Please stop blaming the pipeline for the difference. Interested, qualified women are being pushed away from the field by bias and attrition, and that's a problem we should be trying to solve.
My impression is there are a lot of programming jobs where having a terrible work/life balance is expected. I'm a man and I would avoid such jobs. Perhaps women, including those who earn CS degrees, are statistically more likely than men to feel the way I do about work/life balance. The result would be fewer women working in the field without the environment being sexist or discriminatory.
How about "pulled away"? Maybe it isn't politically correct to desire being a stay-at-home mom, but it happens rather often. Sometimes this is an unexpected turn of events, with changing life priorities. Sometimes it is the goal right from the start.
I met a woman in college who literally said she was getting her MRS degree. That is, she went to college to meet a suitable husband and become a "Mrs.", as in "Mrs. Doe". It happens. This is real.
It's not a problem to be solved unless you have a negative attitude toward homemakers. People choose their own path in life. This might not meet your standard, but your standard might not maximize life satisfaction for everybody.
Was she taking computer science?
If we're going to talk anecdotes here, every computer science major I've ever met has done it either for the sunny career prospects or because they were genuinely interested in the subject matter - and usually both. I do not buy your premise that students are graduating from computer science in order to not have a career in it.
My wife: was capable in computer science, got through 3 years of a degree before kids interfered, was mildly interested in career prospects but very relieved to realize that I could fully support her, was mildly interested in the subject matter
Had my wife taken another year to become pregnant, she'd have graduated. That would put her in your statistic as a woman who graduated but didn't end up in the field. As it is, she's in the "women who drop out of computer science" group, usually assumed to have been pushed out somehow.
Actually graduating and having a career was kind of a "Plan B" thing, although my wife wasn't quite as deliberate as that other woman.
I met another woman who dropped the career about a year after graduating in computer science from a near-top school. She went on leave to have a baby, then simply stayed home. She didn't need the money, so why be away from the adorable little baby?
These women don't have the values that you evidently have. They aren't being pushed out. They are being pulled away by things that they value more. They don't have to comply with your value system.
There are structural problems that make the available talent pool unequal per-capita anyway (women being socially pressured out of software engineering, resulting in a lack of role models, etc. I'm sure there are plenty of other factors).
Part of changing the dynamic will take decades because _currently_ a smaller percentage of all women in the world are software engineers vs men. No one wants to hire incompetent women engineers just to fulfill a quota and all the people I've talked to about this seem to recognize and understand it. Mostly what seems to piss people off (and rightly so) is when people try to claim there isn't any bias, there isn't any problem, and everything is just fine as-is.
If all else were equal, what total percentage of women would want to be software engineers and would be good at it? I have no idea, but it does seem clear that we are far away from that number. As long as we can all agree that the structural problems should be addressed then I think we also understand that it isn't going to be 50/50 overnight and it might never be 50/50. But 90/10 is clearly unbalanced in a way that is not correlated with women's aptitude or ability to write software.
I think we should be a welcoming community and make reasonable efforts to make anyone who wants to join it feel comfortable. I don't understand the constant desire to rules-lawyer or dismiss such a simple and straightforward idea: don't be an asshole, be considerate of others, encourage those who are interested to learn.
In the end I have to think it is partially driven by fear and self-doubt, like maybe if we let black people or more women into the club it will all be over. Global demand for software engineering talent outstrips the supply and software is eating the world. My talents have never been in higher demand. My life is not diminished by nursing mother facilities, unisex bathrooms, coding events in black neighborhoods, attempts to reduce bias in interviews, et al.
"Gender gap" is a fancy way of saying "not 50%". More to the point, assumptions are often unstated, as I'm sure you know.
I agree with you insofar as the mechanisms you point out are likely contributers to this so-called gap. Rather, I'm highlighting that -- unpopular though this notion may be in certain circles -- part of this effect is likely to be driven by bottom-up biological factors.
How big is this part? I haven't got a clue.
I'm copying my "tl;dr" from the above comment because it applies here as well: if we're going to have an honest debate, we have to entertain the notion that at least part of the gender gap is the result of "nature", rather than "nurture".
Addressing disparity in the pipeline is a separate issue.
No. Gender gap is underrepresentation relative to the qualified labor market. Right now the gender ratio in entry-level software engineering jobs does not represent the segment that would be interested in and qualified for them (CS grads).
The 10% difference between grads and junior developers is on us to fix.
You say elsewhere that while 20 percent (the actual number is around 18) of CS grads are women, only 10 percent of junior devs are in fact female. Others have mentioned that maybe the women went on to graduate school or are working some CS related job that doesn't fit the definition of "junior dev".
The latter points seem reasonable to me but you keep bringing it up though so here's my question, where do you think 50 percent of female grads are ending up? The unemployment line? That would seem like a very large number of people, such a large number that it would have been recorded somewhere. Do you have any actual statistical data beyond the raw numbers you keep bringing up?
But that's not the point. A supply of women with both the qualifications and the interest exists. We ought to be seeing a representative sample of that supply, and we should do what we can to avert bias within our organizations.
According to your source, the unemployment rate for women in Computer and mathematical occupations in May was 2.6 vs 1.8 percent for men. That's actually a 31 percent higher amount. Still high but not 50 as you claimed in your previous post. It also says the rate for May of 2015 was exactly the same for both genders at 1.5 percent. This issue has gotten a lot of press in the last 12 months so it is very unlikely that suddenly the numbers are disparate as a result of discrimination after they were the same a year ago.
And in other sectors on your chart like in Management, professional, and related occupations, the unemployment figures are the opposite. Women unemployment went from higher to lower than the men's rate. I mean, in Architecture and engineering occupations, the unemployment rate of men is literally 100 percent higher than women at 2.2 vs 1.1 percent. It just looks like natural statistical gyrations of numbers and not conclusive or even particularly indicative of anything.
And the point is, if you are saying that huge numbers of women are graduating with these degrees and then being shut out of the job market, you can't just stop there, you have to back that up. Even ignoring the fact that just because someone has a degree doesn't mean they're qualified, quoting the percent of females in entry level dev jobs doesn't say anything about where the other women went or what they are doing. I'm pointing out that if they're out there looking for these jobs then the unemployment statistics should reflect that and via your source, they don't. Other posters have suggested graduate school and other jobs not described as entry level dev and so far that explanation seems more plausible. Ask yourself, what are CS graduates qualified to do besides be junior devs and you may be surprised with how many answers there are.
I think where your confusion lies is in order for there to be discrimination, there has to actually be discrimination. Point out the discrimination, who's doing it, which companies, what policy allows this, and we can all rally and do something about it. But just throwing out cherry picked employment numbers and claiming bias is somehow self evident which is what your argument implies isn't good enough. It actually comes across as a kind of weird p-hacking[0]. Even worse is when you introduce a credibility problem by conflating different employment sectors and inflating your numbers like you have here.
What if some percent of those women simply went into a slightly different career?
From the study you linked to:
"As suggested by previous literature and the present study, interests stabilize at an early age. Given the essential role of family and other environmental influences in the socialization process of children and their interest development, it may be important for parents, educators, and counselors to be involved early on, when interests seem more malleable."
i.e. the study accepts the theory that environment, family and in general socialization, contribute to a child's interests. This is the exact opposite of what you claim in your comment
"It is important to note that group differences do not speak for every individual within a group,and it is not the purpose of the present study to reify the stereo-types that men and women are interested in their “traditional”areas."
The study is talking about d < 1 effect sizes. That means that there is a still a significant part of the group that is more interested in a subject than a significant part of the other group. Think of two mostly overlapping normal curves.
"it is beyond the scope of the present study to provide a detailed exploration of the environmental, social, and biological factors that have contributed to the development of these sex differences"
The study makes no claim as to the cause of these sex differences. They only point out that there is a difference and suggest "environmental, social, and biological factors" as the cause. Again, the opposite of what you claim.
What a strange comment (you don't paraphrase; you caricature)! I'm not saying any of this! Where did you get the impression that I was?
I agree with all your points, btw. The existence of these differences doesn't enlighten us as to their causes, proximal or distal.
Rather, we have much evidence showing that anatomy and physiology influence cognition. Does this explain the gender gap completely? That's unlikely, but it's equally unlikely that the gender gap would disappear if only the "mean old white men stopped being jerks".
tl;dr: if we're going to have an honest debate, we have to entertain the notion that at least part of the gender gap is the result of "nature".
I think we agree that the assumption that "removing interviewer/managerial bias will result in a gender ratio of 50%" is false. The variability of sex differences in vocational interests probably accounts for more of the gap than bias in the hiring process, i.e. "mean old white men". I can also accept that physiology influences cognition, although where we disagree is how much of a factor that is in the gender gap, or how relevant it is to any sort of policy decision.
Removing bias in the hiring process wont solve the gender gap entirely, but it will help it.
Telling girls that they can do and be whatever they want wont solve the gender gap entirely, but it will help it.
Changing the masculine and sexist culture in STEM wont completely solve the issue either.
There is basically nothing that can remove the hypothetical physiological factors contributing to gender disparity in STEM fields. So why are we even talking about it? It derails the conversation. There are things that can be done, and we should do them. Until we reach the limit of what is possible according to your hypothetical physiological explanation, why bother even bringing it up?
Moreover, the idea that anatomy and physiology don't condition preferences or behaviors flies in the face of everything we know about human biology and (embodied) cognition. Let's recognize gender/feminist theory for what they are: a sociological theories, not scientific ones.
Equality, in the sense of gender or racial equality, does not mean we're all the same de naturae. It means we should be treated the same de jure.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...