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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#111

Post by alainv »

gshulegaard wrote: post #43
prepend wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point, but I think for me it's more of a visceral response to falseness or inaccuracy that was developed by programming actually. It is good to encourage women and other underrepresented groups to enter tech-just imagine how many awesome programmers we are missing out on- but I feel we can do this by being objectively accurate. I'm with you on the underrepresented story, this is very common. But…

To build off your comment, I went ahead and found the glassdoor study: https://research-content.glassdoor.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2... And it, like most of the statistical papers surrounding the pay gap suffer from what I personally affectionately refer to as the "peanut butter spread" problem. The implicit assumption of pay gap studies is that if you group all jobs into a category and then segment them by gender bot…

You're building a strawman. No one is calling for "a Utopia-esque society where there is perfect freedom of choice [and] perfectly equal distributions of any sort."

One does not need to call for that in order to find the current representation of women in engineering/CS lower than desirable.

Continuing on the theme of using the sources presented in this thread: do you find it more likely that Google's worldwide tech workforce is 83% male because A) there is "no causal influence, insidious or otherwise" and there is perfect freedom of choice or because B) there are systemic factors at play?

That is the only question.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#112

Post by monokrome »

panglott wrote: post #56
dijit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Susan Fowlers case is harrowing and disgusting and shows that sometimes there bad people in powerful positions who are sexist. I don't think the tone of "the world is sexist" is genuine or fair, Susan Fowlers case is notable because it's definitely the exception, not the norm. Of course I will be glad when things like that _never- happen_, but if you take the example of murders.. There is usually a huge murder proble…

This stuff, like catcalling, is mostly invisible to me as a man. But at some point, you read enough stories, you realize it's the norm, not the exception.

...or you start looking out for it :)

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#114

Post by cmiles74 »

stagbeetle wrote: post #87
cmiles74 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is easy to nitpick studies, especially when they are trying to measure something that is this complicated. While the soundness of the paper should be grounded in the methods and the data, it is far too easy for an individual to discount it's value based on a perceived mistake in method. The more complex the methods, the more polarizing the results, the more this is the case. For this particular issue, I th…

I ask out of curiosity. If the wage gap studies were peer reviewed and found to be false, would you accept this?

Yes, I would accept that.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#115

Post by ruleabidinguser »

cmiles74 wrote: post #78
prepend wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty fatalistic, there are many quality studies that people disagree with. The soundness of a paper isn't based on whether you agree with it or disagree with it, it is based on the methods and the data. It's interesting that you require data to change your assumption that there's not a problem.

I think it is easy to nitpick studies, especially when they are trying to measure something that is this complicated. While the soundness of the paper should be grounded in the methods and the data, it is far too easy for an individual to discount it's value based on a perceived mistake in method. The more complex the methods, the more polarizing the results, the more this is the case. For this particular issue, I th…

While you see it as a historical truth this is something that is patently false in my daily life. Sorry I don't substitute historical truth for modern truth! I don't deny the existence of sexism.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#116

Post by dobbin »

panglott wrote: post #60
prepend wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were secretarial jobs and not equivalent to today's computer programmers, like Ada Lovelace.

Those were secretarial jobs because the men designing the hardware thought that was the hard stuff, and that designing software was basically secretarial work. When they discovered that designing software was hard, they forced the women out. http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...

It's a common pattern throughout history and one that really annoys me. People argue that the pay gap isn't real because men choose more highly-valued positions, but the reality is that positions favoured by women are inherently considered low-value. If some type of "women's work" somehow starts to become respectable or starts to pay better, it stops being "women's work" and the women are pushed out. If women start entering a respectable field and the field becomes "women's work", it stops being respectable. You can see it with the salaries of doctors in Russia, and the narrowing definition of what is considered "hard science" or STEM as women enter these fields in the US. It has very little to do with how difficult or important the work is.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#118

Post by smt88 »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #110

Also because the issue essentially doesnt exist. A victim complex is a real thing and there are real victims. You must acknowledge both, not just the latter (or just the former for that matter.) Sexism is real but severely overblown in my experience.

Is your experience that of a woman? If not, you really have no idea whether it's overblown or not.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#119

Post by mattb314 »

zephyrthenoble wrote: post #19
prepend wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see the data on this. I've worked in software development for 20 years and hired tons of people (maybe over 100). I think that professional jobs have the lowest pay disparity. I would imagine it's really hard to measure the pay gap between programmers because there are literally coders that are 2x or 5x more productive than other coders. So I don't think it's as simple as checking all the p…

https://www.cnet.com/news/biggest-pay-gap-in-america-compute...

The source: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/studies/gender-pay-gap/

The methodology: https://www.glassdoor.com/research/how-we-analyzed-the-gende...

I didn't find the editorializing in the cnet article very helpful.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#120

Post by cmiles74 »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #115
cmiles74 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is easy to nitpick studies, especially when they are trying to measure something that is this complicated. While the soundness of the paper should be grounded in the methods and the data, it is far too easy for an individual to discount it's value based on a perceived mistake in method. The more complex the methods, the more polarizing the results, the more this is the case. For this particular issue, I th…

While you see it as a historical truth this is something that is patently false in my daily life. Sorry I don't substitute historical truth for modern truth! I don't deny the existence of sexism.

I think that is a good thing. Still, it is likely that your experience might fall in the "anecdote" category. It is a big country!
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