On Wednesday, 23 March 2016 at 12:35:59 UTC, QAston wrote:
And yes, I'm saying that the world of programming has a history
of accepting "weird" people. That's partially because we have a
clear measurment: either your stuff works or it doesn't. No
need for identity wars. Computing was dominated by women after
the ww2, it was shifted towards men later on. Maybe it will
shift back. Who cares - we all have so much in common as
programmers that it doesn't really matter which parts of your
body hang down.
Fair enough, but here is some background worth mentioning.
In high school I went to a section that was geared towards
computers and electronics. We started with 3 girls and lots of
boys from all over the city. After a year we only had 1 girl
left, and I don't recall any of the boys quitting. She was a
cute, natural, bubbly girl, but in order to get an easier time
she changed into a more silent/serious and mainstream girl which
made her more accepted by the teenage boys. When we had classes
with another class with more girls the boys dampened their
comments... basically the presence of girls made them moderate
themselves and act less obnoxious towards others (both boys and
girls). Studies generally say that mixed groups do provide a more
satisfactory environment. That'a probably true for online forums
too.
In the army I had the same kind of experience. Male dominating
and somewhat rough. The women that persists in such environments
tend to take on less feminine manners too in order to gain
respect. Although we also had a very feminine, extremely pretty,
sergeant who did gain some respect, but her first inspection got
very awkward, the men lost words, stuttered, giggled and
generally had trouble keeping a straight face. She totally
enjoyed it! So gender does create very real differences,
sometimes suppressing (forcing women to become more like men),
sometimes empowering.
In the academic sector the situation was better. Still male
dominated, but more general awareness of gender issues. Still, as
a teacher you can see that one strong female student in a male
dominated group can do well and take the group leader position,
but that more average students might benefit from having
all-female groups.
I have absolutely no doubt that women are just a good programmers
as men, but in my experience women in informatics tends to
gravitate towards topics where they get to work with other people
in addition to the technology. At one department meeting where we
discussed how to attract more women to the Comp. Sci. department,
one of the very bright professors said that she wasn't sure if we
actually would do those women a favour since pure computer
science is such a dull and meaningless topic... ;-) Of course,
the gender percentage is not the real issue, the real issue is to
make the study attainable and enjoyable for all. If only a small
percentage of all women find it meaningful, then that is quite
understandable and hardly a disaster, but if they don't even
consider Compi. Sci. because it is male dominated then that is
not good either.
Anyway, I think the mixed settings makes for better norm
formation and interesting interaction, but we cannot declare that
there should be more women interested in system level
programming. In my experience that path starts in the early geeky
teens by kids picking hardware to pieces... So we are basically
stuck with the discourse of a male dominated community, which is
not ideal, even for the male participants IMHO.
