Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Computing

Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by badsock on Monday August 03, 2015 @09:44PM (#10001167)

I'm genuinely curious - do you not think that this chart indicates some kind of distortion in the tech community:

http://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/women-cs/child.ht...

Bear in mind that the social status of medicine, law, and STEM has (at least by my observations) remained fairly constant during that period, but that of computer science has sky-rocketed.

Do you have an explanation for the decline that doesn't call for a change in the way that women are treated in tech?

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by Raurin on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @11:22AM (#10003985)

To me, that graph looks like the tech industry transition from hobby to industrial/business tool. Pre-1985, there weren't many colleges even offering computer science degrees, so any data from that era could easy fall apart due to small sample bias.

I don't think anything necessarily "happened" to women in tech. You could just as easily say that as computer science became a more established field, men swarmed it because it was interesting to them.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by kentrado on Monday August 03, 2015 @09:57PM (#10001202)

I don't know why it dropped. I don't presume to know the reason. Although I'm sure there are some people who feel pretty certain about what happened.

Why does it matter? If we are already treating each other excellently, as I suggested, and women still won't join computing, then I don't care. If we aren't treating each other in a civil manner, then by all means that what we should do.

I'm in no way advocating special treatment for women. I want to be clear about that.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by sp332 on Monday August 03, 2015 @10:07PM (#10001250)

That doesn't seem to be disagreeing with any of the points listed. Is it just the word "ally" you don't like?

Treating people equally and civilly is a political decision. It's not happening in a lot of places, and if you really want to step in and change it, that's politics.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by kentrado on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @06:38PM (#10006727)

Then you ought to read more carefully.

The points listed in the article talk about treating women in a special way.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by cmsj on Wednesday August 05, 2015 @05:32AM (#10008685)

"[S]He who starts behind in the great race of life must forever remain behind, or run faster than the man in front"

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by monstruoso on Thursday August 06, 2015 @08:34AM (#10015959)

The nice thing about computing is that everyone starts behind, but with a computer with Internet connection and the disposition to learn; You can get ahead.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by sp332 on Thursday August 06, 2015 @11:44AM (#10017232)

The bad thing about computing is that a computer with an internet connection can deliver a whole world of hate right to you. Often by the same media (email, twitter, etc) as the information you'd need to get ahead.

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by cmsj on Thursday August 06, 2015 @10:29AM (#10016661)

(The difference being that if you accept that there are deep cultural problems in STEM environments wrt diversity, anyone who isn't a white male starts further behind)

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Re:Things That Men Can Do to Be Real Allies for Women in Com... by sp332 on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @11:01PM (#10007820)

Point 2 is specifically about equality. What is one of the points you have a problem with?

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