The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by hiram112 » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #145

Reedx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask women and you'll find that most aren't interested in programming a computer all day. Which one could argue is a sane choice. If anything it's more sane. Stop trying to make them feel like something is wrong if they don't have this inclination. Males and females have different preferences on average, some as early as birth[1]. This is not a bad thing. For the ones that want to program all day, obviously they shoul…

> Males and females have different preferences on average, and do from birth[1]. This is not a bad thing. Sure, but it seems more than a little convenient that the male-chosen professions seem to generally pay significantly more, on average, than the female-chosen ones. Haven't there been studies that showed that women moving into a profession was actually associated with pay dropping?

> Sure, but it seems more than a little convenient that the male-chosen professions seem to generally pay significantly more, on average, than the female-chosen ones.

They don't. Most men have to work in order to earn money and attract a partner. You think all of us love sitting in open offices, following our Scrum Master? Of course not, we just don't have the luxury, as do women, to follow our 'passions' in lower paying jobs. We can't marry a breadwinner too easily. We don't receive subsidies from the state, unlike women who are a net tax loss. We aren't able to attract a mate simply by being young, as can women, due to biological differences between genders.

In Scandinavia, where salaries are progressively taxed and women have tons of opportunity to do what they want, women still choose not to sit in front of computers all day. Why the hell would they if everyone's salary is essentially equalized, regardless of whether you're a part-time teacher, social worker or a talented computer engineer working 60/hours a week. All salaries are taxed down to a median $75K / year, with the same health insurance, subsidized parental leave, etc.

Thus, Scandinavian women follow their 'passions' which is what most Western women do, as we see from their choices in college majors, all of which are unarguably 'easier' but pay less. If society were to equalize my salary at $75K year whether I coded all day or worked for a charity or NGO or a music teacher or artist or actor, I'd dump my programming job as fast as I could.

Look at India or China where far more women are into computers - they don't have the luxury of following their passion in dance or writing, because they don't have as much PRIVILEGE in their societies as do women in the West.

* http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students...

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

#452

Post by jancsika » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

aantix wrote: post #339

whack wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this pervasive opinion that women are leaving STEM fields because of toxic behavior feels more sexist to me than anything else I don't think it is sexist at all to claim that some people would not want to be in a field because of its hostile work environment. I sure wouldn't. Factually debatable? Sure. But sexist? > It might sound harsh, but I don't feel terribly concerned about keeping these displaced women in STE…

To further complicate the matter, the idea of a "bad" environment is relative. I've been on many all-male programming teams. Played football in high school. From my experiences, those men tend to make fun of, poke, prod, and occasionally fight their way to agreement. Comments were very direct. Abrasive at times. But usually got straight to the point. I don't think I ever thought of any of it as needing "fixing". Quit…

> To further complicate the matter, the idea of a "bad" environment is relative.

I see no relativism here.

As a description of your past experiences it was ostensibly a productive, functioning environment where every single member of every single group was comfortable communicating in that style.

As a general prescription for the most productive behavior for groups it's a poor model. As you point out, adding a single member with a different disposition can quickly turn the thing into a toxic environment.

Also, that model suffers from the same issue FLOSS projects do-- namely, it's hard to get any numbers at all on how many people never join up because the communication style isn't welcoming to outsiders.

Anyhow, if you posted this on Twitter I'm sure your description would quickly become transformed into an ostensible prescription by its algorithm as it got distributed for maximum outrage. But that's a problem with anti-human digital platforms, not a sign of ambiguity in what constitutes a productive work environment.

Edit: clarification

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

#453

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #314

mixmastamyk wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know enough to form a useful judgement. But, taking your description at face value, it sounds like the employee needs to simply be let go.

I am not seeking judgement. Or asking that people believe me. That has no value to me. It was an example of my reality. It’s an example of how I don’t have this added aggression and hassle if I worked with an all female team. Things just get done quicker if I work in all women team. It’s like we have a hive mind.

I don't know... I've met women very difficult to work with over the years. Men too.

I've heard some folks have difficulty working with one gender in particular, usually due to personality conflicts of some sort.

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

#454

Post by Doingmything123 » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #356

Doingmything123 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Martin talks about how in the 60's and 70's women made up a large amount of the worlds programmers. It would seem somewhere along the way we found ways to significantly reduce the number of women entering the profession. I would argue that any biological reasons have little to no influence compared to social factors. If we accept this alternative theory, then the solution is to change the social culture around…

> Robert Martin talks about how in the 60's and 70's women made up a large amount of the worlds programmers. It would seem somewhere along the way we found ways to significantly reduce the number of women entering the profession. I would argue that any biological reasons have little to no influence compared to social factors. If we accept this alternative theory, then the solution is to change the social culture arou…

I am going to assume that the ~35% number that you are giving without context is the number quoted for peak female representation in earning cs degrees in the 80's. If I am wrong, please correct me. This is much later then I was thinking. I could not find numbers but everything that I have found says that at least a majority of programmers were women in before the early 70's. One of the questions I think is important is why were cs degrees so male dominated in something that was previously a female dominated field?

I am going to take your point about a reduction in sexism in other fields at face value since it seems you are more read up on that than I am. I'm not sure if this is a rebuttal to my argument though. A reduction in sexism in other fields would in fact complement an increase in sexism in computer science. I'm not sure if it is possible to distinguish the effects of each, especially if they compound on top of each other. It might be a little ironic to choose trial lawyers as an example since I don't think they have that much better of a percentage. I would also like to point out that your conclusion of "field of their choice", in my eyes, is heavily influenced by social factors.

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

#455

Post by remarkEon » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #320

zarkov99 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people who are not part of the culture war, which I believe is most people, would be perfectly fine with this disparity.

Speculate as you please. This is an extremely obscure issue, and I suspect that very few people have a strong opinion on it. (If I'm wrong about this, it should be easy to point to a counterexample.)

It is an extremely obscure issue because the vast majority consider women signing up for the draft to be ludicrous, and dismiss the conversation thereafter.

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

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Post by jakelazaroff » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #134

jakelazaroff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. We know from history that a much larger percentage of programmers in the US were women before it became a lucrative career. > Between 30 and 50 percent of programmers were women in the 1950s, and it was seen as a natural career for them, as evidenced by a 1967 Cosmopolitan feature about “Computer Girls.” [1] [1] https://timeline.com/women-pioneered-computer-programming-th...

In the 1950s male culture saw computer as a boring career worth of only women. Note literally computer, sitting down with a piece of paper and calculating some figure by hand - a human spreadsheet if it were. Computer morphed into computer programmer with the advent of electronic computers, and soon afterwards men got involved. Feminists made big advances at the same time and so it is hard to separate which factor (o…

That’s my point. When the dominant cultural view of programming was that it was a boring career for women, women flourished as programmers. It’s strong evidence that the current overrepresentation of men is because of cultural norms, not inherent capabilities.

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

#457

Post by tomp » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #433

banads wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you believe there can be any relation between female infants preference towards faces and female adults preference towards occupations with more face to face, people oriented interactions?

I don't, but I also don't care to debate it, and don't need to, because, once again, face-to-face interactions are also extremely common in professional software development.

You’ve a skewed perception of “extremely common”. There are many jobs where pretty much the entire job is dealing with people - doctor, lawyer, clerk, marketer, teacher, ... in contrast, programmers can get a lot of stuff done (except coordination) just with computers.

And some of us like it that way.

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

#458

Post by smadurange » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #425

lgleason wrote: post #130

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…

I don't understand why modern society doesn't understand/want to believe that men and women have different career interests than men. Men and women value things differently, and it's not all because of society.

There's a whole lot of people who have studied fields that are irrelevant to today's industry needs and have ended up with no real marketable skill. Various forms of activist movements have money in it.

Modern developed societies have solved most of the serious, basic problems making it easier for a group of people to capitalise on solving more lofty problems. I have seen someone who did a degree in communication studies or something like that going after video games for sexism and raise millions for the cause.

This trend will probably continue until we have more serious things to worry about. This is very eloquently described in "Fate of empires" by Sir John Glubbs.

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

#459

Post by m0zg » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

throwaway8548 wrote: post #398

m0zg wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women have unrealistic expectations sometimes. Elsewhere in this comment section someone (you?) mentioned that men are "unaccommodating" to women. But men _are_ in fact more accommodating to women nowadays than to _other men_. How do we know this? _Because men told us_! You're asking for special treatment and you don't even realize it.

> But men _are_ in fact more accommodating to women nowadays than to _other men_ This is not about generic workplace disagreements. Yes, those happen all the time. > How do we know this? _Because men told us_! I know that's tongue in cheek and only half serious but I'll reply anyway. Even if 99% of men are more accommodating, that 1% would still make employment unbearable. After 10 years you probably met a few dozen…

It's not "workplace disagreements". In the workplace you're generally competing against other people, including men. But that doesn't mean that men don't compete against each other. I never got a break/accommodation from anybody just because there's some mythical network of "men" in the workplace that makes things easier for men. I quite routinely see women get a break where a man would not nowadays, however. Yes, 1% of your coworkers will be assholes, but guess what, they're assholes regardless of gender of the receiver, perhaps even more so towards men because man-on-man assholeism is more socially acceptable.

To give a few examples of preferential treatment for which I have first-hand information:

- a hiring committee at Google is officially more likely to rule in favor of hiring a female in "borderline" cases; men go straight down the shitter in that case. Promo committees similarly treat women more favorably.

- at Microsoft a hiring manager can't hire a male candidate, especially, god forbid, a _white_ male candidate, unless they filled their diversity quota, without first obtaining an exception from their VP (which very few people bother to do). This is extremely frustrating to them, because MS gets FANG rejects as it is.

I suspect similar policies exist at other tech companies as well. This is special treatment already. This is "accommodation" to the fullest extent.

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

#460

Post by kleer001 » Fri, Dec 13, 2019, 1:45 AM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #110

kleer001 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tl;dr: Ask Women. This would be an amazing survey. I look forward to its publishing. I wouldn't be surprised if someone is doing it as we speak. It shouldn't be too hard or cost that much. Though, I do have to say, your sample of one is not sufficiently convincing to me.

I don’t know how such a survey could control for projection, though. I remember reading Susan Fowler’s “blog post that was heard around the world” that ended up taking down Uber’s CEO (and nearly Uber itself) and being surprised how little of it had anything to do with being a woman - most of the frustrations she expressed were things that I’ve been frustrated by, too. It seems to me that she just experienced what ev…

Hmmm, I wouldn't think that it would be a fact finding mission, but a plain old survey of opinion.