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

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 630 posts

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

#521

Post by b0rsuk »

SubuSS wrote: post #407
b0rsuk wrote: 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…

Obviously I'm not going to test this myself, but I think the consequences of saying bad things about past work environment are less if you're leaving an industry altogether for a different career anyway. Or if you're asked by someone random like a journalist, who's not considering hiring you or telling the next recruiter.

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

#522

Post by koonsolo »

roenxi wrote: post #479
koonsolo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. "Men are more honest and straightforward, women more jealous and backstabbing". Their words, not mine. But since the whole upheaval of women in workplaces that flowed to Europe from US, I have the feeling that this sentiment has changed.

That anecdote tells you precisely nothing; women who prefer working in all-female teams, etc, etc, have already been weeded out. Talking to people in the industry is sampling from a population of people who probably don't see a problem regardless of the actual situation.

It tells you that the men in the team weren't treating her like crap. And this is exactly what is always discussed, that being a lone woman in a group of men is toxic, discriminating, etc. The women I work with didn't have this issue.

Sure, I read some horror stories, mainly from US. But that doesn't mean that as a women you can't work pleasantly in an all male environment, as my experience clearly shows.

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

#523

Post by belorn »

foldr wrote: post #517
belorn wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. Most worlds armies are conscription, and even the US army had conscription during the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It culturally defines the military. > This perfectly illustrates my point. No it does not. Men as a group did not k…

>Most worlds armies are conscription, Yes, but so what? The gender requirement on front-line service has never been limited to conscription. >It not a privilege. This is a well-worn argument. When women wanted to vote and join the workplace, they also got told that these things were terrible burdens that they ought to be glad not to have to bear. Clearly, there are women who do want to join the military, just as ther…

> Until recently, the men in charge thought that they should not.

Not men as a group. Rich old men thought that poor young men, disproportionately African Americans, should be forced into the military.

In modern context we still have remnant views that military is a punishment. Popular culture often use the trope that troublesome boys who don't behave get sent to military school so the boy can redeem themselves in the eyes of society. The concept of military service as a punishment directed at young men is still well alive. One never see the idea of sending misbehaving girls to military school.

In Europe most nation still have conscription. The question has been whether women should be forced to serve in the military against their will. To pick a few examples, both Sweden and Norway think they should, and thus we have conscription there for both genders. As the advertisements says, everyone has equal responsibility to server their nation. The word "responsibility" is used here to make the conscription sound nicer but it no less forced.

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

#524

Post by b0rsuk »

softfalcon wrote: post #309
b0rsuk wrote: post #262

I think it's safe to say that board games are kinda STEM-related? I go to a local fantasy/SF club that's dominated by board gaming. There are lots of STEM students in there due to location, also plenty of programmers. And very few girls, and the only woman over 30 is mentally . No, there's no beer, no cigarettes, no posters with elves in g-strings, that sort of thing. It's almost as if girls and young women weren't r…

More than likely, the reason others avoid you is because once it became a distinct group huddled around a table nerding out about a technical board game, it became intimidating to join. Hell, I was raised playing D&D and other games, am male, have a computer science degree, and even I feel intimidated walking up to another table of gamers. The same thing applies in reverse when you're with your mates at a pub. You wa…

I think you jump to conclusions too easily. There are usually a few (2-3) groups that play similar kinds of games as me that do NOT contain me at the moment. If it was about me personally, I'd see women in the complimentary group, just not in mine. That is not the case. I usually play in any of the groups except one, which has people I personally don't like. We have a lot of table jumping and newcomers, in fact it's rare to have a match when no one needs to be introduced to the rules of the game. The nature of the club is also that we rarely play the same game twice in a row.

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

#526

Post by SenHeng »

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'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is.

I totally agree with you but I hate that you had to end with that line. It's pointless and simply shuts down any useful discussion and implies that 'you disagree/downvote with me because I'm right'.

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

#527

Post by throwaway8548 »

manfredo wrote: post #474
throwaway8548 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30% That's huge > If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology That's assuming social pressures are randomly distributed. But we don't observe 50/50 split between patriarchy and matriarchy. > Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of wom…

Whether or not a range of 30% is "huge" is a subjective judgement, but that's besides the point. The point is, there are zero observed instances of women forming the majority of a the technology workforce in any county. I'm not sure if it's even possible to put countries in a binary between patriarchy and matriarchy. Instead, the study presented put countries on a scale that measures overall gender equality. And what…

> Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?)

No... I mean the dictionary definition.

Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth.

I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means.

> And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries

Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears.

These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all.

> This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact.

But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages.

I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM.

Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies.

What do they have in common? They are not the West.

They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM.

That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy.

> I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies.

And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures.

There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall.

Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier.

If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case.

Correlation broken.

> not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another

That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.

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

#528

Post by colinb »

rumanator wrote: post #501
novok wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes from how software has become a financially lucrative profession in nice office environment with semi-flexible hours relatively recently. An overall attractive package with the corresponding political attention it gets as a result. While all the other things you mentioned other than maybe oil field work are not as financially lucrative.

> I think it comes from how software has become a financially lucrative profession in nice office environment with semi-flexible hours relatively recently. In short, the goal is to put people of a certain group in positions of power and influence.

People of a certain group are already in positions of power and influence. The goal is to ensure that people from all groups get a slice of the power and influence. Why would you (or anybody?) not want that?

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

#529

Post by rumanator »

colinb wrote: post #528
rumanator wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it comes from how software has become a financially lucrative profession in nice office environment with semi-flexible hours relatively recently. In short, the goal is to put people of a certain group in positions of power and influence.

People of a certain group are already in positions of power and influence. The goal is to ensure that people from all groups get a slice of the power and influence. Why would you (or anybody?) not want that?

No one expressed any opinion or judgement, so please don't impose your prejudice on others. The point is that the first step to fix a problem is to correctly identify it. If you misrepresent the problem them obviously you cannot succeed at fixing it.

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

#530

Post by thu2111 »

elliekelly wrote: post #498
oarabbus_ wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine and Law have made serious efforts to counter sexism? Like what? Law is essentially the definition of the "Old Boys Club" and as for Medicine... I used to work in the medical field for a while. Go ask any (female) surgical nurse about the supposed efforts to counter sexism in the OR. I don't believe your claim is true.

Woman lawyer from Wall Street here. That’s about as “Old Boys Club” as it gets. When I left law to pursue tech I figured it couldn’t possibly be as bad as what I was leaving behind. I was so wrong. Silicon Valley is infinitely more difficult to navigate and less welcoming. The major difference (in my opinion) is that the Old Boys Club owns it. They know they’re not welcoming to women and for the most part they don’t…

Given the rampant discrimination against men that exists in the modern tech sector and that even stating "maybe women naturally prefer to do other jobs than tech" gets you fired, what exactly do you have in mind that would make it even more welcoming?
Post reply on HN