from Hacker News

Gender gap in tech jobs narrows across advanced economies

by sylvainkalache on 3/5/24, 6:28 PM with 90 comments

  • by smcg on 3/5/24, 6:40 PM

  • by swagasaurus-rex on 3/5/24, 6:45 PM

    Some of these statistical shifts can be explained by fewer men graduating colleges entirely.
  • by evantbyrne on 3/5/24, 7:34 PM

    It is important to note that they appear to be grouping workers together based on industry, not job title. For example, the US data (https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/ceseeb5a.htm) lists >35% of workers in "Custom computer programming services" to be women. So while that is a perfectly valid statistic for analyzing industries as a whole, data organized in this way tells us nothing about what percentage of professional developers in the US are women. I haven't looked at the EU data.
  • by countrymile on 3/5/24, 7:48 PM

    I think this is a positive, but the article needs more data on what women are actually doing, beyond a few annecdotes. It says: "Employees in computer programming and related services” what are these related services? For example data on faang and gender looks bad but not that bad. But when you actually look at the roles women are doing within the organisations, there is a massive imbalance when you look at programming, compared to Comms.
  • by vehemenz on 3/5/24, 7:02 PM

    There are smaller gaps between the sexes for high-paying jobs in general. See law and medicine.

    I started at top ten CS program almost 25 years ago, and there were only a handful of women there at all. Today's grads weren't born much later, so when tech jobs began to pay better and became high-status, it's not a big surprise that everyone else flocked to them. I'm not discounting the advantages women get in the hiring process, which plays its own part, but I think it's a lesser factor in all of this.

  • by dauertewigkeit on 3/5/24, 6:49 PM

    It would be interesting to know if this is explained by the status gain of tech jobs (w.r.t more traditionally prestigious jobs). This is one of the theories that tries to explain some of the gap in preferences between man and women of equally high aptitudes.
  • by alienicecream on 3/5/24, 9:28 PM

    Why is this desirable again?
  • by bradlys on 3/5/24, 9:29 PM

    > In the US, the proportion of female workers in tech rose from 31 per cent in 2019 to 35 per cent by the end of 2023, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    It rose by an absolute 4 percent during the incredible rise of the fake email job. To me, it means that we're completely tapped on the amount of women that are willing to join tech.

    If you look at college admissions, you'd think, "Hey, we're actually seeing an increased interest in women joining CS. Look at the percent of women graduating from top CS colleges over the last 15 years." What you're not seeing is the admissions statistics broken down by gender. Almost all admissions statistics that are publicly available are aggregated. I've seen how the meat is made on the admissions side and have had access to the statistics broken down by gender. There is a drastic difference in the admissions process based on gender. Often the only admitted male candidates have a GPA of 3.9+/4.0 to these top programs whereas the average on the female candidates have much lower at 3.4/4.0. That's the difference between perfect academic performance and above average. It takes a lot of effort to achieve a perfect score in some of these intense majors. It doesn't even account for the grading bias that these men will be experiencing in addition.

    What's interesting to me is that you see very few women as ICs in later stages of their career. Most transition to management or out of the workforce. Straight women in tech typically marry someone else who makes same or much more. It's often plausible for the woman to become a SAHP and opt out of working as long as they're fine with either husband grinding insane hours to make 7 figures or moving to Dublin/Boulder Creek.

    In addition, I think the outsourcing of tech jobs will be another way that companies will "improve" the statistics here in the USA. Engineering is overwhelmingly male. Companies love to outsource expensive software engineers to other countries (where they are also still overwhelmingly male but won't be accounted for in company stats!). I think this is the next move for DEI/anti-labor consultants. Expect your job to be outsourced not because it's saving the company money but because it improves the company's demographic numbers.

    I remember a company I worked at bragged about their wildly high POC/black workforce. Everyone they were hiring in those roles wasn't making much money. They were just customer service roles that didn't pay a ton but this was peak fake email job time. The HR side of the company would then trash the engineering org because it was 75%+ asian (one would think it was 95%+ depending on org you joined) and most of the remaining <25% was a mix of white/middle eastern with a few token Nigerians spread in. (Not a single black american in over 1000+ employees in USA employer) Almost always the female IC engineers were under 35 - and none had kids yet. As soon as kids happened - transition to management or quitting. I never thought I'd see it so blatantly.

    I don't know why we have to fixate on such a stupid non-problem. Women and a lot of minorities just have no interest in tech because it has the lowest social status of all white collar professions and it's an incredibly taxing job on top of that. The competitive jobs require an insane amount of effort to get into that requires nothing short of methamphetamine or autism. The only reason most women I know get into these jobs is because the hiring bar is lower for them. A lot of women get completely shellshocked whenever they encounter an interview that is at the level of a typical male candidate.

  • by cedws on 3/5/24, 6:50 PM

    DEI initiatives are inherently sexist and racist and to date I have seen zero solid scientific evidence proving that diversity is a strategic advantage.

    When adjusted for factors such as lifestyle choices, women's salaries are on average 95-99% of men's[0] - a negligible difference. Intervening to enforce exact equality between men and women without taking into account lifestyle choices is in fact giving preference to women.

    Women are already outperforming men in education[1]. Is it really valid to claim women are not on a level playing field anymore? We're not in the 20th century. In the UK, women outnumber men in universities[2]. White, working class British boys are one of the poorest performing demographics in education but I have rarely seen it discussed. As a British lad who left school less than a decade ago, I don't think the education system is suited to engage boys whatsoever.

    [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

    [1]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/13/girls-outperform...

    [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/h...

    Addendum: I'm located in London and work in the tech scene. I have worked with people from all over the world and many different cultures. At no point have I observed a distinct advantage from this diversity.

  • by swader999 on 3/5/24, 7:16 PM

    I just think it's ridiculous to even be discussing gender or color when hiring. I'll interview and hire anyone capable, that's all that matters. And diversity to me is have they done anything interesting with their life, education, career, overcome adversity, something hard, creative, helpful.