Closer To The Ideal

I need to post something to inaugurate this blog, so I will start by reposting some comments I wrote over at Burningbird.

Shelley Powers suggests one of the things that leads to gender disparities in the tech world:

If Tim Bray wants to get a better idea of why there aren’t as many women seemingly interested in Ruby, Rails, or associated technologies such as Ajax, he needs look no further than sites like Ajaxian. In all of the time I’ve been reading the site, it covered women–our contributions, as writers, as techs, in any capacity–a grand total of three times. Which is why I decided to unsubscribe from the site today. It’s not for everyone interesting in Ajax–only the boys interested in Ajax.

Someone in the comments suggested:

I think part of it, at least in the RoR world, is that there’s just so much focus on who the hotshots are, and so so much cronyism.

My thoughts:

I don’t know if it’s useful to look at this issue on the micro level. Questions like “Does the RoR community have enough women?” miss the point. The problem is large scale. The number of women receiving advanced degress in computer science peaked in 1989 and has since been in steady decline. That number is, I think, a useful metric for measuring women’s participation in computer science. Whereas women have made dramatic gains in the legal profession, the medical profession, and in managing large enterprises, they have lost ground in the computer industry.

I’ve yet to hear a great explanation of what’s chased women away from the tech industry. The decline since 1989 is easy to measure, yet most of the explanations that I’ve heard are contradicted by the dramatic gains women have made in the law and medical industries.

Consider a few of the most simplistic explanations:

Women don’t like hard science? Nothing is tougher than organic chemistry, which tens of thousands of women have had to master on their way to becoming doctors or “nurse practitioners” (the highest level of nursing).

Women don’t like long, brutal hours? I’ve a friend who just went through the UVA medical school. During her last year of school her average work week was 90 hours. Sometimes it was longer. 90 was the average.

Women are no good at math? I could repeat my comment, above, about organic chemistry, which involves some tough math, but I’d also like to add that I’ve been doing programming in script languages for 12 years now, and I’ve never needed advanced math. Not all programming involves gyroscope stabalized frictionless vector navigation for NASA space craft.

Women require balanced lives, and are unwilling to spend time away from their families? Relative to law and medicine, the tech industry provides more flex time and more chances to work at home. Also, women do put in long hours in the fields of law, medicine, management and marketing. It’s just tech, in particular, where women have been driven out.

Women are drawn to the more artistic side of things, they don’t like technical stuff? Pure sexism, but even if it was true, it wouldn’t explain why graphic design for the web (the artistic side of web work) has become so male dominated, with stars like Eric Meyer and Dave Shea keynoting every design conference.

It’s clear that women have been chased away from the tech field since 1989. The numbers are clear about that, and match what anecdotal evidence most of us can offer. But why? I’ve yet to have a eureka moment, where someone offers an explanation so clear that I simply jump and go “That’s it! That explains it all!”