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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

#201

Post by heavenlyblue »

kqr wrote: post #45
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'…

A bricklayer works with things. Daycare staff work with people. These are very clear-cut. Then there are a lot of points along that continuum -- nurses and HR reps work mostly with people. Economists a little of both. Software engineers and carpenters mostly with things. We may not agree on a complete ordering but we will get reasonably close to each other, I suppose.

Neithey daycare or bricklaying is something people often choose as their profession - ratger more like they end up doing because of a lack of options. Of course women would prefer bricklaying less as they are generally weaker. Daycare is a good luck call for getting hired as a man in the first place.

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

#202

Post by chongli »

Flenser wrote: post #198
chongli wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s pretty clear to me. I am much happier to be quietly doing research, writing code, testing, writing documentation, fixing bugs, writing emails, etc. Now stick me in a meeting and I soon become very unhappy. Why? Because I’m really not interested in listening to people complain about stuff unrelated to my tasks or giving updates about random stuff or whatever. Now I don’t mind socializing with people at wo…

It depends on the quality of the meetings. My last job I hated them for all the reasons you said. My current job they are enjoyable and productive. That's because the agenda is a "living" document that anyone can edit during the week, and the meetings stop when we've nothing left to discuss or need to get back to work

That's true. At my last job the meetings basically served as a way for the manager to broadcast stuff that could've just been sent out in an email and then collect updates on what everyone has been working on which also could be done with email. There was almost no back-and-forth to it at all, yet the damn thing took 2 hours per week. A huge waste of time!

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

#203

Post by prmoustache »

causi wrote: post #102
prmoustache wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that one should discern strength when actually caring or not caring to injure someone else in the process.

I don't know what you're saying here.

That an old man with dementia who feel he has to defend himself will use full force while the people who the nurse/caregiver will consciently and inconsciently restrain themselves in order to not break any bones or harm the person they are taking care of.

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

#204

Post by LudwigNagasena »

null_object wrote: post #140
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?

> 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…

> I’ve even lived in countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain.

You live in a massive bubble if you think those countries are above average in sexism.

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

#206

Post by LudwigNagasena »

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…

Why would a company hire someone only to push them away from their area of expertise? That doesn't make sense to me. The only reason I would expect someone to be pushed away from their main activities is being bad at their job. If you want to be sexist, you can just not hire someone.

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

#207

Post by esarbe »

So, they have linked different sexual reproductive strategies to differences in behavior.

That cannot be that surprising, right? Different sexual reproductive strategies almost necessitate differences in behavior in general, if the strategies are different enough, which they most certainly are for any kind of mammal or bird.

Given the many examples of wildly different behaviors between the sexes in other species - bower birds as an example - any lack of specific behavioral differences would be surprising.

It's also no surprising that this sex differences (I don't think these are gender differences; these are the differences that shape gender) are more prevalent in societies with greater economic prosperity; it allows the individuals to follow their own generic preferences, unburdened by economic pressure.

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

#208

Post by robjan »

midoridensha wrote: post #166
ShredKazoo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when that hypermasculine Russian military recruiting commercial went viral? They only give Russia 36 on the masculinity index. (US gets 62) Here's the construct description: >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference…

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

The page explains that Japan is ranked highly "masculine" because of how competitive the society is.

> What you see is a severe competition between groups. From very young age at kindergartens, children learn to compete on sports day for their groups (traditionally red team against white team). In corporate Japan, you see that employees are most motivated when they are fighting in a winning team against their competitors. What you also see as an expression of Masculinity in Japan is the drive for excellence and perfection in their material production (monodukuri) and in material services (hotels and restaurants) and presentation (gift wrapping and food presentation) in every aspect of life. Notorious Japanese workaholism is another expression of their Masculinity. It is still hard for women to climb up the corporate ladders in Japan with their Masculine norm of hard and long working hours.

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

#209

Post by mpweiher »

realjhol wrote: post #184
ehnto wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an innate part of being human. That's the point I am making. My point is not that everyone should be in tech, my point is that there is a disparity and if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be. > Now the genders skew slightly differently, for men it's more like 97% prefer to do something else, and with women it's 99% who prefer to do something else. So what? Let people do what they want to do. Th…

> my point is that there is a disparity and if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be. Yes but why do you assume that? What if your assumption is wrong, as the above study shows? Then the disparity would be explained simply by the natural proclivities of different groups of people. > one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to Again this in another article of faith. Not…

> Notice how feminists always use the passive voice

Yeah, that one took me a while to figure out, but once you notice it you see how pervasive this trick is.

For me, it was the thing about women doing more housework in relationships. Or rather "women are required to do more housework". But it wasn't actually their partners requiring this. Men generally don't give a crap, and this doesn't really change whether they are in a relationship or not.

"But women are held to a higher standard". Ah, the passive to the rescue! But by who? Again, men don't give a crap. Well, it turns out that it is women holding each other to higher standards, more or less exclusively. But "women are oppressing each other" just doesn't have the same ring to it...

> "these specific people are conspiring to discourage women for this specific reason".

Turns out there actually are people making that claim. Can't find the actual text right now (it was a PhD thesis turned into a book, IIRC), and it claimed that the move to make CS more like engineering was a cabal of men in CS trying to kick the women out.

The mind boggles.

> Why does anyone want to discourage women from going into tech?

Exactly. No one, that's who. And in fact, if you look around, you see tons and tons of encouragement, special events, special courses, special bootcamps etc. A recruiter here in Europe recently told me she has to get approval from US headquarters if she wants to suggest a straight white male for a role (although that was senior executive recruiting, not tech).

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

#210

Post by ss108 »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #200
sshine wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker Sure, but a female coalminer?

Please tell me how many men willingly (having had other choice) would go doing road works :) Or working at a coal mine on thaf matter.

I have helped defend claims brought by coal miners against their employers, and, while I obviously am restrained from giving specifics, a number of the miners were not without skills that would permit them to work in mines, yet they persisted in working in mines.
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