Turtles, all the way down.

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Or to be less glib, that's a great question, and like many, not simple to answer well.

Mostly, it seems like a lack of positive reinforcement and role models (leading to self selection out at early ages), mixed with sexism in a a variety of forms (leading to lack of opportunities, or hostile environment and self selection out at later ages).

But that's an oversimplification.

If women don't choose to go into tech, that's their own choice.

It's not as if men went into tech because of positive social reinforcement for being a nerd.

There's still a social stigma attached to it, which I'd love to see change, but it affects both men and women.

It's a choice, but it's not the same choice. When a woman signs up to be an engineer, she's signing up for long hours debugging segfaults, just like a man. But unlike a man, she's signing up to spend four years in school being one of the handful of women in her class, then entering a workforce with the likes of Uber, etc. There signing up for a life of awkward encounters with coworkers, supervisors who try to date female employees, limited support networks, etc.

None of that stopped women from entering law, medicine, business, etc.

Tech isn't new. Why haven't women chosen to enter tech in the same numbers they've chosen other male-dominated fields?

> None of that stopped women from entering law, medicine, business, etc.

As to law, it didn't happen by magic. After openly excluding women into the 1970s, law schools and law firms made concerted efforts to increase the representation of women. Large law firms not only track demographic information for hiring and promotions, they disclose it to legal publications who report on it. These days much of it has become self reinforcing. Frat culture has a hard time surviving in an environment where a big chunk of the clients are women (a quarter of existing Fortune 500 CLOs and a third of new ones are women).

That's all true of tech as well. People should seriously ask why women aren't choosing tech careers, because the "old boys club" or "frat culture" explanation isn't at all unique to tech.

There is not a stigma against "in tech". There was never a stigma against it, really.

And yes, men largely do get into stem fields because there is huge positive reinforcement and many positive role models.

>There is not a stigma against "in tech". There was never a stigma against it, really.

Yeah. Traditionally all the cool kids were the math and computer whizes with glasses and pocket protectors - not the star football player. Yeah. Got it.

>And yes, men largely do get into stem fields because there is huge positive reinforcement and many positive role models.

Uh huh. Can you quantify that? Or did you just sit down and think really really really hard about it so it must be true.

>and many positive role models

Is that actually a real problem? Are you saying a white kid will be dissuaded from playing basketball, or even being an NBA fan because the best players are black?

In similar spirit, are you really trying to argue that a young girl will not be able to be inspired by Woz, or Jobs, or Elon Musk because they are men? What dystopian, ugly world are you living in?

I'm pretty sure the cool kids in my school did individual sports (golf, tennis, track), were in 2-3 AP classes, and aced their SATs. So that'd depend on where and when you are.

There's absolutely a stigma against not confirming to prevailing norms, which is a bit of a different discussion. Also the mess that is putting hundreds or even thousands of adolescents in a confined space with minimal oversight.

>Uh huh. Can you quantify that? Or did you just sit down and think really really really hard about it so it must be true.

Why did you get into it?

>Is that actually a real problem?

Yes. Though, representation generally is probably a better way to have said it. Though availability of role models and mentors with similar life experience is a factor as well.

>Are you saying a white kid will be dissuaded from playing basketball, or even being an NBA fan because the best players are black?

Fandom and participation aren't the same things, and while there's some overlap between former participation and later fandom in sports, it's far from 1 to 1.

I'm not sure if white kids would be discouraged due to lack of representation in the NBA. All other things being equal, yes, that's a likely outcome. But all other things are not equal. Race and sports in the US is an interesting topic in its own right.

>In similar spirit, are you really trying to argue that a young girl will not be able to be inspired by Woz, or Jobs, or Elon Musk because they are men?

Not at all. But a lack of representation has a few different impacts. At the personal level, individuals find it easier to identify with folks who they see as being like them. What exactly like them means varies, but the younger the child, the less abstract they tend to be. Second, parents and teachers are influenced by lack of representation, so it feeds back into a loop of lack of community encouragement, which doesn't help.

>What dystopian, ugly world are you living in?

The same one as you, of course.

Really what I'm getting at, there is no 'structural racism' in this case. You cannot point at a law, or mandate, or policy that actively discriminates against an ethnicity, race, or gender. The best you can do is give some hand-wavy argument that 'unconscious biases' are driving racist actions without knowledge of the person - but what is a person supposed to do with that? They are racist in such a secret way that even they are unaware of it? Total garbage.

What is your explanation for the underrepresentation of black people and women in engineering besides structural racism and sexism? If the answer is "self selection," explain to me what could possibly cause women and black people to self-select out of high paying interesting jobs?

>What is your explanation for the underrepresentation of black people and women in engineering besides structural racism and sexism?

Null hypothesis. YOU are making an unsubstantiated claim. What is YOUR proof of this structural racism. And feel free to define your terms, because I have no effin clue what 'structural racism' is.

Here's an alternative explanation, people are influenced by the sub-cultures they are in and ideas that go viral in one sub-culture, may not go viral in another. In the early 1900s professional basketball was dominated by Jews. Why basketball? I don't know. It just happened to strike a chord with that specific population, in that specific time.

I'm not saying this is the reason, but what it is, is an example that YOU have to dismiss or account for to prove YOUR claim.

>If the answer is "self selection," explain to me what could possibly cause women and black people to self-select out of high paying interesting jobs?

An average salary for a radiologist is $350,000/year. Why aren't you a radiologist? I'll tell you why I'm not. I would rather shoot myself than spend the amount of time it takes to become a radiologist because I have no interest in it. I have no interest in memorizing massive amount of latin names and reading volumes of biology and anatomy text books. Similarly, if you don't love programming, programming is an insanely boring and tedious profession. You may sit in-front of a computer screen for days trying to find a bug that occurs sporadically under some very specific conditions. I find that fun, others who have no interest in it will want to shoot themselves too.

So to answer your question: "I don't know" but if your criteria is human irrationality, I can go on and on and on and on... Why are middle-class kids borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to private liberal arts colleges with no real hope of landing a job that will provide them an income to pay of those loans? Come to think of it, why do humanities degrees even exist? Why do people buy lottery tickets when investing the equivalent money will net them a significantly higher return rate?

Humans are not rational agents. We're driven by emotion.

We known several things as fact. We know overt and open oppression of black people happened as recently as the 1970s and 1980s. (I'd say it's still happening, but the fact that it did happen in the recent past is indisputable.) And we know that black households make only 60% as much at the median as white households. All I'm doing is suggesting a causal relationship between the two.

Since you reject my hypothesis, I'm asking you to suggest an alternative. And your alternative appears to be, "I don't know why, but for some reason black people just don't like money." Which doesn't make any goddamn sense. Sure individuals are different, but why would we expect groups of people to have such distinct preferences? To me your theory smacks of rationalization.

That's surely a factor, but there are many other factors that have to be considered: the stigma against "acting white", Democratic benefit programs that breed dependency and make wealth building almost impossible, violence, fatherless families [1]. The opportunities for success exist; now, it's up to people to work for success.

1: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/...

>Since you reject my hypothesis

I reject your hypothesis on the basis that you have provided no evidence.

>I'm asking you to suggest an alternative

An alternative to what? Why there are less black people and women in tech than there are Asians and whites? I don't know. It could be any number of reasons and none of them may have to do anything with racism or misogyny. You can't just prove your assertion by saying "well i can't think of anything else it could be therefore racism must be the cause".

>And your alternative appears to be, "I don't know why, but for some reason black people just don't like money."

Your paraphrasing of a position I put forward is disgusting. It isn't at all what I said. At all.

You also missed my point. I'm not saying I believe my alternative. I have no evidence for it just like you don't have any for yours. I put it out there to demonstrate that there are potential alternatives that would need to be taken into account.

>Sure individuals are different, but why would we expect groups of people to have such distinct preferences

That's a good question. A type of question that one could study and get a Masters for or a PhD. Certainly there is plenty of precedent at least when it comes to tastes in movies, music and food. So why would you just dismiss it out of hand and blame racism?

> Mostly, it seems like a lack of positive reinforcement and role models

If one presupposes that men and women are literally just the same. As in they have the same distribution of proclivities and personality traits across their gender this would be the most logical conclusion to reach.

As an aside. Anyone ever heard of David Reimer? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer