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A comment on Google executive fired after female boss groped him. Parent comment

Re:Google executive fired after female boss groped him by RangerScience on Monday January 30, 2023 @03:03PM (#34585582)
:shrug: The first computer scientist (IMHO) was a woman - Ada Lovelace [1]. It's also my understanding that, when computers were first introduced, they were mostly seen as aide to secretarial work, which is why a lot of the early computer pioneers were women - it was actually women-dominated at that time [2].

So there's (IMO) historical evidence that it's not inherently a "male" field; which I see as evidence that the imbalance is unexpected and undesirable.

(That said, I can't speak to why it's an "urgent" priority)

[1] Babbage invented the mechanical calculator. Ada realized you could do calculations on something other than numbers. IMO that makes Babbage the first computer engineer, and Ada the first computer scientist.

[2] one article of many on this: https://digitalfuturesociety.com/programming-when-did-womens...

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Re:Google executive fired after female boss groped him by enknamel on Monday January 30, 2023 @05:38PM (#34587569)
That's not really a point relevant to the discussion. What matters when it comes to hiring, is that for any open CS role, >90% of applicants are male.

Looking up the funnel, about 80% of CS graduates are male (even though females outnumber males in college attendance).

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Re:Google executive fired after female boss groped him by ShredKazoo on Monday January 30, 2023 @09:56PM (#34590275)
At the bottom of the Seattle Times article I linked is a list of occupations that used to be male-dominated and are now female-dominated, e.g. veterinarian.

Can we conclude that the gender imbalance among veterinarians is unexpected and undesirable?

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Re:Google executive fired after female boss groped him by RangerScience on Monday January 30, 2023 @11:54PM (#34591329)
It's a good question, and I am troubled by not having the same reaction.

I would say tho that yes, I think it's unexpected and it's probably undesirable. What I'd want to check is how the male veterinarians felt about it. Do they feel like they're running into issues doing their job because of their gender?

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