I'm not convinced in any direction of what should be done for gender equality in programming, CMV either way
Also, evidence is always good. That's one thing I am convinced of.
Posted May 8, 2013, 3:41 PM UTC
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Making gender (or any attribute) of a person relevant to hiring or tasks is inherently discriminatory (literally). You are saying, I will discriminate based on this attribute, that there should be as many X's as there are Y's.
If that's one's goal, then that's fine. But, if the goal is some other metric, like talent, then there are chances that enforcing that attribute constraint will lead to suboptimal talent.
Again, talent isn't everyone's goal, sometimes diversity is. But I think many people (rightly) assume that the goal for any organization is focused on talent.
People just need to make a choice and own up to them. But having gender quotas and claiming not to be discriminatory is incompatible.
I believe that there is a place for specialist support organizations like women in programming or minorities in programming, which is fine. But they should not be discriminatory and neither should their upstream counterparts.
So, if a man wants to join an organization targeted towards women in programming, he should be able to.
And, let's say, if a programming language conference is looking for participants, it's fine to invite from these focused organizations but only the face of merit. It's not okay to say, well, we have to invite them and have to have a speaker because we have no women. That's crazy sexist.
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I'm not just talking about hiring advantages, I'm also talking about encouragement to enter programming-related education paths.
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Well, the point still stands. Advocacy is A-OK! "I think there should be more LGBT folk in programming." That's a fine opinion. But quotas, whether in the work place or of some sort of scholarship enrollment are not okay. "Sorry, this scholarship is for GAYS only." Maybe there's a different way to phrase it like this scholarship is for those to advance the recognition of LGBT culture in STEM fields or something like that, so that straight allies don't get classified as "not gay".
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I think that there absolutely is a problem, but that it needs to be solved in youth culture and education, not in workplace hiring (except when there really is discrimination against equally talented women).
I don't feel any need to artificially create some kind of perfect world where every job title is occupied by 50% of each gender, I am just reacting to some very obvious poison in our culture. When you consider that most young males are put off maths, science and computing (by television, movies, bullying, their local culture, etc) it's not hard to imagine how much worse that problem might be for young females.
I agree that the whole movement should be evidence led, but I know for a fact that it was happening at every school that I attended. Until that problem is solved, nobody can really know how many men and women would naturally gravitate towards programming.
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Your article is called "Women in Science." And I agree, scientists are underpaid.
Things is though, we're talking about programming here. If you accept a boring corporate Java job, you can get a pretty decent salary.
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Thanks, this was a really interesting read.
I am 25, and most of my friends are making $60k+ per year and/or starting families. I am in CS grad school making $1200 a month.
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Yes. Tl;dr: programming is a shit job, and the fact that not many women choose it may not be a bad thing for them.
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To answer your question:
That's because "gender" "equality" is a political goal. (In quotes, because the people doing '"research" in this area really mean different things than most other people outside of these fields would expect for both "gender" and "equality"). "Gender equality" does not make sense as a business goal, nor as a scientific goal, nor even a humanitarian one.
Hence the decision on what efforts to undertake are set by politicians, not by scientists nor businessmen or even humanitarians. It's little surprise then that things constantly backfire and that only a limited few benefit by all this mess.
Now to provide some support for the claims made in my answer:
1. It's not a business goal.
The one core concern of a business is generating profits, and there is no logical line of reasoning that shows how an equal distribution of genders among the workforce could actually improve profits.
One argument that is often made here is that the available workforce would somehow more than double, if only we could get women (and others) interested enough in programming. It's not hard to spot the flaw here, namely that there's absolutely no guarantee on what will happen to the available workforce, if we indeed establish gender equality (especially if we do it by force).
Other arguments include things like creativity and better behavior of employees etc. all leading to more productive work environments. There may be some truth to this, but first of all this is outright abuse of women (and others), if its the main reason for pushing through "gender equality". More importantly, however, it most likely isn't even an efficient means of pursing the goal of productive work environments. In fact there, again, is chance that things may backfire, looking at "model employees" like this one.. This is what happens when you try and force things, by brainwashing people into being fundamentalists.
2. It's not a scientific goal.
There is no reason for expecting the distribution of genders in the workforce for some job should be equal, nor is there any motivation for why this would be a goal worthwile pursuing, other than perhaps political ones.
Do Should scientists really care about political motives? This is a very slippery slope right here.
3. It's not a humanitarian goal.
I'm baffled that it doesn't strike anyone making arguments about fairness how blatantly unfair it would be to try and coerce women (or others) into certain jobs. Why is it ok to coerce them into a job where they are underrepresented, but not ok to coerce them into one that they aren't? What if the jobs they are underrepresented in shift from the current ones to some other ones? Would coercion then still be ok (for the old, the new or both sets)? What if the roles reverse? Would coercing men (or others) into them be considered as ok too? How about coercing men (and others) into jobs they are currently underrepresented in then?
And make no mistake, this is coercion we're talking here about. I've yet to hear of a significant amount of women (or whoever else) that could rightfully claim to not have been hired, or been paid less, or not have been admitted to some educational path, solely on their gender alone (at least in our part of the world). Hence the only thing left to do is to actually coerce them.
Now there are times when coercing people into something actually is in their own best interest. The question however is whether we are absolutely certain that this is one of those cases.. Because I'm not. I've yet to see any conclusive evidence suggesting otherwise. If you have, then please by all means do share it, by answering my questions above.
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business goal: there are benefits to business, unless the business targets male exclusively. You cannot simply provide products/services to a group without inputs from that group. You may argue, ok, there's need for female business analyst/sales, but not necessarily female programmers. But when you dig deeper, you will realize the truely good analyst/sales people for technology companies do come from a technology background. You need to know how things work before you can analyze it or sell it.
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I don't know about scientific goal, can't really say much here, other than perhaps a diverse work environment help to boost creativity and communication and things? think about you usual topic during lunch. Most of my male coworkers talk about sports, and thanks to the female coworkers around, they now are aware of some of the culture events happening locally, which is a great boost for some of their romantic relationships. Also, I don't know about you, but I don't like to be the only girl at a workplace (gosh, anyone got tampon?!!), nor do I want to work with 99% females.
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It is a humanitarian goal, and it's not about coerce people into fields. It's about opening up their options. And yes, it applies to both genders. (nursing is a female dominated field and and by your logic, all those scholarships for male nursing students would be considered "coerce" men into the field) Why women and technology? Because tech jobs are flexible, you could really use those work-from-home days when you are late into the pregnancy.
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You cannot simply provide products/services to a group without inputs from that group.
Requirements engineering is important, yet the requirement engineers' genders are not. If you rely on developers making ad-hoc decisions about requirements, then you're screwed either way. No amount of gender equality is going go save you here, because gender is just one of many dimensions along which you can segment your customers by.
don't know about scientific goal, can't really say much here, other than perhaps a diverse work environment help to boost creativity and communication and things?
Like you say, this isn't about science, but about work environments. See my original post for details on this.
Most of my male coworkers talk about sports, and thanks to the female coworkers around, they now are aware of some of the culture events happening locally,
Yeah, good thing there's women around, otherwise men would forever remain these unsociable uncultured introverted entities..
The question here however is why it needs to be women developers to educate the men? How about employing people that have have some actual educational skills? If you actually care about their education that would be the sincere thing to do.
Also, I don't know about you, but I don't like to be the only girl at a workplace
Sure, pressuring the rest of the world into a situation they don't want to be in, just because you feel uncomfortable in your current situation, is absolutely acceptable. No big deal at all.
How is this not politics?
it's not about coerce people into fields. It's about opening up their options.
The options are already open to everyone in our part of the world. The only thing left to do is actually push people into those positions by force, or lure them in by insincere efforts. This qualifies as coercion.
Why women and technology? Because tech jobs are flexible
Lots of other jobs are flexible too, if that's your only metric. I still don't think this is sufficient reason for coercing anyone into a job.
How people decide on what career path to pursue should be left entirely up to them. Anything less than that and we're right back at planned economy...
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When considering this issue, it's important to identify the problem, and not jump to strawmen like "I don't want an under-qualified woman taking my job!" The problem is that women increasingly avoid computer science. In 1985, 37% of CS graduates were women, compared to 18% in 2010.
So how does the problem get solved? Culture needs to shift. Role models need to emerge. Parents need to encourage their daughters to pursue the things that interest them. Educators need to help children discover their passions. Men need to be more aware of the culture they propagate and how "harmless jokes" can be alienating and harmful. We all need to stop shoving people into the boxes we think they belong in.
The same can be said for any minority in any STEM field. The key is solving the problem before college graduation, not during the hiring process. Diversity shouldn't be thought of as a goal for appearances; it's a force that can supercharge the personal and professional growth of everyone involved, and it goes way beyond skin color and gender. If I interacted only with people exactly like myself, how limiting would that be?
In the spirit of the group, I'm wondering what exactly the problem is supposed to be here.
It looks to me that as opportunities have expanded for women, they've shifted away from certain fields and shifted towards other fields that they were previously excluded from. After all, the number of women graduates is expanding: if they're a lower percentage of CS grads, that's because they are now a higher percentage of grads in other fields.
To be precise, is this A Bad Thing because we're all CS people and therefore we want more people in our field, or because we think CS is especially important to our society's future and it's bad the the talent is going into medicine and finance, etc., or is the lower percentage of women seen as a problem in and of itself (even though it's obvious the numbers are going to fall in some fields as they rise in others).
To me, it's not a completely unreasonable theory to suggest that while CS used to be one of the few fields that women were accepted in, as opportunities have expanded women have shifted into more rewarding careers, leaving to men the CS field, which in a lot of ways is a pretty solitary and depressing profession for those who don't tilt pretty far in the aspergers direction.
But why do they all need to encourage them? If they don't want, they don't want, why change it? I can't see why it's a PROBLEM.
The drastically diminished number of women pursuing computer science education is evidence that women are being led away from it when they have no natural disinclination towards CS. In other words, they do want it, but society/parents/teachers/classmates/friends tell them they don't, whether explicitly or implicitly. How many great programmers are we missing as a result?
Or just evidence that they aren't being led towards it...
Led towards...led away...isn't it possible there is no leading going on at all? Couldn't it be that women are finding other types of work more rewarding? We could augment the process and environment to be more rewarding to them but then as a white male, I'm being pushed out of another niche where I feel like I fit in. I'm put in a position of changing because...wait, why? Because we "need" more of a certain type of gender in a certain field of work? I bet 10% is pretty good if you compare it to construction or waste collection. How about we focus on those first?
Because there are still a lot of things that DISCOURAGE or distracting them from getting into STEM fields. Youth don't have the life experience and wisdom to ignore outside influences. Seriously, why is all the popular girls on TV/Movie are hot dumb blonde, and all the smart ones are ugly plain nerds with glasses, acne, no makeup and bad wardrobe?
So you imply that they study psychology/sociology/politology/economy at college instead of engineering because society doesn't views psychologists etc as nerds?
Yep, most TV shows portray psychologist as some kind of mind reader, or at the very least, a professional looking person with a cool office.
Because half of the users of software are women. If you only have guys in software you get products that aren't well designed for both genders.
You're probably mistaking programming with UI development. There are a lot of women in UI/UX.
The hard part is implementing that, which is why I'm not convinced of any particular direction. It's easy to come with abstract solutions, but it won't work if they're unimplementable.
I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, the cause of the decrease of women entering the field is not because they get alienated, but because they don't think about entering the field in the first place. Is that not correct?
If that is the case, I don't see how "harmless jokes" can be an important factor.
"Harmless jokes" can be an important factor, it's hard to understand its effect unless you are at the constant receiving end.
At college, the guys in my project team would say things like: pretty girls like you should just relax and watch the guys work, and never let me do anything. And after two semesters of working with the same team, I almost accepted the idea that pretty girls should just let guys do all the work for them.
At one work place, my male coworkers started with harmless jokes about how girls don't do things as fast or as well, and how girls would rather go dating than coding. However, as they crack that joke everyday, it's really taken a toll. I stopped working as hard because I felt nobody appreciate my hard work (even though the same male coworkers do compliment me on the end results). I switched job and the new place have strict rules regarding this type of things, and you know what, despite the fact I'm the least experienced worker on the team, I no longer afraid to ask guys for questions and help, and I learned a lot and improved a lot.
Let me start out by stressing that I do see that what you experienced is a problem. However, this does not mean that "harmless jokes" are a significant culprit in the gender gap in computing, for several reasons:
Terminology confusion: sometimes "harmless jokes" refers to constantly "joking" about it, but not necessarily. I would probably only use that term when it happens very rarely.
The problem with anecdotes: there are enough female programmers that someone has to be incredibly unlucky.
Your comment is not completely clear on this, but it seems to me that you haven't left programming, which means that while the kind of "harmless jokes" you experienced probably are harmful, they do not necessarily cause any gap.
Again, the majority of the "gap women" wouldn't even have heard the "harmless jokes" if the majority of the gap is caused by women not even thinking about entering the field in the first place.
Unfortunately a lot of people can't distinguish "harmless joke" from constant joking. In an ideal situation, harmless jokes shouldn't exist, because they wouldn't make sense. Would you find it funny if someone cracked a joke about goat milk tastes better than cow milk because cows are dumb? My current coworkers, my SO don't even understand the notion of women = bad coder, because they don't judge people's intelligence based on gender. Whereas the colleagues from previous place seem to think that's perfectly good joke material.
Sure, but it doesn't mean I'm the "incredibly" unlucky one. Since I can't find any survey about how many people receive degrading jokes due to their gender, or race, I'll drop this one.
They caused gap while I worked in that job. I under performed, and was extremely unmotivated. Reason I did make it this far in STEM field is because of three people, my math teacher in high school, and my SO, whom give me the confidence of my intelligence and ability to perform well in this field. And my mom, who gets pissed at every notion that female should be inferior to males, especially when it comes to STEM (she's an engineer). Even my own father didn't think girls need intelligence. He didn't even care which college and what major I picked. Without those three, especially my mom, I'd settle for being an starving artist who try to make a living by finding a wealthy husband.
I've heard of enough "harmless jokes" before college, from teachers to relatives. Plus TV and Movies.