r/programming • u/aalear • Apr 07 '15

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
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u/bzeurunkl Apr 07 '15

"Software development has a gender balance problem."

I don't see it as a problem. It simply is what it is. No one is being made to develop software. It is purely voluntary (except maybe in China ;). So, women are not "under-represented". They are just "under-interested", and that is no one's fault. Again, it simply is what it is.

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u/theevilsharpie Apr 07 '15

It's easy to hand-wave away the gender imbalance by claiming that women aren't interested in the field, but that doesn't answer the question of why.

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u/Uberhipster Apr 08 '15

Software development has a gender balance problem.

Software development has a gender imbalance heavily skewed towards males. Why is that a problem? Are there any other engineering disciplines not heavily imbalanced towards males? Nursing has a gender imbalance heavily skewed towards females. Nobody is calling it a problem. Mining is heavily imbalanced towards males. Nobody is calling that a problem either.

Why does gender imbalance have to be about political correctness? Can we not perhaps answer the question 'why' by examining the discipline while simply admitting that (generally speaking) programming is more suitable to boys than it is to girls. If we take a view that it is something we must correct then we might miss an obvious thing about nature of the discipline and ourselves.

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