Thread of resources! A friend just asked me to give him some links on articles on why women are underrepresented in tech which are written for a popular audience. Here's a roundup of articles I sent him. #womenintech #womeninSTEM (1/n)
First off, one should know that CS was once female dominated in the West: npr.org/sections/money… (2/n)
One should also know that CS is female dominated in some countries today, like Malaysia and Qatar, and that many non-Western countries have near-parity in their CS majors. patitsas.blogspot.ca/2013/10/why-ar… (3/n)
There are structural reasons why there are fewer women in CS in the West. For example, how CS departments responded to enrolment booms in the late-80s and dot-com era resulted in gatekeeping practices that disproportionately pushed women out: cs.stanford.edu/people/erobert… (4/n)
Women are still getting into tech jobs but they're arriving at them from "alternate pathways" rather than the traditional "pipeline", and these jobs are more likely to be lower paid and have fewer opportunities for advancement: theguardian.com/technology/201… (5/n)
The whole pipeline metaphor is problematic and should be abandoned: insidehighered.com/views/2015/03/… (6/n)
Returning to those "alternate" pathways --- pathways such as coding bootcamps could have negative effects long-term since they can increase the amount of vertical segregation in tech: theatlantic.com/education/arch… (7/n)
Then there's this idea that we need to "fix" the women so they can succeed in tech, rather than change tech itself. Women are stuck doing double-duty in tech: not only do we need to prove ourselves but also have to do diversity work: modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-lea… (8/n)
The idea you need an innate ability to do computing contributes to keeping women out of tech: modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-cor… and racial minorities: blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/this… (9/n)
TLDR of all these articles: there are structural reasons for why there aren't more women in tech now. It isn't about the individual actions or "choices" of women, this is a sociological phenomenon and needs to be understood as such.
Feel free to add articles to the list! (10/10)
Feel free to add articles to the list! (10/10)
