Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions • Hacker News Board

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#111

Post by RodericDay » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:09 PM UTC

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…

Pretending that there is this one axis of "free vs. non-free" and that Norway represents best how people behave free of constraint is ridiculous. You are doing the mental gymnastics you accuse your opponents of, in service a thinly veiled promotion of the "men work, women care" theory.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#112

Post by unionpivo » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:20 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #89

jacalata wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't exactly my theory, this is something fairly well documented that I have come across in general reading. >men died on all sides in WWII I'm not sure if you're aware of how far the scale of deaths in the Soviet Union exceeded any Western country - East Germany was probably close, which is an interesting correlation: were there any communist countries without major gender imbalances?

I don't think many people were killed in e.g. Slovenia (and the rest of ex-Yugoslavia). Yet we had communism and almost perfect sex equality.

The overall number of World War II casualties in Slovenia was thus of around 7.2% of the pre-war population, which is above the Yugoslav average, and among the highest percentages in Europe.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovene_Lands_in_World_War_II

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#113

Post by EGreg » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:24 PM UTC

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…

What speaks against your theory is that men died on all sides in WWII, but in the West (read: democratic societies), women's rights developed in a distinctively different/slower way.

The Soviet Union had by far the MOST male casualties of any side in the war. 30 MILLION people died, far more than anywhere else.

https://www.rt.com/news/265603-ww2-losses-interactive-video/

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#114

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:31 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #102

davezatch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Social signalling is relative to the things available for that society. Even if there were no "nice cars" available by your standards, there still were "impressive" cars, relative to the society in question.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#115

Post by clementangerine » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:32 PM UTC

home_boi wrote: post #40

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school. We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

Weirdly enough, these foreign female engineers never complain about "culture problems" even though they make up the majority of female engineers.

They definitely do; I've had plenty of private conversations with non-American women in CS about sexism. I think Americans are just more likely to be openly vocal about it.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#116

Post by EGreg » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:32 PM UTC

If you were to tell Mari that girls don’t look like engineers, women can’t code as well as men, or women aren’t as competitive as men, she’d raise a skeptical eyebrow.

Actually, these girls do fit the typical criteria. They are Georgian, just like several women world Chess champions. Georgia is part of the former USSR, where women were pushed for decades to achieve things in math and science and intellectual pursuits.

Having said that, I'd love to see just one or two young women that look and dress like those very attractive actresses (as one blogger said, "present as feminine" https://medium.com/@sailorhg/coding-like-a-girl-595b90791cce...) and yet were strong programmers or physicists or something. It seems the only look that I've ever seen for women who are hardcore into math/programming is nerdy. Perhaps the feedback from appearing a certain way discourages women from pushing themselves in cerebral activities, or perhaps there is a hidden variable that explains this correlation.

In my own university graduate program, there was exactly one exception.

I know it's not politically correct to bring up a woman's "visual style" when we are celebrating women coders, but someone should point out the obvious correlation, and ask why it's happening. Where are the real James Bond Christmas Joneses? Notably, the public reaction was disbelief:

Reception of the film and its casting choices were mixed. The film became the first in the Bond series to win a Golden Raspberry when Denise Richards was chosen as "Worst Supporting Actress" at the 1999 Razzie Awards. Richards and Brosnan were also nominated for "Worst Screen Couple".[3] Despite stating that she liked the role because it was "brainy", "athletic", and had "depth of character, in contrast to Bond girls from previous decades",[4] Richards was criticised as not being credible in the role of a nuclear scientist.[5][6] She was ranked as one of the worst Bond girls of all time by Entertainment Weekly in 2008.[7]

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#117

Post by kaitai » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

pgeorgi wrote: post #94

qb45 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was no debate about feminism. Women were expected to work There is something to it. In the soviet era, those three girls would have been praised for their success and presented as a proof that the world (or at least the commie world :)) is a fair place where everybody can succeed with enough determination and work. This was intended to send the message that women are expected and welcome members of the workfo…

Isn't "everybody can succeed with enough determination and work" the American Dream in a nutshell? (not talking about how it works out in practice, since that's not the point in your "soviet era" scenario either)

The American Dream of success is different. In the US, for various reasons (probably including mobility & lack of local extended family) part of the dream is to have Mom stay home with Kids while Dad works 40 hrs/week to afford the House, Car, and TV. Those are different contours than the more communal ideals espoused in the Soviet Union or even most of Europe today.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#118

Post by kaitai » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 1:08 PM UTC

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…

I have to say that while the Scandinavian countries are seen as bastions of gender equality, my personal experience has shown some extraordinary sexism there in academia, far far far more than I've ever experienced in mathematics or physics in the United States. Like men straight-out telling women they don't need to get that science PhD because they'll just drop out to have babies anyway, since all women just want to be mothers above anything else, or a friend being explicitly denied a grad fellowship because her slacker male colleague "has a family to support" so deserves it more (despite fewer publications, fewer grants, behind in the program, stopped showing up to the lab for a while). Scandinavians have an inflated view of their own gender equity (and so does everyone else).

Humans are adaptable.... look at all those women who were competent teachers or nurses even though they'd far prefer something else, forced by economic pressure to take the only jobs allowed...

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#119

Post by kaitai » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 1:19 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #22

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my personal observation over the years says that the vast majority of new female engineers have come from foreign countries. Or are American citizens who immigrated here after middle school. We're celebrating a narrowing gender gap, but American women seem to be largely left out.

I wonder which of these other nations are. Perhaps their engineering cultures are more gender-egalitarian than ours.

It's not really about egalitarianism per se, it's about what roles women are expected/allowed to take, and what roles men are expected/allowed to take. The decision that engineering or programming is a "male" role is a fairly arbitrary one that we've made in the US.

In some countries programming is seen as a good job for women because it's an indoor job, maybe you can be in a predominantly female environment, it involves typing, it's not that prestigious so you're not fighting to climb a career ladder. It's a commodity job so you can enter and leave the workforce as necessary to deal with family issues.

None of these things is really about the work that needs to be done, unless we're talking about work that absolutely requires upper body strength. It's all just framing, perception, almost marketing. That's why I find the gender essentialist stuff nonsense. Why is being a top chef a male job and a home cook a female job? Because one requires bluster? You will often find that in countries with fabulously successful women programmers, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, these jobs are just considered jobs rather than Magical Jobs for Extraordinarily Smart Ninja Rockstars.

Re: Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions

#120

Post by kaitai » Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 1:22 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #116

If you were to tell Mari that girls don’t look like engineers, women can’t code as well as men, or women aren’t as competitive as men, she’d raise a skeptical eyebrow. Actually, these girls do fit the typical criteria. They are Georgian, just like several women world Chess champions. Georgia is part of the former USSR, where women were pushed for decades to achieve things in math and science and intellectual pursuits…

Because people only talked about my clothes, not math, if I wore a dress to grad school. Now that I don't get asked if it's laundry day or why I'm wearing that or if I have a date or what special event is happening, and I don't get mistaken for a secretary, I wear dresses far more often. Simple matter of energy management -- looking pretty in a university grad program is way more trouble than it's worth.