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How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

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Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#51

Post by sillysaurus3 »

lhnz wrote: post #35
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

This is how I remember it in the UK, too. Computers were incredibly uncool and only people with zero interest in being cool were willing to invest their time in learning about them. If anything, these people were crowded out from lots of other domains and picked computing because it was the only place which would accept them. Now everybody is trying to turn this around, and imply a conspiracy to "[create] the now-fam…

The stereotype wasn't created be a shadowy group of men to exclude women. That is absurd. Why would sexists block women from programming, while letting them into plenty of other more high status jobs?

Well, we should be careful with claims like that. Think of the gender of most of the secretaries at all the jobs we've had. And little things, like if you're in a relationship, how often do you do the laundry and dishes?

More directly, women really weren't allowed to become the things they wanted to be until the 70's. We like to act like that was so long ago, but that's one grandpa's lifetime. Not even a very old grandpa.

I'm not saying it's due to systemic sexism, just that we're talking about a group of people whose very recent ancestors were denied opportunities we take for granted. They must have faced enormous social pressure to conform.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#53

Post by cmiles74 »

belorn wrote: post #40
cmiles74 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot wrong here, but what bothers me right this minute is the idea that computer programming has "changed beyond recognition" between 1950 and 1980 and that is the cause of the gender imbalance we see today. For sure, a lot of progress was made in the field during that time span. But did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all, we simply saw huge steps made in the quality of the too…

> did the work materially change? I don't think that's the case at all How much money was the computer programming industry creating 1950 vs 1980. In the memo, one of the larger points was that men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs. Would you argue that this claim is false?

I don't understand where you are going with this... Is your argument that since society seems biased to pay men more money, we should blindly do so? Does that logic apply to race as well as gender?

IMHO, Damore was playing to the misplaced belief held by some men that they are innately better then everyone else and that societal biases have played no role in their successes.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#55

Post by pron »

lsd5you wrote: post #2

I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore view is at the very least plausible and tarring a whole industry filled with many thoughtful and introverted (i.e. not messing with others, often taken advantage of themselves) individuals to support some view of gender economics is morally wrong. We now live in…

> but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand

But it is not dismissed out of hand. It is dismissed by serious scholars after significant research. It is Damore who dismisses their well-informed position out of hand by taking out of context some papers whose significance he is not qualified to judge. It is he who rejects scholarship and serious investigation in favor of gut feelings. If Damore's view were as well researched as the prevailing view, then it would merit more careful consideration. But as it stands, he is some lay person who, for his own reasons, decides that the scholars are wrong.

Physicists don't debate all the bloggers who misunderstand or take out of context physics papers, so why should social scholars debate some random guy at Google who wrote a rant? After all, the couple of papers he cites are scholarly works. Do you think those works are not debated in the research community? But you can't debate some layperson who clearly did not bother to put any effort into studying the issue (e.g., he does not discuss any other paper that contradicts his political views, and there are many more of those). If you want, there are some venues (like /r/science, /r/AskHistorians and others) where experts discuss research with laypeople, and you're welcome to ask them questions there. The belief that there is any serious scholarship behind Damore's rant that's being silenced by non-experts is the exact opposite of what's really going on.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#56

Post by oh_sigh »

danharaj wrote: post #6

There's a strong correlation between women entering a field and it having low prestige, and men entering a field and it having higher prestige. Guess which field of ours was considered busywork for women to do until men realized it was going to transform society as we know it.

That's because the women "programmers" were largely doing things like plugging wires into a certain configuration as dictated to them by the (usually male) engineers. What the article terms as programming as essentially operating a switch board - it had nothing to do with programming as we know it today.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#57

Post by mmsimanga »

cmiles74 wrote: post #43
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

I don't think it's a stretch to imagine the socially awkward men you've met in the field aging into slightly less socially awkward older men tasked with hiring new developers. When hiring, it seems a small logical jump that they will higher more people like themselves (socially awkward men) and avoid people who differ. It's a pretty commonplace dynamic and an easy trip to fall into. What surprises me is how hard peop…

I have not citation but from the recent articles on HN, is the problem not that they are not enough female CS graduates to hire from? The crowding out is happening in high school and college.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#58

Post by delhanty »

rayiner wrote: post #50
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

First, that's not true. https://i.imgur.com/pkZPrOI.png . CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today. Twenty years ago, the Space Shuttle's software team was quite gender balanced: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff . Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender th…

>Think about all the references to hiring "cowboy coders" and "code ninjas."

From my memory since the mid 1980s, those references came in somewhat later - about the time tech became cool and there was money to be made.

Maybe something about the macho culture of game programming once it reached significant mass?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#59

Post by sanxiyn »

danharaj wrote: post #9
lsd5you wrote: post #2

I am well aware that the climate is well against this position, but you cannot just dismiss the 'Damore' view out of hand. He is not just 'wrong'. The Damore view is at the very least plausible and tarring a whole industry filled with many thoughtful and introverted (i.e. not messing with others, often taken advantage of themselves) individuals to support some view of gender economics is morally wrong. We now live in…

James Damore's arguments are only plausible in the weakest sense of the word. The only way someone would find his arguments convincing is if one's priors already favor his conclusion. If one weighs the evidence for social factors against biological factors, the question is how should a critical person weigh one against the other? It turns out if one ignores all the evidence for social factors and squint really hard a…

I found evidencs from CAH(Congenital adrenal hyperplasia) rather convincing, in that it is hard to imagine how that effect is entirely social. Admittedly, this evidence was not presented in Damore's memo, so I guess "The only way someone would find his arguments convincing" may stand, if we strictly restrict to "his arguments", but I think it's more useful to consider the best possible version of his arguments augmented by other people.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#60

Post by k__ »

rayiner wrote: post #50
k__ wrote: post #7

I don't understand this whole thing. Until recent years all developers I met were socially awkward men, me included. These are not the kind of people I would attribute any power to "crowd out" anyone. To me it seemed that they started doing computer stuff, because no one, including women, wanted to have anything to do with them. The "cool", way more aggressive, kids wanted to do sales, law, finance, management and st…

First, that's not true. https://i.imgur.com/pkZPrOI.png . CS was a third women in the mid 1980s, dropping to under 20% today. Twenty years ago, the Space Shuttle's software team was quite gender balanced: https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff . Second, nerds can do a perfectly effective job pushing women out of the profession without being aggressive or having social power. We do a lot to gender th…

For academia/public this may be true, but these jobs were always balanced.
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