Where are the Female Developers?

A difficult and sometimes sensitive topic being discussed in our industry is the shortage of women in the world of technology.  In this post I want to focus on the specific field of programming / software development.  I don't think there are any simple answers, but most will agree that it would be nice to offset the male dominated profession.  I would like to mention, at least briefly some thoughts I have when it comes to this "issue".  Mostly I'm interested in hearing others opinions on the matter and am using this article as a way to jumpstart that conversation.  My perspective is extremely limited, and furthermore I am a male which automatically gives my perspective less weight in the discussion.

Is there a demand for women developers?

From my perspective this is a resounding YES.  As a matter of fact I would say having a female developer on your team is a big competitive advantage.  I think for the most part clients like to see equal gender distribution in the company they are hiring.  The current expectation is of course that since there are far fewer women in the industry, competing agencies will have fewer female developers.  

There will always be those men in society who have a less educated perspective on things and resist hiring women, but I think this is pretty rare.  Maybe I'm wrong; I hope I'm not.  By listening to tech news, podcasts, and other media sources, I get the impression that this is where people want to assign blame.  And while I'm certainly not saying sexisim doesn't exist, this topic just isn't that simple.

Often companies will hire women for other roles in the company; like project management, graphic design, etc.  And this is good, but it skirts around the fact that few actual developers are female. From the outside it may look like a software development agency has good female representation, but it's been my experience that very few of these women are actually developers.  This also creates a gap for the increasing number of lean development groups like ourselves that do not want the overhead of non-developers but who want female representation on the team.  Potential clients like the thought of hiring a team that is solely dedicated to development and isn't running up a billable hours with other, often unnecessary, project management tasks.  The danger with this demand for female developers is that development groups begin hiring developers based on their gender rather than their qualifications, which doesn't do either side of the issue any good.

Do women want to be software developers?

This question has answers, but there are more questions behind the answers.  One could argue that women simply do not want to be software developers.  Much in the same way perhaps that a majority of women do not want to become plumbers.  

It is certainly true that most women do not see them selves in web development.  The popular majors for women are education, nursing, and marketing.  And for teaching / education in particular there is a tremendous surplus of teaching graduates (at least in our part of the country) which results in a small percentage of these graduates actually finding work in their field.  Many of whom work other jobs out of necessity.  In contrast I think my computer science department had only a couple of female students.  That was over a decade ago, and I happen to know things are "evening out" a little bit, which is great and an indication that we are heading in the right direction.

So the bigger question is then "Why do so few women want a career in programming?".  This is by far the more difficult but probably most relevant question to answer.  

One reasons is certainly the culture in which we raise our kids.  All it takes is one visit to Toy's R Us to see the difference.  Boys are given blocks, legos, and other electronics that often require some level of engineering.  Girls on the other hand are given other more domestic toys like dolls, dish-ware, kitchens, and shopping carts.  Which, I want to be clear, is not in and of itself wrong.  I have a daughter myself that gravitates toward these kind of "girly" toys, and I am certainly not taking the position of constantly denying her what she wants so that I can orient her toward a path more in line with engineering.  

This is what makes culture so difficult to wrestle with.  Young kids naturally want to assimilate to their peers.  Even if a girl is drawn toward problem solving oriented activities, she might not pursue them if none of her friends are.  The topic of culture is a "rabbit hole" I'm not going to go down very far right now.  But I mention it because it demonstrates the complexity of why so few women find themselves programming computers for a living.

Outside of the culture realm, sexisim is also a factor.  Whether it is intended or not, the current ratio of men to women in software development lends it self to create a "boy's club" vibe from time to time.  And this is no doubt intimidating to women who might be pre disposed to wanting to work as a developer. As an aside, I like to include pictures of some kind in my posts.  In searching for one via the internet I had trouble finding one that might not be considered offensive.  So, denying that this issue exists certainly isn't any good.

What do we do about it?

I don't know the answer to this.  Culture doesn't shift overnight.  But I am encouraged when I see local "meet-ups" geared toward bringing more women to the field.  The more this happens, the more girls will have software developer "role models", and the more girls will be drawn to these types of careers, eventually bringing more equilibrium to the industry as a whole.  

As men we can do a better job of reflecting a more accepting, less sexist industry.  It unfortunately only takes a handful of men to cast a large shadow on the industry as being sexist, hopefully discouraging this among our software development peers will have some impact on this.  I should also mention that many (dare I say most) men are simply ignorant of what impact their words and actions have as it relates to welcoming women into the community.  I don't think it does any good to create tension by getting mad when men make these kind of mistakes, but it present the opportunity for a discussion that will hopefully improve things, as a whole, for the better.

It is never to late to enter the software development field ladies.  Good developers are in high demand.  My hope is that as women are exposed to this kind of work and problem solving they will be intrigued enough to pursue some form of learning (for example, co-learning) and possible career as a developer.  

I started the conversation. Let me know what you think.