect both their career choice and their apparent success in a given field to an uninvolved observer. Trying to artificially adjust this rate will probably end badly, unless you change the definition of success. However, few businesses willing to hold an employee up as 'very successful' when their primary goals include child rearing and vacation time.
As an aside, this is also why there are so few female CEOs, especially of larger, higher dollar businesses. Many of those CEO's have unbroken strings of management reaching 30-40 or more years. On the other hand, many female managers have taken time off for children, family, etc. They're not being penalized, but simply put, one individual shows a greater dedication towards advancing the business than the other. ... I'd like to link to the article, but it was in a business magazine, and I couldn't find a reference to it online
Re:Women are better than men when they act like me (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not a 'feminine dude'. I wouldn't even say I'm a feminist, insofar as I expect that men and women should be treated the same, not given special treatment in order to play catch up, or whatever. However, that's not what I was pointing out.
The raw numbers say women outperform men in many cases where the stereotype and common knowledge AND anti-male politicking says they don't, but only when they are aligned with the same goals we use to measure success, primarily money.
This is actually a common trend; more women graduate college, they tend to be promoted faster, they do better in male-dominated fields such as stock trading and mathematics, make better managers, business owners, etc.
Really, all this leads up to a single inescapable fact: Since women are better than men in general at white-collar tasks, they should be the primary wage earners, and men should be required to lounge at home watching tv and taking care of the kids. It's a more efficient solution.
Re: (Score:3)
What it means to be a feminist appears to be pretty subjective. For some, it means stripping is bad, and for some it means stripping is good - and those are just the extreme cases.
In my personal awareness though, most of the self-proclaimed feminists are not looking for equal treatment. They're looking for special treatment to make up for the fact that they may not have received it in the past, while still holding on to all the gender-based attitudes and differences that are advantageous to them.
I'm not s
Big Man Disease (Score:2, Troll)
Its the idea that your status in an intellectual setting should be based on how far you can throw furniture. Or how far you could throw a football back in high school. These sorts of attributes may have some validity in some blue collar jobs, like ditch digging or bricklaying. But they have no value in a high tech company.
Actually, nobody knows why (Score:3)
I'm not aware of any serious study that attempts to explain why women aren't better represented as programmers. There are lots of studies that establish that it is so.
So, we really don't know why. Until someone really can nail this down with a decently reliable study, everyone is just speculating.
Personally, I think looking at programming is too narrow. If you look at the broader aspects of a development project -- application design, programming, human/computer interfaces, information organization, testing, documenting, requirements gathering, customer management, deployment, training, troubleshooting, customer support, etc. -- I think you'd find that the gender distribution is a lot closer to the working population. It truly does take a village to develop software. It's pretty narrow-minded to focus on just one aspect of the problem, and pretend like that's all there is.
really? (Score:3)
Would someone with decades of experience developing DoD computer systems and networks at the highest levels find a job in Silicon Valley?
Yeah, I think so.
I have a feeling such people (whether elderly, female or from Mars) are in great demand right now at otherwise youthful homogenized companies.
A better question is: would Navy junior lieutenant Grace Hopper be assigned to a high profile research project at Harvard? There are all sorts of reasons that wouldn't happen.
If you really care about this issue... (Score:3)
One great irony is the issue itself is framed in a paradoxically sexist manner. In a real way, the issue is not just why are women underrepresented in various technical/scientific fields, but also why are they over represented in others. More women are going to college after all.
Really, one way to get more women into technical fields is to get more men to go into non-technical ones, the story really should be why do men and women keep taking the degrees in different areas. If a girl needs to be able to dream of being a scientist I suppose a boy needs to be able to dream of being any number of female dominated educated professions. This is two sides of the same coin and each directly affect the other. Plus it may have the benefit of getting more men into college, something we need to do, by opening up more and different opportunities for them.
I know technical jobs often pay very well, but to an extent focusing on traditional male jobs as being the "good" jobs if anything justifies them having the better salary. So in a way the argument is framed undermines itself!
After all, you can not really argue that, women are just a good at everything as men, but at the same time believe, but they are better at the following things.
Re:If you really care about this issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
In a real way, the issue is not just why are women underrepresented in various technical/scientific fields, but also why are they over represented in others. More women are going to college after all.
The real issue is why does it matter so much? Do we really have to get an exact 50/50 gender split in every discipline before people will stop banging on about it? We should strive to make sure everyone has an equal opportunity regardless of gender (or race, or whatever else) but that is as far as our collective responsibility needs to go. After that you leave it to the individuals, and if fewer women show an interest in a particular area, so be it. Study that, if you find it interesting, but don't assume something must be amiss (or amister).
No (Score:3)
Early computer programmers mostly female (Score:3)
I suspect that "taint" of being a femine discpline delayed the recogniztion of computer programming as a bonafid college degree at schools like MIT and Stanford. At MIT where I matriculated, it was not recognized as a full major until 1980. Before that is was a submajor of EE, math or business. (There were other taints too including its appearance as trade school skill rather than academic discipline/)
Re: (Score:2)
My alma mater specifically set aside 10 seats every year for women wanting to get into Computer Science, but I only knew six girls for my entire five year university career that took advantage of that. Three of them (all in different years from me) changed after a year or so to the general science program because com. sci. just wasn't what they thought i
Re: (Score:3)
That's Mrs: 'Masters of Residential Science'. We saw a lot of that in engineering. Pretty freshman girls that only wanted to associate with juniors and seniors, weren't making grades and didn't care. Good times, unless you were fool enough to actually marry one.
Re: (Score:3)
If girls don't want to get into tech why are we trying to encourage them.
By the time they get to college, they don't. And they stay away from math and science fields as well. But before high school, the interests (and skills) of boys and girls tend to be pretty well matched. High school is where one or two loud mouthed mysoginists start making trouble and imposing their world view on the social order. And the faculty is powerless to do much about it
There has been some success at splitting the genders up and allowing women to develop interests and study in all girls classes or
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sick of being blamed for their own shortcomings because of the gender I was assigned against my will.
You are not being blamed for your gender. You are being blamed for your obnoxious comments / beliefs. In the same breath you said that their absence has nothing to do with you and then continuously repeated a term that you clearly consider derogatory toward them. I wonder why they might not want to be around you.
Re: (Score:3)
You've never worked with a man with no skill?
I sure have. It sucks. Yet somehow these women believe that a woman with no skill would be a better programmer than an individual who has experience and education in the field. All on the basis of gender.
Now, would you agree that it's sexist to suppose that a woman with no prior experience or education would make a better employee in a computer-related role over a man with prior experience and education?
Every time this subject comes up, it's women who are the ones being sexist.
The basic fact that
Re: (Score:3)
Wow. SOMEONE'S got a catchphrase stuck a mile up his ass. Do you need to talk about it? Because seriously, that comes right the fuck out of nowhere, sticks out like someone trying to force a meme, is debatable whether or not it means anything, and seriously isn't helping your case at all.
Perhaps I can explain a bit. "womyn born womyn" is a term predominately used by what are colloquially called radfems to marginalize MTF's because they don't consider them women.
And yes, I know some men don't either but most of those don't go out of their way to attack transwomen and the radfems DO.
And it's also refererencing the larger than usual numbers of MTF transwomen in computers/IT, that since the radfems don't consider us/them women you would need to ask the non-transwomen why they don't go into pro
Re:I've met mostly men (Score:4, Informative)
I've worked for women. Wasn't that bad. Better then working for a _short_ man. That really sucked.
I will never again accept work from any man shorter then 5'6''.