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The power of role models

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Re: The power of role models

#291

Post by Shubley »

nickparker wrote: post #110
Oxitendwe wrote: post #24

>The best way to improve the representation of women in the field is not to recruit them, important though that is, but to promote them. To create role models. To push them into positions of influence. I find the idea that we should "push them into positions of influence" abhorrent. These are zero sum games, to give them a special advantage over any other demographic is to disadvantage another. This is antithetical t…

I see where you're coming from, and I think we reach different conclusions because you see merit as a much more readily judged quantity than I do. I wholeheartedly agree, elevating people above the level of responsibility/work they can handle is a bad idea, as is taking away responsibility from more qualified people. Where you run into trouble is the people judging qualifications. Human judgment is an insanely noisy…

I think what you said about height might be a bit off since you're dismissing the possibility that tall people actually are better at their jobs.

E.g. looks and facial symmetry both correlate with fertility and IQ, probably through the mechanism of mutational load. So you could say, "good looking people make more money" as an example here, but the effect could be from IQ because they actually do go together.

The same could be happening for height. This may be the reason people instinctively are attracted to tall people.

Re: The power of role models

#292

Post by Shubley »

tptacek wrote: post #234
brighteyes wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the standard arguments in favor of affirmative action. Those are reasonable arguments. But the counter-arguments are valid, as well: 1. You are suggesting applying explicit, intentional action: "self-correction" as you said. This is meant to counter presumed implicit, unintentional action. The big difference is that the former is noticeable and measurable, while the latter is inferred indirectly. As a r…

Medicine and the law both overtly "self-corrected" successfully, creating marked and durable improvements to gender parity that benefited the fields.

There is no way to measure (or even define?) "benefiting the field".

For example, women leave the workforce earlier and more often. So we now get less work years per education year in these fields. Benefit? Not from the POV of the person paying for all this education and these services.

Re: The power of role models

#293

Post by bsder »

stale2002 wrote: post #269
Oxitendwe wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The women in tech pipeline is a leaky, toxic pipeline that results in talented women being driven out of the industry. I'd be very interested to see some evidence of this. How many women leave, at what stage in their career path do they leave, where do they go after they've left, and how do you know that their unfair treatment is responsible?

You can figure out the reason that they left by asking them. This isn't something that is controversial. There is lots of research into this. https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/the-real-reason-wome... http://news.mit.edu/2016/why-do-women-leave-engineering-0615 http://alltogether.swe.org/2016/04/real-reason-women-leave-s... Are just a couple, actually published research attempts that I found with a 2 minute goog…

Except that every single one of these is a problem for MEN too ...

Assignments just don't drop in your lap, you have to go get them. Praise doesn't just materialize, you have to make sure that the right people know what you did--sometimes with a baseball bat. Everybody fights to get "fast-tracked", although I don't really know what that means anymore outside of large companies.

I knew lots of people at IBM, both male and female, who felt shortchanged and I asked them: "So, what did you do to go get on a better project next time?" Generally the answer was nothing. Several of the co-ops complained that they were just doing menial tasks: "Did you ask to do something more important? Did you demonstrate that you could do something more important? Did you complete the menial task well or not?" Generally the answer to all of these were not.

If you don't complete the menial task well, you're not getting something more important--and sometimes a menial task is important. I have often had the conversation with an intern/co-op "Look, the task sucks. But someone has to do it. It's either you or me, and you're lower on the totem pole right now." If you don't do a good job, you're not getting anything better.

And if I'm doing something interesting and important, I'll be DAMNED if I'm letting somebody take it from me.

You have to offend some people if you want to get ahead. And you may have to leave if things don't fall your way. That's corporate life.

Re: The power of role models

#294

Post by Shubley »

ericjang wrote: post #161
Oxitendwe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>proponents of affirmative-action policies argue that the handicap offsets disabilities from the glass ceiling, discrimination / stereotype threat in the workplace/education pipeline. How do you know that the disparity in women in the general population versus women in computer science is caused by the things you mentioned? How do you know that they have an equal interest and potential in this field than demographics…

Thank you for your civil reply, and I agree that the question has not been put to rest, as evident by the ongoing debate regarding how diversity initiatives should be implemented, if at all. I also agree that all this should be taken with utmost seriousness and consideration of opposing points of view. Since I do not have firsthand experience with being a woman, my information comes from talking to women computer sci…

The Soviet pattern is reproduced today in places like Iran, where many more women study engineering.

Meanwhile, in Scandinavia, the traditionally-female professions like nursing are even more female-dominated than in the USA.

The trend seems to be: The freer the society, the less women are entering the tech workforce and the more they choose traditionally feminine work.

This even applies in the time-trend in America, where women in tech has reduced significantly since the 80's, while feminism has only become more dominant and wealth has increased.

Food for thought.

Re: The power of role models

#295

Post by Shubley »

stale2002 wrote: post #177
alphapapa wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a company which exists entirely online: no physical office, all employees work from home over the Internet. Imagine that all employees and managers and executives use gender-ambiguous screennames, and no one is allowed to ask any questions which would reveal identity, gender, etc. (Perhaps there's a small HR department that handles the real identities, but it's not allowed to share them with anyone else, nor…

This would be much more meritocratic than our current system. And it would result in much better diversity. You don't even have to be as extreme as your example (nobody could work in the conditions that you mentioned). Things like blind resume screening have been shown to significantly reduce hiring bias, and more companies should be doing it. Also, the biggest discrimination problems in tech aren't even direct hirin…

I work in conditions very similar to what he mentioned.

I work with several people remotely, have for months, have made paying projects, haven't heard their voices ever (or even seen photos of them in some cases).

Thinking on it, in some cases I literally don't know the person's ethnic background. One of my guys could be black or white or Indian and I wouldn't know. Even his name is a strange three-letter thing I haven't heard before. Huh.

So yeah, you can work like this.

Re: The power of role models

#296

Post by gaius »

DanBC wrote: post #264
gaius wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loggers, refuse collectors, meatpackers, miners etc etc are also disproportionately male.

You were told three years ago about the programmes that exist to correct the gender balance in each of those industries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6508777#6509275 Women in mining: http://internationalwim.org/ http://www.womeninmining.org/ Women in construction: http://www.nawic.org/nawic/default.asp (some editing to tone it down a bit.)

You were told three years ago

And yet, the problem still exists, no? So my statement was merely one of fact.

some editing to tone it down a bit

Don't worry you got your changes in before I could take a screenshot to post on another site without context to stir up the outrage #hnwatch

Re: The power of role models

#297

Post by Shubley »

RodericDay wrote: post #29

> In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced. I can't prove it was the presence of women that made the difference - it could just be that astronomers are better people all around, a possibility I cannot really refute - but it seemed to me that the difference stemmed from the demographics. I fe…

>As far as I'm concerned, diversity for the sake of diversity is a noble goal.

Diversity of what?

Age? Political stance? Language? Accent? Socioeconomic status? Wealth? Religion? Food preference? IQ? Personality traits?

Or - none of the above? How do you choose which are important and which aren't? Or which come before the others? Do you dump a Catholic man to get another atheist who happens to be a woman? How do you choose between a Francophone young man, and an anglophone old man?

Or maybe it would be good to view individuals as individuals and not pre-judge people based on their DNA?

Re: The power of role models

#299

Post by gaius »

Oxitendwe wrote: post #238
msie wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy.

>If it comes down to the flip of a coin, why not add more diverse opinions if the team is male-heavy. Likewise if the team is female-heavy. What is the value of having an equal number of men and women? What is a "diverse opinion"? If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring, and her opinions end up being the same as the men on her team, will you be disappointed at the lack…

If you hire a woman over a man because of the "diverse opinion" you expect her to bring

Right, this is what I like to call the Google Fallacy. If you have a team that represents all genders, races, etc etc but they are all recent graduates of the same handful of CS programmes, then where does the diversity of opinions actually come from? This is why Google keeps making products and abandoning them when they fail to gain traction, or produce public disgust like Glass. To be actually diverse companies must move beyond the tickybox culture of just looking at gender and colour and look at actual lived experiences.

Re: The power of role models

#300

Post by tonyedgecombe »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #58
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #9

"In my long career, I had never before been in a room like that, and the difference in tone, conversation, respect, and professionalism was unlike any I have experienced." Back when I was contracting I visited a lot of sites, my heart would sink when it was an all male team, you just knew the tone would be different.

Yeah, let's just shun these people solely because of our prejudice based on gender.

Nobody was shunned, this was just a reflection on my experience, it may have been the same if it was an all female team although I didn't encounter that.
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