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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, Interesting) by Sulla on Saturday May 12 2018, @03:21AM
Does the average woman do the reverse? I recently saw an interview with a first wave feminist and she talked about how the goal was equality of opportunity and not the equity that we are seeing today. That masculinity and competitiveness must be held high as virtues because men are needed to do the garbage duty, high voltage line work, etc. Rather than force equity in the fields women want because of the money they can earn they need to have the barriers that keep them from competing on equal terms removed. It seems to me the best system is no additional barriers to entry but allowing the chips to fall as they may in regards to makeup. Nature seems to dictate women are more likely to be nurses than engineers and men more likely to be engineers than nurses. There are exceptions to the rule and that is fine let them compete based on merit, merit being ability and not group identity.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam