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An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

jenniferaldoretta.com

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Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#51

Post by sputr »

lambda wrote: post #19
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

Well, when I looked around a bit I found this article " rel="nofollow">http://readwrite.com/2014/09/02/women-in-computer-science-wh... which links to this study: " rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/11/220748057/why-wome... which indicates that rather than being based on prestige, it appears that the disparity can be broken down based on more rewarding but lower paying, vs. more purely mercenary jo…

I think everyone discussing any gender gap should really watch this Norwegian documentary:

Brainwashed: The Gender Equality Paradox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

The "social expectations" hypothesis fails to explain why countries with higher living standards have more polarized sectors. The idea that in a perfect world with no "social pressure" we would reach a parity between genders ignores just about all research done on the biological gender differences.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#52

Post by [deleted] »

chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#53

Post by tptacek »

chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

We're all the same social animals. Men are just as status-conscious as women are, so your observation probably doesn't have as much explanatory power as you seem to think it does.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#54

Post by nailer »

wongarsu wrote: post #39
nailer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think The Big Bang Theory is pretty awful too, but I think how you describe what you do makes a difference: - "I'm a programmer" (people think about typing) - "I make apps" (people think about the amazing things you create...by typing)

That works well for customer-facing software, but I'm not so sure about the general case. "I make a quality control system for a large factory" (people think about all sorts of boring things) "I make payroll software" (people feign interest for a moment, then change the topic)

> "I make a quality control system for a large factory" (people think about all sorts of boring things)

Sure. But making a quality control system is (for most people in most cases) actually boring. The same skills could be applied elsewhere for something far more compelling. But if you framed them how you achieved them - "I'm a programmer" - they'd sound like the same jobs, which they're not.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#55

Post by diego »

[deleted] wrote: post #52
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

[deleted]

I'm not saying he's right, but "we're all social animals" ignores the entire discipline of evolutionary psychology. Biology forced males and females of various species to evolve different strategies. For humans some of those strategies are obsolete, but it doesn't mean that they're gone from our brains. If you haven't, check out The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller or similar books.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#56

Post by facepalm »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #8
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

Yeah, top jobs where women dominate are all super high prestige, elementary school teachers, nursing/health aides, secretarial, retail, food service... :)

More women than men study medicine, so for example your "nursing/health aides" example really conveys the wrong picture.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#57

Post by minthd »

tptacek wrote: post #53
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

We're all the same social animals. Men are just as status-conscious as women are, so your observation probably doesn't have as much explanatory power as you seem to think it does.

It's not exact. Man care more about their place in the hierarchy , while women care more about how they're perceived by people around them.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#58

Post by facepalm »

fallinghawks wrote: post #14
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

This is the first time I've heard engineering called low prestige.

Where I went to university the engineering students had their own jokes category, usually about them never getting laid.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#59

Post by tptacek »

minthd wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all the same social animals. Men are just as status-conscious as women are, so your observation probably doesn't have as much explanatory power as you seem to think it does.

It's not exact. Man care more about their place in the hierarchy , while women care more about how they're perceived by people around them.

How convenient it is for us men to believe stuff like this.

Re: An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference

#60

Post by facepalm »

lisa_henderson wrote: post #7
chaostheory wrote: post #5

"I’ve lived my life in a 'man’s world', receiving a degree in mechanical engineering—which contains the lowest percentage of women compared to any other engineering field at just 7.2%—from an already male-dominated university." Going on a tangent, I suspect areas like mechanical engineering and computer science are still "boy's clubs" due to one thing: social prestige. I feel that women are more attracted to high pre…

Women tend to focus on those jobs where the need for the job seems solid. If we focus, for a moment, on those jobs that are available to those who have college degrees, many women become teachers, but teaching is not high prestige. There is little risk that the USA will outsource all the hospitals to China, so women go into medicine. There is little risk that the USA will outsource all the lawyers to China, so women…

So why do women become elementary school teachers rather than high school teachers?

Although in general it's probably true that women tend to be more risk averse.

I've always said that women are probably simply too smart to go into IT. Sitting in front of a glowing rectangle in a gloomy basement is probably not the best recipe for happiness. Cliched as it sounds, but a job that involves talking to people might be much more likely to make a person happy.

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