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How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

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Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#61

Post by guard-of-terra »

_bfhp wrote: post #52
andrewflnr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're fighting a strawman here. The "human invention" part is what led the other commenters to generalize from "jewelry" to "adornment", which is a more accurate expression of the idea anyway. In this theory, jewelry is only a close-to-hand vehicle for expressing deeper inborn urges, also satisfied by elaborate clothing, hairstyles, hats and head-dresses, war paint, etc. Further, it's not present only in wom…

Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn an…

"perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn?"

Why wouldn't we? If humans had zero inborn aptitude for religious (mystical, rithualistic) feelings, how could religions arise?

Assuming humans are inborn with christianity is baseless; but assuming humans are inborn with religious drive is logical.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#62

Post by _bfhp »

tzs wrote: post #58
_bfhp wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think female interest in jewelry comes from? Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women? You are begging the question. The professor is concerned with general culture's image of women, which is perpetuated when female programmers are shown to be printing pink jewelry and perpetually enraptured by childish flowery borders. The existence of individual women who enjoy jewelry for the aesth…

> Where do you think female interest in jewelry comes from? Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women? You are begging the question I don't care where it comes from. Do you think that if a woman likes jewelry, she needs to justify it as some inborn attraction before it is acceptable?

Your comments that "women at the mall seem to like jewelry" eminates the implicit assumption that this is a natural trend that will persist deterministically (as in, women who don't like jewelry are natural outliers). I am merely inquiring what that assumption is actually based on.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#63

Post by _bfhp »

andrewflnr wrote: post #59
_bfhp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we assume that men have a natural tendency to cry a bit less because men cry less often? The articles are more strongly consistent with the theory of gender socialization -- that the media et al coerces girls to focus (obsess, kill themselves over,) appearance, and without it it would be impossible to say to what degree such a thing as actually "biological". The rational course of action is to assume an absenc…

Yes. Men are more concerned with being/appearing strong , again, re-inforced and exaggerated by cultural norms. This also makes us tend to buy relatively useless tools/toys like power tools and big trucks, to make us feel strong. IMO this is a close analogue to the common female concern with aesthetic adornment. Women mock us, justifiably, for the dominance contests we like to get into, stemming from the same desire…

People are naturally concerned with interpreting and putting into practice the will of God, a concern which is re-inforced and exaggerated by established religion. This also makes us tend to do relatively useless things like go to weekly church services, to make us feel "closer to God". Atheists mock us, for they are merely in denial of their true urge to believe.

(Toddlers buy their own toys? What country do you live in?)

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#64

Post by andrewflnr »

_bfhp wrote: post #52
andrewflnr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're fighting a strawman here. The "human invention" part is what led the other commenters to generalize from "jewelry" to "adornment", which is a more accurate expression of the idea anyway. In this theory, jewelry is only a close-to-hand vehicle for expressing deeper inborn urges, also satisfied by elaborate clothing, hairstyles, hats and head-dresses, war paint, etc. Further, it's not present only in wom…

Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn an…

You're practically making my argument for me. Pretty much every culture is more concerned with adorning its females than males. How can that be without an underlying, enduring reason? You keep pointing to the self-reinforcing cycle, but how does it start, the same way everywhere?

For similar reasons, yes, it seems clear that there is something about us that drives us to religion. I'm pretty sure I would believe that even if I wasn't already a Christian.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#65

Post by _bfhp »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #61
_bfhp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn an…

"perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn?" Why wouldn't we? If humans had zero inborn aptitude for religious (mystical, rithualistic) feelings, how could religions arise? Assuming humans are inborn with christianity is baseless; but assuming humans are inborn with religious drive is logical.

Not at all, actually. Douglas Adams dispensies with this notion in his 1998 Digital Biota 2 speech, in the paragraphs starting with "Where does the idea of God come from?" [1]

[1] http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#66

Post by _bfhp »

andrewflnr wrote: post #64
_bfhp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world population is religious (or was for most of civilization's history, if the scales have tipped recently) -- perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn? I will break it down if that doesn't suffice: Before women and men were women and men, they were girls and boys growing up in whatever cultural atmosphere they were born into; and every culture worldwide has a policy of showering newborn an…

You're practically making my argument for me. Pretty much every culture is more concerned with adorning its females than males. How can that be without an underlying, enduring reason? You keep pointing to the self-reinforcing cycle, but how does it start , the same way everywhere? For similar reasons, yes, it seems clear that there is something about us that drives us to religion. I'm pretty sure I would believe that…

The reason doesn't have to be biological, but rather could easily be about power -- these women do a better job at elaborating than I ever could:

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2014/03/fem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot8cBm0YmXo

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#67

Post by taeric »

_bfhp wrote: post #62
tzs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do you think female interest in jewelry comes from? Are you implying that interest in jewelry is inborn in women? You are begging the question I don't care where it comes from. Do you think that if a woman likes jewelry, she needs to justify it as some inborn attraction before it is acceptable?

Your comments that "women at the mall seem to like jewelry" eminates the implicit assumption that this is a natural trend that will persist deterministically (as in, women who don't like jewelry are natural outliers). I am merely inquiring what that assumption is actually based on.

You are assuming the natural part. The original comment was simply about dominant view.

Could it be that it is strictly societal based? Yeah, why not? Does that change things? Remember, the desire is to get women into technology. Not to change societal norms on anything else.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#68

Post by andrewflnr »

_bfhp wrote: post #66
andrewflnr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're practically making my argument for me. Pretty much every culture is more concerned with adorning its females than males. How can that be without an underlying, enduring reason? You keep pointing to the self-reinforcing cycle, but how does it start , the same way everywhere? For similar reasons, yes, it seems clear that there is something about us that drives us to religion. I'm pretty sure I would believe that…

The reason doesn't have to be biological, but rather could easily be about power -- these women do a better job at elaborating than I ever could: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2014/03/fem... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot8cBm0YmXo

Where does the power differential come from? I alluded to that in one of my other comments.

It's tragic that the author of that article thinks that the only alternative to "femininity is about looking pretty so men can objectify you" is "femininity is an illusion of the patriarchal society". Not even an attempt to bring the conversation away from physical appearance, with an unnecessarily cynical interpretation of the no-makeup thing to boot; I always assumed that was about discovering, "hey we're beautiful without makeup after all", which you'd think the author would be in favor of. I'm not going to watch the video (because I find videos annoying), but if it's more of the same I'm not going to regret it at all.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#69

Post by andrewflnr »

_bfhp wrote: post #65
guard-of-terra wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"perhaps we should assume that belief in God is inborn?" Why wouldn't we? If humans had zero inborn aptitude for religious (mystical, rithualistic) feelings, how could religions arise? Assuming humans are inborn with christianity is baseless; but assuming humans are inborn with religious drive is logical.

Not at all, actually. Douglas Adams dispensies with this notion in his 1998 Digital Biota 2 speech, in the paragraphs starting with "Where does the idea of God come from?" [1] [1] http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

With apologies for the ham-handed editing:

  ...a question which ... only comes about because of the 
  nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he 
  has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived 
  because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks 
  at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this?
Not only is that an inborn motivation, but if you take away the assumption that there is no god, it's consistent with the Christian view of the whole "everyone knows there's a God" issue. I won't speak for guard-of-terra, but that's close enough for me. It's also in line with the kind of thing I'm talking about in regard to fundamental differences between men and women, in terms of baseness (if that's not an abuse of that word).

That said, thanks for the interesting read. I think we've said all that can be said without repeating ourselves or talking past each other, so I'm done.

Re: How not to attract women to coding: Make tech pink

#70

Post by Timeroot »

mrosethompson wrote: post #51
randunel wrote: post #27

I don't get one thing. If only 18% of the tech graduates are women, why do people (see wsj articles and random blogs) complain about companies "gender imbalance"[1] (not hiring 50% women and 50% men)? Wouldn't that be positive discrimination? As this article states, 18.2% of the graduates are women, but only 15% of the employees share the same gender, so the gap is 3.2%. Personally, I don't consider that 3.2% as bein…

Not necessarily. I'm not presenting this as fact, but merely as a a possible situation and counterexample to what you describe: Your reasoning would hold if you could assume identical skill distributions between men and women graduates. However, it seems somewhere between possible and likely that women graduates are of higher average skill than the men graduating. With so many barriers and cultural impedances for a w…

As a possible countereffect -- not one I necessarily believe to be stronger, but one to consider -- is that women might be weaker due to the culture they're coming from. Plenty of males have been encouraged to play with computers from the age of 8 or 10, and so will have large amounts of [at least some kind of] experience coming in to the workforce. Women are far less likely to have had this experience. Additionally, males (who will have more male friends) will quite possibly have plenty of coder friends whom they have learned from. Females statistically will have less, and have less exposure this way.

i.e. the culture not only makes it harder for women to get through learning compsci, but they'll also have less exposure to it in the process. This could potentially make them weaker candidates.

I don't know to what degree that actually happens.

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