(Untitled)

[eccentrific]

I'm home sick, so I'm catching up on my backlog of NPR and I come across an article on "Why are there so few women in tech". I didn't read it. I've seen so many of these that I can guess what it's going to say. It seems like I see one at least every month

Comments

[drwex]

To be fair, how many in-depth analyses of employment in other fields do you come across? I think we as a nation have a high-tech fetish so these things get promoted to more popular media whereas studies of other fields don't. Even areas adjacent to tech (such as my own UX/design) do such studies and don't get coverage. Gadget worship maybe?

That said, I think the entire question of employment for women is addressing the tail end of a very long snake. I'd rather see more work put into giving women (girls) equal access to early education, quality childcare, tech schooling, internship opportunities, and so on. I have reasonable confidence that if we can stop cheating women (girls) out of the opportunities necessary to fill the pipeline with more than one gender the questions of hiring and boardroom representation are much more likely to sort themselves out.

The above being sort of a long-winded way of agreeing with you, I suppose. Felt like writing more than a +1 I did :)

[mathhobbit]

I'm sorry, but does WWFD mean "What Would Feynman Do?" To me, Feynman personifies some of the largest barriers to women's entry into STEM, but you seem to be supporting both Feynman and women in this post.

Here's a blog post with some quotes from _Surely You're Joking_ , my source for information on Feynman:

https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-called-a-woman-worse-than-a-whore/

[drwex]

Yes, WWFD is short for "What Would Feynman Do"

Feynman remains one of my heroes and inspirations, though flawed like any human. I'm a fan of many problematic things and periodically wrestle with how to reconcile these things.

In my own life I've been the beneficiary of getting to work with many brilliant women, particularly at MIT where I was Pattie Maes's second-ever PhD student. My own attitudes and output have evolved from a much-more-sexist initial position that is perhaps typical of men my age and class. I feel that's on me any is my work to do; whatever Feynman did or said was on him and perhaps if he'd lived longer he would have changed, too. But counterfactuals are hard and the best I can do is note that my heroes are flawed, and go from there.

[eccentrific]

Actually evidence suggests that you're wrong about the pipeline being the main problem (though it is a problem). Women are much better represented in entry level positions than more senior positions, but they tend not to get promoted and then they drop out of tech. And then that tends to put back pressure on the pipeline because why enter a job with no future.

Honestly, the main reason I'm grumping is that these articles all come across to me as "Here's why you shouldn't be in tech as a woman. What are you still doing there? Well, you'll leave soon".

[gorgo]

I suspect that part of the answer is that our society is better at handling women moving into fields that are traditionally male than men moving into fields that are traditionally female. Another part is that tech jobs pay well, so there's an obvious reason why women would want to go into them, which makes it more surprising when they don't.

Early childcare may also suffer from some of the same issues that teaching elementary school does: there's a perception that everyone has the skills required, so it isn't seen as valuable.

[eccentrific]

Exactly. Which is why articles to raise awareness of the lack of men in traditionally female jobs would be useful.

[firstfrost]

I was actually reading an article today about why there are so few men in early childcare! Almost. (It is framed as why men don't want those jobs, which is different than the framing for "why there are so few women in tech.")

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/04/upshot/why-men-dont-want-the-jobs-done-mostly-by-women.html?_r=0

[eccentrific]

Good article. Thanks for pointing it out!