One thing that hits me: Secretaries and Executive Secretaries are almost exclusively female. I bet if you looked at Executive Assistants, you’d find a mostly male demographic, much higher salary and promotion opportunities — and mostly the same tasks.
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Which is why I went on to say,
Respect, and a proper working environment should be given to everyone, obviously. So if someone isn’t respectful, they should definitely change in that case.
In any case,
The geek culture isn’t tied to the work, it’s tied to the people doing the work. You don’t need to know anything about the culture to work in the field. However, if I wanted to stretch it, it’s a lot like knowing Latin. If you’re well-versed in the culture you might understand a few of the ridiculous library names or references that sometimes pop-up in our field. That’s neither here nor there, though.
In any case, are you seriously suggesting that people shouldn’t share what they’re passionate about because it might exclude others? Many of the engineers in NASA have said, time and time again, that it was things like Star Trek that brought them where they are today. That made them build the rockets or design the satellites, rovers, and what-have-you. Likewise, if a male developer is inspired by something that’s considered inherently geeky, he should not throw that away just so we can accommodate more women.
Assuming, of course, that this is part of the reason there aren’t more women in our field.
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The drinking thing is major, and it’s the one I think most companies will have a problem with. A vast majority of people in the US don’t know how to have fun unless they’re drinking. I don’t know why that is - I’ve never liked alcohol, so it was never a thing for me. But every company I’ve been at has had work parties with open bars or at least very available alcohol. I don’t personally know of anything bad happening, but I also didn’t take part in most of the parties since I don’t drink.
I think drinking is a culture problem, and it’s one that’s going to be hard to fix, because everyone just expects every corporate party to have free flowing alcohol.
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I think you’re forgetting that - from a biological standpoint - women are also expected to be the sole source of food for babies’ first year or two of life. Thus it is natural that the mother would care for the child while the father would go out to find food, build shelter, etc.
No, there’s no reason women can’t be builders and men can’t be caregivers, but still there may be natural/biological underpinnings to the way these fields are presently skewed.
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From that standpoint we’re all supposed to live in central Africa, be nude and eat all our food raw.
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In the UK, male teachers in Primary education are highly sought-after, and while the law technically prevents any discrimination, most Primary schools would leap at the chance to hire a decent male teacher, just because of the rarity. Similarly, a decent male primary teacher would be able to take their pick of jobs and will probably advance quickly as schools are keen to keep them.
My son has just encountered his first male teacher at the age of 10, and is really thriving. It helps that he’s a good teacher of course, but it happens to suit him at this point in his life to have this sudden change. Of course, a good female teacher would be great too, but the diversity is definitely a benefit.
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As a father of a young daughter, I’m struggling with not only sticking a computer screen in front of toddlers but encouraging it. The American Pediatric Association recommends no screen time for children under two and then limited screen time after that.
I realize that while TV is only a passive activity while playing on a computer is a more active and engaging task, I’m not convinced that a computer invokes the imaginative play that especially very young children can benefit from. The cartoon even illustrates that: low-tech blocks (I’d also argue for the doll, too) offer infinitely stimulating possibilities; I don’t think it necessarily follows that a computer automatically improves on this because it’s high tech.
I do want my daughter to be interested in STEM and I think that there are so many better low tech options to stimulate her interest before giving her a computer.
From the responses of women it seems men are actively trying to get women out of tech. Although they are probably not aware of it I have a theory for why.
- They may fear women will take over too much tech jobs. Many activities (like horse riding) where considered feminine after much women started doing it.
- There’s much prestige in tech, male ego’s can’t handle women ‘wasting’ that prestige while they could use it much better.
- Some men ‘believe’ women are less skilled technically. This is not based on evidence but on a culture that assumes women are bad at tech and men are good. So everytime a woman makes a tech mistake it’s taken as a sign that all women are bad at tech and when she says something smart it’s ignored. For men it’s the other way around, that’s how they convince themselves that women are bad at tech.
It’s sad really, because the first programmers where women and they are just as capable as men.
I would even suggest that women are the better future devellopers. Because software development is gearing more and more towards user friendly web applications. So more of the work is about communicating and figuring out what the software should do. The theory is that women are better at that because they are not arrogant jerks.
As a man I find myself having to apologize for my gender. We need to stop working on gut feelings and make decisions based on real information.
Those underpinnings are very small and greatly exaggurated by culture. Women who are technically capable should not be blocked by an aggressive culture from performing.
I’ve never seen a woman interviewing for a position at one of my jobs who didn’t have everyone on the team rooting for her to get hired. Most of the guys are sick of the sausage fest, and most of them are momma’s boys. I’m pretty sure any woman had an unfair advantage over any men applying to the same job, but there were no female applicants unless it was maybe a UI, design, or PM type of position.
I don’t agree that this is because anyone shoves dolls in girls’ hands, my daughter loves her dolls and playing on her Kindle. My son, on the other hand, loves playing on his Galaxy, but has already asked me to install Visual Studio on their laptop and started watching tutorials. It takes a certain kind of mind to enjoy staring at logic problems and not talking to people for 8 hours straight, and I’m not sure it’s even a healthy thing. Obviously either of them are in luck if they decide to really go down the programmer path, I’d be ecstatic to share Node.js or MVC with them some day. But I’m not going to scheme on which toys to give them in hopes of directing their future career path.
If you have to convince a certain demographic to enjoy something, it’s a pretty good sign that there’s other fields they would probably enjoy more. And that’s the only reason I would discourage it, if there’s another profession out there that would satisfy them more. Why push them towards something they maybe aren’t meant for just to satisfy some people’s agenda?
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Here is norwegian state televion’s documentary about the subject:
The Gender Equality Paradox - Documentary NRK - 2011 (this documentary was partially responsible for closing of the Nordic Gender Institute)
The core thing is said at 22:26.
We looked at babies that were one day old. And again, we presented them with either with a mechanical object or a face to look at. And filmed how long does the baby look at each of these two objects. And we find that more boys look longer at the mechanical object, and more girls look longer at the face. Even on the first day of life. So this is before toys have been introduced, or various cultural biases or prejudices have been introduced.
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Great topic. I would agree, from my limited point of view, that programmers are a bit “special”. We shared some personality test data among ourselves just for fun and the IT team looks heavily introverted. We have one female programmer in a team of 15 or so developers. We simply can’t find any to hire. Her experience tells me that she was always in a male dominated crowd throughout the school years as well. Girls/women just were not interested, not early, not later. She is a great developer and gets stuff done.
Gender roles, culture, natural ability plays a role. It would be naive to say that women and men are not different and that we do not have different biological strengths. Men can be caring about their families and children for sure. Nobody denies that. But, there is a reason why women and men are even physically very different. There is a high variability in people, men or women - look at all the different body types, sizes, and there are always both men and women who can fit any bucket out there.
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I also agree with you people. The main office of my company has many couples and it works pretty well. The problem are not the relationships, but the lack of maturity. If someone harrases a former significant other at work, you have a very immature person that needs to have a real talk with HR and, maybe, should even be fired. Let’s not interfere on employee’s personal matters because some lame persons do not know how to be a professional adult.
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Millions of years of evolution have results in major differences between the sexes. Do people honestly not expect these differences to have also impacted the brain? Recent studies have shown that women (on average) have more significant function in areas of the brain tied to communication. This is why women (on average) are going to do better at jobs that require a lot of communication (ex: teaching). Those same studies have shown that men (on average) have more significant function in areas of the brain tied to spatial reasoning. This is why men (on average) are going to do better at jobs that require math (ex: engineering and computer science). None of this means that women cannot be successful at computer science. It just means that the averages will result in a lot more men doing well at computer science than women. Trying to fill computer science jobs with 50% women is going against biology and will just result in a lot of frustrated women.
As a society, we can (and should) discuss why many female dominated fields are so poorly paid. As an example, I personally think teachers should make much more money given the importance and difficulty of what they do. But lets not blindly push people into fields just to try to make some “quota”.
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It seems manageable to me. A company’s party can have some alcohol but should not be a binge party, after all. If 15 beers are causing such problems, do not provide 15 beers per person. Also, if you have a culture of respect, colleagues are expected to calm down the most inadequate peers. At least that was how it happened anywhere I worked.
Oh hey look… A not all men article.
Of course evolution has impacted the brain but that should not automatically result in the assumption that women are worse at tech. How is spatial reasoning relevant in software development?
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You believe that because historically they do, NATURALLY they don’t? That’s usually the mark (history and repeated patterns) of a naturally occurring event.
On what basis do you disagree?
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I totally agree; the bothered developer is actually a poor example. She should not be intimidated because people like other things at all! I know people have different levels of emotional maturity but geez! this is a non-issue.
I, for one, despise/ignore almost all “geek culture”, have almost no interest in common with anyone in my workplace and yet it does not bother me. Again, there are levels of maturity - I’m a married man with a kid it is not really important to me - but the solution is not stripping unharmful personal expressions. The solution is more maturity and a search for common interests.
I don’t see anything in here that actually addresses the low number of females in the field. I see “training” that you’re suggesting to suppress natural biological urges:
- Don’t drink and have parties (socialize)
- Don’t date in the workplace (resist attractive people and natural biological urges)
And then a bunch of things that shouldn’t happen in the first place:
- Don’t be an asshole
- Don’t just talk, listen
- Don’t be an asshole (specifically to women)
I’d love to have more women in the field, I’m teaching women programming in my off time. None of the ideas you’ve suggested actually make them want to join the field though. They also deal with some or all of the things you’ve listed in nearly every other job they have, so how is eliminating all that supposed to provide a somehow unique “women encouragement” environment? Most of these occur even in fields DOMINATED by women, yet they still dominate those fields.
I think it’s worth finding out the WHY of the issue, rather than addressing it as a problem straight off.
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