They always address the two main questions/premisses "more women needed in tech" & "why are fewer women in tech" flippantly with weak, unthoughtful arguments & cliche explanations. Both are genuine questions that need to be addressed. Even if you are willing to accept that women need to be equally represented in tech as self evident or fundamental, you should still find out the real reasons why things are this way if you want to fix it.
Any answers that you come up with to the "why" question need to answers it in a way that doesn't equally apply to law, medicine, academics & government. Professions that women entered a generation ago.
In any case, I'm only half convinced about the economic rationale given by this article: We need women to design stuff for women. It is a definitely a real problem people designing tech products are disconnected from many of the people using tech products. But women are the one "group" that technology designing men do interact with. I think if you want to add useful perspectives something to encourage might be technology as a second career. People who spent 10 years as farmers, nurses, builders or rodeo clowns.
We need more women in trash collection. It is a national problem. The disparity between genders in the field is huge, has been going on for years, and relies on outdated, presumptuous, and sexist stereotypes that women do not like to be smelly and dirty. And the discrimination goes all the way up to the top: every CEO of a trash collection company you meet is male. We need to reach every girl and indoctrinate them to like trash as early as we can so that more of them will go on to collect it.
What I mean is: Sure, we really like computer science and allied fields. But there are other ways to live, and it seems really arrogant (and speaking of stereotypes, American ;) to unilaterally decide that our way is the best way and roll in and try and "fix" the problem. Anecdote, but the people who do well in CS are intrinsically into it.
Law firms took concerted efforts to recruit women into the profession. Today, those efforts are no longer necessary because the representation of women in the field (about 55/45) seems to be self-propagating.
Engineering departments have been taking concerted efforts to recruit women into the faculties for years, with less effect. I assume some technology companies have too.
I'm not sure how to quantify the efforts put in by different fields.
Comments
These articles always tend to be quite bad.
They always address the two main questions/premisses "more women needed in tech" & "why are fewer women in tech" flippantly with weak, unthoughtful arguments & cliche explanations. Both are genuine questions that need to be addressed. Even if you are willing to accept that women need to be equally represented in tech as self evident or fundamental, you should still find out the real reasons why things are this way if you want to fix it.
Any answers that you come up with to the "why" question need to answers it in a way that doesn't equally apply to law, medicine, academics & government. Professions that women entered a generation ago.
In any case, I'm only half convinced about the economic rationale given by this article: We need women to design stuff for women. It is a definitely a real problem people designing tech products are disconnected from many of the people using tech products. But women are the one "group" that technology designing men do interact with. I think if you want to add useful perspectives something to encourage might be technology as a second career. People who spent 10 years as farmers, nurses, builders or rodeo clowns.
To play devil's advocate:
We need more women in trash collection. It is a national problem. The disparity between genders in the field is huge, has been going on for years, and relies on outdated, presumptuous, and sexist stereotypes that women do not like to be smelly and dirty. And the discrimination goes all the way up to the top: every CEO of a trash collection company you meet is male. We need to reach every girl and indoctrinate them to like trash as early as we can so that more of them will go on to collect it.
What I mean is: Sure, we really like computer science and allied fields. But there are other ways to live, and it seems really arrogant (and speaking of stereotypes, American ;) to unilaterally decide that our way is the best way and roll in and try and "fix" the problem. Anecdote, but the people who do well in CS are intrinsically into it.
Law firms took concerted efforts to recruit women into the profession. Today, those efforts are no longer necessary because the representation of women in the field (about 55/45) seems to be self-propagating.
Engineering departments have been taking concerted efforts to recruit women into the faculties for years, with less effect. I assume some technology companies have too.
I'm not sure how to quantify the efforts put in by different fields.