The article has some interesting points but isn’t *entirely* focussed on women. The skills shortage could also be addressed by men and encouraging more young people into coding regardless of gender would be a benefit there.
Interestingly…
> standing at only 25%, while just 12% of top technology executives are women.
Some of this will be a legacy of previous decades – hopefully more top tech executives will be female as more female tech professionals rise through the ranks. Think of it as a funnel – with little going ‘in’ in previous years, of course fewer will be at that senior point.
> However, I found this intimidating. I was presented with an empty black prompt window that just said, “Type Hello World”.
I mean… yes? Most things are intimidating when you first try them. Coding from scratch isn’t necessarily *easy* in that sense. I don’t mind saying I can’t do it very well either.
> “Women are more likely to give up unless there’s a clear career pathway,” she says.
This sounds like an inability to research. The career path for a fairly standard developer is not something elusive.
> “I struggled a lot in the male-dominated maths classes during my International Baccalaureate,” they tell the BBC.
> “I didn’t fit in and I struggled to approach the teacher when I didn’t understand.”
So as much as they could look at how classes are taught, perhaps some resilience should also be taught, if not already present?
I can understand not wanting to be the only X in a room full of Y, but that’s a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy if all the X’s take one look and think ‘no way’.
Curious to hear about the experiences of those who are working in this area, does the article tell how it was for you? Was it an easy path to take?
I work with a couple women who are software developers and I’ll say they’re great, best performers in our team.
Any historians who can corroborate the narrative that after WW2, the returning men monopolised the industry, Wikipedia covers their extensive contributions.
“[Women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing) in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the field has downplayed their achievements.”
Edit – not girls stupid, women.
My gf did IT as a lesson in school. It was her, one other girl and the rest boys with a male teacher. In pairs they had to do a presentation to the class on components of a pc.
She was paired with the other girl and had to do a presentation on the mouse, when the boys had, processor, motherboard, ram etc.
She was also told her presentation was the prettiest.
She quit the class. Probably isnt helping.
Saturation divers and plant machinery operators, don’t have enough representation in those roles either.
This obsession with coding specifically has been going for years.
The question I have about articles like this is “Do we want to get *women* into coding, or do we want to get people who are actually interested in coding into coding?”.
There’s genuinely no point in shoehorning anyone into a job they don’t want to do; this is how we end up with shoddy software and code that is horrible to maintain. I’m a developer for a company who employed people who just fell into the role, and as someone who actually cares about and enjoys my role, it really shows in the work sometimes.
I genuinely don’t know if an interest in programming is a gendered thing or not. If it is, then trying to push it onto a group who on average aren’t interested in it is just silly. Hopefully it isn’t, and the inclusion of programming in the school curricular might balance the numbers out naturally. My school didn’t teach us this 10 years ago, so it was my own interest in computers that led me down this path. Maybe for both genders, an early introduction to this stuff will start an interest.
Weird it’s always the safe and reasonably comfortable jobs.
Don’t see many campaigns for women miners. Or oil rig workers. Or retrieval divers.
All of which can be stupidly well paying.
Or generally pretty uncomfortable jobs like refuse collectors. Tip workers etc.
Coding used to be a female dominated field, so lets keep that in mind.
I’m unsurprised more women aren’t in compsci/engineering, its an uphill battle working with men who speak over, undermine, and re-sell your ideas. The black pilling part of it is that the men who do it aren’t usually “nasty mean misogynists” (although these exist, especially in the older generations), they’re actually often decent blokes.
The behaviors that put women off these fields is often completely subconscious, and many would be pretty horrified if they realised they were doing it. What’s worse is that you can’t easily call this behavior out without losing friends, and for you to do well as a woman in these industries you have to be liked (but not /too/ liked, or you risk being seen weirdly the other way). If you were to call it out, the response you’d get is along the lines of “I can’t believe you think I’m sexist, I’m really upset you’d think that of me”, or some moping “how was I supposed to know I was being sexist?” (which, honestly, as the behaviour is subconscious, is somewhat understandable), either way you’re now in the out group.
I know this is a problem because I transitioned from male to female in industry. The better I pass, the more I find myself with these problems that I never properly understood until they startd happening to me.
Either way, complicated issue.
A painter doesn’t go to a class and say I’m a painter. Coding isn’t for the clueless.
Woman in tech here.
The problem isn’t having people interested, in my experience at least anyway.
When I was doing GCSEs I requested to take an IT qualification which would mean me dropping a language GCSE and only doing a single science one. My school refused, as my grades were “too good” to lose those GCSEs. I have since done nothing involving those others, nor has it been required of a job. The IT course was exclusively boys, and I’m still in touch with a few of them who now have pretty solid careers in tech.
Gave up at that point, dropped out of school during A levels because I didn’t have any interest in what I was studying, worked some generic retail jobs for a while.
A few years later I started in First Line Support at a really huge IT company, was subject to flagrant and rampant sexism, from everyone from the bottom up. The head of training singled me out in meetings, talking about how I couldn’t wear clothes that would “rile up the boys”, etc etc.
Left that job, and after a while ended up in support again, at a small company. My managers called me “Legs”, and I feel like that’s all I need to say about that place.
Nearly ten years later, after a bunch of completely unrelated work, and basically giving up on IT, I work for a software company again. It’s a specialist accounting software, but it’s a small company with a really solid company culture, and our support team is entirely female.
A few months ago a few of us were at an Accounting expo and people suggested that they had “sent all the girls so people would come to the stand”. Nope, this is just who you get, because we’re all fucking women, how about you respect us as professionals rather then demoting us to eye candy?
Women are interested in tech, we just get driven out by the horrifically casual sexism that occurs. Had I been allowed to follow that interest when I was a teenager, god knows where I’d be, or had I not been treated so disgustingly in my previous companies. I’ve been interested in IT careers since I was a teenager, but have either been ignored or insulted.
I think part of it is because it is a male dominated field and some women would prefer that they are not in the minority. It’s a self-fulling… thing.
Same thing you do for anyone else, encourage them, it has to come from everyone though.
Don’t bother. An Indian will do it for 30p per hour.
13 comments
[Pink keyboards? ](https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0924CNVLV/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_ZBA395H32TGCVKB1JSH1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1)
The article has some interesting points but isn’t *entirely* focussed on women. The skills shortage could also be addressed by men and encouraging more young people into coding regardless of gender would be a benefit there.
Interestingly…
> standing at only 25%, while just 12% of top technology executives are women.
Some of this will be a legacy of previous decades – hopefully more top tech executives will be female as more female tech professionals rise through the ranks. Think of it as a funnel – with little going ‘in’ in previous years, of course fewer will be at that senior point.
> However, I found this intimidating. I was presented with an empty black prompt window that just said, “Type Hello World”.
I mean… yes? Most things are intimidating when you first try them. Coding from scratch isn’t necessarily *easy* in that sense. I don’t mind saying I can’t do it very well either.
> “Women are more likely to give up unless there’s a clear career pathway,” she says.
This sounds like an inability to research. The career path for a fairly standard developer is not something elusive.
> “I struggled a lot in the male-dominated maths classes during my International Baccalaureate,” they tell the BBC.
> “I didn’t fit in and I struggled to approach the teacher when I didn’t understand.”
So as much as they could look at how classes are taught, perhaps some resilience should also be taught, if not already present?
I can understand not wanting to be the only X in a room full of Y, but that’s a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy if all the X’s take one look and think ‘no way’.
Curious to hear about the experiences of those who are working in this area, does the article tell how it was for you? Was it an easy path to take?
I work with a couple women who are software developers and I’ll say they’re great, best performers in our team.
Any historians who can corroborate the narrative that after WW2, the returning men monopolised the industry, Wikipedia covers their extensive contributions.
“[Women](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing) in computing were among the first programmers in the early 20th century, and contributed substantially to the industry. As technology and practices altered, the role of women as programmers has changed, and the recorded history of the field has downplayed their achievements.”
Edit – not girls stupid, women.
My gf did IT as a lesson in school. It was her, one other girl and the rest boys with a male teacher. In pairs they had to do a presentation to the class on components of a pc.
She was paired with the other girl and had to do a presentation on the mouse, when the boys had, processor, motherboard, ram etc.
She was also told her presentation was the prettiest.
She quit the class. Probably isnt helping.
Saturation divers and plant machinery operators, don’t have enough representation in those roles either.
This obsession with coding specifically has been going for years.
The question I have about articles like this is “Do we want to get *women* into coding, or do we want to get people who are actually interested in coding into coding?”.
There’s genuinely no point in shoehorning anyone into a job they don’t want to do; this is how we end up with shoddy software and code that is horrible to maintain. I’m a developer for a company who employed people who just fell into the role, and as someone who actually cares about and enjoys my role, it really shows in the work sometimes.
I genuinely don’t know if an interest in programming is a gendered thing or not. If it is, then trying to push it onto a group who on average aren’t interested in it is just silly. Hopefully it isn’t, and the inclusion of programming in the school curricular might balance the numbers out naturally. My school didn’t teach us this 10 years ago, so it was my own interest in computers that led me down this path. Maybe for both genders, an early introduction to this stuff will start an interest.
Weird it’s always the safe and reasonably comfortable jobs.
Don’t see many campaigns for women miners. Or oil rig workers. Or retrieval divers.
All of which can be stupidly well paying.
Or generally pretty uncomfortable jobs like refuse collectors. Tip workers etc.
Coding used to be a female dominated field, so lets keep that in mind.
I’m unsurprised more women aren’t in compsci/engineering, its an uphill battle working with men who speak over, undermine, and re-sell your ideas. The black pilling part of it is that the men who do it aren’t usually “nasty mean misogynists” (although these exist, especially in the older generations), they’re actually often decent blokes.
The behaviors that put women off these fields is often completely subconscious, and many would be pretty horrified if they realised they were doing it. What’s worse is that you can’t easily call this behavior out without losing friends, and for you to do well as a woman in these industries you have to be liked (but not /too/ liked, or you risk being seen weirdly the other way). If you were to call it out, the response you’d get is along the lines of “I can’t believe you think I’m sexist, I’m really upset you’d think that of me”, or some moping “how was I supposed to know I was being sexist?” (which, honestly, as the behaviour is subconscious, is somewhat understandable), either way you’re now in the out group.
I know this is a problem because I transitioned from male to female in industry. The better I pass, the more I find myself with these problems that I never properly understood until they startd happening to me.
Either way, complicated issue.
A painter doesn’t go to a class and say I’m a painter. Coding isn’t for the clueless.
Woman in tech here.
The problem isn’t having people interested, in my experience at least anyway.
When I was doing GCSEs I requested to take an IT qualification which would mean me dropping a language GCSE and only doing a single science one. My school refused, as my grades were “too good” to lose those GCSEs. I have since done nothing involving those others, nor has it been required of a job. The IT course was exclusively boys, and I’m still in touch with a few of them who now have pretty solid careers in tech.
Gave up at that point, dropped out of school during A levels because I didn’t have any interest in what I was studying, worked some generic retail jobs for a while.
A few years later I started in First Line Support at a really huge IT company, was subject to flagrant and rampant sexism, from everyone from the bottom up. The head of training singled me out in meetings, talking about how I couldn’t wear clothes that would “rile up the boys”, etc etc.
Left that job, and after a while ended up in support again, at a small company. My managers called me “Legs”, and I feel like that’s all I need to say about that place.
Nearly ten years later, after a bunch of completely unrelated work, and basically giving up on IT, I work for a software company again. It’s a specialist accounting software, but it’s a small company with a really solid company culture, and our support team is entirely female.
A few months ago a few of us were at an Accounting expo and people suggested that they had “sent all the girls so people would come to the stand”. Nope, this is just who you get, because we’re all fucking women, how about you respect us as professionals rather then demoting us to eye candy?
Women are interested in tech, we just get driven out by the horrifically casual sexism that occurs. Had I been allowed to follow that interest when I was a teenager, god knows where I’d be, or had I not been treated so disgustingly in my previous companies. I’ve been interested in IT careers since I was a teenager, but have either been ignored or insulted.
I think part of it is because it is a male dominated field and some women would prefer that they are not in the minority. It’s a self-fulling… thing.
Same thing you do for anyone else, encourage them, it has to come from everyone though.
Don’t bother. An Indian will do it for 30p per hour.