Actually, it's funny you say that, because there are definitely more girls than I expected at WWDC. I'd say there's, oh, 7%, compared to the 4% enrollment of girls in my school's Computing Science degree. The number of girls in computing science has actually been shrinking since the dotcom bust, due to the unnatural influx of them lured by the potential riches of the bubble.

Hmm - I agree with you that it's a problem - the shortage of women in the technical workforce in general, and in particular it would seem as Mac developers.

But there's something very ironic about the way you're analyzing it. Referring to the few who showed up and are part of this <em>professional conference</em> as "girls" and suggesting that their presence would help by giving men somebody to flirt with at the beer bash.

I'm sure your intentions are good here, but I think you should be more careful about the message you might be sending to prospective female attendees.

I think it is the only major event I've been to where the line for the mens room is longer than that for the womens room.

This was one of the first things I noticed on Student Sunday. The ratio I figured was 20:1 male/female. I think if you look at the general conference attendees, it's probably lower than that.

My roommates and I went to the Bloggers party on Monday night at 111 Minna. The door guy wanted us to go find some women to bring to the bar, because it was filled with dudes with laptops. Not exactly an atmosphere condusive to good bar business.

as "girls" and suggesting that their presence would help by giving men somebody to flirt with at the beer bash

So this isn't a serious analysis. I though it would be clear that it was tongue-in-check, but there's no tone of voice. Anybody that knows me knows that gender discrimination isn't really my thing.

I think that moment at the Core Animation session was my inspiration.
Everyone was falling over themselves to see who was talking, but it was also probably the most intelligent question that was asked. What a combo, huh?

As for the "girls," thing, I don't think it's demeaning at all. I'd use it the same way I use "guys."

Just use 'women'. 'girls' just doesn't connote the same as 'guys'. It retains some of the taste of 'boys'.

Just use 'women'. 'girls' just doesn't connote the same as 'guys'. It retains some of the taste of 'boys'

Done. The gods of political correctness have been appeased.

I haven't seen any girls at the conference.

No boys, either.

Probably because they don't allow children here....

I haven't seen any girls at the conference. No boys, either.

I get it. I'm not up on proper terminology. This has taught me I need to submit all potentional posts to a PR person for cleansing and de-sarcasamization before release.

Not entirely directly related but I could not help but notice that there seems to be relatively many women in the Safari team (at least compared to the other teams it would seem)

Not entirely directly related but I could not help but notice that there seems to be relatively many women in the Safari team

Apple staff is something else entirely. There clearly are a lot more female Apple engineers proportionally, but that's separate from attendees. Apple may hire more women to engineering positions than most organizations, but I don't know for sure.

Hi Scott - I am glad you changed the terminology because I think it strengthens your point. I don't think it's political correctness, because there's an implication in that term that it's all for the sake of "correctness." In this case I think it was hurting the communication.

I too have noticed that, for instance, the #webkit IRC group has more women in it than the #macsb group. The other day during the keynote one of these ladies (my offering for political incorrectness :) ) graced us with her presence in #macsb. I think it might have been the only time such a phenomenon has transpired.

Also, I'd like to add that I'm generally not opposed to calling women "girls" if the context is right. In this case it would have helped a lot if you made a point of calling the men "boys." If you wanted to call men "guys," then I guess you'd have to call the women "gals," or in an inspired moment, "dolls."

In this case it would have helped a lot if you made a point of calling the men "boys."

Fair enough.

<i>Are not men with Macs inherently more attractive, not to mention those who program them?</i>

While that is a highly debatable question, I must say that I wouldn't object to accepting a scholarship to WWDC based solely on my gender!

Dave Winer got into hot water recently because of his reference to women at the BlogHer conference. I think there's still a lot of people who are sensitive to such issues.

There is a dearth of women in technical professions, this much is obvious - just as there are fewer female train spotters, role-players and model enthusiasts.

Another factor? My wife studied for a science degree and then a science PhD. She then decided she didn't want to work in science. (Nevermind the waste of public funding as she was grant aided). The whole "family" thing is a real reason why there aren't more intelligent women in science/engineering.

Away with political correctness and the blunt truth: a disproportional amount of badly dressed overweight white male folks, that's what I think. But isn't it always like that in computer science? I have never minded before, and never will. If sexy young well dressed women are willing to come develop I'd be more than willing to help them out with any problems they might have, of course. If not, I'm happy coding here in my corner and I will chat up women in any of the many nice bars there are here in SF.

I think, as an aside, that the WebKit team is probably an exception is down to the fact that web development has come a long way from web design, where things needed to be nice and pretty looking rather than geeky and high-tech. That probably attracts more women?

Has it occurred, by the way, to anyone that there is a disproportional amount of colored people among the staff?

I definitely think part of the problem has been the fall-off of females entering the engineering professions. When I started at Georgia Tech in 1979, the ratio of males to females was 10:1. By the time I graduated in 1983, the ratio had changed to 4:1. There was literally a flood of young women persuing engineering or science degrees. Many of them where in computer science.

Granted, that was a long time ago, but when I entered the professional work force in the mid-1980s, many of my co-workers were women. Today, working in similar environments, I'd guess you see perhaps one in 20 female developers. (QA is a different story -- where I work today, the QA department is majority female)

Over 10 years ago, I used to work with a young lady developer who was our company's strongest Mac advocate. She'd be the first one picked to go to the developers conference. She even presented during a segment of one session.

Life and job changes intervened, and she's no longer developing Mac software, although she remains a top-notch software developer.

Maybe it's the prevalence of geeky guys that drives the young ladies away from a career in Macintosh development....

It has to do with math, CS majors need to know a lot of math. Perhaps if they had a conference for manager types, people with CIS or other NON-science degree sorts who could not hack it in a science curriculum you would see more women. Women rarely enroll in Science degrees, or stick with it. Just look at the enrollment rate. Only women chose this, anyone can enroll in a class.

"Math is Hard" - Barbie

people with CIS or other NON-science degree sorts who could not hack it in a science curriculum you would see more women

Wow, I'm not even sure what to say about this. I certainly don't share your viewpoint.

"I think it is the only major event I've been to where the line for the mens room is longer than that for the womens room."

And that's why I don't think this is a problem...

Your "serious" post does raise some issues worth thinking about. While the educational gender gap in math and science has much to do with WWDC's gender gap (Google "math boys girls"), the environment we, the guys, create, doesn't help.

As Mac people, we're supposed to value good design and more human-centric computing. But we developers also have a tendency to dehumanize what we do - for example, every time somebody introduces a new and unnessary acronym (usually overloaded with previous meanings). Is the focus on great design and quality, or on pointless out-geeking the next guy?

Plus, we need to clean up our act socially. For one thing, there's hostility towards female authority figures. During pre-keynote irc chat, I saw two occasions of outright bashing by multiple participants of a female executive who has appeared in previous keynotes. Sure, irc chat is frequently moronic, but I didn't see any male keynote participants of similar stature being bashed. There are biases here (some subtle, some not), and it would help to be more aware of them in ourselves.

With the exception of management and QA people, I've yet to encounter a female developer. That's sad, and not in the 'I'm looking for a relationship' sense. Women use computers too and have much to offer. Alas, universally referring to members of the opposite sex as 'girls' (not to mentioning commenting on how attractive they happen to be) only helps to reinforce the stereotypes that intimidate women out of technical careers. Paul C. is spot on.

Shame on you Scott :(

Shame on you Scott

Well, I respect the opinions here, but I certainly don't feel shame about it because it was never an intention in my words to do harm. I think this is a hot enough issue that it's easy to misread things.

People use terms in different ways, and to me the term "girls" is in no way demeaning or belittling. Maybe this is more common in the place I live? I rarely use the term "men" either, so there's that.

I clearly need to post a follow-up because a lot of people missed the spirit of the post here. I thought if I called a computer "sensual" and referred to "future generations" of Cocoa programmers, it would be clear it was just a goofy thing I typed between sessions, but I guess the format here makes that a bit hard to see. In any case, I never expected it to be such a big deal.

This is an interesting post Scott and it's commendable that you've stuck with it since you clearly didn't expect the reactions you are getting and you obviously didn't intend anything disrespectful. Personally I'm not too surprised: I agree with the comments and insights by Daniel Jalkut and Paul Collins. Mike Lee, who thinks it's all simply a matter of educational preference, does not seem to take the concept of prejudice seriously (or women generally for that matter). I think the main reason people reacted to your use of the terms "girl" and "attractive" is that those descriptive categories should be immaterial to the participation of women in computing conferences. Of course they are relevant to a discussion amongst hetero men about opportunities to meet women socially, but then you called your post "WWDC 2006: The Gender Imbalance," rather than HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid. That's why I agree with Daniel that it was primarily a communication problem. But good on you for answering to your critics. Enjoy the rest of the conference. I wish I was there.

but then you called your post "WWDC 2006: The Gender Imbalance," rather than HOWTO make the

Yup, I think this was a big factor.

"I think it is the only major event I've been to where the line for the mens room is longer than that for the womens room."

And that's why I don't think this is a problem...

Not to throw in your glasses people. But research seems to show that in fact females are overall more intelligent when compared to males. The thing is that men and women are conditioned from birth to perceive certain kinds of work as more acceptable. Basically the age old girls provide and care, boys do something reckless and bring in some cash too.

While I do feel that things are changing, don't forget that only a few decades ago women did not have that much rights at all. The biggest driver for emancipation in the US seems to be the second world war. The fact that women could keep the nation going while a large section of the male populous was of fighting seems to have been an empowering experience. While not entirely related it does hold a point. We're only making the first steps on breaking down the traditional role gender roles.

Also, someone above stated that girls might be considered a demeaning statement when set against men. Ever thought of the origins of words like FEmale and WOman? Basically it comes down to "not a man". Also note that it is very common to address female groups with cute or childish terms. Why the hell would you call a group of women "dolls"? They're not some kind of toy you can play with.

Also in my personal opinion, the biological role model at work is something that is a disadvantage to women. Giving birth to children makes a woman unable to keep the same career pace as a man. While it could be argued that men could step back to step in at home a bit more too. Most of the time such choices are mostly based on the financial impact. (Which is a very good reason to strive for a debt free life, it enables you to be more flexible with you income.")

On a closing note, this comment is because of some comments posted earlier. Scott's post had nothing wrong with it. It is true that when on a tech meeting there usually is a very distinct reaction when someone female asks a smart question. But that's just because tech savvy, good looking girls are a fetish of many geeky computer literate boys. Also, I don't think positive discrimination is the answer.