It’s Time to Change Male Dominance in Software Development. Here’s Why
Take a look at the graph above from zippia.com. According to the data in 2022 over 75% of software devs were male. I’m reminded we are light years away from getting a real handle on diversity and making sure our teams reflect our customer base and society as a whole.
”I guess it’s ok if you’re a male looking for work though.”
The statistics tell us that most software developers are males. This is something that everyone in the industry should care about and work to change. Let me explain why.
“I’d also like to know why the pie charts are not colorful.”
It’s Time To Care
Diverse software engineering teams come at problems from a wide variety of viewpoints. When we have a diverse team we collect together different people for a shared goal, and they all bring a different vision of good.
When we bring representatives of different communities into the software development process we make better products. Diverse teams have a higher rate of performance and productivity. The diversity in the team is great for all.
It’s fanciful to believe that only men use our software products in 2023 and it is time our teams reflect that reality.
“The reality is that all I care about is code.”
The idea that computers are for boys is outdated and flat-out wrong perpetuated by our culture. This isn’t how it always has been as this NPR Planet Money episode explains women have actually been driven from the industry.
It’s not too late
Since it hasn’t already been this way (as Ada Lovelace would testify) we can make a change for once in our lives.
“This isn’t the time to channel Michael.”
Here are the things we need to change as an industry.
Attitude
Remember when Musk took over Twitter?
You probably heard of the way staff were treated in the months after the takeover. Ultimatums (are you hardcore or not?) and an attitude that signalled that software developers were disposable parts of the organization.
This type of environment is easier if you are young, childless, and dedicated solely to work above relationships or hobbies. The type of person who gives up their private life for a career is likely to be male. The culture around software developers is usually male-driven, and the changes at Twitter make the environment even more male-dominated.
“It’s X. So, even if we refer to it in the past, we should call it X. What do you mean ‘I’m wrong?”
Emotions
Have you ever tried to express emotions at work? Once I got upset in a meeting because of an illness in the family. The product owner kept me back assuming I was reacting to my own poor work performance and said this:
You need to be happy. People won’t want to work with you if you’re upset
There is something in there about assumptions, and also something to be said about how we express emotions at work.
If you don’t suppress your emotions at work you might not be able to stay in employment for long.
“What’s stereotypically male behavior? Oh, that behavior we see at work every day from everyone. Supress those emotions and carry on.”
Recruitment
Hiring practices oftentimes have a written alignment to diversification. Yet diversity in tech is a joke.
I’ve experienced the following:
Gendered job descriptions. That is candidates are exclusively referred to by the pronoun “he” in docs
Interviewing teams that exclusively contain white cis males (although the wider team is more diverse)
There are other ways that we introduce gender bias into our process:
Salary negotiation during the initial fit recruiter chat
Job descriptions unrelated to the role
When writing this article I realized one thing. Many tech interviewers have no training at all and HR does not provide any support or training for this crucial step in the hiring process.
“What training could you need to see if someone can code?”
The Actions We Should Take
We can all take a number of actions to change things. In fact, if we do not take collective responsibility for our work environment things will either stay the same or get worse.
So, here is what we can do:
Push for non-gendered documents in our workplace
Accept that we may have some unconscious bias in our behavior
Push for training before taking part in the interview processes
Push for better processes, better people and a better work environment
Listen to people
“What place does listening to people have in software development.”
Conclusion
We are all responsible for making things better. If we don’t take collective responsibility for what is going wrong, things will never get better.
“Will it improve the code, though? I’m not interested if it’s not about the code”