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Django Girls one year later

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Re: Django Girls one year later

#81

Post by Trombone12 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #72
pron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The observation precisely follows the flow of power. See my other comment. > Academic sciences also have large gender disparities; physics has very few women, while biology has lots. Academia is less interesting to begin with because there is little difference in the power held by different fields (certainly between physics and biology today). Participation can therefore depend on many factors (perhaps side-products…

There is plenty of reason to study them; they provide validation/rejection of our theories. If you claim that "power" drives everything, yet fields with no power difference have disparities which directly mirror the disparities you claim are driven by "power", that suggests there is an underlying theory that doesn't use power at all and which predicts more things. By Occams razor, the latter theory is the one which s…

Dude, you can't use Occam’s razor to select between one theory and "the idea of there being a better theory" o_0

Fine, there might be an underlying theory that explains everything better than the "power" theory, BUT YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE IT before you can argue that it is superior.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#82

Post by tomp »

robertfw wrote: post #37
tomp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it baffling everytime someone refers to men and women as separate groups. What's the point of equality then if we're still so different? (In my experience, if you want to talk about "groups" in programming companies, it's mostly geeks vs. non-geeks, with men and women in both groups.)

It's easy to say that we're all one group if you're in the dominant group...

I hope you're not serious. I'm a geek, mind and body. Most of my life (school, high school, sports, socializing, university) I was part of the marginalized, made fun of, or outright abused groups. Incidentally, many women had it a lot better that I (they were popular, attractive, outgoing, talkative, ...).

Just because some of us (programmers) managed to unexpectedly strike gold (in this economy) doesn't make us "dominant" in most areas of life.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#83

Post by tomp »

pron wrote: post #60
tomp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it baffling everytime someone refers to men and women as separate groups. What's the point of equality then if we're still so different? (In my experience, if you want to talk about "groups" in programming companies, it's mostly geeks vs. non-geeks, with men and women in both groups.)

In spite of what some may think, these groupings are not based on some essence but on observation and the goals of those of us who seek to change the situation. We don't try to make everything equal, but first and foremost see if there are any obvious power differences in society at large. Since women form a group with a power share that is clearly and significantly lower than that of men, it is useful to treat women…

You see what you want to see. I see plenty of very powerful women (Merkel, Lagarde, Hillary) and countless powerless men.

Hint: what the powerful have in common is not sex, but money. If you really wanted to make a better society, you would focus on eradicating that discrimination and gap. But then, that probably won't win you any friends or popularity contests, so I guess I understand why you focus on the low-hanging fruit.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#84

Post by sfk »

Trombone12 wrote: post #81
yummyfajitas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is plenty of reason to study them; they provide validation/rejection of our theories. If you claim that "power" drives everything, yet fields with no power difference have disparities which directly mirror the disparities you claim are driven by "power", that suggests there is an underlying theory that doesn't use power at all and which predicts more things. By Occams razor, the latter theory is the one which s…

Dude, you can't use Occam’s razor to select between one theory and "the idea of there being a better theory" o_0 Fine, there might be an underlying theory that explains everything better than the "power" theory, BUT YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE IT before you can argue that it is superior.

Here it is:

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Obviously this is about averages, there will be several women here to whom the theory does not apply.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#85

Post by sfk »

pron wrote: post #80
yummyfajitas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? I have no idea what you are trying to say. Make sure to include a clear definition of "power", and make sure this definition is clear enough that I can at the very least evaluate "more" and "less" power. (I.e., I have no idea why you consider academic physics to have more power than academic biology.) I also have no idea what you mean by "a margin…

> Can you state your theory clearly enough that I can directly apply it? Certainly. Non-hegemonic groups are marginalized from seats of power. After a long struggle, they may increase participation. Put another way: groups with more power tend to preserve and increase the power difference between them and less powerful groups, while the less-powerful groups may gain a share of the power after a struggle. Sadly, it's…

Seats of power? Any woman can start and maintain an OSS project like xterm. They don't, because it's a thankless task and either they aren't interested enough or they figure out the "thankless" part faster than men.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#86

Post by sfk »

indubitably wrote: post #59
fooballs wrote: post #58

You don't beat sexism by creating a sexist organisation. It's amazing how people think that there are all these barriers to programming for certain groups of people which must be overcome. There aren't. Sit down, grab a computer and a book, and learn to code. If you're good at it, you'll get a job, and people will respect you. If you can't learn to code on your own, you probably don't have the mental skills necessary…

Ah yes, the convenient argument that the world is truly a meritocracy, and that those in positions of power, who evaluate merit, have no biases. I do not know whether you are in a position of power, but I note that this argument is often advanced by people in positions of power.

Where are the 50% of open source projects that should have been started by women?

Or are they deleted from the Internet by those in power?

Re: Django Girls one year later

#87

Post by pron »

sfk wrote: post #84
Trombone12 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, you can't use Occam’s razor to select between one theory and "the idea of there being a better theory" o_0 Fine, there might be an underlying theory that explains everything better than the "power" theory, BUT YOU HAVE TO PROVIDE IT before you can argue that it is superior.

Here it is: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science Obviously this is about averages, there will be several women here to whom the theory does not apply.

That's your theory? Women participation in math and the physical sciences is extremely high relative to their participation in software, where it used to be much, much higher (same as in other professions) and is constantly declining. That decline actually coincides with increasing, rather than decreasing salaries and prestige, and is not due to increasing work hours (that are lower in software than in medicine and law, where women participation is high). Software is a very clear anomaly.

That theory is even wrong for science in general, especially considering that women participation has been increasing, and that some scientific fields -- that are just as demanding -- are actually dominated by women.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#88

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #30
belorn wrote: post #9

In every work environment which has an clear gender imbalance we see the same stories of the minority group being pushed out by the majority group. The minority group feel pressured to be more majority-like to fit in, receive comments like "you are good for a minority person", and feel a social expectancy to be more like the majority group. Those who don't behave correctly report of being silenced and treated in a ve…

> 87% of squirrels work in a profession hostile to badgers, and 88% of badgers work in a profession hostile to squirrels. This is a good point, and I think this mindset could go a long way towards avoiding the sort of demonizing that often undermines conversations on this topic. Surely a large part of the dynamic is that the statistical majority can naturally come to regard itself as "normal" (in the normative as wel…

Just addressing the analogy but tree squirrels aren't so good at digging and badgers aren't so good at climbing. So when a squirrel takes a job that involves digging not based on their digging ability but on their species being under-represented in digging jobs then the other badgers would be rightfully perturbed.

The piece does a petitio principii in assuming that squirrels and badgers are both naturally predisposed as species to perform the same tasks. They may be, but it's a pertinent conclusion to the analogy and so can't be assumed.

Re: Django Girls one year later

#89

Post by ryannevius »

sfk wrote: post #86
indubitably wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the convenient argument that the world is truly a meritocracy, and that those in positions of power, who evaluate merit, have no biases. I do not know whether you are in a position of power, but I note that this argument is often advanced by people in positions of power.

Where are the 50% of open source projects that should have been started by women? Or are they deleted from the Internet by those in power?

I think you've completely misunderstood what @indubitably was trying to say...

Re: Django Girls one year later

#90

Post by [deleted] »

tomp wrote: post #83
pron wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In spite of what some may think, these groupings are not based on some essence but on observation and the goals of those of us who seek to change the situation. We don't try to make everything equal, but first and foremost see if there are any obvious power differences in society at large. Since women form a group with a power share that is clearly and significantly lower than that of men, it is useful to treat women…

You see what you want to see. I see plenty of very powerful women (Merkel, Lagarde, Hillary) and countless powerless men. Hint: what the powerful have in common is not sex, but money . If you really wanted to make a better society, you would focus on eradicating that discrimination and gap. But then, that probably won't win you any friends or popularity contests, so I guess I understand why you focus on the low-hangi…

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