Girls Who Code • Hacker News Board

Re: Girls Who Code

#261

Post by jfarmer » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:27 AM UTC

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #99

crassus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Party line" is an interesting choice of words. There's definitely some unhealthy groupthink going on that's gaining in power. It's never been easier to have something said taken out of context and have your reputation dragged through the mud by people who are professional social justice warriors and not much else (I doubt Nitasha Tiku could program "hello world") Maybe it's due to the rise of twitter and the ease of…

Shanley Kane and her circle and sympathizers are spearheading this. Many of them show up in every HN thread about charged topics. I fully expect defense of them to show up in reply. It is part of my core being to be respectful to everyone, to listen to all sides, to feel empathy; however, when I am presented with a popular group in my industry that does none of those things, I am not sure how to react. What's depress…

> On top of that, I know several women in the industry, from marketing wizard to expert programmer with publish credits, who have to tip toe when they go to a company because men are being trained that all women are like Shanley in the industry.

It's really hard to read that and not think of this: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/vote-no-on-...

Re: Girls Who Code

#262

Post by yetanotherphd » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:27 AM UTC

newnewnew wrote: post #248

quinnchr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men score better than women on standardized tests in math in some countries, while in other countries women score better ( http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~kelly/gap_sept09.pdf ). It's almost as if the culture you are surrounded by somehow affects you. In fact the countries with more gender equality that encourage women in the sciences have higher test scores for women!

Wow, I never knew that the male-female Math gap was so robust. Look at the tables in the last three pages you linked. Except for Israel, nearly every country has a male-biased Math score gap on standardized tests.

It's called progressive-splaining [1]:

A condescending, inaccurate explanation delivered with rock solid confidence of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course they are right, because the are the progressive in this conversation

[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mansplain

Re: Girls Who Code

#263

Post by Crito » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:27 AM UTC

glesica wrote: post #246

theorique wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but largely because the standardized tests are all biased against women and/or minorities. IQ tests - which are pretty well normed across cultures if you use the right ones - tend to turn up the same patterns over and over. IQ tests (or their proxies) are useful ways of testing general cognitive fitness and ability and anticipating on-the-job performance and learning (see, e.g., http://www.udel.edu/educ/go…

So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy? You actually made my overall point stronger, because you demonstrated that this community clearly doesn't define "merit" to be "raw intelligence". It is a much, much more nuanced concept and it includes, I suspect, a large number of characteristics that are heavily influenced by gender, culture, and class. When we say "merit"…

> So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy?

In the US, doing that is a decent way to get sued.

'tokenadult has a standard comment (he's made it many times with various revisions/updates) on this topic that you should read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6584957

Re: Girls Who Code

#264

Post by jfarmer » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:28 AM UTC

newnewnew wrote: post #241

jmagoon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence to back up your broad-brushed claims? And who are these "feminist activist" strawmen(straw-women?) you have set up?

5 minutes of googling: "MEN, WOMEN AND RISK AVERSION:EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE" - http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_Ind_3.pdf "Sex Differences in Everyday Risk-Taking Behavior in Humans" - http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep062942.pdf Reality fits egalitarian beliefs quite poorly.

You've obviously made a serious study of this and that's why you have such justifiably strong opinions on the matter. Can you do 10 minutes of googling next time and share more? Or maybe 20?! Think of how informed you'd be after 20 minutes!

Re: Girls Who Code

#265

Post by jfarmer » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:32 AM UTC

001sky wrote: post #242

hacker789 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Across all cultures (perhaps across all of history), women are more risk averse. In fact, feminist activists didn't push to get more women into tech until tech was a higher paying, lower risk endeavor. Only then did it become scandalous that young women were choosing different career paths (but interestingly, the fact that young women are earning more than young men and graduating from college in far greater rates th…

women are more risk averse I think this is misleading. Men and women face different risks , and heterodox strategies are not indicative of very much. First, you need to be careful how you infer "risk taking" from "not taking the same bets", because the actual riks taken is a portfolio riks calculation which is blind. Second, you don't have any data to infer anyrthing about the quality of the risk taking they are in f…

You and your complexifyin' aren't welcome around here, friend! All that nuance just makes our arguments much harder to make. You'd best take it elsewhere.

Re: Girls Who Code

#266

Post by yetanotherphd » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:36 AM UTC

philangist wrote: post #255

codex wrote: post #172

In a far off land, bounceyball was the national sport. A funny cross between basketball and volleyball, it was hugely popular, and to be a professional player was considered the most prestigious occupation. A minor scandal erupted when was noted that there were few women in the co-ed national league, and a huge about of effort was made to recruit female players. Every family wanted the prestige, fame, and fortune tha…

I don't necessarily agree with this metaphor, but it was entertaining and a fresh approach to the girls in tech problem. I especially thought 'Male players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating' was hilarious. Anyway, my major problem with your assertion is that we know that the number of female bouncyballers has been going down significantly over…

It could be that the industry has become more flexible and meritocratic. The top post in this article mentions IBM and other big companies being more minority-friendly. But they also represent an older management style. The current industry with its focus on innovation and getting things done, may actually be more meritocratic.

Re: Girls Who Code

#267

Post by vezzy-fnord » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:39 AM UTC

ceol wrote: post #198

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating coding with the culture behind it. And even the culture isn't uniform, it's divided into many different subcultures. For all intents and purposes, there's nothing stopping a woman from learning how to program, contribute to open source and engage in community. A lot of people, male and female alike, operate under a pseudonym. Unless you're a celebrity, it's generally smarter for plenty of reasons, i…

> For all intents and purposes, there's nothing stopping a woman from learning how to program, contribute to open source and engage in community. Except the community , which is generally hostile towards women. Sure, someone can learn how to program on their own without ever interacting with the programming community, but that means shutting them off from a huge and helpful resource. > A lot of people, male and femal…

The "you're just too sensitive" argument is a valid argument. I don't want to end up publicly shamed for jokes I make in private conversation.

Re: Girls Who Code

#268

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

azakai wrote: post #79

overgard wrote: post #70

When I hear about this being a cultural thing, an important aspect people leave out is that men aren't exactly encouraged to be coders either. Writing code has pretty much no social cred until you're out of school, and pretty much automatically gets you tagged as a nerd. No coder I know started coding because it was cool, they just sort of enjoyed it and accepted the social consequences. I'm just going to throw this…

> I'm just going to throw this out here: only about 10% of nurses are male. Yet I rarely hear about the cultural problem of not having enough males in nursing, or how we can encourage more male nurses. Perhaps because you mostly read tech news sites, and not nursing news sites. This stuff (in both tech and nursing) rarely reaches the mainstream news sources, so people not involved in the industry generally are unawar…

Perhaps because you mostly read tech news sites, and not nursing news sites. This stuff (in both tech and nursing) rarely reaches the mainstream news sources, so people not involved in the industry generally are unaware of it.

That's a good point.

However, I was watching something on TV just yesterday about getting women into programming. My perception is that trying to get more women into programming is a much more popular issue than getting men into nursing.

If we kept up with industry news would we observe more "get women to be garbage collectors" and "get men into preschool education" news?

Re: Girls Who Code

#269

Post by esperluette » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:44 AM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #234

esperluette wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this couldn't be in part because women have less free time across the board, about five hours less?[1] Hard to get to tournament quality if you don't get as much time to practice. [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/10/another-gend...

Are you seriously saying that women without children at home having less free time is now somehow society's problem? You don't just "have less free time" automatically. It's probably because you choose to do more housework, which is exactly what the study says ("they spend about six hours more than men doing household work"). Don't want to do it? Cool, practise for a tournament all the time, don't do more housework,…

Uh, no.

The OP was trying to imply that women are naturally worse at the competitions cited, and I pointed out that women in the age demographic that wins those competitions (usually men 20-50) have less free time than the men.

And ... many women don't "want" to do more housework/chores, but feel they have to do it, because if their house is dirty or their kids don't have clean clothes/snacks for the soccer game, etc., it's considered the mom's fault. The dad often gets a free pass. The social pressure makes it a LOT less than a "choice". The social pressure = society's problem. Think about that the next time you see an ad where a woman is shamed because X in her house is less than sparkling, or one where a man is given a free pass to be incompetent at a household chore.

The average woman will catch much more flak for having a dirty house than she will be praised for playing competitive X, even if she's very very very good. And if she's less than very very very good? She's "neglectful" or "selfish."

If I said a guy "chooses" to wear pants instead of a skirt, is it fair to leave out the fact that a guy in skirt will probably face some harassment? There are free choices and not-so-free choices.

And ... please, I don't want to hear "But yardwork!" The grass gets mown 1x/week. The garbage cans go out 1x/week. The dishes, laundry, general tidying? For anything more than 2 people it's every day.

I'm lucky because my spouse does 80% of the housework, because I have a demanding startup job (uh, with time to read HN).

Re: Girls Who Code

#270

Post by crassus » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 4:45 AM UTC

philangist wrote: post #255

codex wrote: post #172

In a far off land, bounceyball was the national sport. A funny cross between basketball and volleyball, it was hugely popular, and to be a professional player was considered the most prestigious occupation. A minor scandal erupted when was noted that there were few women in the co-ed national league, and a huge about of effort was made to recruit female players. Every family wanted the prestige, fame, and fortune tha…

I don't necessarily agree with this metaphor, but it was entertaining and a fresh approach to the girls in tech problem. I especially thought 'Male players wanted more females playing so it didn't feel like a damn sausagefest all the time, and to help with dating' was hilarious. Anyway, my major problem with your assertion is that we know that the number of female bouncyballers has been going down significantly over…

The percent of female bouncyballers has been going down, but has the absolute number?