The collectivist/individualist conflict in this article is odd. On the one hand, she seems to be opposed to collective responsibility:<p><i>Men supporting the notion that their female significant other can contribute as an equal partner financially or be the bread-winner of the household....leaving the choice of taking care of elderly parents up to women.</i><p>Ok, sounds good. No one owes anyone anything, you can do as you like with your life. No social obligations.<p><i>Having supportive social and economic practices for those who do chose to have children and take care of aging family members, which will need to be reinforced by some body such as companies or governments.</i><p>Wait what? So non-mothers owe mothers "support", socially and economically?<p>I'd love to know the philosophical underpinnings of this odd combination of individualism and collectivism. I do hope it's something more interesting than simply "the universe should make my chosen lifestyle easier!"<p>(Incidentally, it's incoherent articles like this one which have convinced me that more people should learn philosophy. I describe it as incoherent simply because it has a gaping philosophical hole, and no attempt whatsoever is made to explain it.)
My mom became a doctor in the late 60s, when there was still a good deal of real sexism towards women (she was the only woman doctor at the college) - she had her lab work sabotaged among other things. (Before becoming a doctor, she started majoring in computer science, of all things.)<p>So why did women start becoming doctors? Is it because we went out of our way to create special programs, incentives, interest, and reverse discrimination for them?<p>No.<p>Women became doctors because they wanted to, and now sexism is at a point where it is kind of pathetic to not become a doctor because you are afraid of any sexist reactions you might encounter. I'd say the same applies for computer science. Women will come into the discipline over time (especially since now there are more software engineers than there are farmers in the US), no need artificially manipulate the evolution of the job market.
Reaching out and providing scholarships and generally giving a leg up is not how this gap will be closed.<p>It has never been about teaching women to code, except at the bare minimum "I can get a job at a giant company where I'll write 2000 lines of code in a year."<p>It's about right clicking with your mouse to see if there are any other options available. Googling for your answer before you ask someone else. Asking questions on stackoverflow. Hacking and reading at night to figure out something that may or may not be for work. Recompiling the source code to make it bend to your will.<p>There is a price to be paid, and it doesn't have to do with money. As was said thousands of years ago, "There is no royal road to Geometry." It is the same today. All these solutions that don't involve paying that price are destined to fail. College age is too late. Middle school may be the last opportunity for any real percentage of women to be affected. It's not about completing classes.
There are a lot of other things too. We live in what I call the "economic order of fake-gender-neutrality" where women get ahead by foregoing having families. This means that a certain kind of woman is going to be interested in taking high-risk long-hours work like being a tech founder. Not someone like my grandmother who was a tenured astrophysicist while raising four children.<p>I know this is probably not going to go over well on HN given the connections to VC's but a major part of the problem is that "tech founders" means businesses caught in the VC exit strategy. But I think a lot of the really disruptive businesses of tomorrow are going to be lifestyle businesses, and if you want to attract women to coding, I think that lifestyle businesses are a better deal for most people. The potential payoffs are lower, it is true, but the freedom is higher, and the security is better in many cases. And with a lifestyle business, the freedom to have a family, and to integrate family and work time, makes the challenges that face child-rearing men and women (but they affect women at a younger age) easier to handle.<p>I think that as one starts to show that these lifestyle businesses are really viable in technology, that we will see women come (and truth be told, probably become the majority of coders in open source software).
Pando just published an article on a super-model who also writes and releases her own iPhone apps, codes also in python. I guess you could also say she is a software engineer who dabbles in modeling.<p><a href="http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-high-fashion-model-has-a-secret-double-life/" rel="nofollow">http://pando.com/2014/01/02/from-coding-to-the-catwalk-this-...</a>
I just want to point out that this story has been shot down off the front page, and 2nd page, in less than 20 minutes. HN really can't handle having the spotlight revealing its thoughts on gender & race. My browser history was the only reason I could even find this link again.<p>You know what someone should make in 2014? A website scrapes/mirrors HN, but only the topics about gender and race that get "disappeared"(made undiscoverable) from HN in under 20mins.
The author mentions child care, shared responsibility, financial support, parents etc. But all these things matter after it might already be too late to get into coding. The fundamental issue that needs to be addressed is the one PG made last week: "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers."*<p>Instead of having a discussion on what is probably the single most important factor affecting gender inequality in tech, PG was forced to defend. For these reasons, gender discussions have become somewhat pointless. There is no place for candidness. Everyone is trying to be politically correct and to say things that people want to hear.<p>*Most of the arguments against this seemed to rely on exceptions, random examples and personal experience, and not on stats.
> will produce a Mark Zuckerberg, who will go on to build a billion-dollar company in roughly seven years<p>The entire premise to this article is based on a misled expectation. The expectation is that there <i>should</i> be a billion dollar startup founded by a woman. Who set that expectation and why is it reasonable?<p>I'm a man, and I don't aspire to build a billion dollar company. I aspire to be insanely happy, and love what I do for a living. And travel a bit. Given we're entering a new age of humanity, shouldn't we be spending clock cycles on figuring out how to be happier, instead of just wanting more stuff?<p>BTW, 'more stuff' is not inclusive of 'fair and equal treatment'. We all deserve to be treated equally.
> Meanwhile, it is still socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career.<p>Right, but so maybe the goal <i>shouldn't</i> be that women should be able to do the same... what if it could instead <i>stop</i> being socially acceptable for men to focus wholeheartedly on their career?<p>Think of all the men who wish they'd spent more time with their kinds, instead of at the office. More time with their wives. Think of all the divorces caused by the long hours and stress of management and C-suite jobs. Even if men <i>want</i> to spend more time with their families, it's often just not socially acceptable, within the culture of their company/industry. Men who take full advantage of "maternity" leave aren't exactly looked at as promotion material, all too often. And think of how much of life they miss out on.<p>We hold up Steve Jobs as a model of shining corporate success. But it's become public knowledge that he wasn't exactly so shining when it came to being a good dad.<p>Maybe it's not just necessarily the mindset around women that needs to change -- maybe it's the mindset around men.
I was waiting to find an article clearly speaking about this; which I think is the elephant in the room when it comes to female tech founders.
The issue, as it points out, is not being able to hack; or being able to learn, etc. Society has been proven over and over that females can do just as good as males.
The issue, I think, is purely social. Most people still see women with through a veil of prejudices, and this will only change with time as more women venture into that part of the industry.<p>Founding is barely about learning how to code. It's more about human relationships and networking. And as long as the image of a female entrepreneur keeps been looked down at, this problem will keep rising. May be it's not as easy to see in USA but I've seen it clearly in my country (Mexico) in small-medium businesses conventions and with clients.
<i>We can encourage women to participate and welcome them with open arms, but that won't undo the thousands of years of ongoing cross-cultural practices that reinforce a woman's primary role as a nurturer (and I am not just talking about nurturing children).</i><p>The bit in brackets is referring to compiler bootstrapping.
> Please bear with me as I draw an analogy using history. In 1865 the U.S. government abolished slavery. [...], and it wasn't until 2008 that we elected our first African American president. Doing the math it took 143 years before African American were supposedly on equal political footing!<p>By this logic, I guess white women are (politically) disadvantaged compared to black (men) today?