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Comment by peteforde | Hacker News Reader

I've found that in the last few years as the "we must encourage more women into tech" train has gained speed, people have lost sight of the importance of removing barriers in favour of recruiting girls simply because they are girls.

In addition to being totally messed up politically, it's really harmful to your self-esteem if you think that you are being given special treatment to satisfy someone else's political correctness quota. Not to mention that eager men (with the best of intentions, no doubt) over-compensating can lead to "othering", that feeling that everyone is going overboard making you so welcomed that you kind of want to barf.

My current speculation is that for most girls, it's actually their parents that instill a nagging sense of doubt regarding what they are "supposed" to consider good career options. Therefore, I think the key is to reach young minds.

Girl coders: go speak at public schools or high schools today!

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On your comment about parents guiding their girls into certain careers, I don't see that as being so prevalent today. Part of the issue is that coding isn't viewed as a social experience, so it isolates - especially - girls, as teenagers feel peer pressure to be doing social activities. I strongly remember being 15 and wanting to be in the computer lab, but it was deemed unseemly by my peers and at that age it's more important to keep your relationships intact. So I started coding in my early twenties when my peers were busy studying or working so the social aspect was less of an issue.

Perhaps in some subcultures, but I know in at least a one immigrant community girls seem to be actively dissuaded from pursuing any engineering degrees whatsoever and steered instead toward the medical field in some capacity, or business degrees. When my significant other told her family she was changing majors to an engineering field away from a business field, they were pretty upset.

In addition I noticed in the Bay Area when I lived there for a few years many of the immigrant Asians really didn't give a damn one way or the other what their daughters did. This is actually worse, in my opinion.

Ah well, here is to the hope more of the sublimely proficient women I know seek engineering careers instead of pigeonholing themselves into "touchy feely" crap fields like marketing & PR.

Can you clarify why you think parents not giving a damn about what their daughters do with their careers is worse?

didn't give a damn one way or the other what their daughters did doesn't mention the word career. I do not know whether that is what was intended, but I interpreted it as "parents not giving a damn about whether their daughters have a career".

Because having support and encouragement at home of any kind is preferable to benign neglect, imo.

Interestingly in the article the author notes that she was positively influenced by a professor that regularly said "let's hear from some of the girls" -- something that sounds condescending and like it's unfairly singling out the girls/women. Presumably that was countered by the positive effect of actually forcing them to talk. And the Imposter Syndrome (which I see sited very often by women) implies that while the damage to self-esteem might be an issue, girls (and women) will still probably self-inflict that damage to their esteem regardless. Which is to say, removing barriers won't counter this (might not even be that important), rather it takes some assertive effort.

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