Submission + - Fortune.com: Blame Tech Diversity On Culture, not Pipeline (fortune.com)
FrnkMit writes: Challenging a previous Code.org story on tech diversity, a Forbes.com writer interviewed 716 women who left the technology field. Her conclusion: corporate culture, and the larger social structure, is the primary cause they shook the sand of the tech industry from their shoes, never looking back. Specific issues include a lack of maternity policies in small companies, low pay which barely covers day care, "jokes" from male coworkers, and always feeling like the "odd duck". In reality, there are probably many intertwined causes: peer pressure at the high-school and college level, female-unfriendly geek culture, low pay, a lack of accommodations for pregnant/nursing mothers, the myth of "having it all", stereotype threat, and repeated assertions that women aren't biologically suited to writing software and therefore there's no problem at all.