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Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

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Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#151

Post by kaitai »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #91
nostrebored wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[0] "One reason for the poor Nordic performance at higher corporate levels is high taxes, which limits the amount of household services supplied through markets. If it is harder to hire someone to do the chores, that makes it harder for women to invest the time to climb the career ladder." This is just so goddamn laughable. Again we come back to the implication that women are the de-facto owners of housework. [1] jus…

Women are the de-facto consumers of housework - the party most likely to care if it's done or not. Creating a disparity in paid leave for women and men again creates a default assumption of women as caregivers. Sweden used to give both parents 16 months of leave to split as they liked. When parents chose to give it all to the mother, Sweden decided to force men to take 2 months (or give them up). Now they are increas…

As my husband always reminds me, if he doesn't clean I'm the one who will be judged!

- signed, a messy female

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#152

Post by enraged_camel »

rayiner wrote: post #132
gshulegaard wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity." Ummm...the first part is fine, the corollary reasoning is what is academically dishonest. Prima facie is not academically acceptable when determining causal relationships in statistics. The…

The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter. What else could it be? Also, what is acceptable for proving a causal relationship in a statistical sense is not coextensive with what's academically honest. In the real world people have to make…

>>The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological.

Nature/nurture argument is not a dichotomy. It isn't either/or. It can be both to varying degrees, i.e. biological dispositions can be nurtured/reinforced by environment and upbringing.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#153

Post by enraged_camel »

ankey1 wrote: post #52
larrik wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has taken the kids out and about during the day, I have to say that it's awkward . You end up being the only man in a group of dozens of women with their kids, or you are the guy at the playground sitting by himself while his kids play on it (which looks a ton like you don't have any kids to an outsider). Society, at least in most of the U.S. is frankly a bit hostile to males as the caregivers. I can't…

And now you know how it feels to be the only woman engineer on a team of 20 engineers. It's awkward and sometimes hard for women engineers like me to focus on our jobs because of the awkwardness contributing to hostile work environments. And this is why it's awesome that YC is supporting Women Who Code.

Sure. Just so we are clear though, there is a huge difference between being regarded and treated as a potential pedophile/kidnapper (father at a playground) vs. simply an outsider.

http://www.freerangekids.com/thanks-for-assuming-im-a-pedoph...

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#154

Post by kaitai »

busterarm wrote: post #42
nck4222 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. There are plenty of women who would enjoy being a developer but it wasn't presented to them as a realistic option in their childhood, or it wasn't a welcoming atmosphere for them when they started learning about it.

You could swap the gender and career with just about any field in either end of this list[0] and have the same argument, but there is a razor focus on this one specific field/gender combination. [0]: https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/chal...

This is a tech site. Is it any surprise that there aren't a lot of discussions about getting men into macrame? There are no discussions of macrame, period, on HN. More's the pity -- it involves lots of cool knots. But somehow on a tech site it's just not of primary interest.

Nursing is brought up on everyone of these threads about gender, though. I haven't yet built the threatened autoposter about efforts to get men into nursing and the premium that men in nursing are paid over women in nursing, but both of those are well-documented.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#155

Post by nostrebored »

slackstation wrote: post #142
nostrebored wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I've done this, let me tell you why: 1) People in tech are assholes to women. I don't think most of them realize they're doing it. Sending images of swimsuit models over slack or otherwise sexualizing your work environment is an awful idea, and you shouldn't do it even if you don't have women on your team. My partner gets asked out by coworkers regularly, even while pregnant. 2) No really, people in tech are assh…

These are startup problems. Larger mature tech companies (there are many of them) shouldn't be that hostile. I work at one with 1000+ employees and while it's not 50/50, I can't imagine it being that bad. Also, I'm a black person. All of the horror stories they say about POC in tech, I have never experienced one. I've had individual jerks but, I haven't had things like the company passing me up or ever felt that I wa…

Most of these anecdotes are from women at big 4 companies.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#156

Post by kaitai »

antisthenes wrote: post #100
nck4222 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i just don't believe in encouraging anyone to do anything in particular, except what they enjoy. There are plenty of women who would enjoy being a developer but it wasn't presented to them as a realistic option in their childhood, or it wasn't a welcoming atmosphere for them when they started learning about it.

Being a developer was not presented to me as a realistic option in my childhood either, mainly because most of the many schools I've attended did not have any sort of computer science curriculum until the senior year. Nor did I have anyone in my circles interested enough in programming until I've already picked my major. Does that mean I now qualify for some special victim treatment just like those women? Let's be ho…

There are plenty of outreach efforts in the US targeted at students who might not get exposed to coding in school. I guess I wouldn't consider them special victim treatment; after all, golf and tennis also have outreach efforts to communities that don't have golf and tennis in school. Is that special victim treatment? It is often framed as charity as well as a way to popularize the activity in question.

Should all attempts to expose people to coding cease? Or are they ok if we only target people like those currently in the industry, perpetuating the status quo of 2016 but not 1984?

I notice you ignore the "welcoming atmosphere" part of the parent.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#157

Post by rayiner »

enraged_camel wrote: post #152
rayiner wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter. What else could it be? Also, what is acceptable for proving a causal relationship in a statistical sense is not coextensive with what's academically honest. In the real world people have to make…

>>The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. Nature/nurture argument is not a dichotomy. It isn't either/or. It can be both to varying degrees, i.e. biological dispositions can be nurtured/reinforced by environment and upbringing.

You're right, dichotomy implies sets are mutually exclusive. "Jointly exhaustive" is the phrase I was looking for.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#158

Post by imaginenore »

gaylemcd wrote: post #139
H0n3sty wrote: post #117

What would people think if the genders were reversed and this institution was discriminating against women and only helping men? Women have a far larger presence in other fields like biology and education, but you don't see new organizations popping up every other month to change that in favor of men. Discrimination like this should be illegal.

So you mean if you totally changed the context? Gee, for this completely different situation that really has little to do with this one, yes people would be offended. But, you know, the context and implications are so completely different. What's your point?

Reversing the genders is not totally changing the context. It just shows that it is discrimination based on gender.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#159

Post by jacalata »

busterarm wrote: post #12
dudifordMann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if that is the right mind set: "So around the time a lot of people have kids? ...you need to make a LOT of money to pay for daycare ... you might as well just stay home." The "you" can be the other partner. Ensuring fair pay and opportunities for all qualified workers would encourage only a brief departure from a woman's career for maternity leave, allowing either partner to be the home support (as need…

Do we know that that's the reason that more women are deciding to stay home? This looks like a big conclusion to draw when the data only _may_ correlate. Where's the survey of double-income family moms working in tech where they specified the reason why they chose to stay at home? There are a lot of reports coming out that look at numbers and say what may be the reason, but I've yet to see anyone go ask women the rea…

You may have literally never looked because it's really easy to find those studies on google.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#160

Post by jacalata »

imaginenore wrote: post #158
gaylemcd wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you mean if you totally changed the context? Gee, for this completely different situation that really has little to do with this one, yes people would be offended. But, you know, the context and implications are so completely different. What's your point?

Reversing the genders is not totally changing the context. It just shows that it is discrimination based on gender.

It is changing the context. I don't know if you know this, but there are a lot of existing gender-based influences in the world already, they aren't inventing the concept.
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