How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/How-not-to-attract-women-to-coding-Make-tech-pink-5602104.php

by timr • 12 years ago

32 70 12 years ago

tzs2• 12 years ago

Last month, Google announced its plan to spend $50 million over the next three years encouraging young women to give coding a try. The website for the project features articles about inspiring women, like Erica Kochi, who leads UNICEF's Innovation Unit. The first item on a page of coding projects for girls to try is a 3-D-printed bracelet.
"It's insulting, not only because it's highly gendered, but also because it perpetuates this idea of women as consumeristic and narcissistic," said Losh. "It's kind of like a trifecta of badness."

Professor Losh needs to do some field research. A few hours hanging out in a mall or other place popular with young people will show that a large fraction of young women do in fact do seem to have quite an interest in jewelry.

Including a 3D bracelet project sends the message to young women who have not considered coding that it can be a part of their current world. It's something they can apply to their lives, not something they have to change their lives in order to use.

What's insulting is Losh's implicit assumption that women who wear bracelets must be doing it because they are narcissistic and consumeristic. Why can't they wear them for aesthetic reasons? Or sentimental reasons?

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

Where do you think female interest in jewelry comes from? Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women? You are begging the question.

The professor is concerned with general culture's image of women, which is perpetuated when female programmers are shown to be printing pink jewelry and perpetually enraptured by childish flowery borders. The existence of individual women who enjoy jewelry for the aesthetics are of no consequence to what the professor is concerned with. You are responding to an assumption that isn't there, but rather one you've imagined as a substitute for an understanding of the her social analysis.

"It says that the only way you can be interested in technology is if it is girly," said Wheat. "I'm very girly. My room is purple. I have floral bedding. I think I'll probably be a very feminine engineer. I just don't like the idea of being pigeonholed."

guard-of-terra5• 12 years ago

"Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women?"

This is an extremelly important question with regards to history of our species, so if you by some chance have an answer be sure to share it with us along with rationale.

andrewflnr9• 12 years ago

It doesn't really matter why women like jewelry. It seems to me (as a man (with a sister)) that if it's not biological, it's sufficiently deeply ingrained as to make little difference in the short term. That's where they are today, so it at least makes sense to try to talk to them there. But I think you and I agree it should not be the central point. We've got to figure out how to teach math properly.

jorgis• 12 years ago

Passing out mirrors and nail files at a social event for women interested in programming is like passing out hammers and dimensional lumber at a social event for men interested in fashion design.

tzs2• 12 years ago

Where do you think female interest in jewelry comes from? Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women? You are begging the question

I don't care where it comes from. Do you think that if a woman likes jewelry, she needs to justify it as some inborn attraction before it is acceptable?

mercer• 12 years ago

I find that an important question to ask when it comes to these discussions is whether the goal is to be pragmatic toward reaching a specific goal or to be 'correct'. Another important question is asking yourself to what extent one can achieve both, as that would be preferable.

I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, so I could be very wrong. However, I'm inclined to think that if the goal is to get more (young) women to work in tech, making things more 'girly' might not be a bad idea. Ideally this would not be necessary, and I don't consider the approach 'correct', but as one of the possible approaches it might be the most pragmatic. And there could be plenty of initiatives in parallel that take a more correct or ideological approach.

This reminds me a bit of a workshop I heard about from a friend. It was a whiskey and wool event where participants would do whiskey tasting (with a Scottish-looking man guiding them), but also learn how to knit. The goal was specifically to get guys to try knitting, and it was very effective.

These kinds of things can be fine, in my opinion, as long as they're not the only options.

Then again, I'm not a woman, so I don't know if perhaps it's more offensive than it seems to me.

informatimago• 12 years ago

The whole discussion of women+tech is insulting!

Guys weren't baby fed tech! They just grab it and have fun with it.

Girls can grab it all the same: it's just knowledge. Computers and books are as available to girls as to boys.

I don't say in the 70's when computer access was limited, perhaps boys could jostle to gain access to the computer console better than girls; but the reality is that at that time, girls would just shun and mock boys interested in computers: geeks and nerds never have been "popular". I'm not sure it has much changed for a long time, until they realized that big money could be made by some in computers.

And even now, it only goes as far as how much money is made in computing.

If you look at: http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/

You see that computing startups are the ones that are less likely to be still operating after 4 years (at 37%). Therefore I'm not surprised that girls are not interested in computing!

If you want more girls in computing, then make it more profitable and more reliable. Eliminate the risk!

ivanca• 12 years ago

That other article in the front page: "Clicking Their Way to Outrage", this is exactly what it is talking about.

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

Snark is the universal solvent of cultural conversation. - http://thatjohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-hate-snark.html...

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

Shhh. The only reason I'm reading the comments on this is for the drama.

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

There's a difference between female people and femininity. Not all women are into femininity to significant degrees or to any degree, and some see it as a questionable social construction [1]. The women in the article are simply proposing that using extreme degrees of femininity to appeal to potential female programmers is not a sustainable campaign, given that that's not what the actual programming world is like. Role models do a lot more for children [2]

[1] http://feministcurrent.com/8789/femininity-is-no-joke-nomake... [2] http://reelgirl.com/2013/11/im-not-a-pilot-im-a-pilots-wife-...

oillio2• 12 years ago

From the article: "It seems so degrading," Wheat said. "If you're a girl interested in building websites, you're a 'web diva.' If you're a boy, you're a web developer."

-------------------------------------

I have seen many a job posting looking for web ninjas, rockstars, and the like.

Our industry has a history of being rather informal, and often catering to the narcissistic side of developers. Sometimes this is for the better, sometimes not (e.g. the "bro-grammer" bullshit recently). I personally have no interest in loosing our informal culture to the PC police.

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

You are missing their point. "Ninjas" and "rockstars" aren't particularly gendered (they actually are and we both know it but who would be honest enough to admit such a thing?) but "diva" certainly is. The writer's problem is not the lack of formality -- is that really what you took away?

oillio2• 12 years ago

You just made my counter argument for me. Ninjas are definitely gendered.

Yes, the argument is about formality. The claim is that "diva" is degrading because it is unprofessional and narcissistic, where "web developer" is gender neutral and professional. My point is, there are many many examples of non-gender neutral and unprofessional references in our industry. Diva is not degrading, it is targeting a specific audience, as is Ninja.

We definitely have a gender imbalance in the industry. Should we be attacking those trying to rectifying the situation because they do not match your opinion on the extent that society should remain gender neutral?

watwut4• 12 years ago

Ninja is someone skillful - in various contexts. Rockstar is someone successful - in all kinds of contexts. I would much rather be called one of those then "diva".

jiggy20113• 12 years ago

The original meaning of Diva "A diva is a celebrated female singer; a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and by extension in theatre, cinema and popular music." (according to wikipedia) so very similar to "rockstar".

andrewflnr9• 12 years ago

I like "don't make it pink" as a slogan to combat tech gender backlash nonsense. Love of math, beauty, and raw power are all universal, let's work on that angle. But at the same time, let's make sure we allow gender-specific themes from both sides to be involved, so we don't quash freedom of expression while at the same time not excluding...

Never mind, it's probably going to take two generations to fix, regardless of what anyone says today. Society will figure all this out when a generation grows up in a time where this is all painfully obvious and not before.

thegeomaster4• 12 years ago

I have this exact same problem.

I see merchandise and slogans and whatnot targeting the "geek culture". I hate that stuff, the "witty" and "nerdy" T-shirts with stupid inner jokes about programming, I hate the "developer-targeted" ads with stereotypical geek talk I'm bombarded with, I hate all that, and would never want to be a part of it. I feel it's the same that these women get because tech is getting pink.

But I respond to this by ignoring what annoys me. I don't feel offended when I, as someone who likes to program, is looked at through the eyes of these "geek" stereotypes. Why are these women so offended because someone is catering to some stereotypes that apply to women? I don't feel degraded when companies try to get me to purchase their VPS hosting by targeting me with ads that cater to stereotypes that apply to developers.

This kind of stuff will always happen to almost all demographics. Quite honestly, from my position, I think this is overreacting.

Of course I would love to see more women in tech, and I would do all I can to help that happen. But I think this is fighting a wrong fight. There ought to be some work on helping teenage girls overcome the stereotypes about tech they acquire in high school. But this just seems getting offended because of something that happens to everyone who is part of a certain demographic.

I see that this kind of comment is strongly frowned upon, so if you downvote, please be so kind as to also reply to me and explain your viewpoint on this.

hyperpape• 12 years ago

Two things: first people are different, and "it doesn't bother me" doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't bother someone else.

Second, and probably more importantly, there is an issue of scale. I find the Big Bang Theory stupid and obnoxious, but I don't think any stereotyping I've dealt with in my life matches what I hear about from friends of mine who are Black or women or Muslim. It's easier to be easygoing about things when you know that they won't really affect you.

thegeomaster4• 12 years ago

Yes, people are different, and you're right that when something doesn't bother me doesn't mean that it shouldn't bother anyone else. But we need to draw a line where a "this bothers me" said by someone is actually meaningful and not oversensitivity. I think we can agree on that one, because a world where small and harmless statements that are in no way degrading can be deemed "offensive" by a very small group of people and judged because of that, would be a chaos. Some reasonable threshold must be there. Reasonable, of course. We shouldn't also allow really offensive and malicious statements and viewpoints and actions to slip by. I cannot stress this enough.

I can testify that people who are seen as geeks and/or nerds are very heavily stereotyped. I know I've been shaken off by a girl on one occasion when I mentioned my field of study, no joke. It's an extreme example, but the pendulum can swing both ways. But I didn't feel like the "female culture" was unwelcoming to programmers :) I just thought about how I met an isolated case of an idiot, and of course, that's how it is.

I still haven't heard someone say or allude that women, or a woman, is intrinsically less capable with tech-related crafts. I believe, though, that there are people who think that way. But I at least hope they're isolated cases, and I believe that they will be met with scorn from others just as much as they would from me, and that their behavior won't be tolerated.

DanBC• 12 years ago

You're applying your dislike of geek-targeted stuff to the wrong items.

Stop thinking about how you react to t-shirts with stupid jokes about programming; imagine a cookery book assuming that you are, because you are a geek, incompetent in the kitchen and that you need help with buying eggs from the store and need instructions on how to cook eggs.

Or imagine a set of low quality kitchen equipment that has those "Roses are #ff0000" style slogans on. Does that in anyway make cooking more accessible to you?

A bunch of people on HN are good at cooking. They don't want that kind of pointless targeting. They want better specs, better access to information, and so on.

I imagine, but I do not know, that women don't just want pink colour themes for their code editor.

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

Women are historically and systematicall disadvanted as a class of people. "Geeks" hardly are -- in fact to become a target of "geek culture" marketing requires a significant degree of advantage in the first place. There's one difference.

watwut4• 12 years ago

Because stereotypes that apply to women are usually about us being stupid, unable to manage finances, being weak, caring only about things like jewelry, not understanding politics, philosophy or anything that requires brain. If you see something pinkified or "for women", you can safely assume it is also dumbed down. It is not always so, but it happens to be true often enough.

And mostly, while many people believe stereotypes about women and tend to judge individual women through them, I found that people are less prone to do the same with geek related stereotypes. If they know you are programmer, you get the benefit of the doubt and people are willing to accept you are not borderline autistic.

On the other hand, convincing them you know your stuff is harder if you are women.

Probably related, negative stereotypes about geeks are equally irritating if I hear them too much, but they are much easier to avoid. You just do not hear nor read them as often as some stupid jokes about women. There are also many positive stereotypes about geeks (geeks being geniuses), positive stereotypes about women ends up pretty much with us being "nurturing".

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

Indeed, OP's claim that he has "the exact same problem" is a lie. There is danger in obfuscating the realities of being part of a social class.

randunel• 12 years ago

I don't get one thing. If only 18% of the tech graduates are women, why do people (see wsj articles and random blogs) complain about companies "gender imbalance"[1] (not hiring 50% women and 50% men)? Wouldn't that be positive discrimination? As this article states, 18.2% of the graduates are women, but only 15% of the employees share the same gender, so the gap is 3.2%. Personally, I don't consider that 3.2% as being hugely discriminatory, but rather expected, see below.

The problem starts even before formal education. In the country I was raised in, young women get an education which can be summarized by "get a husband to take care of you, cook and have his children". As long as parents have this mentality, their girls get no incentive to continue with college or anything technical, because this path is unknowingly inhibited since childhood. Most developed countries rely heavily on imported workforce, so a lot of Yahoo's and Google's employees come from countries where the percentage of women graduating in tech is far less than the 18.2% of women graduating in the US.

_bfhp22• 12 years ago

That's a good point. Criticizing top tech companies is more marketable as journalism than doing deeper cultural analysis -- so you aren't going to see the women doing the deeper cultural analysis as often (though I would argue that this article does just that). You should read up on what feminists are writing lately.

mrosethompson• 12 years ago

Not necessarily. I'm not presenting this as fact, but merely as a a possible situation and counterexample to what you describe:

Your reasoning would hold if you could assume identical skill distributions between men and women graduates. However, it seems somewhere between possible and likely that women graduates are of higher average skill than the men graduating. With so many barriers and cultural impedances for a woman pursuing tech, it takes at least the same skill (to pass the classes) as their male classmates, plus enough extra competency to ward off the detractors and skeptics that men don't have to deal with.

Again, I'm not saying this is reality, I certainly don't have the statistics to back it up. But it fits my experiences pretty well, and I think your analysis probably is too simplistic to be useful.

And, in regards to your second point, about starting much earlier: I absolutely agree. The more the culture changes, the less this will be an issue.

Timeroot• 12 years ago

As a possible countereffect -- not one I necessarily believe to be stronger, but one to consider -- is that women might be weaker due to the culture they're coming from. Plenty of males have been encouraged to play with computers from the age of 8 or 10, and so will have large amounts of [at least some kind of] experience coming in to the workforce. Women are far less likely to have had this experience. Additionally, males (who will have more male friends) will quite possibly have plenty of coder friends whom they have learned from. Females statistically will have less, and have less exposure this way.

i.e. the culture not only makes it harder for women to get through learning compsci, but they'll also have less exposure to it in the process. This could potentially make them weaker candidates.

I don't know to what degree that actually happens.

judk3• 12 years ago

If women are discouraged from pursuing STEM, then the women who do graduate are expected to be a higher caliber of persistence, and perhaps other measures of ability, than the average male graduate. If the bottom half of women are culled before graduation, whike men are not so culled, then the women who do graduate would be comparable to top half of male graduates.

judk3• 12 years ago

I don't know. NFL went pink and it attracted loads of female customers/fans.

At any rate, pink isn't worse than black and red and shiny metal spinning razor blades and ninjas. It's another niche.

Mz• 12 years ago

Excerpt:

To start, there were the pitches from college engineering programs in curly purple typeface accented by flowery images. She started to notice that many websites for budding female engineers are pink. Then there was the flyer for an after-school program hanging in a hallway of her high school. Printed on purple polka-dot paper, it read, "Are you a tech girl? Are you a web diva?"

They aren't seriously doing this, are they? This is so gag-worthy. I am female and I like fashion and all that and I don't like polka dots. Nor am I big on wearing pink. I don't have an aversion to it but I certainly don't love it or something. I like "classic" fashion design.

I thin if you have a STEM brain, you probably kind of have an engineer's sensibilities. Why would that be particularly different because of what is between your legs?

geez.

taeric2• 12 years ago

I find this quote interesting, "I'm very girly. My room is purple. I have floral bedding. I think I'll probably be a very feminine engineer. I just don't like the idea of being pigeonholed."

I don't necessarily like it when I'm incredibly pigeonholed, either. However, I'm genuinely at a loss as to the complaint of the title. If not pink, then what color? Would neon green suffice? What about puke? The article complained even about purple.

Now, mayhap I'm wrong and there really isn't some effort at market testing different designs. But, if there are, and it is showing that pink is working... should they stop? A few data points showing that "girly" color selection is bad does not indicate that it fails at large.

I say this as a man that likes the color pink. Used to have a few pink shirts that I wore so much they literally fell apart. Looking to get new ones. Do I wish more men were comfortable with pink? You bet. I genuinely cringe when I hear fellow parents bemoan their child's color choice. No matter what color it is. (Ok... I'll admit I would slightly regret puke green as a favorite color...)

For my hypothesis, if you want to get more women in technology, you should work on making men and women more comfortable working together. This is especially tough on the stereotypical "geek" male. Heck, we have a hard time working together period. Add a woman to the mix and most of us lose it big time. Is it any wonder more of them don't wish to join us?

How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

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