> Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South Indian families. What's the evidence for that claim?
She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?
I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
81–90 of 147 posts
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#82> Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South Indian families. What's the evidence for that claim?
She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?
“Lived experience” is anecdote, which is a fine way of coming up with hypotheses about generalities, and a very bad basis for asserting any but very weak, tentative conclusions about generalities.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#83"All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?" I generally agree with this article. But you can't be a white male and speak this way in silicon valley without being shamed and being labeled a Trump supporter. Especially if your company has militant diversity advocates.
The tragedy here cannot be overstated. The truth itself has been demonized by people who claim to be "just speaking the truth" when they lie, and people who can't see through it and believe it's ok to sacrifice truth on the altar of their ideology.
The tragedy is that for hundreds if not thousands of years half the population has had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectually hamstrung
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.
Why would one boast about less diversity? Did you mean "highest ratio"?
But highest ratio is still less diversity. Only 50-50 is highest diversity, right?
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#85Something I've noticed after 10 years in tech/finance is that there are very, very few western women in engineering roles. I think I've only ever worked with 1 woman who wasn't an Eastern European or Asian immigrant (and yeah, I eventually married one of the immigrant ones). The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us. This article really hi…
>those cultures are doing that's different than us. 1. One of the very few jobs that is well paid. So you are either a software engineer or poor. 2. There is not social stigma associated with being an engineer. infact its the opposite, see point 1. 3. Even in India "math is for boys" meme is strong but point 1 overpowers everything else. > The gender gap is purely cultural Unless you can point me to a non-poor countr…
Rather, it seems it has to be biological, but it's left to flourish most in wealthy countries.
The resistance to this gender essentialist conclusion is easy to understand, but it shouldn't change anything to true egalitarians. If someone's suitable for a job, hire them. Gender or race quotas are sexist and racist, by definition, and it's those policies that are endangered, not egalitarianism.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#86Quoting article: > I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity ranked far, far below. Growing up as a South Indian in Mumbai, neither me, not anyone I know or grew up with, has ever had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice, regardless of their sex. I c…
FWIW, as someone who grew up in western India (but not Mumbai, another city/state), my personal experience is very similar to what the author described in the article.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?
“Lived experience” is anecdote, which is a fine way of coming up with hypotheses about generalities, and a very bad basis for asserting any but very weak, tentative conclusions about generalities.
Absolutely. I agree with you. For the purposes of her article, I think it's more than enough. Most discussions about issues of diversity and similar "dangerous ideas" try to use statistics to back them up but often do use statistics terribly.
It's better in my opinion to be upfront about anecdotal data.
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#88Dear Mallika, Many thanks for writing this article! Totally echoes my thoughts. fwiw, as an Indian male engineer in US, I initially was very enthusiastically thinking "lets go out of our way to support the pink elephants" and later was surprised when some of my peers (female engineers from India in US or of Indian origin) showed utter disinterest in being part of many of these women centric meetups/conferences. They…
I'm surprised that you were not very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No Asshole Rule". Maybe it's possible to try multiple approaches at the same time? And that trying several different things is good?
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#89The political correctness climate is so unpredictable. I'm considered both sexist & feminist due to being a white male who doesn't pay attention to the gender of my non romantic relationships. Laissez faire ideals makes you an enemy of everyone in an age of 'allies'
All those studies showing that basically everyone has an unconscious bias for gender and race don't apply to you?
Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room
#90I often see people arguing against the idea of sexless-ness based on the idea that its been tried and failed, but I honestly the only time I truly seen evidence of this is in movies making fun of the 70th's. It seems that when the feminist movement moved away from equality feminism it cultural had to disavow the concept of sexless-ness. The idea of sexless-ness, which can also be describe as women/men as equal and un…
Identity politics has won over these ideals. Instead of gender becoming less and less relevant, it came to define the person's identity, and in the process begot more and more genders in a quest to categorise everyone. As victimhood and groupthink are the pillars of current politics, instead of trying to obtain more and more freedom and detach from stereotypes, people try to belong more strongly to the categories in…
Sorry, when has it ever been the case that gender did not define a person's identity? I'm a bit confused as to when in history this was.