I wonder why are there so little women in Engineering/IT?
The pay's good, the treatment(compared to how men are treated) is not bad compared to what I hear from friends in other spheres, and it's not like we're dumber than men.
So I wonder why aren't there more of us.

I've had this talk with my beloved, basically a whole lot of socio-economic-cultural factors. We concluded mainly 3 factors

* Sexism in education (girls play with dolls and kitchen, boys play with cars and workbenches)
* Political/cultural/religious nudging towards specified roles (mâles go out and be providers, females become mothers and take care of household and birthing/raising kids)
* Prejudice and disproportionately judgement of talent and expertise between men and women ('nah it's okay bro, it happens to the best of us to break production on a Friday' / 'you stupid whore! Of course you need to be careful with changing the pipeline! It's better you say? But I don't understand any of it anymore! Stop what you are doing like Introducing those so-called innovations and get us a refill on those mugs')

Because men and women are in fact not equal and care about different topics
How comes CS education has 90% men where anyone has the same chances to get into and is too young to worry about "providing/family"

I thought it had to do with games

but in reality my comp sci program was mostly business dudes who dreamed of money

also I find in the workforce the women that are managers just play games with you or something, and cause political drama at companies that HR and no higher-up wants to put a stop to so it gets out of hand. the men are fine though. like even the harassment types are easy enough to deal with, and it's not politically ok for them to punish you so that doesn't get through, but the women are going to smear you and that will have effects down the line at the whole org. they seem to feel ok doing this to other women whereas the men are in their own sphere that protects them because other men will maintain their reputations, but men don't feel ok maintaining a female's reputation and some other female talking about her overrides it

@devRancid Well, that's the same question of what I'm asking, why are there only 10% (Don't know if it's the actual number but some small percentage) women in CS education?...

That was a rhetorical question

The question is probably extremely complex and multi factorial. All I know is that we shouldn’t push one person or another to do something they do not want to. Problem is not that women don’t want to be software engineers. Problem is that nurses are underpaid.

When choosing people for highly skilled roles, humans generally place more value on bullshit than on actual ability. It so happens that most bullshitters are men. The solution is to stop rewarding bullshit.

I knew 4 other people in my high school that actually were interested in CS. The rest only wanted to play games. 2 of them were women. This was early 90s. In my tech school there was 1 woman in the program out of 80. This woman made it to graduation out of like 20. This was for electronics which included some programming. I don't know why there was not more interest from women. This was before the big stem push for women. My wife thought programming was cool and could do some, but she really did not have interest in it. I have met 2 women in my career that were into CS as a job. I have worked with mostly men. When I was going to programming meetups we had 1 woman show up for one meeting once. Otherwise it was all men. So even hobby interest seems low. I don't know what the colleges are like. My guess is women start in programs and just lose interest about it compared to men (as do men).

Sorry to say, but women do not lose interest, they are pushed out.

Let’s do an imagination exercise: would you work or be in IT when everyone around you will act like your IQ is lower than an amoeba, belittle, ignore or when it’s convenient steal your ideas and give credit instead to a random dude. Ah, and don’t forget, on every interaction with teammates, they will explain to you what you already know, no matter how many times you tell them that you know it.

Ah you said “well paid field”, you’re not getting that. Get -30% IF you’re lucky. But don’t worry, you’ll have extra responsibilities like glue work, taking notes and other BS that someone above you will decide to. All of this while being stuck to a lower seniority, being very aware of other’s paycheck, not having any sort of support AND hearing from everyone else that N other fields could pay the same with half of the stress.

Would you really stick around? I can’t blame them for leaving

@idkhow I don't think those are female problems

there is a class of dudes that love to tell chicks that they're stupid and to leave the men to do the thinking though, and those are sexist and they try to use that as superiority. but those guys are not confined to computer science but exist in all fields

as for stealing credit and explaining things you already know, that's a bad character and exists regardless of gender and isn't directed at a gender

in my experience the crossover between sexists who think you can't think and those who steal credit and overexplain I haven't seen

the glue work and taking notes thing did keep happening to me though. I didn't like that. but it was again other women giving it to me, never the men. HR kept asking me to do those things. they project and think all women like that work. I get this from women outside of jobs as well. personally not a fan of helping unless I get something out of it, but culture says women should be "giving"

Easy. Hyper-condensed testicle stank pools keep the females away, it's not rocket science. Barbie dolls and hot wheels can't magically mind control you into picking a career path, and norms have always been openly challenged, else we'd still be living like it was ~10,000 BC.

You introduce a technically oriented school environment in which girls are comfortable and this situation immediatelly reverses. Not that difficult. You just have to accept that mixing is illicit.

Another issue I have run into when working with women. If I talk and get to know them like I do male coworkers then they take it the wrong way. I have had 2 women who tried to sleep with me as a result. One was a computer scientist. So I keep my distance and have less intimate work relationships with women. I tend to be more buddy buddy with men. I am polite and welcome everyone into conversations. But I will not risk having women get the wrong idea. No, I don't socialize with colleagues outside of company parties either. I just don't see the point of that. I can only guess that this would cause some isolation with female colleagues. In recent years I have also been putting male colleagues at arms length. Maybe this is just me not being invested in work relationships. I don't know.

I also don't work with any female colleagues at a close level currently anyway. We have a secretary, HR, and COO that are all women.

@jestdotty they are not per se, but ironically I haven’t found a single woman in IT who haven’t faced at least some of them (me and you included).

Indeed some women do end up propagating this type of shit, which doesn’t make the situation better.

There have been plenty explanations of the systemic processes that push women away from STEM. I'm here to add that sometimes those piles of shit compound: A (female) coworker once told me her mother begged her not to go into the CompSci program in uni, because "it will just be a bunch of man-childs eyeing you all day long! You will be the only woman there, and people you thing you're one of the gays!" (apparently the word "lesbian" was too much for her mother, just as basic respect for consenting adult human beings doing things that are none of her business).

My view is simple.

Engjneers, especially software, typically work in an R&D like environment. I don't necessarily mean in a lab separate from everyone.

If you think about it, devs are tasked with making the systems, and often products, that support a company at an extremely base level. Often other parts of a company dont need to sign an NDA even. Most dev teams are managed in a way that kinda bottlenecks the ability for code leaks (often poorly) and interaction with the rest of the company.

This means the devs work with the devs, have the opportunity to get really close...and long periods without being watched.

So-
Sexual distraction(decrease in production increase in errors)

Fear of lawsuits( which leads to a certain tension often or awkward silence when things need to be communicated)

Then consider average higher-ups of companies needing a lot of dev... mostly clueless to IT and a lot of nepotism/adjacently placed males, who tend to inherently be the 'flirtatious' slime type

@donkulator while i agreed with you... it's hard to spot and take down skilled bullshitters.

Personally, i am an award winning bullshitter... i dont use my skills for evil. I also agree that it shouldnt be so easy for anyone, me included, to win on bs. But since it is and i frankly enjoy out bs-ing a stuck up bs-er... i tend to play with, then cull, bullshitters when i have the time or they pull that crap on me.

My solution:

Who else wants to learn to be a better bullshitter just to cull the domineering crap ones? Free lessons.

Oh... i feel like i should mention this... the pattern is similar with things like Magic the Gathering... which i also kick ass in. Ive been to sooo many tournaments that someone newer to the area(ie hasnt played me before) always assumes i came with a bf and was just playing to make them happy... then gets reeeeeallly pissed when i annihilate them (im not boasting, it's caused issues).

I'm not a typical woman by any regard outside of genetics and 1 more hole than guys... so i probably dont understand the whole female viewpoint (all my friends have nearly always been male too, im the 1 girl in the 2 bigger groups of friends).

I think there may be some stigma (true or false) when females are thinking about being attractive to males (i dont naturally consider that).. kinda like a fear of a reverse of the typical 'being friend-zoned' if they are involved in too many male-dominant things

@Demolishun dude... so I'm naturally oblivious to that type of flirting stuff... like reeeeally oblivious. Ive found out so many people were into me way later. The same is true for being bullied (kid got suspended in 7th grade, in a school so small they nvr suspended someone before, i still have no clue wtf he did to bully me but everyone thought i knew and was so hurt i was pretending not to know)... this may explain why im in the fields i am. I must admit... most chicks annoy me, not all(im technically bi too). They are super confusing and illogical a lot of the time. It's like how i imagine normal people see a rubix cube challenging (i dont, never did... its weird)

@idkhow That's how people who are not bullshitters get treated. The gender thing is spurious correlation.

This:

@lastNick That guy's a good bullshitter. He's going to go a long way. Largely at the expense of women who don't bullshit.

Well, it requires a certain type of person to work in IT to begin with. You gotta be slightly masochistic to enjoy this bs.

But for women it's a bit even more so. For me it's been "why would a *woman* study IT", "are you an IT student" when asking thesis topic from the professor, "who takes care of the children when they're sick" in work interviews (~illegal here), "suppose we'd need to set two saunas if we had a woman workin here" etc...

On the other hand "it's so awesome to have a *woman* working here" as if all my skill doesn't matter, the only thing meaningful is what I have between my legs. Men on power trips hiring women 'cause they think they're more easily manipulated to do their jobs for them too without any extra pay. Getting paid less than less experienced male colleagues, not getting raises... (These do apply to men too but on top of everything it stacks...)

It's no wonder some take the easier path. I'm just too a stubborn bitch to take any of it.

I'm a cynical person to begin with, but in the end, there actually is good people, good teams, good management, good HR who do not think with gender/sex. You're just one of the team, a person unique to you with unique set of skills and not defined if you have boobs or moobs.

We're developers, a breed of our own, we stick together and share the humor based on our pain.