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

581–590 of 630 posts

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

#581

Post by DuskStar »

throwaway8548 wrote: post #403
bluGill wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 understa…

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

But guns are, what, less than a millennia old? What possible evolutionary differences could have arisen in that time frame? No way that women and men would perform differently in competitive shooting [0], right? And as it turns out, men shoot faster, women shoot more accurately.

There's all sorts of things that have only existed for a century or two where men and women perform differently. Adaptation for one task often has effects on similar tasks, after all.

This doesn't mean men are better than women at CS! But "this field didn't exist a century ago" isn't sufficient reason to assert no differences can exist.

0: http://www.realbiathlon.com/2011/11/who-shoots-better-men-or...

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

#582

Post by tstrimple »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #246
jimbokun wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are women better represented in those roles?

Anecdotally, it seems like it at least for developer evangelist. But I haven't seen any hard data.

This was true when I was working as a developer evangelist at Microsoft. But Microsoft has been specifically recruiting women out of college to try to increase representation. Most of the men in my org were industry veterans while most of the women were fresh out of college. This leads to an imbalance of experience and often means the women are relegated to less technical aspects of the job which hinders their progress.

The evangelists also have to deal with not just the environment at Microsoft, but also the partners we were helping architect solutions for. On more than one occasion I know women had problems delivering solutions to a partner because that partner had blatantly sexist stakeholders who would constantly try to question or circumvent them in ways that didn't happen for men. One of the college hires I was mentoring was the point person on a project, yet every single question was sent my way and I had to keep redirecting them to the woman who was perfectly capable of answering the question and was actually in charge of the account.

So yes, there were a lot more face to face interactions, but the women still didn't stick around for these roles. Some had much better experiences actually writing code on the product teams. Some moved into project management or research.

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

#583

Post by belorn »

foldr wrote: post #568
belorn wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we are at an impasse. Men as a group did not choose to force themselves at the threat of gun point to go into trench war fare and die. That is just ridiculous. Young poor men has always been at the bottom of the social ladder.

>Men as a group did not choose to force themselves at the threat of gun point to go into trench war fare and die. As you must be aware, I didn't suggest that this is the case. I simply said that men chose to exclude women from military service.

The men who got forced into the trench war did not have a choice in who got drafted. People who society deems expendable and at the bottom of the social ladder do not have that power or influence.

The people who got excluded from military conscription were women, rich men and men with influence.

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

#584

Post by belorn »

koonsolo wrote: post #285
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 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.

Being in groups of the opposite gender has the benefit that you can opt out of inter-sex competition. Men compete with men. Women with women. A woman working in a otherwise all men team have no other woman to compete with which can be a great freedom. If a person explicitly talked about "jealous and backstabbing" I would interpret it as terminology of inter-sex competition.

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

#585

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

aantix wrote: post #566
foldr wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that fist fights in the office are ok, then? Or you mean something else?

I’ve never seen a fist fight in an office. Probably not a good idea from a legal or liability standpoint. But if two consenting adults want to physically fight in a controlled, fair environment, zero problems with that. And I could see how it could be therapeutic to release the resentment towards the other. Maybe an office boxing league?

You're forgetting the first and second rule...

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

#586

Post by iimblack »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #45
iimblack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not understanding what the gender segregation during advanced/specialized education is meant to accomplish. Also, can you expand on this: "I believe that there will be equality between the genders and less conflict if they don’t compete with each other in the same space". Is that space referring just to school or even further than that?

I want to preface with ‘only in my experience’, ok? Men are a distraction while trying to focus on work/studies. And they are constantly vying for attention too and it’s flattering. From my perspective as female, it took a lot of my mental space and time to engage male attention. First we take a lot more time to groom ourselves. Physical attractiveness is time consuming for women(just trust me on this) and there is a…

So your hypothesis is that all of this `overhead` (mental space/time) would be removed or at least reduced if men only worked with other men and women only worked with other women? I guess the first thought is that this only considers heterosexuality. Then there's the fact that these are generalizations, and so the premises don't apply to everybody. Do you put more effort into your appearance just because there will be men there or because it's a work environment and you want to be professionally presentable?

I guess the traditional thinking is that we want to have different thought processes and mental modes all working and collaborating together as much as possible. Wouldn't it be limiting to a lot of people to cut off interaction just because of their sex? Is there really a certain way that only men think and a different certain way that only women think?

I'm trying to think of my own work environment where I, as a man, am actually in the minority on my team. I just can't think of a project where I think that gender or sex made any difference to anything. Maybe since we're programmers and not dealing with lifting heavy things it's different? We also have a good mix in the leaders. I've had both female and male project managers, tech leads, team members, etc. I've seen all kinds of mixes of personalities between the genders too. I guess, only in my experience, I can't find a time where I feel a team of only men or only women would have done something better.

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

#587

Post by jelliclesfarm »

iimblack wrote: post #586
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to preface with ‘only in my experience’, ok? Men are a distraction while trying to focus on work/studies. And they are constantly vying for attention too and it’s flattering. From my perspective as female, it took a lot of my mental space and time to engage male attention. First we take a lot more time to groom ourselves. Physical attractiveness is time consuming for women(just trust me on this) and there is a…

So your hypothesis is that all of this `overhead` (mental space/time) would be removed or at least reduced if men only worked with other men and women only worked with other women? I guess the first thought is that this only considers heterosexuality. Then there's the fact that these are generalizations, and so the premises don't apply to everybody. Do you put more effort into your appearance just because there will…

This is very strange to me. Have you asked the women in the team? I feel like no one would say that they prefer to work in segregated environments. Which is why it easy for me to say it as an outsider without any consequence. I say it because I have heard both genders have reservations about working as a team with the other gendered colleagues and peers.

There is no coming back from a politically incorrect comment after it’s out in the open. Gender segregation at high school/college was my original position..not at work necessarily. Altho that would be suitable for some group dynamics. This is just one such position.

I feel like somewhere along this thread it morphed from gender segregated educational environment(the original post was about STEM and gender) to work. I probably am partly responsible for that with my subsequent comments. Altho..I will read your comment again in leisure, consider my response and get back to you as soon as possible. Regards.

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

#588

Post by sfink »

mikekchar wrote: post #489
tmh79 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Keep in mind that if I am in a team of 5, then 80% of the group is in the dominant "not-me group" and 20% is in the minority "me group". We often (and reasonably) choose to prioritise the needs of the dominant group over the non-dominant group. If I want to use Elm, but the rest of the team wants to use JS and React, I'd actually be a bit of a jerk to force them all to accommodate my wishes. While contrived, I'm conv…

Valid points. I have used the example of a lone vegetarian joining a team with a tradition of eating together at a steak house. In my mind, it would be a reasonable accommodation to stop doing that once a vegetarian is hired -- low cost to switch, highly obnoxious not to.

I find your example of communication style to be trickier. It feels in-between to me. I would agree that some elements of communication style should not be changed to accommodate an inflexible newcomer. On the other hand, when people talk about the benefits of diversity, communication style is a really large element! You know what you enjoy about your current boys' club style -- but it might very well be better if you switched to something more professional even in the absence of onboarding someone new. You won't know until forced to by the introduction of diversity, and that's true in many different subtle areas, not all of which you're going to have any chance of spotting in advance.

The same argument could be applied to just about anything. Perhaps GWT would be a really great fit for what you're working on, but you won't know until you try it. That's far less likely than a communication style change, though, so it's probably one of the costlier and less likely things to try to accommodate.

I agree that the question of whether or not to accommodate a difference is not always answered with "yes!" It depends on the accommodation required.

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

#589

Post by throwaway8548 »

DuskStar wrote: post #581
throwaway8548 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 understa…

> But software is, what, less than a century old? What possible evolutionary differences could have risen in that time frame? But guns are, what, less than a millennia old? What possible evolutionary differences could have arisen in that time frame? No way that women and men would perform differently in competitive shooting [0], right? And as it turns out, men shoot faster, women shoot more accurately. There's all so…

Oh come on, humans have been targeting and hitting targets with various weapons (or just rocks) from a distance since time immemorial.

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

#590

Post by zarkov99 »

Cougher wrote: post #535
zarkov99 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-f... I ignored the "for men" qualifier as it seems obvious that these are the most dangerous jobs period.

Is that really that obvious? Given that nursing and nursing assitant jobs are amoung the most dangerous and the fact that the vast majority of those jobs are filled with women, your willingness to erase an important aspect of a headline is a good example of the bias that this entire discussion is centered around.

Yes, it is obvious. I did not try to erase anything, I posted the source without being asked for, and pointed out the discrepancy and my interpretation of it, which was correct, as you can see in this other article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/08/most-dangero...
Post reply on HN