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Our approach to gender diversity

blog.whiteoctober.co.uk

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Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#51

Post by RyanMcGreal »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #47
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still begging the question. Shall I jump on the regress treadmill with you and ask why women have a "comparative advantage" with respect to caring for their children? I suspect you'd like us eventually to land on some innate, hard-coded difference between men and women that makes women's relative absence in tech and under-representation in pay and seniority in other industries okay, but that's bullshit. Men ar…

I don't know why, I haven't looked at the topic in detail. I just suggest comparative advantage because it is generally a good answer as to why two parties mutually agree to some particular economic arrangement. I don't actually subscribe to collectivist moral theories that declare it somehow wrong when members of different groups are statistically more likely to make different choices. In fact, I believe most of the…

A family is not merely or even principally an "economic arrangement". This reductionism of a complex biological, social and cultural arrangement to abstract economic principles is pretty much guaranteed to lead you to clean, rational conclusions that entirely miss the point of what you're trying to reason about. You end up talking about people and their experiences as if they are instances in a multi-agent system.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#52

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #50
yummyfajitas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why, I haven't looked at the topic in detail. I just suggest comparative advantage because it is generally a good answer as to why two parties mutually agree to some particular economic arrangement. I don't actually subscribe to collectivist moral theories that declare it somehow wrong when members of different groups are statistically more likely to make different choices. In fact, I believe most of the…

There are enormous social pressures involved. Families and child rearing are deeply tied up in culture and history. Pretending that it's just parties mutually agreeing to a particular arrangement based on comparative advantage ignores the evidence plainly in front of your face in order to preserve some idealistic theory. Between my wife and I, there is no comparative advantage when it comes to child rearing. We're at…

[deleted]

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#53

Post by sambeau »

philjackson wrote: post #29
sambeau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tech industry has many male asian speakers, I suspect there is still a strong white-male majority (I can't find any reliable figures) but asian (men) are the other race who seem to be well established in the world of IT . We do have incredibly talented transgendered speakers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson and at least one very talented asian transgendered speaker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_…

Sophie Wilson is amazing. For those who don't know, she designed the Acorn Micro-Computer, the Firepath processor and biggest of all the Arm chip.

She appears briefly towards the end of BBC's 'Micro Men' as the barmaid in the Baron of Beef:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9MM...

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#54

Post by Pxtl »

rayiner wrote: post #50
yummyfajitas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why, I haven't looked at the topic in detail. I just suggest comparative advantage because it is generally a good answer as to why two parties mutually agree to some particular economic arrangement. I don't actually subscribe to collectivist moral theories that declare it somehow wrong when members of different groups are statistically more likely to make different choices. In fact, I believe most of the…

There are enormous social pressures involved. Families and child rearing are deeply tied up in culture and history. Pretending that it's just parties mutually agreeing to a particular arrangement based on comparative advantage ignores the evidence plainly in front of your face in order to preserve some idealistic theory. Between my wife and I, there is no comparative advantage when it comes to child rearing. We're at…

Yup.

My wife took only 5 months mat leave. I took the other 7. People were generally envious and supportive of me, at least publicly.

My wife, on the other hand, got to hear all the negativity. People treating her as heartless for going back to work and "leaving" a 5-month-old, and being deeply suspicious of "trusting her husband with the kids", which kinda turns my stomache.

Honestly, most folks are pretty positive about it, but it only takes a few throwbacks to make you feel disgusting.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#55

Post by RyanMcGreal »

Pxtl wrote: post #54
rayiner wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enormous social pressures involved. Families and child rearing are deeply tied up in culture and history. Pretending that it's just parties mutually agreeing to a particular arrangement based on comparative advantage ignores the evidence plainly in front of your face in order to preserve some idealistic theory. Between my wife and I, there is no comparative advantage when it comes to child rearing. We're at…

Yup. My wife took only 5 months mat leave. I took the other 7. People were generally envious and supportive of me, at least publicly. My wife, on the other hand, got to hear all the negativity. People treating her as heartless for going back to work and "leaving" a 5-month-old, and being deeply suspicious of "trusting her husband with the kids", which kinda turns my stomache. Honestly, most folks are pretty positive…

When my children were quite young, I used to bristle when people who knew me would see me out with my baby or toddler and ask, "Oh, are you babysitting?"

I'd answer, "No, I'm parenting."

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#56

Post by gametheoretic »

Zigurd wrote: post #49
gametheoretic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your use of the word 'compelling' is in reference to the contents of that link, well, I just could not disagree more. a) Surveys are shit - they're as far removed from double-blind as you can get, and b) the framing of cause and effect is highly opinionated, e.g.: "Having just one female director on the board cuts the risk of bankruptcy by 20%" -- superior feminine corporate guidance or well-documented feminine av…

Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives? Men have a tendency to bullshit their way past lack of knowledge. Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet."

> Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives?

I made no positive claims, only negative ones.

>Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet."

Doing my best to refrain from username-dropping here. If an iterated game rewards some strategy s, then the eventual adoption of strategy s is inevitable. Don't hate the player.

>Men have a tendency to bullshit their way past lack of knowledge.

I will assume you're referring to Chris Bart and Gregory McQueen here. ;)

But seriously, human beings, lacking omniscience, require strategies to work around their blind spots and keep moving forward. When/if we're lucky enough to be cognizant of our own ignorance, we can either notify the others in the room or we can not - both are real options; neither strategy is universally dominant. Obviously, I'm being nice; it is called 'bullshitting'. But if you have a nose for it, then who's to blame for letting it affect you?

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

gametheoretic wrote: post #56
Zigurd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives? Men have a tendency to bullshit their way past lack of knowledge. Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet."

> Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives? I made no positive claims, only negative ones. >Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet." Doing my best to refrai…

> If an iterated game rewards some strategy s, then the eventual adoption of strategy s is inevitable. Don't hate the player.

When the players are also the people that spent considerable effort getting the rules of the game rewritten in a way that end up causing it to reward the strategy (replacing rules that had been put into place precisely to prevent the kind of collapse that happened after the rule change, after another instance of the same type of collapse), I'm not sure the "don't hate the player" argument applies.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#58

Post by elnate »

sambeau wrote: post #43
elnate wrote: post #12

> Ours is a male-dominated industry – and weaker for it Has this ever actually been shown? I hear it a lot but have never heard any evidence either way. (the latter part)

The evidence is self evident: Women perform equally to men in school/college in related subjects (better than men in the UK). Women make up 51% of the population. ∴ Our industry is ignoring half the talent.

You implied that genders are represented equally in all fields of study, but that certainly wasn't true in my education (CS + EE). So assuming a bell curve of talent, your ideal team would have more men than women.

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#59

Post by sambeau »

readstoomuch wrote: post #14
sambeau wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tech industry has many male asian speakers, I suspect there is still a strong white-male majority (I can't find any reliable figures) but asian (men) are the other race who seem to be well established in the world of IT . We do have incredibly talented transgendered speakers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson and at least one very talented asian transgendered speaker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_…

> It is notable that both these are transgendered women I don't know of any transgendered men. Tim Chevalier, of Rust - http://catamorphism.org

Thanks. I assumed it was ignorance on my part and I was right.

His "The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist" is a depressing, informative read.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Male_Programmer_Privilege...

Re: Our approach to gender diversity

#60

Post by Zigurd »

gametheoretic wrote: post #56
Zigurd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives? Men have a tendency to bullshit their way past lack of knowledge. Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet."

> Where has adding women to a previous male bastion caused reduced performance? MDs? Parliamentarians? Senior corporate executives? I made no positive claims, only negative ones. >Imagine if we had had ibankers who stopped to think "Maybe CDSs are a bullshit kind of insurance, but with inadequate capital, so the first black swan that poops on a big CDS position is going to blow up the planet." Doing my best to refrai…

> But seriously, human beings, lacking omniscience, require strategies to work around their blind spots and keep moving forward.

That' a very benign interpretation of what happened, and one that is naive of the nature of financial regulation. Specifically, you can't just rename "insurance" to "derivatives contract that pays out like insurance but with unregulated capital requirements (and please ignore the word 'insurance' - it has consequences)" and expect to get away with it.

Regulations are written to apply to everything that behaves like the regulated product. The people writing CDS knew exactly what they were doing. They just assumed they were so smart they would not be left holding the bag. Which is what everyone participating in a fraudulent scheme thinks.

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