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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

#491

Post by cousin_it »

edna314 wrote: post #129
tscs37 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. Of course, for Equality of Chance to be properly implemented you need to do away with as many barriers to it as possible but you should be willing to accept that no matter what you do, there won't be a perfect 50/50. From all evidence we have, there is strong evidence that male and fem…

> Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. More desirable to whom? To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance. Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal? > I wo…

> To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance.

That's not true. Yes, equality of outcome would give disadvantaged people more money to buy bread. The mistake is assuming that the price of bread would stay the same.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#492

Post by teddyh »

icefox wrote: post #454
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…

> My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. A colleague told me when out at a bar he refrains from telling women that he is a programmer because they suddenly become way more interested because they know how much $$$ programming jobs bring in. That does not sound like low social status signalling to me, but the opposite at least for males.

Having a high income gives a high status to men, but not to women. Women are not at all judged by their income like men are. Therefore, the fact that programmers make money attracts men to being programmers, but does not attract women.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#493

Post by JabavuAdams »

antisthenes wrote: post #486
JabavuAdams wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's something to the communication angle... Part of why I like computers is that I can spend my day not talking to these fucking apes that infest this planet -- present company excluded, of course. I say this as someone who's not a social moron, who's recognized as an excellent teacher, and who's actually interested in team-dynamics and debugging miscommunication. If I'd wanted to be a social worker -- I…

> As I got to know them, the data scientist confessed that she didn't really like the math and wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't so lucrative. Your expectations are pretty high if realizing this led you to be disappointed. Not expectations of your SO in particular, but in general about people. I think this is inherent to most people - they generally don't enjoy the job they do, but they do it still to pay the bills a…

I should clarify. I know what you mean. This isn't a value judgement on them. More that it would be awesome to have a life partner who could teach me biochemistry, or machine learning, or physics that I don't know already.

EDIT> But also, I generally don't do any job whose subject matter I don't enjoy. I'm different in this way, from most people. The concept of doing something that I don't like is very foreign to me, with all the positives and also negatives that entails.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#494

Post by kirillkh »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #420
zxxon wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, programmers are generally less socially inept than people would think, while people in most other professions are less socially adept than they think they are. The thing is, some programmers really are socially inept and CS work is one of their last refuges. That includes a bunch of socially inept women, too! Let's not disturb their natural habitat by bringing all these overly social people in, thos…

Software development is an increasingly social job NOT because the people doing it are more social, but out of necessity. Anti-social cowboy programmers just can't produce the results the industry needs at this point it in time. Stories of success like Notch are increasingly rare.

From my experience as a programmer, while some level of communication is certainly important, most of my time and effort is spent concentrating alone at the task at hand. That's the central part of the job, communication only supports it. Communication is necessary to divide work across the team and exchange experience; it also provides some psychological relief and motivation. While all of these are important, I consider the concentrated mental effort a far more important and difficult part.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#495

Post by tptacek »

collyw wrote: post #302
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty. Or just natural. I mean there's gender imbalance in most careers, as is also mentioned in that article; there's just less attention being paid to e.g. the gender difference in day cares (which is in part due to people's preferences in lines of work, but in that particular area a very clear case of gender…

yes, does the OP feel the same about the percentage of males females in jail?

At this point I can't tell what you're trying to pin me to, but just to be clear: no, I do not think there is an innate difference between men and women that is the cause of male mass incarceration. I believe there are profound cultural forces that create that result.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#496

Post by bluthru »

door2 wrote: post #477
bluthru wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Describing a gender with a negative adjective is never ok? Is it wrong to call men "clueless"?

It’s not the same. If women and men held totally equal power in society, it would be the same, but they don’t. Attacking women in tech as a group is punching down, attacking men (at least for their rampant horrible and sexist behavior) is punching up. In terms of gender relations, men are absolutely, in general, and especially in tech, totally clueless.

Saying that you can't criticize a group because of its amount of power in a society is a completely arbitrary rule that is easily disregarded. You will never be able to shame people into following that nonsense.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#497

Post by tptacek »

qwr23qwer wrote: post #183
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…

Maybe women just see CS for what it is - 'simly not that hard, wiring form fields to databases', and think, let others tap away at the keyboards, I'll be a surgeon or whatever. So, if that were the case, would you say that it's fair to now force these would be neuro surgeons, doctors, lawyers, microbiologists, etc.. to 'wire fields to databases', because in 2018 some people believe that has a somewhat high status in…

This begs the question.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#498

Post by tptacek »

aje403 wrote: post #268
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…

"One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed in than the computer software industry." All other points aside, this is simply an untrue statement - the lofty heights of the average software engineer at Alphabet is not even fractionally close to the pinnacle of "intellectual difficulty" in our professional field.

The Damore memo wasn't talking about Laszlo Babai's graph isomorphism work, or deep reinforcement learning.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#499

Post by tptacek »

notlob wrote: post #270
tptacek wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that there's nothing touchy-feely about biochem, which is chem except you take orgo almost immediately. But the prefix "bio" in it allows them to dismiss it.

This is a misstatement of what the biochemistry coursework I am familiar with looks like. Biochem, when offered as an undergrad program, is offered through the biology department and has a number of standard biology department requirements that would be elective at best for chemistry undergrads. Biochem majors also take orgo following gen chem, just like chemistry majors. I don’t know what “touchy-feely” means in thi…

My son is in UIUC's biochem program. It's offered through the Chemistry department, has him in orgo next semester, and has a first year shared with chemical engineers.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#500

Post by tptacek »

signal11 wrote: post #236
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…

Is there any regional variation? e.g. are there more women in CS depts and industry in Asia than in the US? How about Europe?

My sibling comment attempts to make lemonade out of the problematic fact that there are in fact huge gender parity differences worldwide, with for instance massively improved gender parity in Asia. I'd say that fact pretty thoroughly acidulates the article's assertion about correlation with cultural gender norms.
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