There's a lot of us neurodivergent folks in tech because it suits our needs better than a lot of other fields, and a lot of us just love technology
We're more prone to being LGBTQIA+ than neurotypical folks, scientifically documented
Makes sense tech would have more trans folks as a result, we pad the numbers a lil bit
This is of course a generalization and actual ND/LGBTQIA+ presence is going to vary based on job, location, how insufferable management is, etc, and not all NDs are LGBTQIA+ and vice versa.
I wasn't saying the latter but that's an interesting idea. Not the former per se- the cis heteronormative gender and sexuality binary is bullshit and only exists bc religion (capitalism.. moar serfs in fields) and generations of fear. There's tons of fluidity in earlier civilizations and more in nature.
I'd just like to hear some comments from all the downvoters. Odd thing to get so defensive about Lemmy
Something I've been for a while now is why this gender disparity is so strong in this specific area of engineering compared to all other engineering areas. People seem to claim it's because of the "geek" stereotype, but that seems more like a symptom than a cause and I fail to see how it enforces this disparity, considering there's nothing preventing a woman from being a geek too.
the actual reason? Nobody pushes women into the field of CS. Back in the 80s and 90s it was a similar thing, boys were fucking around with computers and software, not girls, it was considered to be a boys thing back then, and it still is now, because women are moving more frequently into higher expertise fields more often than not. CS while incredibly complicated, and difficult, is also just code monkey simulator at the end of the day. You could just write a PHD thesis on some mathematical shit and be as involved with CS while having been a mathematician instead lmao.
Nobody pushed me into this field, I followed it because I liked it. Same thing with kids messing around with computers in the 80's. Nobody was pushing boys to do that, they just did. For some reason more men enjoy working with computers than women. I've worked with a few female coders, and they were good at their jobs, but women are definitely a minority in the field.
I probably would have gone into tech earlier if I’d had a female role model in tech. When my (male) friends started programming in high school, I was very interested and wanted to learn it too. But it literally didn’t occur to me that I could, until ten years later, when I was already far along in a study in the humanities. I ended up in data/ software development in the end, but it took me ten years longer because I didn’t realise earlier that it was a field I could get into if I wanted.
So long story short, it’s not just a matter of interest, there are societal factors that play a role too.
May have something to do with computers as they exist being defined by male psychology. Well, it's understandable why swords, guns, rockets are, and same with computers.
Basically sending instructions to change state. I don't know how can a computer exist which doesn't work like this and is still usable for the humanity, but this seems to be psychologically a bit more of a male thing. Maybe there's nothing problematic for women but aesthetics there.
If it's something deeper, then maybe some analog optical\quantum\whatever computers of the future will push us to change paradigms for some drastic change in efficiency. And maybe those new paradigms will be more appealing to women.
Which is ironic, because women were the "code monkeys" of back when human computers were a thing - humans actually doing the computing by hand; and most of them were women.
One floor of my office building is a very well known gaming company. They've been remote since I started my job in 2021, but they have started coming into the office recently. I'd say 75% of the people I've seen get off at that floor have appeared to me to be LGBT+.
this mentality made me doubt and question and delay for too long so i try to push back on it when i see it. You don't actually need to have always "known" or "shown signs". If you feel like experimenting you can just try it.
Margaret Elaine Hamilton (née Heafield; born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer, and business owner. She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program. She later founded two software companies—Higher Order Software in 1976 and Hamilton Technologies in 1986, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hamilton has published more than 130 papers, proceedings, and reports, about sixty projects, and six major programs. She invented the term "software engineering", stating "I began to use the term 'software engineering' to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process."
On November 22, 2016, Hamilton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from president Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo Moon missions.
Huh, didn't know about her! She sounds like a badass lady!
People might be more familiar with this viral picture as well, if not the name.
"Margaret Hamilton shown in 1969 standing beside listings of the software developed by her and her team for the Apollo program's Lunar Module and Command Module."
My mom was a systems programmer who used assembly language and built a lot of the banking infrastructure!
Originally, programming was actually a woman dominated field because it was considered a subset of secretary work and "beneath men" (it wasn't for a good reason).
If you watch the recent cummerbatch movie about Turing the eagle eyed observer will notice that nearly everyone who actually interacts with the computer software is a woman.
Not to turn this into a sociology discussion, but for anyone unaware: this is a fairly common pattern.
Women often pioneer fields like this, but as soon as it becomes seen as something "important" out "respectable" then suddenly it becomes male dominated.
The opposite also happens, where as society deems something as unimportant, a male dominated field will become female dominant - see teaching for an unfortunate example of a field that used to be highly paid and respected, and is now largely looked down on.
Sorry, don't mean to go off on a tangent - it just bugs me and I think more people should be aware of it.
Beer brewing was originally a field dominated by women.
The presitege associated with a position can also change the expected gender. Women traditionally cooked meals at home but "Chefs" are predominately male, especially famous or celebrated Chefs.
You can google "women in computing" for more details, or check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing - it's amazing how much women contributed to this field and how little known that appears to be. (I only learned about it a few years ago myself.)
But the gist is:
Early on (i.e. the 1940s and 50s), men thought the prestige and honor was in building the giant machines (which back then could fill a classroom or more). Actually programming them was considered easier, "just like following a recipe", so women got jobs as "computers" who did this part. To quote that wikipedia article: Designing the hardware was "men's work" and programming the software was "women's work."
Fast forward to the 1970s and people had started realizing that programming was actually hard, and so it was promoted as a field boys should get educated in, while girls were encouraged to instead become nurses and teachers and such.
using a computer traditionally was seen as a secretary job, so it was often dominated by women. its only as of post consumer computer events where a lot more males went into the field due to the large market it offers came in.
