Alpha male programmers aren't keeping women out

http://loudthinking.com/posts/40-alpha-male-programmers-arent-keeping-women-out

by joao • 17 years ago

38 85 17 years ago

loudthinking.com

ericb2• 17 years ago

A fine example of what-aboutery!

Reference: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-har...

Alex3917• 17 years ago

Actually, I think it's closer to arguing in the negative:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=190553

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Now that doesn't mean the underlying problem isn't worth dealing with. It absolutely is! I think that the world of programming could be much more interesting if more women were part of it. I wish I knew how to make that happen. If I find out, I'll be the first to champion it.

This may get me a ton of down-votes, but I'm genuinely curious: is the gender gap in programming actually a problem? If so, why? In what ways would the world of programming be more interesting if it was more evenly split between men and women?

I'm not trying to sound misogynistic or anything, just haven't thought much about this topic and I'm not sure I understand why it's considered a big problem. Would love to hear people's views.

octane• 17 years ago

> actually a problem

I agree. This is really one of those places where I think to myself, so what?

The only real problem I see is that a guy who goes into the field is going to be surrounded by other dudes, which is one of my biggest regrets with this profession.

wheels3• 17 years ago

I prefer working in an environment that's a mix of men and women, and I think that's fairly common. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I chose to go to a liberal arts school rather than an engineering school because I didn't want to go to a university that was 80% men.

branden• 17 years ago

It's a problem because in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out. The problem isn't that there isn't an even split, it's that an entire population of might-be geniuses and innovators is being left out of the game.

xenophanes• 17 years ago

I agree it suggests a systematic bias.

But like DHH, I don't think it's anything to do with male programmers. They act no worse than men in other fields, maybe better.

And I don't think this problem is programming specific. It also happens in math, physics, and a variety of other fields.

So, where is this bias coming from? Who teaches girls to take up girly interests? I think it's primarily their mother.

This ought to change. http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

> It's a problem because in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out.

There is another option: programming hasn't done a good job of appealing to women. It's entirely possible that it's not a case of women being shut out, but rather they haven't been sold on the profession to begin with. In short: an image problem.

I know this doesn't apply to the situation we have here with this ruby presentation full of porn, but as long as we are generalizing this specific instance into the "why aren't there more women in CS?" question, I thought I'd throw it out there.

It's not like programming is the only profession with this problem. As a male, I haven't been particularly sold on being a nurse either, despite the fact that (in my area) it pays roughly the same and the few male nurses I know love the flexibility to move around the country almost at will. I just never considered it for a career because of the gender bias regarding that profession held by society, not by the members of the profession itself.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

in lieu of evidence that women are innately worse programmers, it suggests a systemic bias keeping women out

It might simply mean that women enjoy a comparative advantage

http://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadv...

at doing something else, whatever the something else is, and they are happy to live in a world in which they trade their ability to do what they do to enjoy the benefits of modern computer technology developed mostly by males.

Philip Greenspun's comments on women in science

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

may not be completely apropos, because programming as a career isn't exactly the same as research science as a career, but those comments illustrate that simple guesses about what the problem is just might be mistaken.

ericb2• 17 years ago

Maybe initially things are fine--the balance is skewed, but it happens to reflect the individual choice, regardless of gender, regarding what field to go into. It becomes a problem when an environment is created that perpetuates the situation--when a subtle attitude shift interrupts promising careers. If women who would enjoy programming careers are made to feel uncomfortable and subsequently leave the field, the world suffers.

Imagine you are purple.

You are in a room filled with green people and a green lecturer. The lecturer's presentation is nothing but slides of purple people making goofy faces. All evening, everyone who approaches tries to get you to tell a joke. You try and show your new project off, but no one seems to take it seriously.

You object in private conversations afterward, and the green people all tell you they weren't offended--what's the big deal?

natrius5• 17 years ago

If we assume that men and women are identical when it comes to intellectual pursuits (which I don't really believe) and that men have chosen and continue to choose the jobs they perform the best at and enjoy the most, then the gender imbalance is a sign that there are women who would enjoy programming and be good at it if there weren't sociological issues in the way.

In my opinion, the problem isn't with the people in the field of computer science. The problem is with the pipeline. There are fewer girls than guys who explore computing when they're 12. If that can be "fixed", which assumes that it's something to be fixed in the first place, that's probably where it needs to happen.

netsp2• 17 years ago

"he problem is with the pipeline. There are fewer girls than guys who explore computing when they're 12."

Is that really the pipeline? If you go in to a 1st year CS/IT class, how many have been tinkering with programming for years? That's a genuine question. I don't know. I just suspect that it's a minority. Possibly as big a minority as business students who have tinkered in business or biology students that have tinkered in biology.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

Many of us enjoy meeting women.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Go outside, or to a coffee shop, or the beach, or...you get the idea.

adelle• 17 years ago

I think the gender imbalance is a symptom of a larger problem that affects competent programmers of both genders: An industry that doesn't take competent women seriously, doesn't take competence seriously.

There were a lot of threads a few weeks ago about "what to do about all the incompetent programmers". The two problems are related.

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

Article doesn't mention whether sitting down with the groups is in mixed company. Perhaps men in the other occupations are more "inappropriate" with other men, but know how to hold their tongues when women are around. (In other words, maybe they're sexist in a way that helps them avoid repelling women.)

dasil0032• 17 years ago

Hell, maybe they're just better looking. That would go a long way by itself.

dasil0032• 17 years ago

I'm not sure who is making this argument anyway. Women are naturally attracted to alpha males.

I think the truth is quite the opposite. Programming and IT have historically attracted a large number of social rejects, who, despite scoring high on self-evaluated liberalness, have no idea how to talk to women. Whether the individual problem is general awkwardness, sexist beliefs, bitterness towards women, or inability to engage with women or fawning all over them, if half the guys in an IT department have one of these problems then it's going to be a very unwelcoming place to be for a woman.

I remember in my undergrad that the ratio of men to women in CS classes created a problem in and of itself as any remotely attractive woman had to fight off all kinds of unwanted attention from a steady stream of unattractive guys. To me it's no surprise that by senior year they had dwindled to a handful.

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

It may not be inability to engage with women, but instead with people with interests outside of our field. I'd conjecture that work/life balance within the programmer group is significantly more tilted toward work than average.

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

It doesn't even take half the IT department. It only takes one or two rude colleagues to make your life miserable.

Part of the problem -- ironically -- is that programmers are in many ways a very tolerant bunch. We have to be, because many of our colleagues, including some of the most talented ones, have a lot of trouble reading social cues. Call it autism. Call it Asperger's. Call it "quirkiness". Blame it on a tendency to spend too much time mainlining Perl code. But you'd be lying if you claimed this correlation wasn't real. I've manifested the phenomenon myself at times.

Anyway, you won't last long in programming if you can't develop a tolerance for socially awkward people. But that tolerance is much harder to develop when those awkward people are constantly hitting on you. Especially if you are female and they are male. [1]

As a woman, what can you do to dissuade the socially awkward? Subtle social cues often don't work. Ridiculously obvious social cues, like sending a memo or writing a blog post, might help, or not: They might not get the message across to the recipient (trying to teach an autistic person to be socially appropriate can be like teaching photography to the blind) and they tend to be public, which runs the risk that you'll be labeled a "troublemaker". You could try appealing to the guy's colleagues, but they might just conclude that you're too "thin-skinned" for programming. After all, they are all highly tolerant of socially-awkward men. They have to be.

Or you could resign and find a different field.

Other fields don't seem to have this problem to the same extent. I expect that's because they're more efficient at screening out the people who aren't good at reading social cues. Given that I'm rather fond of many of my socially-awkward friends, that's not my favorite solution. I guess the only alternative is education, mutual tolerance, and careful social engineering, but nobody said that process would be easy.

---

[1] It's uncomfortable for men when they are hit on by socially-awkward women. But the potential consequences aren't the same. As a straight male engineer, the idea that I could lose my job because I rejected a co-worker's advances is kind of laughable, the thought of being groped in an elevator is absurd, and the very possibility that I could be raped without going to prison first is almost unthinkable. And, as it happens, I wasn't sexually abused as a child -- unlike an estimated 5-15% of men and 15-25% of women -- so I certainly don't have debilitating flashbacks when some guy shows me soft-core porn and invites me to laugh along with it. Lucky me.

lsb• 17 years ago

"This article explores this fourth possible explanation for the dearth of women in science: They found better jobs."

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

basugasubaku• 17 years ago

That article is about a career in academia as a scientist specifically. It is irrelevant to programming as a career.

thras6• 17 years ago

Women aren't as mathematically inclined as men. They're also shorter. Anyone who tells you that we're all equal is trying to win votes.

zackattack6• 17 years ago

This is such a poignantly obnoxious post, because your sarcasm comes dangerously close to seriousness.

The reason women aren't, on the average, as measurably good at math as men is strictly due to cultural differences. Women are more prone to experiencing stereotype threat in mathematics ("girls aren't as good at math as boys"), which makes them suffer in early mathematics performance, which makes them less likely to take increasingly more advanced math classes.

I have yet to see a study that conclusively proves (or even suggests) that women have inferior innate capacity for doing mathematics.

Women indeed may employ different strategies to solve certain classes of mathematical problems (e.g., those involving mental rotation) but that does not mean that they "aren't as mathematically inclined."

I hope you are never put in a position of power over a female engineer in the workplace. Christ.

natrius5• 17 years ago

"The reason women aren't, on the average, as measurably good at math as men is strictly due to cultural differences."

Citation? Testosterone has been proven to enhance spatial ability[1]. Why wouldn't there be other differences in cognition between the sexes? You haven't seen a study that proves such a difference with math, but where's the study that disproves such a difference? Until there is one, you're more wrong than he is, and your condemnation is ridiculous.

[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/brcg.1995.1269

thras6• 17 years ago

Okay. What is your mechanism for all this equality? I assume you're some sort of young earth creationist, right? Sure, if God made men and women absolutely equal, then we're equal. The big guy can do anything. Probably right after he got done making fake dinosaur bones.

Some of us here believe in evolution. And evolution doesn't bring about nice politically correct results. The best explanation for observed sexual behavioral dimorphism (for example, the 2009 math SATs by gender) is most parsimoniously explained by genetics.

pg• 17 years ago

Please don't resort to personal attacks.

Rod8• 17 years ago

Unless you're working on computer graphics, there's no math in programming / IT...

rglovejoy3• 17 years ago

Evidently, you have never taken a class in algorithms.

natrius5• 17 years ago

Or natural language processing, machine learning, information retrieval, artificial intelligence... The things that most programmers do on a regular basis don't require much math, but most programmers don't do graphics either.

nuclear_eclipse• 17 years ago

http://xkcd.com/385/

nostrademons• 17 years ago

Wait, shouldn't that be 1/3 x^3 + C?

mcslee2• 17 years ago

Interesting, but I think this argument is flawed. The author notes that different professions tend to have different distributions of male personality types. Programmers tend towards meek and introverted, lawyers and businessmen more alpha, yet women don't shy away from those fields.

This seems to assume that women must magically all have the same personality type and/or no personality selection bias in their career choices. Since women are comfortable going head-to-head with alpha-male lawyers, they therefore should be totally comfortable with geeky programmers. I don't buy it -- all women are not the same, just like all men are not the same.

It seems to me that women who become lawyers or businesspeople likely have A-type personalities themselves. Accordingly, they are probably more likely to view competition or confrontation with males in the workplace as a motivating challenge. Women who become programmers are probably, just like male programmers, a bit more introverted and geeky. Accordingly, confrontation/competition with males in the workplace is probably less likely to be motivating, and more likely to be intimidating -- especially when you consider that many "meek" male programmer types tend to drastically overcompensate for insecurity in physical situations with hyper-competitive and vitriolic behavior in virtual environments (I wonder what the gender and programmer/non-programmer ratios are like on 4chan).

In other words, just because male programmers don't rank as alpha-males relative to the general male population doesn't mean they don't behave like alpha-males in their own environment, especially relative to the female personality types interested in becoming programmers.

My 2 cents.

prospero• 17 years ago

There's not a single scale for outrageous behavior; context changes everything. Musicians, lawyers, and doctors generally understand and adapt to the social norms of whatever situation they're in. This is only sometimes true of computer programmers.

mdasen• 17 years ago

I don't think that the lack of women programmers has much to do with male programmers or computer science programs. Male programmers and computer science programs always seem to love women who express an interest in it. Let's face it, none of us want this to be a male-only profession.

However, society does socialize people into gender roles. Women are taught not to go for math (which computer science, at least at an academic level, depends on) and the sciences just as men are taught to forgo sociology. Remember, there are departments that are mostly women at colleges and it's equally telling to ask why there aren't men in those departments - not as a matter of discrimination, but a matter of socialization. Anyway, women tend to be pushed away from certain paths just as men are pushed away from certain paths (while I find nursing to be an admirable profession, what percentage of nurses do you think are male? And I think it's decently clear that from a young age, many of us have the image of doctors being male and nurses being female).

It's a big problem in our society, but I don't think that programers and computer science departments are to blame. We train children from very young ages to go into certain roles. Once you're along a path (any path at any point in life) there is a high cost of switching. If you've been pushed away from math and science through high-school, the chance that you can switch that in college is very low. You have to make up a lot of work that the other students already did - and you're throwing away the work you've done on an alternate path. Having not had biology and chemistry in high-school, medicine was simply out of the question for me in college unless I intended to work much, much harder than my fellow students - and the premeds were an over-achieving bunch.

And, really, this is more of a problem if you're going toward the science than if you're going toward the social sciences or humanities. Why? At my school, computer science was an 18 course major; nuroscience 21 courses; biochem was up there too. What did you need for history? 8 courses. Sociology? 10. Anthropology? 9. And you could usually take those courses at the same time while the sciences tend to build on each other in a linear fashion to a greater extent.

It's harsh. Even if you want to change into a science, sometimes the barrier is too high. We need to do a better job teaching children that it's unacceptable for both genders to forgo science and math. Otherwise, you end up (like me) in a freshmen bio class realizing that you have to learn everything that everyone else knew from high-school without falling behind on this course. And I'd say that the majority would take the path of least resistance and go for something they weren't missing knowledge in.

jibiki• 17 years ago

> Women are taught not to go for math

> men are taught to forgo sociology

> We train children from very young ages to go into certain roles

I don't want to argue about this, because it will just end up being an anecdote battle. But, for the record, my anecdotes are the opposite of yours. I've never observed a teacher discouraging a female student from going into mathematics. I've never seen anyone discourage a male student from going into sociology. And as far as I can tell, in the US, there is very little specialization before ~11th grade. Obviously your anecdotes are different. Is there any reliable data on the subject? (What would even constitute reliable data...?)

juanpablo• 17 years ago

Not directly, but through role models in movies, TV, etc.

jaxn• 17 years ago

I don't think DHH really understands what an "Alpha Male" is.

chromatic• 17 years ago

Alternately, he's trying to shift the argument away from a very legitimate discussion of "How can a community be more pleasant and welcoming?" to a tepid and difficult-to-counter "Don't censor the awesome, edgy, boundary-pushing behavior that's made us rock stars!"

I make the assumption that you can invent and refine interesting things without offending people gratuitously. Perhaps DHH does not.

jleyank• 17 years ago

This bloody topic keeps reappearing, and the results look the same. As I (and others) have written previously, if you're capable of being successful in many fields (medicine, law, ...), why on $GOD's green earth would you pick this one??

The working conditions aren't the best, the weeks tend to run long and the tanning possibilities under fluorescent lights just isn't great. Throw in a couple examples of, umm, undersocialized folks and I know how I'd vote if I get a do-over.

christofd2• 17 years ago

Agreed. If you aren't fascinated by the topic you are way better off going into medicine, law, business...

lunchbox• 17 years ago

We'll have to disagree on this one.

For instance: medicine? If you have a hard time tolerating the undersocialized folks in software, you probably won't enjoy being vomited on either. Or any of the other hundreds of perils of being in the medical field. Being a doctor might be fulfilling, but it is NOT a pleasant profession.

We in the tech industry have it really good. It's very tough to find an industry with this combination of pay, flexibility, interesting work, and work/life balance.

alphazero• 17 years ago

Its the tools, stupid.

We're an arts and crafts "industry". Only a fraction of our time is spent thinking about the problem in the abstract. A great deal of it is spent wrestling with our primitive tool kit to realize the concept.

When programming becomes entirely an intellectual field, you will see the same gender ratios as you see in other mature sciences.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

In my uninformed opinion, I don't think we do a very good job marketing what our field is about. If the uninitiated understood the creativity and artisanship involved in software, I think there would be more women programmers. Instead, they get a feeling that programming is something vaguely geeky and uncool, and the intro Java class doesn't do a whole lot to dispel the feeling.

calambrac• 17 years ago

This isn't something you have to have an uninformed opinion about. The issue has been noticed before, people have thought it was important to understand, and actual studies have been done. Here's the authoritative one:

http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Clubhouse-Computing-Jane-Mar...

It's not an alpha male thing, though that's some of it. It's a socialization thing. Guys had more exposure before college, are more likely to learn the material on their own rather than in a group (how women usually prefer to learn), and so appear to be far more competent earlier. Girls who make it over that initial hump do as well or better, but not many do, because there's not a lot of interest in helping them through it.

Jem• 17 years ago

(Insert big anecdotal evidence disclaimer here...)

It's not programmers that keep women out of programming (or IT in general). It's not the tools, the bad hours, the awkward guys, or the 'girls are bad at math'/'girls can't program' stereotypes. Right from the beginning I was pushed away from computers (before I'd even decided what field I wanted to apply myself to) by teachers, career advisers, college lecturers, friends, strangers, employers and sexist colleagues.

I remember being 13/14 and sitting down to an 'interview' with a career adviser. We had to answer a series of questions on screen which were supposed to tell us our ideal career. Every time I answered I could see that various computer related careers were climbing up the list, and yet I was told by the chap doing the interview that I should be a vet or a police officer. Neither made much sense to me.

My computing teacher in school used to prioritise computer access to the boys for after school 'computer club', and although I did ICT at college (A levels in the UK), lecturers informed me that I would only be able to use the qualifications to get into admin/secretary jobs (boys were told otherwise). I was one of only two girls on my course at college, and the other girl dropped out by the end of the second year due to family pressure. My last boss used to make derogatory remarks about the fact that I was female, and colleagues supported my male colleague over me.

It's the attitude from everyone else that women can't and shouldn't get involved with computers that pushes women into other fields. I was lucky to have a very supportive family and a partner that wholeheartedly supports women in IT to push me through - oh, and being a stubborn bugger helped too :)

srn2• 17 years ago

I'm interested in a study which looked for correlations between having a tangible role model in science/engineering during childhood and later joining the field.

srn2• 17 years ago

I get tired of technical environments online which assume there are no women present; or worse, that outright insult them. Slashdot and digg are particular bad about this, but you see some of that here as well. What message is that going to send to people who are considering joining the field? Who would want to deal with these jerks?

Assume that there are women present, even if you don't hear from them, and act civilly. That will make room for more women to come in. Thanks.

hannahevefon• 17 years ago

When I was in college, quite a few girls left CS for Business cause it's so hard to get good grades. If I was getting a few C's in classes, I'd switch majors too. If I wasn't so comfortable without a social life and spending a lot of time in front of the computer by myself, I probably wouldn't have made it. It doesn't have to be this way, but that's what happened for me. As the whole experience improves there'll probably be more girls. I think creations like Ruby on Rails makes the experience that much better and that much more appealing and productive. I guess whatever that makes programmers in general happier, will have women programmers happier too. Ruby on Rails rocks.

Alpha male programmers aren't keeping women out

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