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Hangover March 8: another article on Habré about women in IT

“If, in your opinion, a woman can be a blacksmith,
then why not a man be a pedicurist?
She forges, he saws, a wonderful couple! ”
To the film “Take care of women”

I have been reading Habr of the year since 2009. Over the past few years, on the eve of March 8, there has been a wave of publications, special projects, megaposts and other formats about women in the IT field. They all drown as one for equality, literally shouting that all developers are the same, the woman in IT is well done, and Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and Margaret Hamilton are icons of the IT world, which have proved everything to everyone. But, as you know, if there is noise around a problem, this indicates one thing - in spite of all these one-day manifestos, there is a problem.

The way they look at the gender problem in IT looks rather narrow and usually comes down to discussing the thesis “Can a woman program?” This is not even one side of the coin, it is just one piece of a complex psychophysiological and mental mosaic. I do not pretend to be scientific and unshakable in my thesis, but probably it’s worth at least identifying the facets of the problem being discussed and raising questions. Then the answer will get closer. Let's discuss soberly.


By the way, quite a common situation :-)
Post by the moderator: the article was completely reissued, as due to technical problems, another material was mistakenly published.

Why does this question exist?


The problem of equality between men and women in professions has ancient roots that go back to the time of the first industrial revolution, and then, depending on the country, relate to the most important historical events and intersect with sociocultural types (a woman in the war, a woman in the rear, a woman in science, a woman in medicine etc.). Accordingly, the problem arose not together with information technologies, but long before them, and our industry has become only one of the small questions of a huge layer of research on the place of women in the labor sphere.

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You can throw a white coat on yourself, put your sword forward and say that the question itself is monstrous, and a woman has long been equal to a man in almost everything. But no, friends, this is impossible to do - for a number of completely heterogeneous reasons, the question will always exist.

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In general, I propose first of all to separate the concepts of gender and gender. Gender is a physiological concept, the objective biology of our organisms; gender is a set of socio-cultural and psychological criteria that determine a person’s affiliation with a man or woman. This is partly why in foreign studies the word “sex” (biological gender) was replaced by “gender” (social gender), because any person can indicate that he is a man, woman or non-gender (in terms of attitude). And researchers often make a remark that “respondents consider themselves to be ...” In Russia, this is not yet available, but problems related to gender as a social gender exist.

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A little later in the article there will be a little biology and you will see that both men and women are not people from Mars and Venus, but rather biological individuals of the same species. And most of the myths about the female and male brains are complete nonsense and anti-scientific populism. Gender attitudes are given by family, society. The society in the Russian Federation is rather traditional, sometimes patriarchal, there is still a large proportion of age-related and even relatively young employees (30 years old and sometimes younger) whose attitudes were formed in the coordinates “you are a girl”, “boys do not cry”, “do not play cars, here’s a doll ”, etc. From here we get such a bias in the IT sphere: a) girls are still less likely to enter IT universities; b) there is still the concept of a job search "suitable for a woman"; c) the predominance of the female role over the professional one prevails. And this is neither good nor bad - it is a given.And you and I have to talk about those cases when male specialists and female specialists work together in the IT company. Do they differ in anything? Or can you safely call your colleague to hone a burger and start to smell a pivasik under a raid on World of Tanks?

Women in IT: well, IT and IT professionals


According to the Stack Overflow report, in 2016, the share of women in development was 5.8%, while the compilers give the following remark: “The results of our survey demonstrate significant inequality in technology among men and women. In fact, we know that women make up a larger share of developers than our study suggests. According to Quantcast, about 12% of Stack Overflow readers are women. We also know that this survey does not represent people in countries where there is a high probability that a woman will be a developer (South Korea, India and China). ”

Here are the top majors in which women work (in fact, the list is much longer):


And this is an interesting schedule: the distribution of men and women by the duration of their experience in the IT field:


You can see that women prevail among beginners. And it was 2016, which means that there has been a trend towards an increase in the number of women in IT. Check it out.

We open the report of 2019. Women in statistics are already 7.9%. Women have the largest representation as front-end developers, designers, data researchers, data analysts, QA or test developers, scientists and educators. For three years, this is not stunning, but indicative and qualitative growth. And, we think, the growth rate in the coming years will grow.

But what are we all about Stack Overflow? Just last week with a special projectby March 8, we collected our statistics on Habré. 462 girls unsubscribed to us - it is their quotes that adorn this article (in total we received 307 impressive and inspiring "notes"). Here are the specialist girls we have:


Moreover, among the respondents there were 3 CEOs of IT companies, 4 DevOps, 3 system administrators and many specialists with lead and senior prefixes. By the way, feminists used on the strength of 20 interviewed girls, the rest simply indicated their specialty as is. There were also several girls who, in a commentary to the survey, said that they had grown out of humanitarian specialties - which sometimes proves that all our limitations are sociocultural in nature and whether or not to be in IT is a matter of desire and quite a bit of ability, interest in the work itself ( I hope you feel that IT is not romance and pure creativity for you, but painstaking and sometimes routine work?).

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Indeed, a girl can find herself literally in any IT field: from HR and translations to full-stack development and DevOps. In general, it all depends on interest, craving for the basics of one direction or another (someone likes mathematics, someone people, someone algorithms, someone glands) and education.

By the way, in Russia there are many communities of women in development who hold their meetings, conferences, sections at general festivals, etc. And I can’t say whether it’s good or bad, because such separation and circulation of slogans like GRL PWR emphasize the fact that girls in IT are still a separate phenomenon. So why do this if you just can prove your professionalism, as everyone in companies and at conferences does? For example, I had to hear absolutely amazing reports of women speakers at the conferences of Oleg Bunin (HighLoad ++, RIT ++), JUG.RU, at GDG events.

And what does science say?


If you try to look into the differences between men and women as workers and social individuals without a psychological and clinical background, the abyss of obscurantism will look you in the eye. You will read fierce stories about the "small female" brain, special exclusively female hormones, male aggression and primitive instincts in office life. And it would be all right for us, Khabrovsk citizens, not to occupy a critical mind, but all this through quasi-scientific and popular science publications is poured into fragile minds as a student. And here the best exits are classic textbooks and official scientific articles. Alas, one can expect anything from copyright books on psychology and even neurophysiology: from hushing up research results to open social order and distorting facts. So we will discuss the game in the comments,Now let's turn to strict science.

Fact 1. The female brain is really less than the male on average by 200 grams


Also, men have a larger volume of some formations (“parts”) of the brain, for example, tonsils, and a woman has more gray matter (men have white) and the thickness of the cortex in the orbitofrontal region is different. There are also differences in the neurochemistry of the hippocampus and the limbic system. However, all these differences do not indicate that women and men have different brains, they only say that women may be prone to ... or men may be prone to ... and this is determined by the anatomical features.

For example, women tend to be more talkative (did everyone immediately recall the chatty male colleagues?), Because they have on average higher verbal abilities due to the fact that their neurons in the Wernicke area have a more complex and developed branching than men. In women, the intensity of cerebral blood flow and glucose metabolism in this zone is 15% higher. But it is possible that a man will have the same difficulty or, for example, a man will not be an excellent speaker due to his constant public appearances and the huge number of books read. On the contrary, a woman may be silent not because she doesn’t have something like that with neurons, but because she is shy, busy, or is afraid of some kind of external defects.

Despite the difference in the volume of gray (“processing”) substance, both women and men burn out approximately equally with an intensive stream of tasks and are prone to procrastination. However, women are able to immerse themselves in the task deeply and for a long time, while the man’s brain begins to demand a break and resists prolonged concentration. It’s easier for women to get a routine - that’s why girls make very cool testers and quality engineers.

▍Fact 2. EEG-indicators of brain activity in men and women are different


In general, a woman has a higher level of activity of the central nervous system. However, there is no evidence of the objective existence of cerebral asymmetry (stories about a more developed left cerebral hemisphere in men and the right in women), so this argument is best to immediately exclude from any discussion.

▍Fact 3. Hormones


But this is already a huge and controversial section of neurophysiology, which gravitates towards medicine and is fiercely used by populists in the psycho-psychological literature. I’ll try to explain briefly and clearly, so that you and I do not fly away to a lecture on endocrinology. The truth is that each sex has its own system of neuroendocrine regulation, characteristic and determining it. Simply put, in men and women in the normal state, different hormones are present in different proportions, which determines masculinity or femininity. Indeed, science is inclined to believe that hormones determine the development of the brain in the process of development of the person himself (the effect on the hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, etc. is studied). However, it cannot be argued that testosterone forms a smart brain that loves math and C ++ from birth, and estrogen makes a brain of flowers and vanilla love is.If you come across a book with similar reasoning, you can safely dispose of it.

Women have a greater proportion of oxytocin, estrogen and serotonin, due to which they are more assiduous, but also more prone to vivid emotional reactions. But testosterone is responsible for the fact that in men empathy decreases during intellectual stress - that is why it is not worth distracting male colleagues when they are absorbed in a complex, urgent, important task. You will receive a portion of negativity or, in the case of a high emotional culture, confusion and apparent indifference.

However, one cannot blame everything on hormones - if a person is healthy, has no nosologies and pathologies, slept normally, ate and is not in a state of severe, severe stress, the effect of hormones on behavior is not so great. Or rather, so few that they can be neglected in ordinary life. Therefore, if your boss is healthy and freaking out, this is not “spring, testosterone”, but ordinary licentiousness and rudeness. Just like if a girl doesn’t work, makes mistakes and throws tantrums, this is not “hormones, spring, PMS”, but reluctance to figure out and show her incompetence.

Yes, at different stages of life, under different influences, the balance of hormones in the body (hormonal background) changes and this can affect behavior, cognitive abilities, mood. However, remember that the influence is not so much great as mythologized.

▍Fact 4. Temperament of men and women differs precisely due to differences in CNS activity


A woman is socially plastic, controlled by external motivation, attaches great importance to the verbal component, is emotionally more sensitive. A man is driven by internal motivation, has a high autonomic reactivity, is more active and aggressive, less prone to partner decisions. BUT! This does not mean that the man is the “Hulk to break”, but the woman is the “fox-Alice”. This is again a "tendency to ...", a probabilistic assessment. However, it is precisely the difference in temperament that often leads to working conflicts: for example, a girl-tester describes a bug for a long time and in detail, scrupulously collects logs, and a male developer boils in a desire to find out what the problem is. The solution is a compromise and mutual respect, in the presented case, everyone is right and everyone does their job perfectly.

▍Fact 5. Women retain intelligence longer than men; average intelligence of women is also higher


Checkmate, guys! In view of the above-mentioned features, girls have higher verbal abilities, a wider vocabulary, reading is easier, which contributes to a better education. However, practical work equalizes all of us and everyone surpasses a colleague due to experience, knowledge and skills, and not because he reads white.

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They also say that time in the perception of women is faster. But this fact has no modern evidence :-)

The brain reflects not only certain qualities determined by genes and biology, but also a person’s lifestyle. You don’t even have the name of the opportunity to do MRI and encephalograms in the laboratory, you can conduct an experiment: for example, do not read for six months, don’t go to the Habr and devote all your free time to series or vlogs of bloggers (everyday topics). You noticeably dumb, start to slow down. Or vice versa, give up entertainment and start learning some programming language (Python is a good fit for this kind of experiment), get involved in mathematics, physics - and you will see that your brain gets used to thinking and your main activity (if it’s non-technical work: copywriter, manager, HR, etc.) will become more systemic, you can see the engineering skeleton in almost any life situation. Just because the brain, speaking roughly,“Trains” due to its variability and plasticity.

Quickly repeat the main points:

  • The “male” and “female” brains do not exist;
  • hormones rule, but normally and outside peak states, they have little effect on behavior;
  • behavior is determined by education and development environment;
  • women are more emotional;
  • a woman’s brain is smaller, but this does not affect cognitive function.

There is no need to declare war on gender stereotypes, to build a grimace of feminism that is terribly distorted by society - you just need to work together and respect each other at every moment in time. There are no concepts M and F, there is the concept of “professional” or “not professional”. And yes, you love girls, give them flowers and concede in something not because they are weak, but because they are just cute, kind, cool. By the way, they also often want to do something nice to their male colleagues, but again they are dominated by the stereotype of “what if they don’t understand that”. Therefore, gentlemen IT specialists, less jokes, more work!

What to read?


  • Annibali Joseph, “Anxious Brain” is just a good, non-abstruse book on how to set yourself up in a calm mood.

Habrovka women and IT girls, tell your stories in the comments!

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