I saw this chart on LinkedIn with the heading “Chart: Women in tech continue to face uphill battle” and the hashtag #STEMSexism.
The first reason for the low number of women in computer jobs is that we rarely hear about women in computing except in the context of pay gaps, harassment, discrimination, “uphill battles” and #STEMSexism.
It’s self-perpetuating. “Computing is a terrible profession for women in so many ways.” Followed by “Why aren’t there more women in computing?”
You’ve answered your own question. If you think computing is a hostile profession (I do not, btw), why do you want more women to go into it?
The second reason for the low number of women in computer jobs — sometimes the simplest explanations are the best — is that women prefer to do other things.
Men and women are different and make different choices about their lives, as a result of which, women are underrepresented in some professions and overrepresented in others.
Women, for example, are overrepresented in nursing, family counseling, speech pathology, social work, education, to name a few.
Do we hear about a diversity crisis in speech pathology or social work? We don’t, right?
I worked with a nursing organization for five years. About 90 percent of nurses are women, but in five years I can’t remember a single instance where gender bias was cited as a crisis, a dilemma, a problem, or even something as mild as a cause for concern.
Women being overrepresented in certain professions is not widely considered to be a problem. But if women being underrepresented in computer jobs is a problem, then their overrepresentation in other professions is also a problem.
In fact, it’s the same problem. Because where are the women in computing going to come from?
On the safe assumption that the number of women is constant — that a large number of new women are not going to just appear out of nowhere — the women will have to come from other professions that they seem to prefer, the professions in which they are overrepresented.
Sorry girls, we can’t have so many of you working in healthcare, education and other helping professions because we need to boost the computing numbers.
Or — we could calm down about the computing numbers and leave young women to make their own choices about their own lives.
TL;DR -> Women are capable of making decisions for themselves. For the most part, they choose to do things other than work in computer jobs, which is okay. It’s possible that none of us really knows what is the “right” percentage of women in computing and it’s possible that none of us really knows what other people should be doing with their lives.
Thus spoke The Programmer