That's survivor bias [0]. The point isn't whether there's still at least one woman in the field, or whether there's "plenty of women" (what does that even mean, anyway?). The point is whether anyone was stopped from entering the field at all.
The ones who are still in the field are the ones most resilient to the abuse. But you miss out on the contributions of all the people who left and did something else. How much farther along might we be in software engineering, or sculpture, or architecture, or <insert your favorite field here> -- had the toxic environment not been present in the first place?
"plenty of women" (what does that even mean, anyway?).
Not really sure - I don't personally view a lack of $GROUP as a problem. If you feel similarly then disregard my entire post - it's premised on the idea that the reader does view a lack of women as a problem.
There are two claims here. One is that bad behavior exists. The other is that this bad behavior plays a significant causal role in keeping women out of tech.
The latter is what I'm questioning. Since large number of women seem to want to enter acting in spite of it having a far worse reputation (never heard of a "casting couch" in tech), it seems that bad behavior alone is a poor explanation for the lack of women.
Basically, you want a formal proof that "bad behavior plays a significant causal role in keeping women out of tech" is a valid hypothesis?
While scientifically interesting, I don't see the utillity for that, honestly. Do we really not agree that this has to stop? Does it really matter how many people harassment would keep out of the business? While skepticism has its place, harassment is not a technical, but a social problem, and I, for one, can bring up enough empathy to not need the scientific method to want to stop harassment.
As to the casting couch, I don't know how it's where you live, but here in Europe, while everyone in the acting and music community is familiar with the term, the "casting couch" exists merely as a myth, not an actual thing preventing women to begin working in acting. Besides, the acting/music community is far beyond the 1/10 (or whatever) gender split in the tech community, so even if someone would try to establish the casting couch as a de-facto gate-keeping procedure, female members of the in-group would call it out, ending this phenomenon much sooner than would be possible if the gender gap in those communities were to be as it is now in tech.
Even then, you wouldn't bring up statiscics how many women were entering the acting field by "passing" the "casting couch". So I'm confused and would like to know what your point really is.
No, I'd like to see evidence of some sort that the effect is significant before concluding it plays a significant role in keeping women out of tech.
If you want to tackle the problem of crazy people trolling public figures, be my guest. I don't see any reasonable steps that we could take that wouldn't be oppressive, but maybe you have more imagination than me. Just don't be surprised if you solve this problem but tech remains 25% women.
We're not discussing "crazy people trolling public figures" here. No one wants to do anything about your favourite sunday newspaper cartoonist and his daily Obama caricatures. We're not talking about your neighbour kid playing phone pranks on you.
What we're talking about here are death threats, sexual harassment, and calling your boss to get you fired. Deliberate, organized hate. Effective and planned activities to harm an individual who doesn't represent the in-group you're happening to be in.
I couldn't care less how the gender distribution remains after we've solved THAT issue. This is a showstopper bug that has to be solved BEFORE we even begin to debug the gender gap.
Anything else would be ridiculous:
"Yeah, we're trying to find ways to get more women in tech, but since we don't have any scientific evidence to back up that the harassment, hate and verbal abuse against women in tech is a root cause of too few women in tech, we're still investigating and solving other possible causes"
If you were a woman (I suppose you aren't), would you want to work in an environment that is obviously this toxic?
If you were a woman (I suppose you aren't), would you want to work in an environment that is obviously this toxic?
I don't think tech is "toxic".
I've put as much of my money where my mouth is as my plumbing allows. I recently (read: past few months) did everything I could to help a girl I care about get into tech. I think she'll be happier in the field than in her various alternatives.
Well, that's because I assume you're a decent human being, and that's great - and I try to do the same (while not having experiences specifically with girls, I try to support women in tech where I can)
We both are fortunate to not see a problem in our specific peer groups, but strangely seem to disagree that the problem still exists for some other peer groups, and that we should do anything possible to stop that toxicity.
I'll add another reply to this, because this deserves its own discussion:
> I don't personally view a lack of $GROUP as a problem
Do you really not see how a group's problem-solving could be much richer if more $GROUPs are added to the mix?
I find this astounding. A lack of $GROUP in a design team designing products for $GROUP leads to obvious overhead where the members have to account for every $GROUP's needs, while not having a representant of this very group, leading to blindness and bias - one popular example being crash test dummies which no one even thought to test for female body types, leading to greater injuries in car accidents for women (it's not difficult to find scientific articles on this, if that's new to you)
Another obvious problem is that by having $GROUP out of the mix, a member of $GROUP trying to enter the field faces doubt and skepticism ("scene whore"), just because of the fact that $GROUP is under-represented, perpetuating the situation.
Let's play devil's advocate here and say that a lack of $GROUP isn't a problem in itself - how would you solve the two aforementioned problems without increasing $GROUP's representation in a field?
In at least two jobs, not to mention my current consulting project, I've been the only member of my racial group. I can't think of a time my group membership ever helped or affected the work at all.
At most it was a source of fun within the office - e.g. convincing an officemate that I had two illegitimate children might have been more difficult if I were a member of the majority group.
I agree that diversity among crash test dummies, nurses and security theatre pat down people is important since specific job functions depend on it.
Another obvious problem is that by having $GROUP out of the mix, a member of $GROUP trying to enter the field faces doubt and scepticism ("scene whore"), just because of the fact that $GROUP is under-represented, perpetuating the situation.
Your entire process is broken if irrational concerns like this are playing a significant role. This is a bigger problem, and merely throwing in some more bias to compensate is papering over the problem. The solution is to vigorously make your process systematic and objective, removing human judgement as much as possible.
While anecdotal trivia of your work history didn't make you feel a lack in your work environment, you're actively downplaying and trying to make a non-issue of the lack that is viewed by your peers in the group. Why? What would you lose if more $GROUPs happened to work in your field?
> make your process systematic and objective
You mean the crash test dummy example?
You can't automate the design of a new process, because the design of the automation in itself is the designing of a process which underlies human bias and blindness.
How exactly are you going to make the process of a female being called a "scene whore" on IRC as soon as the mob find out she's female make more "systematic and objective"?
I think you mixed up the different examples here.
What would you lose if more $GROUPs happened to work in your field?
Nothing. I don't care about the background of the people I work with. And if other people do, I'd suggest they should focus on work instead of tribalism.
By "make your process systematic and objective", I'm referring to entry processes into tech (or whatever). E.g., judge a job candidate by their github + systematic tech interview instead of a resume + culture fit. Or hear out what a person on IRC has to say rather than spewing ad hominems.
> Or hear out what a person on IRC has to say rather than spewing ad hominems
Let me quote from the original article.
"When I was 14, I found IRC, and with it, a whole subculture of people that loved the same things that I loved. [...] But the negative attention that came from being a female on IRC far outweighed anything I got from the positive. This was really my only substantial interaction with humans though, so I didn’t know it was weird. I thought that this is just how it was. I didn’t know it was wrong to treat people that way. I saw it happening to other women on IRC, too. Even though I never consciously acknowledged it, women felt like second class citizens to me. Even though my only goal was to learn, it was always a battle being taken seriously. I was constantly being called things like “scene whore” and “clueless” [...]"
By the way, please read the article, and the second part.
The ones who are still in the field are the ones most resilient to the abuse. But you miss out on the contributions of all the people who left and did something else. How much farther along might we be in software engineering, or sculpture, or architecture, or <insert your favorite field here> -- had the toxic environment not been present in the first place?
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias