A couple of years ago somebody shared a “good article on the barriers to women in tech” in one of the Slack channels at work. You know, another one of those low effort diatribes that spew the same talking points about muh wage gap, sexual harassment and representation, in a lame attempt at explaining why the tech industry is male dominant. One of the responses dared mention women's “maternal instincts” (double quotes in origin) as a possible contributing factor to this horrible inequity. The ensuing conversation revolved around how these kind of comments are the reason women are hesitant to enter the tech world and in what circumstances you should punch in the face anybody who express himself in a similar manner. One 'woman in tech' confirmed that as a kid she was told to “go home gamer girl” and that she was lucky to have survived.

To say that I rolled my eyes at the suggestion that in Canada, one of the most progressive countries in the world, women are somehow denied access to anything at all, would be an understatement. You can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting some kind of organization, outreach program or a scholarship dedicated specifically to women. And yet we’re supposed to believe that there still exists a prevailing mystical bias in society and in tech in particular, pushing women away. Sorry, I don't buy that, and this relentless barrage of poorly written, misinformed op-eds only serves to cement my doubt. This kind of drivel is not at all new to me, but to see it hit so close to home definitely raised a red flag.

The Fostering of an Inclusive Environment

A year later, on Friday 2017-08-04 an internal Google document, authored by James Damore, was leaked. That document details the ideological echo chamber within Google, its far left leanings and their consequences. It is particularly focused on the gap between men and women in the industry, possible reasons for that, why affirmative action is a bad solution and other possible ways of bridging that gap. Additionally, it warns from the danger of silencing dissenting opinions. In response, Danielle Brown, Google's VP of diversity, integrity, and governance wrote: “Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions”. On 2017-08-07 James was fired for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes”. This kind of insane doublespeak, where you say one thing, then immediately proceed to do the exact opposite is sickening. And given Google's position in the tech industry, it also serves as an alarming wake up call.

Indeed, had you formed your opinion of Damore based on Google's official response and the media narrative you would have been under the impression that his main argument was that “women are less qualified than men” or some other nonsense. Thankfully, you don't have to rely on these total hacks since an accurate account of what happened and the actual validity of the “anti-diversity screed” are available from Andy Ngo and this interview by Jordan Peterson with James himself (an interview that also contains in its description a list of references to recent related studies which will be useful shortly). Suffice it to say that no statements of inferiority where made.

I remembered a DevDays talk by Greg Wilson in which he puts a great emphasis on research rather than baseless opinions. He specifically mentions the book “Why Aren't More Women in Science?” As a great example of professionals in their field debating a topic using research, like adults. Which is exactly what was needed here, so I got a copy of it. The type of ideologues who will fire you for getting the answer to this question “wrong” will probably not care about my conclusions, but this had gotten too far and I needed an answer at least for myself. One that is backed by science, not mere anecdotes, and is taking into account the work of a wide array of researchers.

Ironically enough, the book starts with another man who was forced out of his job for expressing harmful opinions. In 2005, Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard University, had the gaul to say that more men than women perform at the highest levels in math and science and that it's probably not because of socialization. [This was at a Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. To question why such a conference was needed in the first place is probably another fireable offence. But, it is interesting to note that diversity was our strength as early as 2005.] Much like Damore, Summers's intentions seem to have been in the right place: “I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them”. But even before Twitter ever existed, the outraged mob never cared for these kind of things. The faculty passed a no-confidence motion against Summers and he agreed to step down.

The introduction also notes that the media coverage of this story was as shallow as you might expect. As usual, you can never trust anything you hear in mainstream sources, who turned outrage peddling into a business model. But the issue is far more nuanced than this and it would seem that that is what prompted the book to begin with.

The rest of the book is a series of 15 essays, in which different people take turns trying to answer the question in the title. However, no coherent message or conclusion is being made by the book collectively and the reader is left to draw his own. I’ll try to do that here. And since I am a man in tech after all, I will also focus specifically on the tech industry, not necessarily on STEM as a whole.

Taking a Detour into Academic Integrity

But before I do that, I want to jump ahead to chapter 4, written by Elizabeth Spelke and Ariel Grace. It just so happens that in 2005, Spelke had appeared in a debate on the same topic with Steven Pinker. You can go watch that for yourself, but I have chosen to ignore anything she has to say. Why? Because she is lying.

On the second to last paragraph of the essay she says: “Although women work longer hours than men do worldwide, often with poor compensation (Chen, Vanek, Lund, & Heinz, 2005)”. If I didn't know any better I would probably not even notice that blatant lie. If you follow that reference, on page 11 you’ll find that the poorly compensated longer hours women supposedly work actually refer to “unpaid care and domestic work”. Meaning, house chores and the raising of one's children. Now, whether women work more than men or not (they don't) is not really consequential to her point in that paragraph. Why then, if she’s willing to fudge the meaning of the word ‘work’ to paint women in a positive light when it hardly matters, should we trust anything she has to say on anything of significance?

It's no surprise the social sciences have such a bad track record when a seemingly respected scientist can deceptively cite a UN feminist propaganda piece in a book claiming to be concerned with hard data and evidence. Thankfully none of the other writers seem to be that disingenuous. At least not that i’ve noticed.

The Biological Foundation of a Blank Slate

Since there will always be those who need this kind of disclaimer (and those who will proceed to ignore it), I will also point out that when comparing the two sexes, we are obviously talking about averages that do not apply to specific individuals. The average man is taller than the average woman. This doesn't mean that there are no six and a half feet tall women out there. There is also no single factor that is responsible for the lack of women in tech, these kind of issues are typically highly multifaceted. And finally, being the same species, men and women are more similar than different and the differences are generally fairly small. This also doesn't mean that all of these differences are small or that they are irrelevant and can be shrugged aside.

To try to make sense of the rest of this we’ll start with this point:

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species.

If, like Nicholas Matte, you find this statement of fact troubling, please stop reading and seek professional help. Otherwise, consider that a sexually dimorphic species is subject to sexual selection – a mode of natural selection where members of one biological sex choose mates of the other sex to mate with, and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex. The sex with the slower rate of reproduction (females) invests more in parenting, is selective in mate choices, and exhibits less competition over mates. In some species this selection drives the more competitive sex (males) to develop skills that improve their chance of reproduction. Sexual selection will also drive males to show greater within-sex variation on many traits as they compete for mates. In modern societies this will manifest as men being more focused on achievement and status in the domains in which they compete.

This offers an explanation to two other points that frequently come up in the book:

Men are better are spatial reasoning.

Men are more variable in intelligence.

Spatial reasoning is the ability or mental skill to solve spatial problems of navigation, visualize objects from different angles and space, faces or scenes recognition, or to notice fine details. While it is definitely heretical to suggest that men are better than women at anything, and some of the authors even contest this point, most do not. If we also acknowledge that men will narrow the focus of where they compete on areas in which they have a competitive advantage, we can see this as one of many factors that will push them towards occupations in which spatial reasoning may offer said advantage. Meanwhile, women who are on par in terms of spatial capability are most likely more than capable of pursuing non-STEM related careers and more often than not will choose to do so. It is, however, highly doubtful that spatial ability has any advantage in most areas of tech, which tends to be less spatial in nature. So I would take this one with a grain of salt.

Secondly, the idea that intelligence is just one of the traits males will show greater variability on, in an effort to compete, is fairly straightforward. Combine that with the fact that, overall, the difference in intelligence between the sexes is non-existent (or negligible at best), and it's easy to see why occupations that require a higher than average intelligence, will tend to find more men in them. There are simply more men in that pool and the effect gets worse the more intense the requirements become. Of course, this mainly applies to areas in STEM research and industry where this kind of pressure exists, and not so much in the general tech industry where, I can assure you, average intelligence is more than sufficient.

One major way these sex differences emerge is through hormones, both prenatally and after puberty. Specifically, prenatal hormonal exposure influences the fundamental organization of the brain and produces permanent effects. For example, prenatal androgen levels are said to almost certainly be a major factor in the level of adult spatial ability. Hormones may influence the direction in which an individual leans towards early in life, and even in adulthood, variations in hormone levels are associated with variations in specific cognitive abilities. These effects, however, are incredibly complex and often interact with genes and gene expression, physical health, and socio-economical factors.

Cognitive ability aside, the more interesting and relevant impact hormones have is on our psychology and personality. In the book, the example of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) comes up multiple times. CAH is a genetic disorder that causes the adrenal gland to overproduce androgens including testosterone, beginning prenatally. Prenatal androgens are strongly associated with later sex-related interests, including childhood toy preferences, adolescent activity interests, adult hobbies and vocational interests. Females with said disorder have masculinized preferences, although they have female-typical gender identity and think of themselves as female. This is important because it means that these interests and preferences cannot be said to have been ‘socialized’ into these girls by their parents since they are still raised as such.

The Psychology of Things and the Mechanics of People

Which leads me to the next major point:

There are psychological differences between men and women.

Most notably, men prefer things and women prefer people.

If the example of CAH didn't convince you, you might want to consider that a 1991 meta-analysis of 172 studies found virtually no disparity in how parents mold the social behavior or abilities of boys and girls and that “among women who experienced particularly high prenatal androgen exposure, greater maternal encouragement of femininity typically leads to less adult femininity” (Schmitt, 2016). Note that twin studies consistently show zero contribution of shared environment to variance in personality and intelligence. And finally, that we are also told that male babies show a preference for mechanical systems over human faces as early as 1 year old (Or even 2-3 months old) and that these preferences remain consistent throughout life and across all age groups.

Simply put, “men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people” (Rong Su, 2009) and the “results indicate[d] a very large overall sex difference in vocational interests” (Morris, 2016). Only 15% of women show greater interest in engineering than the average man (Geary, 2017). Now, assuming that only people who are moderately interested (more than average) in engineering will enter the field, you would expect to find there people from the top 50% of males along with the top 15% of females. Which would translate to a 77%/23% male to female ratio. You may object to the use of the male average as the cutoff point and that would be fair. However, using the general average we still end up with about a 70%/30% split. And that's assuming average interest. Any need for more than that will tilt this proportion even further to the extreme.

Given the size of this effect and how well documented it is, I would argue that it is the single most important factor when accounting for the dearth of women in tech, they just don't want to be there. Nobody actually thinks or argues that women are not capable of succeeding in STEM or tech specifically, we recognize that those who are, tend to prefer other, more social fields. It's so obvious in retrospect that it's weird to have to point it out.

In fact, we now know that the more free and egalitarian a society becomes, the bigger these differences become (Stoet & Geary, 2018; Falk & Hermle, 2018; Schmitt, 2016; Sanandaji, 2018; Khazan, The Atlantic, 2018). The so called “Nordic Paradox” is the observation that “higher levels of economic development and gender equality favor the manifestation of gender differences in preferences across countries”. It is simply what happens when people don't feel pressured into high paying jobs for economic reasons and do feel secure enough to follow their passion. If you’ve always wanted to be a gardener but the only way to feed your family was to become a doctor, the choice would be pretty clear. You may even say you didn't really have a choice. If on the other hand, feeding your family is not that much of a problem, you might take the chance and fulfill your dream.

By the way, if you’ve ever worked in tech you probably noticed that even within the industry, women tend to find themselves working on the frontend side of software where they are much more likely to interact with the product team, UI designers and the users themselves. Frontend work is much more people oriented than backend work.

One of the funnier arguments that inadvertently favors the preference theory comes from chapter 15 where we are led to believe that “women may reject the possibility of becoming an engineer or a computer scientist because they have a limited view of what engineers and computer scientists actually do”. Apparently, if you’ve got the impression that developers will often sit down to debug a small piece of code for hours with little to no human interaction, it's not because that is what we actually do, but because “as a culture, we do a very poor job of providing information to our children and adolescents about various occupations”. “Thus, if we want to increase the number of females who consider entering physical science and engineering careers, it will be important to help females see that these careers provide opportunities to fulfill their humanistic and people-oriented values and life goals”. According to this, it's not that women find tech boring, they are just too clueless to figure out how interesting it really is and it's up to us to show them why they’re wrong.

This idea seems to have picked up some clout in the most unlikely of places, Google. In this early 2018 interview for NBC News, both Susan Wojcicki and Sundar Pichai seem to embrace it. Wojcicki had this to say: “I think it has to do with this perception that the computer industry is a geeky, not very interesting, not social industry” and Pichai continued: “We need to make the environment more welcoming. We need to make the jobs more interesting. Women typically look for a job with a purpose and a study showed that. I think it's important for them to see... why you need technology”. While the interviewer doesn't seem to be impressed by their answers and even though Damore's ideas are inaccessible to them directly, It appears that both CEOs have found a politically correct way to express the same thing with a little bit of sugarcoating. It's fine to acknowledge differences in interest between the sexes as long as you frame it in a way that purports to make those nerdy, icky tech jobs more appealing to women.

The Circle of Life Pegged in a Square Hole

Getting back on track, imagine this scenario: a fresh male fetus is conceived and exposed to prenatal androgens throughout his pregnancy, shaping his brain in a way that leads to a slight preference for mechanics and objects over social interactions. This preference is expressed in his choice of toys as a toddler. His parents recognize this as part of his personality and further reinforce it by providing more toys geared to his preference. As he grows, the child gains more confidence in his technical and spatial skills by which he is able to move in and manipulate his environment. In school, he seeks experiences consistent with his interests, joins sports teams or the computer club. Parents provide more tools, allowing for further exploration. Teachers encourage this and may offer related extracurricular opportunities. Interests are reinforced by peers who share them, which leads to even more confidence and maybe even a will to specialize in a related field in the future.

Now imagine the opposite scenario with a female fetus. Or the same scenario with a CAH effected female. In fact, this is exactly what Sheri A. Berenbaum and Susan Resnick describe in chapter 11 right before they go on to say: “Taken together, the child selected and the adult- and peer-facilitated environment reinforce the girl's interests and abilities related to moving objects and spatial information, facilitating interests, abilities, and confidence related to science and math”.

Extend this scenario to an entire population, where the same general pattern occurs independently for millions of individuals, and we can begin to understand where gender stereotypes (or gender schemas as they are described in chapter 1) emerge from. They are category based heuristics generated by the human brain's tendency to detect patterns. “They are cognitive in origin rather than motivational or emotional”. When you notice that the men around you are generally more aggressive than the women around you, you may begin to form an opinion about it. It's important to be aware of this phenomena and the truth at its core if we want to have any chance at treating individuals fairly and without judgment based on group associated stereotypes. At the same time, the emergence of these stereotypes is not an excuse for social engineering attempts that tend to almost always backfire.

I will now lift the next paragraph straight from Doreen Kimura's chapter 2, since it demonstrates the problem perfectly: “In Canada, a program called University Faculty Awards used to be competitively open to both men and women in science for several years (1986-1989). These were highly desirable awards because they were tied to faculty positions and paid the bulk of salaries for several years, as well as providing research grants. The applicants were overwhelmingly male, So despite the relatively higher success rate for women over that period, only 57 (14%) went to women and 363 (86%) to men (T. Brychey, personal communication, August 20, 1999). Since then, the awards have been labeled Women's Faculty Awards and are available only to women. It must logically follow that hundreds of better qualified men have been passed over in the zeal to artificially raise the numbers of women in science. It appears that Harvard University president Lawrence Summers's attempt to engage his faculty in rational discussion of the situation in science will in the end result in Harvard's playing a similar game.”

Coming full circle, it's safe to assume that throughout our distant past, whichever traits that make males more object oriented today, were selected for by female mate choice. This positive feedback loop is embedded in our genetic makeup and is reinforced every generation by the aggregated choices of all of us. Outliers always exist but the general structure remains stable. To attempt to undo this seems to me to be futile at best. At worse, it's going to skew the system in favor of one group, at the expense of individuals from the other. This is what affirmative action does, by assuming that women's low representation is due to discrimination it creates tangible injustice in the opposite direction.

To hammer this point home, if you do think discrimination is in effect, you will need to explain the abundant presence of women in medicine, veterinary, biology etc. Explain why we are not concerned with said discrimination in construction, plumbing and sewage jobs. Explain why is it that when blind recruitment has an “undesirable” effect it's immediately put on hold. What stops women from excelling in scrabble or chess. Or why female gamers overwhelmingly enjoy family simulators but avoid sports, racing and strategy games almost entirely. Point being, there actually doesn't seem to be much of a barrier for women in the areas they choose to enter voluntarily and suspiciously enough, whatever barriers may exist in less prestigious areas are paid absolutely no attention.

Maternal Instincts that Will Make You Second Guess Yourself

Next we’ll need to tackle those darned maternal instincts:

Women give birth and are the primary caregivers.

This is more appropriate when debunking the infamous wage gap, nevertheless there is a point to be made here. As we’ve already discussed, The fact that women give birth is a major drive of sexual selection. Being the primary caregivers after birth is a natural extension of that and is probably a big factor in women's preference for people over things. It's another case of biological reality creating a social structure which in turn further reinforces its biological origins. To name just a few of the effects this has: women are more empathetic, fair and cooperative, and sensitive to facial expressions and voice. Women's speech is more cooperative, reciprocal, sensitive, negotiating. Mothers are more likely to hold their children in a face to face position, to follow through the child's choice of topic in play and to fine tune their speech more to match the child's understanding.

So it shouldn't be surprising when more mothers than fathers choose to be stay-at-home parents and focus on raising the future generation. There is nothing socially constructed about this and until we’re able to grow humans in vats without major side effects, this will not change. And that alone should already mean that we shouldn't expect a fifty-fifty representation in most fields, including STEM, including tech.

Other things to take a look at, that are also too verbose to elaborate on here, are: Simon Baron-Cohen's Empathizing–Systemizing (E-S) theory (chapter 12) which is a variation on the things vs people concept that goes into much more detail on various differences between ‘male’ and ‘female’ brains. The important thing here is that E-S is a better predictor of a STEM career than sex (Billington, Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2007). Secondly, chapter 14th's look at specific brain regions and how they differ between the sexes, offers some insight into how these differences manifest physically and what the implications may be. For example, the corpus callosum is larger in women and is said to be responsible for inter-hemispheric communication. In general, female brains are optimized for communication between hemispheres (advantage in language and better integration of the verbal-analytical with the spatial-holistic) and male brains are optimized for enhanced connectivity within hemispheres (advantage in rapid transition from perception(posterior) to action(anterior), incorporating limbic input).

A Conclusion of the Third Kind

To close this off, I will not be offering any solutions here. I am not convinced there is a problem here to be solved, rather we seem to be where we are for natural and benign reasons. Most women are not very interested in tech, and that's perfectly fine with me. The entire narrative that has been weaved around the tech industry and other male dominated spaces reeks of dishonesty and resentment, maybe even a power grab. Ever since the nerds have had their revenge and climbed on top, the tech industry has had a huge impact on every aspect of culture. It would not be a stretch to view this perpetual push for more women in tech as just another battle in what has been called “The Culture War”.

The progressive intersectionalists are waging this war on anything that is culturally significant or perceived to hold any power. Their totalitarian need for absolute equality in everything is driving them mad and since nothing short of complete control can get them there, these activists now have a never ending well of faux causes to fight for. You may or may not know that everything has a sexism problem, but they are here to tell you all about it. Certainly, the “diversity” initiatives popping up in every conceivable place possible are a part of that. And if you dare point out the innumerable obvious flaws in their logic, well.. you’re just a stereotype perpetuating sexist, and probably a racist homophobe too. The mob will eat you alive and discard of the bones.

There needs to be a push back against this. It takes a long time and a lot of effort to reverse things and set them straight, but truth tends to prevail eventually. The research detailed here is only a small nudge in that direction, but at the very least, I'm now better equipped to weigh in on the kind of agitprop that led me down this rabbit hole to begin with, when it inevitably rears its ugly head again.