Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought 445
itwbennett writes "According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 about 22% of computer programmers, software and web developers in the United States were female. That number comes from the Current Population Survey, which is based on interviews with 60,000 households. But Tracy Chou, an engineer at Pinterest, thinks the number is actually much lower than that. And last month she created a GitHub project to collect data on how many females are employed full-time writing or architecting software. Even at this early point, the data is striking: Based on data reported for 107 companies, 438 of 3,594 engineers (12%) are female. Here's how some well-known companies stack up."
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
Who gives a shit?
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, this entire "study" is garbage. It is a self-selecting poll. So it doesn't "prove" there are fewer women, it just shows that men are more willing to fritter their time away on some stupid web poll.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Says you. I didn't read anything about a cowboy neal option in this poll you speak of.
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm more interested in the number of engineers than the percent that are female.
Apparently Reddit gets by with only 14 engineers, Khan Academy needs 24, SnapChat only 13, Flickr needs 42, but then Pinterest needs 105, Etsy needs 149, Dropbox needs 143, and Mozilla requires 500 engineers. Some of those companies are much more lean and efficient than I thought. And others are way more bloated.
14 people at Reddit can manage their entire infrastructure of servers and networking gear hosting all of their forums, in addition to the mobile version, browser extensions, buttons and widgets and whatever else, but Dropbox needs 143 people to manage file uploading, storage, and access. Not to downplay what Dropbox does, but I don't think they offer 10 times the product that Reddit does.
Re: (Score:3)
Uh no, those 14 people are who Reddit has "writing or architecting software, and are in full-time roles". Presumably there's an entire different pool of people managing their infrastructure of servers and networking gear, etc. IT people are not software engineers any more than your car mechanic is a mechanical engineer.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't read the article, the table of data just listed "engineers." Network engineers are people, too!
Even so though, my point about the comparison between the various companies still stands. Reddit seems lean and mean compared to companies like Dropbox and Etsy.
Re:And? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, then tell the people at your company who aren't actually software engineers to stop calling themselves software engineers. Contrary to common opinion, it's not a term for any vaguely computer related job.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Dropbox offers a file storage service that works across a myriad of wildly differing device types and platforms using native platform development. Not to mention they store many orders of magnitude more data than Reddit.
Meanwhile, Reddit only provides community-moderated plain-text discussion threads via a lightweight web interface.
Just because Reddit has more content that is specifically valuable to you, how do you make the jump to assume that what they're doing is on par or more difficult than what Dropbox does?
Re: (Score:2)
reddit is basically just a forum. dropbox does storage and lots of it, that means scaling is critical, data consistency / backups and infrastructure should be a lot more robust. that requires more people.
Still, that pinterest number is way too high.
Re: (Score:2)
Taking an educated guess and replacing it with pure speculation of your own does not a +5 Insightful comment make, and yet here we are.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
After all, everyone knows there are only two kinds of people who love small children: female elementary school teachers and male pedophiles.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
"After all, everyone knows there are only two kinds of people who love small children: female elementary school teachers and male pedophiles."
I certainly hope you were being sarcastic. Because if we wanted to take your comment literally, then all fathers would be pedophiles.
On the other hand, it has certainly seemed as though society has been willing to look askance at any male who pays any attention to children. This is a problem in our society that I noticed over 20 years ago.
Hint, folks: treating an entire gender as though they are likely perverts is far worse than discrimination in employment. In fact, I would call that a perversion in itself.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
The GP was referring to the reason given by many trainee male teachers for not wanting to go into primary schools. It's a major problem in the UK, with children lacking male role models. They spend a lot of their young lives at school so it is important.
We have had a long and relentless campaign against paedophiles, lead by newspapers. This is the result - our children are being harmed far more.
Re: (Score:3)
Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
Who gives a shit?
As a man, Wiederspan is a rarity in U.S. elementary-school education. And experts say that as boys continue to lag behind girls academically, schools could use more male teachers.
"Having male teachers, boys have a model that it's OK to be male and be in the classroom, he said. "School isn't just a female enterprise. That's what the presence of a man says to kids."
Why Men Don't Teach Elementary School [go.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Most Democrats?
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this particular case (male teachers) it is far more about the painting of all males as child molesters and rapists who cannot be trusted around children.
But yes, the huge feminisation of many aspects of society, including schooling, is a major factor. Most male teachers end up seeing their views ignored,
themselves patronised, and their care values bought in to question on a continual basis, basically to marginalize their position as a teacher.
After all, 'think of the children!'
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. That is not an accurate translation. That is shaming language, the last resort of those backing the politically dominant yet outmoded popular position for emotional/self-interested reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think he's referring to the rights that females have, that males lack.
In the UK those would include retirement age, parental leave, medical care (and life expectancy), equality of treatment in education and the workplace.
Re: (Score:3)
Every time I walk into an NHS establishment I'm bombarded by posters about 'well women clinics' pre/post natal care, breast/cervical cancer screening. Where are the posters inviting men for cancer screening, offering drop-in opportunities to discuss their health issues, regular healthy checks?
The posters I do see that are targeted at men? "Feeling suicidal? Call.."
Seems sensible to me. Women get breast cancer more often than men (wtf, eh?) and men commit suicide much more than women. Oh and breast cancer is
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Last I heard the requirements for engineering school were exactly the same across the board.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point our society went from "leveling the playing the field" to "drastically changing the playing field to make the end-game scores the same". See, it doesn't matter that millions of years of evolution have resulted in some significant differences between males and females. It doesn't matter that there are already programs/scholarships to place to favor one group over another. It doesn't even matter if they can't find any specific examples of discrimination. The very fact that there are more of X than Y in a specific profession is reason enough to try to slant the playing field even further in an effort to make the end result the same.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe, but the demand that there be equal distributions everywhere is also part of the problem. It's a rather childish, simplistic, and dysfunctional worldview to have.. esp when forcing large tracts of society to comply with it via the law. All it does is breed more discrimination against those labeled as the 'oppressors' which in turn breeds actual, real contempt in that group for the protected 'victim' classes. ("She got the programming job? Was it achievement or politics?" instead of "She got the job, ok great I look forward to working with her")
Liberals always like to preach 'tolerance' and 'diversity' when they don't really understand the implications of the terms. 'Tolerance' of difference implies that things won't always be equal, that we are all individuals with different strengths and weaknesses, and so we are not interchangeable square pegs. Liberals are fine with this until it touches on race, gender, or sexual orientation, where we are expected to throw out any rational thought and assume that any imbalance is due to bigotry (instead of biology, or free choice, or life choices or..).. This is as irrational as the 'god hates fags' mantra of westboro baptist.
Re: (Score:3)
Complain all you want about the particular way that people try to solve problems, but the idea that we should just ignore biased outcomes under the assumption that nothing is wrong is absurd.
It's no less absurd to jumpt straight to the conclusion that different outcomes must be attributed to bias or discrimination simply because outcomes are different. What about different life choices and personal preferences? Isn't it reasonable to assume that people, when left to make their own choices freely, might experience different and possibly even unequal outcomes? Liberals are far too concerned with equality of outcome and not nearly enough with personal freedom and the right to a fighting chance. Th
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
On average men are taller than women. Does that mean every man is taller than every woman? Obviously not. But if there is a job that requires reaching tall heights, you can bet that there will be more men working in that position than women.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
"Boys generally demonstrate superiority over female peers in areas of the brain involved in math and geometry. These areas of the brain mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls, according to a recent study that measured brain development in more than 500 children. Researchers concluded that when it comes to math, the brain of a 12-year-old girl resembles that of an 8-year-old boy. Conversely, the same researchers found that areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills (such as handwriting) mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys."
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
But... Are there any social inequalities when it comes to female software engineers? Is the man somehow keeping chicks out of coding classes? Is the ol' boys club not allowing cooties to spoil their source?
You're looking at the end result and and claiming that there must be social inequality that lead to it. I understand this line of reasoning when it comes to the military, corporate CEO positions, and professional sports. They have a history of barring or diminishing women.
But engineering? Software engineering? Dude, during my time in academia I saw them bend over BACKWARDS to get girls into their program. Between the scholarships, special clubs, awareness programs, and general reports like this that stated more women needed to go be geeks. Even culturally, we geeks LOVE geek girls. It's a thing.
Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers. There are plenty of counter-examples, but they're a minority. But it's not so much social inequality, so much as latent social norms and expectations. Breaking them doesn't get you burnt at the stake, but it might raise some eyebrows.
If you want to stop the NFL from being assholes to women, or to break that glass ceiling when it comes to corporate CEO positions, I'm all for that and you have my full support. But if you want to shape culture so that there's no stigma with being a male nurse or a female software engineer, that's getting a little close to the sort of fascism that demands we think a certain way. Your way. Sorry, but you just can't steer culture like that.
But hey, we need more female software engineers, because we need more software engineers. So I'm down with this sort of effort. But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.
Re: (Score:2)
But the lack of chicks around here has very little to do with social inequality. So don't get your panties in a twist.
I see what you did there.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, part of the "problem" IMO is probably also the discrepancy between 22% "in the field" and 12% "working on code" - female developers choose or are steered to management by a large margin. I'd say 40% of the development managers I've met in my career have been women, while the 12% number sounds right for coders. I've worked with just one women who was senior on the non-management technical track out of the hundreds of coders I've worked with in my career.
There's definitely something interesting there,
Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
There are fewer women in programming for one reason and one reason only: families.
Both in the US and Canada, I worked with a lot of bright young women over the years. And the vast majority of them quit their jobs shortly after getting married with the intent of raising a family. By the time they were ready to return to work, their tech skills were stale, so they took jobs as headhunters and HR interviewers because they had *technical skills* needed to fulfill those roles, even if they weren't current enough for *coding*.
Most of them also ended up making a hell of a lot more money that way than they would have if they stuck with programming.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, although this is eventually true of men too, from what I've seen.
Many males, by the time they're in their 40s and 50s, have moved on from coding to architecture, management, multifunctional roles like customer engineering liasons, highly specialized SWE roles like JVM optimization, or have switched careers altogether. Hard to compete with the young kids who'll work 12 hours a day for pizza.
In other words, by the time the women are ready to come back, the men (of the same age) aren't generally doing that work anymore either. So it wouldn't be appropriate for women to return to that role. The main difference is that men tend to stay with it longer, through the family years, where women bail sooner. And that's good. People gravitate to what they are intereted in, and where there is demand. It is a fact that women are better at raising young kids, and more importantly they want to do it more than men do. We all know it.
The sexes are not interchangeable. They can fill the same roles, because as a rule humans are remarkably adaptable and intelligence goes a long way to compensate for gaps in natural talent. But often, one or the other will be better precisely because of talent or interest. The edge may be small but it is still significant.
For example, I think women are better in roles where they are dealing with people, or in program manager type roles where there are a zillion little things to keep track of all at once. I don't understand why, but I often see this pattern, and I see that women often to a better job than men do in these roles. Women are better at staying home with small children; if society pushes them in that direction maybe its because there is good reason for it. Men are better at focused attention. You don't need studies to tell you this, it's everywhere, it's obvious to anyone with even a little intelligence or intuition. Of course women can be good software engineers, and depending on individual talent and interest, may be as good or better than men. Humans are varied. Some men excel at things that women are usually better at. And that's all good. But it is foolish and ignorant to pretend that there is no difference, that differences do not exist in the population as a whole.
Talent is extremely hard to measure, but interest and motivation are very easy to see. Personally I think that interest is far more important than talent. It goes back to that large brain thing. We can learn to be what we want to be. And in my opinion, most women don't want to do software engineering. Why should I care? Why they be forced to do what they don't want to do, in the name of political correctness? I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?
Re: (Score:3)
I thought modern society was all about giving women choice?
Free to choose as long as society doesn't view the choice as politically incorrect it seems. For example conservative women who vote Republican are often criticized viciously by the left as being stupid, unsophisticated and unliberated for choosing traditional family values. These progressives profess tolerance, at least for those that agree with them, but are themselves intolerant of those that deviate from their ideals.
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Now, it might be some sort of culturally imbued sexism. The sort that diverts men from being grade-school teachers and women from being truckers.
That's exactly what the problem is. In all my years of engineering school and work, most of the female engineers (or engineering students) I've met were not American, they were Indian and Chinese. Apparently, their cultures do not divert women from these jobs the way Western or American culture does.
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah so men should be punished for being 'crude' around women, yet they should tolerate the inappropriate emotional dramacoasters and the passive aggressive, hypergamous behavior of the stereotypical modern female office worker? Yeah, fuck that.
You want to be treated 'equally'? Fine.. Time to break out the thick skin and deal with it. (Healthy) guys don't tolerate that above mentioned behavior for a reason. It completely disrupts productivity. If you're taking every damn quip someone makes personally, you're the one who's lacking. You say guys telling crude jokes are childish boys? What about the childish girl that's always crying when the boys say something she doesn't like? Stop demanding that men walk on eggshells around your princess ass so that you don't have to change. Equality is not demanding that everyone else live up to your priorities and expectations. Equality is the opportunity to measure up in relevant ways. That's all.
If you demand that men roll out the carpet for you, many of them will, mainly because so many of them are pussy beggar manginas/white knights, but the consequence is that they will never respect you as an equal afterward.
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how many bisexual transgender autistic bi-racial native american / tongese dwarf insomniac coders do we have? not too damn many I bet. we need more. let's make that a goal.
I would so work with one of those.
Re: (Score:2)
It's more an issue of societal views on gender roles influencing young people. Society gives the impression that men should be the nerds sitting at their computers designing whatever, so women shy away from engineering, math, and sciences. Society gives the impression that women should nurture youth, so men shy away f
Technical terms (Score:3)
Is that a... (Score:3)
Women in general aren't introverted enough (Score:5, Funny)
Women in general aren't introverted enough. Most women refuse to live in a dark room with a slot in the door that someone stuffs food through. Without that you can't be a successful programmer.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a funny thing, one girl developer I know is far more introverted and anti-social than me. She has to be almost dragged to social events, spends weekends in her bedroom gaming, and would rather communicate with a chain of e-mails than do a phone call.
This is a problem because....? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't get it. So women don't want to program. That's fine.
Do we know that? I sure don't know that.
Maybe its because computer studies, and software engineering is hostile to women. Do I know that? No, I don't know that either.
But if its true its something I'd want to know and correct.
Once upon a time there were no female politicians. Is that because "women weren't interested in politics?" Turns out, no, that was not the reason at all.
Maybe the sciences are the same. Maybe its got nothing to do with science.
Re: (Score:3)
"So women don't want to program. That's fine." -- Do we know that? I sure don't know that.
I'd understand if you profess your lack of certainty when we are discussing geology of Mars. But, reportedly, a few women are present on Earth, and since they are sentient you can ask them and get an answer :-) Wouldn't that be the most reliable way to find out what their motivation is?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Feminism has nothing to do with equality, the moment it achieves equality, the feminist cry foul and change the rules. Feminism is a religious cult more than anything else.
When female privilege backfires [youtube.com] - watch this.
roman_mir [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3)
The genders are different.
Yeah, they sure are in horrifying and amazing ways. But I'm not aware that "inherently not being talented at or enjoying computer programming" is one of those ways.
Simply looking at their participation in computing science is not valid evidence.
You know where ignoring this is causing all types of havok? The military.
Oh, this is going nowhere fast.
Among other things, you are in a company of women on the front lines. Do you trust her to carry 100lbs of gear or to carry you if you g
Re: (Score:3)
If you don't think it's hostile, ask three women you know to anonymously count the number of hostile comments posted here.
Sorry, I ran out of fingers for my poor fragile female brain to count on.
Re: (Score:2)
it's because of men being sexist pigs, not because women just aren't interested in computers (or video games, or construction jobs, or whatever)
I've never heard a feminist complain that there aren't enough female refuse collectors.
Scary (Score:5, Funny)
I read this as "Female Software Engineers may be even Scarier Than we Thought" and I couldn't wait to find out how in the world that was going to be quantified and/or justified.
I love geeks, scary or not.
Misread that (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it said Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarier Than We Thought.
Re:Misread that (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it said Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarier Than We Thought.
We are.
Fair pay (Score:2)
Female and male sofware engineers should receive equal payment. Female engineers should get half the total payment, males get the other half. That's only fair, isn't it?
Why should we care? (Score:2)
Most hairstylists are women. Should we wring our hands about that too?
Re: (Score:2)
Proof that the dinosaurs still live. (Score:2)
Male elementary school teachers may be scarcer than we thought.
Who gives a shit?
Men and women are different. One or more of those differences may account for the disparity in software engineers. For example women tend to be more social creatures. Maybe they tend to choose jobs that are more sociable than coding?
Computer work requires accountability and taking responsibility, and dealing with reality something that very few women are capable of doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Proof? Where's your proof?
Do you actually have a point to make?
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Then again... (Score:2)
Female Software Engineers May Be Even Scarcer Than We Thought
In these admittedly "androgynous time" we live in... how can we really be sure who's who?? :p
Re: (Score:3)
Androgynous? When I was a small boy I began reading all sorts of magazines and finding out things about the sexes. Imagine a 7 year old trying to talk about complex issues like gender or gravitational lensing with moronic adults. Despite everyone telling me what was "normal" for a boy I had different urges -- I wanted to do things that boys aren't supposed to do. In my teens I finally realized that my brain was trapped in the wrong kind of body -- One that could survive the harshness of space. I should
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Maybe for "web-based" companies... (Score:2)
So 10% of software engineers are female, but, the entire list of firms listed are "within the decade", web-based firms that program mostly in Javascript.
Get into the insurance or banking businesses, or anyone that's been computing since the 1960's and you'll find those numbers are different. If we're programming Cobol, I'd have to say that almost 50% of our developers are women.
nothing to do with it? (Score:2)
Where does the discrepancy come from? (Score:2)
Interpretation-wise, both numbers are way too low, and the industry needs to put in an active, collective effort at increasing them.
Statistically, that's a weird margin. Both surveys seem to have fairly sample sizes. How do they manage to differ by 10 percentage points - nearly as much as the smaller number?
I'm wondering why this is news? (Score:2)
Scarcer than "we" thought? Who is the "we"? In close to 30 years of working with computers, I can count on one hand the number of females I've run into who actually code for a living.
I think more wind up in some sort of project management position over a group of developers ... but even that's not quite commonplace.
I don't think this has much of anything to do with equality of pay between men and women, nor is it the fault of sexist hiring practices. It's simply fact that very few women get too excited ab
Re: (Score:2)
In close to 30 years of working with computers, I can count on one hand the number of females I've run into who actually code for a living.
Well, what do you mean by "code for a living"? Do you mean women that held an engineering position for that entire 30 year span of time? Most of my coworkers are male, granted, but I'd have to at least include my toes to count the number of female software engineers in the building with me right now.
Re: (Score:2)
I was referring to the number of women I've known who were actively working full-time doing software development/coding for a living -- without regard to how long they held the position.
I don't know where you work, and for that matter -- I never worked for a company primarily focused on software development, so maybe my personal experiences don't include a lot of situations? But I have worked in I.T. for companies who had software development teams on staff -- and I haven't run into any women writing the ac
My two cents (Score:2)
I was surprised to see that flickr supposedly has 40 developers. They must all be on dilbert style cofee breaks because from a customer's perspective they can't get the site working for beans. Having personally reported significant bugs to them months ago (every one of which is still present), it's extra disappointing. Maybe they're too busy writing encryption to
What about other sciences? (Score:4, Informative)
Are women a minority in other sciences?
Based on enrollment in engineering studies they are a distinct minority (17.7% in 2009 per the NSF PDF):
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2013/pdf/tab2-9.pdf [nsf.gov]
Given that, I would expect that under 20% of software engineers would be women (in no year did the % enrolled exceed 20%).
An individual, regardless of gender, must choose to go into engineering(software included), usually via a degree program (I went actuarial and then moved into software development - but I had a lot of software development experience previously, into architecture/process optimization now).
As an alternate example, men only represent about 10% of the Registered Nurse population (not sure of the year):
http://www.minoritynurse.com/minority-nursing-statistics [minoritynurse.com]
I see no issue or sexism based on the number of women entering engineering sciences. I imagine the stats generally follow the % by gender that seek such degrees.
At first blurry-eyed glance... (Score:2)
...I thought that said "even scarier".
Small, commercial companies (Score:2)
All of the companies listed in the article are small companies that do strictly commercial software development. I don't see any numbers for the really big commercial software companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Likewise, I don't see any numbers for the big aerospace companies like Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed, CSC, BAE, etc. Big companies and, especially, big companies that work on government contracts are much more likely to have affirmative action policies and specifically recr
My andecdotal evidence (Score:3)
I have been a professional software developer for 22 years. Over that time I've worked for 5 different companies, of varying sizes, the largest having maybe 100 employees.
Not once in all these years was there a single female software engineer working for any of those companies. Not a single one.
Anyway, from the single data point that is my personal experience, female software engineers seem to be about as common as unicorns. Even 12% seems way too high a figure.
I don't know why this is, but I think it's a shame.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll add my anecdotal evidence. The place I work at has about 20% female developers. We do device drivers, not web stuff.
Last time I saw a thread about this on Slashdot someone posted what they called the Dave threshold theory: Within any software group there will be as many or fewer female developers as there are people named Dave.
I've been here for 10+ years and we've always been above the Dave threshold (and we do have a Dave).
Physics Has Had to Deal With the Same Issue (Score:2)
When I was in physics, we had the same problem. In a freshman class of 20 or so students, there would be 2 or 3 women. By graduation there would only be 5-10 men left and no women.
I asked one of the women that started the year after I did why she switched to math. She said that we guys all got together to work problem sets in the dorms while she had to do hers alone (the college offered limited opportunities for men and women to visit each-other's dorms at the time). This surprised me as I always did my set
Fortunately, there's an alternative (Score:2)
They're supposed to be equally viable candidates, remember?
Not surprising at all (Score:2)
I'd never seen a statistic of 22%, which sounds high based on my experience. 12% sounds much more plausible to me.
Screw it (Score:2)
I don't give a damn.
I got called sexist because I was promoted over a womyn-born-womyn I was more qualified than. The feminists called me sexist, even though the person who promoted me was also a womyn-born-womyn.
Guess what? I'm still making shit per hour while she went off and got married, had a seven day honeymoon in Hawaii, and is now a stay-at-home Mother. (Yes, with a capital M.)
We'll get more womyn-born-womyn in STEM careers once we decide that womyn-born-womyn need to have a career that pays more
"Too dumb to code..." (Score:2)
It's not the guys who say this, depressingly I've found it's women (at least down here in Australia) that commonly lament that they (feel they) are mentally incapable of tackling programming. =/ Of course, typically nobody challenges those assertions.
I suppose what's needed is a bit of public education. Sure, coding is a logical thing at its core, but a whole lot of creativity goes into producing great code as well.
Maybe the solution is to popularise pair programming more?
I read it as SCARIER.... (Score:2)
Anecdote (Score:3)
I'm living/working in a country that seems to care somewhat less about gender roles in IT than the US. In my career I've worked with various women, and I never detected any sort of institutionalized sexism.
However, a number of women I've worked with tended to gravitate to non-programming roles (Business Analyst seems to be a favorite, others are Testers, Configuration Managers and what not). I've heard a couple of times "programming is too hard". It needs to be noted that these where intelligent people and their programming output, from what I could see personally, was certainly not inferior.
I'm puzzled by it, but I guess in an industry that does not enforce quotas but allows people the freedom to progress as they see fit, what is the harm?
Re: (Score:2)
And the pun in the last sentence of the Slashdot summary is why there are not more.
Why do you say that? She's kinda hot.
Non Traditional Employment For Women (Score:2)
when they complain about lack of female loggers and roofers, and farmers and fishermen and taxi drivers and construction workers and miners and linesmen and welders then "feminists" might have a point,
Women working in the skilled trades make two to three times more than women in traditional careers.
Non Traditional Employment For Women [new-nyc.org]
Re: (Score:2)
There are a few ways to look at it.
The idea that women are more social and men are more technical is not some law written in stone. Might we have tendencies? Probably. But part of being human is being able to improve oneself beyond one's tendencies. As a male, I have read that I have a genetic predisposition to spreading my seed and raping lots of women. But you know, I, like countless other men, don't do such things.
Now, of course I am fully aware of the bias in this field. I haven't seen any kind of equ
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My gf, who predictably enough works in education, is absolutely desperate to get more men into the field. As teachers, as volunteers, as just about anything we are willing to do, just to get more interaction between children and adult men. Society is slowly becoming aware of gender gaps in those fields and starting to provide incentives.
As for social aspects of software engineering, I posted about it before I read what you wrote. I think computer-relat
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The whole "anti-social software guy" as the norm is absolutely untrue. I work with a handful of them, and while they g
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You know, telling a story about your mom and pretending that you have a girlfriend really doesn't make you cool. Because with that attitude, I really doubt you have an actual gf (or at least that you will have one for very long).
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Why is there an imperative to increase the number?
There probably is some reason as the issue comes up every now and then.
Give me a reason more real than 'clickbait'.
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there is nothing in the biology that makes kenyans faster runners than other countries
Actually, there is some truth to why Kenyan's are faster than other countries. It is physiology related to how the African body compares to that of the caucasian body. There was a study back in 2010 [livescience.com], that looked into this. Note that since 1968, the world record holders in the 100m dash have all been of African descent.
The conclusion drawn by the study was that humans of African (vs Caucasian or Asian) descent have proportionally longer legs compared to their torso, so this gives them a higher center of ma
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Coding requires brains -- lots of them.
Women who have those brains figure out quickly that there are enough boorish misogynist geeks that they leave at a higher rate than men. And quietly snicker at the complaints of skills shortages.
They probably also figured that the grapes they turned up were pretty sour.
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"Fed up with these companies that keep trying to extort cheap overseas labor, instead of investing in their own country."
I've said it before (wait for it; it makes sense): the mistake many German people made which allowed Hitler to come to power, was to think treason meant "disloyalty to government", when what it actually means is "betraying your people or country". A government can commit treason.
If you take treason in its more reasonable and only ethical sense, i.e. to betray your people or country, then companies who push for more offshoring, or more H1B1 visas, are committing treason.
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the mistake many German people made which allowed Hitler to come to power, was to think treason meant "disloyalty to government", when what it actually means is "betraying your people or country". A government can commit treason.
If you take treason in its more reasonable and only ethical sense, i.e. to betray your people or country, then companies who push for more offshoring, or more H1B1 visas, are committing treason.
So really you want H-1B folks to end up like the Jews under Hitler, is that what you are
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Why women aren't in STEM jobs has been studied to death. Bottom line: enough men don't want them, and women are smart enough to know where they're not wanted.
But are all other STEM ratios as bad as that for software specifically? Are we hearing the software crisis here because the Slashdot demographic leans toward software? Is the problem just as bad in other science and engineering fields?
3) Demand that all applicants have recent (in the past two years) experience.
This might be the key. Other engineering disciplines don't chase the fads as rapidly as software. So an absence of a couple of years will really bugger a s/w resume. I have known some quite capable female software engineers. But many of them work with languages like COBOL. Wh
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However, most of these 11 were brilliant and yes, they were all very beautiful.
Russian spies, no doubt. And all servicing Edward Snowden now.
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I draw from this that most females prefer other careers. There is NO problem. NO crisis. They just want to do other things.
Few CEOs or executives at any level are women. Must just mean women don't want to work those jobs. Just like how most doctors are men and how most lawyers are too. No real crisis or problem. That's also probably why they make less than men in the same profession too -- they just aren't driven enough to go for the big bucks.
If that doesn't sound ignorantly dismissive to you yet, try substituting "black people" for women, and the statistics will be just as true and the reasoning just as false.
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Few CEOs or executives at any level are women. Must just mean women don't want to work those jobs.
This may be true. Women like having a family and spending time at home with it.
That doesn't gel well with executive responsibilities or working hours. CEOs don't spend much time with the kids.
Just like how most doctors are men and how most lawyers are too.
In at least 13 European countries there are more female doctors than male.
In the UK the number of women becoming doctors is 30% higher than the number of men.
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.
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So basically you let them win. :-(
Re: Threatened, much? (Score:2)
It's not possible Some of these comments could be women trying to troll or reinforce a sterotype for their benifit?
Oh, but it's ok to be sexist against men. Sorry I forgot.
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