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Blazing The Trail For Female Programmers

C

Charles Kozierok

Elite Member
It's the 21st century, but enormous divisions in gender roles persist, and someone is trying to do something about it:

Sarah Allen has been the only woman on a team of computer programmers a few times in the more than two decades she has worked in the field. Most notably, she led the team — as the lone female programmer — that created Flash video, the dominant technology for streaming video on the Web.

Since only about 20 percent of all programmers are women, her experience isn't uncommon, and now she's trying to bring more women into the field.

A little over four years ago, Allen founded , which does design and development of software for mobile devices. The company's mix of 10 programmers and designers work with entrepreneurs and help them take an idea and turn it into software that works.
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The article mentions ENIAC, an early computer I spent quite a bit of time researching last week so I could write about it. The machine was incredibly difficult to program; the programmers were said to have needed to know the hardware to the same level of detail as the computer's designers. Its six original programmers were all women, none of whom got the credit they deserved.

The most depressing part of the article:
Allen says the number of women who major in computer science has actually been going down. She hopes that making women in the field more visible to each other will help young women see that there is a path for them in what is one of the fastest growing professions in the world.
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My wife has been a programmer for nearly as long as Allen, and hasn't experienced much in the way of overt sexism, but the gender imbalance can be disquieting at times.
 
Over the last 10 years, I have seen a ratio of 4/1 - 5/1 for females.

However, hardly any are American.

Majority have been Indian or Chinese.

Technical classes, at an community college is running about 60% male, however the advanced courses drop to about 20-30% female
 
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Just my two cents; when more women start entering the field, then we'd see more women working in IT/Programming. It gets tiring when people want to constanty *hint* at discrmination in the workplace when there may be just more qualified men at this point in time... this word as taken on a whole new meaning in the 21st century, IMO.

..or should we just start overlooking qualified men just to hire probably underqualified women just because they're women and we don't want to be on the wrong side of those statistics?

FWIW, I've worked under women managers for the last 5 years I've been in IT -- only one male in my current role.

I think this can lead to men being discriminated against becasue some hiring manager is on a crusade to employ more women.
 
EagleKeeper said:
Over the last 10 years, I have seen a ratio of 4/1 - 5/1 for females.

However, hardly any are American.

Majority have been Indian or Chinese.

Technical classes, at an community college is running about 60% male, however the advanced courses drop to about 20-30% female
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/this

Not many women take technical classes or go to tech schools (i went to RIT. it stunk trying to date..)
 
Honestly I don't really have an issue with this. Women are certainly capable of Computer Science/Engineering, but for whatever reason many choose to enroll in other things.

Some things are just natural/cultural. I don't see any real barriers against women in the technical areas, they just mostly choose not to go there.
 
irishScott said:
Honestly I don't really have an issue with this. Women are certainly capable of Computer Science/Engineering, but for whatever reason many choose to enroll in other things.

Some things are just natural/cultural. I don't see any real barriers against women in the technical areas, they just mostly choose not to go there.
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This. I think women in general are not as interested in computer science. Can't force them to be.
 
irishScott said:
Honestly I don't really have an issue with this. Women are certainly capable of Computer Science/Engineering, but for whatever reason many choose to enroll in other things.

Some things are just natural/cultural. I don't see any real barriers against women in the technical areas, they just mostly choose not to go there.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I support the initiatives to get more women (and men) interested in STEM (science tech eng math) but I think it's mostly a problem with the education system rather than the workplace.
 
DaveSimmons said:
Exactly. I support the initiatives to get more women (and men) interested in STEM (science tech eng math) but I think it's mostly a problem with the education system rather than the workplace.
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I don't even think it is the education system more so as it is the culture. Women just aren't as socially accepted doing technical oriented things. Doctors and researchers are the only field I see with a good (by my own observances, I've no idea on the whole industries as I am on the outside) amount of women.
 
Obviously women are less interested in the technical fields. The question is why they are less interested.

Unless you believe it's something genetic, the huge imbalance is a result of societal conditioning, and if that's the case, I see nothing wrong with someone trying to change that.
 
Charles Kozierok said:
Obviously women are less interested in the technical fields. The question is why they are less interested.

Unless you believe it's something genetic, the huge imbalance is a result of societal conditioning, and if that's the case, I see nothing wrong with someone trying to change that.
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I think the problem is how someone is going to try and change that social conditioning. Are we going to give tax breaks for corporations that hire more women than men? Are we going to give more technical scholarships available only to women? The most we can do is push for education and hope women get into it. Otherwise, you are screwing men because women in out society don't want to be in certain fields.
 
Charles Kozierok said:
Obviously women are less interested in the technical fields. The question is why they are less interested.

Unless you believe it's something genetic, the huge imbalance is a result of societal conditioning, and if that's the case, I see nothing wrong with someone trying to change that.
Click to expand...

So long as they don't start screwing men to do so, sure.

But societal conditioning or not, if women don't want to go into technical fields, at this point that's no one's responsibility but theirs. No need to urge women solely out of some sense of political correctness.
 
smackababy said:
I think the problem is how someone is going to try and change that social conditioning. Are we going to give tax breaks for corporations that hire more women than men? Are we going to give more technical scholarships available only to women? The most we can do is push for education and hope women get into it. Otherwise, you are screwing men because women in out society don't want to be in certain fields.
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No, you start at a much younger age by getting young girls interested in computers and programming.
 
As a woman pc tech, I have experienced this first hand many times, and it really disgusts me. It even gets to the point of physical harassment in some cases. The american society is especially bad about this. I don't feel well at all today so instead of speaking my thoughts on this subject, I will post a couple of links to pertinent "nearby fields" of work and play.

http://www.siliconsisters.ca/
http://www.feministfrequency.com/
 
waggy said:
/this

Not many women take technical classes or go to tech schools (i went to RIT. it stunk trying to date..)
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You think WPI or Lowell Tech was any better?
We always felt the CalPoly was the lucky one.

However at LTI, there was the liberal state college up the river. Amazing how many engineers took liberal art classes there instead of on campus. 😛
 
jaqie said:
As a woman pc tech, I have experienced this first hand many times, and it really disgusts me. It even gets to the point of physical harassment in some cases. The american society is especially bad about this. I don't feel well at all today so instead of speaking my thoughts on this subject, I will post a couple of links to pertinent "nearby fields" of work and play.

http://www.siliconsisters.ca/
http://www.feministfrequency.com/
Click to expand...



I was a C etc programmer for at least 40 years (I'm old) no harassment. I know that female techs and corporate types had a tougher time, but there's something protective about writing code that works.
 
That really surprises me, now I wish I had gotten into programming... As of today I'm 36.

Before you say I should start now... I would love to but lots of barriers, main one being I'm sposed to be dead already from a degenerative neurological condition, am housebound, and have two forms of advanced arthritis. Not looking for pity or shock or amazement or bananas, just explaining why I am not going to peruse that aggressively, though I am thinking of trying to start learning something current and easy (like maybe python). I taught myself TRSDOS basic and apple basic back in the day, as well as ms-dos qbasic.
 
I'm surrounded by female developers, managers and project leads.
A pretty big mix ethnic background and age, from SVP's in their 50's, to noobs straight out of college who need to put facebook away and stop trying to multitask (poorly). We have a few Indian devs (contractors and employees), the Hong Kong crew and Caucasian women.
The demographic that we have the least representation are blacks.
 
nanette1985 said:
I was a C etc programmer for at least 40 years (I'm old) no harassment. I know that female techs and corporate types had a tougher time, but there's something protective about writing code that works.
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We have one developer who has been with company since the mid 80's.
She had to deal with harassment back in the 80's because at the time she was gorgeous and our office was essentially "Mad Men" with more recreational drugs.
Its because of one "incident" she was able to maintain her job through numerous layoffs\mergers.
One boob grab in a bar by a higher up resulted in 20 years job stability.
The incident was a long time ago before everyone went lawsuit crazy.

true story
 
Charles Kozierok said:
Obviously women are less interested in the technical fields. The question is why they are less interested.

Unless you believe it's something genetic, the huge imbalance is a result of societal conditioning, and if that's the case, I see nothing wrong with someone trying to change that.
Click to expand...

I don't know that it's genetic. I suppose it's conditioning. I don't really understand why they are conditioned that way. It's not like IT is a "traditionally male" profession like a lot of others where women were kept out for that reason. IT is too new to have any tradition.

It seems to me that girls stay away from math and science in school because they think it's nerdy. I don't understand the exact mechanism for how that comes about.
 
irishScott said:
Honestly I don't really have an issue with this. Women are certainly capable of Computer Science/Engineering, but for whatever reason many choose to enroll in other things.

Some things are just natural/cultural. I don't see any real barriers against women in the technical areas, they just mostly choose not to go there.
Click to expand...


I agree that this is natural, disagree that it's culturals.

Women, if they want to can be great programmers. The problem is that few women want to. Women tend to like social jobs and there's nothing social about sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours programming. Sure, there are exceptions, but they're exceptions, not the rule.

As long as women can be programmers if they want to and face no prejudice in doing so, I'm not quite certain what can be done. I'm not even certain if anything should be done, why should we try to force false equality when there's no interest?
 
I think one reason why women aren't going into the tech/science fields is that they have been conditioned into thinking that it wasn't appropriate for them and have been pushed into other directions such as nursing and others.
 
Just today I saw some poll results on men and women in the IT industry and it seems they believe the lack of female role models in the industry is something holding back a lot of women. Also, education about the fields from a young age would help. This was a survey of people looking for jobs inside the industry, but still telling. source: https://www.elance.com/q/women-in-technology
 
Anyone that doesn't get that this has to do with the American society is a retard, its' almost equal in other nations.

This is also why nations like India and even Pakistan have more equality than the US, you may not consider it but the sociecty is built up around conservative normatives regardless of what a minorty has to say on the matter.

It's cool to be a housewife in the US, it's not ok to be a leech in any other nation in the world.
 
kia75 said:
I agree that this is natural, disagree that it's culturals.

Women, if they want to can be great programmers. The problem is that few women want to. Women tend to like social jobs and there's nothing social about sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours programming. Sure, there are exceptions, but they're exceptions, not the rule.

As long as women can be programmers if they want to and face no prejudice in doing so, I'm not quite certain what can be done. I'm not even certain if anything should be done, why should we try to force false equality when there's no interest?
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No, many women want to, people like YOU don't want them to and society is shaped by the likes of you.

It's not a feminine thing in the US, SA, or India but in Iran or Europe it's a completely feminine task.

Yeah, let's overlook the view that "they don't want to be so they are not good at it" that you are portraying here, i'm sure that has no influence on anything anywhere.
 
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