Poll: Male or female?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309

by noaharc • 17 years ago

116 95 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

Of course the responses to this voluntary response poll will not yield a reliable picture of the break-down of the whole community, for reasons well known to statisticians.

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...

http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=4582549&t...

jrockway2• 17 years ago

This poll is probably meaningless, but it is a good indication of how many people read HN on Sunday afternoon. 80 votes in 20 minutes, or so.

Edit: OK, actually 85 in 19 :)

edw5193• 17 years ago

At the time I voted, it was 96.6% male (143/148).

I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male.

I don't find it hard to believe that hacker news readership is 96.6% male.

Does hacker news "attract" a more male readership?

Or is the population already this skewed?

noaharc2• 17 years ago

Certainly both are heavily skewed to males. For example, in my Internet & Web Systems class, there are 25 guys and 3 girls.

andreyf• 17 years ago

Slightly related PG quote:

I didn't realize it till I was writing this, but that may help explain why there are so few female startup founders. I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that only 1.7% of VC-backed startups are founded by women. The percentage of female hackers is small, but not that small. So why the discrepancy?

When you realize that successful startups tend to have multiple founders who were already friends, a possible explanation emerges. People's best friends are likely to be of the same sex, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will be a minority squared.

Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html

jibiki• 17 years ago

If you believe Roy Baumeister, men are more invested in broad, shallow social networks. Much like this one.

jlees7• 17 years ago

Do women hang out in online hacker communities?

Generally, no, and here's why: http://xkcd.com/322/

cperciva• 17 years ago

The population probably is that skewed. Males gain a far larger evolutionary advantage from excellence than females, due to their lower direct reproductive investment; consequently, there are strong evolutionary incentives for males to adopt high-risk behaviours.

rdouble• 17 years ago

I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male.

I don't find this hard to believe. I've been working as a startup hacker for 10 years and can count the number of female programmers I've worked with on one hand. The population IS skewed.

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

a good indication of how many people read HN on Sunday afternoon

Have we established how many of us post from what time zone?

babo• 17 years ago

Is that matters online?

ableal• 17 years ago

The poll author did forget the 'dog' option (as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_y... )

rufius• 17 years ago

Who cares.

noaharc2• 17 years ago

I take it you don't. Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes? Really, give this a shot: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm.

biotech• 17 years ago

"Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes?"

I agree with the GP, but not with this comment. Obviously there are meaningful differences between the sexes. But there are other ways to group people, as well:

- Gender (already covered, here)

- Age

- Nationality

- Ethnicity

- Sexual Orientation

- Political Orientation

- Religious Orientation

- Number of Older Siblings

- ... the list goes on

All of these factors are significant in the sense that they help to establish our unique identity, and there are meaningful differences in each category. Should we poll for each factor? At some point..... well, I can't say it more succinctly than the GP:

"Who cares?"

rokhayakebe3• 17 years ago

We should care. We like to believe that all our differences do not make a difference, but fortunately and unfortunately they do.

For example if YC funds more startups with women you will not see the impact in the next 2 years. But 10 years from now those veterans would have encouraged several younger women to get into technical fields. Everyone will benefit from that.

I have had the chance to meet and work with a couple of female programmers, and although I am not a coder I was most certainly thrilled.

jlees7• 17 years ago

Ah, but should YC make a concerted effort to fund startups with women because 'everyone will benefit eventually'? That's hardly fair.

TJensen• 17 years ago

YC should fund startups that have a chance to succeed. If women entrepreneurs come in with unique perspectives to target the under-served community of women on the intertubes, then great. Otherwise, it is a waste of money that doesn't benefit YC which hurts other startups and ultimately the startup community as a whole.

philwelch3• 17 years ago

It's interesting—startups are probably a better opportunity for female hackers because, in general, markets are less sexist than hiring managers.

mkyc2• 17 years ago

I agree that if the data can't be applied, then we're satisfying only trivial curiosities. Like if I asked about your gender - who cares? But this data can be applied. Here we're testing the hypothesis of the above-linked essay. It's a poor test, though I think that HN users are better behaved in voluntary online polls.

More importantly, it lets us know how our community stacks up. Genetically-encoded risk-taking aside, many of us want to see equal proportions in this poll, or would like to imagine that this poll would come out more equal than not. Yet it currently comes out 20:1, and this matters to me. (As a consequence, I'm probably going to make an effort to recommend this site or its discussions more often to women that I know.)

axod5• 17 years ago

>> "many of us would like to see equal proportions in such a poll"

Good luck with adjusting the internal structure of female brains.

philwelch3• 17 years ago

If we're talking about Erlang, no one. If we're talking about gender, though, it's pretty important.

dschoon• 17 years ago

I am offended by your disrespect for Erlang.

noamsml• 17 years ago

It's a measure of our progress.

pg2• 17 years ago

I do. People often ask about the number of female founders we fund. It would be interesting to know whether it's low because of something about startups, or just a reflection of the larger pool from which they're drawn.

axod5• 17 years ago

Out of interest, how many female founders applied in the last round? That seems like far more useful+reliable data than this poll.

>> "People often ask about the number of female founders we fund."

Do they ask how many black people get funding? How many Christians? How many blind people?

Asking such questions seems a bit irrelevant at best, and accusatory at worst to me.

arh• 17 years ago

I think it may have more to do with the latter. A quick Google Scholar query of "why is computer programming dominated by males" provides some interesting results, including an abstract with the key finding that "men had more confidence in using computers than did women even when statistically controlling quantitative ability. In fact, female CS majors had less computer confidence than did male non-majors." (Beyer et al., 2003)

csbartus• 17 years ago

women are welcome, or even more

octane• 17 years ago

Do you really need a poll for this? Just like every other tech site it's a bunch of 18-35 year old dudes sitting around clicking reload every 20 minutes.

nocman• 17 years ago

I think you underestimate at least the top end of that age range. I am quite certain that a number of folks on HN are well above the age of 35. PG is in his 40's, and I'm sure he's not the only one here in that category (and I wouldn't be surprised to find hackers older than that here -- perhaps much older).

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

Now THAT would be an interesting poll

<20

20-30

30-40

40-50

50>

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

Semi-relevant: http://xkcd.com/385/

EDIT: I've actually seen this in action. I spoke up about it, and got complete incomprehension in return. People really, really don't notice that they have these sorts of attitudes, and it stinks.

I'm leaving my gender unspecified.

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

True, though it probably doesn't apply here.

Off-topic, I asked the same question on another thread without a response. Other then generic attitude issues, have you ever seen a case of a woman programmer being discriminated against? In my experience, due to their rarity and the environment they tend to be treated very well, both professionally and socially.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

This is a mine-field, and personally I think you can't win, you can't break even, and you have to play the game.

In my experience women programmers are treated very well. However, there's a school of thought that being treated well is being treated differently, and that's what some find so off-putting.

I've seen a woman programmer turn up at a meeting and have someone bustle over and say "Gosh, hi, welcome! Nice to see you!" In contrast, everyone else is given a generic "Hi!" and then ignored until they join in. It's that different treatment that can irritate.

Something I've heard is "Why can't I just be treated like everyone else?"

Perhaps treating everyone very well should be the norm. Too much to hope for, methinks.

lleger• 17 years ago

It may be an unscientific poll, but if nothing else, it's interesting to see with whom we are interacting.

djm• 17 years ago

There is some basic info of the breakdown of users including gender on Alexa, though it only provides info for users with their plugin: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com

It will be interesting to see how that data compares to the poll results.

thesethings3• 17 years ago

Female here, just voted.

I just wanted to say I love Hacker News.

I'm an introvert and a nerd before I am a female, so I am of course drawn to Hacker News because it's a great place to find other over-sensitive folks who take themselves, their questions, and other peoples' questions very seriously. As others point out again and again, the quality of discourse here is just really high.

Secondarily, but still present, I like Hacker News because relative to other community sites it's very female-friendly. HN is mostly based on ideas, not status/gender/age.

I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here (I've pretty much learned to just not even click threads about the ideal age to get married, what's more important relationships or programming, etc) but even when things make me sad, they're at least not crudely written. Basically HN keeps it pretty civil.

Anyway, you folks are great, HN is great, and I think more females will gravitate here for a variety of reasons, most having nothing to do with gender.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

well said. i initially avoided hacker news because i still viewed "hacker" in the "old school" basement programmer meaning, which i associated with immature, ego-centric aggression. also, even knowing lambda calculus, the 'y' in y-combinator still struck my as rather male-oriented.

don't not read a book because of it's cover. the emphasis on intellectually interesting articles and discussion, as well as culturally and directly moderated civil discourse, is awesome. it makes anyone's presence here more about content than gender or immaturity.

there are certainly comments that make me cringe, but i doubt that is primarily a gender thing.

Alex39173• 17 years ago

"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here, [...] but even when things make me sad..."

Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad? I feel like there's an interesting academic study in here somewhere.

edit: If the parent comment was made by a guy, would I still be getting downmodded?

thesethings3• 17 years ago

(Just upmodded your question, a decent one.)

"Does reading comments you think are misguided make you sad?..."

Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's pretty context dependent. First of all, outside of HN, I'd be much less sensitive to stuff I feel is off-base, after all, that's why I'm at HN, it's different, a refuge from a world I'm used to feeling out of place in. (Don't mean to make that sound so dramatic/emo. I like plenty of things outside of HN, but in terms of general-subject tech news, it's pretty unique.)

I guess it stings more at HN because there are many people here I highly, highly respect and am inspired by, and a few posters here who I try to follow very closely, as if their HN posts were a feed I subscribed to. When these folks say certain things, it makes my heart sink a little, because in my fantasy, I want to imagine there's room for somebody like me in their view of the world.

I wrote something related above,

" when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at."

I don't want to change the tone about my overall feeling about HN. I think it's great. It's my extremely high opinion of it that gives it the power to make me feel sad sometimes.

edw5193• 17 years ago

"I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here..."

I used to. I don't anymore.

My (totally illogical) belief system regarding hn comments:

If we agree, then I think, "Great! I'm on the right track."

If not, then I think, "They just don't understand (yet)."

May not really make sense, but I always leave hn feeling better, never worse.

thesethings3• 17 years ago

Heh. No, your description does make sense, and made me laugh. Never do I feel more validated than when reading a Paul Graham essay, ("Guess who's not crazy?? Me!").

As I said above, I freely admit I'm oversensitive, something I probably share with many HN users. Maybe one reason I wince here at HN more than elsewhere is because I'd otherwise consider HN somewhat of an intellectual refuge, with peers. So when you read/hear something about you described as an Other, or somebody who should/does have traits different than you do (example: I don't like fashion.), you feel out of place, something I'd otherwise never feel at HN, a place I usually feel right at home at.

Anyway, I like your description of how it feels to read HN, pretty right on :D

jrockway2• 17 years ago

I feel the same way about comments advocating the use of PHP or Java.

mihasya• 17 years ago

a/s/l?

it's threads like these that will forever keep me from accumulating any karma on here.

ralph• 17 years ago

As I write this, 4.55% "of those that answered" are female. That seems surprisingly high to me, so I think you could be right. It will be interesting to see whether the relatively high number of women will help keep the conversation civil and respectful.

I'm wondering this because in the UK it's understood that mixed schools are better for boys because they behave better in the company of girls, however, it's worse for girls because the boys still muck around enough to distract from education; girls on their own do better.

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

> I do wince and get bummed out whenever I read certain comments here (...)

Would you care to elaborate?

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

The parenting networks that I hang out on even more than I hang out on HN reliably have female majorities in their posters and their readers. Men are quite conspicuous on such groups, so much so that I tend to assume everyone is female, even if the screen name sounds very male, until I'm told otherwise.

I've asked before

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=553145

if any of you know of online discussion sites with a more balanced ratio of male and female participants. I didn't get any answers the last time I asked. The most balanced site I participate on is College Confidential,

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/

which doesn't seem noticeably skewed to me one way or the other.

whatusername• 17 years ago

I can think of two small targeted communities that had a pretty good m/f ratio.. Probably only <3000 members each though. Neither of which exist anymore. One was targeted by location/religion/age -- and the other was kind of similar. So hitting a small niche - High School aged Buddhists in Iowa - means that you identify nicely with the niche whether you are male or female.

EDIT: Just remembered a site I stumbled upon one time.. Don't know the full details but seems to be pretty evenly split: http://www.themarriagebed.com/boards/

Alex39173• 17 years ago

My guess is that some of the various Yahoo! communities are pretty well balanced (certain mailing lists, flickr groups, etc.), but I don't participate in any of them so I have no idea.

axod5• 17 years ago

>> "We've had some excellent gender articles on here in the last few days"

Please stop :( The whole "women in tech", Rails porn thing, please just end it now.

jrwoodruff• 17 years ago

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

zemaj• 17 years ago

I'm female on the internet.

srn• 17 years ago

Since we're here, if there are women in the SF bay area who want to get together for a bring-your-project-and-work-on-it afternoon/evening, contact me.

rmdstudio• 17 years ago

Come on ladies! get out and vote!

ttam• 17 years ago

auch, the current numbers (764 male/37 female) is worse then my school's comp.sci enrollment numbers!

erlanger• 17 years ago

HN is officially a sausagefest.

csomar• 17 years ago

oops %95 are male, I never estimated it! Thanks for the pool :D

GrandMasterBirt• 17 years ago

Funny thing about the ratio, it holds true for developers at my job as well... :)

tpyo• 17 years ago

I voted both male and female.

Poll: Male or female?

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