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Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#131

Post by gnull »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #128
gnull wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His choice of wording is poor, and it's clear in most cases he assumes he's "right" - rather than posing a question and linking to supporting evidence for why he "might be right". There's also some effort required on the reader's part here. You should dig through some bad phrasing and for each statement that the writer makes, ask yourself, "what's the strongest interpretation of this that can be backed up?" A good…

> There's also some effort required on the reader's part here Obviously. A well constructed argument requires minimal effort - and avoids flamebait and opinion - so it's easier to focus on the actual points... > There's enough uncertainly in this question to make both opinions valid, and allow people to pick the one they like. We should be trying to arrive at the truth, not arbitrarily picking opinions based on feeli…

Yes, we should. But before we do, people still have to make choices ("should I adopt this gender-equality policy or that one?", "should I teach kids these of those ideas about gender-equality?"), they aren't going to wait for science to catch up. And before we have a definitive answer, we admit we don't have it, and let people make their own bids in those choices. And also discuss choices, and also question them.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#132

Post by unknownsky »

yung_steezy wrote: post #114
niceghost wrote: post #100

wtf those “preferences” are a result of history - societies raised women to take care (take care of their family and house chores) while men went out in the wild to play, study and work. - women had to be “empathetic” because understanding one’s mood was vital to their survival throughout history: in times where it was “ok” and even expected that women were beaten up to make them more docile or whatever. - women were…

I have to disagree that it can all be explained by societal conditioning. They tried to sample every society they could in this study to see if societal factors could explain the preference but could not see a societal effect. While you might be able to claim that every society around the world is fundamentally sexist to explain the difference in preferences, I think in that case you would have to be able to explain…

If cultures universally share a characteristic, that does not prove that the characteristic is a hard-wired drive. That thinking has been used to make several arguments.

Cultures all around the world have made pyramids, so pyramids must have a deep spiritual meaning that all humans are tuned into. Or all these cultures were working with heavy objects and gravity and they all independently discovered that a pyramid is the easiest large structure to build.

Seafaring cultures all around the world have myths about mermaids, so mermaids must be real. Or people spending lots of time at sea looking at sea-life are likely to start imagining them fusing with humans.

Cultures all around the world have sun gods, so a sun god must be real and we all sensed it. Or everyone around the world looked up at the sky and saw the same thing.

Cultures all around the world have gender stereotypes, so they must be hard-wired. Or women everywhere are getting pregnant while men aren't, so societies shaped themselves around that fact in similar ways.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#133

Post by [deleted] »

catears wrote: post #37

The definition of working with people vs. working with things doesn't seem obvious to me. As a software engineer I am working a lot with my computer. Therefore I must be working with things! But... I am just as much working with my soft skills. Scrum retros, talking to stakeholders, discussions on design with fellow engineers, testing with end-users. Some days I don't spend even a minute working with "things". I don'…

[deleted]

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#135

Post by wreath »

curiousguy wrote: post #75
epicureanideal wrote: post #23

Does this mean James Damore was right? Or is there something wrong with this research?

James’s mistake was to want to discuss taboo topics in _public_ and in a _working environment_. One of the best pg articles imo: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

> in a _working environment_.

What? it is about the work environment.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#136

Post by ShredKazoo »

unknownsky wrote: post #120
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society? Do you mind me asking where have you been before?

I have lived in a handful of different countries. I'm criticizing the idea that it's so simple to say one country is more sexist or more equal than another because there are so many metrics you can use to measure equality. Sweden beats a lot of countries when it comes to a strongly protected right to parental leave for both men and women. But Sweden is behind many other countries when it comes to stereotypes and assu…

This Swedish website actually claims that tech is a problem area for Sweden:

https://sweden.se/life/equality/gender-equality

There's a link to this report: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5501a836e4b0472e6124f...

"Every third woman who responded to the survey, sent out by Allbright to employees at the tech companies, reports that she has been discriminated against"

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#137

Post by realjhol »

defrost wrote: post #122
realjhol wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> On average women find tech work grindingly boring. > No evidence of that Are you for real? Have you ever tried to talk to any women about technology? With occasional exceptions, the response you will get is a face that has completely glazed over. This is only a problem for people who believe in egalitarian ideology - where every group is supposed to be at all times "equal" in ways that are simply not bourne out in…

> Have you ever tried to talk to any women about technology? All the time - they love technology. Sue runs all the books on the local family farm (which is a large multi million $ enterprise), she pulls in all the GPS logs to a NAS, databases the livestock tags, has bots watching the stock sales. Robyn runs a super computing facility for the local SKA project (Square kilometre array) after being the Vice C. of the lo…

This is so tedious. I said there were plenty of exceptions. As with many human traits it's a distribution with long tails at the extremities, and plenty of overlap between groups.

This doesn't in any way negate the existence of a mean difference between groups. In the real world innate sex differences are a fact of life.

That's the whole point of the paper attached to this thread.

Egalitarians believe that society would be better off if we made all efforts to flatten these differences out or ignore them. This is an article of faith, that is in no way reflected in the real world.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#138

Post by ur-whale »

niceghost wrote: post #100

wtf those “preferences” are a result of history - societies raised women to take care (take care of their family and house chores) while men went out in the wild to play, study and work. - women had to be “empathetic” because understanding one’s mood was vital to their survival throughout history: in times where it was “ok” and even expected that women were beaten up to make them more docile or whatever. - women were…

> those “preferences” are a result of history

Source ?

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#139

Post by ehnto »

realjhol wrote: post #107
ehnto wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On average women find tech work grindingly boring. No evidence of that. > There's no evidence that adults are creating this bias. They are not. Are you absolutely certain? It's the subject of quite a bit of research. > Why is it a problem? It isn't. Just let people do what they want with their lives. Kids don't know what they want to do with their lives, they get lead down various paths by their upbringing. Plenty…

>> On average women find tech work grindingly boring. > No evidence of that Are you for real? Have you ever tried to talk to any women about technology? With occasional exceptions, the response you will get is a face that has completely glazed over. This is only a problem for people who believe in egalitarian ideology - where every group is supposed to be at all times "equal" in ways that are simply not bourne out in…

You wanted evidence, not anecdotes. But if you want anecdotes then yes, I've even worked with a bunch of women in tech. You can't make generalizations based off your own experiences though, obviously I'll bump into women in tech while working in tech. But similarly, if the people you bump into aren't already in tech, then it shouldn't be too surprising that they're not as excited as you are about it. You believe they're not in tech because they are born without the ability to like it, I believe it's because more often than not they're guided away from it during their upbringing.

You can be right that it's common to see and still wrong that it's an innate part of being a woman.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#140

Post by null_object »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #97
unknownsky wrote: post #88

> gender differences appear to be greater in societies with greater gender equality and in which people have greater economic resources I don't think this is a paradox at all. Discouraging 50% of the workforce talent pool is a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford. I experienced this first hand when I moved to Sweden. I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer u…

> I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society? Do you mind me asking where have you been before?

> Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society?

Sweden is such an interesting paradox: womens’ rights to work in different fields and (mostly) on an equal footing are protected in law, and (in my experience) in practice. And yet in many ways I find it generally the most gender-divided country I’ve experienced, and I’ve even lived in countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain.

There are strong traditions of socializing mostly as a group of women or a group of men, inviting all your girlfriends or male friends for dinner (“tjej/herrmiddag”), meeting friends at certain cafés or restaurants that are almost 100% gendered (this can have a comical effect of being the only male in a café filled with 50 females).

Away from the larger towns there is still a strong macho culture, with cars and hunting being as popular as any redneck county in the States, and with all the usual horror-stories of growing-up gay or a misfit, before moving to Stockholm or Gothenburg.

It’s fascinating to me to read outsider’s perspectives of Sweden, as I shared that impression before coming here.

Otoh it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker, digging a hole alongside her male colleagues without it seeming odd or misplaced.

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