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Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

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Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#31

Post by knowtheory »

csallen wrote: post #25

I just finished reading "The Blank Slate", a very interesting book by Harvard (and former MIT) psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, he argues against the politically correct (but factually incorrect) notion that our minds are infinitely malleable at birth, and that our nature is primarily shaped by culture and the environment. On the contrary, genetics and neurobiology play a comparatively tremendous role in dete…

1) The Blank Slate was published 10 years ago by a psycholinguist (albeit Pinker an AWESOME psycholinguist but that's besides the point). There's been a lot of research since then to muddy the nature/nurture debate.

2) who's even suggesting that we need a 50/50 gender balance? Where are you getting this straw man from? All McClure has asserted is that there should be more women in tech, and given our 9:1 M:F ratio... there's a lot of room to move before we even start to discuss whether 50/50 is an appropriate ratio.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#32

Post by majormajor »

gms wrote: post #9
Volpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I don't see it as 'tokenism' or 'charity'. We are solving a big problem (gender-inequality).

Is it a problem that the nursing profession is dominated by women? If so, why?

I have a friend who's a nurse.

He's told me that he's gotten some shit from people because of his profession. From other guys who aren't nurses. Weird, huh? But I've seen more hostility or unintentionally discouraging behavior towards female programmers from male ones than he's mentioned ever encountering from female nurses, so in that regard it's less of a problem.

Yet he's also mentioned that the number of males in the field is increasing, and that there are, in fact, efforts being made to get more men into the field.

Why would a limited labor pool for any profession be a good thing? And why should I believe that the current distribution in a very young field represents a natural equilibrium?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#33

Post by Xcelerate »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #3

Right, this is just a call for something akin to affirmative action, which has had questionable results at best. The onus here isn't on women. And the right solution is not to preferentially favor women in the tech field. What you'll end up with is a situation where asshole misogynists consider themselves even more justified in treating women in tech as second class citizens. This time because "they only got there th…

I'm a little confused as to what the problem is. Is it that there aren't enough women in tech, or is it that women who are in tech aren't being treated fairly?

If it's the latter, then I'm all for fixing that problem. But if it's the former, then it may just be the case that women don't' want to be in tech. I try encouraging my sister to learn about programming and computers all the time, but she'll have nothing to do with it. It has a certain, ah, stereotype when you're good at that stuff that she'd rather avoid (although she's smarter than I am and could probably learn it very quickly).

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#34

Post by seats »

wheels wrote: post #26

> I’d like to CHALLENGE every woman in tech who’s a) got a nice car, b) owns a nice house, or c) is making over $125K a year In the US you need to have an income of greater than $200k/year or assets not including your home of over $1 million in order to be an accredited investor. [1] You don't have to be an accredited investor to invest in startups, but it does open up the company to additional annoying reporting req…

This is technically true at the moment but not for long. Once the crowd funding portion of the JOBS act is accepted by the SEC, anyone can invest up to 10% of their annual income in startups.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#35

Post by kvnn »

Volpe wrote: post #20
wh-uws wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Tech is supposed to be meritocracy. Anyone here who would discount other's because of perceived charity is shortsighted at best and ignorant asshole at worst. All we are supposed to care about is can you code and/or help our business. Being red/white/magenta or whatever gender or permutation there of shouldn't enter into the conversation if Tech is really the "meritocracy" it claims itself to b…

> Tech is supposed to be meritocracy. You can't have a proper meritocracy if the prospective field don't have access to the same level of opportunities. Women get ostracised from I.T. fairly early on (i.e before education has finished).

> Women get ostracised from I.T. fairly early on

What evidence have you found that suggests that women are systematically ostracized from I.T.?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#36

Post by scott_s »

csallen wrote: post #25

I just finished reading "The Blank Slate", a very interesting book by Harvard (and former MIT) psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, he argues against the politically correct (but factually incorrect) notion that our minds are infinitely malleable at birth, and that our nature is primarily shaped by culture and the environment. On the contrary, genetics and neurobiology play a comparatively tremendous role in dete…

An indication that it is cultural is from looking at other cultures:

If you look globally, there are countries where that isn’t the image, and in fact, their numbers are dramatically better. I was recently speaking with some of our Oracle engineers from China and they pretty much have a fifty-fifty split of men and women. And they think it’s sort of odd that we don’t.

http://www.txchnologist.com/2012/breaking-the-brogrammer-cod...

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#38

Post by darren »

mangodrunk wrote: post #21
Volpe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the nursing industry. But I would comment, that increased diversity (whether it is gender/race/age/etc) always yields benefits as you have a more diverse range of viewpoints to draw from. So it is always a problem when one group is over(or under) represented in a given area.

Do you have evidence for increasing diversity helps?

The Impact of Gender Composition on Team Performance and Decision-Making: Evidence from the Field

http://www.econ.upf.edu/~apesteguia/Gender_Teams.pdf

"Looking across the performance distribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams are outperformed throughout... For MBA students, at the top, the best performing group is two men and one woman."

http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...

"The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better."

http://www.20-first.com/968-0-lbs-study-shows-addition-of-wo...

"The optimal percentage for the gender balance of men and women on teams is 50:50. Neither men nor women flourish when in a minority on teams. When in a minority, women tend to network outside whereas men tend to become less motivated. Having a slight majority of women on teams (about 60%) improves the self-confidence of the team."

I think the evidence is pretty clear. Anecdotally, I've seen the best performance out of mixed teams. All men teams and all women teams generally don't work out so well.

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#39

Post by majormajor »

s_baby wrote: post #27
LOLtampicoLOL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By extension, do you support "empowering" the employment of men in a female dominated profession by decree with the same zeal you show here toward women in tech?

What about women in coal mines and crab fishing boats? It's true that a man has greater mobility towards the top of the career ladder but this "privilege" also exposes him to the much more likely risk of ending up on the bottom of the ladder. It's not equal to have proportional gender representation in only desirable jobs.

By "the bottom of the ladder" do you mean economically? Is your claim that women have a higher earnings floor then men? Could you provide figures?

Re: Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

#40

Post by [deleted] »

majormajor wrote: post #39
s_baby wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about women in coal mines and crab fishing boats? It's true that a man has greater mobility towards the top of the career ladder but this "privilege" also exposes him to the much more likely risk of ending up on the bottom of the ladder. It's not equal to have proportional gender representation in only desirable jobs.

By "the bottom of the ladder" do you mean economically? Is your claim that women have a higher earnings floor then men? Could you provide figures?

[deleted]
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