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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

#171

Post by tomp »

kansface wrote: post #110
tzs wrote: post #102

She mentions her field of STEM (mechanical engineering) has a particularly low percentage of women among its members, and cites another site. On that site, there is this interesting list: 39% of chemists and material scientists are women; 27.9% of environmental scientists and geoscientists are women; 15.6% of chemical engineers are women; 12.1% of civil engineers are women; 8.3% of electrical and electronics engineer…

Women make up about 50% of undergrad chemistry degrees. On the other hand, they make less than 20% of physics/math degrees (engineering funnels). I don't have any real idea why women are so low in math and physics, but I suspect you'd have to look back much further in time.

I studied math in Slovenia. There were about as many female as there were male students. In financial mathematics (and e.g. pharmacy, IIRC), there were more women than men. On the other hand, in computing and physics there were more men than women.

I am very inclined to think this is mainly a matter of preference. On the other hand, maybe the situation in the US is completely different, and Slovenia is just so much more equal when it comes to sex (e.g. the unadjusted gender wage gap is only 2.5% for Slovenia).

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

#173

Post by tomp »

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.

Not necessarily. There is a lot of anecdotal theories that women care more about how they are perceived by their peers. There might also be some research (a minute of Googling brought up this, although I'm quite sceptical of most sociological/psychological research).

> The researchers concluded that women seek to regain a sense of belonging whereas men are more interested in regaining self-esteem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_rejection#Ball_toss_.2F_...

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

#174

Post by tomp »

chaostheory wrote: post #159
spcoll wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sweeping statement like "women only care about social validation, and that's why there aren't many in tech" is sexist. First, that's like saying "men only care about money": it's not backed by any real evidence and it is disparaging to an entire gender. Second, that's sweeping under the rug the constant discrimination against women that is keeping them out of our industry. You are making women responsible for not c…

"A sweeping statement like "women only care about social validation, and that's why there aren't many in tech" is sexist." I feel that you're making really strong and incorrect assumptions about my posts. I never said that "women only care about social validation". Is it wrong to say that more women frown upon occupations that are seen to be held by social pariahs and outcasts by society at large? Why would an ambiti…

> Also some sweeping gender statements are actually true, such as men being more prone to violence than women.

Well, the alternative explanation is that men are simply better at violence than women (because we're stronger). E.g. men commit more suicides than women despite women attempting more. Also, domestic violence is roughly equal (60-40), but I imagine women are hurt worse more often.

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

#175

Post by rndn »

jholman wrote: post #160
rndn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find this interesting: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/24/perceptions-of-required... (I haven't read it yet though, only one of the linked articles in the third paragraph.)

Based on two recommendations, I went and read the slatestarcodex article. I too enjoyed it greatly, though I had a methodological quibble or two. The main reason I'm commenting is because I want to note that the entire point of the article you linked is to debunk the articles in the third paragraph (none of which I have read).

I know. Initially, I wanted to link the article I've read, however, Google referred me to this slatestarcodex article, so I figured I would directly link to a discussion about it.

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

#176

Post by wpietri »

b3tta wrote: post #164
wpietri wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few things in discourse I hate more than this sort of "just", the kind of ignorance-encouraging, status-quo-supporting "just" that tells people to stop thinking. Given that we have a millennia-long history of gender discrimination and given that women got the vote less than a century ago, this "just" is ridiculous. Look at this graph: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-wom... I guess i…

Hmm... Sometimes even I say "maybe women just prefer [...]", but actually mean exactly that, what you said: There are social trends and in this case there is a social trend specific to women wrongly being taught that they are not as good as men in STEM fields. So much in fact (here in Germany) that it's kind of unsettling, when they tell you "haha I'm just not good in math haha" and you can't even, because it's so ef…

Could be, but a lot of people take that "just" as meaning "there are essential gender differences rooted in the very fabric of the universe, so there's no point in talking about it". So if I were trying to point at the social factors that shape general preferences, I'd look for a phrasing that can't be taken for a call, as here, to ignore those factors.

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

#177

Post by tptacek »

tomp wrote: post #173
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.

Not necessarily. There is a lot of anecdotal theories that women care more about how they are perceived by their peers. There might also be some research (a minute of Googling brought up this, although I'm quite sceptical of most sociological/psychological research). > The researchers concluded that women seek to regain a sense of belonging whereas men are more interested in regaining self-esteem. http://en.wikipedia…

I'm not sure why I'm meant to put much weight on "anecdotal theories of women" while staring down the barrel of an 80/20 gender gap that is basically unique to computer science.

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

#178

Post by Retra »

crazy1van wrote: post #162
Retra wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from the post I was responding to: >Would we be hunting for a root cause in social pressure or discrimination if we found women were a much higher chunk of the audience for Twilight and men were a higher percent of Avengers viewers? What is this question suggesting? Is it saying that media preferences and employment differences are similar in such a way that the fact that we do not investigate media preferenc…

> I disagree with the implication that employment differences are to be trivialized as 'matters of preference,' I dont think that's trivializing the issue at all. Millions of people in the world with different preferences in all manner of things from movies to professions is hardly trivial. What's trivializing is thinking we can do some studies and find some kind of root cause of what is really an average of millions…

I don't even know what you're talking about. People have preferences for a reason. It's not a static property of reality. So what if men don't like Twilight? We could easily rewrite Twilight if we wanted so that they do.

Women don't like STEM? Change STEM so that they do. What do preferences have to do with anything? We don't have to abide by them.

Preferences are not a problem, social inequalities are a problem.

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

#179

Post by crazy1van »

Retra wrote: post #178
crazy1van wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I disagree with the implication that employment differences are to be trivialized as 'matters of preference,' I dont think that's trivializing the issue at all. Millions of people in the world with different preferences in all manner of things from movies to professions is hardly trivial. What's trivializing is thinking we can do some studies and find some kind of root cause of what is really an average of millions…

I don't even know what you're talking about. People have preferences for a reason. It's not a static property of reality. So what if men don't like Twilight? We could easily rewrite Twilight if we wanted so that they do. Women don't like STEM? Change STEM so that they do. What do preferences have to do with anything? We don't have to abide by them. Preferences are not a problem, social inequalities are a problem.

> Preferences are not a problem, social inequalities are a problem.

Exactly. Preferences are not a problem. Social inequalities are a problem. However, neither of those are easily directly measurable. So we do indirect measurements on things like gender participation in a given career. When we measure unequal participation in a field, I think we are too quick to attribute it to social inequalities when perhaps it is more personal preference. That's the only point I'm trying to make... My movie preference analogy confused my point. Sorry about that.

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

#180

Post by Retra »

crazy1van wrote: post #179
Retra wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what you're talking about. People have preferences for a reason. It's not a static property of reality. So what if men don't like Twilight? We could easily rewrite Twilight if we wanted so that they do. Women don't like STEM? Change STEM so that they do. What do preferences have to do with anything? We don't have to abide by them. Preferences are not a problem, social inequalities are a problem.

> Preferences are not a problem, social inequalities are a problem. Exactly. Preferences are not a problem. Social inequalities are a problem. However, neither of those are easily directly measurable. So we do indirect measurements on things like gender participation in a given career. When we measure unequal participation in a field, I think we are too quick to attribute it to social inequalities when perhaps it is…

EDIT: I have a clearer analogy for you. Imagine that we lived in a world where the US watched lots of action films and Spain watched lots of documentaries. Furthermore, imagine that there was a lot of money and power flowing into the documentary industry, and that the action film industry is relatively dry.

That's a proxy for socioeconomic inequality. Now what you are trying to argue is that Americans just might prefer action films. Ok... great. Americans prefer action films. But why?

So we go out there and we ask Americans how they feel about documentaries:

    "They are boring. We'd prefer not to watch them."
Hypothesis confirmed! So we ask them why the prefer action films:

    "Because they are in English. All the good documentaries are in Spanish."
Ding ding ding! Of course Americans prefer action films! They don't have access to good documentaries! Why would they prefer documentaries when they are all in Spanish?

---

So when you ask why women prefer not to work in STEM, you'll learn something about the cause of the social inequality. Saying it's a "matter of preference" tells you nothing. It just sounds like you're trying to invoke a naturalistic fallacy and stop investigating.

Maybe if you invested more in good English documentaries, they would be quite popular. Maybe the preference would disappear. So it doesn't matter if there's a preference. What matters is why there is a preference.

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