I believe that the tech industry is dominated by men, that's a given, but I don't necessarily believe that we need more women, or even more men. At the moment, the tech industry has a surplus of jobs and not enough bodies to fill the desks, so what we need is more people, irrespective of age, gender, race, etc.
In my opinion, it is extremely sexist to even suggest that we need more women in tech, it implies that the (large amount of) men who are currently in the industry are not doing their jobs correctly and should be replaced by women, that women would do a better job; granted, some women would do a better job, but so would some men.
You can not force equality (a thing which you already have) upon the masses, but look at it like this, there aren't less women in tech because men don't want them there, there are just less women who are inclined to go in to technology, this isn't a case of "Male oppression is forcing us not to follow our dream", it's merely a case of less women having this dream.
Let's be honest, from our earliest childhood years, we are given this impression that certain activities are for certain genders, and yes, to some degree this is wrong, I happen to like the colour pink and my sister absolutely loved playing in dirt, to my mothers disdain, but these young character building years are what defines us, the fact is that there are two genders, not one, and they are not always equal, we need to celebrate these differences instead of trying to subdue them in to none-existence.
Personally, the finest developer I have ever met was a woman, so I have nothing against women in tech, but let's look at the fact, from a young age, boys are taught that playing computer games is a boys thing, playing these games often fosters a natural ability to understand computers.
If you play model of honour enough times, you begin to recognize the path finding model which the computer takes, and at a very primal level you begin to understand the most simple AI elements, this experience builds your understanding of how computers works. I'm not saying this is the only way to get in to computers, I'm just giving the example which was relevant to myself.
tl;dr: Stop blaming men for the lack of women in tech, take a look at your own base camp, men have given you equality for years now, just accept that most women don't want to go in to tech; not because they are women, but because, let's face it, we're a big bunch of nerds and foreveraloners and most sane people would do anything they could to stay out of this space.
If you took all the male foreveraloners and replaced them with normal people and women, would more women be attracted to the field? If so, why not do that?
It's one thing to say that women don't select into a profession because they don't have the aptitude to do it. I think the number of women who score 700+ on the Math SAT proves that at least a lot more women have the aptitude for tech than to into it. If its not aptitude, then it must be culture, and why should the male foreveraloners get to dictate the culture of the field? Because they were there first?
It's the forever-aloners who spent half a decade obsessively learning how computers work before college. If the women you're talking about are being driven away by something so tangential as the culture (which isn't between you and the keyboard), do they still have enough insatiable curiosity to be coding alone as a hobby? If not, how do you figure they have the aptitude?
We need more qualified people, but mostly fewer unqualified people. Most of the men we already have are worse than useless, and I don't want to attract anyone who isn't markedly better.
Your first sentence seems to imply that you believe it to be true. I think there are already a lot of IT companies with normal employees, but they still don't attract a lot of women (I have worked in several of them). I therefore don't think your assumption is correct.
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Here is my $0.02:
I believe that the tech industry is dominated by men, that's a given, but I don't necessarily believe that we need more women, or even more men. At the moment, the tech industry has a surplus of jobs and not enough bodies to fill the desks, so what we need is more people, irrespective of age, gender, race, etc.
In my opinion, it is extremely sexist to even suggest that we need more women in tech, it implies that the (large amount of) men who are currently in the industry are not doing their jobs correctly and should be replaced by women, that women would do a better job; granted, some women would do a better job, but so would some men.
You can not force equality (a thing which you already have) upon the masses, but look at it like this, there aren't less women in tech because men don't want them there, there are just less women who are inclined to go in to technology, this isn't a case of "Male oppression is forcing us not to follow our dream", it's merely a case of less women having this dream.
Let's be honest, from our earliest childhood years, we are given this impression that certain activities are for certain genders, and yes, to some degree this is wrong, I happen to like the colour pink and my sister absolutely loved playing in dirt, to my mothers disdain, but these young character building years are what defines us, the fact is that there are two genders, not one, and they are not always equal, we need to celebrate these differences instead of trying to subdue them in to none-existence.
Personally, the finest developer I have ever met was a woman, so I have nothing against women in tech, but let's look at the fact, from a young age, boys are taught that playing computer games is a boys thing, playing these games often fosters a natural ability to understand computers.
If you play model of honour enough times, you begin to recognize the path finding model which the computer takes, and at a very primal level you begin to understand the most simple AI elements, this experience builds your understanding of how computers works. I'm not saying this is the only way to get in to computers, I'm just giving the example which was relevant to myself.
tl;dr: Stop blaming men for the lack of women in tech, take a look at your own base camp, men have given you equality for years now, just accept that most women don't want to go in to tech; not because they are women, but because, let's face it, we're a big bunch of nerds and foreveraloners and most sane people would do anything they could to stay out of this space.
If you took all the male foreveraloners and replaced them with normal people and women, would more women be attracted to the field? If so, why not do that?
It's one thing to say that women don't select into a profession because they don't have the aptitude to do it. I think the number of women who score 700+ on the Math SAT proves that at least a lot more women have the aptitude for tech than to into it. If its not aptitude, then it must be culture, and why should the male foreveraloners get to dictate the culture of the field? Because they were there first?
It's the forever-aloners who spent half a decade obsessively learning how computers work before college. If the women you're talking about are being driven away by something so tangential as the culture (which isn't between you and the keyboard), do they still have enough insatiable curiosity to be coding alone as a hobby? If not, how do you figure they have the aptitude?
We need more qualified people, but mostly fewer unqualified people. Most of the men we already have are worse than useless, and I don't want to attract anyone who isn't markedly better.
Culture is not tangential.
Your first sentence seems to imply that you believe it to be true. I think there are already a lot of IT companies with normal employees, but they still don't attract a lot of women (I have worked in several of them). I therefore don't think your assumption is correct.
I'm entertaining the assumption. I don't think engineers are any weirder than say accountants.
It is not implying that men are not doing their job correctly.
We need more women in tech because a better male/female balance helps the industry grow.
More women will bring a new/different perspective in all areas of tech.
More women will bring a new/different perspective in all areas of tech.
All areas? What is the female perspective on query planning, routing and queueing?