Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

thejournal.ie

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 310 posts

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#201

Post by mrchicity »

tptacek wrote: post #141

This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women make up something like 20% of the workforce. The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM throughout the western world for greater male participation than female, computer science is uniquely low ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for ge…

Are men more accepting of high risk, low QOL careers? You don't see many women on oil rigs or driving long-haul trucks, either, even though it can be quite lucrative relative to the skill level required.

Software jobs have little in the way of on the job training, "up or out" career progression/compensation, unstable employers, long hours/crunch times/getting called at night, management pressure and constantly changing goals, frequent skills turnover, age discrimination, abstract work without a concrete purpose, etc. etc.

Let's say someone with the mental acuity to become a Pediatrician can also become a reasonably decent Software Developer for some FANG. The expected value of the Pediatrician's annual earnings is $150k a year and the Software Developer's is $250k, but with much higher variance and personal stress.

Is it irrational to pick Med School instead? Maybe the question we should be asking is why men are stupid enough to flock to tech or other workaholic fields (big law, investment banking) in the first place.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#202

Post by gameswithgo »

tptacek wrote: post #141

This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women make up something like 20% of the workforce. The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM throughout the western world for greater male participation than female, computer science is uniquely low ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for ge…

>Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

How are you concluding that? It does not follow logically from anything you said before it.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#203

Post by mpweiher »

geofft wrote: post #128
jhall1468 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex. Well since these are claims you can undoubted produce data that all of these issues are significant across the entire field?

Sure, give me a research lab and some funding. I don't know that there have been many rigorous studies across all of STEM that measure this effect and give an answer one way or another. For tech in particular, see the Kapor Center's report: https://www.kaporcenter.org/tech-leavers/ (which, it should be noted, reports on people who have left tech: the percentages in that report should not be read as the fraction of pe…

For studies like these, it actually helps to look at the data rather than just skim the headlines/talkimg points, which tend to cherry pick to support the narrative.

For example, when "left due to unfair treatment" is unpacked by group, white women are the lowest percentage! (28% vs. 38% for white/asian men).

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#205

Post by briandear »

jacobsheehy wrote: post #127
OtterCoder wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point that a satisfied person has little incentive for activism. Also, most conservative opinions tend to be met with anything from disgust to derision online, further disincentivizing counter-protest.

> You miss the point that a satisfied person has little incentive for activism. This is interesting - what do you mean by this? I'm not sure what you mean in this context, but in an overall, general sense I strongly disagree. Certainly there is significant incentive for activism from a satisfied person. A person may be satisfied but that does not mean that there is not room for improvement or change. Satisfaction is…

> Everyone is incentivized by it because everyone can benefit immensely from change, even the ultra-rich.

Not everyone. And, some people don't feel like they need charge. Some people are actually happy with their life, career and situation.

> even the ultra-rich.

What does the ultra-rich have to do with anything? You've kind of jumped the shark there.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#206

Post by ec109685 »

purple-again wrote: post #108
reitanqild wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries. What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for the very important work they actually do, first? Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software engineering? Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me…

Because that’s how capitalism works. Money follows value generated to society not individual perceived value. A teacher at maximum capacity can only deliver a tiny tiny fraction of the value that a software developer can. 100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well say.

Valueable in what sense? Are what most programmers programming intrinsically valuable?

If that teacher was a difference maker for 100k people, that seems very valuable.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#207

Post by joshuamorton »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #169
joshuamorton wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know at what age they checked that? I've seen prior research that suggests that the disinterest in stem appears in middle or high school, and isn't statistically significant before then. This would heavily imply some level of social conditioning to be the cause for disinterest.

What people say they like is one thing, but observing proclivities is another. In elementary schools, boys score higher in math and girls score higher in reading comprehension.

A cursory look suggests that math aptitude starts at parity or near parity and grows over time, which doesn't necessarily disagree with either of us.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#208

Post by rayiner »

aspaceman wrote: post #56
nicolashahn wrote: post #9

I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing criteria for choosing careers, and artificially forcing the distributions towards the middle might do more harm than good.

As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this argument. It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand. Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they a…

It’s simple: Get it to 50/50 using affirmative measures, and then see if that ratio sticks.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#209

Post by aspaceman »

hyperdunc wrote: post #197
aspaceman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article never claims that areas of high gender equality do not have these negative forces. In fact, my main issue with this article is how it defines "gender equality". > If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem. I never made any such claim - you have twisted my words in order to make me appear irrational and prejudiced. I claim t…

If a woman is going to be put off participating in tech because she feels unwelcome then she probably isn't that interested in tech to begin with. If people do what they love they will be driven to overcome barriers, perceived and real.

This is a horribly un-empathetic position to take that ignores most women's testimonials. Reading the accounts of women in tech who have been forced out would not lead me to believe that they just aren't that interested. They are systematically encouraged to get out, and do something else with their lives.

Being so skeptical of these opinions because they're in the minority, rather than evaluating their actual merit is horribly toxic.

Also this is just a damn job. You don't have to love it completely to want to do it. I sure as hell don't love programming wholeheartedly but I still do it as a career—I'm one of those folks who doesn't do side projects when they get off the clock.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#210

Post by rayiner »

lulmerchant wrote: post #124
geofft wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/mea... , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disres…

Of course it does. Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries. The data overwhelmingly shows that when you give men and women equal opportunities and the freedom to make their own choices, that men and women, on average, make different choices. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and their…

The study doesn’t say anything about feminism being ingrained in those cultures.
Post reply on HN