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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

#361

Post by soundwave106 »

naasking wrote: post #229
tptacek wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just gave me a sequence of data points that confirms my argument, claimed instead that it contradicts it, and then linked to a rambling SlateStarCodex post.

Not really, you claimed double digit differences, which is incorrect as shown by the data. You claimed widespread prejudice, which has no supporting evidence. And you may consider the article I linked to be rambling, but it's comprehensive.

The claim was that what was holding women back from CS was an artificial construct. "Prejudice" is a loaded word for that, in my opinion... in that it often seems to imply malice in what I see sometimes in society as a tribal-oriented congregation on proper "roles", and stereotypes that get associated with professions and cling onto them.

The "people / things" role postulate is interesting, it may explain some of the differences. But I don't think it holds up in all cases (50% of chemist bachelor degrees are female (https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom...) and chemistry really isn't a "people" oriented discipline IMHO).

In general culture, I do think some things get grouped into one sex or another based on pure marketing and image. The marketing style or image itself might play on certain characteristics of the sexes that are biological (for instance, men have more testosterone of course, so men will respond better to marketing and imagery that plays on testosterone oriented characteristics). But this might say nothing about the product itself.

For instance, I see nothing biological at all why in most Western societies, beer tends to be seen as a "masculine" drink and wine a "feminine" one. Rather, to me it seems to be pure marketing positioning at this time.

With CS, there may be some biological explanation which will produce a natural bias in the ratio. But there may also be a marketing / image / "role" component of CS that does depress the ratio as well. IMHO, the marketing / image part of this is always worth challenging.

And there is an ingrained stereotype with computer programmers: the popular image of someone into computers in Western media is, pretty much almost always, a socially awkward, non-athletic, nerdy male. (This stereotype honestly is actually honestly unfair to male programmers that aren't socially awkward or are athletic or aren't terribly nerdy.)

It would be interesting to examine the popular stereotypes and generalizations of programmers in other countries and see if sex ratios differ based on what the positioning is.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#362

Post by JabavuAdams »

weeelvil wrote: post #279
aws_ls wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways Not commenting on other points, but may be you are looking at it from an angle of an expert who has mastered it, so everything looks trivial. As, clearly its much more than that. It is like building extension for machines - the brains and the controls and also pure information management. That's why projects run into millions of lines of cod…

I agree with tptacek here. Based on just my experience (contractor then corporate programmer for the last decade), probably 99% of programming work out there in the world is mechanical rote that just involves reading comprehension and the ability to mechanically execute steps in some order. Calling this type of work complex only means someone fucked up somewhere. Certainly there are specializations that are pushing t…

I always find it interesting that game programmers have to be so much more technically skilled (well, until the age of game engine middle-ware) than full-stack CRUD jockeys, and yet are compensated much worse.

Science is fucking hard, and biology is fucking complicated. Trying to make this transition now, and ermahgerd I thought I dealt with complex system. Not!

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#363

Post by brighteyes »

mercutio2 wrote: post #293
vbtemp wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways. I'm so sorry to hear you've had an underwhelming career working on boring projects. There's so much more that's passed you by.

Please don’t make baseless ad hominem attacks. It wouldn’t matter if you were accurate, it would still be rude and inappropriate, but note that tptacek is about the last person in the world I would describe as having had an underwhelming career working on boring projects (although I’m sure he’s done his share of those, too), so you got your facts wrong on top of everything.

That makes it worse: if he's had a fascinating career (and sees it that way), but says that 99% of CS work is "just writing form fields" as he puts it then he's looking down on everyone else. I hope we can have more respect for each other in this industry.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#364

Post by door2 »

wrren wrote: post #354
novia wrote: post #192

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the thi…

I'm not sure what this has to do with the article; it doesn't make any judgements on women's suitability for careers in STEM. Where it does talk about ability, it points out that women are, on average, better at science and maths than men. I think the article is making a similar point to that of Damore's memo; the difference in representation may be explained by a difference in preference. That's not a value judgemen…

This is a narrative that you can only plausibly believe in if you’re a man surrounded by almost entirely men.

Sexism and harassment is rampant in this field, as well as any male dominated field.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#365

Post by cmrdporcupine »

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…

Datapoint in agreement: My sister left a very successful career as an electrical engineer in her late 20s after a very successful school career, because ultimately it became clear to her how antisocial the career was for her, and how personally unsatisfying it was. She made the transition to become a counsellor and was much happier as a result.

And I can understand why -- I did the opposite -- dropped out of my philosophy BA to go join the .com rush, and now 20 years later am a SWE @ Google -- but having come from a humanities background originally, I continue to find this culture off-putting.

And I very much would prefer to be working with 'living things' (plants) at this point in my life. If I could only make a decent living that way.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#366

Post by Consultant32452 »

kazagistar wrote: post #288
collyw wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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)?

Equality of opportunity a way of saying "fair treatment by some measures, unfair by others". You are picking which traits inequlaity should happen by and, huh, imagine that, they probably happen to be traits that overall benefit you. "Equality of opportunity" is a phrase I no longer trust, because it obfuscates the true differences in moral ideology. Just be explicit about which factors you think should create unequa…

I agree with you, but from the opposite direction. On its surface the idea of equality of outcome seems terrible. It will never be achieved without oppressive totalitarian intervention. So any measure of equality or progress which is predicated on the goal of equality of outcome is a non-starter for me.

The only discussion I'm willing to have is one in which we discuss a particular area of treatment or opportunity.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#367

Post by mixmastamyk »

dominotw wrote: post #337
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.

In Cal, 90% of the women I’ve worked with are south or east asian, and all locals.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#368

Post by door2 »

rvo wrote: post #321
novia wrote: post #192

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the thi…

There is the flip side too. I wouldn't want to be known as the diversity hire. I want to be judged on my work and my skills. Not on what chromosomes I carry or what my melenin level is. The more we keep framing things in the context of hiring to meet gender based quotas, the more people will see us as diversity hires. I would hate that more than knowing someone doesn't like me because of my gender because that person…

Maybe that’s the problem of sexist and racist white men who can’t believe that a woman or PoC could possibly be here based on merit and always treat them with suspicion. It’s not the fault of people trying to fix the problem.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#370

Post by mpweiher »

novia wrote: post #192

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the thi…

> [just completed] [wanted to study all my life]

Congrats!

> extremely distressing to me.

Why?

> just imagine [..] appears to an aspiring programmer

Hmm...how do you think it should appear? You hint (strongly), but you don't really say.

> none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men,

Yes. As in: not even a bit.

First, most of the talk is about preferences, not ability. Second, if anything it is about distributions that have large overlaps, with average ability being the same and with differences (in STEM), if anywhere, mostly in the width of the distribution (so males may have wider variance). Third, there is apparently one difference in ability, which then reflects itself in preference: women with high math scores tend to also have high verbal scores, whereas men with high math scores tend to only have high math scores, they are not good at the verbal bits. And statistically, people of either gender with high scores in both prefer going into non-STEM fields.

Fourth (going back to the second point): all of these are at most distributions. They say absolutely nothing about any individual. For example, I am a guy but despite the fact that I scored high in both math and verbal parts (and absolutely atrociously at the 3D mental rotation that supposedly explains a slight edge for guys in STEM), and was interested in (a) physics (b) english literature and linguistics (c) philosophy here I am as a programmer.

> but what I'm reading here is the subtext.

What is the subtext you're reading? Can you be specific?

What I see, text and subtext is an entire field defending itself from being smeared as sexist assholes with zero credible evidence of this being true and due almost entirely to choices other people make, choices that the people in this field have absolutely no influence over.

> [How will be perceived/respected etc.]

This will depend almost entirely on your individual circumstances, meaning most people will treat you with respect if you treat them with respect and behave respectably yourself. If you enter as a gender warrior, things might be different. Is this a 100% guarantee? Nope, nothing is. Assholes exist. In every industry.

If I told you the things that have happened to me in this industry, you probably wouldn't believe me, and if I claimed this happened to a woman, it would be seen as surefire proof of the systemic sexism in the industry. Except it happened to a guy, so whatever. And if shit happens to you, you probably want to assume it is because there are shitty people, not because of your gender.

A 2008 survey[1] by the ACM that actually interviewed both men and women didn't find significant differences in most parameters of job satisfaction, and in fact women reported slightly higher support by their superior than men did.

[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...

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