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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

#431

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

fastball wrote: post #163
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…

Do you not think this could be because immigrants are looking for economic prosperity and have fewer connections? For example, a British woman that graduates from a British university with a history degree and wants to work in the UK probably met a couple people during the course of her degree (or at any other point) that can help her move forward with a career. Because let's face it, you're not going to get a high-p…

It's an explanation but not a very simple one. It requires the immigrant to have chosen a career while in their country that would offer them more prospects once they emigrated. But then, why immigate instead of choosing a career that would be profitable and respectable in their country in the first place?

I think a simpler explanation is that people choose a career in their countries for whatever reason (that I don't know and can't speculate about) then when demand for their skills rises, they may find that emigrating is a better choice than staying at home- for instance, because salaries are better abroad.

That would be a simpler explanation for why more women in IT professions are immigrants to the UK (and possibly the US, though I'm not sure): they got the skills, there's job offers, they go abroad and take the offers.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#432

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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.

In the UK, a large number of doctors and medical staff are foreign, particularly Indian or EU citizens. For Indians I'm guessing English is not a problem because they learn it at school, especially the ones from the poshest backgrounds. EU citizens will have similar command of English. For those who have studied in British institutions, foreign language courses are mandatory if they can't prove a level of English that allows them to participate in the courses.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#433

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

MistahKoala wrote: post #398
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mention is also referred to in the article itself, and it does make sense - true emancipation and gender equality is IMO more about equal opportunity, and the freedom to choose. The push towards getting more women in STEM and specifically CS feels like it tries to take that freedom away in a sense; you SHOULD pick CS, here's all the money we're investing in getting women to work for us.

> What you mention is also referred to in the article itself Admittedly, I'm yet to read it (Pocketed it for later). I assume I agree with your sentiment about what equality means and what its relationships with freedom and liberty are - it's just not something that can easily be said in the open without running the risk of having to defend it or attracting pariah status. I don't really want to say much more on the m…

>> Admittedly, I'm yet to read it (Pocketed it for later).

Tut tut. You should always read the article before commenting, the manual before turning it on and the contract before signing it.

But, you know- no pressure :P

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#434

Post by mdorazio »

dragonwriter wrote: post #388
mdorazio wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Becoming a Nurse Practitioner requires, at a minimum, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, followed by licensure as an RN, followed by a Master's in a NP specialty, followed by certification as an NP. Practically, it requires more because most NP programs require practice a…

Thanks for the additional information. What about RNs vs. junior devs, which you completely ignored? As far as I know, that profession requires only a bachelor's degree.

I'm also trying to figure out what your point in the third paragraph is, exactly. If NPs are geographically distributed roughly equally and software developers are not, you would see exactly that median salary distribution. Again, that's the whole point - if you look only at national medians or averages, you're completely ignoring the effects of regional outliers. Take away SF, Seattle, NYC, and Austin, and then tell me what the median software dev salary looks like nationally. If you can't do that, look at non-tech cities and countries for an indicator of what unskewed salary comparisons look like between professions.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#435

Post by Raphmedia »

mpweiher wrote: post #389
Raphmedia wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was under the impression that this was a rhetorical question. Of course she doesn't want the community to censor itself. She is describing how such discussions are distressing to women (and not merely to herself, as you seem to state). She gives the example of an aspiring programmer stumbling on HN, noticing all the subtle sexism and giving up STEM. Which is precisely the issue that we should be debating. In…

> while the actual debate should be "what is it in our communities that is driving women away? Why? Women aren't, on the whole, passively "driven away". They actively choose other careers that interest them more. Or why is it that men are "driven away" from veterinary science and early childhood education, while women choose not to go into computer science and mechanical engineering? I find this the most distressing…

You are missing the point.

Novia (the OP of this comments thread) already started a career in STEM and "wanted to study math [her] whole life".

With those two facts, she should be the perfect candidate. However, she is still feeling pushed away.

She actively chose STEM and is put in such situations that she has to (as you recommended yourself) block out entire topics simply to avoid reading distressful and distasteful comments.

It wouldn't be too bad if our community only acted like that online and in specific threads. But that isn't the case.

Male "elitism" and subtle sexism is present in the day to day life of female developers.

Imagine how tiring it would be if wherever you went, people singled you out because you were nerdy or geeky. You wouldn't want to keep working in that field at all.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#436

Post by jeffreyrogers »

pron wrote: post #429
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in the finance industry and the tech industry, both industries where women are underrepresented. These industries would love to employ more women. When I worked in finance the recruiters spent a ton of effort trying to get women to apply, but they couldn't get anywhere close to 50/50 in terms of number of applicants. Maybe women (on average, not outliers obviously) value other things more than power? At l…

But the whole point of almost every kind activism is to change what has so far been called the traditional way of life -- from the struggle of the plebeians and patricians in ancient Rome, through the French Revolution and abolition to women's suffrage and desegregation (and even, you could say, that of vegetarians) -- because the traditional way of life distributes power unequally (that's an objective fact) and unfa…

> The real argument is this: do you think that women should (meaning that it is our priority as a society to make that happen, and that means changing things) have equal power or not?

I'm not sure what equal power means, nor what changes would help bring that about.

By the way, I don't think people who want to change the current distribution of power are "obsessed", but it's hard for me to know what a fair distribution of power looks like. It's also likely that due to unfair distribution of personality traits among the population that a fair distribution of power is unlikely in practice unless enforced on society.

I also think women and men have different values and priorities in life, in part due to women's fertility declining sooner than men's. It's hard to have a high-status job and it's extremely hard to care for young children while doing a high-status job.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#437

Post by Raphmedia »

bluthru wrote: post #348
corpMaverick wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lat…

>Women are socially smarter What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man. Women also have a reputation of being more adversarial and catty: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-...

Socially smarter doesn't mean better social skills.

It simply means that they are more socially aware. If you allow the metaphor, I would say that they are more likely to "play the game" and "play it well" at that.

Social skills have very little relationship to "emotional intelligence", so I have no clue why you would bring up the point that women are more willing to talk about their feelings.

You are comparing extraversion and agreeableness. While both are statistically higher in women, you are comparing apples and oranges.

Here, have some science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#438

Post by psyc »

itsmenotyou wrote: post #378
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…

I think the idea that people are being silenced from discussing the issue honestly is totally disingenuous. I see far more posts from people on HN about not being able to discuss the issue than I do posts actually trying to discuss the issue. I don't think I've ever seen people shut down for expressing reasonable if contentious opinions, yet somehow everyone has this idea that there can't be a reasonable discussion a…

You seem to be saying it's not a big problem on Hacker News. I would agree with that. Most people, including you and I, post pseudonymously here. Many people create throwaway accounts in order to post anything political. Furthermore, social justice people consider Hacker News to be the preeminent example of toxic-masculine tech.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#439

Post by commandlinefan »

megaman22 wrote: post #235
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…

Seriously. I regret that I only have one upvote to give. Things that we here take for granted are nigh impossible, or look like magic to 90% of the population. Even among the subset of people that are employed as software engineers, it can be sobering to realize how many of them struggle and flail at "just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways."

Well, I certainly hope so.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#440

Post by oh_sigh »

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.

How did you find this out? When people complained about PC, did you ask them 'Are you really upset that you can't call people niggers and faggots any more?'
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