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0 pointsjosephg8y ago0 comments

> The world is absolutely full of utterly brilliant women.

... Brilliant women who aren't interested in programming. Why not?

If they're turning away from programming because of sexism, we can and should be fixing that.

If they're turning away from programming because women are less likely to be interested in systems thinking, and thus fewer women find programming as interesting as men do then its fine. Let the women who want to program be programmers. Let the women who want to be lawyers, or mums, or doctors do that instead.

The research suggests that both of these things are happening. If you talk to girls thinking about careers they say "programming is for boys". Also, men and women have very different interest distributions. And one of the clearest ways people express their personal interests is via their career.

You could also ask the same question about a career with an inverse gender distribution like nursing. Why are only ~10% of nurses male? Some of the effect size is probably sexism, but probably a lot of it is that (statistically) fewer men are as interested in caring for other humans as women are. Any sexism found should be fixed. But if the difference is due to expressed preference, its fine and we should all chill out.

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biocomputation8y ago

No one should be forced to become a computer programmer just to satisfy some notion that companies should be 50% men and 50% women. No one should be forced to become a nurse just to satisfy some other notion that there should be equal numbers of men and women in nursing.

It's also not wrong to say 'maybe we should try to make our company more representative of society'.

>> But if the difference is due to expressed preference, its fine and we should all chill out.

The problem is that systemic prejudice causes long-term harm to human society. Women whom make less simply because of their gender have access to fewer opportunities. So do their children. They retire with less. It goes on and on...

For many people this issue isn't something that can be summed up as simply as perhaps you would like. It has real, long term consequences.

josephgOP8y ago

> Women whom make less simply because of their gender ...

My understanding is that most of this effect is caused by:

- Women taking breaks in their career to start families

- Women preferring jobs that give them more time to spend with their children. Jobs that have better benefits often have worse pay (Eg lawyer vs schoolteacher.)

- Society values traditionally feminine jobs less than traditionally masculine jobs

I'm not sure how pushing for more women to become programmers will help address any of these issues.

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