[SGVLUG] OT: Why aren't there more women in tech?

[Christopher Smith]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 10:39 AM, John Kreznar <jek at ininx.com> wrote:
> In a message purporting to be from "juanslayton @dslextreme.com"
> <juanslayton at dslextreme.com> but lacking a digital signature, it is
> written:
>
>> ... My daughter (Rebecca Marie Slayton) took her PhD at Harvard, but
>> did most of her hands-on research at MIT. ... she has occasionally
>> been the recipient of condescending treatment by male colleagues.  And
>> by the media, which is a source of particular irritation.  Things are
>> getting better, but it's still gonna take time.
>
> Still, to deny the likelihood of a correlation between gender and
> science aptitude, just as there is between most pairs of measurements of
> human individuals, is, as Dustin says, to bend science.  Politically
> correct, yes; true, not necessarily.

I dunnoh that this is going on. The politically correct attitude is
that there could be *more* women in tech if some changes were made,
not necessarily that there'd be as many or more (hard to prove either
way, but seems likely). The larger PC problem is this: even within the
industry we seem incredibly stupid about our interpretation of
statistics, and equally stupid about how to react to the reality that
the field is male dominated. I mean really, how stupid do you have to
be to ignore the reality that the prevalence of bias against women in
tech has a Darwinian effect, such that it is completely idiotic to
assume a woman who *is* in the field lacks aptitude or interest or is
likely to speak up without having something important to say.

The disturbing thing is that this plays out only for certain industry
minorities (women and to a lesser degree, seniors), but for the most
part for others. For example, industry demographics definitely show
under representation of those of African descent, but I have yet to
see a young male African American programmer ignored, overlooked or
have their talent disrespected like I see all too often with women,
and the industry is not rife with unintended insults to Africans. I
don't like the explanations I can come up with for this observation.

>> I think the more serious question is, "Why aren't there more of
>> _anybody_ going into tech?"  Nobody is going to get brownie points for
>> scientific ignorance.
>
> Yep.  Technical illiteracy has to go the way of illiteracy in natural
> language.  Illiterates simply cannot cope in the modern world.

But the two aren't necessarily uncorrelated. Not only is there the
issue of people not always being interested in careers with
demographic skews, but when your industry appeals to a narrow type
(and I'd argue the industry is narrow enough to focus beyond just
"young male", but that's a big chunk), it tends to shape the job & the
career in a way that the bulk of the population is less likely to
qualify for and isn't interested in participating in.

I'd also point out they aren't correlated in another way: you don't
have to be in the tech industry to be technically literate. That's
another lovely industry prejudice. :-(

-- 
Chris