An Open Letter to Jessica Livingston About YC's Female Founders Conference • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by pekk » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 8:56 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #25

nailer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people need people from a background close to them to really feel like 'yeah, that could be me on stage'. I don't think that's good or bad, just how it is.

Is it easier for people to identify with gender than ethnicity? Let's say a conference has speakers and attendees that are predominantly white men. Should I relate because I'm a man even though I'm not white? Should a white woman relate because she's white even though she's not a man? It just seems weird to discuss disproportionate representation through only one lens.

Maybe this is too idealistic, but I would hope that conference attendees could relate because they are interested in the subject of the conference. It's disturbing that in practice, being a bird of a feather is exclusively defined in demographic terms. I have very little in common with most other people of my demographics, especially as pertains to my interests.

I want disproportionate representation - by people who are interested in the subject and are not just there to sell something or whatever.

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

#82

Post by notsony » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #64

What a sickening sycophantic declaration just to plug a very dangerous return to calendar-based contraception methods: http://www.readytogroove.com/the-cycle/appendix-a-the-sympto...

I'm going to upvote you.

It's a very good point you've made here.

This founder is giving bad advice to women who don't want to get pregnant causing some women to ditch contraception like condoms... resulting in unwanted pregancices.

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

#83

Post by practicalpants » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

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.

Wow... really? It's absolutely viewed as low prestige in my experience. I mean our culture has an ingrained stereotype of the socially awkward, maladjusted engineer, that's definitely out there. The jocks, "cool kids," extroverts, your typical fraternity member etc. are supposed to be in finance or striving to be an executive or something.

I think it's generational to some extend. IMO the baby boomers are particularly bad w/ regards to the stereotype. My parent's friends ask about my work as a programmer, and I suggest that their son or daughter who hasn't figured out what they want to do consider taking it up (code bootcamps make it easy, great market now, etc.), and I just get such cringe reactions from them.

But... younger generations are better, given how startups are now viewed as "trendy," and I do think movies/TV like the Social Network had a big impact.

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

#84

Post by birdsareweird » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

spcoll wrote: post #12

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…

HN's casual nerd misogyny showing up again...

As opposed to the special snowflake club ignoring the politically inconvenient research done in the last 20 years on gender equality? Differences in in-group bias, differences in headline coverage as victims, differences in court judgments, ...

Let's keep rewriting history so that white men are to blame. It's not like they do things like land probes on comets or anything.

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

#85

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #79

tptacek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more truth-y than true. If occupational prestige drove employment, we'd all be firefighters. And, of course, when you actually look at occupational prestige figures, engineers crush lawyers. Really, there's no axis on which your hypothesis explains anything.

Which explains why politics - which by definition is full of people who have enough status to set national policy - is full of engineers, while the lawyers are left discussing the finer technical points of voir dire on Lawyer News.

Not that I'm saying you constructed it this way intentionally, but this argument is the rhetorical equivalent of one of those Highlights For Children "How Many Things Can You Spot Wrong With This Picture" puzzles; including, at least:

* The notion that politicians occupy high-status careers

* The notion that it's the status held by politicians that is the reason they're allowed to set national policy

* The notion that your intuition about status trumps the actual numbers for occupational prestige, which are (a) easily found and (b) immediately refute both the premise and conclusion of this argument

* The notion that most lawyers are on a track to become politicians

* The notion that lawyers would be overrepresented among politicians because people love lawyers that much, and not because the top echelons of law are disproportionately well compensated, or because those people make decades-long careers out of making connections with businesses and power brokers

* The notion that you can evaluate the overall status hierarchy position of a career solely by observing it's top echelon (here: national office-holders, and not city council-people)

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

#86

Post by lucidrains » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:06 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #30

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pharmacists are paid extremely well and have a higher representation of women (56.3) than men.

Actually, Pharmacy is going to become the new Law. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119634/pharmacy-school-cr...

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

#87

Post by Alex3917 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:09 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #48

fallinghawks wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's now low prestige, it's just lower prestige than e.g. medicine, law or "investment banking".

> It's now low prestige, it's just lower prestige than e.g. medicine, law or "investment banking".

Software developer and data scientist are both at the top of the list of best careers in America right now, and more people aspire to be startup CEOs than movie stars or pro athletes.

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

#88

Post by 3pt14159 » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

Before you write a comment about why women are or aren't enrolled in STEM fields, please read the Wikipedia article on it. Every time someone says a generalization like "they just choose safer employment" or "high status something, something" without first reviewing a summary of the body of research into the matter, it's kinda pointless. It's like someone saying "here's why I think computers crash" but they've never read a book on HTML.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields

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

#89

Post by stretchwithme » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC

Carol Dweck has shown us that it is the belief that intelligence is fixed is a major problem.

If children are told that failure is just part of learning and not indicative of potential, they keep trying until they master the material.

Of course, if someone is uninterested in acquiring a particular skill, that's irrelevant. They may have exactly the same potential for learning, but just don't care.

We should not be trying to make people pursue careers because we don't like the statistics. People should be free to follow their own desires. They know better than "society", whatever that is.

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

#90

Post by abathur » Sun, Feb 22, 2015, 9:27 PM UTC

xaa wrote: post #76

abathur wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hypothesis about why people end up in the jobs they do fails to account for whatever non-causative correlation someone can cook up? Astonishing! Why doesn't every country with a highly gender-segregated economy have a high standard of living?

Obviously because it is quite reasonable to assume that standards of living partially cause gender distribution by making daycare affordable, allowing more paid leave, etc., whereas gender polarization would not be expected to be a strong enough effect to pull an entire economy significantly in one direction or another. Causal modeling is a very difficult thing when you cannot perform a controlled experiment. I would…

Right. Precisely. Gender polarization isn't a strong enough effect to pull significantly on an economy; sputr is trying to use a spurious correlation with little value in actually predicting whether a country will have a high or low standard of living as evidence that we've all had the wool pulled over our eyes.

Assuming you mean the authors of the documentary, I'll give you a new synopsis highlighting what it's really about: Strawman arguments abound as our intrepid documentarians drag us from interview to interview to assert that it seems people conform very closely to what our stereotypes tell us to expect of them. Obviously this must be the inevitable result of our biology! Our strawman assertion of what "equality" means is defeated! There's no way our stereotypes could be self-perpetuating! People definitely don't continue to believe in the same religions or speak the same languages or eat the same food or celebrate the same holidays just because their ancestors did! Propensity to speak English and believe in the Judeo-Christian God must also be biological destiny!

Per your last question, I have no meaningful suggestion for the authors of the video; they're going to have a miserable confirming or disproving anything as long as they insist on using logical fallacies to do so.