Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#21

Post by jkot » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #17

jkot wrote: post #8

> fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this 'problem' will solve itself. EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college. Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years men will be a small minority at university education.

Anecdotally, I had five woman in my CS program out of 100 students (I know, pathetic)... but all five of them graduated. Can't say the same for the men. My wife was an Electromechanical engineer, in her program they had the same number of woman but a higher percentage because there were fewer students in the major in general. I think they all graduated although a couple of them had to retake some courses so they didn…

> Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren't necessarily expected of men.

Could you name some? I have opposite experience.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#22

Post by bonniemuffin » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

jkot wrote: post #8

> fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this 'problem' will solve itself. EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college. Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years men will be a small minority at university education.

I suspect this is driven by women's culturally-conditioned lower belief in their own ability, as well as men's conditioning to believe they must go to college.

The women who would fail have already self-selected themselves out of CS due to believing they won't be able to hack it. Therefore women who actually do start a CS program are likely to be the most driven ones with the greatest likelihood of success.

Whereas men are conditioned to have more belief in their own ability and to see college as non-optional, so they're more likely to commit to a CS degree (or any college degree) without realizing they won't be successful at it.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#23

Post by CJefferson » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

kukac wrote: post #20

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #3

Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

I totally agree with you. No one really seems to be able to explain this.

There are many programme to try to increase male elementary school teachers, you just don't hang around on elementary school related forums.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#24

Post by bonniemuffin » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

Melinda Gates says: "Some of the best programs, UW, Stanford, Berkeley — or what [president] Maria Klawe is doing at Harvey Mudd — are finally looking at that very first CS course. If it’s completely geared towards an 18-year-old white male, and they are not thinking about role models for women or problem sets they get for women, how do we keep [women] in the course?"

I can really see myself in this -- as a teenager I wrote a lot of code recreationally, writing scripts to automate playing text-based computer games ("go north. a monster attacks!") and writing my own games.

It was the first CS classes that drove me away from it, and led me to think:

- CS isn't for people like me

- CS problems aren't interesting

- CS doesn't do anything to make the world a better place.

It took me many years to come back around to the coding career I'm in today. I really believe that small changes to the classes could've prevented me from developing those misconceptions and being driven away from it.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#25

Post by atombath » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

Good on her. My regular disagreement w my feminist friends is their SJW stuff does them more harm than good and the only way forward is our having more female engineers. Clearly then, I think this initiative is really tackling the core of gender issues.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#26

Post by jkot » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:21 PM UTC

bonniemuffin wrote: post #22

jkot wrote: post #8

> fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this 'problem' will solve itself. EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college. Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years men will be a small minority at university education.

I suspect this is driven by women's culturally-conditioned lower belief in their own ability, as well as men's conditioning to believe they must go to college. The women who would fail have already self-selected themselves out of CS due to believing they won't be able to hack it. Therefore women who actually do start a CS program are likely to be the most driven ones with the greatest likelihood of success. Whereas m…

I think I will go with discrimination and sexism.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#27

Post by kukac » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #23

kukac wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. No one really seems to be able to explain this.

There are many programme to try to increase male elementary school teachers, you just don't hang around on elementary school related forums.

Okay, that's actually great to know, but I am yet to see feminists fighting to get more females into other male-dominated jobs that are not as well-paid as software engineering.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#28

Post by bonniemuffin » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

jkot wrote: post #26

bonniemuffin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is driven by women's culturally-conditioned lower belief in their own ability, as well as men's conditioning to believe they must go to college. The women who would fail have already self-selected themselves out of CS due to believing they won't be able to hack it. Therefore women who actually do start a CS program are likely to be the most driven ones with the greatest likelihood of success. Whereas m…

I think I will go with discrimination and sexism.

Yes, this is very much a result of gender bias and sexist conditioning for both men and women, which leads both of them to have inaccurate self-assessments of their abilities. Gender bias hurts both men and women.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#29

Post by jkot » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:27 PM UTC

bonniemuffin wrote: post #28

jkot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I will go with discrimination and sexism.

Yes, this is very much a result of gender bias and sexist conditioning for both men and women, which leads both of them to have inaccurate self-assessments of their abilities. Gender bias hurts both men and women.

And that's why today 60% of students are women (and raising). But it hurts women too, because they will not find husbands to marry.

Re: Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

#30

Post by throwaway2016a » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:30 PM UTC

jkot wrote: post #21

throwaway2016a wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I had five woman in my CS program out of 100 students (I know, pathetic)... but all five of them graduated. Can't say the same for the men. My wife was an Electromechanical engineer, in her program they had the same number of woman but a higher percentage because there were fewer students in the major in general. I think they all graduated although a couple of them had to retake some courses so they didn…

> Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren't necessarily expected of men. Could you name some? I have opposite experience.

I can't quantify it. Sociology is not my field.

However, it has been my experience that men are expected to have a fair amount of recklessness and irresponsibility that woman are not.

Examples:

- Men being with many woman during college is considered experimenting, whereas for woman it is considered slutty.

- A man answers wrong on a question in class and people just move on. A blond woman does the same and she's a dumb blond. (I've seen this happen)

- A man fails it's OK, failure happens and is a part of learning. A woman fails, and it's because maybe women aren't cut out for this.

Again, not my field just going by conversation I've had with woman I know.