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Nevertheless, She Coded

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Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#221

Post by bbcbasic »

prepend wrote: post #126
panglott wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

No, it's because back then programming was largely secretarial and clerical and involved many manual tasks repeated over and over to set up the programs. It was very different from what is done today.

> many manual tasks repeated over and over to set up the programs

In some ways, not much different to today

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#222

Post by jeremiahwv »

ar15saveslives wrote: post #209
jeremiahwv wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, that's what we like to tell ourselves. But is that actually what's happening? Did you take the test?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#223

Post by brighteyes »

owenversteeg wrote: post #193
sheepmullet wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there are disparaging comments because people love to quote misleading statistics... kind of just like you did. From the glassdoor wage gap study you mentioned in [2]: > After taking into account differences in education and experience, men working at tech companies overall make 5.9 percent more than women do From a brief scan of the study they didn't control for hours worked and they are already down to 5.9%…

Funny enough, I agree with both you and the person you're arguing against. I agree that the wage gap (as defined by the difference in how much men and women earn when working in the same position with the same skills) is probably pretty close to 6%. [0] I also agree that there is a big problem currently. In my opinion, the problem is twofold. First of all, this gap - whatever you think it is, 6% or 9% or 21% - it is…

> The second part of the problem is societal: women are discouraged from pursuing higher-paying jobs by society. This isn't the fault of the women themselves

I really think that point of view is both wrong and harmful.

It's true that society influences people in various ways. But you're assuming that what men do is the "default", and so if women do it less, they are discouraged.

Instead, looking at it from the women's side, perhaps it is men that are overly encouraged to do certain things. For example, men are highly overrepresented in prisons compared to women, and that's not good.

That might be an extreme example, but the fact is that many studies show that men care more about careers that make money, while women care more about making a positive difference in the world (obviously, both only on average). Given that, perhaps society pushes men too much towards tech and finance and so forth. It would be better if we nudged men instead towards nurturing professions, where you help people every day, like nursing or teaching.

In other words, society influences both genders in various ways. Any difference could be either women pushed one way or men pulled the other.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#224

Post by brighteyes »

fatbird wrote: post #215
gspetr wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are software companies composed of all men (or 95% men if we want to be a bit more relaxed). Successful ones - as in making profit. Where are all-women (or 95% women) companies? If you can get away with paying them less, where are all the capitalists exploiting the market inefficiency and getting rich in the process? Hell, nowadays companies like Starbucks[0] routinely put social causes first, profits second. S…

If women are underpaid because they're (consciously or not) undervalued as workers by entrepreneurs, then those same entrepreneurs are unlikely to visualize a net salary savings. You're basically saying: if women are as good as men but you can pay them less, why not hire women? And the answer is that the same factors that lead to women being underpaid lead to not seeing them as interchangeable hire with males.

I could be wrong, but I think the point that the poster was making was this: Sure, maybe women are undervalued on average, but that's just on average. Assuming women are both paid less, and undervalued, then together that creates a double opportunity for an employer that can see through the undervaluing, and rationally hires mostly women because they are just as good but cost less.

And the point is that we don't seem to see such companies. All the major tech companies have similar percentages of women, despite all of them trying very hard to increase those numbers.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#225

Post by _xhok »

Mz wrote: post #219
_xhok wrote: post #196

I wish comments were scored in a way that was weighted by the degree of bravery it took to write them. What a shame that most of the top comments here are boring, stand-up-for-the-vulnerable types agreed with by the majority— "women face difficulties in tech, and we should help them whenever we can"—while the downvoted posts are the ones trying (not necessarily successfully) to arrive at politically incorrect truths.

It is incredibly hard to have a good discussion about this topic. I think it is getting better on Hacker News, but there is still a lot of work to do. I sometimes write about such topics, but can't get much traction. A few of my pieces have gotten a few thousand page views, mostly on HN, but most of what I write is largely ignored. If you want something meatier, you might enjoy my personal blog. Best.

I'll check it out.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#226

Post by mmel »

dobbin wrote: post #116
panglott wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I'm curious, what used to be considered a "hard science" that is now no longer considered so due to (or corralated with) the influx of women into that field?

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#227

Post by tomlock »

bsder wrote: post #208

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 disappe…

>pay disparities in most tech fields almost disappear.

So what you're saying is there are pay disparities in most tech fields.

Aka, women face continued pay disparity.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#228

Post by throwaway91111 »

bsder wrote: post #208

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 disappe…

Except—women DO face continued pay disparity. Just because a hand-picked statistic deviates from this norm doesn't mean it's not true.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#229

Post by brighteyes »

cbhl wrote: post #163
CryoLogic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied economics in college, and worked with a professor who was researching the "pay gap". We found that adjusting for a number of factors (profession, experience, education, etc.) the pay gap actually closes significantly. That isn't to say some companies don't have pay gap, but it is largely overblown and often dissimilar pay is a result of other factors. tl;dr 70 cents on the dollar is not a real thing when yo…

If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong with the world. "Adjusting for profession" ignores the cultural context of terms like "pay gap" -- we come from a world where women couldn't work certain jobs at all.

> If men become doctors and women become nurses, or if men become Software Engineers and women become Test Engineers, then there's still something wrong with the world.

Imagine that doctors and nurses were paid the same. Would you still think that?

Other than salary, neither being a doctor or a nurse is "better". One is more technical, the other involves more personal contact, but neither of those is better, just different.

The same is true for Software Engineers and Test Engineers. It's snobbery to say one is better.

We should be lobbying to get nurses paid more.

Re: Nevertheless, She Coded

#230

Post by danso »

_xhok wrote: post #196

I wish comments were scored in a way that was weighted by the degree of bravery it took to write them. What a shame that most of the top comments here are boring, stand-up-for-the-vulnerable types agreed with by the majority— "women face difficulties in tech, and we should help them whenever we can"—while the downvoted posts are the ones trying (not necessarily successfully) to arrive at politically incorrect truths.

Why should we expect "bravery" or novelty to correlate with "insightful"?
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