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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#401
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not imply this, because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant.

> because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant Relative to what? IT remains less sexist relative to doctors and lawyers, so...

What's your basis for saying that?

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#402
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not imply this, because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant.

I mean, that doctors and lawyers were substantially less sexist compared to engineers in the 60's and 70's also strikes me as less than plausible, though I'll grant that'd be a closer competition than comparing them to engineers now. Do you have any evidence of an advantage there?

I am talking about relative levels of sexism in the present, not in the 60s and 70s.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#403
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women That's a bit of circular reasoning though. - Look how men and women behave differently! - But why do they behave differently? - Because they're different. - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently. It's not logically consistent and doesn't answer anythin…

The opposite claim - that men and women are equal has the same problem. As far as I can tell we don't know how men and women are different other than a few physical factors related to breeding or hormones. Worse it is a controversial subject that you probably shouldn't study because when your results are other than what someone wants to believe true they will make your life difficult. Either you find a difference or…

I would probably believe that if we weren't talking about software.

But software is, what, less than a century old? What possible evolutionary differences could have risen in that time frame?

I mean, the number zero is very unintuitive and the ancient Romans/greeks/chinese/whatever didn't discover it, despite the fact all evidence shows they were very smart in many things.

Yet you want me to believe that men understand that arrays are zero based better than women.

Apply that to any software principle.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's about equal rights, equal treatment, it does not mean that men and women are the same, it's not a mathematical equality. Sure, perhaps in theory. In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women are immediately blamed on discrimination and the like. There is an implicit assumption that men and women a…

You're not actually supporting your claims, just asking us to share your assumption that "psychological and physiological differences" makes more sense than "discrimination". Look: all you have to do is swap the two explanations and it functions just as strongly as an argument against. > In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by [discrimination] are immediately bla…

There's a wealth of information available regarding differences in men and women. The answer is all around you and affects every interaction you have with the opposite sex.

1.Brain scans showing differences in structure and/or function, used to identify transgenderism

2. Physical sexual dimorphism, which through a lifetime of social interaction can lead to different average behaviors (like growing up being stronger/weaker than 50% of the population)

3. Different concentrations of and responses to behavior altering hormones (testosterone/estrogen in particular)

4. Millions of years of evolutionary specialization through sexual dimorphism

5. Consistent differences in performance on various psychological aptitude tests (e.g. men and women have different average scores in spatial reasoning tests)

This is only a partial list, and I won't put the effort into citing any of this but it's all a Google search away, if you're willing to accept the unpopular but, IMO, glaringly obvious opinion and actually look for it. Of course there is also a well established bias in academia and the subject is sort of off limits, except in the case of transgender studies.

At the very least one shouldn't be so quick to immediately scream discrimination when there are so many alternative explanations rooted in genetics.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-t... > In four studies, Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men. The effect held whether they saw the negotiation on video or read about it on paper, whether they viewed it from a disinterested third-party perspective or imagined themselves as sen…

Rubbish "study". Nothing in there is based on reality, but people put in a test environment and asked to try and behave how they would in the real world. Reading written accounts of people asking for a pay rise and deciding what to do? How does that in any way mirror an face to face interaction? All 4 experiments are either on paper, or using video recordings. No statistics, very few people. Just another "gender gap" study that the media can cite to push the narrative.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a bit of circular reasoning though. > - Look how men and women behave differently! > - But why do they behave differently? > - Because they're different. > - How do you know that? > - Because differences are observed at birth, are relatively consistent across countries with vastly different cultures, and the differences in behavior are observed even when raising children in a controlled environment free of g…

> Because differences are observed at birth, are relatively consistent across countries with vastly different cultures, I mean the article literally says different countries/cultures see vastly different results.

This is in reference to gender differences like extraversion, and make newborns dedicating more attention to things and female newborns dedicating more attention to people.

As far as this post's article, the rates are not vastly different results, most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30%. If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology. That is not the case, all countries have majority male tech workforces, and they're mostly in the 15-35% range with some outliers on both ends.

Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of women in tech. Countries with some of the strictest gender roles like south Korea and Algeria see the highest rates of women in tech.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#407
post #283

I know it's not a popular opinion, but consider a company analogy. People who leave because they're not competent have a tendency to badmouth the company. I'm not saying all of them do, and all that badmouth were incompetent. But there is a tendency to rationalize and lash out. What if women were calling those environments toxic because they had a hard time doing well in there? There are absolutely toxic, hermetic, u…

Let's say you bring up an issue about a bug in software you're working on. Let's also say you didn't cause it. But the moment you talk about it, I respond, 'didn't the code you wrote yesterday have a bug?', 'isn't this code base from a reputed oss repo?' and so on.

Essentially my exact words don't mean that this is also your bug, but there is an (un)intended implication that you're a crappy developer. You're probably gonna latch on to that at the speed of light rather than giving a Data like logical response. That's the problem with bringing up such alternatives.

It alludes that women or minority will right away fall back to their gender or whatever when convenient. It also alludes that they don't know the weight of one such allegation, they aren't thinking about the effect it is going to have on their future employment opportunities (It so happens this kind of allegations true or not seriously affect your career, everyone starts to tiptoe around you at the least in your new job) - essentially attributes a lack of integrity and foresight.

IOW - I do agree that there is a very interesting question around what do we do about incompetent employees who happen to be a minority. I also know this line of responses are probably not going to be productive :)

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#408
post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they were once just as stereotypically male as tech is now, and yet have radically shifted their gender balance. You say this as if the fields themselves decided, but it could just as easily be that women pushed in harder. > Fifty years ago people would no doubt have told you that women just weren't interested in becoming lawyers or doctors. Again, what was the difference? You've suggested a relative difference…

I think you are reading a lot into my comment that isn't there. I don't know exactly why women fifty years ago made the decisions that they did. You don't, either.

You're being vague and deflecting here. In one comment you suggest that the cause is law and medicine being relatively less sexist, and here you just say, "well, we don't know why they did what they did." Well, which is it? What basis do you have for your earlier point?

> You don't, either.

Why would you even say this? The comment you responded to didn't have me asserting a reason why. It's like you're attacking a strawman.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#410
post #318

It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always) because of different interests. Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in. And that is before you get into interests vs natural talent and how that does or does not affect ones success in a field. On a fundamental l…

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument... I think its a lot more complicated than this. Yes, men and women can be jerks. The bigger issues seem to be when a team is 80%+ one gender or another, and the issues aren't about "being mean" the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs. A huge problem is that we have a lot of 6 person tech teams with…

> the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs.

I do not think that is the problem of 80%+ one gender groups.

Imagine going into a store and see that 80%+ is the opposite gender. Before anyone has a chance of accommodating your need, what emotions pops up? Now compared that to going into the same store with the 80%+ being your own gender.

Going into an environment where you feel like a part of a dominating group give most people a feeling of security. They feel safe and what ever choice everyone else does is a safe choice to adapt. Entering a group where you are a minority has not just the absence of that, but can also induce a sense of insecurity.

This is one theory why countries like Sweden have a very extreme gender segregation of around 90% of men and 90% of women working in a gender segregated profession. From student to senior employee, every step is impacted in how secure the person feel in continuing with their career path, and the above effect influence how leaky the pipe get.

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