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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

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Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#331

Post by corpMaverick »

jenthoven wrote: post #244

I’m a CS graduate and female founder. I disagree with many parts of this essay, but I actually agree with this part: “The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science“ I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisti…

> I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives

I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this.

My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#332

Post by fixermark »

rvo wrote: post #314
tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

> Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty. Seriously? Why does it even matter if women don't want to work in CS? Why do we software "engineers" have the ego to think that we work in some great occupation and it's a "travesty" that women largely don't have any interest in working sitting in front of a computer all day. We are glorified mechanics.…

Because software engineers consistently become involved in designing, clarifying, and solving the problems themselves, and companies consistently make mistakes that should be avoidable if that had more than zero women or minority staff working on the problem scope and definition.

See, for example, "HP doesn't care about black people," the ongoing trend of tech devices that are sized for men's bodies and hands and not women, social networks that fail to consider how a stalker could exploit their access policies, etc.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#333

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

davehtaylor wrote: post #312
so33 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny. All I hear about in my social circles is people complaining how PC everything is now. It seems like it’s rather PC to complain about political correctness.

And what I've found, is that a vast majority of people lamenting "PC culture" are people who are pissed off that they can't call other people niggers and faggots in everyday conversation. Replace the phrase "PC" with "common decency", because that's what it is. It's not a list of taboos that are designed to attack WASPs. It's just being a decent person and not being an asshole to everyone around you.

More directly, you're insinuating that those who lament PC culture are racists. Are you sure that's the position you want to take? It seems incredibly naive and unnecessarily divisive to propose such a thing.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#334

Post by graywh »

mdorazio wrote: post #315
dragonwriter wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In san-fran, sure That’s national data for the US, not local for SF.

That's the whole point. Median salary nationally is massively skewed for computer science because salaries in tech centers, where those jobs are clustered, is extremely high. The same is not true for nursing, which is distributed fairly uniformly across the country. For example, according to Glassdoor, a software dev in Chicago has an average salary of about 82k compared to about 120k for a nurse practitioner. Or if…

Becoming a nurse practitioner requires additional education and certification/licensing in addition to what's required for a registered nurse. It's not just a tenure/promotion thing like moving from junior developer to developer.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#335

Post by dominotw »

bloak wrote: post #199
donkeyd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never really paid attention to this, but now that you mention it, the Dutch company I work for has 4 female developers, 3 of which are Indian.

I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills, such as engineering or music, rather than law or advertising, say. Some of my engineer colleagues are very hard to understand on the phone because of their language. It's hard to imagine them getting anywhere as a lawyer, for example.

> I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills

Thats not correct theory. Visas (h1b) are only granted where there is perceived shortage like computer programmers ect.

An indian woman cannot come to "choose" to be an english teacher in usa.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#336

Post by tessierashpool »

scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

there’d be an uproar because it’s been extensively debunked and people keep saying it anyway.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#337

Post by dominotw »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #94

I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked…

Visas are overwhelmingly only granted to technical fields. So people who can immigrate to america are the ones in technical fields.

You won't see lots of indian students studying philosophy because once you are done you have to go back. Bad monetary investment.

Want a better life = study engineering. The explanation is as simple as that.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#338

Post by dnautics »

collyw wrote: post #150
traverseda wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most men I know are pretty heavily in favour of equality. That might change if we treat equality as a war against men, instead of something we all work towards. Adapting behavior is reasonable, but there's men also need to be able to have a voice, or you're going to get some major pushback. Hopefully we can keep this kind of war at a low simmer when trump is up for re-election. More specifically, that means making su…

"Equality" is the sticking point. Equality of opportunity (meritocracy) or equality of outcome (sounds like a nasty place where people are selected on things like race, or gender)?

How can you be 100% sure there's been equality of opportunity unless an equality if outcome metric has been satisfied?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#339

Post by JabavuAdams »

awinder wrote: post #110
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a…

You're not wrong, and yet ... as someone who would visibly be considered an african american, I have to watch what I say around my leftie friends. God forbid I should fail their intellectual purity tests. Fuck it!

I was at a club, and the first thing a brown woman said to me was "I had to get out of that room -- it was too white in there!". These bullies are just replacing one in-group with another. The root problem is tribalism and groupism, and only individuality, not a re-slicing of identities solves that.

Is this about revenge, or is it about equity?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#340

Post by cm2187 »

collyw wrote: post #145
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

"charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore" Maybe I am on the autistic spectrum, or ots teh fact I studied science but i thought that Damore's memo was fairly well written. First time I went through it he made a couple of points where I though to myself "that sounds controversial", but then in every case he had backed it up with some study validating it to some extent. It was certainly a lot better written…

I agree, his memo was a lot more reasonable than how it was depicted in the news (whether we agree with it or not). However I watched a couple of video interviews and concur on "charismatically challenged". For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9hh47dqeI
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