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So... concerning the rant on here: https://devrant.com/rants/4299469/...

I'm making my comment as a separate rant because the thread from the original rant was too long and also slowly deviated outside context.

"Why has the rate of female developers reduced overtime?".

Here is my take:
It's natural and I'll explain why I think so...
During my computer science school days we had seventy two (72) males compared to just twelve females (12) in class. The girls could compete in theoretical grounds but when it comes to real coding they were no where near.

This boils down to the passion for programming as a real world subject. In programming you feel rewarded when you "fix a bug" and you're filled with pride when you "learn a new language". This reminds us of the scientific research of boys being more attached to reward engaging activities, most times for bragging rights while for the girls they'd prefer compassionate activities where they can easily be noticed, but unfortunately enough in programming "you only notice yourself".

We can clearly see the mode of career options in our world today...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interfering with people (Compassionate reward)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Front desk officer... Female populated
* Support personnel... Female populated
* Nurse... Female populated
* Flight attendant... Female populated
* Childcare workers... Female populated
* Preschool/KG Teachers... Female populated

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interfering with things (Intrinsic reward)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Engineer... Male populated
* Electrician... Male populated
* Welder... Male populated
* Carpenter... Male populated
* Programmer... Male populated

From the list you'd notice females prefer jobs that are compassionate in reward, require minimal physical activities and also able to make them easily recognisable.
On the other list, male populated jobs are intrinsic in reward, physically inclined, working more with things than with people.

Now seeing the clearer picture, we could sincerely say this is nature at its finest because we have here a balance. Females are kid bearers and we shouldn't be surprised that they are more compassionate to people than with things. Males have more pride than compassion which is needed to protect a family and this indirectly affects their choice of selection.

In reality...
Females are more attracted to Males with pride.
Males are more attracted to Females with compassion.

I would say, it's all the doings of nature affecting our unconscious career options while we seek to find our purpose in life.

Comments
  • 3
    Do you have any links to the studies you mention? (I'm not doubting you, I'm genuinely curious)
  • 7
    I think this has a ton to do with social conditioning. I don't dispute that many women have nurturing qualities but I honestly think this has to do alot with how guilt and care taking is instilled in us from an early age. There are plenty of women out there who only reproduce or caretake because its all they were taught to do and many of them resent it. I worked in a hospital and plenty of nurses hate people and are usually quite miserable to deal with but they went into it because it aligned with what they were good at in school and what they were pushed to do. To be an RN you have to be very good at problem solving, and competent at math and sciences etc. I don't think it occurs to women that stem jobs are something they might be interested in because they don't really see themselves represented in the crowd.

    Also, I know Bootcamps maybe aren't quite the same as CS classes but the girls in my course with the same level of experience as the guys were just as competent/competitive.
  • 3
    @neeno Google "intrinsic and extrinsic reward male and female" there are lots of papers on it.
    One Example: https://google.com/url/...
  • 2
    Also, most women are attracted to compassionate men. Pridefulness isn't really attractive to most of us despite what the media, music etc might lead you to believe...
  • 2
    @yesNo I wouldn't say "they were thought to do"... Most of the choices women make are their natural instinct. Picking a job without physical labour is one.
  • 2
    @yesNo "Most women" I know... maybe that would be a better term.
  • 3
    @GiddyNaya I can see physical labour being a thing, I won't dispute that - but programming is not physical labour and I am a women and I am telling you as someone who has lived the experience: I know countless women who have gone into these situations/careers and have personally been pressured to be a mother, to be a caretaker, to be nurturing this or that and it is not necessarily something that comes naturally to many of us.

    I am simply an outlier because I have had alot of life experiences that have led me outside the fray of societal expectation and allowed me to disconnect and be comfortable with that.

    That's not the case for alot of women.
  • 2
    @yesNo It's not just about physical labour... Read the post again maybe.
  • 3
    Check the career pattern... Most women prefers jobs where they would work with and be validated by other people. The table speaks that.
    You may not appear to be in that category but the majority of female is.
  • 4
    Also, to be totally honest the only thing women are taught to compete over is validation from others so that's a really unfortunate factor here - I'd be interested to know how much of that is intrinsic and how much of that is taught to be totally honest.
  • 1
    @GiddyNaya see my next comment. I find it funny you mentioned validation because that ties into the comment I posted before I saw you bring it up.
  • 3
    @yesNo "Needing to be recognised" is synonymous to "The need for validation" I spoke about that on the post.
    In programming... You work with abstracts than with people. You have no direct contact to validate or recognise you. This shares the same effect with the items on the male populated list. That's the pattern I'm seeing here. You may disagree and that's okay.
  • 3
    I know but do you think that the need for validation is something built into women or do you think it might be something that's conditioned into us because I think it might acctually be the latter.
  • 3
    Also I see plenty of male programmers begging for validation and posting on here because they are salty they get none.. So... 🤷‍♀️
  • 3
    @yesNo Because you see doesn't make them the majority. It's not a 100 ratio 100 scenario. And when I say validation... I mean "physical validation".
  • 5
    @yesNo We can take our views aback.
    I suspect "Female need for validation" and "the act of pride in Masculinity" stems from human evolution than of societal imbalance.
    Not all female seeks validation though and also not all male has pride as supposed but the majority is true for both.

    An average Male is more muscular than an average Female. This is a natural phenomena because like the popular saying "If you don't need it, nature takes it away".

    This muscularity gives the male some sense of dominance over female and this instinct grew over the years.
    To impress the female, the males engage on events that waters their pride making them seem more dominant.

    Females need to compete but since nature has taken away their muscularity there need to be some other way.

    "Beauty and compassion"
    Believe me or not this I think is the most powerful weapon females has over males.

    The only way to rate this attribute is through "Validation"... "PHYSICAL VALIDATION"

    It's an instinct less perceived
  • 2
    I sense another flame war
  • 1
    That's not my experience. During school projects, most guys I have worked with they either don't give a shit or they have strong ego and can't take advice. Not sure about the best devs, the worst ones are definitely guys
  • 0
    I wonder how this _table_ would look like if internal/external locus, introversion/ambiversion/extraversion were added as those (in my experience and knowledge) noticeably shape the % of women and men doing the jobs above.
  • 2
    @Nanos True talk.
    This also relates to why gender equality is argued to be an impossible dream.
    If you choose to be smart and then you neglect the activities/careers that pays more because they're "physically inclined", "boring" or "too competitive", how then can you demand equality in a fucked up world where the amount of money you have determines your level of status.

    This circle resets and restarts all over again from generations to generations.
  • 1
    @Nanos Females can decide to join programming but like you pointed out... There are better non-boring jobs out there.
  • 1
    @GiddyNaya

    I guess we could also say the same about races. In June 2020, the unemployment rate for black people was 15.4%, but for white people it was only 10.1%.[^1] I guess black people are just lazy and prefer to be unemployed. Black people can decide to work, but I guess they got better things to do...

    I'm being sarcastic btw.

    [^1] https://progressless.org/2020/07/...
  • 0
    My two cents:

    If women being less attracted to this line of work is a social construct, it shouldn't exist in at least some societies.

    If it's intrinsic it should exist in most societies.

    Now pair that with the knowledge that scientific computing used to be a female dominated field in its hay day, and I'm really confused and don't know what to believe.
  • 1
    @lungdart computer "science" went from being a creative job to just a mundane craft nowadays. I would assume that may have some connection. Most IT jobs are a mundane and boring craft.
  • 1
    Counter domains for women: medical lab staff (nearly exclusively women - no contact to patients), accounting, other bureaucracy jobs.

    Counter examples for men: salesmen, lawyers, medical doctors.

    @lungdart That's because early "programming" was basically re-wriring machines. There was one kind of staff that had experience with that, and that were the women from the telephone centrals which used manual wire switching back then.

    In turn, that were women and not men because the quality of audio transmission back then was better with female voices.
  • 0
    @Fast-Nop What then can you assume is close to answering the hard question?
  • 1
    @GiddyNaya It's a chaotic mixture of natural preferences (I do think men and women are, on average, different - but with overlapping ranges), social expectations, and economic constraints.
  • 1
    @Frederick oh-oh, can I just hate all humans?
  • 0
    @iiii That would be black metal.
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