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it's amazing the extent to which these people have bought their own propaganda; this claim is provably false. we know sex hormones control gendered interests in humans and numerous other species. not that mere facts have ever gotten in the way of liberalsimage.png
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@velartrill then why was the field initially half-and-half (maybe 60/40, but close enough)? and why is it now so different from other stem fields?(sorry for socrates again XX, but implying not necessarily that "gendered interests exist" is false, but rather that maybe the difference in this case is more to do with trappings and less the programming itself. at least seems that way to mee)
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@velartrill understand what you mean, but still rather disagree. not on "women are more interested in people", but on how that fits into things herelike take war-time watch-dial painting. or knitting or basket weaving even. women are, and have historically been, good at and associated with focussed, sedentary, solitary, work with detail, skill, and artistry involved. then go on to brag about it and compare notes during the daily gossip, or compare new fads. bring up the watch dial thing because read some of their stories / journal entry stuff recently, and (prior to bodies crumbling from radium), they all seem to have loved it: a space to be together with others, working silently and concentrating hard for a while on improving their skills, interspersed with morning/lunch/afternoon chances to talk and compare notesand programming, honestly, is very much this same sort of activity. "real" projects are generally too large for a person to finish alone, so it mandates exactly this sort of mix between solitary concentration and cooperation.the two big dips in women-in-tech percentage (as i remember it; would need to find the data again to confirm) seemed to correspond to first home video-game consoles and then home internet access, and takeaway from that here (and doing a CS degree and talking with the other (two or so) women there) is that the narrative became "computers are for games", "computers are for guys", "computers aren't something i can do with my friends".like seems like computers moving into the home meant that initial kick-start in interest in them became biased towards people who stayed home alone and messed with the computers there, despite real-world programming stuff being a much more social activity.also, if you don't buy any of that, then maybe at least could agree on web-design type stuff? traditional graphic design has plenty of women involved, and those i've known who got past the initial "computer :c" ick phase ended up really enjoying it
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@shmibs because women did not have very many other job options. as soon as jobs we liked more opened up to us, we got right the fuck out of CS and never looked back"women are more interested in people, men are more interested in things" is probably the single strongest difference between the psychology of the genders (effect size ~1.1 iirc) we've discovered, which i think makes it even more consistent than the difference in dominant/submissive social role orientation preference
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@shmibs @velartrill The decline of timesharing definitely had the largest part to do with it, I think.
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@velartrill this was it, p'surehttps://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding2020-1596743477.png
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@velartrill > oppressingnever meant to imply that. rather i do think it's a natural phenomenon. just an unfortunate one not directly tied to programming itself (which is, of course, to begin with not a field interesting to most people and seems to be slightly guy-biased regardless of the extra factors i proposed above; just not as strongly)> househusbandsthe ones staying home were kids, gradeschool boys who went straight home and messed with the computer there. is what i meant. maybe it wasn't the case for you, but having that early-life exposure is a huge leg-up for people who do take interest in computer-ing. know i felt way behind, getting a first computer at 18 and then hearing about how all these guys had been doing programming stuff with their dads as like prepubescents. and it's particularly that early-life exposure that seems to be guy-biased> i'd rather help organize development than do it myself.this is exactly the sort of stuff i think having more women would help with. the whole mythical-man-month everyone-do-your-own-thing whoops-there's-a-bug-in-prod phenomenon is a huge and ever-growing problem (because the bugs keep piling up and the codebases becoming more pointlessly complicated
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@shmibs > understand what you mean, but still rather disagree. not on "women are more interested in people", but on how that fits into things here*shrug* you can disagree all you like, but the statistics are what they are.> and programming, honestly, is very much this same sort of activityprogramming makes my brain hurt and it's extremely unrewarding. i only do it when nobody else is going to and it'll make my life easier in the long run, and i still frequently run out of motivation because it's just so unpleasant. i'd rather help organize development than do it myself. given that where women are involved with dev work, it's usually in a managerial role instead of a codemonkey one, i suspect i am not the only one who feels this way. i'd never consider working in tech except as a tutor or organizer.i was also taught to code very early on in life by another woman, who used to write fortran for boeing, so i know in my case that social norms have nothing to do with it.> the two big dips in women-in-tech percentage (as i remember it; would need to find the data again to confirm) seemed to correspond to first home video-game consoles and then home internet accessit seems very weird to ignore the fact that women left tech for other, more feminine jobs when those jobs opened up to us, but instead point at video games and the internet and claim that those are somehow responsible for oppressing women out of Computers. it's looking for a conspiracy theory to explain what is already fully explained.> the narrative became "computers are for games", "computers are for guys", "computers aren't something i can do with my friends".if a mere narrative is enough to stop you from getting into a field, you're clearly not very interested in that field. even if this was true it would reinforce my point, not detract from it.> biased towards people who stayed home aloneyeah, that's true, all those househusbands got to spend time tinkering with computers while their wives were at work earning the family enough income to survive :p> also, if you don't buy any of that, then maybe at least could agree on web-design type stuff? traditional graphic design has plenty of women involved, and those i've known who got past the initial "computer :c" ick phase ended up really enjoying ityup. frontend web design is the only dev thing that many women seem to enjoy. (this has unforuntate consequences in terms of javascript proliferation, but i digress.) one of my moms was a graphic designer and she was very good at it. pretty computer-literate. but never learned any programming languages, despite having a computer very early on in the history of home computing when writing your own software was much more common. but you could not pay her to touch a compiler.
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@Moon @shmibs @velartrill when i was teaching at uni all the women were russian, arab, asian.
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@shmibs @velartrill in countries like India tons of women code and go into engineering stuff
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@lain @Moon @velartrill yeh. it was kind of a relief to get out of the undergrad stuff and do research with the grad students a bit, not being an ocean of guys
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@lain @Moon @velartrill (...wants to start the "hoard of guys 苦手 at CS and only doing it because 'muh dollars' " conversation, but probably better to avoid
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@Moon @shmibs @velartrill how to get more women into tech? make it critical to actually earn money in a real job
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@lain @velartrill @Moon plenty of productive stuff that needs doing but isn't being done in the current systemmaybe am too ?-fan, but do think this is where ubi can be very effective middleground. don't-let-anyone-die, don't-remove-incentive-to-work (salary on top still), but-let-people-not-be-tied-to-wage-ingplenty of the jobs around now are mostly / entirely pointless in "developed" countries, and feels like the world is finally catching up to that a bit, so not really any need for so much "traditional" productivityand the whole needed-but-uncompensated work stuff, like the strongest case here is working with mental health patients, maybe, like bad schizophrenia or so. having one or two people try to full-time care for that person is just not really humanly possible; wears down even family members. if more people are available for the task, though, and do just one day a week or something, maybe it could work?seems also space here for a sort of separate social currency, more dire with cash kinda disappearing and neighbour-kid-mows-my-lawn / local-lady-watches-my-kids-for-a-few-days market along with it. dunno how best to implement that, though
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@velartrill @Moon @shmibs this isn't wrong, but many people don't actually want to do anything productive. inb4 muh productivity evil capitalism.
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@lain @Moon @shmibs i just wish we could let people contribute to society in the way they like the most and are best at without politicizing it
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