They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with men, even trained teachers, who were abjectly unable to interact with women in a way that left them feeling comfortable. This is of course not to say that such men do not exist, as they surely do. But after a decade or two of experience, why roll the dice?

They're not afraid of this by chance; this is a rational fear arising from a hundred, a thousand previous encounters with women, even women in management, who were abjectly unable to interact with men in a way that left them feeling comfortable. This is of course not to say that such women do not exist, as they surely do. But after a decade or two of experience, why roll the dice?

Now that I've flipped the genders, do you see how offensive your comment is?

My general view: if women are avoiding computing due to the stereotypes and intolerance as you describe, then good riddance.

No. I'd recommend you also ask a woman for her opinion, though, in case my male-ness has prevented me from seeing the obvious.

For future reference, statements made about privileged groups are not, generally, as offensive as those made about the unprivileged. For example:

My general view: if men are avoiding childcare due to the stereotypes and intolerance as you describe, then good riddance.

From another perspective, would you think it reasonable for black men to avoid tech because of "a thousand previous encounters with [white]men who were abjectly unable to interact with [black individuals] in a way that left them feeling comfortable"?

My first thought when I read the article was "lol 'built a wordpress.org,' nice." Then I realized I was being an idiot and that it's great that they're learning. But something didn't jive---excluding my little sister, at no point can I remember teaching a female anything technical without getting either impatient or patronizing.

But, as I think about it, both are signs that I wasn't really there to teach. I was either trying to impress them, or uphold my self-image of being smart, or something else that wasn't teaching.

As a single guy of no particular attractiveness studying a technical subject, I consider myself a member of what one could call the aspirational class of the social world. I don't feel satisfied with where I am in life. Considering the low value we place on teaching in our society, I'm pretty sure teaching would not be a good way to remedy this.

I wouldn't be surprised if many male teachers of technical subjects aren't really happy to be teaching at all. Wallowing in their discontent or outside ambitions, perhaps they're unable to fully engage in the empathy required for good teaching. Questions "obvious" from the instructor's point of view will be brushed off or scorned, reflections of his self-hate. A male student hearing this will think, "Fuck him, I'll learn this anyway." A female student will think, "Why on earth am I hanging out in this environment?"

A better solution might be to teach women (and men) to accept and understand different styles of communication. And that class shouldn't be gender-specific.

In regard to programming, another commenter had a great solution. Get some books, make a github account, learn to code. You have complete anonymity on github. It's a place where all aspects of your individuality can drop out of consideration except the most important in the context: your ability to understand and write code.

Think carefully.

This is a somewhat prejudiced argument; try switching the roles, or maybe adding ethnicity in there, and you'll see. “Everyone knows” etc.

Of course, that's not to say it must be untrue. The (at least perceived) alternate pedagogy does seem to work, so I'm all for it!

Of course, I imagine there are plenty of women who would never attend a class called "Ladies Learning Code," but they might be receptive to a different strategy. The point is that having multiple fronts in this war on computer illiteracy may be more effective than having a single big one.

I encourage you to think less like a software engineer and more like a hacker. These people are gaining greater digital literacy. They are gaining the tools to solve their own problems.

Only a few of them will take up software as a profession. They will be subject to the same filtering process as everyone else.

> If we allow the future of the web, software, hardware, video games, etc. to be conceptualized, created and maintained by just one sector of the population, it’s impossible to expect that it will serve the needs of the entire group.

and

> We recognize the power of diversity and want to seek ways to attract more women and girls in to the tech industry – for their own personal benefit and the overall potential of the industry.

suggest the goal is to substantially change the face of the industry. And the existing filter is entirely inadequate for a large number of candidates only moderately interested.

The program fails if most of the women, upon exiting the program, start programming with men and say "This isn't like Ladies Learning Code!" and either quit programming altogether or simply join other groups of women to program.