I remember a discussion on HN where many of the comments have said that the best way to bring women into the industry is to bring women into the industry. Quite true, I definitely agree to it.
I don't know that I'm so sure. Most other professional industries were, at one point, just as lopsidedly male as tech is these days. But as society lifted the more explicit barriers and it became common for women to pursue professional careers, they naturally flowed into all sorts of different roles (the "Jackie Robinson effect", so to speak).
That they haven't showed up in tech (and math and science, though there are slightly more there) means there's something else going on, and I just can't buy the theory that women have stayed away because there are few women, since that has proved to be a relatively small deterrent in so many other cases.
I'm similarly skeptical that sexism in the industry is responsible for this, because it's just as rampant, if not moreso, in most industries (I could tell you some really unbelievable stories about the finance industry, yeegads...). That's not to say that because "everybody else does it" it's right or okay in tech; rather, it's to say that unless there's some clear reason why sexism in tech should push women away more forcefully than it does in other fields (or a shred of non-anecdotal evidence that sexism is more prevalent in tech, which I have never seen, and which I'm skeptical about because if it was true it seems fair to assume that we'd see a greater pay gap than in most other fields, which is not the case), it's hard for me to accept it as the main reason women aren't showing up to the party. And if it's not the real reason that women aren't getting into the field, then we might be missing the actual cause, which perhaps we could do something about.
Or maybe we can't. But we should at least be trying to figure out some better way to find out what's actually going on, rather than just arguing from anecdote and theory (I'm guilty of this, as well).
I would look at how many women are in STEM fields in, say, Europe. Because if it's an American problem, then maybe it's because in America, STEM fields are low-status. Not as low-status as garbage collectors, but low-status enough that women don't aspire to break into those fields the way they've broken into law and medicine.
I don't know that I'm so sure. Most other professional industries were, at one point, just as lopsidedly male as tech is these days. But as society lifted the more explicit barriers and it became common for women to pursue professional careers, they naturally flowed into all sorts of different roles (the "Jackie Robinson effect", so to speak).
That they haven't showed up in tech (and math and science, though there are slightly more there) means there's something else going on, and I just can't buy the theory that women have stayed away because there are few women, since that has proved to be a relatively small deterrent in so many other cases.
I'm similarly skeptical that sexism in the industry is responsible for this, because it's just as rampant, if not moreso, in most industries (I could tell you some really unbelievable stories about the finance industry, yeegads...). That's not to say that because "everybody else does it" it's right or okay in tech; rather, it's to say that unless there's some clear reason why sexism in tech should push women away more forcefully than it does in other fields (or a shred of non-anecdotal evidence that sexism is more prevalent in tech, which I have never seen, and which I'm skeptical about because if it was true it seems fair to assume that we'd see a greater pay gap than in most other fields, which is not the case), it's hard for me to accept it as the main reason women aren't showing up to the party. And if it's not the real reason that women aren't getting into the field, then we might be missing the actual cause, which perhaps we could do something about.
Or maybe we can't. But we should at least be trying to figure out some better way to find out what's actually going on, rather than just arguing from anecdote and theory (I'm guilty of this, as well).