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Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

latimes.com

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Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#21

Post by noobermin »

spaceflunky wrote: post #13
RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

I think that the term "diverse" has many definitions. For example, if a gender split at a tech company was 50/50, but everyone was white, would we still consider that company diverse? What is the right definition of "diversity" and which groups (gender vs race vs socio-economic vs ...) should we spend our time working on? You can see how identity politics become problematic very quickly.

When it comes to a single tech company, just by the reason of statistics, I can understand how it's hard to worry about diversity because you're basically taking a small N sampling of the distribution. When you're talking about all tech companies as a whole it makes more sense...and similarly, all colleges, or even individual colleges, who tend to enroll a larger sample of the population.

Of course, when we're talking about Google or Facebook, we at big N territory, so if you don't expect biases, the make up should reflect the general population.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#22

Post by SerLava »

lemmsjid wrote: post #18
RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

I wouldn't call the act of attempting demographic balance in a field 'stubborn'. History often teaches us that differences between groups are contextual rather than intrinsic. When I say contextual I mean they are often for reasons that have to do with specific social forces at work during specific historical periods. For example, there was a time that software engineering was dominated by females. At the time, softw…

>For example, there was a time that software engineering was dominated by females. At the time, software development was considered a feminine task.

But I think you are talking about a menial job that doesn't exist anymore. That skew comes from basically punch card data entry.

I don't think software design was ever female dominated. Is that incorrect?

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#23

Post by _mhr_ »

RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

They're not pleased with a majority female program. They're pleased with a half-male / half-female program. They don't want it to be lopsided in either direction because they believe programming as a skill is orthogonal to sex.

I think making computer science assignments and quizzes fun and less intimidating is a very different idea from the extreme of macho nursing.

Your article shows that teachers were making girls feel unwelcome because they didn't understand the cultural in-jokes. There's a big difference between cultural predisposition and predisposition towards a skill. I find it really hard to believe that programming and problem-solving is something men are just generally better at compared to women. If we measure problem-solving ability by IQ, then women are just as capable as men, though it looks like there are more males than females on each side of the spectrum of extraordinarily good at problem-solving and extraordinarily bad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intellige...

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#24

Post by drspacemonkey »

geofft wrote: post #9
RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

I'm having trouble reading that Quartz article as arguing that men and women have intrinsically different interests, and I think you acknowledge that by saying that there are social differences. It doesn't seem like they're arguing that there's anything in Star Trek posters that deters people with certain hormones, but that socially, Star Trek posters convey an association with a closed male culture. Thing is, this i…

>But we're arguing that these purely artificial constructs of geeky men bonding over Star Trek are worth upholding

I'd argue that letting geeks be geeks is worth upholding, and forcing engineers to not be geeks would be a disaster.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#26

Post by dethswatch »

lemmsjid wrote: post #18
RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

I wouldn't call the act of attempting demographic balance in a field 'stubborn'. History often teaches us that differences between groups are contextual rather than intrinsic. When I say contextual I mean they are often for reasons that have to do with specific social forces at work during specific historical periods. For example, there was a time that software engineering was dominated by females. At the time, softw…

> a time that software engineering was dominated by female

ref?

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#28

Post by hkmurakami »

dominotw wrote: post #25

We already have a very accurate system of privilege in 'parental wealth'. It has always puzzled me why people refuse to use this instead of relying of race/sex ect . wtf. why is this downvoted?

Because America has a belief system of a flat society vs a class hierarchy.

Both wealth hierarchies and social class hierarchies exist, but that goes against the narrative.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#29

Post by noobermin »

geofft wrote: post #9
RoboticFoot wrote: post #5

I have two concerns with the ideology espoused in this article; the first is that a majority female program is lauded as "diverse", whereas a majority male program, even by a similarly small margin, is considered problematic. I don't buy the idea that any given subset of students has to either exactly match or disfavor men compared to the general population. My second concern is with the stubborn insistence that we m…

I'm having trouble reading that Quartz article as arguing that men and women have intrinsically different interests, and I think you acknowledge that by saying that there are social differences. It doesn't seem like they're arguing that there's anything in Star Trek posters that deters people with certain hormones, but that socially, Star Trek posters convey an association with a closed male culture. Thing is, this i…

Is anyone not going to bring up Star fucking Trek is that beautiful fantastical future where women and men are equal in almost every respect, and humans all band together as a single race? Star Trek is a globalist/liberal's wet dream. Even TOS which had Captain Pike mumbling about "women on the bridge" was diverse for the 60's not just in representation of women but minorities, and clearly TNG was everything most of the SJ crowd would hope for.

Re: Harvey Mudd College Attempting to Address Tech Diversity Issues

#30

Post by FT_intern »

dominotw wrote: post #25

We already have a very accurate system of privilege in 'parental wealth'. It has always puzzled me why people refuse to use this instead of relying of race/sex ect . wtf. why is this downvoted?

My theory is that affirmative action gives colleges an excuse to bump up rich, "underprivileged" minorities over poor, "privileged" races so they don't have to give as much financial aid
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