Tim Cook: 'No Good Excuse' For Lack of Women In Tech (bbc.com) 394
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Apple chief executive Tim Cook says there are still "not enough women at the table" at the world's tech firms -- including his own. He said there were "no good excuses" for the lack of women in the sector. Apple has just launched its founders' development program for female founders and app creators in the UK. "I think the the essence of technology and its effect on humanity depends upon women being at the table," Mr Cook says. "Technology's a great thing that will accomplish many things, but unless you have diverse views at the table that are working on it, you don't wind up with great solutions."
Apple had 35% female staff in the US in 2021, according to its own diversity figures. It launched its original Apple Health Kit in 2014 without a period tracker -- which led to accusations that this was an oversight due to male bias among its developers. One challenge facing the sector is the lack of girls choosing to pursue science, tech, engineering and maths subjects at school. "Businesses can't cop out and say 'there's not enough women taking computer science -- therefore I can't hire enough,'" says Mr Cook. "We have to fundamentally change the number of people that are taking computer science and programming." His view is that everybody should be required to take some sort of coding course by the time they finish school, in order to have a "working knowledge" of how coding works and how apps are created. According to Deloitte Global, large global tech firms will reach nearly 33% overall female representation in their workforces in 2022 on average -- with 25% occupying technical roles.
In the interview with the BBC, Cook also commented on the future of augmented reality, saying: "in the future, people will wonder how we lived without AR." He added: "we're investing a ton in that space." Earlier this year, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple could announced its long-rumored mixed-reality headset as soon as January 2023.
Apple had 35% female staff in the US in 2021, according to its own diversity figures. It launched its original Apple Health Kit in 2014 without a period tracker -- which led to accusations that this was an oversight due to male bias among its developers. One challenge facing the sector is the lack of girls choosing to pursue science, tech, engineering and maths subjects at school. "Businesses can't cop out and say 'there's not enough women taking computer science -- therefore I can't hire enough,'" says Mr Cook. "We have to fundamentally change the number of people that are taking computer science and programming." His view is that everybody should be required to take some sort of coding course by the time they finish school, in order to have a "working knowledge" of how coding works and how apps are created. According to Deloitte Global, large global tech firms will reach nearly 33% overall female representation in their workforces in 2022 on average -- with 25% occupying technical roles.
In the interview with the BBC, Cook also commented on the future of augmented reality, saying: "in the future, people will wonder how we lived without AR." He added: "we're investing a ton in that space." Earlier this year, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple could announced its long-rumored mixed-reality headset as soon as January 2023.
Mansplaining at its finest? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are literally dozens of excellent papers explaining the infrequency of women in STEM, and their prevalence in some parts of STEM without the grinding hours, career death from childbirth, or horrible work/life balance issues common to so many STEM fields. It's so much *fun* to see idiots demand equal outcome rather than equal opportunity!
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James Damore made the same mistake. The authors of the studies he cited claiming to show that women were simply less inclined towards careers in STEM came out and said he misinterpreted them.
For example, in your post you talk about "grinding hours". That's not something inherent to STEM, and arguably it's because men are more willing to do them or less willing to complain about them. It would actually be better for men if more women entered STEM and pushed for better work/life balance. It would also help if
Does Tim also whine about ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... lack of male nurses? ... lack of female fire fighters? ... lack of female plumbers?
Providing a professional environment where people can be friendly and have friendly banter is one thing. Not hiring employees simply based on their genitals because you have some bullshit diversity hire "quota" is reverse discrimination. No one cares.
Re:Does Tim also whine about ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lack of male teachers (elementary through highschool)?
Re:Does Tim also whine about ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lack of male teachers (elementary through highschool)?
There are efforts to attract more men into teaching.
Boys, especially those from low-income homes, do better in classes with male teachers.
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... lack of male nurses?
They exist, but that's mostly because nursing is heavily stereotyped as a female profession so any men who might be interested try to become doctors instead.
More male nurses would definitely be a good thing. For instance, a female nurse I once dated was quite thankful for the male nurses on her unit who could help with lifting heavier patients as well deal with sexist male patients.
... lack of female fire fighters? ... lack of female plumbers?
Probably less of an issue... though I suspect some all-male fire halls get nasty cultural issues that they wouldn't have if th
Re:Does Tim also whine about ... (Score:4, Insightful)
So have you done anything about them, or is this more virtue-signalling from you than actually caring?
Re:Does Tim also whine about ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... lack of male nurses? ... lack of female fire fighters? ... lack of female plumbers?
Probably not. Perhaps that's because Apple doesn't hire a lot of nurses, fire fighters, or plumbers so it's not directly his problem.
Here's the thing. My company, and Apple, have trouble hiring all the good developers we want. It irks me that half the people I might hire aren't even considering a job in software.
Never heard Jobs complain about this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Jobs only cared about getting the right person for the job.
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Jobs was constantly fighting his engineering staff. The engineers used to subvert him however they could, for example by adding expandability to Apple computers when Jobs wanted none. Many of them got fed up and left.
Yes, (Score:5, Insightful)
He's right. There's no excuse, there's only facts. And it's a fact that by every metric that measures freedom of career choice, societies in which women are more free tend to have women focusing on careers that focus on interpersonal social dynamics, and societies that have less freedom of choice have women who tend to focus on money-making technical skills. India vs. the US is the classic example.
There are studies undertaken by researchers who *wish* to find the opposite, but continually find that men and women tend to choose different types of careers. Again, not everyone, and you can't judge any one individual by their gender. https://www.ocregister.com/201... [ocregister.com]
https://nautil.us/why-women-ch... [nautil.us]
https://www.pewresearch.org/fa... [pewresearch.org]
https://www.thequint.com/voice... [thequint.com]
Women also tend to go into certain hard sciences more than men. Why do they not consider this evidence of discrimination? Equality of outcome is completely different than equality of opportunity and freedom of choice.
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> He's right. There's no excuse, there's only facts.
The idea that "there's only facts" does not seem well founded. There are tremendous politics involved in modern "inclusivity" programs, even if many seem founded on fantasy.
Re:Yes, (Score:5, Insightful)
Then explain why this changes over time? Why were there more women in the early days of computing? If this is innate for females then this should not have changed over time. I have seen a steady decrease in percentage of females since I started 40 years ago. There's definitely a societal influence here despite the trolls claiming otherwise.
The field changed so much .... (Score:3)
Why do you need an explanation for this? The early days of computing were SO different than what it's evolved into, it's hardly even recognizable as the same field!
As an example? Before my father passed away back in 2004, he was a Physics and Math professor, and used to work with mainframes and minicomputers occasionally. I remember finding cardboard boxes in the basement full of organized punch cards containing programs he used to load into them. He was utterly lost with the concept of a GUI, a la Windows,
Equity (Score:2)
You can have freedom or equal outcomes, but not both.
The Addicted Future (Score:2)
Cook also commented on the future of augmented reality, saying: "in the future, people will wonder how we lived without AR."
Yeah, we kinda already have those kinds of people today who wonder how anyone lives without social media. They're called addicts.
But hey, nice sales pitch. Lemme guess...the first one is free, right?
What about a reason? (Score:2)
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That's almost all jobs these days.
HealthKit complaint is ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)
Mobile health apps originally focused on fitness, with actual health care both highly regulated and privacy sensitive. If I was trying to become a father, I wouldn't want to try to show off how many steps I hiked over the weekend to a coworker and accidentally display my sperm motility count. Better to have a separate app that is run by my clinic, not Apple or Google, with proper security and privacy in mind and that my doctor can access without me having to share my account. If GenZers are not concerned a
Spare me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at a fortune (low number) firm that always talked a great game about diversity/inclusion/whatever. What I noticed when asking uncomfortable questions was that we had about an 80:20 male:female ratio in IT. I was hiring at all levels and didn't give a shit about degrees or where the person had worked before. I simply wanted intellectually curious people who were willing to roll up their sleeves and we'd teach them what they needed to know to get the work done. What I got from our "woke" recruiting department that was tirelessly virtue signalling on LinkedIn was:
~80% Indian men candidates
Of the remaining 20%, most were men from varying backgrounds, but a vanishingly small percentage were women.
I asked if we could re-visit which schools/colleges we visited to promote the company. I was shot down. Clearly, we weren't looking in the right places or we were not offering roles that were interesting for women. "Oh no, IT person, let us figure that out for you."
It's pretty shameful how bad things are.
We can do better.
Maybe they don't want to work there? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a radical idea, but maybe they don't want to work in tech? It certain seems that no matter how much they try to create a welcoming environment, women simply do not want to work in tech.
For all his awkwardness, maybe James Damore was on to something? You know, that something that got him fired for daring to suggest men and women are attracted to different things.
Simpler times.
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This is a radical idea, but maybe they don't want to work in tech? It certain seems that no matter how much they try to create a welcoming environment, women simply do not want to work in tech.
For all his awkwardness, maybe James Damore was on to something? You know, that something that got him fired for daring to suggest men and women are attracted to different things.
Programming used to be female-dominated, only a mere 60 years ago. More importantly, modern humans first appeared around 300,000 years ago, while "tech" careers have been around for only a mere eyelash of a blink of that time. It strains credulity to say that there's an inherent biological sex difference due to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that is (a) that strong and pervasive throughout the population to have the effect we see today, and (b) flipped in only the past two generations.
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But WHY don't they want to work in tech? I think it's sociology, not biology. Because I have been around back when women were much better represented in computing. Even if you look at mathematics departments you will see far more women these days than in computer science. Societal attitudes have changed, and people have invented notions of things that are for girls and things that are for boys and it's not constant over time.
Re: Maybe they don't want to work there? (Score:3)
You're on the right track, with the wrong conclusion. If women were more represented in the past, do you think societies have since become more sexist? The evidence clearly points the other way.
The gender equality paradox is a puzzle. As equality increases, the sexed diverge - notable in personality traits and career choices. Sociologists assume this shift is due to oppression, despite the evidence against the social constructionist belief. it's untenable to believe biology isn't playing a role. I'd say the
He got fired because his CEO had to apologize! (Score:2)
For all his awkwardness, maybe James Damore was on to something? You know, that something that got him fired for daring to suggest men and women are attracted to different things.
Simpler times.
James Damore wrote a long-ass essay and posted it within company resources on company time that upset a HUGE portion of his coworkers. Was his manifesto correct? I don't know. I don't care. I read it and was frankly unimpressed. However, I am confident that he wasn't paid to write it and doing so was a distraction to his job and definitely distracted many of his coworkers. He was bad for business. That's why he got fired. His fucking CEO had to leave his vacation and go and apologize for what some s
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If women don't want to work at Apple then Tim Cook should ask why that is. Is it something about the culture and reputation at Apple?
If Damore is to be believed then women should love working at Apple, where there is a heavy emphasis on UX and cosmetics, much more so than most STEM companies. Apple is practically a fashion brand.
Re: Maybe they don't want to work there? (Score:2)
Yeah...I know a smart woman who spent 2 days trying to get a filed uploaded. She told me when she got it finally uploaded and I asked how big the file was.
"I don't know".
How can you not know?
Re:Maybe they don't want to work there? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, Damore's memo absolutely did NOT say that. You are spreading falsehoods, just like the army of other people who kept insisting he said something obviously horrible when, in fact, his memo straight-up did not say that.
There is a huge audience of people who want Damore to be a simple misogynist who said insulting things about women, because they love to hate. And you seem to be one of them. But they are all (including you) objectively and provably wrong, simply by reading the memo and engaging reading comprehension skills.
And what do you want it to be? (Score:2)
There is a huge audience of people who want Damore to be a simple misogynist who said insulting things about women, because they love to hate. And you seem to be one of them. But they are all (including you) objectively and provably wrong, simply by reading the memo and engaging reading comprehension skills.
And what is he to you? To me, he's a dumbass who wasn't doing his job and distracting his coworkers. I've been fired for much much much less. He's not a social cause. He's not a whistleblower. It seems like many want to make him the posterchild of big tech woke oppression, but his fucking CEO had to take off his vacation apologize for his dumbass essay to the fucking press. If you embarrass your boss, expect to get fired. He's not an editorial writer. He wasn't hired to opine on gender issues.
A
Re:And what do you want it to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
Damore didn't post his memo on any news outlets. Google created an internal forum requesting employee feedback and dialogue on topics related to this. He simply did exactly what employees had been invited to do.
Someone else leaked the memo to the press, and made Damore infamous. The CEO didn't cancel his vacation "because of what Damore did." He cancelled his vacation because of what the leaker-to-the-press did, and because of the twitter mob reaction.
But you asked "what is Damore to you?" To me he is an example of a terrible, harmful, wrong social phenomenon that destroys the careers of innocent people. You seem to be arguing that a bunch of people being offended means you obviously did something wrong and therefore got what you deserved. That is rubbish. The "court of public opinion" is far too manipulatable. This mob was not offended by what Damore wrote. They were offended by deceptive summaries, written by people OTHER than Damore, ABOUT what Damore wrote. They were lied-to, they didn't check their facts, they screamed for blood, and they got it.
So, that is what Damore is to me, a warning that any of us can, at any time, have our careers destroyed by lies that others say about us, because there is a mob of thoughtless internet users who are eagerly waiting for the next excuse they can find to unleash a torrent of hatred on some innocent victim.
Re:Maybe they don't want to work there? (Score:5, Insightful)
My issue with the Damore fiasco is not the factual accuracy of anything he wrote in the memo. Like when he posted that women tend to have the personality trait of "neuroticism" more than men, for example. Is that true? Maybe it's not and we have evidence against it (or any other similar claim). That's fine, so Damore was wrong. People make factually inaccurate statements all the time. It happens. We point them out and move on.
What upsets me is that Damore was cancelled for something he did not say. He was not cancelled for getting some facts wrong, or for being wordy. He was cancelled because people kept accusing him of saying "women make worse programmers than men" (or similar), which he did not say, nor did he imply. He didn't even say that in some roundabout indirect way. He suggested that these personality trait differences might explain why women would freely choose a different career, which is not remotely the same statement.
This phenomenon puts literally everyone at risk. Absolutely anyone can be accused of saying something they didn't say, get an angry twitter mob after them all motivated by the same straight-up lie, and get the person's career ended. Nobody is safe from this. It is not an ok situation, and every single person who insists that Damore should have been cancelled is part of this problem.
Drama is no substitute for truth.
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Here's a good one!... (Score:3)
I've tried to recruit many of my ex-coworkers. It's TOUGH. I usually lose out because they find another job 5 miles closer to their house or some trivial reason that is neither the job nor the pay. One told me she just liked the other office complex more. Most find any job other than engineering: HR, project management, etc.
Unless you can point me to a qualified pool of people who cannot find a job, I don't want to hear a word whining about lack of diversity. I have positions I can't fill and have to choose between candidates who can't do the job AND can't speak English AND don't want to learn either. Even the shittiest of candidates we reject...and you have to be REALLY shitty to get rejected by our idiot hiring board find jobs quickly somewhere else.
Once there's a pool of talented and unemployed women...then we have an issue...until then...sorry...this is not a tech world issue. You can debate if it an educational system issue, but that's not really where I nor Tim Cook should be opining. The opportunities are there for women.
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In my opinion, based on my own youth, girls are not stimulated (when they are young) for tech, or even pushed away.
This is purely social pressure and not biology. And when schools and companies are pulling they are 16 or older and it is too late.
Sure there is! (Score:2)
When you have 10 male applicants for every one female, and 8 of those have better credentials for the job...
It's not discrimination.
It's simply math. Demographics.
Tim Cook is a Dumbass (Score:5, Interesting)
He said there were "no good excuses" for the lack of women in the sector.
It's not that they're not good excuses, but that they're not excuses at all. Go read about countries like Sweden that have pretty much eliminated the role of gender in society, starting with kindergarten. They've eliminated pay disparity between men and women as much as they've been hoping for. Yet the majority of teachers and nurses are women and the majority of garbage men and tech workers are men. Watch Jordan Peterson talk about this very subject. The Scandinavian countries' experience with gender neutrality has produced exactly the opposite of what everyone called "equality". Turns out that, when you remove all the hindrances and worries of people about making a living by providing good social services and good pay, most women actually tend to go toward the jobs that they're more interested in and passionate about, instead of having to, say, become computer programmers when they actually have no interest in becoming computer programmers, but do it for money (Note that I said most women, not all women). But that very subject has become the elephant in the room that everybody seems to want to ignore.
Re: Tim Cook is a Dumbass (Score:2)
If I didn't have to care about money, there are a lot of things I'd rather be doing than sitting in front of a computer all day.
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This is based on a study that has proven to be extremely flawed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even after making corrections to errors that were found, other researchers could not reproduce their results.
Even Sweden is far from having eliminated the role of gender in society. It's arguably impossible, given that even if Sweden was perfect people there are still exposed for foreign media and culture.
Comment removed (Score:3)
And into the peanut gallery we go... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gotta love the comments on this article so far.
So typical - I suspect most made by old white males - greybeard slashdotters.
Their argument being "Maybe women don't want to work in tech!"
Well, sure, but there's many men who don't, too - so you are _completely_ missing the point.
The point is _how_ gender bias is steered from an early age, how there's still very much systemic change required to shrug off stereotypical attitudes.
Yes, many women don't want to work in tech, but many that DO, fear facing a male do
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Yes, many women don't want to work in tech, but many that DO, fear facing a male dominated environment where they aren't treated seriously.
I'd be absolutely *shocked* if a large percentage of women were thinking four years ahead as college freshmen trying to decide what to study. If college students understood their job prospects when choosing a major in year one, we'd have way, way fewer history majors than we do. :-D
Maybe there are women who thought about that and decided not to get careers in CS, but I suspect at least 100x as many never even considered the possibility of going into CS in the first place, largely because they weren't expos
Why just CS? (Score:3)
Here we go again (Score:3)
Women are not interested in sitting in front of a computer for hours on end to solve complex abstract problems.
Spare me the "not all women are like that", or the "that's because of social conditioning. Go read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate. You may learn something.
I used to be just the same. I used to be a feminist. I used to be a blank slatist. I used to be as brainwashed as most people here. I encouraged her to pursue a career in technology, but she didn't, not interested. I encouraged my wife to continue programming after we got married. She didn't. She wanted to have children instead and stay at home. Biology asserts itseld, we're attuned to evolutionary rewards, and the more you fight it, the more miserable you'll make yourself and those around you. Romanticism needs to die.
Indeed (Score:3)
No excuse for only 1% women bricklayers as well.
Women are smart, they don't WANT certain jobs.
Interest (Score:3)
The question is, why aren't women interested? My first guess would be cultural/educational factors in early childhood, but maybe genetics play a role as well? I feel like there should be more focus on figuring out the underlying cause than on post-hoc adjustments.
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They don't want to work at start-ups, where the environment is so often toxic socially and emotionally as employees _grind_ to get those first products out the door. I'm older, I don't want to work there either, but eager programmers just out of school do so very eagerly. They also spend a great deal of time re-inventing very old wheels, which is partly what I get paid to clean up.
Re:Problem is it's all one pot (Score:5, Informative)
Women tend to be financially risk-averse. They want a steady income, not stock options.
Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices [pnas.org]
Re:Problem is it's all one pot (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of they
- most women (if you can provide reference)
- most women I've discussed this with (which may be valid, but a subset who specifically chose to work in low risk environments)
- most women I've observed (which leaves this open to us deciding how valid your interpretations of your observations are)
- many women (which doesn't even require a majority and may even mean one or two dozen)
I can go for pages on this. But Plato and more significantly Cicero did excellent work documenting the mechanisms of ethos.
Without a strong opening that establishes credibility, logos will be digested with skepticism. By making a sweeping generalization as your opening statement, you attempted to choose to cause your audience to be of a singular group who probably are of like mind with you. This is excellent if your goal is to start a club or a mob. However, I would predict that others such as myself immediately thought of members of the "them" group who contradict your statement thereby invalidating your overall rhetoric. However, for the sake of giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you either are not a passionate aficionado of classical rhetoric, or simply were not interested in investing more effort in your statement, I (and possibly we) read further to identify your intent.
I think you were suggesting that the females in tech that you encounter in your community display a few commonly stereotyped characteristics often attached to women that suggest that women tend to mature earlier than men and that women have an innate instinct to nest.
In modern times, my observations have been that
1) testosterone when it is out of control (generally under the age of 28 in men) is similar in effect to alcohol in the sense that high risk ventures seem more reasonable when under the influence.
2) the maturity issue and the nesting instinct has been primarily environmental out of necessity.
3) Men and women tend to both make similar choices under similar conditions.
Given access to the same tools and requirements, the methods chosen by everyone will be similar. Women and men are typically trained differently and thereby have different tools. For example, historically, girls were trained from birth to nest. Boys were trained to hunt and gather. Our parents provided the education needed to achieve this. In modern times (starting with GenX), mothers initially ditched "the women's work" and slowed down on teaching those skills to their daughters. Then once things settled, boys and girls were both expected to do more of their share of the "women's work". Then women dropped more of the "women's work" and men learned to feed babies, change diapers, cook and even use the terrifying washing machine.
And now, mothers and fathers can raise their daughters to expect men to do their share or hit the road. More importantly, we teach both boys and girls to have a far more similar set of tools. We still have a core issue which is societal pressure. Boys are still more likely to exert dominance or defend themselves physically. Girls classically exert dominance through words an influence. Boys have moved far more towards the female method, and some girls have started swinging punches, but the tools used by each gender is still a few generations from equalized.
Women classically actively nested which is perceived as a mature behavior earlier in the past because given the tools available to them, survival depended on it. In 2022 when men and women have a more similar set of tools than ever before, women are, more than ever willing to take similar risks since they can manage just fine on their own if they fail. Same as a man.
It is also worth noting before I conclude that testosterone levels in men have dropped considerably in the past 100 years. As such, younger generations are making considerably fewer rash decisi
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I hope some tech companies manage to hire more than 50% women, even if the industry in general has a gender disparity it will be at least be a good sign to see some deviation from the mean. I'm getting kind of tired of the status quo being present every where I go, be it a start up or small company.
Re:Problem is it's all one pot (Score:4, Insightful)
Why so much focus on increasing the number of women in tech?
There are many other male dominated fields... The garbage collection around here is 100% performed by males, construction workers are all male etc. I've seen far less women in professions like these than in tech, and yet there is no push to increase diversity in such fields.
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Why so much focus on increasing the number of women in tech?
Because we fucked up.
There are many other male dominated fields... The garbage collection around here is 100% performed by males
My driver is a woman.
construction workers are all male etc.
Earlier this year I was stopped by a CalTrans employee to wait for traffic on the other end of a single lane road. (other lane was being torn up, probably to bury cables or a water main). Oh the employee, she was pregnant. Go figure, maybe she's not qualified to lift anything heavy while she is pregnant but props to her for standing on her feet all day.
Great goal, no action. (Score:2)
The goal is to get more women going into the field and industry to begin with,
That should be the goal but it sure seems like nothing is really being done to advance toward it.
Where in the summary does it say what they are doing to get more women in CS? It just says they need to.
What women thinking about college majors is even going to hear about what Apple is doing now? Apple has been trying stuff for years, with no impact.
Argue how it will and I'll listen.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:5, Interesting)
That should be the goal but it sure seems like nothing is really being done to advance toward it.
I can't believe this. I was in college comp sci ~20 years ago. There were many efforts to get women into the computer science program. Affinity clubs. Female only scholarships. Special mentoring groups with female professors. And so forth. I imagine the response will be that by college it was too late, but my highschool calculus class was almost exactly 1/2 female. My highschool AP physics class was ~1/4 female.
In grad school I switched to a humanities field and my department was about 3/4 female.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:5, Interesting)
That should be the goal but it sure seems like nothing is really being done to advance toward it.
I can't believe this. I was in college comp sci ~20 years ago. There were many efforts to get women into the computer science program. Affinity clubs. Female only scholarships. Special mentoring groups with female professors. And so forth. I imagine the response will be that by college it was too late, but my highschool calculus class was almost exactly 1/2 female.
To be fair, at most schools, a certain number of math classes are a requirement, and if you're good enough at math to test out of algebra, you have to take calculus, even if you're a communications major. (That was one of my two majors.) Calculus is required for a much higher percentage of students than CS, so you would expect that to be roughly gender balanced, assuming the schools as a whole are gender balanced.
I think the lack of universal requirements is probably one big reason why CS is less popular among women as a career choice. They're not exposed to it equally at a young age, when it can make a difference. All the clubs in the world won't help if they don't join, or if their friends tell them that computers are for boys, or if any number of other social factors discourage them from continuing. But if some amount of CS were part of the mandatory curriculum starting in elementary school just like math is, then we'd probably see a lot more women in CS.
Of course, even that isn't guaranteed to work. After all, despite similar cognitive abilities, men are a lot more likely to frame discussions and problems abstractly than women. Given how abstract computer programming is, that difference itself could be part of the reason for differences in interest in CS. How much of that difference is biological versus social is anybody's guess.
For that matter, pretty much all of the women I've known who studied CS and didn't drop out almost immediately were all really good at it, whereas the men were all over the map right up to the end, so it is entirely possible that women are less likely to stick with something that they suck at or hate doing solely for the money. And although that would qualify as a social cause, it would also suggest that a lot of men shouldn't be in CS, rather than that more women should be. :-D
The only way to really be certain is to eliminate all the social factors one by one until you either succeed or you run out of social factors to control for, whichever comes first. My gut says that even after they do this, they'll still see differences in gender preference towards CS careers. But that's purely a guess.
Either way, it's not necessarily a bad thing. What's inherently bad is the lack of adequate gender mixing in the workplace that results from it. And that's a completely different problem that requires completely different solutions.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:4, Informative)
As a woman who studied CS I don't even know. I did it because I wanted to, not because there were special efforts that tempted me in. I did join a university 'IT Girls' club but aside from getting a free travel mug, there wasn't much point to it.
Re: (Score:2)
And that's the key. We need more women who want to study CS because they actually find it interesting.
Not because someone sold them on the major, or convinced them it was a good career choice.
The critical point to nudge in this direction is probably middle school.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:5, Insightful)
I did it because I wanted to
That being the key. Most women don't want to. I don't understand why everyone tries to force an equal representation of women in technical professions. Just because they can do it, it doesn't mean that they want to. I can do carpentry (built my kids cribs, changing table, beds, our own bed). I can also sew (sewed curtains for our living room and many Halloween costumes, much to my wife's amazement). But I'm a computer programmer, because that's what I LIKE to do.
Now don't come back and say that "well, girls say they WANT to become computer programmers, so you're wrong." I've spoken to teenagers, girls and boys alike, who have said they want to go into programming, and they equally get discouraged when they find out what it's like to become a programmer: working on projects they have no interest in, working under unrealistic deadlines, and so on. When they think of programming, they think "I get to make Skyrim!" They're not thinking "What do you mean I have to write a transaction processor?" And they equally become disinterested. All good programmers I've known have been in it because they enjoyed programming. Not for any other reason.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:5, Insightful)
High school or university is pretty late to go pulling.
My entire youth I heard stuff like "that is for boys" and "girls can't do that". Mind you that was in the 80' and 90'.
Even the toys reflect that thinking. Boys get mechanical toys, girls get dolls. I hated dolls, but still got them.
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Don't underestimate how much girls are pushed away from tech during their childhood. High school or university is pretty late to go pulling. My entire youth I heard stuff like "that is for boys" and "girls can't do that". Mind you that was in the 80' and 90'. Even the toys reflect that thinking. Boys get mechanical toys, girls get dolls. I hated dolls, but still got them.
I think there's a little more to it than social pressure. I'm not discounting the effect of social pressure, mind you, but parents of children who deliberately work to counter those social pressures often -- not always, but often -- find that their children have strong gender-traditional preferences. There's a great degree of variability, of course, ranging from children who so strongly prefer the traditional preferences of the other gender that they ultimately decide they're actually trans, to those who ar
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The percentage of females in engineering is higher in Iran than in Denmark, where 98% of nurses are women.
I chuckled when I read the above statement. Not because it's wrong. It is not. But, funnily enough, the percentage of male nurses in Iran is high. The reason? Gender segregation. Male nurses aren't allowed to touch female patients and vice-versa. My mom (in Iran) was recently in the hospital and needed to be given a shot at 2:00 AM. They couldn't give her one because they only had guys on duty that night and the woman on duty wasn't coming on until 4:00 AM. Pretty fucked up, if you ask me. But, be
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument has been used to "fix" sexual orientation.
It's been at least 60 years that we've been trying to manipulate our young girls to our perceived ideals, ideas. The world is not black and white and I am not saying that stereotypes are not influencing the next generation. They are. What I'm saying is our society is no longer setting up a level playing field for the next generation but it's doing the exact opposite of what it's trying to fix. The message we are sending to the next generation is that it's OK for girls to have extra help because they can't do it by themselves. We have to help them make up their own minds and encourage them by teaching them that everyone who wants to can do it, with a little help for the women.
It's amazing how many women only clubs, awards, bursaries, subsidies, empowerments, etc... exist. When a men's only club, award, etc.. exists it's either made to accommodate women, made illegal or a women's alternative needs to be created. We can't have equality by promoting sexism. We can't have equality by encouraging sexism.
I wonder where are all the programs encouraging boys to take on female dominated fields? Today we have a male telling us that we should manipulate more women into a career that they may not want so he can fix the labour shortage or reduce the labor cost that his organization is experiencing.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:4, Insightful)
Toys and marketing aimed at kids push girls away from technology.
Why? Toys and marketing exist to sell product. Why would toys deliberately push women away from tech? Toys are the perfect example of choice, because kids play with what they WANT to play with.
Schools push girls away from technology.
Why? How? I was in school in the 80s and 90s. I didn't have a single male teacher until middle school (~2-3 in middle school). I had more male teachers in high school, but the majority were women. _Every single math teacher I had before college was a woman._ Why would all these people be pushing women away from tech?
Peer pressure from girls of the same age pushes girls away from technology.
I think you're actually on to something here.
It's no wonder that by the time most girls reach highschool or university age they have no interest or prior experience in any technology fields. If you then force them to study a field they have no interest or prior experience in, then naturally they're going to be at a severe disadvantage compared to a boy who has grown up learning about technology.
Do you have kids? I'm assuming you don't spend much time around kids, particular aged K-12, if you can possibly make a statement like this.
You end up with a very tiny percentage of girls who are able to resist the peer pressure and the push the other way, and although few in number the fact that their interest was always so strong usually makes them exceptional in the field.
Got it, so people with a strong interest do well. And you think girls are too weak to resist peer pressure, unlike generations of boys who were bullied, mocked, called nerds, etc. That's honestly a pretty sexist POV.
If you want more women in tech, you need to start with more girls interested in tech. You need to change the culture and upbringing which pushes girls away from technology.
To sum up your arguments, it's the fault of corporation, it's the fault of teachers, it's the fault of OTHER girls, it's the fault of girls (who can't resist peer pressure), and it's the fault of society.
You've blamed everyone and everything and you refuse to even consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, speaking in averages and generalities, maybe it is possible that girls are less interested in introverted, solo, technical and object-focused activies than boys.
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You are assuming that women make a completely free choice about what interests them, entirely disconnected from things like working conditions, hours, office culture, good bosses, social pressure and the like. That is clearly not the case.
I don't get why some men are so resistant to this. More women in the workplace is a good thing. It helps us get better conditions too.
You are assuming that all women don't have a free choice about what interests them and want to manipulate them to change their view. You are also assuming that the female dominated work environments don't have similar working conditions, hours, office culture, good bosses, social pressure and the like. It sounds to me you haven't worked in a female dominated domain. A hostile working environment is not just a male trait.
How many programs/incentives do you see trying to change male choices and direct them t
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So I was in CS in the early 80s, and apparently that was the peak. The rise before then is sort of iffy because it was a brand new field and most universities didn't have a computer science department separate from mathematics. So the chart is showing a decline until around 2007. So something must have happened to discourage this given the steep drop.
It is odd, because so many women were there in the early days from the 40s onwards. Being a computer "operator" was even seen as women's work because it wa
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Oh wait, the chart doesn't show relative percentage of men vs women. And I know that in 1980 that computers were the new "plastics" that many wanted to get into to guarantee good jobs. But I do think there's been an overall rise in CS enrollment since 1980.
Re:Great goal, no action. (Score:4, Insightful)
So I was in CS in the early 80s, and apparently that was the peak.
The early 80s were when PCs because popular.
Programming transitioned from a social activity you did in the computer center to a solitary activity you did at 2 am in your bedroom.
Re: Great goal, no action. (Score:2)
Your post title was "it's all the same pot" which is just logically incoherent, and then building on that wrong statement - wrong by your own admission in your reply to me! - to advance a bewilderingly stupid argument reeking of bad faith. I can't tell if it's just because you're dumb or the values you've arrived at are dumb because you're dumb .. as always with you it's just one moron gumbo. I have about as much interest in you listening to me as a brick wall listening to me. I just take pleasure in ensur
Re: Great goal, no action. (Score:3)
Apple should just hire, before this year is out, 10,000 women to be software developers. Take all comers and train them as needed to be top notch.
How about it Tim? Care to put your money where your mouth is?
No? I didn't think so.
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train them as needed to be top notch.
It takes years to train someone to program at the professional level and several years of experience after that to be "top-notch".
How about it Tim? Care to put your money where your mouth is?
Of course not. It would cost Apple $250k each to train them, and half would fail to ever be productive.
Why should Tim do that when he can get the activists off his back by just talking about the problem?
Re: Great goal, no action. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I don't think Apple should do this. I was just pointing out that if one REALLY wants more women in tech, then they should just hire women to do tech.
I don't claim that Tim gives a fuck about the topic either. He's like anyone else in "the club". Just talk about whatever, doesn't actually put HIS billions on the line to solve whatever problem he is blabbering about.
Re: Problem is it's all one pot (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no good reason to have an over 90% white male dominated tech industry
I live and work in Silicon Valley. When I am in tech meetings, it is common for me to be the only white guy in the room.
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I don't think you have ever worked in predominantly female environment before.... the backstabbing , the cliques... you think a bunch of guys talking about women is terrible, you don't even know what sexism until women feel comfortable around you and you hear them talk about guys, like it's a whole other level (totally mind blowing if you are a guy listening in). They don't call them snake pits for nothing.
Point is, healthy environment has both, men and women. Too much in either direction can be a very toxi
Re:Problem is it's all one pot (Score:4, Insightful)
you think a bunch of guys talking about women is terrible, you don't even know what sexism until women feel comfortable around you and you hear them talk about guys, like it's a whole other level (totally mind blowing if you are a guy listening in
try being in an area that is almost entirely women and they don't realize there is a man sitting in one of the cubes.. the shit you will hear my friend.. *shudder*
Re:Problem is it's all one pot (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullying isn't an exclusively male trait. Women just bully differently.
Yes, women are more "social" than men, and that's also how they bully. Female bullies form cliques and dominate by guile rather than force. Which makes them actually more dangerous in the modern corporate world than male bullies for the simple reason that their bullying is more socially acceptable.
In a nutshell, women don't rough you up, women engage in mobbing.
Been there, done that, got the wedgie.
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If your understanding of gender dynamics is restricted to forms of bullying, I feel bad for the grim and pessimistic world you live in. There's so much more to it. Also, "women do not do this" is a total farce. Social bullying is the primary way women express aggression to others, and they are routinely noted as being much more savage and aggressive in that sphere, where men tend to be more physical, which fades away as they mature. Your conclusions are about as valuable as your false assumptions and li
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Really? I hear them, and all teachers I know, complain a LOT about how there aren't enough male teachers.
I agree with your second sentence, but your first sentence is very wrong.
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Really? I hear them, and all teachers I know, complain a LOT about how there aren't enough male teachers.
I agree with your second sentence, but your first sentence is very wrong.
You are both right. GP is talking about the media (or the teachers' union's PR). You are talking about teachers themselves.
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But, some years ago, I did work as a substitute teacher, and it was kinda fun. In fact, though it was years ago, I've recently had younger folks ask, "Did you used to sub for $schoolDistrict? I had you as a teacher." I always ask, "Was i
Re:The woke is strong in this one .. (Score:4, Interesting)
They banned one book because it mentioned racism - it didn't say you were racist, or that racism was good or anything, but it used results from a survey on racist beliefs in the context of a math problem.
They banned another math book for encouraging students to work together and have a positive mindset and approach toward math (negative attitudes toward math is a major learning barrier).
This is all drummed up nonsense for the most part intended to make teachers and schools look bad to try to score political points.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/22/florida-examples-prohibited-topics-math-textbooks
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The pay goes down every year? What? Ridiculous statement on its face.
Only Indians and Chinese?
Wow... that's not true but even if it was, so what?
The racism is strong in this one.
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> The pay goes down every year?
It does, but ironically because the labor force expands as asia is entering the sector - both as H1B, and global non-US tech market. While parent's view is skewed by racism, your view is skewed by seeing only the FAANG apex in HCOL areas. But there's other end to that - the immense long tail near $25/h average wage.
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India and China happened to be where they get the cheap labor from but it could come from anywher
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Adjusted for inflation every person I know in it and I know a lot has seen their pay go down. A handful of people working for Wall Street making millions to do high frequency trading excuse the average and even the mean. But for your rank and file it worker the huge influx of cheap labor through the H-1B visa program and general offshoring has caused our wages to plummet while our hours continue to increase.
Adjusted for inflation, my income in CS has gone up by about a factor of 3 since 1999. Maybe you just aren't very good at it?
The problem isn't printing money (Score:3)
If you're such a capitalist chad you should learn a bit about competition.
None of your sentences are correct (Score:2)
To drive down the price he has to pay for tech workers. Frankly women are too smart to go into tech. Unless you happen to be a math whiz it is the domain of Indians and a handful of Chinese completely. Everyone else should just stay the hell out because the hours are long, it's always your neck on the chopping block and the pay goes down every year. Who in their right mind would enter that industry?
Sorry, I've worked in tech 25 years...I'm neither Chinese nor Indian nor a math whiz...there are tons of people who are neither of those 3.
Also, the hours are generally not long. For most, it's a 9 to 5 job. It's been that way for me most of my career.
Who would enter the industry? It's one of the few that pays a middle-class wage and it's always expanding. It's typically as good of a place to work as any other. Some are shitty places, most aren't...the same could be said about most careers.
The plural of anecdote is not data (Score:3)
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> He just wants more labor
Every field wants to drive cost of labor down, not just tech, ie not really a good reason for women to avoid tech as such. I think it's more sinister here - in an industry-wide occuring 50/50 gender ratio situation, women routinely ask for lower salary (impostor syndrome). But in male-dominated fields, women can ask for far more if they're quota hire, albeit only to a point due to glass ceilings. Meaning women *do* have much easier ride in tech, on average, compared to men, for
I don't think women should avoid tech (Score:2)
And Jesus Christ knows there's no such thing as a quota hirer. There are no quotas. That is a myth. Companies are required to keep records regarding their hiring decisions so that they can show their decisions aren't motivated by race or sex. That's it. It's like you've never sat thr
Re:Blame the conservatives (Score:4, Interesting)
You might ask yourself why you are so susceptible to falling for fake news and propaganda?
Re:Secondary Effects (Score:4, Insightful)
3) A class of first-class workers (women) dominates the workplace, that you cannot argue nor contradict. As a female quitting is much worse than a male quitting.
So you have an example of these businesses that were male dominated but now have first-class female workers that can't be argued with or contradicted?
Re:shut up, Tim Cock! (Score:5, Insightful)
References, or you just make that up? Explain why there's been a steady decline in women in computer science?
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Re: shut up, Tim Cock! (Score:5, Interesting)
The gender equality paradox is worth studying. As equality between the sexes increases, the sexes become increasingly divergent in career choices and personality traits. The more equality there is, with the associated freedom of choice, the less women are interested in STEM.
One theory is that increasing freedom causes female traits to be more freely expressed. If you want more women in STEM, shifting towards a less equal society would seem to compel more women into STEM. Corporate California would get more women into STEM by advocating relatively moderate Islam. Alternatively they could stop trying to force women to become masculine in order to fix a problem normal people see doesn't exist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Re: shut up, Tim Cock! (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how much is innate traits and how much is environmental influence.
Girls are taught to behave very differently pretty much from birth. They get dolls while boys get cars and construction sets. Studies have shown that if prompted girls are happy to play with things like Lego, and are equally capable of developing those skills.
There was an interesting BBC show that looked at this a few years ago.
Part 2 https://youtu.be/wN5R2LWhTrY [youtu.be]
Part 2 https://youtu.be/cp9Z26YgIrA [youtu.be]
In one experiment that was replicating studies done under more rigorous control, babysitters were asked to play with a baby they were told the gender of. Except that the producers lied and told them they had a boy when in fact it was a girl. What many assumed to be an innate preference that even babies had, turned out to be entirely due to prompting from adults.
As for the gender equality paradox, just passing laws that make gender discrimination illegal and removing some barriers doesn't do much for the social conditioning part of the equation.
Re: shut up, Tim Cock! (Score:4, Informative)
The study that claimed the gender inequality paradox to exist is unreliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even after corrections, others were unable to reproduce their results.
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Have you read the sources they cite? The study can't be reproduced at all.
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Yes. Or everything goes to hell. As long as there is equal opportunity, there is no problem. Of what they manage to make of that opportunity is very much dependent on personal performance, skill and interests.
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