Re:Autism and gender imbalance in tech
by MichaelGG on Sunday August 06, 2017 @05:40PM
(#14943727)
I'm not sure this is accurate.
Well roughly only 1% of the US population are software developers, so I think you could have a workforce only consisting of autists. Not only that, but if the autism ratio is 2:1 male and you filled all positions with autists, you'd have numbers near what Google has in reality for male/female.
Wikipedia suggests the ratio for autism is actually 4:1. So if a company had 50% autists and 50% non-autists with 50/50 balance, you'd get the ratios like Google has today.
If only 1/3rd of the workforce is autistic (4:1), then you don't need a huge bias in the rest of the hiring to get the 2:1 ratios we see in practise. Systemic bias and any other factors could easily bridge that gap.
Well roughly only 1% of the US population are software developers, so I think you could have a workforce only consisting of autists. Not only that, but if the autism ratio is 2:1 male and you filled all positions with autists, you'd have numbers near what Google has in reality for male/female.
Wikipedia suggests the ratio for autism is actually 4:1. So if a company had 50% autists and 50% non-autists with 50/50 balance, you'd get the ratios like Google has today.
If only 1/3rd of the workforce is autistic (4:1), then you don't need a huge bias in the rest of the hiring to get the 2:1 ratios we see in practise. Systemic bias and any other factors could easily bridge that gap.