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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

#81

Post by deepnotderp »

pron wrote: post #78
deepnotderp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occas…

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3389

Scott Aaronson considers it to be valid. Being conservative doesn't negate its arguments.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#82

Post by pron »

deepnotderp wrote: post #80
pron wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the point. The term "sexist" itself, at least in its scholarly meaning, does not imply intent. Sexism is a feature of a social structure where women are granted significantly less power than men. The prevailing hypothesis -- which has a lot of supporting evidence -- is that we are all sexist, men and women alike, merely by virtue of being socialized in a sexist society. When people first discovered microbe…

Minor problem: that's EXACTLY what the media and outrage engine is specifying.

That's not what I see, so I guess both our views on what the media and "outrage engine" are doing are very much shaped by our political views.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#83

Post by cmiles74 »

k__ wrote: post #65
cmiles74 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"insisting the current state is somehow the "natural state"" This is a strawman, nobody assumes this is natural in any way. The point is, yes we want more women in the field, but the awkward male nerds that are there right now aren't the main problem. Better look at the hiring managers and what society "shows" women every day.

Damore's argument was that the current state was because "biology".

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#84

Post by abalone »

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?

> men are exceptional pushed/forced/heavy incentivize by society towards high paying jobs

This is a very curious way of explaining how men end up with most of the money and power. They're forced to do it!

A perhaps plausible alternative theory: once jobs become high paying, men campaign to recast it as "men's work". This theory is supported by the true history of our profession, succinctly reviewed by this article.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#85

Post by rhapsodic »

rhapsodic wrote: post #64

Just once, I would like to read in one of these articles about an actual non-anonymous woman who could plausibly demonstrate that a.) she had a strong desire to be a software developer, b.) she had developed sufficient skills in a marketable language to be employed as one, and c.) she had made a prolonged effort to find employment as one, and d.) she was unable land a job as a software developer. Instead, it's always…

The parent of this post has been getting about an equal number of upvotes as downvotes.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#86

Post by deepnotderp »

pron wrote: post #82
deepnotderp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor problem: that's EXACTLY what the media and outrage engine is specifying.

That's not what I see, so I guess both our views on what the media and "outrage engine" are doing are very much shaped by our political views.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sexist+google+memo&source=ln...

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#87

Post by sanxiyn »

cmiles74 wrote: post #83
k__ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"insisting the current state is somehow the "natural state"" This is a strawman, nobody assumes this is natural in any way. The point is, yes we want more women in the field, but the awkward male nerds that are there right now aren't the main problem. Better look at the hiring managers and what society "shows" women every day.

Damore's argument was that the current state was because "biology".

Nope, the argument was that the current state was caused by both social and biological effect, and that it is harmful to insist that the cause is entirely, or mostly social. Honestly we don't really know how large are contributions from social and biological effect.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#88

Post by deepnotderp »

pron wrote: post #78
deepnotderp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occas…

> I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion.

Little bit difficult when all those articles scream sexist, but sure, links please.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#89

Post by deepnotderp »

pron wrote: post #78
deepnotderp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Both are conservative publications, which is fine, but: There are certainly some researchers, like those in the first article, who agree with Damore's position, but they are by far the minority; if you're interested in the subject, I suggest you at least read some research written by the majority opinion. The second link is written by a non-expert, and therefore does not constitute a scholarly opinion at all. I occas…

The other thing that makes it difficult is the extreme strawmanning and misrepresentation. The Wired article says that Schmitt disagrees.

"How this all fits into the Google workplace is unclear to me. But perhaps it does."

They cut off the "But perhaps it does" and simply state "So even the researcher he cites disagrees".

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#90

Post by abalone »

mdorazio wrote: post #29
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #3

I have always wondered: People often point to graphs showing a massive decline in the percentage of women in CS in the 80's. But has anyone seen a graph of the absolute number, not percentages? If 1 million women were coding, then 100 billion men started coding, those 1M women would still be coders. So there wasn't necessarily a decline. Or maybe there was, and the numbers will reflect that. I am interested in the ac…

This has been my question as well, and few people want to consider it. The best data I've been able to find on actual gender split over that period only goes through 1996 [1] - just when the dotcom bubble was getting going. However, if you look at total CS degrees (look under "The third surge" in [2]) it at least seems pretty obvious what happened. Right around 1980 the number of CS degree students exploded, with men…

> it seems like men just got more interested in the field for a variety of reasons and naturally came to massively outnumber the women... it's hard to argue a systemic push against women in science degrees when CS is pretty much the only one with an increasing gender imbalance

This is a bad premise. What sets CS apart from most sciences, and correlates perfectly with the 80s, is that it became a professional path to vast wealth (the rise of software giants like Microsoft). This supports the article which details some of the mechanisms by which the composition of CS was engineered to shift from women to men through a series of professional and cultural obstacles, once it was clear that software would be a high-paying career.

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