Thoughts on the day...
So it would seem that there is a huge push to get girls/women/ladies/female persons into STEM and programming specifically. There are people working on "scholarships" or "free tickets to cons" and such for them as underrepresented class of persons. I am wondering the actual specific reasons? Is it because we have an actual shortage of programming persons? Or because this class of persons desires to be in programming, but is somehow being shut out? There doesn't necessarily seem to be lack for this class of persons in other STEM fields. Could it also be due to the fact that this class of persons is traditionally paid less than their boy/man/dude/male person counterpart performing the same job as an attempt to lower the cost to businesses employing such? I am curious of the pushes that are being done, because I never trust the motivation given for anything that affects so many aspects of something.
Without turning this into an essay, I want to raise a few more questions?
Does the industry gain anything in the field from diversity itself? Does a programming team benefit from having a person of a specific gender, race, religion, national origin <insert the rest of the eoe protected classes> from the fact that they are in fact a member of that class.
Should the industry and its players change itself, (customs, culture, mores, language, and so on) to allow for such integration, or would the marriage of such new culture to an existing culture naturally change it organically?
Is this done in other industries where they are made up lacking a certain class of person and strong encouragement, support etc. is made to interest, entice, or otherwise bring members of that lacking class into it?
@Absinthe From a "for the good of the world" perspective, it's because we still see things like https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mgb3yn/technology-isnt-designed-to-fit-women which wouldn't have happened if more women were involved in the creation of various technology products.
As for from a "because society still has immoral biases built into it" perspective, I seem to have forgotten to copy the post with all the citations into my reference-back bin, but here's the gist of how I understand it:
1. While it's true that we see a skew toward women *wanting* non-STEM jobs that exercise other skills (eg. language) in nordic countries where factors such as pay are reduced or eliminated as biases, studies show that even the nordic countries still have fewer women in STEM fields than they should when controlled for that. (ie. In a properly fair world, studies show there should be fewer than 50% women in STEM fields, but more than we have.)
2. Our school system is partly to blame because, while girls and boys develop differently and arrive at the same point eventually, the current development curves tend to result in math being taught in a way that better harmonizes with the boys' development curve and English (and, I'd assume, other native languages) being taught in a way that better harmonizes with the girls' development curve.
3. Biasing factors can be *very* subtle, such as parents allowing male babies to cry longer without realizing it, or being more concerned about little girls getting dirty or hurt during play that might help to develop their curiosity about the natural world... again, without realizing it. (eg. Balancing on a rock in the middle of a stream)
@Absinthe Another article in the vein of that first link:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes
EDIT: Aha! It mentioned the book (Invisible Women) that was used as the basis for the title of one of the articles in that original list of citations I couldn't re-locate:
https://www.wired.com/story/caroline-criado-perez-invisible-women/
