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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.

#41

Post by csallen »

knowtheory wrote: post #31
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...…

It's not surprising that new and enlightening nature-vs-nurture research has come out in the last 10 years. But I haven't personally come across anything significant with regard to asymmetry in gender-based interests.

Also, I'm not attempting to refute Dave McClure or anyone specific. I never claimed that he claimed we should strive for 50-50 equality, so it's unfair for you to accuse me of a straw man. I'm just making reference to an argument that happened to affect my personal view on the matter. This topic has come up again and again on HN and in tech-related blogs, and I think it's a very common viewpoint that any deviation from a 50-50 distribution is attributable to discrimination.

Regardless, I agree with you that that current ratio is overly-extreme, and that we can do better.

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

#42

Post by DeepDuh »

Volpe wrote: post #13
gms wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Not to mention the physical issues. My wife was nursing and according to her the inability to carry most of the patients is one of the bigger problems in that field. The way it works now you need a group of male employees basically just for carrying people - not a very popular job. They try to solve it with robots in Japan, but it's at least another 10 years until those solutions are really viable. 50% male nurses would certainly help there.

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

#43

Post by roguecoder »

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…

Pinker's book has been ridiculed by pretty much everyone who understands statistics or actually studies neurobiology. Even his views on linguistics are proving excessively simplistic as further evidence is gathered.

I recommend against holding up pop-science cults of personality if you would like people to take you seriously.

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

#44

Post by othermaciej »

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…

It's nothing like affirmative action. He's not saying "investors should invest more in women-founded startups". He's saying "more women should invest in startups". It's self-help, not affirmative action.

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

#45

Post by csallen »

scott_s wrote: post #36
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-bro…

That's interesting, although I'm not inclined to take hearsay of hearsay at face value. It'd be great to see a report with some hard numbers proving that this is the case, and examining the cultural differences that could explain why their numbers are so drastically better than numbers elsewhere in the world.

Also, from a scientific perspective, this is a disastrously imperfect experiment. You cannot rule out the effect of the genes unless you control for that. Looking at a group of people who are physically different AND culturally different , then arbitrarily concluding that any differences are the result of cultures is about as unscientific as it gets.

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

#46

Post by ajross »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #15

Okay. I left Google because I was fed up with how things were going over there (read my posts - link in profile - if you want to know more). I started my own little business. So, okay, let's go. Throw money at me. I'll make more cool stuff with it. I'm mostly a "plumbing" sort of person, but I've been known to make actual top-level user interfaces on occasion too. Well? Who's with me?

I'll bite here on a tangent: are you really interested in taking a $5k check from an individual angel? Do startups (real ones, not just "I started a company!" startups) bother with that stuff? It seems that if you're a three-person YC gang that the effort involved in coming up with an extra week's (if that) worth of runway isn't even close to worthwhile.

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

#47

Post by SCdF »

kvnn wrote: post #35
Volpe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.?

It's all anecdotal of course, but my female IT friends, both in uni and work, have to deal with not being made welcome, or being made too welcome.

If I got leared at and hit on all the time when I'm just trying to get shit done I'd feel like I wasn't welcome either.

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

#48

Post by roguecoder »

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?

We address this is every gender thread on hacker's news. Yes, it is a problem. Yes, people are trying to fix it. Yes, including creating male-only nursing scholarships and spaces and community groups.

None of which has anything to do with programming. I don't know if you think you are being clever or if you are just repeating a talking point, but either way it's a derailment that has been addressed a hundred times before if you cared to do a little bit of homework.

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

#49

Post by roguecoder »

coderdude wrote: post #2

>If I appear to be moronic, self-centered, or sexist… it’s only because I am (I’m a guy). Still I believe my heart is in the right place, and unlike my head, hopefully it’s not in my pants. What the hell? I feel like I'm watching a US TV commercial. "Whoops honey, if I didn't have my sports cap on I'd probably lose my head." "Oh dear, you lovable oaf." Mother and daughter shake heads at retarded male

He sure holds a low opinion of men, 'tis true. I suppose it's so easier to get through life when everyone assumes you are too stupid to be expected not to pee on the rug.

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

#50

Post by Volpe »

kvnn wrote: post #35
Volpe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.?

The low numbers of women in I.T with CS majors, is indicative of this.

Are you just trying to enforce a burden of proof here? Or do you seriously not think that woman are ostracised in I.T?

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