There's intermittent controversy over having women in combat. Countries that have tried it, incidentally, find that it's a liability because men tend to go apeshit protective when female soldiers get hurt.
"But I'll never see that because I think secretly deep down they know, gee, people are different, genders are different, and there's something about gender that just has this shaping force on our interests and talents."
If so, it may be helpful if more women were involved in software, because if women are different from men that probably extends to how they use software, and it would be good if software was better for women.
For software I'd be less certain. It is well-known that being your own customer can be a powerful thing. It is not inconceivable that on average men and women may approach computing tasks somewhat differently, different goals, different metaphors, different preferred cognitive frameworks. And while I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be night and day different, as Apple shows getting those last tiny details nailed down can make a huge difference in how a product feels. If men even slightly prefer one thing and women slightly prefer another, an interface tuned for one or another slight difference could manifest as a huge impact on the pleasure of using the software.
Unfortunately, we are reduced to hypothesizing here because I am not aware of any amount of study on the topic. All I can say is that it is certainly conceivable and not necessarily unfair.
I would also suspect that if such differences exist they are likely to be as I said above more in the cognitive domain than in the more stereotypical appearance domain. I don't know per se that women will necessarily respond to a more rounded or pink or whatever stereotypical visual thing you might initially come up with, I suspect it'll be something more like men prefer more spatial organization, say for MP3s, whereas women may prefer more word-based and tagging organization, just to give one example. (And as you can see from that example there's going to be substantial overlap no matter what.) I'm not claiming this difference would even hold true, I offer it merely as an example of a cognitive preference.
The same arguments they used 50 years ago to keep woman out of frontline police work are still being used to keep woman out of combat.
Solution: all female battalions.
1. You can search for "amazon" on this page: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/16/magazine/the-rush-hours.ht...
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it"
Needless to say, this idea has been thought of before, and people tend to look poorly on those who employ it.
But we've never seen 'setting up hundreds of your men to be slaughtered by your enemies' as a ridiculous strategy.
They're both ridiculous strategies, and yet we routinely deploy the one and are horrified at the other.
The 'children' bit is just a strawman, as are the 'buses' to use them as human shields. We're talking about prejudice here, and why just changing sex seems to have an effect over and beyond the competence angle.
Loss of 80% of the male population could be recovered fairly quickly, but loss of 80% of the females would be devastating for generations.
In the whirlwind of 20th century liberation movements, people seem to forget that there really _are_ fundamental differences between certain types of people. Not differences like "women are only good at cleaning and men only think about sex", but differences like "women are generally more often disposed to child-rearing and men are generally more often disposed to computer programming".
I don't see what good there is in ignoring these differences. Yes, some people took it too far and decided women shouldn't vote and blacks and whites couldn't intermingle, but that doesn't mean we go to the other extreme and plug our ears and refuse to believe that any one type of person is predisposed to a behavior, belief, or emotional status.
Certainly, there is little data to back the natural difference up AFAIK, and again correlation is not causation. For example, how much is due to the fact that women willing to have a child need to have them in a period which is generally considered crucial for your job ? For law and medical related jobs, the mandatory length for studies is much longer than for tech - is this a factor ? I can think of many other reasons to explain the current situation which has nothing to do with "how our brain are different" and other platitudes. It may be true, but it is so close to the usual cliches that people will legitimately consider them as such unless you have strong evidence to argue it.
As culture becomes more homogenous, the differences are becoming less evident. I'm don't think people are proposing an extreme "plugging ears" situation, but a "hey let's push them a little further and see what they can do" often with astounding success. I think this mostly depends if you view the impacts of women on the technical fields so far as positive or negative. I personally believe they have had a positive impact (look at my other posts) so I am more inclined to push women past their societal boundaries, hopefully not past their 'fundamental female' boundaries.
You say that people took it too far in the past. Why was that? I think that they didn't just take it too far, they made a categorical and methodical mistake. They did not question the basis on which to make such assumptions. In that sense, you're making the same mistake today.
[Edit] And don't forget that we're talking about something - web startups and entrepreneurship - that takes an incredibly broad range of capabilities that have nothing to do with having babies. It's not like we're talking about interest and talent for breast feeding. And by the way, I totally agree with Arrington. He doesn't say anything about why we see what we see though.
Yes, there should be some room for "gender differences" which is not necessarily distinguishable anyway--however, there are actually compelling reasons for women and men to join fields that they are minorities in.
In this case, it is not that women merely choose not to go into technical fields out of pure disinterest. It is the social barriers and the lack of exposure women have had since childhood. This comic briefly explains: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883
Women have the possibility of increasing the total popularity of the field and decreasing the social stigma behind technological fields. They increase the total size and productivity of the industry. They increase the diversity of perspectives in the field. They appeal better to and understand female clients. They could make technological fields more presentable and appealing.
This technological feminism helps women as well. There are increasing spaces for Computer Science-related jobs in the industry and there is not an equally strong work force rising to meet it. Making it more appealing and more acceptable for women to take these roles (there would have to be a disproportionate push towards women because of their given backgrounds) would give them a wider range of profitable options in life and would increase the accessibility of the technological culture to all women. I believe that the 'geek' culture surrounding the growth of technology is becoming a more important and significant part of mainstream culture, yet women are not participating in it as widely as men are. The implications for the culture and the women not participating it are not great.
I realize the group here is not as receptive to technological feminism, being primarily male and anti-feminist, so I will stop here. Please feel free to message me if you are interested.
However, it is true that "building" type toys are generally marketed to boys only, and that's got to be a factor.
One interesting data point; lately they've been marketing a Barbie with a tiny camera (concealed as a pendant necklace) and LCD screen on the back. Apparently many boys think this is "creepy", but many girls instantly see the possibilities of making movies from Barbie's point of view.
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/lights-camera...
So, we have really one set of women with some sort of interest in actually being in the tech industry, but they're mostly talking about someone doing something stupid, which can and does happen in every other industry. I don't think a limited number of misogynistic instances is really indicative of the state of the industry.
If someone can point out a recent article written by a woman who tried to enter the tech industry but couldn't because we're a sexist bunch, I'd love to read it. So far, though, I just haven't come across that.
[1]: The one that comes to mind is the talk given for some Rails function a year or so ago. I don't remember who gave the talk or what it was about. I just remember it caused a big stink.
This isn't obvious. If you want to argue this point you need to offer evidence.
> It obviously comes up and the fact that it keeps coming up means there is underlying issue that is not being addressed.
Your conclusion that there is a cause not yet addressed doesn't follow. The recurrence of an argument can just as easily be attributed to arguers who can't admit they're wrong or don't understand their opponents, especially in this case when the arguers aren't female tech startup founders.
> Nobody is saying it's an issue that is easy to address but both educators and women in tech keep bringing up the issue so the incumbents are not doing a good job addressing it.
You didn't specify what the "issue" is. As ahlatimer pointed out, this claim needs support. And again, your conclusion doesn't follow, for the same reasons.
> Plus, it is in everyone interests to have all kinds of people be technologically savvy whether they are male or female.
A trivial statement. Ideally everyone would be savvy at everything. It seems like you're trying to argue that women are capable of something in this space that men are not, but I'm not sure what that is.
Look, it may be that you have valid points, but you're embarrassing yourself with the way you argue them. Read [1] if you don't understand why. You're a consistent DH3, which means you contradict without justifying, hence the downvotes. Anecdotal evidence, studies, careful reasoning (that doesn't use the word "obvious"), etc. would help everyone understand the merits of your point of view better than repetition.
Yay for stakeholder representation and death-by-committee.
Groups cannot be involved in doing things, only in preventing things. Individuals can do things, and it really doesn't matter what groups those individuals may be seen by others to be a part of. All that matters is whether they're willing to try something new and different, and whether everyone else feels like using whatever they build.
No structure, no "process" for groups to get involved in and veto, just people doing interesting things and other people choosing whether to use those things.
What would that "something" and that "force" be?
The next time I see somebody complain about too few women in software I want to see them complain about too few men working in hair salons, too few men working in child day care centers, too few women working the trash pickup trucks, too few men in corporate HR, too few women in Tactial Special Ops teams. But I'll never see that because I think secretly deep down they know, gee, people are different, genders are different, and there's something about gender that just has this shaping force on our interests and talents. And that there's nothing wrong with that. Really, it will be okay. Just relax. Carry on.
Instead let us all please focus on real problems and challenges like hunger, disease, WMD proliferation, climate change, pollution, education cost & disparity, etc.