racketboy.com

My mistake for getting the wage levels the wrong way around.

It doesn't change the fact that there are very few women coders out there. Despite studying for my degree on a course mainly filled with girls, I have only ever worked with one female coder and I would not recommend her to anyone. She was there for the money but couldn't actually stand the job.

I think one of the biggest factors for women to earn less money is because many of them take a career break to raise children. When you do that, you often start at a lower pay grade when you re-enter the workforce and it takes time to work your way back up.

I'm more surprised by how high the average salaries are and by how many people have medical coverage.

MrPopo wrote:Male domination in programming is not just in the game industry; it's pretty much across all software development areas.

It's not just programming related jobs, hard sciences in general tend to be dominated by men, especially at the top level.
Video game industry isn't the only "creative industry" where there's a low female to male ratio. Look at movies (in a top 100 directors of all time ranking there weren't any female directors), comics, or music (depends on genre, but generally applies).

If I've learnt something is that the "gender gap" is an incredibly complex subject matter.

These statistics don’t seem all that surprising. The overrepresentation of men in the field is most likely due to the fact that the skills needed to be successful in the field lend themselves to the inherent differences found in the brain between the sexes (gender, is of course a term used to denote the sex of words in the language, and shouldn’t be misapplied to biological concepts. But I digress).

Sexual dimorphism is alive and well.

saturnfan wrote:These statistics don’t seem all that surprising. The overrepresentation of men in the field is most likely due to the fact that the skills needed to be successful in the field lend themselves to the inherent differences found in the brain between the sexes (gender, is of course a term used to denote the sex of words in the language, and shouldn’t be misapplied to biological concepts. But I digress).

Sexual dimorphism is alive and well.

And pseudoscience.

http://www.themarysue.com/women-programmers/

The differing skills aren’t necessarily intellectual, as other personality factors may account for the difference. And just because women have been shown to be able to program isn’t proof that they are drawn to the job or are better at it or equal to men. Nor are Cosmo articles substitutes for scientific research.

saturnfan wrote:The differing skills aren’t necessarily intellectual, as other personality factors may account for the difference. And just because women have been shown to be able to program isn’t proof that they are drawn to the job or are better at it or equal to men. Nor are Cosmo articles substitutes for scientific research.

Did you... did you even bother reading that at all? Or did you just see Cosmopolitan and felt justified ignoring something that problematizes your pseudoscience?

Are you...are you even familiar with the scientific method and how scientific questions are investigated? The massive amount of research conducted in the field conclusively shows that men and women think differently and value different things. It's not surprising or controversial that programming, a job that doesn't showcase verbal or interpersonal skills would be unappealing to women.

Women have far more job options now than did in 60s and subsequently gravitate to work that suits their skills and interests. Repeatedly saying that its pseudoscience doesn't vindicate your point of view.

saturnfan wrote:Are you...are you even familiar with the scientific method and how scientific questions are investigated? The massive amount of research conducted in the field conclusively shows that men and women think differently and value different things.

What's the sample size? The population demographics? Did they control for economic and socio-political conditions? Were they making a biological assessment, or a cultural one? You need to do your homework a bit better before you make the leap from "men and women value things differently" (with which actual research, not pop psychology, disagrees).

It's not surprising or controversial that programming, a job that doesn't showcase verbal or interpersonal skills would be unappealing to women. Women have far more job options now than did in 60s and subsequently gravitate to work that suits their skills and interests. Repeatedly saying that its pseudoscience doesn't vindicate your point of view.

Nor does saying "it's science" without any studies backing up your claim. There's a reason Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus has been widely derided in the science community. At the end of the day, it's just stereotypes that explains nothing. First, other countries have a much higher ratio of women to men earning computer science degrees. Second,