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Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

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551 points adrianhon | 3 comments | 08 Apr 24 15:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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toolz ◴[08 Apr 24 19:57 UTC] No.39973124[source]▶
I do believe there are unique challenges to being a woman in tech, but the odds seem in favor of women doing well both back in the 70's and today with todays stats having roughly 20% of CS grads being female while some 23% of SWEs are female. That suggests there are more women in software jobs than women who have been pursing that career academically. What stats do you see that suggest the odds are against women in tech? I frequently recommend tech as a good field for young girls, but I'll probably not do that anymore if the odds are truly against them.
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leononame ◴[08 Apr 24 20:01 UTC] No.39973152[source]▶
How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low.

Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the women in those places notice that even if it's behind their backs.

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1. rootusrootus ◴[08 Apr 24 20:12 UTC] No.39973233[source]▶
Would be nice if it were higher, for sure. And it will become that way, because more women go to college now than men. Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%? I'd like to think so, but I won't take that bet.
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2. randomdata ◴[09 Apr 24 02:50 UTC] No.39975856[source]▶
> Will we care about young men being under represented in college before they get down to 20%?

We won't care about men being under represented, but colleges may worry that they are losing out on customers if the male population of college buyers swings that low. That may prompt marketing campaigns to try and attract men into college.

I mean, it is not like we care about women being under represented either. Nobody is ever bothered by just 5% of firefighters being female. Tech was only ever concerned about women in tech because the industry was desperate for a larger pool of workers and women looked like an untapped source of people.

3. AlecSchueler ◴[09 Apr 24 08:23 UTC] No.39977223[source]▶
> go to college now than men. Will we care about young men

This is called whataboutery. The fact that we are still de-railing conversations about women's representation to centre men's issues shows exactly why there's still so much work to be done.