Murray Robinson
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

I’ve been working in the software industry for 30 years for big, small, local and international companies. There sure are a lot more men than women in technical engineering jobs. But it’s not because there is no support for women to enter a sexist field. It’s because few women choose to study STEM subjects in high school and college despite encouragement from teachers and the industry from 1970 onwards.

If you go to a computer science lecture now you will find that about 15% of the students are women. It’s the same for other engineering and maths subjects. On the other hand if go to a psychology lecture you will find that 65% of the students are women and in nursing 90% of the students are women. Is this because there is strong discrimination against women in computer science departments and strong discrimination against men in nursing and psychology college departments? Obviously it’s not. It’s because of the individual choices of students. The split starts at high school. As soon as students get to choose their subjects girls choose to do maths and science less than boys even though teachers encourage girls to do STEM subjects.

If 15% of computer science graduates are women its reasonable that 15% of computer programmers are women. There is nothing sexist about it. It reflects individual choices. To blame it on a highly sexist and biased industry that doesn’t support women is a highly biased and misinformed thing to do. Every IT company I’ve worked for over the last 30 year’s has had a policy of hiring and encouraging more women. Sometimes actively discriminating in favour of women during the recruitment process. Plus many companies I’ve worked for have been delighted to have women in technical management positions and have actively discriminated in favour of women on many occasions. I have read about a sexist bro culture at uber and I acknowledge that it’s a real and awful thing in those cases but I’ve never seen it in 30 years in the industry. Most IT departments are like Dilbert or Office space. No one cares enough to be sexist towards women and there are political brownie points to be gained for supporting women.

If you really want more women in computer science then you should focus on getting more girls into STEM subjects in high school. I suspect though that you are enjoying your own righteous outrage and the privileged position it gives you too much to address the real problem.