I remember when this was first posted to HN the top comment was about a serious flaw in this hypothesis. Need to find the comment thread again...

Edit: Found it, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483751

e.g. the other explanation could be that women applicants are just better than men, and that they aren't discriminated against.

Thank you for re-posting that.

I wonder if the genders in the study were reversed, how many would claim the same hypothesis?

Yeah, women get driven out of tech in droves.

In order to even survive, the average woman has to be at the very top of their game, or else theyd be gone because it isn't worth it to put up with all the BS that they have to.

>>"Yeah, women get driven out of tech in droves."

True, over 40% of women leave SET (science, engineering, technology, math) mid-career (https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenint... page 9).

Interestingly, in engineering 39% leave mid-career, and in technology occupations 56%.

>True, over 40% of women leave SET (science, engineering, technology, math) mid-career //

How does that compare to other fields?

Not sure about the data for other fields. But if you compare to men, in SET, only ~17% of men leave mid-career.

The big elephant in the room is pregnancy and children. I've thought about having children, and leaving my career very intensely, but pushed it back after seeing the related costs.

This differs a lot: at the last company I worked with some men were awful.

That doesn't seem to be the standard though.

I do see one issue though: women are far more likely to be sick (at least around here statistics are quite clear IIRC).

Men are more likely to place pride over medical care. They'll take fewer days they really need as a result.

Seriously. Some days I think I put way too much irrational pressure on myself just to be "good enough" at my job.

When toxic masculinity is literally toxic.

Masculinity has been sexually selected for (by females) for millennia. Much of this selection wasn't even done by humans! Placing blame seems silly.

"women are far more likely to be sick"

That's only the case for younger workers. For older workers, men are more likely to be sick, according to insurance statistics.

Interesting. Didn't know.

I'll accept it for now but I guess I'll have to look that up before I feel confident to tell that as fact.

Edit: why was parent downvoted?

Beware that this is almost certainly subject to Campbell's law, and trying to actually rate organizational bias by hire-to-promotion rates will result in companies gaming the metric without fixing the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law

I know the reason, because I have seen it in action.

Simply put, few women work in technical IT, but end up in management, business analysis, etc. And management has a faster and higher career path to elevated positions, while techs will top out at "senior engineer/developer" after about 5 years, and will be still stuck there after 20 unless they basically give up their passion and become a manager.

Of course, there are far fewer management positions than tech roles, as the are far fewer women working in tech generally.