HN Explorer

The Readers of Hacker News: 86% male

10 points by derekc ↗ HN
https://www.google.com/adplanner/#siteSearch?identifier=news.ycombinator.com&geo=US&trait_type=1&lp=false

Another interesting statistic: 100% of us all went to "some college" or beyond?

19 comments

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Mistone
shocking.lol. while def has correlations to the dev/startup community, HN is a very low design site, super info driven, seems like that would appeal more to male demo then female.
genericone
I wouldn't say its a very 'low' design site as much as it is a very 'simply' designed site. I find HN to be very easily browsed and wouldn't have it any other way. The simple design shouldn't have any bearing on the number of female visitors to HN.
Mistone
disagree, there are the blatantly obvious reasons as stated in comments above. Women do read tech news sites but I think HN design is more appealing to men. Not the core reason for the audience stat but an aside.
AmberShah
I don't think it has anything to do with the design or the fact that it's info driven as it does the type of content. 12% was the amount of females graduating in computer science last time I checked, so it actually matches up pretty well.
chc
Seriously, any other explanation for this is like noticing that 50% of the US population doesn't have a uterus and deciding, "Well, birth control is very popular in more highly developed nations, so maybe Americans commonly have their reproductive systems removed."
ArcticCelt
Wow 14% female! That's at least 5 times mores than in my computers science classes. (no joke)
oz
During my year at uni, there were about 12 girls out of the 120 cohort. Strangely, that also works out to 14%...
WiseWeasel
> there were about 12 girls out of the 120 cohort. Strangely, that also works out to 14%

That would be strange, since it's 10% according to my maths.

pkulak
That's not a great ad for your university's math department...
oz
That's a good excuse for why I dropped out...
oz
Oops! Guess that's why I failed Pre-Cal...
BigEd781
Even if these numbers are accurate, who cares? Get ready for a shock; men and women are different. We think differently, act differently, and like different things. Why is that bad?
WiseWeasel
Because clearly, we (especially you) are creating a hostile environment for women on Hacker News, by our stubborn refusal to up-vote more cat-related stories.

/ducks

_delirium
There seem to be changes over time that are larger than genetic drift could account for, though. For example, in 1985, about 35% of undergrad CS degrees were awarded to women, while in 2008, it was 18%. What caused the proportion to drop in half over that time period?
sparkiegeek
100% when you look at data for UK, though it appears we're less educated - 23% "High School"
gstar
Per capita, people in the UK are more likely to have a degree - they converted all tertiary schools (formerly polytechnics) into universities in 1992.
gphil
Now that I think about it, it's always felt 100% male to me. Can any females speak up and prove me wrong?