Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

I am not sure that I agree with the entire article, but this part stood out to me. I never know how to express this in a way that sounds appropriate, but I feel that some of us might be better off if we focused more of our energy on actually developing in our chosen field and less on dwelling on how sexist everyone says the field is.

I understand that the above comes with a lot of caveats. "What if the sexism is the thing _preventing_ me from developing?", etc. And I do think there are legitimate problems, and that they need to be addressed. But sometimes it seems like the flood of media and popular opinion constantly shoved at us about how bad we have it only makes us more tuned to focus on things that may not even matter (and may not _all_ come from a place of gender bias, but are now prone to being categorized that way). This then results in us wasting our time being affected by/thinking about/dwelling on those things rather than a) actually growing in our chosen field and b) focusing on more _serious_ gender issues that may be a little bit more concrete than "This guy was rude to me, obviously it's because I'm woman and not because he's an asshole to everybody."

At the same time I'm not sure if the above is the right viewpoint to have. Is it better to potentially be blind to actual "microaggressions" or other "smaller" issues that might build up and keep trudging along in a state of ignorance, or is it better to not see those things and keep working in a field you enjoy?

I don't speak about this much because to be honest I don't have the energy, and prefer to spend my time on making things. This may be bad: one day I too may have a "MeToo"-esque story of working in tech, and maybe I will suddenly realize I've been blind this whole time.

I’ve mentioned it repeatedly on HN and have never so much as gotten a rise out of anyone. (I should also point out that the SAT folks publish a detailed report on SAT gender differences each year and nobody blinks an eye.) The problem is that it doesn’t explain the disparity in STEM—it cuts against it.

Men outrepresent women about 2:1 among perfect SAT Math scores. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this represents a real difference in mathematical ability. Even if programming ability were 100% correlated with mathematical ability, you’d expect a much higher ratio than you see in practice. That is strong evidence that women are kept out of STEM for other reasons. Beyond that (1) the pool of programmers isn’t just people with perfect SAT scores—the representation gap rapidly disappears as you go from top 0.5% to top 5%; (2) professions leverage other competencies too. The same 2:1 difference shows up in the top percentile of the LSAT and MCAT, but those fields are more gender balanced because women applicants tend to have better college GPAs.

Anecdotally: I went to a competitive admissions STEM high school, where admissions is gender blind and based heavily on an SAT-like test. The ratio was about 60:40 boys, about what you’d expect from the required testing percentiles. CS was required for all students so it is gender balanced. But APCS was overwhelmingly boys, not because it was full of the best math minds, but I suspect because we’d play DOOM if we got our assignments done early.

I stay well away from it too. In fact I fear simply writing this comment.

On Twitter, I've taken to unfollowing people who repeatedly retweet threads that have turned into piling-on contests built on a shaky foundation - the uncritical joining of a mob to throw stones at the perceived oppressor is especially worrying when a closer examination shows nuances that don't justify mob justice even in an emotional sense.

>and because it has been verified. //

That may be true for you but is essentially an appeal to authority. Most scientists claim to be falsificationists and the current agreed Scientific Method is one of Popperian falsification.

Your comment on cliffs belies an ignorance of epistemology - people didn't used to have a gravitational theory, as far as we know no animals have one, that doesn't mean you then jump off cliffs. One's beliefs about reality don't fundamentally change reality.