Is there anything good men can do? (to bring more women into tech)

@cregox Caue Rego
Sat, 21 Jun 2014 18:50:13 +0000

@cregox wrote:

The title is a mix up of a recent blog post I've read with one of my favourite texts on the gender subject. To add to it, I also recently had an argument with wife because I was posting an answer on quora which I accidently found while looking for a previous answer on a related subject.

Unlike most of the links, I want to be as brief as possible here. But, beware, this will be a highly flammable topic if you don't read at least the first two links above!

Programming languages are languages. I think everyone should know at least 2. Everyone. 2 languages and 2 programming ones. But the later is a field completely dominated by men and so the first link here proposes 5 things men could do to begin changing that, which are great! But I think Jeff don't acknowledge the second link, about differences between men and women while proposing them and it is something that comes before all that.

Women are different from men. And vice-versa.

Of course, the environment has to be favorable... But women have to gather interest in programming somehow, preferably since childhood. This unproportional men to women ratio scenario exist today not just due to a supposed hostile learning ground for girls. It's also because women naturally have no interest in technology. Maybe even mainly so. And then this scenario would only naturally change if first women could see something which might interest them. The technology have to be just a tool for them, unlike for men who can enjoy philosophy much more, for instance. Men enjoy "wasting time" just thinking. In this sense, women are much more practical.

So no, I don't think there's anything men can do to make women learn programming language today. There's too little that technology can do for them. There is still much that can be done at least to improve the environment for them, and for the future. And who knows when, eventually we might start programming by talking (not dictating) to computers... By then, maybe we'll have more female programmers than male!

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