Earlier quoted context omitted.
GP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur
> GP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur It doesn't matter if it's bosses or co-workers, the math works out the same.
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
611–620 of 630 posts
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
> GP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur It doesn't matter if it's bosses or co-workers, the math works out the same.
No, it doesn't. It would require all-male teams to be substantially more common than teams with 1 or more women. It's not clear to me that this is the case (it's very much not my experience: 1/6 teams I've worked on have been women-free).
If your average team size is 5 people, then on average, the gender breakdown in your company is 72% male/28% female. I assumed 80/20, so yeah, it's still pretty accurate.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
i hate this argument so much! it has been thrown in my face soooooooo many times... it's the go-to excuse managers and sales people use to tell a woman in IT that she's weird for doing what she does. even in teams with 90% men, it was almost never the men in the team that were the problem, but almost always those looking in on the team: managers, sales people, marketeers, project managers, journalists, ... please, st…
We should tackle sexism where it exists, but we can't tackle it properly if we're trying to say everyone is the same...because they aren't.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply co…
> That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country. The core thesis of…
We literally don't have matriarchies, there's no data about it. And I also don't know why you put that in quotes, it's an actual word.
> Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less egalitarian than the US.
Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't.
You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.
> The fact that these rates are overwhelmingly in a relatively narrow band between 20-35%.
> The overwhelming majority of countries studied had female representation in tech between 15-30%. This is indeed a fairly consistent rate.
I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment...
It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!
And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.
It's like saying unemployment falls between 5-40% in the majority of countries. Well d'oh, it's expected. It says nothing about the health of the countries in questiom.
> I agree, the alleged correlation between Eastern Europe and rates of female representation in tech is BS and random - but that was your alleged correlation...
Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?
> Countries on the other end of the spectrum like Turkey and Indonesia have 35%. This is still barely over 1/3rd.
You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it.
> For example, Indonesia has a female labor participation rate of 52% as compared to the United States' 56%. Vietnam has a female labor participation rate of 76%.
You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.
You don't get it.
> Adjusting for this does not explain the difference in representation in tech.
Yes it would, you just don't know how to adjust for it.
> Furthermore, even if it were you are erroneously assuming that if more women entered the workforce those women would.
It doesn't matter if they would or not, it won't affect the statistics, you still need to adjust for it.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply co…
> That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country. The core thesis of…
> You're supposed to compare between women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate in the US has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Are you... insisting that tech is welcoming to women? Hm. I guess it was all in my head.
Hm. I guess it was all in my head.
Probably it is, yeah. Please don't try and pull "I'm a woman so you just have to accept whatever I say about women" here. It doesn't work. I see, every week, clear cases of discrimination against men and in the favour of women. So do millions of other men. If you want us to disregard the evidence of our own eyes and ears you're gonna have to do a lot better than being condescending towards us in public.
And it's not just in tech. It's all over society. It never ends. Did you know the current EU Commission is made up of half female commissioners because the woman who runs it demands men not be nominated to half the positions? Did you know the only public justification for why the head of the Commission is because she's a woman?
Put bluntly, if you feel disrespected it's because women have been setting things up so they're impossible to respect by default. If you know that women are routinely put in positions merely because of feminist activism, how can you respect them? They didn't get there by being good at their jobs.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
The core activity of software engineering, programming, writing code, is a solitary activity. It's what people think of when they think of programming. It's what we spend hours being trained for, getting good at. Yes, in between writing software, we need to coordinate with others, so we have meetings. You'd really describe this overall process as being more people-oriented than thing-oriented? I've heard the argument…
Does this apply to other solitary activities, like writing prose (majority women), painting and drawing, poetry, creating clothes & other fashion?
[1]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/taking-...
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a tangent, but, "More Americans died in making stuff for the WW1 than in the actual war, as the conditions of factory work was brutal." I'm doubtful that this is true for many other countries involved in that war.
Factory work was not yet as common place as America and England in many other countries. Ford assembly lines were not yet widely used when WW1 broke out, most of the WW1 was fought with less industrialized weaponry.
The US basically wasn't a major combatant in that war, so it's not a representative country to use as an example. I'm sure it does show that factory conditions were brutal, but it falsely implies that they were more brutal than combat conditions.
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country. The core thesis of…
> The more countries drift away from "patriarchy" and towards "matriarchy" the fewer women go into tech. We literally don't have matriarchies, there's no data about it. And I also don't know why you put that in quotes, it's an actual word. > Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less eg…
We may or may not have matriarchies - a couple countries like Spain do have more women in parliament than men so maybe they fit your definition of a matriarchy. But we do have data on how the female representation in tech varies with respect to increases in women's rights and resources, and the data shows that the more rights and resources women have the less they go into technology. This would indicate that a matriarchy would have among the lowest rates of women in technology.
> Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't. You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.
I did indeed address this. In this comment [1] You had claimed that Eastern Europe has similar shares of women in STEM fields as India, and that this is due to cultural factors. I pointed out that Eastern Europe does not, in fact, have similar rates of women in tech as India - only Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia do. Eastern European countries with lower rates of women in tech as compared to India include: Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia (if you consider it Eastern European).
Furthermore, your comment rested on the assumption that gender roles in Eastern European countries are monolithic. This is not the case. Hungary, as you pointed out has very low gender equality as does Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Slovenia, on the other hand, is the 5th highest on this list. Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Moldova, and Lithuania have the same or higher ratings for gender equality as the United States.
So to recap:
1. Eastern Europe does not similar rates of women in tech than India's 30%, most have lower rates of women in tech than the United States' 25%.
2. Eastern European countries are diverse and have varied degrees of gender equality, they are not a monolith so talking about gender roles in "eastern europe" rests on the false understanding that these countries have the same culture with respect to gender.
I pointed out that your argument with respect to Eastern Europe is contradicted by the data we have, and is based on the false notion that women in Eastern Europe have a similar experience with respect to gender equality. This seems like this thoroughly addresses your point, care to explain what you feel is missing?
> I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment. It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!
Can you please read the article before posting comments like this? Every country including outliers falls between 15% (Chile) and 41% (Algeria). That's 36%. That's barely over half of the range, let alone "almost the entire range".
> And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.
Why? Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?
> Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?
You're the one that originally brought up Eastern Europe and India. You falsely claimed that Eastern Europe has similar rates of women in tech as India, and I pointed out that this is factually incorrect - most Eastern European countries have lower rates of women in technology than India.
> You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it. You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam. You don't get it.
What do you mean by adjusting for women's labor participation rate. You say that I'm not doing this correctly, but you neglect to explain what you mean by this. If a country that has 100% female labor participation had 30% women in technology, and another country has 50% labor participation and 15% women in tech then the latter's rate of women in tech is actually the same if you account for labor participation rates.
If you insist that the better way is to compare the ratio of men to women in the labor force, here's that data [2]. It does not significantly alter the results. The United States has a ratio of 0.82 female to male. Norway has 0.885 - so its share of women in tech would actually go down even further if we adjust it to match the US. Viet Nam has 0.889.
There are some that do have significantly different participation rates. Chile has 0.657, so its share of women in tech would rise by ~20% from 15% to 18% if we made its labor participation ratio the same as the US. Qatar has 0.531 so its ~23% women in tech would rise to 35%. But notice that these adjustments move these countries closer towards the trend line. In other words, adjusting for the differences in labor participation rates makes the inverse relationship between gender equality and women's participation in STEM even stronger.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21786037
2. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/labour-force-participation-ra...
Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don’t spread moral panic by labeling other people’s worldviews sexist. It does not sell your argument but only serves to polarize the debate. I know a lot of women in tech who feel uncomfortable with all the special treatment they get — entire conferences dedicated to “women in tech.” I find the idea so patronizing, just like I would a “men in daycare” conference. It is an extension of coddling the incapable a…
It's not patronizing. We have, e.g., men in nursing conferences ( https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference ). I don't find that patronizing as a man. It makes sense for a field where men are a minority.
Hm.