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Comment by ucaetano | Hacker News Reader

> yes there is a root cause in biology

No.

Proof: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

If there was a root cause in biology, in 1980 there wouldn't be the same % of women in CS as in business, or almost the same as social sciences. Or almost the same as there are women in math/stats today.

Something happened in the early 80's. I have a hypothesis for that, tied to the rise of video-games, sci-fi, etc. that eventually came to dominate CS. But don't have any non-anedoctal evidence for that.

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It is not a proof. Come on! This is a complex thing - there might be many factors involved.

I don't say that nothing happened in 1980s - and your theory about video-games only moves the problem to another area, why women don't like video-games like men?

Women do like video games. But in the 1980s, it did seem like more of a boys thing. I'm not sure why.

Sometimes I wonder why it is "natural" that some fields are dominated by females by nearly a 90% but it is worrisome that others are 80% male. I mean, given a more or less equivalent intelligence distribution people needs to end doing something.

Also, the dotcom bubble sure killed CS.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but in Netherland, a lot of people are worried about the dropping number of men in education. It's becoming increasingly dominated by women, but it's important that kids also see men in front of the class.

I think my oldest son's school has only two male teachers, and my youngest son's childcare has only one male childcarer (what's the word for that?). It'd be healthy if it was a bit more equal.

That's not proof. It's an observation that needs explaining. Scott Alexander's post[0], which was linked in TFA offers a plausible explanation.

> My impression is that there were lots of women in CS in 1980 for the same reason there were lots of Jews in banking in 1800: they were banned from doing anything else.

> Computer programming was originally considered sort of a natural outgrowth of being a secretary (remember, 77% of data entry specialists are still female today, probably because it’s also considered a natural outgrowth of being a secretary). Women had lots of opportunity in it, and a lot of women who couldn’t break into other professions naturally went into it.

> Then people let women become doctors and lawyers, so a bunch of the smart ones went off and did that instead.

> You can see the same thing going on with teachers. There’s been a huge decline in the percent of the most talented women who become teachers.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

That explanation doesn't match the chart: There weren't a lot of women in CS. They were growing, just like other fields.

And then, suddenly, they stopped growing and started declining.

It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests.

Maybe there might be two effects at work here: Women joining a field early that was seen as a female job (computer secretaries) that did not align with their interests while conversely men started to join more when the job became more stereotyped as a "male activity" while at the same time being aligned with their interest.

Contrast the business curve which also saw an early increase but also is more of a people-interest thing, thus did not see a decline.

> It did rise most sharply in CS because it was open to women early on when women joined the labor market (previously either holding non-degree jobs or being stay-at-home wives). Once other fields opened up too they left CS for those fields which aligned more with their interests.

Again, that doesn't match the chart: http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-bachel...

Actually, you're wrong. This doesn't disprove anything, unfortunately, because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender (that is for example women will prefer jobs with more women over jobs with less women, ceteris paribus). In the presence of such feedback effects, even if the ratio of men and women who intent to work in some field is the same, you will get a dynamical system where the actual ratio can vary a great deal over time.

> because there also can be a feedback effect from people preferring fields with more people of their own gender

No, that would mean that women in business, architecture, physical sciences, etc. would not have increased.

The fact that women in CS followed closely several other fields (business, architecture, etc.) means that % of women already on the field is not relevant.

The fact that other fields that use skills similar to CS (math, stats, physical sciences) have much higher women ratios, show that there is no inherent biological factor impacting it.

No it doesn't, because they're different fields, some of which are pre-med related. And amidst programming itself there's different behaviors. Way more men design their own programming languages.

Maybe worth looking at the proportions in other countries too, "pre-med" isn't the first step to becoming a doctor worldwide. I gather that Law differs a fair bit too.

I bet that would not be useful because the cultural effects seem to be much different in magnitude even between European countries.

The same argument that would disprove my point would also disprove OP's point that it is biological.

If you look at the actual numbers of men and women in CS rather than just the percentage of women, you'll find that whatever happened in the early '80s affected both men and women. Before that, the numbers for both men and women were growing, with the women growing faster (hence the rising percentage of women). Then the numbers of both men and women started falling for several years, with women falling faster (hence the declining percentage of women).

Staring at the chart, 1980 doesn't seem that significant. It shows from 1970s to 1980s, almost every major has seen an increase in women graduates.

I don't know much about this subject, best I can do is pass around a link(video) I saw that was semi-convincing to me that - there might be some general biological tendencies(https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70). Biological tendencies are not useful for individual cases, so as long as everyone is given moderately equal chance at getting a job they qualify for and can do the work in peace, everything is well and good.

I think it's about 1984 where Computer Science suddenly peaks and drops back to below 20%. It's the only field to do so; the others keep going up. Though Engineering stays below 20% the entire time.

Abstraction, that's what happened.

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