And the "sexism" debate was stirred by people who were only tangentially involved in Tech, like the PR person "Adria Richards". If you listen to actual women with actual Math, CS, or EE degrees, you'll hear a different story.
> And the "sexism" debate was stirred by people who were only tangentially involved in Tech, like the PR person "Adria Richards". If you listen to actual women with actual Math, CS, or EE degrees, you'll hear a different story.
As someone whose listened to actual women with Math, CS, and EE degrees (and women who are working in technical roles without degrees in those fields, as both women and men in the field do), I disagree. You'll hear a mix of stories from those women, some positive, some as bad (or worse) than those from women "tangentially involved" in tech.
OTOH, I don't think that sexism in the tech industry would fail to be a problem if it only victimized women in non- (or less-)technical roles within the industry.
The "listen to women" part that people take issue with is being expected to assume legitimacy, and hence support any draconian policy proposed, all based on subjective testimony. Ask a certain UVA frat about that.
> Technology companies are generally considered to be some of the most sought-after employers in the world. We have an inherent “home field advantage” when it comes to recruiting the largest and richest talent pools of our most critical position: software engineers. However, despite this advantage, our data indicates that software engineering teams in tech have proportionally fewer women than several non-tech industries; namely healthcare, retail, government, education, and nonprofits. For example, a typical software engineering team in a healthcare company is likely to be 32% women, compared to 20% in technology. While these non-tech industries employ significantly fewer software engineers versus technology, their teams tend to exhibit greater gender parity.
You don't end up with 50% women in other industries with basically the same role without some sort of reason.
Right. My title is Senior Software Engineer, with the corresponding experience and salary, but since my degrees are not in one of those three fields, I'm only tangentially involved in tech. Thanks for providing such a succinct demonstration of the kind of dismissal "actual women" in the field get to hear all the time.
Are you being serious? That's exactly what's being implied. Which part of tangentially involved in tech juxtaposed with unlike women with Math, CS, or EE degrees would lead you to read that differently?
I am honestly as confused by your interpretation as you are by mine. I don't have any of those degrees, and I don't infer that Supercomputing is dismissing me as "tangentially" involved in tech. They are suggesting that Adria Richards' "Developer Evangelist" role wasn't a real technical role, which I couldn't really comment on. I don't think they are implying that ksenzee's "Senior Software Engineer" role doesn't count as a technical role.
Certainly, and your interpretation is logical. I agree the original commenter didn't necessarily mean to imply that. However, they appear to have bought into a kind of false dichotomy that gets applied to women and minorities all too often. It's a mindset where there are "fake" woman developers (or gamers, or whatever), and there are "real" woman developers, and you only get perceived as one of the "real" developers if you meet an unusually high standard. It's tiresome to be on the receiving end of it.
You just said you agree the OP didnt mean to imply it yet you're making a rather big statement about dismissal that only you seem to see. Which is just as problematic.
Look at the population of women in fields such as:law, medicine, social science, etc. and you'll see that STEM lags behind in parity. The percentage of women in computing, according to some studies, isn't much higher than it was in 1960! [2]
From my perspective as a software engineer, we work in a male-dominated field, and we've made the work culture and norms what we want them to be [1]. The few women who do end up on engineering tracks often leave, and in a lot of cases they move into engineering support roles (dev evangelist, marketing, etc.).
I think Adria Richards is a loud, exceptional example that doesn't tell the story here. The reality is, this is a very quiet, insidious problem; women are walking away from our field, or just not showing up.
I don't believe that half of the best of the best talent pool just doesn't want to do engineering like the other half. There's a reason they're disinclined, and I accept that I'm part of it -- I'd like to see it change, and I think we have a responsibility to do better. I believe that as an industry, our future suffers for it.
In 2013, only 26% of computing professionals were female — down considerably from 35% in 1990 and virtually the same as in 1960. While the percentage of women in engineering has risen since 1990, the progress is modest –rising from 9% in 1990 to 12% in 2013.
Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields? When men don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it, when women don't go into a field, they find a way to blame men for it. Don't women have any agency? Are they dumb robots that only do what men tell them? Maybe they don't WANT to be in STEM fields...
> Why does nobody make this argument about Nursing, or Teaching, or Social Work, or Psychology, or any of the "Female dominated" fields?
People make this argument about female dominated fields (particularly education and nursing, which are, or have been, areas of perceived shortages) all the time; they probably don't make it as often in tech industry focused discussion fora, for reasons of lack of relevance to the venue.
The average yearly income of a nurse in my country is between $3k less, and $10k more than the average salary of a software developer in my country, depending on the source.
Although the stresses are perhaps not comparable, it's important to note that a nurse working the same hours as a typical software developer could expect to earn around twice as much.
Mind you, educational requirements may be more expensive than for software developers. I'm not familiar enough to speak to that.
An average elementary school teacher in a nearby city makes about $3k less than an average software developer, with around 7 weeks paid leave.
At least one female respondent in another nearby municipality recorded having 10 weeks of paid leave and full benefits. With that, I think that total compensation must be at least on-par.
Average salary of a social worker is around $15k less than that of software developers in my country. I don't know as much about social work. I suspect it's good, hard work. I hear that it's risky. Benefits packages are mostly ubiquitous though.
Of the small sample on this site, all respondents said that they were extremely satisfied with their employment as a Social worker.
Average clinical psychologist salaries are about $25k higher than average software developer salaries in my country. Likely owing to higher typical educational requirements.
Of the small sample on this site, all respondents said that they were extremely satisfied with their employment as a Clinical Psychologist.
Teachers in the US make on average $58k or so, varying from state to state quite a lot. It's about $30k less than the average software developer in the US, and if you're not very senior as a teacher you might get fired every year and rehired in fall. It's not a very secure job in many places, actually, even if you can teach math or science.
Nurses in the US make a lot more money, on par with developers, but much more physically and emotionally demanding.
People bring this up in every single thread about sexism in HN and almost every single time somebody gives them a cite to any of the several of efforts dedicated to getting dudes in those fields.
Which is meaningless without means of comparison.
The fact that programs exist somewhere in the world tells us nothing about the importance placed, or resources spent, on those efforts.
Maybe if you actually worked in said industry you've have a better sense of the environment. I doubt the average nurse (male or female) knows much about how the tech industry works.
This is not a mainstream media article. It's a blog post. I doubt my cousin the insurance adjuster ever heard about it, just as I never hear stories about the insurance industry.
For law and medicine - is it because there's less sexism, or because the fields are more prestigious and therefore women who wish to be in those fields let more of it slide in the interest of retaining and advancing their career?
There is a very basic dynamic at play here. Take away every department outside of engineering and you still have the chance to actually make technology. Take away engineering and you have literally nothing. The contributions don't need to be downplayed. Logic demonstrates the hierarchy of importance rather plainly.
