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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

#151
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very simple: As a first approximation, we are concerned about women being marginalized from positions of power, not about them being underrepresented in any particular profession. ... I think that's all I need to know here. So feminists think that it's okay to go into an industry and demand that there be more women because it is a "powerful industry"? And somehow those of us who support Damore are the unreasonable…

What? No! After researchers having established, with thorough researched that's available for all to see, that women have been marginalized from positions of power -- which includes the tech industry, where women participation, in the US, has been declining in the past three decades or so -- we feminists demand that the practice stop. That's all.

> we feminists demand that the practice stop.

You literally just stated that you are interested in the tech industry because it is a "powerful" industry, and you feel that women have been historically marginalized from positions of power. Consequently, you feel that females are entitled to obtain these positions in order to "balance this power distribution". Am I correct?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#152
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I have no inclination to do that. If you have a strong opinion on some subject which is based on things said by people who you know are not expert and have not researched it -- namely, your opinion is knowingly based on ignorance of the issue -- yet you can't be bothered to look up what the experts say on the matter, then I have no desire to educate those who don't wish to be educated. Either you care…

> If you have a strong opinion on some subject which is based on things said by people who you know are not expert and have not researched it -- namely, your opinion is knowingly based on ignorance of the issue -- yet you can't be bothered to look up what the experts say on the matter, then I have no desire to educate those who don't wish to be educated. Either you care about this subject or you don't. Two can play t…

No, because, again, all I'm saying is look at the entire field, and you, like Damore, wave some specific research at me. I have read everything Pinker has to say on the subject, because that's how you do research.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#153
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I explained in another comment (chemical plant pollution), Damore is totally wrong regardless of the merit of the couple of papers he (a layman with zero knowledge or interest in the field) picked. My problem with that medium post is that an actual scientist shouldn't argue with some random dude on the internet who's clearly not interested in learning about the subject, while using actual science (and the very car…

When you have to lie about what your opponent is saying in order to score your points, you’re rarely in the right. In fact, you may be missing that you are actually in agreement.

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate.

99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged position can be disclaimed on vagueness/indirectness, leading to the conclusion that, until someone will commit to interpreting him as making a claim, he apparently wrote a memo which said literally nothing whatsoever.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I saw that. It is yet another of the posts which basically say "the science is not saying that the differences are 100% certain, so somehow that means that Damore is totally wrong". I actually did a half-way pickthrough of that post on twitter, not gonna repeat it here. Annoying enough with 140-character per message limitation. I'm done with this memo.

Well, Damore made some strongly-worded and poorly-cited claims in an attempt to pass off his "science" as somehow uncontroversial and irrefutable. The fact that multiple people have chimed in pointing out that A) it's very far from uncontroversial/irrefutable and B) his arguments are based on studies whose effect sizes would not produce the results we see , is a pretty convincing rebuttal. Also it's telling that "the…

>"Damore was absolutely right about everything ever and we should all stop diversity efforts since women are too hobbled by their genetic ladybrains to work in tech in large numbers anyway"

Do you want to build a strawman?

All we are resisting is being told we are sexist for not having a higher proportion of females in our industry despite having approximately the same proportion of which there are female graduates.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#155

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…

But the percentages are very important. In your example you if 1M women were coding then 100B more men started, but there are still 1M women, there isn't a decline... But there is.(Couldn't you have used more realistic numbers?) if a lot of new men entered the field, but there was not a similar increase in women, then there is a problem, why did the number of men to up, and not the numbers of women? As long as the distribution doesn't match the population, within reason, the is an issue. That is why the actual numbers don't matter, but the percentages do. Women make up roughly half the population, but less than 20% in the computer industry. Why is there such a discrepancy?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have to lie about what your opponent is saying in order to score your points, you’re rarely in the right. In fact, you may be missing that you are actually in agreement.

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate. 99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged po…

I'll bite.

Damore says that there are possible non-bias reasons that women display less affinity towards the tech industry thus possibly partially explaining the difference in gender representation.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#157
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a strong opinion on some subject which is based on things said by people who you know are not expert and have not researched it -- namely, your opinion is knowingly based on ignorance of the issue -- yet you can't be bothered to look up what the experts say on the matter, then I have no desire to educate those who don't wish to be educated. Either you care about this subject or you don't. Two can play t…

No, because, again, all I'm saying is look at the entire field, and you, like Damore, wave some specific research at me. I have read everything Pinker has to say on the subject, because that's how you do research.

And your takeaway from Pinker's research was?

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have to lie about what your opponent is saying in order to score your points, you’re rarely in the right. In fact, you may be missing that you are actually in agreement.

Before we proceed, please provide a clear, coherent, short summary of what you personally believe Damore's argument is, and then agree to personally commit to that belief for the duration of debate. 99% of the problem of this debate is that his "memo" was so vague in places -- despite being so allegedly well-written! -- that we end up being able to attribute zero claims and zero positions to him, since any alleged po…

How about the reverse: you commit to what you believe the memo said, because all you've written so far makes me doubt you've even read it.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#159
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, it's a report written by actual experts on the subject, and one that actually cites more than two sources, not all of them affirming the same point of view. It’s not the Principia, but it’s scholarly work, and a hundredfold better than some rant written by some random guy who has not studied the subject at all, not even as an amateur. But if it’s not to your liking, you’re welcome to go down the list on…

I have a question. How come the brouhaha is always about tech jobs but never about bricklaying? As a corollary, how come it's always okay that there are far more female nurses but immediately sexism when it comes to less females in tech?

Both those industries have programmes to increase gender diversity, and it's trivially easy to check.

The fact you don't know about them suggests you don't know as much about this topic as you think you do.

Re: How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution

#160
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men only dominate positions that have high income in the beauty industry. Follows directly the predictive model as stated above. Young women (ages 12-24) out-buy all other age groups when it comes to haircare, skincare, cosmetics, and fragrances (Source: “Junior League” by Kelley Donahue. American Salon , January 2000). Feel free to provide statistics that men are the majority customer for those products. You assume…

> Men only dominate positions that have high income in the beauty industry. Follows directly the predictive model as stated above. Nope. There are two predictive models, one that men were "forced" to take higher paying programming jobs, for which you've offered no support, and the other is that they worked to exclude women and recast it as "men's work", which is thoroughly detailed in the article with interviews, stu…

You attempted to dress up quotes from a Cosmopolitan news paper as it was a study based on data. It don't work, and I am not sure why you trying such a futile attempt at misdirection. That is anti-science, and is fatally doomed to fail at persuasion.

It clear that you won't admit that consumer preference exist, as it would shows a clear link between gender specific incentives and behavior. You can try to play ignorant, but it won't change the data. Incentives has a real impact on human behavior, and it is trivial fact in psychology.

Finally you admit that men, just maybe, just possible, just as a theory perhaps, might face a unique pressure to make money. Funny that. And yes there is a strong possibility that gender segregation has a multitude of factors (a fact that was well written in a government issued report on gender segregation in the field of education). The problem statement then changes at this point to define which factor has the bigger impact, and we get back again to look at experimental data to see what has a strong impact and what has a small impact.

Let for example guess there exist a study on what jobs children want to do when they grow up. What will the average income of those jobs be when comparing boys vs girls preferences?

Or let say a study at a bit later time in life, and look at when people enter the work force. Will we see men entering the work force earlier and with greater haste than women, and what incentives is there for young unmarried men to get an income around the ages of 18-25?

We can look at studies that survey what teens want in a job, and how they select which profession to study. We can continue by looking at whom and what impacts behavior during this crucial time period in a person life.

We can also look at the primary cause of gender segregation as highlighted in that government report I mentioned earlier. Do people feel more confident when entering a group that they belong? do they feel more self-doubt when they are a local minority (such as in a class room or work place). Does ingroup and outgroup exist as theories, what is the scientific proof for it, and does herd behavior exist in human psychology.

I will note that in the government report, no where does it even entertain the idea that women are crowding out men from the education system. Similar to bloomberg it does record a historical change where men used to be the dominating gender in education, but is no longer. Instead it gives other explanations, such as the government cutting funds and thus the social status of teachers dropped. When money disperse from a profession it also caused the gender ratio to favor more women. When money increase, the opposite happens. Fairly simple statement to prove or disprove by data. Here is your golden opportunity: convince someone on the Internet of your theory by disproving that a influx of money has an impact on gender segregation.

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