coders gender ratio

The small number of lady programmers I know are also some of the best programmers / most intelligent people I know.

Agreed. I hate walking into the toy store with my 6 year old daughter. All pastel pinks and purples. Boys side... all colours and sounds imaginable.

Now shes a pro at legos and xbox!

damn marketing...

That's not the reason obviously. There are and only male miners but I did see anyone complain about it.
Just most girls don't like stem field like most boys don't like anything with beauty, fashion, or helping others (nurses, babysitters etc).
Also you would find more female programmers in India than in Norway, just because when people choose free and not because their life depends on it they choose what they really like.

@superuser Do you mean that the differences in how we deal with our children depending on gender does NOT influence what they choose to do for a living?

@Gauthier yup.... I'm sure if you were a girl, you'd still follow your passion....?

@c3ypt1c Do you mean that the way your parents raised you did not influence what your passion is?

I have a very controversial opinion on this kind of thing. I get annoyed at the "all toys must be neutral" campaigners. Toy companies do market research, right? They're not out to shape the future, they're out to make money. So they produce things they know will sell most.

But have you ever watched to see how much imagination and creativity shows when kids (girls?) play with seemingly less interactive toys? What do STEM jobs require if not imagination and creativity!!

I don't think the number of females in IT relates totally to childhood experiences. I'd love to see the number grow, obviously, but that's because I care about the field. There are many factors and I just don't think we understand them all yet.

@samk There might very well be biological reasons for this unbalance. But we do things differently depending on children's gender (how many boys are given the opportunity to play with dolls?).

Biology: there might be a difference
Environment: there is a difference

Why not even try to get at the arbitrary differences we know exist?

@Gauthier my parents disencoraged me... they never really gave a shit...

@Gauthier fucking hell.. they still don't...

@Gauthier "how many boys are given the opportunity to play with dolls?"

quite a lot actually.... my mother let my brother play with my little pony that was deemed a girls toy... children can play with whatever toy they want in school... no one is really stopping them... no one is stopping girls from playing with boys toys and boys with playing with girls toys...

@Gauthier I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. I'm totally in support of everyone's differences, hence my argument against everything being the same for everyone.

But I do think you're generalising slightly on the boys/dolls things. There is no universal constant in this - every social setting and every family is different.

@c3ypt1c So what gave you the passion you have? Your genes? The environment you grew in (and the one you're in now, of course?)

@samk What I'm trying to say is that, as you said, you don't know all the factors that make so few women seek this profession. I'm not saying that biology isn't one, but I'm saying that our environment is sexist and that it must play a role. It's much easier to try and change that, than change the biology.
We don't seem to agree about how sexist our environment is. I live in a rather progressive country in that matter (Sweden), yet the very first thing people ask you when you get a child is not if everybody is fine and well. It's the child's gender. THAT is what people are most interested of.
Where I was born (France), people barely use the word for "child". It's either "boy" or "girl".
People are under the impression that knowing someone's gender will tell them a lot about who that person is, and that is infuriating.

@Gauthier i wanted to be good at something no one else around me was... I wanted to be important... reliable... ect....