Let's assume sexism is the number one reason that we see less female developers. What in your opinion would be the second largest barrier?

I couldn't think of any other thing other then biological reasons. But I guess you'd label them sexist. 😂

these statements are generalized!

Women often prefer part time work as they might have children or an house to look after. We've all pulled some crazy stunts to be able to finish those deadly deadlines.

Women often prefer things like cleaning or daycare for their jobs. They prefer to not get to dirty or muscle breaking hard work.

The country in which you live.

I don't think that is a safe assumption.. assuming you are male ask yourself this why are there not many male hairdressers or primary school teachers? Is that because of sexism too? Maybe it just doesn't appeal to them as a career?

halitosis

Many young girls don't think they can do such a technical job because of stereotypes. When the parents want to have a small princess but boys get to play with cars and Lego technic, that sets the path for future developement.

I mean who the fuck cares about gender, if that shitty project can be completed by hiring a star fish, I'll hire star fish as well.

@NoMad obviously I will, I don't see any problems with that. What's wrong with that? It's not like I'm going to hire every starfish, it's like if you can do that you're in.

@Alice #peta thanks for the Intel and for your info, I've already hire 8 of them, they are doing pretty good so far.

@Alice That's it. Screw feminism and mra.
I'm a starfishist from now on. #starfishism
Equal rights for starfish!

@Alice Go ahead and Good luck with that, I already have legal permit to hire cute ocean creatures.

@rootshell FUCK !!! It seems now I'm in trouble. 😨😨

For every dollar a woman gets the starfish only gets 79 cents!!!!

I disagree about sexism being the largest issue. It is an issue, but IMO not even close to the problem or even the largest.

You can not change what people think about a particular topic unless you actually address their points and just ~talk~ (as programmers in teams, you should know all about this), which seems to be the major downfall of this current generation.

Anecdotally with the amount of people I've met and talked to about programming, the amount of times guys respond with "o IT is interesting" to women who respond with "meh" is staggering.

I'm also not buying into the "its intimidating thats why they aren't interested" -- by saying that you are inherently disrespecting the capabilities of people, whilst simultaneously giving shade to those in the industry.

tl;dr, people should talk more instead of living in a bubble.

starfish are cool, my best friend at nursery was a starfish.

@NoMad I disagree about just "hiring more women" because quota sake.

How about we just hire based on merit, experience and personality.

If there is an untapped potential, surely doing this will "tap" into it?

In every interview process I've participated in, race, religion or gender has never came up once. Its just not something that IT companies even bother considering. There is a shortage of IT professional in general, you think companies can afford to be petty for little gain?

@D--M I disagree with you.
I thought programmers were this rebbel bunch of ragtags.
I don't care about your gender as long as you put in the work required. 😥

@D--M i couldn't agree more. A person in my family applied to be a Professor at university and he almost had the job. They told him the only thing that could happen so that he wouldn't get the job is if a woman would apply. Guess what happened. This is so stupid, he is so qualified for that job but the woman gets the position regardless, only because of genitalia.

@NoMad Don't worry, we are heading towards much better time, in the history of humanity in terms of equality. I think gender gap is getting filled much faster and better with each passing day. As a matter of fact I didn't really paid attentions to the topic of "sexism" until I read this post, because places I've been and worked I noticed number of woman working there are either equal, near equal or greater than number of man working there. It's my personal opinion and experience though.

Upbringing. Have you ever heard mother/grandmother/aunt tell your sister or a female friend that something they did was not 'ladylike'?
Or they can't do or play with something because it's for boys?
Things like that stick to your own thinking, when you hear it enough in your life. And then you actually start thinking that you can't do that, because you are a female. Delicate, dependent, too stupid sometimes.
Some girls are forced to cook and clean the house when they got older, while the same things aren't applied to their brothers.
The way those parents are raising children actually makes difference for the kids about what they are and are not capable of doing.

In the other way around: same reasons are why there's not many male preschool teachers.

the kitchen door

IM SORRY I HAD TO

I think a big problem is that there aren't many female idols and all the things @NoMad pointed out

Sexism isn’t the number one reason, it’s the only reason.

Not interested? That’ll be social conditioning and gender norms, defined and enforced by the patriarchy.

Don’t feel welcome? Toxic masculinity and overt sexism.

Got pregnant and can’t stay in school? 1-2 combo of poor access to contraceptives (thanks to men) and poor social support for students with kids (same).

As it stands, we tell women from childhood that they should aspire to “female” roles, actively push them away from tech by treating them like shit, do nothing to help women with kids to finish their degree, and then sit around scratching our balls wondering why there are so few women in tech.

We *need* more female developers, it's so hard to find competent collegues.. more people in the industry would most likely help.

Well, during the war when most men was drafted for service, women took over many industrial jobs so ability is not a problem.

Feeling lonely and exposed is a bug factor if you are a lone man or woman at a place.

@spacem it is sexism though, being concerned with your hair is considered "girly". This hairdressing is seen as a "girls" job. And thus men are, for the most part, conditioned by society underlying sexist assumptions to not have interest in it. It's a similar reason with IT. In the 80s, IT and computers work was considered as a "boys" thing. So computers were pushed towards men, and disencourged for women. Due to how society generally views people who don't fit into the preconceived "gender roles" this was pretty effective at removing women from IT.

Now people are getting more accepting of gender roles being a bad thing, (but still too early for them to have been removed from society), and your seeing people of both genders branching out. More women entering male dominated fields, and more men entering women dominated roles.

However, as alluded, society still has the concept as gender roles, and this does slot in shaping children and their interests. So until it's gone completely...

@Voxera exactly! In the early days the industry was mostly dominated by women. And they did great things,e.g. ichrace Hopper build the first compiler.

@spacem ..we can't really talk about peoples natural level of interest, because it's being shaped too much by outside forces.

@NoMad the woman was less qualified (the person in my family heard complains about her work later). But they had to hire her because of the law, which is stupid.
As with any problem, this problem should be worked on on its roots, not at the symptoms. In germany we have a day called girls day and many technology companies invite young girls and show them how it is to work in stem. That way they can get interested in such a field. Or as I said in a comment above, stereotypes that lead to girls being treated like a little princess and boys playing with cars and tech toys, should be abolished. That way we don't need a stupid quota that makes no sense. Women want to be hired because of their skills, not because of their gender. And at the moment there are more skilled men, so more men are hired. That's just how it is and it will change as more women are studying in stem fields.

@jobylie when I think about it I spent my girls day at home with my dad who has a Homeoffice and works in IT 😂

@theNox but now you work in IT, right? (ok, maybe the grilsday wasn't the #1 reason for that)

@Voxera I'm always the sole female developer wherever I go. It's so lonely.

@Alice sorry but I don't even believe that sexism is number one.
Where I work there is almost as much womens as mens (working at Capgemini Morocco so talking of hundreds..) however the vast majority of these womens are working not on the technical side but the functional side : testing, reviewing specs, or working at the TMA whilst mens are for the majority working on the technical sides.
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In my opinion and from what I learned from working with both genders either on technical questions or fictional ones, mens are more able to face logical technical problems while women have a better ability to work on larger areas without underestimating any point (which lack's most mens) but men's focus better on one aspect of that large area and solves it faster.
My point is that we are in fact different, women do best what men can't do and mens do better what women can't do.. we aren't here to compete but to get something bigger done :-)
In fact genetically women and mens are different (brain composition) so each gender had it's strengths and weaknesses.

It's not an assumption, it is sexism. And keep shit like this off here, please. Take it to r/bros or something.

@omom the differences are overplayed. They wouldn't affect things to such a significant degree. Especially since brains are pretty good at reorganising itself based on experiences and skills learned.

I think much more of the differences you see are the underlying assumptions people have on each gender, how that subtle influences how people treat children of each gender, and thus shapes the type of things those children learn and focus on in their most formative years.

Stupid assumptions.

@Sekhat totally agree with the fact that there should be absolutely no difference between children's, if a boy wants to play with a Barbie or if a girl wants to play with a car just let them fucking choose who they wana be.. 😏

@omom I mean it even goes beyond toys. Boys being a bit rough is seen as normal. Girls being a bit rough get the whole "girls don't do that" spiel. So much of a young child's personality and behavior is shaped by past moderations of previous behavior placed on them by their parents, and this moderation is often applied differently to each gender, and a number of times can be quite subtle, but have a huge effect in what that person becomes.

Probably kids thinking that some people are naturally food at math. There is no such thing is being naturally good. A skill is nothing more than a pursued interest.

The second largest barrier is probably the "special treatment" that happens if a girl actually gets into software development.

"Wow a GIRL as dev, so rare"

Exactly, and it's going to stay that way if you mention it all the time.

lets ignore the fact @Alice mentioned.

It's a scientific fact that the male and female brain work differently.

One example would be focusing on tasks or what people used to call "multitasking". Girls in common (so ofc with exceptions) are better at the second. Males at the first (I'm a different case though xD)

And maybe you just need this for programming.

But I agree. The main point is that girls rarely are pushed into but rather pulled away from programming. Fuck this shit xD

@Jop- I don't know much anymore but it was something about how much gray (or grey?) matter and white matter your brain has. I remembered those worksheets in English class. It's not my opinion but scientificly proved. And like I said; in common. There are lots of exceptions. Nobody applies to all rules ^^

@NoMad in order to calculate the speed of consumption you have to bake the second derivative of this tiramisu.

I'm unsure where this discussion is going..
I know for a fact that women are as capable in programming, as men are.
I don't know much about brain capabilities or mathematics, but I'm sure that this is not an important factor for being a good developer. I consider myself a great developer, but I totally suck at math.

In my experience there are two main factors for being good at software development:
1) total time invested
2) the mindset, to be ok with being wrong in your opinions and to adjust to new knowledge

Guys this was my first post on dev rant and I've had such fantastic responses and insight . Thank you all for the 2 cents!

@redx1918 welcome to this lovely community :)

@Jop- brain composition order IS different, sorry to disappoint you.. I don't know the names in English but in French I would say that : le cerveau chez l'homme est composé de matière grise à l'intérieur et de matière blanche à l'extérieur, tandis que chez la femme c'est l'inverse.
Google translate it..

they're not usually encouraged by the society. society always tell them they can't do this or that because they're a lady. it's just the same way my mom tells me that i travel for tech events a lot that i'm a lady i shouldn't be doing such that what if i get married.
it's fucking annoying really!

@mokeam logic: if a woman gets married she shouldn't have to travel a lot. If a man gets married he can travel all he wants. Because who cares if it sucks for the wife to stay at home allone all the time.

But I see your point. Those sexist stereotypes die really slowly. I always notice that when talking to my grandma.

@jobylie yeah, if you've read the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg,you'd understand what i'm talking about better... there are ways where both the husband and wife can look for a way to balance work and home together.. why is women's responsibility to always keep the home,i mean why not men too?

this issue needs to be fixed!

@NoMad exactly,that's the point! sadly, they don't always understand our point.