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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: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:22AM (42 children)
Are you fscking serious? #MeToo?
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:21AM (36 children)
It's truly astounding to me how many people here clearly don't understand the difference between "befriend" and "sexually harass." Are there behaviors that could potentially be ambiguous between the two? I suppose, but most of those would come about only in a long-term close friendship. The initial stages of "being friendly" vs. "harassing" are generally quite different, with a rather large chasm between them.
When I was young, going through undergrad and then early years working, the vast majority of my close friends were female. My best friends were generally male, but the next layer of friends and colleagues were mostly female. I successfully befriended them, hung out with them, and generally treated them like PEOPLE rather than as sex objects or potential mates. Because I was legitimately interested in them as people, like I would be with any friend.
It's really not that hard to avoid being creepy. I've also worked closely with a lot of young women as a mentor or teacher over the years.
It's not hard to avoid anything that could reasonably be construed as impropriety if you are even moderately intelligent about your actions. (Just a hint that the "intelligence" here should not come from thinking with your groin... Even a little bit. If you truly can't control that around a particular woman, she's probably not the best person to befriend. If you can't stop acting and thinking with your groin around women in general, you have larger social and emotional problems to deal with.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:47AM (3 children)
You're social. You're not an incel. You're successful. It's not your life on the line, so you can dispense harmful advice unsuited to the current climate. We can roll the dice, but the house always wins. #MGTOW #MAGA #MeThree
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:50PM (2 children)
Whining douches never win.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:28PM
Indeed, and here we have Exhibit A :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:36PM
You obviously need to freshen up on US politics. Whining douches pick the President about half the time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Sulla on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:50AM (5 children)
I dont know how old you are or how long it has been since you were in university but it is dangerous out there. The same handshake that was fine in the 70s is sexual assault today. Looking at someone to try to make eye contact is making a hostile learning environment. Holding the door open for a person is going out of your way to prop up the patriarchy. The rules for normal human interaction are different now than what they were in the past and it is difficult to navigate. I think the vast majority of the time things are fine, but there are enough examples of it not being fine where you have men afraid to interact at all.
God forbid you pat the wrong girl on the back like you woud do with one of your buddies, or have cold hands when shaking hands (creeeeeepy), or shake hands too long, or accidently cut someone off when you speak, or get the best grade in the class (fucking white cis male priviledge), or hold that door open for someone who did not provide consent, or accidently misgender somebody,
I see how the guys/girls in their 40s and 50s at my work banter and joke, and it looks like fun. But if I said or did any of the things they are doing with a coworker my same age I would get slapped with a harassment policy.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:54PM (1 child)
Join in the fun, young man. And, if HR talks to you about it, just tell him (or more likely her) that you don't give a small damn about what they think. That's what I did, and I became something of a minor hero among my coworkers. Well, a minor hero for a couple days, anyway. Then Walter won the cockroach races and became the new hero.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:08PM
And then everyone on the bus stood up and clapped because that totally happened and would not have gotten you fired.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:00PM (2 children)
From your comment, you are young, 20's or early thirties, and have some social anxieties. Start saying hello, and chatting with those older ladies (and guys). Pretty soon you too will be able to crack jokes like that with them. The guys will probably rag on you, take it like a good sport, stay nice and give it back without being nasty. You will get respect for that. The women will start to see you as a nice guy, and probably mother you.
Socially it will improve your standing with the younger crowd too, if the older people like you. They may deny it, but young people are influenced by older people.
And, if you are socially awkward, the older people will be harsher in some ways, but a lot more tolerant in others. They are very unlikely to legally fuck up your life if you misread a social cue, but they will hang shit on you at the drop of a hat. ('hang shit on' : aussie expression meaning make fun of).
The main benefit of the above is that being socially adept is like any other skill, it gets better with practice. Practice with the old people who won't fuck your life up over a simple mistake. Make sure you hang out with young people too though, they are slightly different skills and you need both.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Monday May 14 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
Things are not just the one-on-one interactions between coworkers where misunderstandings are occurring. The older people are following the younger by hiring HR young technicians and managers who are hip to the "every unwelcomed communication is sexual assault" and "all masculinity in the workplace is evil" and upholding decisions made by HR that enforce these ideas. I have worked places where you could get written up for holding a door open, one of the older people might make a gripe about it but they won't refute the decision because their feet are also to the fire (maybe they shared a mutual kiss with sally at the christmas party back in 93, what if she changes her mind like these young kids do?). Older folks can see the issue, but hell why should they care they will be retired in a couple more years, if young people are like this is must be what they want so let them do it.
There is a part of it that is social awkwardness, but there is an ever increasing number of actions that were acceptable just a few years ago or are totally acceptable if you are social/decent/good looking that you just can't pull off if you are not perfect. You can interact fine, hold conversations about hobbies/weather/weekend activities, but if you bump their leg with yours on accident trying to adjust your seat while you are working in a confined space on a project you better be ready to be written up. The majority of people out there are fine, but one bad seed can really mess up your life so why risk it?
A lot of guys flounder in basic conversation because college is drilling into them that their "mansplaning" is causing damage and their opinion is not welcomed or wanted. There is room to grow socially when you talk with older people and sort of figure out how to interact, but what good is that when the goal of the other young people is to stop the way people used to interact? I mean yeah if my only option to learn how to use a computer is to figure it out using a old windows 95 box then i will take the opportunity, but how is that going to help me with windows 10 when I am expected to skip from one straight to the other and if i try anything that worked in 95 in 10 the whole system will crash and I will lose all my progress?
For the record. I am in late 20s with a wife and three kids. Quite successful where I work and as far as I can tell pretty well liked. I have some social awkwardness but not when talking about my knowledge base. I avoid any difficulties by refusing to have anything to do with anyone outside of strictly work activities and limiting work conversations to work. Work is for work and home is for home, school was for learning what to do when you get to work, if the woman who wrote the article has a problem with that then she should be more accepting of disciplines that men who want to avoid women go into. Men don't mind women doing what men do, men mind women doing what men do then complaining that it is too hard or that the men aren't helping them enough when men aren't even helping other men.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16 2018, @11:55AM
I can see it heading that way here, but I think you may be a few years ahead of us.
I am old enough to remember when people joked around with their co-workers, and many of them ended up lifelong friends or entered relationships. Hell, my wife was my boss about 20 years ago.
Condolences. SJW's and 3rd feminists are killing what little humanity and joy there was in the workplace.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:53AM (3 children)
Yeah, it's not hard, just be good looking. If you're attractive, women will be happy that you talk to them. If you aren't, you're the person that makes them uncomfortable and scares them out of tech, regardless of what you say...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)
You're making excuses. Women aren't fixated on appearances like men are. In the course of a lifetime, you'll find a lot of beautiful, intelligent women who "fell" for some homely jackass far beneath your own level.
Well, to be fair, I don't know you at all. There may not be any homely jackasses beneath your level. Still, stop making excuses. You can't do much about homely, but you can stop being a jackass!
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 12 2018, @09:37PM (1 child)
Don't. Do. That. That is the opposite of advice likely to get you laid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:08PM
No, Runaway is right. Being a jackass doesn't get you laid, being an arsehole does. There is a subtle difference.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:18AM (1 child)
The fear does not come from not understanding the difference. After all, I, humble AC, am not the one who will be doing the judging. The fear comes from observing the people who are all too willing to pass judgment, and making note of their professed standards (or lack thereof).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @02:59PM
More excuses. Stop observing, stop making note. Those observers mean jackshit. Want a friend? Be a friend. Treat the woman in question as you would like to be treated, and ignore the asinine bullshit. It means nothing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:34AM (15 children)
You do not understand. Especially on a college campus in $current_year, the only sane policy is to consider women as hand grenades with rusty pins. It doesn't matter if you are creepy or not. It doesn't matter your intent at all. It doesn't matter what HER intent is or how she perceives the event at the time. She might think it all perfectly normal platonic interaction. Or you might ask her out and things go swimmingly, after a couple of dates you are boning every night and she is enjoying it so much she is alternating between screaming your name and calling you "Daddy!". Because if next semester she decides IT just isn't for her and switches majors to Womens' Studies she will get reprogrammed; she will suddenly "reinterpret" either the harmless social interaction as "sexual harassment" or the boning sessions as "rape" and your life is over. Most campuses won't even allow you to lawyer up and contest it, zero tolerance, women never lie about that, etc. You might not even be told who your accuser even was, privacy policy and all. You are just toast.
JUST. SAY. NO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:48AM
So now we know what happened to jmorris. Poor, poor, rich girl's fuck-toy! You have my sympathy.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 12 2018, @12:01PM (11 children)
What's telling in your reply is that you clearly didn't understand my post. My post was about finding friends and treating women as people rather than potential mates. Instead, your reply immediately launched into complaints about the dating scene and bad stuff that can happen there.
I'm not at all going to disagree that the dating scene with young people has become complicated. And I would NOT want to navigate that minefield myself.
But that has absolutely no bearing on my post. See, the fact that I was talking about being a friend, and you suddenly start thinking about dating the woman... THAT there: that's what makes you creepy. Even if you don't intend it, it's clear you aren't focused on just being a friend. She will likely sense that. You will come across as creepy, and if you start doing little things like patting her on the back, you'll linger a little too much. You'll give into sniffing her hair or something.
When I interact with female students (and yes, to all those other replies, I have been on college campuses recently), I don't see them as potential dating material AT ALL. They are absolutely off limits. You can't control whom you're attracted to, but you absolutely can control whom you decide is impossible to date. And once you adopt that mindset, amazingly women around you likely won't see you as trying to "get in their pants," because you're not. And you won't be creepy... And you definitely won't be tempted to do something that would be construed as sexual harassment.
Are there crazy uber-feminists out there who will perceive every encounter with a man as aggressive? Sure. But for 99+% of women, acting like a PERSON who views them as a PERSON is mostly all that is necessary. (And frankly, I can generally spot the small percentage of wackos in the first 15 seconds of talking with them... It's clear they don't want to talk with you, so just go away. Again, generally that's the way to avoid being creepy: if it's clear a woman -- or a man for that matter!! -- doesn't want to talk with you, don't hang around them and force it. That IS creepy.)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:30PM (10 children)
THANK YOU! I wish I could print this out, bronze it, and pass it around to like every guy between the ages of 15 and 60 in the country! People, THIS is someone who gets it!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:28PM (7 children)
Hardly!
No, he is someone who has not been wracked with loneliness and a head full of hormones with no outlet. He's that one guy who had all the girls on a string, and so felt no need to finely sift through every inflection of voice or gesture to see if maybe somebody liked him, because he had the luxury of not having to do that. He was truly lucky for this to have been the case for him.
It is not the case for so many of his peers. Especially in a technical field, he is the unicorn he is that rare.
And we talk about this as a societal issue because it happens when everyone is young and inexperienced; but men reach their sexual peak then, when they are least equipped to cope with it, while their female peers can take it or leave it, hormonally speaking. So male missteps are amplified. Women, however, don't hit their sexual peak until middle age, when everyone else has moved on or is settled or has ceased to care; seeing a middle-aged woman sitting by herself at a bar, hoping someone, anyone, will talk to her is the saddest sight in the world. So their pain is invisible. It's not fair to men to be judged so harshly when they are expected to manage biological processes they can barely understand much less contain, and it's not fair for women to be so overlooked when they have so much perspective and complexity and such a burning desire to share it with someone else.
It's life, and it's just the way it is, but we could all practice a little more compassion and understanding for each other's loneliness and yearning for companionship instead of pathologizing or ignoring it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Saturday May 12 2018, @11:42PM
This. Menopause is the cruelest joke in nature.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:07AM (4 children)
Speak for yourself. To me it means we're both getting laid tonight and there's a high likelihood that we'll both have a pretty good idea of how to make sure the other person really enjoys themselves.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 14 2018, @03:19PM (3 children)
Actually I'm not speaking for myself. I am happily married and quite content in every department.
But there is a bar on the corner of my block I walk past coming back from meetings or work late at night, and I see the middle-aged women sitting there, with half a glass of wine. They have their best makeup, shoes, and outfits on and they toss their hair at men who pass. Nobody talks to them. The memory of my teen-age self, desperately lonely and totally disregarded, remembers the ache they're feeling. In my early 30's I mocked them because the bitterness of female rejection was still sharp, but not anymore.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 16 2018, @04:52PM (2 children)
Define middle age. I'm 32 and people still think I'm in my mid or late 20s, and happily taken such that dating isn't even on my radar screen. And if it ever gets to be, aside from the expected amount of drama you get when it's all women dating other women, I don't expect to have too much trouble. This sounds like a problem with the way straight people approach love and sex, not age itself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday May 18 2018, @10:19AM (1 child)
I don't think it's a question of gay or straight, but rather a numbers game. By the time the female libido fires up in the late 30's to middle 40's, the available pool of potential partners has shrunk. It's not a problem if a person is in a committed relationship; have at it with gusto. But if through divorce or death of a partner that woman finds herself alone, the imbalance of the desire for intimacy and the sheer number of people you can be intimate with becomes acute.
So, as a numbers game I'd surmise it's a priori more acute for lesbians who find themselves middle-aged and alone, as you are a happy few to begin with. As for the quality and nature of how lesbians approach love and sex vs. straight women, well, not being a lesbian or a woman I'm totally out of my depth on that one. But the difficulty of finding someone does seem to be a staple of lesbian humor and plot lines (didn't the L Word do a whole episode where they charted it out and figured everybody had dated the same people?).
Let's hope none of us find ourselves bereft of love and comfort in this broken world.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 18 2018, @07:30PM
I won't lie, lesbian dating is a weirdly closed ecosystem. There's just not that many of us, a dangerous (IMO) proportion of us have a tendency to "U-Haul," and there's a lot of drama. I'm one of the lucky ones, in that I met my current girlfriend online after helping stop her from commit suicide, and we'd been friends for over half a decade before realizing we'd fallen in love. But that's an odd case.
As far as libido goes, mine started ramping up around age 21 or 22, weird as that sounds. It's still pretty high at 32, and I expect there are another 10-15 years left.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:30AM
That's dumb. She should be at the comic book store instead.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:27AM
Maybe even try to get it inserted into sex ed classes. Hey, the current social climate may make schools more receptive to this than they've been in the past; I bet it wouldn't be too hard a sell to help schoolteachers and administrators keep teen guys' (at least) hormones under control, considering all the other testing laws, parenting issues, budgeting, social media exposure, and the other crap they have to deal with. You might even get support from the pro-abstinence local school boards and legislatures.
Plus, I bet teen guys - especially considering the cultural variety you find in some school districts - could use some (any) good behavioral examples and baselines to start with.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday May 16 2018, @04:03AM
I think there is some misunderstanding here. Just because I interact with a woman on what I feel is a completely platonic level does not mean they do not see something in it that is strictly platonic. For a lot of the guys I work with the extent of their interactions with others are inviting them to a bar to bullshit with them. You can invite a girl out to a bar and say you are going out with some coworkers, but how are you insured that she sees it as only platonic? No means no and yes can also mean no. Will I face a complaint in the morning because even though she said she would love to go, drove herself there, hung out for a couple hours, then went home alone, that she wont say she felt pressured into going and was put in an uncomftorable position? Yeah I get that the chances of that are very low, near 0 when we are talking about people who are over 40, but the risk for me is my job, house payment, car payment, stain on my record. The risk of not interacting is nothing. A few bad apples are spoiling the barrel and it seems that men are unwilling to risk their futures on any level of interaction.
When invited to go do something I will accept, but I will never ask first.
My work had a thing where very second monday coworkers go out to the bar. There was this unattractive socially awkward guy who was trying to get over it and would force himself to hold brief convos with people in the office. Simple stuff, weather, sports, nothing "weird" like anime or politics. At one point he asked if it was okay if he went along and was told that its cool, after the invitation but before the event I heard coworkers (younger women) badmouthing him as a creeper. He hadnt said anything out of line but was bad with eye contact. This situation goes both ways.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:01PM (1 child)
I believe that GP stipulated that you DON'T view your coworker as a potential mate. Didn't he say something about "don't think with our groin"?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:47PM
And if you reread what I wrote you will find that I'm saying that in $current_year it no longer matters. Purely platonic or raw dogging, anywhere on that whole spectrum is now almost equally dangerous. Whether the form lists "toxic masculinity", "mansplaining", "sexual harassment" or "rape" really doesn't matter because the end result is now the same for you. Anywhere Progs hold sway, universities, major corporations, the tech industry, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:07AM
Yeah -- ask Garrison Keilor about that.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Saturday May 12 2018, @08:50AM
Indeed, all it takes is to follow a few simple rules [youtube.com].
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @01:59PM
It's truly astounding to me how many people here clearly don't understand the difference between "befriend" and "sexually harass."
Let me introduce you to the ladder theory. http://laddertheory.com/ [laddertheory.com]
Once you accept this theory as possible and probable you will see it from that angle. But tl;dr Women tend to like to have friends. Men tend to want to fuck everything. The theory tends to smooth out as people get into their 40s and up.
MOST men can not do the 'friend' thing. They are not interested in that *at* *all*. You can not force interest in something or someone especially if they are afraid. It does not work. You can try to persuade people to do that. But the status quo is the ladder theory. Men are usually not interested in being friends with women. They are one #metoo moment away from having their entire life turned inside out. Women can get away with #metoo moments because our society allows it and even welcomes it. You may disagree but it is what I see going on. So as a male I keep my mouth shut head down and do not approach. Sorry if you feel bad about it. But I am going to protect myself. I have had a couple of close calls here and there. I am not alone in this thinking. My wife agrees with it too. She has watched *many* of her friends turn into vindictive assholes and use sexuality as a weapon. Men do not have that weapon. Until women own up to the idea they are also fucking things up nothing will change. You can not have one side lose everything and the other win everything. You want a win-win. Otherwise the other side just walks from the negotiation.
(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.
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Saturday May 12 2018, @04:31AM (3 children)
If this is the way you feel around women then you just might be on the spectrum. With attitudes like that it's no surprise you scare them away.
(Score: 2, Touché) by oakgrove on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:22AM (2 children)
I'm starting to think assholes like you going around calling everyone you disagree with "autists" or "on the spectrum" are probably on the spectrum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
Assholes have their own spectrum. It's pretty much invisible to those of you who don't have the asshole gene.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:31PM
Is it all in shades of brown or something?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @05:10AM
Probably not a "girl," no. But you could be friends with a much older woman and all parties involved would be less inclined toward unwanted drama.