How to get more women in IT and technical fields.

Hugo Drax

Diamond Member
Nov 20, 2011
5,647
47
91
ATTN ALL WOMEN! When you have a baby girl, don't buy them Barbies, easy bake ovens, Disney Princess shit,etc..

Buy them Lego sets,chemistry sets,erector sets,arduinos,computers, take them to the library and science museums, do experiments with them, etc...

Thats how you get more women into IT and technical fields.


You always here people talking about how to fix this issue but the problem is in the parents, you have to lay the foundation right from the beginning and plant the seed.
 
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Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,710
6,198
126
How are we going to get men to be psychologists, give them dolls to play with?
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
16,189
14,102
136
How are we going to get men to be psychologists, give them dolls to play with?

The OP seems to suggest that nurture matters more than nature, at least when it comes to choice of occupations. Are you suggesting the opposite?
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,710
6,198
126
The OP seems to suggest that nurture matters more than nature, at least when it comes to choice of occupations. Are you suggesting the opposite?

That is not what he is suggesting. He is assuming, without any real psychological or scientific understanding of the factors which might engender and cause a proclivity to seek a scientific occupation or discourage one in relationship to gender, that he actually knows those specifics, and that they are the ones with such certainty he disposited here.

As a parallel to his thinking, so that he might reflect on what I, at least, would call unscientific thinking, I suggest a similarly off the wall cure, that perhaps he should have spent more time playing with dolls.

In general I would say that the essence of the issue is not to seek to provide a nurture with objectives, but to provide one in which nature flowers, whatever it may be.
 

CitizenKain

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2000
4,480
14
76
ATTN ALL WOMEN! When you have a baby girl, don't buy them Barbies, easy bake ovens, Disney Princess shit,etc..

Buy them Lego sets,chemistry sets,erector sets,arduinos,computers, take them to the library and science museums, do experiments with them, etc...

Thats how you get more women into IT and technical fields.


You always here people talking about how to fix this issue but the problem is in the parents, you have to lay the foundation right from the beginning and plant the seed.

Also get rid of the sexist idiots that infest the industry. Because that is where the real problem is, not parents not buying a chemistry set.
 

mammador

Platinum Member
Dec 9, 2010
2,128
1
76
Because women are less rational, it's proven...

In my country there are numerous ICT female professionals.........perhaps the USA is not as enlightened as it may think.
 

realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
12,337
898
126
How are we going to get men to be psychologists, give them dolls to play with?

And Moonie comes in with the perfect comment.

If you want to grow "women" into wanting something, then you are trying to grow them into what you want. How about letting the kids decide what they want. If a boy wants a doll, get him a doll. If he wants Legos, get him Legos. The same should apply to girls.

Women are rational people who make choices based off of their situation. Right now, women bare the biggest responsibility in terms of child birth. Society has created a situation where a pregnant woman is very productive, but there becomes a point where many tasks become difficult or impossible. A woman can do just about any IT job. Once she gets pregnant, it becomes a different matter. If she is 7 months pregnant and a company needs a data center configured, she cannot be expected to stand 12+ hours building racks. Its hard enough for a normal person, but then you add in all the stresses of being pregnant and its unhealthy.

There are always going to be differences between men and women, because we are physically gender dimorphic. We have physical differences in our body structure and brain structure. We should make sure there are not policies and culture factors that inhibit choices, but that is about it. Let people be people.
 

Spungo

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2012
3,217
2
81
ATTN ALL WOMEN! When you have a baby girl, don't buy them Barbies, easy bake ovens, Disney Princess shit,etc..

Buy them Lego sets,chemistry sets,erector sets,arduinos,computers, take them to the library and science museums, do experiments with them, etc...
You're a bad parent if your daughter asks for a Barbie doll and you buy her a chemistry set. Should we also force boys to use easy bake ovens? Should we use gender-neutral pronouns so kids grow up with sexual identity issues?


You always here hear people talking about how to fix this issue but the problem is in the parents, you have to lay the foundation right from the beginning and plant the seed.
Another feminist talking point that is provably wrong. It's almost completely determined by genetics and hormones. This "social construct" idea comes from the same group of people who think beauty is a social construct instead of something that is purely objective. Even newborn babies show significant personality differences based on gender, and newborn babies will look at beautiful faces longer than ugly faces. These things are not social constructs. Men, on average, are more interested in machines and tools. Women, on average, are more interested in people. There isn't some global conspiracy that pushes women into nursing and teaching.


It's amazing how much people want to deny reality. I'm about 30 right now, and I'm seeing drastic personality changes in my friends. It's like someone flipped a switch. Suddenly they are moms. They act like moms. They think like moms. They talk like moms. I can either assume all of their husbands and boyfriends are beating the hell out of them to make them act this way, or I can make the simpler conclusion that some kind of hormone change is radically changing their behavior. We see the same effect in teens. A feminist/progressive/whatever would say teens act irrational and unstable because of some social conditioning. A medical doctor would facepalm at this idea and say it's obviously caused by hormones, something we've known for at least 100 years.

It would be wonderful if personality were as simple as social conditioning. I wouldn't need to take antidepressants to cancel out the mood instability caused by hormonal birth control. I would just learn to stop being depressed. Maybe fertility itself could be a social construct, and I could prevent pregnancy by talking about it and rubbing magic crystals on my forehead.

Women are rational people who make choices based off of their situation.
Exactly. This effect is called something like the "gender equality paradox." In countries where women have the most opportunity, women choose the easiest path. In countries that really suck, women work extremely hard. We just want an acceptable standard of living. If one can be happy making 30k per year, why not go into something you love doing, such as child care? In countries like the Soviet Union, women often took on highly technical positions like engineering and medicine. It wasn't really a choice. If you want that 30k lifestyle in the USSR, you need to be a doctor. Look at the extreme opposite of that - marrying an upper middle class guy and being a stay at home mom. If it's possible to get that 30k/year lifestyle while staying at home to care for children, why not do it?

We keep trying to fix something that isn't a real problem. Should anyone care when there is a lack of male nurses? If men don't want to be nurses, they shouldn't be nurses. The last thing we need is nurses who don't want to be there, engineers who don't want to be engineers, and lawyers who don't want to be lawyers.
 
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K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
46,880
34,834
136
I don't think what you recommend will make a difference, getting rid of the stereotypes that prevent them from striving in STEM fields is what will make them want to get into the fields.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/27/women-in-tech_n_6955940.html

ding

As a non tech worker who spends basically all my time around tech folks the issues mentioned in the article are quite real. The culture has even further evolved to exclude women. A large part of tech company culture essentially looks (from my anecdotal obeservation) like a big frat party where the geeks are welcome (because someone has to do the coding and engineering) complete with the immature and boorish behavior that is let go because it's "creative" or "innovative" or "disruptive". Misogyny is rampant even in some of the best companies either through negligence or actually driven by the attitudes of people at the top.
 

Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,296
149
106
You're a bad parent if your daughter asks for a Barbie doll and you buy her a chemistry set. Should we also force boys to use easy bake ovens? Should we use gender-neutral pronouns so kids grow up with sexual identity issues?

maybe your daughter wants a barbie doll because she sees all the other girls with barbie dolls. if you don't at least try to steer her into the creative thinking toys, she'll never get to explore that side and see if she likes it better.
 

Spungo

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2012
3,217
2
81
maybe your daughter wants a barbie doll because she sees all the other girls with barbie dolls. if you don't at least try to steer her into the creative thinking toys, she'll never get to explore that side and see if she likes it better.

Yes, make her a social outcast. That will help her build her personality.
 

polarmystery

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2005
3,907
8
81
ATTN ALL WOMEN! When you have a baby girl, don't buy them Barbies, easy bake ovens, Disney Princess shit,etc..

Buy them Lego sets,chemistry sets,erector sets,arduinos,computers, take them to the library and science museums, do experiments with them, etc...

Thats how you get more women into IT and technical fields.


You always here people talking about how to fix this issue but the problem is in the parents, you have to lay the foundation right from the beginning and plant the seed.

It doesn't matter, and biologically it just isn't possible. I've read countless stories, documentaries, and articles about the disparity between the interests of the genders, and how the correlate to real life choices (careers et all). Biologically, we are just interested in different things. You can't force the issue (on a macro level) even if you tried. It isn't that the genders can't do disparate things, it is simply that they don't want to.

One of my favorite documentaries:
https://vimeo.com/19707588
Go to about the 19 minute mark.
 
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Aharami

Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
21,296
149
106
so what happens if your daughter goes to a friends house and plays with legos and decides she likes that better than playing with barbies and dolls? Are you going to force more dolls on her to keep her aligned with society?!
 

Jimzz

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2012
4,399
190
106
It also helps to not sexual harass them as well. My wife is a computer engineer and she and all the other female engineers I have meet all have crazy stories.

1 guy told one women to write back on a different e-mail account as the company was watching him due to other complaints.
Another would keep calling/writing and even flew from another state when she said no and would not write back any more.
A married guy just bluntly said "I want to have sex with you..." during work and was dead serious.
etc...

Are all you male engineers pervs with no skills in dating?
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,823
1,493
126
It also helps to not sexual harass them as well. My wife is a computer engineer and she and all the other female engineers I have meet all have crazy stories.

1 guy told one women to write back on a different e-mail account as the company was watching him due to other complaints.
Another would keep calling/writing and even flew from another state when she said no and would not write back any more.
A married guy just bluntly said "I want to have sex with you..." during work and was dead serious.
etc...

Are all you male engineers pervs with no skills in dating?

This. The problem with women in IT is the men in IT. 30 years of being "that nerdy job" for "that guy who doesn't like people" has taken its toll. And a lot of just gets overlooked because, well, "oh, he's just the weird IT guy."

If IT people and engineers had half the social skills of the average Walmart employee, the industry would be 50/50 in five years.
 

MrPickins

Diamond Member
May 24, 2003
9,022
600
126
You're a bad parent if your daughter asks for a Barbie doll and you buy her a chemistry set. Should we also force boys to use easy bake ovens? Should we use gender-neutral pronouns so kids grow up with sexual identity issues?

This is true; the child should not be forced into something they have no interest in.

Another feminist talking point that is provably wrong. It's almost completely determined by genetics and hormones. This "social construct" idea comes from the same group of people who think beauty is a social construct instead of something that is purely objective. Even newborn babies show significant personality differences based on gender, and newborn babies will look at beautiful faces longer than ugly faces. These things are not social constructs. Men, on average, are more interested in machines and tools. Women, on average, are more interested in people. There isn't some global conspiracy that pushes women into nursing and teaching.

Umm, nature vs nurture is hotly debated, but I don't know anyone that says it's all nature and no nurture when it comes to a child's development.
 

woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
16,189
14,102
136
That is not what he is suggesting. He is assuming, without any real psychological or scientific understanding of the factors which might engender and cause a proclivity to seek a scientific occupation or discourage one in relationship to gender, that he actually knows those specifics, and that they are the ones with such certainty he disposited here.

As a parallel to his thinking, so that he might reflect on what I, at least, would call unscientific thinking, I suggest a similarly off the wall cure, that perhaps he should have spent more time playing with dolls.

In general I would say that the essence of the issue is not to seek to provide a nurture with objectives, but to provide one in which nature flowers, whatever it may be.

I'm not sure what you mean by that last sentence. I will say that I believe the two genders have different biological inclinations in many areas including occupational choice. However, that is a general tendency within each gender. Individual genetic variation will cause a portion of each gender to have inclinations more characteristic of the opposite gender. For example, although a far lower percentage of women regularly consume pornography, the women who do (10-20%) tend to view the same "stag" porn as men, not the type of feminist or female friendly porn that is produced for women. Research suggests that these women may be "wired like men" when it comes to sexual proclivities. Similarly, there is a percentage of women biologically inclined toward occupational choices traditionally associated with men.

The trouble is how the "nature" aspect plays into this. It tends to reinforce the general biological tendency of the group without regard to the individual variation. Hence, girls receive almost exclusively toys traditionally interesting to girls. Most girls are fine with this and actually prefer it. Others who are biologically inclined in a different direction will go with it because this is what society quite obviously expects of them.

The OP's idea makes sense if what the parents are doing is providing additional choices to their children - they can buy the girls dolls and chemistry sets and let the child explore both. If they are only interested in the dolls, there isn't much point in trying to force it. If the OP is suggesting that it can be forced then he is mistaken. He is also mistaken if he thinks that parental influence could ever level the playing field within these occupations. It might, however, have some effect in encouraging those with a natural inclination to cross-over by avoiding imposition of the expectation that they should always go with what is expected of the entire gender. This is less about using nurture to force a result which runs counter to nature than it is about removing an impediment to pursuit of the natural tendencies of certain individuals, to provide a context in which "nature flowers" as you suggest.

Contrary to some of the assertions in this thread, it is self-evident that nurture plays some role in occupational choices. If this were not the case, there would be the same percentage of women in math and sciences today as there was 50 years ago.
 

Imp

Lifer
Feb 8, 2000
18,829
184
106
My company made an effort to hire female entry-level engineers but some of the more social ones with larger personalities seemed to leave within a few years. Speaking to their work acquaintances revealed that they were leaving the field entirely.

A big reason I left STEM after 6 years (over 10 if you count school) was that there was barely any social interaction. I had work friends and talked to coworkers about work, but I wanted to actually have to interact with more than 2 people a week. I could go weeks without leaving my desk and sometimes spent a week or two in the field alone. The worst part was that the people I got to interact with usually had no social skills. And because their social skills sucked, I often felt compelled to be as deadpan and "professional" as possible.

And maybe I was at the wrong companies, but the work became so cookie-cutter. There were a handful of design variations and I spent more time doing administrative type work than anything creative. I understand the business case of not screwing with success, but it doesn't make for great work. There were literally phonebooks of standardized responses to everything.

Killing off the kardashians would be a good first step.

I don't understand how a show with ~5 million viewers (?) produces "stars" that are so popular.
 

Blitzvogel

Platinum Member
Oct 17, 2010
2,012
23
81
Egalitarian idiots haven't figured out that boys/men and girls/women are different. I have no problems with equality in opportunity but to forcibly move one sex or the other in and out of fields is way out of bounds of what should be done. There is also nothing wrong with a women (or a man) wanting to take care of the kids and home either. Hell, I think it's a better model for early years parenting anyways.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,670
7,896
126
Fabricated dilemma - We need more female coders

Solution - Throw a bunch of money at it, and get nothing
 
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