Edit Summary for the TLDR

People are asking for a summary due to the enormity of this thread of posts and comments.

In summary this post is to discuss the link of diminishing numbers of women in programming and the research that reveals this is due to women feeling isolated within such a male dominated field.

I do not speak for all women, but the subset of female programmers who (according to research) find it more difficult than their male counterparts participating in programming communities, whether in a learning, working or online community.

As a community do we want to alleviate this? if so:
Is there anything we can do as a community to alleviate this?

This is just a discussion. It has no purpose except to help bring some issues to light and stimulate discussion.

In part I was prompted to write this after seeing a horrible post on here where the OP used a housewife as a benchmark for stupidity. It had been there for a while. I was very upset and flagged it. The post was deleted.

This in turn prompted me to write this as a suggested question for moderator candidates.

This will probably not be well received, as we are all supposed to be treated with the same brush here and I'm telling you it doesn't work for some groups within our global society. Also, it feels like I'm breaking some unspoken law in the ever tightening coil of political correctness. And this post is focusing on WOMEN, and I feel qualified to speak as a woman, on the experience of being in such a male dominated area, as it is well documented that my feelings are common among my female peers 2. I can not speak for all women, but I can speak for a majority.

I can supply as many references and sources that are required if these links do not stand up to scrutiny.

A quick Google search verifies the diminishing numbers of women in this field.

What many of the users on here do not realise how difficult it is being a woman in this field. Women, by and large are not as confident in their programming skills and do not always understand many of the nuances of such a male dominated culture.


Now this is not the fault of SO, but is worth bearing in mind that this is many women's experiences before they ever land on this site.

Think of it this way. How would you talk to me or any other woman face to face? How would you like people to be addressing you mother, sister, wife or daughter? How we address people based on age and gender does vary. Try and visualise 3 or 4 men standing around talking to a woman. What happens as the discussion gets heated? What if everyone starts yelling. What if the men happen to be in agreement and the woman is outnumbered? Could the woman feel intimidated?

Just because it's online it does not prevent a woman from feeling the same way as if it was face to face. Particularly when people are prone to stalking people around the internet - and that is not specific to men, but it is to try and show how events and fears can be linked within an online interaction.

The fact is we have different ways of relating and different expectations of what is professionalism and what is not. This couple with the fact that online communication is difficult at the best of times, lacking the major cues of communications, intonation, body language and facial expressions.

As a woman I frequently feel intimidated when debating with men online. When I feel threatened, the way I have personally coped with it online is to become aggressive, much like a cat fluffs up its fur. As you can well see from my overreactions in the comments, I am in the wrong.

Now this is not the fault of SO, that's one person's defence mechanism to being vulnerable. One a site like this, we're putting ourselves on the line, to be placed on that spectrum of incompetent->skilled, ignorant->educated, simple-minded->intelligent.

Women are (usually) vulnerable physically in the real world to men. Just by sheer size, nothing bad. And much of our interactions with men (we don't know) is centered around maintaining physical safety. I understand men can be hurt by women, I am not saying women are better than men or that all men are dangerous. If a woman has to walk through a group of men on the street, she's tense. I am trying to convey the woman's psyche in a way that may be helpful to men interacting with women online in a site like this. The pressure is quite intense.

I stick with it, as I love SO and the knowledge is immense and it improves my programming skills. More importantly, as my skills improve (they are by no means brilliant), I want to show myself as a woman with growing experience on the most well-known programming site, and a site that also has a reputation for being rough and tumble for newcomer programmers. I want to do this to help other women.

Now, as mentioned, I am my own worst enemy in how I react in the online environment. When there is an even mix of men and women it is very different than when I am acutely aware of the lack of women, and am usually the only woman in all my sets of interactions on most days on SO. And I do become very defensive when I know there's a bunch of men and if I don't communicate well and then there's discussion, it quickly leads to me being very defensive. Is this your fault? No. Is it my fault, but I'm also doing my best, as it is really difficult. I'm making this appeal, so that the tiniest changes can be made to ease the way for women to come into the field and succeed.

Now to reiterate.. what does this have to do with SO? It's the single largest online programming resource, and it is beneficial as a programmer to be active on this site.

I am trying to express the experience in the hope that this may cause one person, or another and a ripple effect. Even though women are not often comfortable within this type of environment, but we can't give up. I'm hoping to see more high rep female users. Hoping to be one down the track.

Also this discussion encompasses a tolerance towards different groups needs. So many cultural differences and language barriers and by being mindful of this, maybe we can all make a difference with a kind word, and a bit more empathy.

So ideas?

What are the stats on female to male users on the site and within the varying rep brackets?

Do women feel the need to hide their gender on this site like I did?

  1. What are the facts?
  2. What can we do to improve this?


I was tempted to post an answer, but thought it would be better to elaborate on the question.

To address people who do not agree with the word diminishing. If you click on one of the links I provided or do a google search, it is a fact that the numbers of women in the field are diminishing.

To address the people who suggest I am asking to reinvent SO or criticising SO. Where have I done this?

I have asked people to be mindful and not once do I claim women to be the only human beings to have struggles in life. I am merely addressing the declining numbers of women in the field on the largest programming site in the world. Using my personal experience and the research which indicates why many women are leaving or their experience of learning and working in the field. As research suggests, my experience is typical of the norm.

This type of discussion can be applied to many sub groups of our greater community, I have chosen to discuss this particular subject. My choosing to discuss this does not in any way imply it is more important that other people's concerns.

It is a straw man argument to suggest I asked for positive discrimination, or to change SO, or have singled women out as the only people to struggle with any of the above issues. It is glib and serves only to side step the actual issue being addressed here.

There are a set of issues facing this subset of people.

Let's clarify or TLDR

1. FACT: This is a discussion, not an answerable question; I threw out questions to stimulate a discussion

2. FACT: Women are diminishing in this field

3. FACT: There is a significant pool of reasons for this addressed above

4. FACT: This is the largest global programming resource community

5. Statistics and norms are just that, this is not every woman's experience. I am using research to be a voice for a statistical significant portion of the population. This is not ALL women's experience

6. Let's discuss this

I have stated clearly I love SO and the fact I have posted here shows I am aware of how influential we can be as a community to make positive contributions globally. If this bring up other struggles/issues you feel are important, feel free to discuss these here also, but other struggles/issues do not lessen this struggle/issue. There are many intelligent thoughtful people here and I am delighted with the response.

There are many differences between genders, cultures, etc. We cannot reasonably expect everyone to be blended sheep, but we can have a reasonable expectation of what is acceptable community behaviour. But what defines that can also be subjective.

This post shows that the gender differences are not necessarily malicious or even intentional. The point is not to assign blame, but to see what can be done to improve things, for both women and men. Which means an effort on both parts.

This post provides some relevant statistics and discussion Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?.

The developer surveys and this blog post raise relevant data and information to this topic.

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    Just a few comments, since we don't require a "gender" identification when you sign up getting stats on this would be difficult, if not impossible. Nothing on my profile explicitly says "I'm a female" but that doesn't take away from the fact that I am. – Taryn Nov 10 '15 at 19:32
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    @ryanyuyu My experience on SO might be very similar to the OP or not. We all choose to identify our gender or not online for a variety of reasons. I'm honest enough to say that I purposely didn't identify as a female when I joined SO for many of the same reasons in this post. – Taryn Nov 10 '15 at 19:35
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    @bluefeet: Joke's on you - I assume birds to be feminine by default. – BoltClock Nov 10 '15 at 19:43
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    @BoltClock Wait... there can be MALE birds? I thought it was the same as with cats and dogs.... cats are girls and dogs are guys. right? RIGHT?! – Patrice Nov 10 '15 at 19:44
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    Some women have admitted in other discussions that they did feel the need to hide their gender on this site. Some women here have encountered rudeness. The nice thing about the Stack Exchange network? You flag that rudeness and it will be handled. It will not be tolerated on this site, whether the mod that handles the flag is male or female. I've had bad experiences on other sites because I've never once felt the need to hide my gender. But I have also never once had an issue on the network. Basically, the system here is working the best it can so far, in my opinion. – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 19:46
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    I don't know how well it will fare on Meta, but this is a very thoughtful post, thank you for writing it. – Pekka Nov 10 '15 at 20:00
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    To the answerers: please be careful to make your answers pertain directly to Stack Overflow. Answers discussing gender inequality as a whole without contextualizing it for Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange aren't really on-topic here. – user1131435 Nov 10 '15 at 20:03
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    Let me add a quick note: When I opened this post, I was ready and raring for a rant about how SO treats women horribly. I didn't get that. Thank you for writing this as objectively as I think this can probably be approached, and thank you for keeping the tone of your post calm. You help touchy situations out more with a light touch than a rage face. :) – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:09
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    One thing I'm wondering though is how come I've never been on the receiving end of such a comment. I'm by no mean a woman, but the fact I have a French male name that's being used more and more for females in the English language means I'm often mistaken for another gender. I've sincerely NEVER seen any kind of frak from that though..... maybe if I change my picture as well? – Patrice Nov 10 '15 at 20:10
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    @Patrice That is surprising, considering that I am frequently tempted to shout NOBODY ASKED YOU PATRICE!!!!1!! ;) – Bill the Lizard Nov 10 '15 at 20:15
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    @BilltheLizard to tell you the truth I feel a great relief with airing this here. The response has been amazing and thought provoking. And there's always room for humour.. Robyn is hilarious, she gets so worked up.. my daughter and I love that show. And I did not assume Patrice was a woman, not with this global thing happening... Also, I have a french name, sooo.. people often mistake my son's name as a girl's name.. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:30
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    @Yvette I've been following this for the last few hours because it is a very interesting topic. But please take a break and calm down, because what was initially very very good is slowly becoming, well... "not good", because you have started using lots of bold, and capslock the last hours, coming of as defensive-agressive. You wanted a discussion: some people will disagree, some people will misunderstand - once enough people are gathered, especially around such a deep topic, this becomes inevitable. Please take a breather. – AnorZaken Nov 11 '15 at 9:34
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    "As a woman I frequently feel intimidated when debating with men online." Why? Or, why is the fact that you're a woman relevant in debates? Online, we're all just people. Users talking to other users. Why care what someone's gender is? Gender is irrelevant online. (Unless you're on a dating site, which SO isn't.) – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 10:48
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    The 'gender/race etc is irrelevant anyway' approach always comes from people who haven't been in those shoes and experienced it. I think it's best to let those who live it speak up.. – dsgriffin Nov 11 '15 at 17:15
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    @Cerbrus The question is bringing up something that does impact SO and it's reasonably on-topic. As long as the discussion isn't going off the rails, we are leaving it. – Taryn Nov 12 '15 at 11:48

20 Answers 20


What you are bringing up here isn't something that is discussed very often on Stack Overflow but it's something that I think about and I know others do as well. We want our sites to be welcoming to everyone, regardless of gender, sexuality, unicorn-ness, or whatnot. This is why we have a Be Nice model that we expect everyone to abide by. If you see someone being rude, inappropriate, etc then you have the ability to flag it for a moderator to step in and handle as needed. We won't tolerate any attacks on users...Period.

As I mentioned in my comment we don't require users to include gender when signing up, so there is no way to get numbers directly from profiles on men vs. women. However, you can look at the 2015 Developer Survey to find some stats based on the users who completed it. The survey pretty much points out what is known, the programming industry is predominantly male.

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I'll admit that many of your feelings described in your question influenced my decisions when I joined. When I started using SO 5 years ago, I had been programming for a little while but was very intimidated to answer or ask anything (I'm sure many people are). I was honestly worried about being harassed by other users if they knew I was a woman, so I consciously made the decision to keep my SO profile separate from my professional life. I selected a username and a gravatar that was generic, I didn't correct users who called me "he", or "sir" - yes, I would be irritated by it, but I didn't do anything about it for a long time. I wanted users to know who I was because of my contributions not because of my gender. As I've mentioned before that yes, I have experienced some sexist comments once I started correcting users who called me "sir"/"he" but most of those interactions get deleted once you bring it to the attention of a moderator...as I said, we won't tolerate it.

What can we do to improve this?

We can continue to make the site welcoming to everyone. If you see something inappropriate, flag it and move along.

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    What the English Language really needs is a non gender-specific personal pronoun. It would save accidental insults. – NickJ Nov 10 '15 at 20:20
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    @NickJ We already have that on SO/SE - use OP, user, they, etc. :) – Taryn Nov 10 '15 at 20:21
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    @bluefeet I think my favorite example of someone calling me a "he" comes from work rather than online: We completely re-wrote a public system, and user sent an email in, thanking the "men who updated the site." I laughed and explicitly asked if we could have someone reply with, "Well, the one man who worked on the project is glad you liked it and thank him! The ladies who worked on it are just glad you like it." Hard to correct someone professionally sometimes. :) – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:23
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    @Kendra Yes, I think we've all had that experience. I know I have on more than one occasion. – Taryn Nov 10 '15 at 20:24
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    @NickJ It rubs me the wrong way when someone thinks it an insult to be accidentally referred to as a man. On a site that is 95 percent male by participation it amazes me that the zillion posts where the female pronoun is used indiscriminately aren't viewed as anything even unusual, much less insulting, but the very few times a masculine pronoun is misemployed it is viewed as an accidental insult. This oversensitivity about the way English works totally distracts from the fact that there really is a fringe set of weirdos who hold bizarre views about capability based on gender. – zxq9 Nov 10 '15 at 23:32
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    @zxq9 Whether intentional or not, it hurts to be called something you aren't. It can make you feel like an impostor, and it makes you feel ostracized. Just because it isn't an intentional insult doesn't take the sting away. – Alexis King Nov 10 '15 at 23:44
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    @AlexisKing Hurt feelings don't really bother me -- be they mine or anyone else's. That's in the eye of the beholder, especially when its not deliberate, and can't be helped no matter what we do. Moves that have a concrete impact on careers but are totally painless -- that is what I am actually concerned about, and what this whole pronoun fuss completely distracts from. The kind of people (women, men, anywhere between) who are going to rise to leadership positions will always require thick skin. You think pronouns hurt? How about being strongly second guessed as lead on a $50m project? – zxq9 Nov 11 '15 at 6:58
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    @Yvette You are talking about leveling the playing field, encouraging participation, etc. My point was that an overfocus on petty issues like pronouns (because it is such a trivial and obvious thing that everyone feels safe to have an opinion about it) distracts from your goal of actually creating an environment where people feel accepted. If you want more than token participation by "diversity group X" then you also want more women to have actual roles and responsibilities, not just praised for being born female, right? This is a very tricky issue. – zxq9 Nov 11 '15 at 8:16
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    @Yvette What frustrates me the most is when I see a big group of men getting together to discuss diversity issues, endlessly talking about pronoun use -- and not a single person actually evaluating anyone based on merit. Its so easy to flippantly discuss this: hop on a thread written by a woman expressing her sense of awkward intimidation -- that minnow swimming in a school of barracuda feeling -- and white knight the only way they know: by inventing rules nobody will follow (or worse will fracture the community by giving the unscrupulous few social weapons to abuse) to "fix the problem". – zxq9 Nov 11 '15 at 8:35
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    @zxq9 Pronouns matter because defaulting to he/him reinforces the idea that programmers are male by default with female exceptions. It assumes that the female programmers are the rare unusual cases and perpetuates that idea. It's very related to the psychological concept of othering. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 11 '15 at 15:36
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    @SuperBiasedMan: So, we should all just start using gender-ambiguous pronouns instead? Heck no. Female programmers are relatively rare. They're bound to be referred to with the wrong pronoun plenty of times. Using "Them" for everyone because a minority of the minority can't handle being called "him" once in a while doesn't solve the problem. Why make a big deal about what pronoun is used to refer to you? What does it really matter?! If someone's wrong, they're not intentionally hurting "you", it's just not blatantly obvious the person they're referring to is a woman. – Cerbrus Nov 12 '15 at 7:16
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    @SuperBiasedMan I remember back when nearly everyone who played MMORPGs was male. Somewhere along the line that changed, and a lot of female participation got going. It wasn't planned, and there was no diversity drive -- being a female gamer just happened to stop being an oxymoron around that time, and girls started showing up in WoW. How was this obvious? In voice chat. Suddenly in textual media pronouns started getting changed up a lot and in-line "he (sorry I assume male based on char/name?)" checks became common. That was a reaction to the change, it did not cause or encourage it. – zxq9 Nov 12 '15 at 8:57
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    @Cerbrus It's alienating and othering. It's not that people "can't handle" the idea of being called a man, it's that presenting the male as default enforces the idea that women are exceptions and not the norm. It reinforces the culture that most programmers are men instead of trying to get away from that situation. It's not hard to say the OP, the answerer, the poster, the user or just they when it's unclear, so I don't see why it's worth objecting to. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 12 '15 at 9:36
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    @SuperBiasedMan "get away from that situation". This is calling for a diversity drive, and that's a silly goal. It means I'm suddenly supposed to consider whether I'm addressing a man or woman (or whatever other target characteristic is the goal at the moment) instead of accepting who they are as a programmer and evaluating them on what they can actually do. "We need diversity" -- why? Because all men "think one way" and all women "think another way"? That must be the underlying assumption -- and it is an expressly sexist view. That is why I hate this crap. – zxq9 Nov 12 '15 at 9:57
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    Now I am thinking about who is what, how we differ, and what conclusions I show draw from that. This is exactly the sort of problem that diversity pretends to solve, yet only exacerbates. It is much easier for me to be unbiased and fair when gender/race/etc is the farthest thing from my mind. HAHAHA! Holy crap, writing this now I've just had an epiphany: It just dawned on me that James Mickens is black. See, now look what you've done! In retrospect he's said it before, but it never mattered, but now he's actually a black man to me. I liked him better as "a really smart researcher". – zxq9 Nov 12 '15 at 10:04

Let me chime in as a woman who does not want to hide my gender on this site. The whole notion that women should be treated differently because they are women is somewhat offensive to this woman who has, on more than one occasion (outside of SO), been told I can't participate or compete or that I should be treated differently because I am a woman.


I call B.S.

What you're describing is a confidence-related issue, not a gender-related issue. Confidence does not come from being treated differently because you're a woman or from having some kind of counter-balance to perceptions, like isolation, cultural nuances, or physical size, that you're relating to gender.

In fact, it's the opposite.

Confidence comes from proving to yourself that you have the skills it takes to be successful in the industry and/or on SO. Without special considerations. If you feel intimidated when debating a male, that's your issue. Male SO members are not making you feel intimidated.

SO is not structured in a way that impedes women from being just as "successful" as men. And to suggest that we should draw conclusions regarding SO culture being male-biased from stats like SO profile gender scaled against rep is a really big leap. Let's not perpetuate stereotyping with flawed analysis, nor inflate an off-handed, poorly-worded comment regarding housewives and stupidity, into a major SO cultural issue.

I want to continue to exist on an equal playing field with other SO members.

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    And to suggest that we should draw conclusions regarding SO culture being male-biased from stats like SO profile gender scaled against rep is a really big leap I didn't make any conclusions about that stats, I simply asked what are the stats. You've made that jump. This discussion references what precipitated me to post. I have not complained about SO at all, I have clearly given people a walk in someone elses shoes. I try to do the same, in fact I am attempting to do it with you. To try to understand better your response. to be cont – user3956566 Nov 11 '15 at 7:51
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    You have not met my argument with any facts, it is totally based you YOUR EXPERIENCES. I have cited facts from studies and you call it BS. It's like I'm not going to accept the validity of these studies, it doesn't support my internal view of the world. So it's BS. – user3956566 Nov 11 '15 at 7:54
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    Clearing a big pile of comments; if you can't fit your response into one (or even two!) comments, Anor, then you're using the wrong tool for the job; write an answer. Dumping 5 comments on someone's post is crazy. – Shog9 Nov 11 '15 at 15:35
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    @Shog9 - you also deleted a comment by Yvette and my response to it ? – devlin carnate Nov 11 '15 at 15:37
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    'The whole notion that women should be treated differently because they are women is somewhat offensive to this woman' totally agree, but I see no hint of that on SO. Also: 'If you feel intimidated when debating a male, that's your issue.': I made that point in my answer, but you said that so much better than I did! – NickJ Nov 11 '15 at 18:46
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    yeah, that was all tied up in Anor's wall of text, @devlin; might as well just post a new response, 'cause that mess is gone. – Shog9 Nov 11 '15 at 19:00
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    Summary: Yvette wants to raise awareness of an issue, related to confidence and a state of affairs (the diminishing), approached from a female majority perspective, to spawn discussion of the state and perhaps find improvements. Partly gender neutral (help everyone feeling isolated), partly not because of a strong focus on the state. Devlin basically said: You better make damn sure this doesn't lead to "positive" discrimination because that's just another evil. And she goes on to explain why and what she feels that confidence is. Looking past the strong language both of them are correct imo. – AnorZaken Nov 11 '15 at 19:12
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    To elaborate (2 comments should be fine, no?) I think Devlin felt that Yvette's description of "most women" was offensive (needs better wording regardless of factual correctness) in the same way that it can be offensive to say that "most men are sloppy at cleaning and I want to raise awareness about that and have a discussion of how these men can be helped". That really can come of as offensive if you are that guy that always keep things nice and clean and proper. This caused a bit of attitude in the wording, which then Yvette perceived as claims that her facts are lies. Please look past that. – AnorZaken Nov 11 '15 at 19:22
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    @Yvette - the article you cite regarding confidence in programming skills concludes that it's hard to say what the study means. So the point I make about it being BS is not just my own experience. The study in that article also found CS departments where women outranked men in confidence. And more to my point, there's nothing about SO that inherently makes women feel less confident in their skills. If anything, it's a great platform in which women can gain confidence. – devlin carnate Nov 11 '15 at 19:42
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    “Feeling isolated or ostracized is a common frustration among women in technology.” It's interesting that this is the case. From my experience and from what I've perceived of others I've met in the industry, feeling isolated or ostracized is a common frustration among teenage boys in their schools and daily lives, and why they've fallen into the protected world of computers & programming. So in a way, feeling isolated or ostracized within the industry is preaching to the choir— most of us have been there, done that. – Slipp D. Thompson Nov 12 '15 at 1:28
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    @Yvette I really don't think anyone is imposing isolation and ostracization on others, if someone feels that way (women and men alike) that often it's their own perception, and not the act of others. – NickJ Nov 12 '15 at 10:59
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    @Yvette Yeah, that would seem to make sense. I'm no psychologist but I think that things undergone by humans while pre-adult affect us differently, and more permanently. I think the case here is that the isolation becomes both an implicit “standard” of what is perceived to be a serious programmer, and a rewarding lifestyle— a solitary quiet lifestyle is a productive one. Therefore, a programmer socializing too much and not independent enough is perceived as annoying, inexperienced, and not authentic. The isolation leads to development of strong independence and determinism traits, I guess. – Slipp D. Thompson Nov 12 '15 at 19:14
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    @Yvette Also — and again I'm going on intuition here, not formal studies — I believe this could be extrapolated to the assumption that most programmers just don't value warmness and openness to others. The coldness becomes is a safety mechanism to keep out newcomers who would hurt our communities (nearly all of us have experienced that one guy who eats up so much time asking all the questions but still just doesn't get it). – Slipp D. Thompson Nov 12 '15 at 19:59
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    @Yvette I've been speaking more about the whole of the programming community, not just SO. Also, I think it should go without saying that experts in any field start young— usually around age 10. Programmings' no different; the best & the brightest, and a good portion of the community of SO started in their teens or preteens and are now late 20s - 40s. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear enough from the onset of my point with “is a common frustration among teenage boys”. – Slipp D. Thompson Nov 13 '15 at 0:40
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    I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. As a white male I often feel the very same things that I've seen the "minorities" complain about, hard to believe, I know. I've been down voted for bad answers, called out for bad questions, even been in the odd argument or ten. The difference is I attribute those feelings/failings to a genuine lacking in my own person. I don't blame others for being more competent, dominant, or better at the job than I am, at least I try not to. I fed up with this victim mentality, and the survey only drives the wedge deeper. – Dan Rayson Apr 11 '19 at 10:20

What we should do...

...is not care about what people identify as. The only important identification to this site is that we all identify as some form of computer programmer (waits for someone to call me out on that, too).

Are you female? Why do I care? Are you homosexual? Why do I care? Are you a unicorn? Why do I care? I - and many if not most if not all - people on this site are here to help you program, and the fact that you're a woman doesn't matter to me. I will help you just the same. And that is what everyone should be doing.

What we should not do...

...is treat any group any differently. Not only does that open us up to accusations of bias, but it's still discrimination.

Reiterating my last point - are you female? Why do I care? The fact that you're a woman should not mean that I have to treat you any differently to anyone else, purely because you're a minority group.

I sympathise with your position as one of a minority group - trust me, I know how that feels - but it's important to recognise that there can't be special rules.

Now let us be clear: I am not advocating sexism. If you see any of this, flag it - it is discrimination and should not be accepted on a professional site. Neither am I advocating a low percentage of women in the field. I am advocating neutrality - and if it's hard to see that, read the post again.

I do not want to see women being treated as inferior, but neither do I want to see us have special rules, procedures, or regulations for our female complement on the site.

Let us not have a debate on feminism and the diminishing proportion of women in programming: let us treat everyone equally, and let everyone make their own decision about whether they want to be here or not.

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    I half agree and half disagree, I think. I'm not on board with not caring about others' differences. They're interesting, they make us unique and human, and crucially, they can often contribute to how we experience the world and others' behavior. We can't just ignore them. But I don't advocate for special rules for special groups, either. What I do advocate is for all of us here to be aware of our own actions and how they affect others, and to acknowledge mistakes and be open to changing our behavior when someone tells us we've stepped on their toes. – hairboat Nov 10 '15 at 20:29
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    @abbyhairboat very nice comment. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:37
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    @Yvette Thanks - and thanks for the OP :) – hairboat Nov 10 '15 at 20:43
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    @abbyhairboat Agreed. I'm talking about an ideal, here. In an ideal Stack Overflow, everybody would be treated the same. Neither is it that I don't care about your differences; I care about them to the extent that they are helpful or interesting in the actions I take here. If it gets to a point that they'd make a difference in how I treat you, I don't care. – ArtOfCode Nov 10 '15 at 20:43
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    @ArtOfCode I totally get that, I like what you have written, it is idealistic.. and I guess I wanted to throw this discussion on the table.. And by doing so I'm discovering other women and that is nice. Even though it's not supposed to matter :) haha – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:46
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    @Yvette Well I'd love to see the day that Stack Overflow meets that ideal. I actually think the lower proportion of women doesn't matter, as long as everyone is treated the same. My username itself is a bit of an experiment around this theme: it's gender-neutral. I could have chosen an obviously male username and been guaranteed good treatment. As it is, I've had people treat me well and not so well - and unless I say it, it's hard to guess my gender. – ArtOfCode Nov 10 '15 at 20:50
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    I could have chosen an obviously male username and been guaranteed good treatment that speaks volumes! it shows you are aware of everything I was talking about! And it's not SO that needs to change, it's the whole world, and I am reaching out to SO, because it's one way of improving things.. and look, we are all trying to do that in each our small way. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:00
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    @Yvette aye, and kudos to you for having the (figurative!) balls to chuck it out there - Meta can be pretty murderous to things it doesn't like. But hey, small steps start big leaps. – ArtOfCode Nov 10 '15 at 21:05
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    tell me about it! meta and murder. I'm learning to curb my emotional reactions, that helps a lot. And you kn, talking about ideals, I think of this through all aspects of our global lives. Of the wars and terrible things that happen around the world. In this platform I am mentioning women in programming, but by developing empathy, the world can only become a better place. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:09
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    "Are you a unicorn?  Why do I care?"  — Obligatory meme. – Scott Nov 10 '15 at 22:09
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    Like @abbyhairboat, I have to half agree and half disagree with this. On one hand, I 100% agree that, ideally, gender (or ethnicity or sexual orientation or anything else that's not relevant to programming) should not matter on SO. On the other hand, whatever the ideal may be, the "minnow swimming in a school of barracuda feeling" mentioned elsewhere in the comments is a real thing that needs to be addressed, if we actually want to make SO (and the programmer community in general) welcoming to everyone. – Ilmari Karonen Nov 11 '15 at 14:31
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    In any case, I don't think that gender-neutral usernames and avatars are the solution (and I say this as someone with a gender-neutral avatar and a name that, to non-Finns, can be quite gender-ambiguous). The problem is that, in an environment with as biased demographics as SO has, I (like most people, I suspect) tend to subconsciously assume that people with generic names are probably white males -- and, at least for the "male" part, I'll be right over 90% of the time. In effect, with such a strong prior bias, "don't ask, don't tell" just serves to hide the existence of the minorities. – Ilmari Karonen Nov 11 '15 at 14:49
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    @ArtOfCode it is, because if the minorities don't know that they're on SO then the message is that SO is not for them. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 12 '15 at 9:00
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    @SuperBiasedMan exactly, I assumed (incorrectly) I was often the only woman in a discussion. It's such a relief to see other women and know who they are. I don't feel so alone. Btw, I've enjoyed reading your comments. Also I love the irony of your name in such a discussion!!!! :) – user3956566 Nov 12 '15 at 23:23
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    Sure we should be gender neutral. I suggest we call everyone she (that is as gender neutral as defaulting to using he) for a few days and see how many men are insulted by that. – HLGEM Jul 13 '16 at 20:59

It sucks that different forms of offensive behavior exists. But you know what rocks? How Stack Exchange feels about it.

I'm approaching this from how I read your post: As a question of how we can improve this site in regards to equality.

I don't think there's much more we can do. This site already has a very effective way of handling rude, degrading, offensive, and even abusive comments geared toward men, women, homosexuals, different races, different religions, and so on: Flags and moderators.

If you see anyone personally attacked, quite blatantly, in any post on this site, you can handle it! If the entire post is rude, offensive, or abusive, flag it for that! If an answer or question has a small, rude quip, edit it out. If a comment is rude and offensive, flag that too! Moderators here won't tolerate offensive content.

The attitude that is promoted toward the matter of diversity on this network is the attitude that we want in the real world. Unfortunately, that won't change overnight. Are there women on the site that deal with these issues? Yes. There have been meta posts about them, even. Are they the only ones? Of course not, and I don't think you assume they are.

But the biggest question: Will these attacks ever be tolerated here? No.

Your concern is a valid one, and I've dealt with sexism in the tech industry myself, but at least Stack Exchange is taking the right steps to handle these kinds of situations. With hope, eventually more people will also take these correct steps and the field will become more diverse again.

  • @ryanyuyu Oh geez... Thanks for that! I don't know how I missed that... – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:09
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    No worries. You've bailed me out of a few brain-farts of my own. I'm always happy to read your meta commentary. Once again, another on-point and professional post. – ryanyuyu Nov 10 '15 at 20:11
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    I think the thing that got me about this particular post was it was there for a while, had a load of views and downvotes, and the reaction to it was not welcoming. It still chewed my stomach to see it there in writing. The housewife comment. Also the OP was downright offensive to a number of people and called them out by name, I also found that offensive. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:36
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    @Yvette Yeah, I know exactly which post you're talking about. That particular user isn't the best about wording things tactfully. His heart is in the right place, for most of the posts I see (as in, he's trying to bring up issues on the site to fix them), but he goes about it wrong a lot. That post was taken care of, first by a mod edit to change the wording, and now it's deleted. – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:39
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    @Kendra was it our old friend, the Colonel? – Pekka Nov 10 '15 at 20:42
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    @Pekka웃 You are correct. (I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to figure that out.) – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:43
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    @Pekka웃 I totally agree with you, I'm not sure it's a post that's suitable on Meta, but it sure feels good to air the issue.. and it's very supportive all round I think... and yeh that post from the said person, was pretty horrible. I'm glad it's deleted. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:48
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    @Yvette see that's the thing about gender questions on Stack and where it gets complicated I think. We can't change the way PEOPLE act. So there's not much about it, but as Kendra pointed out multiple times, the mods are RUTHLESS in stopping that behavior. So there's that that's good at least! While we can try to see what can be done better by the HUMANS (read : normal users), the SYSTEM (diamond + community mods) works fine – Patrice Nov 10 '15 at 20:59
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    @Patrice I didn't expect a change in SO's policies or moderation at all... it was a way of reaching out to people to show another side of how a particular group is known to struggle in programming.. and as it's a programming site.. and there's a be nice policy, I thought by trying to bridge the gap in understanding this may help. I mean, I clearly admit some of my reactions are not helpful.. but this post may help other women to have the courage to be active on SO, it may make some men stop and think, hey it's probably really hard for her to start out here on SO.. To be cont – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:13
  • @Patrice but I dnt think it's just women who have it "worse" or that other people do not struggle with the same thing. It is just shining a light on a real issue of the diminishing number of women in programming.. why this is.. and voicing it on the top programming site in the world :) – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:14
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    @Yvette no no, I'm definitely with you on that. I get what you're trying to do and honestly, you did it in an admirable way. I read your question at first and was expecting an amazing rant. In the end it turned out to be a very well construed and thought out post. My point is just how hard it is to discuss this on SO, since from SO's point of view, we're doing what's correct (even if there is a REALLY major flaw about the number of women in the field.. I mean at my graduation, we doubled the number of women from previous year! We had 2....) – Patrice Nov 10 '15 at 21:15
  • @Patrice omg that's terrible.. double to 2. The complaint isn't at SO either, from my end.. the fact I felt I could post it here, is a positive testimony to SO, as I believe it will make some kind of difference.. I only brought it here, as it's the largest programming site that I know of..so.. you kn, we get the audience.. and I dnt kn where else to address it to such a large audience that IS concerned with community dynamics AND programming. :) – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:22
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    @PoolPartyRenekton I think that would sidetrack the discussion at hand; maybe someone can enlighten you in some other venue, like a chat room. The relevant part right now is his insistence that "average housewife" is a good benchmark for low programming aptitude, as mentioned by the OP. – Frank Nov 10 '15 at 23:50

I'm just gonna throw some words out there because I've been thinking about this a lot.

I think as a man in the industry, the best thing I can do is just to try to learn more about other people's experiences. There's a lot of things that people who feel excluded or unwelcome do in the general programming world and in this community specifically.

I remember how shocked I was the first time I learned one of my female friends had two accounts, one that was with her real name and picture and one that has a generic username and no profile picture, which she uses to ask questions she's too embarrassed to ask using the first one. I had no idea people would go to such great lengths to do something like this (I think my first response was "But who gives a shit if you sound stupid on the internet?!?") but it turns out this is a common things that a lot of my friends do.

There's a lot that we can do to try to make the programming world/community a better and more inclusive place for all minorities, and I think the best first step is just to ask people who feel comfortable sharing to share their stories so we be on the same level ground on what's actually the case and what's happening in the world. The worst thing I or someone else could do is to start trying to argue someone's feelings away (If I have to say "FEELINGS ARE MEANT TO BE FELT, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU DISAGREE I STILL FEEL THIS WAY DAMMIT" to one more person I'm going to explode) -- A large part of that comes from having safe places were people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and experiences though. I've been doing this a lot one-on-one in real life, but it's a difficult thing to try to scale.

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    I wish I could give you 10 votes. You hit the nail on the head. And I often feel for the real newcomers, who are struggling with English and also from a culture where they are very polite. I tend to work with them if it's something I can help them with. To understand the language barrier and try to understand what they are asking. Often it does not take much. I get very upset when people launch in unkindly in these situations. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:51
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    Regarding the two account stuff, I'm not sure if it's relevant, since I think it does not correlate to the gender. Anyone can do that if they want to hide their "stupid questions". – nhahtdh Nov 11 '15 at 3:27
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    @nhahtdh It's an interesting point, but if they already feel like their contributions are valued less, or criticised more harshly, because of their gender then that might influence the decision to have a separate account for "stupid questions" to a relatively large degree. Not saying that's always the case, or even was the case in this instance, but it's something I think the answer would be improved by addressing. – Anthony Grist Nov 11 '15 at 11:41
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    @nhahtdh Anyone can, but if there's a significant trend of women feeling the need to do that when there's no trend among men then that shows a difference. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 12 '15 at 15:33
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    @nhahtdh there's a reason I said minorities repeatedly and not just women. I think the two account stuff applies to everyone, and the fact that it applies to a lot more minorities and people who feel uncomfortable because they don't look like everyone else makes it a much bigger issue than it sounds at first. – Kasra Rahjerdi Nov 12 '15 at 20:42
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    here's a quote that expresses a similar idea: "Most people mistake their own perspective, shaped by their subjective and limited perception, for the absolute reality of the external world. Questioning this assumption is what advanced our research on dark matter. It is also the only thing that has ever advanced human empathy." from Seeing dark matter as the key to the universe — and human empathy – jfs Nov 14 '15 at 10:03

I've never seen sexism on SO other than people assuming the gender of others. I tend to always use "them" when mentioning a user in a question because I don't like gender labeling. But apart from that, I've never seen anyone show disrespect based on gender here.

But then again, the amount of "stereotypical girly" avatars and usernames here is quite low. It either means that there are almost no girls here, or that (more likely) they "hide" behind generic usernames. I don't think the problem comes from SO, but from the internet culture and the gender-associated imagery in general. I mean, if I change my avatar to a pink unicorn, many would say "oh, this is a girl".

That's why I have a very abstract username and avatar on most sites. So that people don't have any reason to assume. On chat sites my username is often purple or pink, and it's enough for people to be uncertain. I like that.

But I don't think SO can or should change anything about the current situation. The problem is much worse in gaming communities.

EDIT: Ok, I was pretty much avoiding to say it in the post but I realize it has much less weight if I don't. I'm a boy, but I don't relate to gender at all. It annoys me that people assume I'm a "stereotypical boy that does all boy things" when they talk to me online. So I understand why girls might want to hide their gender on sites even when people don't harass them - being reduced to your gender is a pain.

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    PS: and as my name may tell, my first language is French - sorry if I made any mistake. – Domino Nov 10 '15 at 20:49
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    "I mean, if I change my avatar to a pink unicorn, many would say "oh, this is a girl"." Why does a parade of BoltClock's avatars, past and present, flash through my mind? (As for gaming communities, as a woman who games, I still haven't hit any sexism there. Maybe I'm just one lucky woman...) – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:51
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    @Kendra yeh I was thinking I've seen some very colourful unicorns around SO lol. I have changed my pic to me, a woman, my name and still get referred to as he! that doesn't bother me. What's sad is the presumption that the user is a man and the fact that most of the time that is correct... and it's not that women have to become programmers, it's the reason they are not becoming programmers, is that feeling of disconnectedness. And Jacque yr Anglais is fine. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:56
  • you just got my vote with that edit :) – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:02
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    "What's sad is the presumption that the user is a man" Why is that sad? I believe you're significantly over-estimating the thought process involved in choosing what pronoun to use. I doubt anyone actually thinks a moment before typing "he". It's an automatism, not an observation / assumption. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 11:12
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    @Cerbrus we really are at crossed purposes. By sad I mean because so few women are coding, I dnt care if people think I'm a man (well in real life I would), I'm sad that some women are feeling too intimidated to start or remain i programming. I might not explain myself very well at times. It's my way of writing. So it confuses people in this type of communication. – user3956566 Nov 11 '15 at 13:26
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    Oh, I see. That makes more sense! I wouldn't mind more women in "our world" either. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 13:28
  • +1 for pink unicorns. *seriously thinks about changing avatar now...* – Ilmari Karonen Nov 11 '15 at 15:01
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    (haha, soon they'll all fall in my master plan to push forward the brony agenda!) x) – Domino Nov 11 '15 at 16:09

I just realized this...

A portion of the female users on SE feel, for one reason or another, uncomfortable to identify as "female" in their accounts.

So, what already is a minority appears to consist of even less users.

From this, I'd conclude that hiding one's gender really is counter-productive in this case.

That said, gender is irrelevant on Stack Overflow.
I really don't see how SE can improve the "female experience" without taking special measures that focus on welcoming women.
This would only lead to separate them from the male portion of SO's population, as they'd be getting special treatment.

The only solution here is not to consider gender to be a big deal.
(Which SE already does by not having a "gender" in the profile)

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    Oh, and before anyone replies with "You're a guy, you don't know how women feel being the minority!": Among other significant minorities, I'm a guy that rides horses. – Cerbrus Nov 12 '15 at 8:14
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    I think the problem here is that other people are making one's gender to be a big deal - when oneself isn't trying to. No, SE doesn't have a gender field, but it does have profile picture and display name which can consist of your real photo and/or your real name. We've had many cases of female users getting unsolicited and irrelevant comments about their gender just because they chose to use their real name and photo, and they happen to be female. And that is why they feel a need to hide their gender in spite of the fact that, like you said, gender should be irrelevant. – BoltClock Nov 12 '15 at 8:52
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    Do you happen to have an estimate what portion of "harassment" is about a person's gender? – Cerbrus Nov 12 '15 at 9:00
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    Out of all abusive comments overall, these are practically isolated cases, but that's not particularly fair when you consider the gender imbalance. So, in proportion to the number of users whose name or picture suggest they are female (even if they're not)? Too many to be considered an isolated case, though thankfully not all or even most commentary is about a person's gender. – BoltClock Nov 12 '15 at 9:08
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    "A portion of the female users on SE feel, for one reason or another, uncomfortable to identify as 'female' in their accounts." I am no longer comfortable revealing that I am a straight white male because I know many people will dismiss much of what I have to say as a result, but I do so in spite of my discomfort because I wish to be straightforward and to avoid misrepresenting myself. It therefore seems to me that discomfort is not an indicator of someone's willingness to do something. – jpmc26 Apr 12 '19 at 23:44

I don't have time to look over every aspect of your question, but I want to address this:


Not really. Your Google search cites percentages. The question discussing degrees you link cites percentages. I've looked into the raw numbers behind the percentages of degrees, and women aren't declining in number any more significantly than men:

Graph of number of computer science degrees

What is happening is that the number of men is growing more than the number of women. In times when women decline in actual number, so do men. In fact, men usually decline in larger numbers, although it's a smaller percentage.

Why is this distinction important? Because it doesn't support your narrative. You are basically describing women being chased out of the field, but that is not what your data shows us. What it does show is that the number of women entering the field is not growing as fast. And the reasons for that are not clear. In particular, "feelings of isolation" can't really drive someone out of a field they never entered; you have to be in the field to experience them. You have presented absolutely no data that indicates women are entering the computer science field and then choosing to leave it. Yet you act as if you've made this exact case. If you have such data, then present it. If that isn't what you were trying to say, then you need to reword your entire post.

Furthermore, as a point of speculation, of course people feel isolated in programming jobs. When you're a programmer, you spend most of your day alone staring at a computer screen trying to figure out, by yourself, what the right sequence of commands is to obtain your output. It's well known that increased interactions between people is detrimental to productivity in this field. (1, 2) The only thing your surveys and research do tell us about women in the programming industry is that they experience noteable rates of decreased mental health for some reason; that reason could be because of fewer women working with them or it could be due to the nature of the job. If programming is bad for women's mental health or maybe they just don't like this kind of isolated work (in aggregate and on average; obviously women differ significantly, but there are trends and tendencies), maybe it's a good thing that they're choosing other career paths.

The bottom line is that, as far as I can tell, we don't know the reasons for this or even whether it's a good or bad thing, and assuming that it's due to some form of discrimination is unwarranted, premature, and potentially harmful. Back off and show a little caution and humility before you jump to these conclusions.

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    Absolutely this. I myself feel isolated solely due to the fact that the vast majority of people I know and meet have no programming interest or experience whatsoever; and those that do tend to have a different level of interest than me (usually much lower such that all conversations on programming related topics that I find interesting lead to looks of disinterest). Programming is something that having an interest in can be isolating in and of itself, regardless or gender, race, age, species, or sexual preference. – user4639281 Apr 12 '19 at 23:34
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    @TinyGiant I agree with and understand that. I delight in my programming friends. We can share things that everyone else in my life dismisses. The whole point of this post was to encourage women that may be good at or interested in programming to program. People have read it as an anti - men thing. It's not. We have more in common than we don't. If that makes sense. – user3956566 Apr 13 '19 at 0:48
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    @YvetteColomb "People have read it as an anti-men thing." What? I find that response appalling because looking through the answers, that seems to be wholly untrue. Your opposition is not saying that you are being anti-man. Your opposition is saying that you've drawn conclusions that your evidence does not support or that gender and sex matter, in practice, much less than your post assumes. Rather, they point to other causes that are not gender exclusive and emphasize fair treatment over increased female participation as a goal. – jpmc26 Apr 13 '19 at 0:59
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    @YvetteColomb "The whole point of this post was to encourage women", so you had an ulterior motive? I thought that this post "has no purpose except to help bring some issues to light and stimulate discussion". So this wasn't in good faith after all? – user773737 Apr 13 '19 at 1:38
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    Re "Number of Computer Science Bachelors by Year": Where? In Germany? World wide? – Peter Mortensen Apr 13 '19 at 1:51
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    @Houseman To be fair, one could interpret that line to mean, "stimulate discussion about encouraging women." So I don't think it would be right to characterize it as an "ulterior motive." In light of her comment here, I think her intent with that line was to emphasize that she was not trying to attack men. However, as I said above, I think the idea that she was perceived that way is totally incorrect and probably stems from her own misunderstanding. – jpmc26 Apr 13 '19 at 2:28
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    @PeterMortensen Good question. The data is from IPEDS, which is part of the NCES, and it's published by the National Science Foundation, so U.S. institutions. As nearly as I could discern (by graphing the percentages and comparing to cseducators.stackexchange.com/q/2875/981), it's the exact data behind the graph used there. – jpmc26 Apr 13 '19 at 2:34
  • The absolute numbers show that, as a group, women aren't "chased out", but that does not prove that there are not women who individually or in small groups, feel compelled to leave. The numbers leaving are compensated by the numbers entering but on the whole the Google numbers show that for females, programming is not gaining in popularity as a career choice. Which still begs the question, what could be done to make the field more attractive to women? – Elise van Looij Apr 13 '19 at 16:58
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    @ElisevanLooij I suggest you focus in on my last two paragraphs and on my reply to Yvette above. It has not been established that women choosing other fields is a bad thing. Setting even participation as a goal is based on a very large set of assumptions. – jpmc26 Apr 13 '19 at 20:59
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    Also read the "nordic gender equality paradox", @ElisevanLooij. The Brainwash video summarizes it well. Note, there are authors out there that claim that the welfare state is the one that makes women less interested in working on certain sectors. As economist that actually likes the welfare state, where nobody is forced to work jobs they don't like, I would take that opinion with a grain of salt. – Braiam Apr 14 '19 at 11:25
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    My theory is that we see more men than women in programming careers due to men being more likely than women to want to be programmers. And I don't think the reason for this difference in interest in the field has to have a nefarious source. Maybe men just enjoy programming more than women, for whatever reasons. – LetEpsilonBeLessThanZero Nov 4 '19 at 15:07

It is a misconception that women are underrepresented in science or STEM fields fields in general. The reality is that women have entered some STEM fields to the point where they are no longer underrepresented (e.g., biology) while largely forsaking other STEM fields (e.g., computer science).

Today, more women than ever major in so-called STEM fields. More than 58% of all bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in biology are being awarded to women.Within certain University biology departments, women also make up nearly half of the faculty. And within the department of behavioral and social sciences, 70% of faculty members are women :

enter image description here

However, women comprise only 18% of students receiving undergraduate degrees in computer science, 19% of physics grads and 20% of engineering grads. These figures have been stagnant for several years, or in the case of physics, decreasing. And in spite of having an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in any STEM field, women remain underrepresented as faculty members for those fields as well. Policies to attract more girls and women into subjects such as computer science, physics and engineering have largely failed.

These trends in gender representation are consistent internationally. My girlfriend and I, both living in Belgium, are a perfect reflection thereof : I work a programmer and have almost exclusively male colleagues while she teaches at the bio-engineering faculty of a local university and has mostly female colleagues. Nevertheless, the width of the gender gap obviously differs on a per county basis.

One possible explanation for this gender gap is the high "geek factor" in fields like computer science, physics and engineering. Another would be gender stereotyping transmitted through our interaction with others. However, there also biological differences to consider, like the difference between men's and women's brains. And in my opinion, those offer the best explanation!

Men may simply be more driven by a biological urge to build things, whereas women may simply be more driven by a biological urge to help people. It would be foolish to underestimate the impact of sex hormones on our individual preferences when even among monkeys males prefer to play with trucks and females with dolls!

Either way, I don't see a problem that needs to be solved. I don't see any evidence of discrimination of women. I don't see women being treated differently from men. I just see - mostly biological - differences that exist between men and women. And I believe those differences need to be embraced instead of denied.

Sure, I'd love to have more female colleagues. But forcing "diversity" is not the answer. If fewer women choose to become programmers, so what? There's always been much fewer men who want to become nurses, but I've never seen anyone complain about that.

  • Many girls like to build things for their dolls. – Elise van Looij Apr 13 '19 at 17:08
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    @ElisevanLooij : And some girls love to play with LEGO or cars. And some boys love to play with dolls. Not all kids fit into gender stereotypes, but most kids will choose the toys associated with their gender when given the freedom to choose... which is a pattern that's been demonstrated even in monkeys! – John Slegers Apr 13 '19 at 17:13
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    Why is that graph labelled as if it were about STEM when there is no 'E' anywhere on it? – Ben Voigt Apr 14 '19 at 5:54
  • @BenVoigt : You should ask the people who created that graph. Either way, as I pointed out in my answer, women comprise only 20% of engineering grads. This roughly corresponds with the number of women in engineering faculty. – John Slegers Apr 15 '19 at 8:42
  • Am I the only boy who played with dolls? I switched when I got bullied (a lot) in school about it. – 10 Rep Oct 8 '20 at 15:09
  • And there you got me writing my very first comment on meta for your last paragraph. Thank you! :) (@10Rep no, you're not the only one ;)) – Matthieu 12 hours ago

Now this might be better a comment - but I feel one particular point in your edit quite faulty:


Just how are you considering that a professional attitude? "my experience is typical of the norm", is a bad argumentation, a fallacy. Especially since you later on wish to address other bad arguments as a fallacy.

Your wording is also very verbose: "my experience" - what experience, how is a personal thing important? "Norm" - what norm, where, which country?

I know that in the netherlands a recent study from the cbs (central statistics bureau), has shown that the difference in money earned by females and males is reducing over the last few years. In july this year (2015) a survey was posted that noted reduction in unemployment of females in particular. In between Februari and May time a reduction in unemployment of 0.2% was noted, and the complete reduction was due to increase in work participation of females.

So in the global case of "any job" your problem is an issue -females still earn less than males- however it is a dieing issue with more and more females participating in managing functions and overall more jobs for females specific.

Now you're also talking about trends, so for trends let's look at what young girls choose after graduating from highschool - do they follow a technical profile or will they choose a non technical study at university. Again the CBS has done a study for this. The amount of girls in technical studies has grown from 20% in 2011 to 38% in 2013. Furthermore, the difference in average income between males and females has reduced in that time, for females below the age of 30 the difference is low. And at governmental institutions (so also universities, governmental payed research) females (age less than 30) actually earn slightly more than males.

So I can't stroke your points against the reality. Sure the female participation can be made still much better - but the statement that the participation is reducing is just something I can't follow.

Now with this post there are two other important points I wish to make.

First and foremost: In any discussions you do you have to not let your "feelings" or "experience" be the main argument. Experience is non discussable nor verifiable. You should come with sources to support your arguments.

But most importantly, notice the sites I linked as source are Dutch. I wish to show that the idea you have is a cultural problem. It is hence very limited to where you live and what culture you "belong" too. I believe that in Scandinavian countries actually the female work-participation is actually higher than the male participation. In other parts of the world even following primary education is, for females, an offense worth the death sentence....

Stackoverflow is an international site; as such it cannot and should not try to do change the cultural norms. To do this just follow the professional attitude and ignore any insinuations. Can you give direct examples where SO is directly offensive to you?

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    @Yvette Well the reason I stress it so much is that by doing so (providing sources) you can easily remove any "personal" feelings. Making the post neutral in the highest sense. And as I concluded that is as far as I believe SO should and can go. - I think I showed that these problems aren't something "globally" rather a problem "locally in a lot (majority?) of regions". - But that still means it has to be solved locally on country/cultural group level first. – paul23 Nov 11 '15 at 13:57
  • The gender disparity in the technical fields has been a source of concern in The Netherlands for a good many years. In the nineties the government launched a program to encourage girls to take classes in mathematics and physics and consider technical careers. These efforts produced little effect for more than twenty years, until lately. Not sure what made the difference, perhaps it needed a new generation of mothers. And privately, @paul23, uw antwoord bevat een hoop kritiek op de schrijfstijl van een ander maar u kent toch hopelijk het spreekwoord over de splinter en de balk? – Elise van Looij Apr 13 '19 at 17:23

I think it very unfortunate that software development has so few women, and I think the cause goes all the way back to how girls and boys are treated differently in early childhood, and gender roles are established. But that's not the point of your question, I don't think.

The only way to infer someone's gender on here is by their name, in cases where their name might be the same as their actual first name. There's a natural assumption that they are mostly men.

It's unfortunate that you feel intimidated, but is that because you are a woman, or are you using your gender to excuse feeling that way? I am a man and sometimes I feel intimidated by people with much greater knowledge than I have. It's human nature. Gender is irrelevant.

Now I will answer some of your points:

Try and visualise a 3 or 4 men standing around talking to a woman. What happens as the discussion gets heated? What if everyone starts yelling. What is the men happen to be in agreement and the woman is outnumbered? Could the woman feel intimidated?

If the discussion gets heated, then they are acting unprofessionally. Especially if they are yelling.

If the woman was outnumbered by then men in agreement, then she would probably feel intimidated. But if one of the men was outnumbered, then so would he! Here, again, gender is irrelevant. Anyone would feel intimidated if they were odd-one-out in a heated discussion.

I want to show myself as a woman with growing experience on the most well known programming site, and a site that also has a reputation for being rough and tumble for newcomer programmers. I want to do this to help other women.

Agreed, but I want to help everyone, irrespective of gender. Why would you want to help women specifically? Why should you want to treat men and women differently? Is that not the very definition of sexism?


I don't see too many people shouting out "Hey! I'm a man!!" So why should women state their gender on their posts? Is not stating their gender 'hiding' it as you suggest?

EDITED after reading comments...

The fact is, gender is irrelevant. If you see sexism on here, then report it - but remember the vast majority of users would never treat you that way.

What can we do to improve this? I don't think any improvement is necessary, the moderation system works pretty well.

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    "Anyone would feel intimidated if they were odd-one-out in a heated discussion." Except Chuck Norris. I would say Jon Skeet, but Jon Skeet is never outnumbered. He just creates a program to put the numbers in order on his side. (A more serious comment will follow- For the most part, I like your answer.) – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 19:54
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    I'm with you on the "a man with 4 other men stacking against him would feel intimidated." I'm a tall and large guy, and having a heated discussion where I'm alone... I feel intimidated, no matter if I'm arguing with men, women, both. I also don't like using gender as an excuse. But there are still facts that sexism DOES appear on the network. I've recently replied to a girl who got an answer critiqued with "obviously you have to be a girl to answer with such terrible methods". So I think it's very unfair to say that this is all in the OP's mind – Patrice Nov 10 '15 at 19:55
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    Certainly the post you mentioned is sexist and has hopefully deleted. Sometimes people don't think, and can be generally offensive (sexist or otherwise) but luckily such instances are few and far between. The word 'almost' was deliberately included. – NickJ Nov 10 '15 at 20:01
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    There definitely are instances of sexism that appear on SO, but from what I've seen it's usually pretty quick to be cleared up when brought to the attention of mods. That's not to say that everything said against a woman is sexism, of course. Sometimes people are just wrong, regardless of their gender, and get defensive and reach out for excuses rather than just admitting they are wrong. – TZHX Nov 10 '15 at 20:06
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    @Kenda yes I take that on board. I certainly didn't mean to be insulting to the OP or anyone else, merely to indicate that perhaps sometimes people feel insulted when no insult was intended. – NickJ Nov 10 '15 at 20:10
  • No worries. :) I'll clean up my comments on the matter, now that you've reworded that. – Kendra Nov 10 '15 at 20:14
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    The gender imbalance in programming has got worse. When I started (over 30 years ago) there were (or appeared to be) more women in the programming workforce and all levels than there are now. – ChrisF Nov 10 '15 at 20:27
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    @ChrisF yes, the number of women enrolling on comp sci is dropping. And Nick, you don't need to shout out you're a man, we all know you're a man. Also, I don't mean to be rude, but your post shows a lack of insight into the experience women have and totally sweeps above some of the concerns. Why specifically help women? because they are leaving the field and not from lack of interest, but for many of the reasons I mentioned. My expose on how I cope was not to excuse my shortcomings, but to help explain what goes on inside many women. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 20:44
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    I don't normally point out my gender. It seemed relevent here. The general point is that we are all software developers who want to help each other. I would like to see a better balance, but I don't think positive discrimination is the right way to go about it. I believe everyone should be treated with the same respect. – NickJ Nov 10 '15 at 20:50
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    "Why would you want to help women specifically?" You suspect gender roles in early childhood is an issue. I would specifically want to help females get past that mindset (if that really is a problem) so we have a greater talent pool of software developers. – Morpheus Nov 10 '15 at 21:01
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    @Morpheus now that is a huge discussion, why are there differences? innate/nuture? My whole point of posting this was to make a millimetre of difference. And Nick I don't think positive discrimination is the way to go, it actually leads to discrimination (against others). I just wanted to explain from a deep and personal way what it is like for women, in the hope some people might go, wow, and you never know who might be helped on the way. – user3956566 Nov 10 '15 at 21:06
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    @Yvette it is indeed a very huge discussion. Discrimination is such a loaded term. If the simple fact is that there is a decline in the number of women enrolling in comp sci, I can't see how it would be unfair to men to encourage more girls to take a look at the discipline. – Morpheus Nov 10 '15 at 22:55
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    Euthanizing the parents of daughters would help a lot, (though admittedly a bit extreme). I'm afraid that software engineering is all-to-often seen as a socially uncool profession, unsuited to their little darlings. No, I don't understand why:( Doctor good. Lawyer good, Engineer bad:(( – Martin James Nov 11 '15 at 10:43

Warning: This is a opinion post reflecting my personal opinion on the matter as a means to add to the discussion. If you disagree, please do so constructively. Im not opposed to changing my mind if arguments convince me otherwise.

Personally speaking I do not see this as a major issue. I realise that in my position as not a woman I am maybe not well qualified to speak about this issue as felt by the affected, but bear with me.

I think that SO in General is very well equipped to deal with discrimination based on minority status or other factors. We have elected community moderators who represent us in matters of moderation. These people are supposedly (and overwhelmingly also practically) strong examples of fairness and good judgement. If you find such instances of targeted discrimination its always appropiate to get them deleted or otherwise removed.

I realise that in many places of the tech industry systemic discrimination is still rampant, however I do not think that stack overflow or stack exchange in general is still one of those places.

TL;DR I think SO and SE in General already handle this topic very well and with the utmost due respect.

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    What is expressed is the problem that some users feel they can't be open about their gender. That is not an issue for moderators to solve, that is an issue for you and me and many others like us to solve. – rene Nov 11 '15 at 10:54
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    @rene I don't get why anyone feels the need to express their gender here is the point. This is not about personal things, but programming. If im answering a question, how does it matter in even the slightest to me who you are? – magisch Nov 11 '15 at 11:39
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    I agree with that but still users that are named Petra feel they are handled different when they are named Peter. I think that is what the post tries to address. – rene Nov 11 '15 at 12:06
  • @rene speaking for myself, I don't. Or at least I don't consciously. Wether or not someone is female or part of a minority is about as relevant to me for the scope and quality of their programming question as the lunch they had 2 years and 3 days ago. – magisch Nov 11 '15 at 12:09
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    @rene: But are they treated differently, or is it a matter of perception? I've only ever seen misogynistic comments once or twice, and those have always been dealt with swiftly. Other harassment unrelated to gender is way more prevalent, in my experience. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 12:11
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    @Cerbrus it might be a matter of perception but If that is triggered by my behavior that I'm unaware of I'm willing to try to change my behavior to make sure nobody feels treated differently. – rene Nov 11 '15 at 12:36
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    My point is that I haven't seen women being treated differenly on SO. (Other than those few abrasive users that'd have insulted the user any way, regardless of gender). Sure, women are a minority in programming, but that's not a SO problem. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 12:39
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    @Cerbrus They are not treated differently by the vast majority of SO users. Sometimes, I think that difference is perceived where there is none (or at least none intended) – NickJ Nov 11 '15 at 12:40
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    @NickJ: I agree. Feeling insulted / hurt when the wrong pronoun is used, for example, really is something that can't be solved by SO. Women are a minority, so as a female user, one's bound to be referred to as "He" once in a while. They sure as heck can't expect everyone to use gender ambiguous pronouns from now on. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 12:46
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    Maybe the sheer fact that we think there is no problem/downplay the issue is hurting/feeling as an insult? – rene Nov 11 '15 at 12:49
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    @rene I just can't see an issue to downplay there. Its not clear to me how this is an issue on SO. In all my time here, I've seen precisely 3 Misogynistic comments, and none of those survived an hour even. – magisch Nov 11 '15 at 12:50
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    @Magisch: In my experience, general insults vastly outnumber misogynistic ones. The problem isn't that women may get insulted for being female, the problem is that those users feel the need to insult someone. And that problem is always dealt with swiftly. – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 12:54
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    @Yvette I certainly didn't. It may be im just not here long enough, but in my time here, SO has been nothing but a wealth of knowledge for me (littered with poorly worded homework questions from time to time, but ah well). – magisch Nov 11 '15 at 12:55
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    @Yvette: "But seems no one else saw it as an issue." Maybe because it wasn't really an issue? – Cerbrus Nov 11 '15 at 12:55
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    @Cerbrus I should clarify as this is not a clear way to communicate.. You suggested that the post I flagged had no problem, that only I saw a problem, that was where i replied to you, that a using a house wife etc.. I thought we were all referring to the post I was referring to in the original question. Sorry if I offended you, I think the way the conversation flows in comments can cause things to be taken out of context. – user3956566 Nov 11 '15 at 13:15

In the United States, women are dramatically underrepresented in our industry from at least high school on. Not only that, but ratio has dropped from 38% in the 80s to roughly 20% now. Most professions in the US have moved in the opposite direction in terms of gender split. (Obviously, demographics of where you work may very well be different. I'm curious if there are any locations where gender diversity in programming comes close to 50%.)

In one sense, gender diversity on Stack Overflow reflects a greater system outside of our control. The best we can hope for in the near term is for our demographics to match the population of working programmers. But we've started thinking bigger lately. When I hang out in chat, it's striking how many people use our sites well before they enter the workforce. There are very few places where teenagers and veteran programmers operate on equal footing; Stack Overflow is certainly the most influential. As a result, this community has a unique potential to mold the future of our profession.

Gender seems to have almost no influence on how Stack Overflow posts are perceived. If nothing else, we deemphasize personal information of authors in favor of site statistics (reputation and badges). On a fundamental level, we work really hard to encourage people to evaluate posts on their content (especially the usefulness of the content) and not on the identity of authors. As Jeff Atwood says:

What Stack Exchange does is essentially data, fact, and science-based.

I don't intend to dismiss problems people experience in posts (either on main or meta), but they are, I think, rather rare and easily sorted out.

As we shift focus to comments and especially chat, gender becomes more of a factor in how people interact. As a community, we are pretty quick to flag and remove comments that fall short of our Be Nice policy. In chat, however, interpretations of the rules varies from room to room. If you think of chat as the place to blow off steam, that's not the worst thing in the world, I suppose. But I see far too many instances of behavior that, whether by design or accident, seems certain to make chat an uncomfortable place for people who don't always feel they are part of the group.

I have a lot of words to put here that I don't think will be helpful. Instead, I'd like to encourage us to imagine, on occasion, a young girl (or boy, for that matter) who has a passing interest in programming hanging out in your chatroom. Is what you discuss and the manner in which you discuss it driving lurkers toward or away from our profession? If you are active in a language-specific room, do your words tend to make your prefered technology look attractive to an eager young mind?

As programmers, we tend to have very strong opinions about all sorts of things. Often they are weakly held, which would be no problem if not that such nuance doesn't often get through when communicating in text. So the next time the topic in a chatroom starts to drift away from the de jure room topic, please consider moving the conversation to a different room. When things get uncomfortable for you (even if you are pretty sure people are joking) use a flag to let someone else know. If it bothers you, there's a good chance it bothers other people too. If your message gets flagged, please take the opportunity to examine your contributions to see if they can be improved.

I won't pretend that moving off-topic conversations in chat will change the world. But I do think it's a small thing that everyone can do right now.

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    Thank you for taking the time to write such a composed and thoughtful answer. I am glad you added some links. And the point you make about the gender gap widening in programming, where as it's reducing in many other fields is exactly the reason it concerns me. Of course the cause is beyond SO, but I really have faith in SOs ability to affect change in the world.. it isn't the solve all elixir, but it certainly is a brilliant site knitting humane principles with a high bar on scientific and logical excellence. +1 hope the comment bots don't get me! :) – user3956566 Nov 16 '15 at 19:47


I'm not sure a google search will show that. For such statements I prefer to go to the official labor statistics compiled by the government.

Here we see stats for 2010. The number of women in "Computer and mathematical occupations" was 24.8% of the workforce.

Here (table 11) we have the stats for 2018. the number of women in the same field is 25.5%

This tells me that women in IT is increasing, and not as the author suggests.

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    I'm not sure you can derive "steadily increasing" from two datapoints. "has increased" yes, "steadily increasing", not so much. – snakecharmerb Nov 3 '19 at 16:25
  • @snakecharmerb Feel free to read the rest of the stat reports from the gov site. – gbjbaanb Nov 3 '19 at 18:36
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    I'm not arguing the stats, I'm arguing that their presentation in the question doesn't demonstrate a "steadily increasing" trend. The onus is on you to edit your question to support your assertion. – snakecharmerb Nov 3 '19 at 18:54
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    The question was written in 2015 using these numbers, which go to 2012. In any case, the numbers are nothing compared to the 37% of 1984 CS bachelors degrees that were awarded to women, nor the 57% of total bachelor's degrees in 2017 which were awarded to women. (The numbers for women getting math bachelors are more balanced). The numbers for actual jobs look to be similar; the highest percent of women in programming was in the 80s. – Laurel Nov 4 '19 at 3:52
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    @Laurel the largest % of female programmers was in the 60s when it was considered a secretarial role, the industry has changed considerably since those days. I don't think CS degrees matter to the job market either, most of the people I worked with had degrees in subjects other than CS. – gbjbaanb Nov 4 '19 at 15:55

It has been a difficult time since this question has initially been asked. That was back in 2015.

Today, someone posted an an answer here. The answer was uninformed, shallow, and inconsiderate, and it was deleted quickly.

The problem is: It was deleted without an obvious reason.

(It was then re-posted, which is not acceptable, but that's not the root issue here)

The tl;dr version of the answer is:

Should SO do something at all in relation to the small number of women in programming fields?

My personal opinion is no. [ ... ]

Why there are small number of womans studying programming/IT fields in universities? [...]

The answer is - simply because in general woman isn't interested in programming

The only hint of a reason for the deletion was probably referring to the last statement:

This isn't an argument we wish to give you a platform to make, and we have no obligation to do so. If you repost this, your main account will be suspended as well.

So even though it has been discussed ad nauseam, I think it's necessary and appropriate to unpack this particular point.

Quoting from the original question:



2. FACT: Women are diminishing in this field

I don't want to argue about whether a Google search per se is a profound basis for stating something as a FACT. One could dive deeply into the search results. But the remaining line of "argumentation" in the question was not so much an argumentation based on hard facts, but rather an attempt to use feelings and impressions in order to suggest a causation for (subjective) observations of correlations.

So whichever "argument" stackoverflow does not wish to give a "platform" for, let's put aside feelings and impressions, and have a look at some studies. One can argue about the selection of the quotes, but the full articles are in the links:

Substantial evidence suggests that the male advantage in mathematics is largest at the upper end of the ability distribution,a result that could provide important clues to the origin of this sex difference. In addition, a ‘‘tilt’’ favoring visuospatial or mathematical abilities compared to verbal, regardless of level ofability, is more frequently exhibited by males than by females.Females tend to be more balanced in their ability profiles, which may lead them to choose mathematics or science careers less frequently than their male counterparts do.

Halpern et al, The Science of Sex Differences inScience and Mathematics, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2007

The analysis covers many influencing factors, one of which might be related to the one that Yvette referred to in the question, namely the "Stereotype Threat" (see pages 33ff). And the article also contains a statement that may be surprising to some:

Moreover, the magnitude of the sex difference correlates negatively with measures of gender equality in the country.

This has been examined further in recent studies, and is now sometimes referred to as the "gender equality paradox":

One of the main findings of this study is that, paradoxically, countries with lower levels of gender equality had relatively more women among STEM graduates than did more gender equal countries.

Stoet et al, The gender equality paradox in STEM education, Psychological Science, Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2018

The latter was confirmed with replicating studies, e.g.:

... there was a strong correlation (r = .69) between a country's sex differences in personality and their Gender Equality Index.

Giolla et al, Sex differences in personality are larger in gender equal countries: Replicating and extending a surprising finding, International Journal of Psychology, 2018

Although I'm not a psychologist or social sciences expert, this at least suggests that the fact that the number of women who pick a STEM/Programmer career is decreasing might also be attributed to an increased gender equality.

We could argue about that.

What is not acceptable, however, is when an answer that even suggests that this might be a contributing factor is deleted simply because it does not fit into someones personal ideological agenda


I must admit that I'm also offended by the housewife joke in spite of being a male since my wife is a housewife, and she's probably overall a lot smarter than me. :-D I don't know what to do about this situation.

I'd love to see more female programmers for a start. I taught CS 101/102 for a brief period in my life (though the academic vibe wasn't my thing, I wanted to create software), and I was disappointed to find that among multiple semesters, I only had one female student the whole time.

Yet she was one of my finest students -- the most enthusiastic, hard-working, most willing to ask questions, always sitting in the front row. There was one characteristic she lacked, I think due to a lack of confidence. I had to encourage her to play around and experiment in the code more. She wanted to do everything by the book, according to the regular parameters, and I had to push her to try bending the rules and experiment a lot more to discover how things work and discover how to best do things. I don't know if that one sample is at all indicative of a sociological trend within female programmers, I just found it interesting that she was hard-working yet so timid and afraid to play around in code.

I think what exacerbates this issue is that programmers typically aren't the most outgoing social types. In fact, I can think of few other professions with such a strong antisocial vibe besides maybe a mortician.

Issues like sexism are often the result of social isolation/segregation of some sort. If you get a whole bunch of antisocial guys who have never been with a woman let alone talked to a number of women really intimately and openly, what you tend to get are a group of guys who hang out with other guys who imagine how the world works in a way that's completely detached from actual experience. They're also incredibly intimidated by women, believe it or not. It's just that their way of hiding their insecurity is to feign superiority and make a bunch of chauvinistic jokes.

To me the two biggest solutions that come to mind are:

  1. Make programmers in general more social, outgoing people who can speak openly with women all the time. This is probably pretty hopeless.
  2. Get more female programmers to start putting the male programmers in their place. This seems a little less hopeless.

So perhaps we just need more female programmers like yourself!

For the SO side of the topic, if you know any female programmers who aren't on SO, maybe encourage them to join? The numbers help to restore the balance.

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    Good to know that when my life as a programmer ends I can always become a mortician without the need to learn social skills ... :D – rene Dec 12 '15 at 11:31
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    Great answer, you've things I think, but don't dare say. And I've notice that some people may have high IQ and not so high EQ. – user3956566 Dec 12 '15 at 12:27

Extremely high level thoughts.

Reinforcing the concept of always respect the original author.” is something that might be core to Stack Exchange philosophy, but heck if I can find that message conveyed across all sites. Why not just always have that message shown to any/all users editing a question or answer?

I believe always hammering home the point that you can edit for clarity but you should always respect the author will help make Stack Exchange sites like Stack Overflow and others more friendly towards women and others who might be intimidated by this system.

Shorter thoughts.

I generally think that the Stack Exchange system works quite well. There is just so much one can do to regulate human behavior here on this site or in the world. This place is not perfect, but the mechanisms exists to make this place as pleasant and high quality as possible.

That said, one issue I have noticed on a recent post on the Workplace Stack Exchange site was the very strong desire of others to remove gender from a female junior/male senior developer conflict discussion. My personal assessment as conveyed in my own answer was simple: I did not see gender bias, but that said, you should approach this as XYZ. I assume good faith but will also post my thoughts on anything that makes me view a claim a bit askance.

The resulting minor edit war was not that great but not as horrible as one would think and resulted in a decent Meta Workplace thread. But still, seeing the behavior of some users in that thread made me a bit ill. There’s a difference between disagreeing with evidence presented and wiping it away completely and the idea some folks could not see that makes me shake my head.

So the long and short of it: If one of the core editing philosophies of Stack Exchange—as shown on many edit pages—is always respect the original author.” then why doesn’t that show up on every site in every editing interface?

Longer thoughts.

First thing off the bat, I’m a heterosexual white male who lives in a large metropolitan area who has blonde hair and blue eyes. So take that foundation for what it’s worth.

When I first saw this post come up, I wanted to join in but felt that some of the encounters I have had on Stack Exchange sites were too far in the past to bring a valid POV to the table. That said, there was a recent posting on the Workplace Stack Exchange site that I believe dovetails with a lot that has been said here and I am posting an answer to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the Stack Exchange system.

The post in question is this current question that has an answer already:

Senior architect lashing out when junior developer asks questions. What to do?

The gender related issue came from the original post that was titled:

Male seinor architect bullying junior female developer. What to do?

All in all, I believe the process that managed the post was good and worked well. Generally, the current edit—approved and made by the original poster—removes gender from the equation since she now realizes the issue is a larger one with the senior developer just being a territorial ninny irregardless of gender.

That said, even when it was originally posted, her original assessment showed no real evidence of bias. So when I went ahead and posted my answer to this question I passed along my advice—based on my own history dealing with such personalities—and stated bluntly:


And then just went on with my answer. While I felt there was no gender aspect to this scenario, I did not feel it was my role to edit the question to neuter gender from the post… But that’s when the proverbial “fun” began; just look at the edit history.

First came this edit from a user stating:


I came back and then re-edited the question stating:

“Adding gender back into the title. While I don't believe this is a gender-based question, it is not anyone's job but the original posters to clarify what they mean by adding gender to the context.”

Which then triggered another edit from another user claiming:

at the risk of starting an edit war, moved gender out of the title (and really, "a female", come on)

You know what? I fully understand “a female” is grammatically wince-worthy, but the original poster used that language in her original post so I just left it as true to her original spirit/intent as possible.

This action resulted in me doing a rollback, which then resulted in one of the past editor’s then editing by doing a: “gender moved out of title into body of post.” Which was then—thankfully—followed by a moderator editing yet again stating:

Restoring the original title and additional motivation for it possibly being gender-related. Removing that from the question without the OP's consent changes too much.

Which I fully agree with. There is a fine line between editing for clarity and then washing away intent. And I believe that edits that remove a key point such as gender—even if people cannot see that—crosses that line.

But then the party did not end since another user neutered gender from the post by stating:

remove irrelevant information that is not constructive to the question.

Which then resulted in me rolling it back yet again stating:

The issue of gender being erased from this question is being discussed on Meta. The inclusion of gender was made by the original poster for a reason and as such the original poster’s intent should be respected. Disagree? Discuss in Meta. https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3434/14273

And then finally ended with the original poster editing her question in the end and stating in an edit addition:

I talked to another coworker about this and he said it's happened to him too so no, it wasn't a gender issue.

Okay, with the dust settled it’s clear it was never a gender issue. But what disturbs me—and still disturbs me—is the sheer number of people active in edits and comments who felt it was necessary to “cross that line” and wipe that aspect of the discussion away without respecting the original poster’s intent.

As I understand it one of the key messages being sent to anyone who attempts to edit a question is a bullet list on the right-hand side that includes—among other tips—the following message:

always respect the original author.

I strongly believe the way I acted in that post and comments respects that POV and idea. But the meta thread and even comments on the original post seem utterly tone deaf to that idea on multiple issues.

And what was most maddening to me is the rush to judgement to not only question the supposed gender issue but also decide right away that should be edited out as if there might be some aspect of gender the original poster might not be revealing for whatever reason.

That said, there is no way you can program or create a system that will fully smack down tone-deafness towards others like that. But I do believe the Stack Exchange system worked quite well to keep this post in keel.

Add the “always respect the original author.” to all editing view interfaces across all sites.

That said, one small thing… Maybe I am blind, but the “always respect the original author.” doesn’t seem to be consistently deployed across sites? Or perhaps my reputation level has gotten so high—and it’s not that high on Super User—that I no longer can see it, but perhaps having that bullet list always show up across sites would be a good way to send a message at best and have something to point at in a worst case scenario.

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    My brother was white, blonde hair blue eyes and heterosexual, so I won't hold that against you :) Thank you for taking the time to post and I also think waiting for the dust to settle is a good idea. As for the workplace post you linked, the fact the OP originally put it as a gender issue and then needed to ask a male peer to get a check on her senior, shows that she experiences her life with a perception that there is gender bias (most likely from experiences). As I mentioned in my post SO is a good place, and the issue is more overcoming some women's perceptions so they can (cont) – user3956566 Dec 12 '15 at 9:05
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    feel welcome coming here as 'women' and not feeling the need to hide that fact (people do not have to disclose their gender, but we don't want them hiding it). Also we want to educate people to be aware of stereotyping, to avoid compounding the problem. I really like your POV of the original intent of the post. You have made some insightful comments and approached the issue from another angle, which is always fresh and needed. – user3956566 Dec 12 '15 at 9:07
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    @MrsEd “…feel welcome coming here as 'women' and not feeling the need to hide that fact…” Agreed on that. My long winded point basically comes down to this: If a woman cannot post on the Workplace site about her experiences as a developer dealing with a male co-worker without fear of repercussions, then there are larger issues here. Happily the system “worked” and protected the discussion, intent and conversation. Still, the whole thread makes me feel a bit uneasy about the POV of some other users when it comes to understanding the need to respect an original poster’s intent. – Giacomo1968 Dec 12 '15 at 18:34
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    And what I don't understand is the objection to the mention of gender. There are differences between the two in terms of experience and perception, which are relevant in any community. – user3956566 Dec 12 '15 at 22:32
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    @MrsEd Mentalities like the one expressed in this comments desire to wash gender away to a degree it actually becomes sexist if you ask me, “This site is a Q&A site not a dear abby site. The edit removed information that was not necessary. The OP can always edit it back in if they feel strongly about it hopefully clarifing why they think it is a gender issue.” – Giacomo1968 Dec 13 '15 at 1:15
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    Yes they are hostile remarks and made from people who have issues. – user3956566 Dec 13 '15 at 5:23
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    Related What's so bad about "Nancy" where a female boss shown in a bad light turned into an edit war where the gender was deliberately downplayed, whereas here you have deliberately kept a male portrayed in a bad light. Does SO have institutionalised sexism (against men)? – gbjbaanb Nov 3 '19 at 20:53

I got this idea from Cerbrus' answer

  • I believe we should all be treated equally and there seems to be a consensus on this.

  • Given that the issue is NOT a flaw in SO, but is more complex, my original question asked should we do anything, if so, what should we do?

so the idea to encourage women without discrimination.

We could always have a blog or a link to a blog somewhere discussing this, perhaps with female SO users (I'm not going through all of SE, this is focused on SO), who are happy to write their testimonials, as programmers and SO members.

from a comment

A subset of women fear they will be treated differently if they reveal they are women. So in an online environment they are more prone to hide their identity to avoid this.

I don't think SO actually does treat women differently at all. In fact there are many users here who are pro-active at making people feel welcome (and there are the opposite, but they are not discriminatory, I'll pay them that!)

Given that many newcomers need to muster up a certain level of bravery and there is a subset of people who are disabled by their inferiority complexes, I'm trying to encourage women and to show them, hey SO is supportive of women and you won't be discriminated.

Of interest

  • Google has taken an initiative to increase the number of women in their organisation.




  • They also partner with the following:



  • I've also added some more links, as people have been asking for me to provide links to support my claims (I will update this over time):






  • I like this idea of "taking it offline" as it were, and have a separate blog, unrelated to SE. Maybe that blog could then lead to more crystallized suggestions or ideas that could be sent back here. Or not. Either way, it seems like women programmers here need to have a place for discussion. Also, that blog could attract non-SO women to join SO. – geekandglitter Apr 10 '19 at 13:42
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    @geekandglitter yes and no. We discuss demographics on here. Wanting to keep the community growth and retention healthy is something that needs to be discussed. Clearly focusing on women is controversial. It doesn't have to be. One things for sure. There's a lot of people who will browse meta and think I'm not posting there. – user3956566 Apr 12 '19 at 23:08

This answer opened my eyes.

What if part of the disparity is because men are socially more inclined to deceive themselves, imagining that they're better at developing software than they are? Or more likely to try to elevate themselves in the eyes of others? Or both?

Picture two novice developers, one male, one female. Neither knows what they're doing yet, but the male is convinced that he's a genius. The female believes him and measures herself as deficient because she's no more able to measure skill than he is. Quite likely others believe him as well, which reinforces everything. It reinforces his estimate of his skill, her perception of deficiency, and the overall male developer stereotype. Is that plausible?

It fits with a few other considerations:

  • It's social, not biological. Most of us consider it unlikely that the gender disparity is caused by biological differences.
  • Most men claim that they don't believe that women are inferior developers. Just the opposite - they scratch their heads and wonder why there aren't more women. This idea points to something other than some deliberate intent to reinforce a stereotype or keep women out. It's a more subtle difference in thinking and behavior.

It goes along with the idea of the expert beginner which proposes that much of software is dominated by people who are great at convincing themselves and others that they're highly skilled. The industry rewards it. The problem is that the industry has difficulty measuring skill, particularly at the entry level, and accepts overconfidence and self-deception as indicators of ability.

I'm a man, but I've been affected by such behavior. When I started out I was determined that I didn't want to fake it. I wanted to be good at it. And that slowed me down because I was surrounded by people who portrayed themselves as highly skilled, while in retrospect I can see that they weren't. (Oddly they were unable to describe any habits or practices that others should follow.) Management validated whatever they believed about themselves.

I don't see this so much as an answer as a direction to consider. Software development is a weird mix of skill, curiosity, and commitment to improvement. We struggle with linking cause and effect because effects are deferred. It's fertile ground for self-deception, imposter syndrome, and expert-beginnerism.

Perhaps we need to look more closely at those factors and educate developers on them right from the start. We also need to look more closely at what behaviors we encourage and reward. That's a larger industry problem, but now I see where it might reward social behaviors more common to men.

Call it a hypothesis, although the validation or invalidation will be anecdotal. I'd love to hear feedback.

As for a direct answer to the question - what can Stack Overflow (or anyone) do about it?

The answer is to share information that will help rather than emphasizing the disparity. Overemphasizing the disparity - even in an attempt to reduce it - reinforces stereotypes. It advertises to the world that most developers are men.

Instead, focus on what helps. Teach new developers about expert-beginnerism and Dunning-Kruger. Teach them that the uncertainty they feel is normal and common, and not to believe an overconfident developer's self hype. As an industry learn how to better evaluate skill instead of rewarding people for overestimating themselves and penalizing realistic self-appraisal and modesty.

I don't know whether SO is the platform for it. Make room for it if you can. If not, talk about it elsewhere. Also, I understand why some women conceal their gender, but if you're a woman then perhaps identifying that might help. That's very personal, but it's a thought.

  • What does the Imposter Syndrome have to do with gender? This answer wouldn't be different if the roles in your example were reversed. – Cerbrus Nov 1 '19 at 14:29
  • @Cerberus - perhaps one person's overconfidence contributes to another's imposter syndrome. – Scott Hannen Nov 1 '19 at 14:34
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    The disparity is much more likely to be because women simply don't want to work in IT. I have a report showing the country with the smallest gender disparity in STEM is Lebanon, whilst the one with the greatest disparity is Iceland. Its clear that the countries with the best female rights is the one where women decide to work in traditionally female roles. You're probably still right that the inustry is dominated by charlatans, but that's nothing to do with gender. I'd put it down to tooling churn/"cool fads" as I'm sure expertise was much better in the past. – gbjbaanb Nov 3 '19 at 15:55
  • I don't know. Women become doctors and lawyers. I have no idea why IT is different. Then I thought of auto mechanics. I'm sure there are female auto mechanics, but I've never seen one, ever. Maybe some things give off a vibe that if you do them, you'll be the only woman surrounded by men. Maybe instead of talking to female developers we should be talking to women who avoided it and asking why. – Scott Hannen Nov 3 '19 at 20:48

I am not sure. My experience is that women are much less socially active in any community bound by IT, including Stack Overflow.

By the company I am working for, their ratio is between 15-20%. In my life I think their ratio was between 5-10%. However, they are much more likely to do work which is strongly connected to IT, but not exactly programming (project management, design and so).

I don't know any effect that would directly distract them. Actually, I think there is a light positive effect, because HR obviously prefer some gender balance.

I think, their most distracting factor is that we, male programmers are very alien to them culturally. In us, programming is somehow driven partially by1 testosterone, and they have much less. But honestly, I can't do anything with it. The most what I can do, is that I try to be so helpful to them as I can. But I am only a little screw in a big machine.

1"driven by" relates to motivation, and not to abilities.

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    "In us, programming is somehow driven partially by testosterone, and they have much lesser." Very wild hypothesis. The rest is probably debatable and may be true, but this is just a very wild speculation and, I guess, most probably wrong. I'm not sure if for the next survey we should ask respondents to make a testosterone blood test and then correlate the results with their rep on SO, to test this wild hypothesis. – Trilarion Apr 12 '19 at 8:12
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    @Trilarion Blood test would only prove a correlation, and not causality, your idea is false. Causality could be proven by a deeper analysis of the data. Maybe it could be proven also by some applied psychology. However, I consider your comment as hairsplitting - you might disagree, but it is hilarious to want blood tests to prove a simple and well-known statement. If you consider it seriously, then I also think that you are simply not a programmer and don't understand us. – peterh Apr 12 '19 at 9:35
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    What I think is that the mentioned relation is very far fetched. You basically take something that obviously discriminates men and women (some hormone) and attribute something completely different (programming ability) to it. It's not clear why this should be so and so I would in the absence of any proof rather not say anything about it. I feel the answer would be better without it, which I would regard as good example for a strong opinion weakly backed up, but of course it's your choice. – Trilarion Apr 12 '19 at 10:59
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    (in my own-deleted comment I explained that "driven by" relates to motivation and not to abilities) – peterh Apr 12 '19 at 11:52
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    When I read this "I think, their most distracting factor is that we, male programmers are very alien to them culturally." I was intrigued. Then I read this "programming is somehow driven partially by testosterone," Please back up such assertions with some facts. – user3956566 Apr 12 '19 at 22:45
  • @YvetteColomb I wrote this: "In us, programming...", not in general. I don't think it would be intriguing in any sense, this is only my experience. Others with different experiences, or on any other reason ;-) will have the option to vote this answer down, as usual, but I would deny that it would be intriguing. Maybe it could be interpreted as some type of self-critics (although also this was not my intent). – peterh Apr 12 '19 at 22:56
  • Re "male programmers are very alien to them culturally": In what way exactly? The stereotypical pizzas, computer gaming, and interest in role-playing games? A mental age that is much below the chronological age? Or something else? – Peter Mortensen Apr 13 '19 at 2:06
  • @PeterMortensen Please read also the following sentences. – peterh Apr 13 '19 at 2:31
  • @PeterMortensen Teamwork is a cooperative game, but feeling the strong, instinctual motivation in us, it might look for them, at least on a sub-conscient level, as if we would play a competitive game with them. This might result for them to withdraw for the sake of the better cooperation. The result is, that although we like them on a conscient level, we still might suppress them, unintentionally, on a sub-conscient level. – peterh Apr 13 '19 at 16:58

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