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Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

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Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#101

Post by eru »

jlg23 wrote: post #60
jacalata wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

In the GDR equality between the genders was supposed to be a done thing, so no one talked about feminism.

Women did work. But we had few women in management and leadership positions.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#102

Post by eru »

davezatch wrote: post #81
jlg23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, or maybe it was the basic understand that the communist dream can only come true if everyone, men and women, equally work towards it. In my parents' generation (I'm born in the GDR) there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work, childcare was available, it was free and it catered to people who had to work 40h/week. Sometimes I was in kindergarten from 8am to 8pm. I still remember how I did no…

I can't find the link now, but I remember reading about a paper (probably through Marginal Revolution) that showed that, in the GDR, because men and women worked equally and earned equally (in the general case, party leaders aside), a lot of cultural gender equality just became the norm. E.g. men couldn't impress women with nice cars or any of the other status symbols that are so common in the West, and had to 'convi…

Also, there were almost no nice cars to be had.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#103

Post by pluma »

dafuq2 wrote: post #84

> The three sisters live in Georgia, a European country [...] ... Georgia is not a European country! Stereotypical American author confirmed (no clue of geography / politics outside of the US). Next time please take a look at a map before writing a blog post.

As a German: why not? What else would it be?

The geographic absurdity of splitting up Afro-Eurasia (and Eurasia in particular) aside, Georgia lies at the exact edge of Asia and Europe but the Georgian people have always been more European than Middle Eastern (ethnicly, politicly, religiously and culturally).

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#104

Post by pluma »

brohee wrote: post #91
dafuq2 wrote: post #84

> The three sisters live in Georgia, a European country [...] ... Georgia is not a European country! Stereotypical American author confirmed (no clue of geography / politics outside of the US). Next time please take a look at a map before writing a blog post.

And were would it be? Georgia sings in the Eurovision, play football and rugby in the European cups... The frontier between Europe and Asia is an artificial construct, but Georgia itself firmly sees itself in Europe...

To be fair, Israel is included in a lot of European competitions for cultural-historical reasons, too, and few people would call Israel part of Europe.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#105

Post by azazqadir »

oolongCat wrote: post #51
azaxacavaba wrote: post #46

Competitive coding contests are in a way similar to chess or olympiads and it is a sport in itself. For all the years I have spent and observed on topcoder, Google Code Jam and others I haven't seen a lot of women coders reaching the top, not even from Russia. So what these girls are achieving is a big deal and should inspire many. It is a little disappointing to see comments like they didn't crush because they didn'…

I think most of the negative comments are here, because of the sexist tone of the author of this article. What these girls have archived is something we should celebrate, not as a victory for the sexes, but as a sign that more and more young people are learning to code.

Exactly. It's good to see that young people today are taking interest in coding, be it a girl or a boy that doesn't matter.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#106

Post by Infinitesimus »

hermanbystand wrote: post #100
i_cannot_hack wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he meant it like that at all. If he thought a girl couldn't teach you anything about integrals, he wouldn't have asked for help. I think he used it as an example to show that the cultural distinction in his school between the genders when it came to math weren't enormous. Had there been a clear culture of math as an all-boys-no-girls subject, that exchange (were he as a boy asked a girl for help) would…

If it surprises anyone that a boy can ask a girl for help with maths, then that person is a sexist. Unless you think girls are worse at maths, then this is a null-story. Shall I tell you a story about how as a child I saw that the sky is blue?

It comes across as you are more interested in being angry than trying to understand what the original poster might have been saying(?)

> If it surprises anyone that a boy can ask a girl for help with maths, then that person is a sexist

I think everyone here agrees with you. My understanding of the original post's point was:

"I asked a girl for help in math and it was nothing special; Just like asking anyone who is good at math for help regardless of gender because we weren't socialized to view girls as somehow inferior here

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#107

Post by staticelf »

> It might even be a better world, ingrained with the idea that programming is just another skill to be mastered through persistence — with or without a Y chromosome.

I have never heard anyone, in my entire life, suggest otherwise. Sure it's cool that they win competitions but by consistently focus on women, treat them differently, create special groups etc is basically fighting sexism with sexism.

If we shouldn't focus on the sex but the achievements this sort of article is exactly the opposite of that. I am confident that these "women can also" articles/groups/company messages creates more sexism than it solves.

Why can't we just treat each other equally?

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#108

Post by guard-of-terra »

clevernickname wrote: post #59
tenpies wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting Norwegian documentary that looked into this[1]. The overall observation was that societies where women were extremely free, usually ended up with the same gender distributions as societies in which they were less free (e.g. few women in STEM). By contrast, societies where women were only somewhat free, the number of women in STEM exploded (although I don't recall if it was quite 50/50). Witho…

Came here to post that documentary (the entire series of which is freely available, btw[1]). I think you misinterpreted it slightly, however. The documentary presents evidence (strongly denied by the Norwegian social scientists interviewed) that male and female brains are wired differently, to be good at and enjoy different activities. It even goes so far as to show studies that link receiving an excessive amount of…

This "nurses or teachers" stereotype is awful. There's plenty of women who are both smart and not people's person.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#109

Post by lukasm »

jacalata wrote: post #55
rdtsc wrote: post #47

That is pretty awesome. I remember back in high school in the Soviet Union (then, what became one of the ex-Soviet Union republics, much like Georgia), there were quite a few girls in my class who were doing well above and beyond what boys would be in math, informatics (what we called computer science) and physics. Remember asking a girl for help to understand integrals. So there is something to it in that part of th…

Some of it may be traceable to the enormous number of Soviet men who died in WWII, prompting intense state support for single mothers and allowing the remaining men to avoid responsibility and be spoiled, essentially. This is mentioned briefly in this article if you're interested - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-...

The economy was so inefficient that they had to utilize everything they had to sustain it. There is also communist narrative about equality.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#110

Post by guard-of-terra »

dafuq2 wrote: post #84

> The three sisters live in Georgia, a European country [...] ... Georgia is not a European country! Stereotypical American author confirmed (no clue of geography / politics outside of the US). Next time please take a look at a map before writing a blog post.

Actually he is right. Georgia is on the Asian side of Caucasus range.
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