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Poll: Male or female?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Male or female?

#21

Post by rokhayakebe »

rufius wrote: post #9

Who cares.

We should care. We like to believe that all our differences do not make a difference, but fortunately and unfortunately they do.

For example if YC funds more startups with women you will not see the impact in the next 2 years. But 10 years from now those veterans would have encouraged several younger women to get into technical fields. Everyone will benefit from that.

I have had the chance to meet and work with a couple of female programmers, and although I am not a coder I was most certainly thrilled.

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#22

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

Semi-relevant: http://xkcd.com/385/

EDIT: I've actually seen this in action. I spoke up about it, and got complete incomprehension in return. People really, really don't notice that they have these sorts of attitudes, and it stinks.

Related: http://dev.linuxchix.losurs.org/?q=node/10

I'm leaving my gender unspecified.

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#23

Post by biotech »

noaharc wrote: post #11
rufius wrote: post #9

Who cares.

I take it you don't. Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes? Really, give this a shot: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm .

"Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes?"

I agree with the GP, but not with this comment. Obviously there are meaningful differences between the sexes. But there are other ways to group people, as well:

- Gender (already covered, here)

- Age

- Nationality

- Ethnicity

- Sexual Orientation

- Political Orientation

- Religious Orientation

- Number of Older Siblings

- ... the list goes on

All of these factors are significant in the sense that they help to establish our unique identity, and there are meaningful differences in each category. Should we poll for each factor? At some point..... well, I can't say it more succinctly than the GP:

"Who cares?"

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#24

Post by mkyc »

rufius wrote: post #9

Who cares.

I agree that if the data can't be applied, then we're satisfying only trivial curiosities. Like if I asked about your gender - who cares? But this data can be applied. Here we're testing the hypothesis of the above-linked essay. It's a poor test, though I think that HN users are better behaved in voluntary online polls.

More importantly, it lets us know how our community stacks up. Genetically-encoded risk-taking aside, many of us want to see equal proportions in this poll, or would like to imagine that this poll would come out more equal than not. Yet it currently comes out 20:1, and this matters to me. (As a consequence, I'm probably going to make an effort to recommend this site or its discussions more often to women that I know.)

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#26

Post by rdouble »

edw519 wrote: post #10
jrockway wrote: post #7

This poll is probably meaningless, but it is a good indication of how many people read HN on Sunday afternoon. 80 votes in 20 minutes, or so. Edit: OK, actually 85 in 19 :)

At the time I voted, it was 96.6% male (143/148). I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male. I don't find it hard to believe that hacker news readership is 96.6% male. Does hacker news "attract" a more male readership? Or is the population already this skewed?

I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male.

I don't find this hard to believe. I've been working as a startup hacker for 10 years and can count the number of female programmers I've worked with on one hand. The population IS skewed.

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#27

Post by axod »

mkyc wrote: post #24
rufius wrote: post #9

Who cares.

I agree that if the data can't be applied, then we're satisfying only trivial curiosities. Like if I asked about your gender - who cares? But this data can be applied. Here we're testing the hypothesis of the above-linked essay. It's a poor test, though I think that HN users are better behaved in voluntary online polls. More importantly, it lets us know how our community stacks up. Genetically-encoded risk-taking asi…

>> "many of us would like to see equal proportions in such a poll"

Good luck with adjusting the internal structure of female brains.

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#28

Post by jurjenh »

andreyf wrote: post #13
edw519 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the time I voted, it was 96.6% male (143/148). I find it hard to believe that our community (hackers) is 96.6 % male. I don't find it hard to believe that hacker news readership is 96.6% male. Does hacker news "attract" a more male readership? Or is the population already this skewed?

Slightly related PG quote: I didn't realize it till I was writing this, but that may help explain why there are so few female startup founders. I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that only 1.7% of VC-backed startups are founded by women. The percentage of female hackers is small, but not that small. So why the discrepancy? When you realize that successful startups tend to have multiple founders who were alre…

Then again, people of a like mind tend to be found near each other, so the minority squared is likely to be an underestimation.

It could also be that women tend to procrastinate less due to better multi-tasking skills, but that's just wild speculation on my part...

Re: Poll: Male or female?

#29

Post by whughes »

biotech wrote: post #23
noaharc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you don't. Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes? Really, give this a shot: http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm .

"Is it because you think there are no meaningful differences across sexes?" I agree with the GP, but not with this comment. Obviously there are meaningful differences between the sexes. But there are other ways to group people, as well: - Gender (already covered, here) - Age - Nationality - Ethnicity - Sexual Orientation - Political Orientation - Religious Orientation - Number of Older Siblings - ... the list goes on…

Certainly, we've had polls for some of these (I remember age specifically) in the past, and we'll probably have them again as the user base changes. With the context of an increasing number of gender-related articles, I think this information is valuable.
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