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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#201

Post by jeremiahwv »

ar15saveslives wrote: post #174
zephyrthenoble wrote: post #21

I'm frankly quite surprised by the initial wave of comments disparaging this message. The facts are that women are poorly represented in the tech community[1], and do make less than men[2]. Any attempt to let women feel more accepted and bring about much needed change should be championed, not picked apart and belittled because you feel like you are personally being attacked when people are just asking for help. 1. h…

If they make less than men, why don't companies hire women alone? Don't they want to save money on salaries?

Precisely the question. Why indeed?

Would you be more likely to hire a man than a women for an engineering role? Take the harvard implicit gender bias test for one answer: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#202

Post by Tycho »

RodericDay wrote: post #154
dashundchen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always amazed by the stories I hear. It's a common yet toxic mentality where women are told they can't or shouldn't do something, or aren't cut out for STEM because they are female. I recently saw this surface on HN in the basement of this thread, discussing the appointment of Jennifer Widom as the dean of Stanford Engineering. Many posters speculated, without knowledge of her credentials, that she was unqualifi…

There's this nerd fiction favorite called "Snow Crash". I read it early on, and this line always stuck with me: > It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists. It's really very true.

Isn't the genre science fiction?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#203

Post by gspetr »

sanswork wrote: post #178
microcolonel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really have to ask yourself: Why would women, as a cohort, make the same amount per individual as men? Do you assume that nothing can be different enough between men and women to reasonably justify the statistics? I know of women who are paid more than me in tech, and I know why. I know of women who are paid less than me, and I can think of n reasons why. As for sheer numbers, ask yourself: are there any industri…

Your whole argument is that people are biologically set to specific roles because in some countries where they have the free choice they still go for those roles. But that ignores the fact that even in those societies children are still constantly bombarded with messages telling them what their gender should be when they grow up. You're looking at the finish line and making an answer while ignoring the fact that they…

OK, let's look at different sets of people.

My argument is that you cannot expect uniform distribution of career choices either by race or gender.

You can't expect exactly 13% of cops to be african american or exactly 50% of physicists to be female.

Let's look at hispanics and asians.

Asians outnumber hispanics in STEM 9:1

Hispanics outnumber asians in History 3:1

Don't have links to hard sources at hand since I'm on mobile, but even anecdotally I think almost anyone would agree that hispanics are outnumbered by asians in STEM.

Ethnic chinese are strong in STEM not just in US, but almost anywhere. You can take any country with a significant chinese diaspora and you'll see the results are about the same.

Can you make a compelling counterargument that hispanics are brought up in a way that specifically encourages them to learn History?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#204

Post by danso »

xor1 wrote: post #200
danso wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity. This particular piece focuses on gender because of today's being International Women's Day. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-silicon-... http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-sco... https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity...

>The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity Why don't I ever see it being discussed on HN?

Uh, does it not seem logical that if there are fewer black/Hispanic minorities in tech, that there will be fewer blog posts from that perspective?

But just because you don't ever see it discussed on HN doesn't mean that it isn't. Try out the HN search engine:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=racism&sort=byPopularity&prefi...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=african%20american&sort=byPopu...

Here's a discussion last year on the YC blog post that was titled, "YC Open Office Hours for Black and Hispanic Founders"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228326

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#205

Post by chongli »

fmihaila wrote: post #105
microcolonel wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really have to ask yourself: Why would women, as a cohort, make the same amount per individual as men? Do you assume that nothing can be different enough between men and women to reasonably justify the statistics? I know of women who are paid more than me in tech, and I know why. I know of women who are paid less than me, and I can think of n reasons why. As for sheer numbers, ask yourself: are there any industri…

> As for sheer numbers, ask yourself: are there any industries where there are considerably fewer men than women? The answer is, of course, yes. Look at nursing. Do the men employed as nurses make less money on average than their women colleagues?

Do the men employed as nurses make less money on average than their women colleagues?

No. Male nurses make way more than female nurses, on average. A big contributor to this is that male nurses are far more likely to be CRNAs than female nurses and CRNAs are the highest-paid nurse specialty (and requires a graduate degree).

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#206

Post by mmcwilliams »

xor1 wrote: post #200
danso wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity. This particular piece focuses on gender because of today's being International Women's Day. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-cant-silicon-... http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/20/9179853/tech-diversity-sco... https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/thought-on-diversity...

>The same people who call attention to gender diversity also speak out for racial diversity Why don't I ever see it being discussed on HN?

Because the highly-entrenched members of this site have access to the downvote button.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#207

Post by danso »

Loved this anecdote:

https://dev.to/thepracticaldev/nevertheless-she-coded/commen...

> The first thing I coded was an Everquest 7-page website in plain-old HTML. I was 15 and I had figured out HTML from right-clicking and wondering if 'View Source' was how it was made.

I went into computer engineering because I loved video games and wanted to write games. I believe my one of my first webpages was a Final Fantasy fanpage with Microsoft FrontPage, uploaded to my dad's Prodigy web space. I don't know what the actual stats are in terms of girls playing video games, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a correlation between that childhood activity and a later interest in programming.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#208

Post by bsder »

I really wish they would quit promulgating this because it's actually counterproductive:

"women face continued pay disparity"

Seeing this statement tells me immediately that the author is grinding an ax.

In some fields of engineering (EE, for example), women actually get paid more (104% last I checked). And, when you control for experience, time off for family, etc., pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear.

Complaining about discrimination or harassment? Sure, go for it. Lack of child care and having undue burden with family health issues? The stats back you up.

However, attempting to promulgate something which is not true hurts the overall movement when there is so much that is true and needs to be fixed.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#209

Post by ar15saveslives »

jeremiahwv wrote: post #201
ar15saveslives wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they make less than men, why don't companies hire women alone? Don't they want to save money on salaries?

Precisely the question. Why indeed? Would you be more likely to hire a man than a women for an engineering role? Take the harvard implicit gender bias test for one answer: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

> Would you be more likely to hire a man than a women for an engineering role?

If they are equally good, there's a good chance I'll choose the cheaper one.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#210

Post by sanswork »

gspetr wrote: post #203
sanswork wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole argument is that people are biologically set to specific roles because in some countries where they have the free choice they still go for those roles. But that ignores the fact that even in those societies children are still constantly bombarded with messages telling them what their gender should be when they grow up. You're looking at the finish line and making an answer while ignoring the fact that they…

OK, let's look at different sets of people. My argument is that you cannot expect uniform distribution of career choices either by race or gender. You can't expect exactly 13% of cops to be african american or exactly 50% of physicists to be female. Let's look at hispanics and asians. Asians outnumber hispanics in STEM 9:1 Hispanics outnumber asians in History 3:1 Don't have links to hard sources at hand since I'm on…

Many asian countries culturally encourage STEM fields above all else so it's not surprising that they are both over represented in STEM fields and underrepresented in non-STEM fields.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here? That culture pushes people to certain expectations? I agree.

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