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Over the last several months, I’ve witnessed many controversial discussions among my friends, in my San Francisco community, and on online forums about James Demore’s memorandum. People of both genders are wrestling with the fact that fewer women go into computer science and trying to find explanations that balance their experience, empathy, and ethical aspirations. I’ve heard lots of good-intentioned people consider discouraging theories of biological superiority because they can’t find any other compelling explanation (like this post on HackerNews, for example). As a woman who studied computer science, worked at some of the top tech firms, and has founded a software startup, I’d like to share my take on why fewer women go into CS and my opinion on how to address the issue.
[...] I graduated from Stanford with a BS in Mathematical & Computational Sciences in 2015, interned at Apple as a software engineer, and worked as an Associate Product Manager at Google 2015-2017. In October, I founded a video editing website called Kapwing and am working on the startup full-time. Although I’m only 25, I’ve already seen many of my female friends choose majors/careers outside of STEM and have been inside of many predominately-male classes, organizations, and teams.
This article is one person’s humble perspective, and I do not speak for every woman in tech. But hopefully having the view of someone who has “been there” can help people trying to understand why there are fewer women in tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:10PM
Bully for you. It's heart-warming to hear how you had no trouble at all befriending women and navigating relationships with them. It sounds like you were a natural in correctly charting a safe course through the social thicket of gender relations.
For many others it's a long, rocky road on which you take many knocks and take a lot of spills. Today's young men, the poor bastards, are afforded no training wheels. There is no room to make any mistakes. At all.
Even with constant, directed, conscientious effort (and we're talking about serious mental and emotional exertion), it can take decades to achieve the plateau of comfort you seem to have alighted on.
Washington DC delenda est.