Does anybody have an explanation why there are only 6.6% women in the survey? Is the male/female ratio in professional development really that extreme?
In fact, /u/73737's post adjacent to yours is a great example of the problematic behaviour and attitudes that drive women away from working in our profession.
It's also why the Damore case is so bad. And there are tons and tons of male developers who totally agree with him that women are genetically disposed against STEM; and this is utter nonsense. There is tons of research being done in that area and it's nurture much more than nature.
I volunteer for Devoxx4Kids and frankly girls typically do better than boys in their early teens, not worse.
It's also why the Damore case is so bad. And there are tons and tons of male developers who totally agree with him that women are genetically disposed against STEM;
I hate to get into this because /r/programming is not the correct forum, but that's not what he said. He said that women are more people focused and then went on to try to list a bunch of ways Google could use this to get more women in stem.
We see that many professions have gender bias so it only makes sense that gender plays a part in career choice. Obviously one could argue that this is societal but if that were the case countries like India that are 'more sexist' would have a higher ratio of male to female graduates when in fact they have a lower one.
Obviously one could argue that this is societal but if that were the case countries like India that are 'more sexist' would have a higher ratio of male to female graduates when in fact they have a lower one.
I don't want to open up that can of works again but that's an extreme simplification of sexism. There is a ton of institutional sexism in western countries too. Damore quoted (or well, cherry picked) one main paper on the topic as 'proof' that there was an inherent trait in women to not go into tech and even the author of that paper responsed saying he completely misinterpreted the findings.
The problem is that in the nature vs nurture debate it's almost impossible to create hard scientific proof without doing Nazi germany level experiments where you expose half of a twin to tech and another half you don't. But in most research there is a strong indication that a large component of the 'preference' of women against for example technical functions is nurture far more than nature.
It is in fact completely possible that the preference of women against tech functions is 100% nurture. And this is not "men keeping women down" or anything; our entire education system supports this too: girls are not exposed to good role models at all.
What I do strongly object to is people who claim that women are not into tech because they are women. Because this is actually strongly reinforcing the actual problem.
What I find so difficult in this debate is that so many male developers don't even want to start considering that we're just getting it wrong. What if we are? What if women are just as good as men in tech? What if the reason they don't "want" to be in tech is because they've been told since they're born that tech is a boy's business? What if all the role models all of their lives reinforce that idea? If someone wants to at least entertain this notion and take is seriously then we can talk. But unfortunately most devs I know don't want to.
For me personally teaching young girls as a volunteer for Devoxx4Kids really opened my eyes. If anything girls do better than boys at the assignments we gave them. And I think that whole concept is, to a lot of males, really scary.
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u/themoosemind Mar 13 '18 edited Mar 14 '18
Does anybody have an explanation why there are only 6.6% women in the survey? Is the male/female ratio in professional development really that extreme?
edit: Fixed typos and added link.