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Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

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Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#291

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

slackstation wrote: post #133
ps4fanboy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because women dont want to marry men who want to be primary stay at home dads, some do, but I have never met a woman who wants that. Most of the women I speak to when asked think its a little bit funny.

Women tend to prefer men that are higher status than themselves. For a working woman (especially one in tech that earns alot) they tend find partners who are also employed. This makes a dichotomy where if a man makes $100k+ in most places in the US, they can one-income support a family. Where as women tend not to look favorably to men who take time off of to stay at home. Women's desire for high status men is somethi…

It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#292

Post by dragonwriter »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #291
slackstation wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women tend to prefer men that are higher status than themselves. For a working woman (especially one in tech that earns alot) they tend find partners who are also employed. This makes a dichotomy where if a man makes $100k+ in most places in the US, they can one-income support a family. Where as women tend not to look favorably to men who take time off of to stay at home. Women's desire for high status men is somethi…

It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

> It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

While resulting partnerships obviously must be reciprocal, preferences don't have to be.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#293

Post by NTDF9 »

rimantas wrote: post #253
nostrebored wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Don't be a good parent. Nice to see where this is going. >>Get this law to treat women the same as men. Wrt to parental leave, that's what I've been advocating for throughout this thread. I think that the social and legal status quo sets up women as the caregiver defaults, which is harmful to women. >>Women can play point guards when they start having families with deadbeats. Or, men could leave their jobs and let…

> I think that the social and legal status quo sets up women > as the caregiver defaults, which is harmful to women. That's quite sexist claim.

Not really. Laws in the US default to women as caregivers.

- Women get maternity, men don't - Women get default custody of child in divorce, men don't - Women get to adopt easier than men - Domestic violence on men is ignored/laughed upon, presumably because men are not caregivers but violators by default - Women don't have mandatory military conscription, men do (presumably because men have to be fighters and women have to be caregivers by default)

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#294

Post by dragonwriter »

NTDF9 wrote: post #293
rimantas wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that the social and legal status quo sets up women > as the caregiver defaults, which is harmful to women. That's quite sexist claim.

Not really. Laws in the US default to women as caregivers. - Women get maternity, men don't - Women get default custody of child in divorce, men don't - Women get to adopt easier than men - Domestic violence on men is ignored/laughed upon, presumably because men are not caregivers but violators by default - Women don't have mandatory military conscription, men do (presumably because men have to be fighters and women…

> Laws in the US default to women as caregivers.

Mostly, they don't.

> Women get maternity, men don't

Well, by definition, its only "maternity" when the mother gets it, but the federal requirement for unpaid, job-protected family leave in FMLA applies equally to parents of both genders, as does (for one example) the California state requirements for job-protected unpaid family (CFRA) and paid family leave (PFL)

> Women get default custody of child in divorce, men don't

There is no legally-specified default custody in divorce; women get custody in divorce more often because they are more likely to request it. Men get custody more often when it is contested between the parties.

> Women get to adopt easier than men

AFAIK, that's true for single women vs. single men in practice, but not an example of a default in the law, since its a result of the practices of private adoption agencies, not a result of a difference in legal requirements.

> Domestic violence on men is ignored/laughed upon, presumably because men are not caregivers but violators by default

Again, to the extent that's true, that's not an example of the law treating them differently; as a matter of law, domestic violence is equally prohibited when a male is the victim.

> Women don't have mandatory military conscription, men do

Well, no, since the draft ended and the all-volunteer force was established, no one has had mandatory military conscription in the US. Men are required to register in preparation for any potential change in that policy, though, so while overstated, this seems to be the single valid example of a legal preference in the direction you suggest on your list.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#295

Post by lucio »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #291
slackstation wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women tend to prefer men that are higher status than themselves. For a working woman (especially one in tech that earns alot) they tend find partners who are also employed. This makes a dichotomy where if a man makes $100k+ in most places in the US, they can one-income support a family. Where as women tend not to look favorably to men who take time off of to stay at home. Women's desire for high status men is somethi…

It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

It's because women have specific preferences, and men just want women.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#296

Post by wpietri »

MollyR wrote: post #290
wpietri wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok? I am not denying that, but I'm not seeing how it's connected to me telling the "OMG helping women is sexism" guy that there's a history here that he should pay attention to. In particular, the historical comparator to nurses isn't software engineers, it's doctors. Take a look at the gender distribution of medical school graduates: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SwyK7qFvLaI/AAAAAAAAL_... You can see it take…

Why do we have to work on the equality of outcome ? Isn't equality of opportunity enough ? My friends who are nurses wanted to be nurses, they didn't want to go medical school. They didn't want to wait to make money until their 30's, they considered career paths in relation to having a family. As long as they had the option, I don't see why forcing outcome is important here. As for helping men into nursing, if divers…

We don't have to force an equality of outcome. But it behooves us to be suspicious when the outcomes aren't equal. For centuries we had unequal outcomes in terms of doctor gender; one defense was "women don't want to be doctors". But when we finally removed the barriers, we see medical school admissions run about equal.

I'm all for men going into nursing. You can work on shifting that ratio if you like. But I'm not personally going to work on that because I don't think it is a result of oppression in the same way that keeping women out of medicine was.

I'm also fine with a little bit of what looks like overreaction in the moment, because that's how we find out where the balance is. People thought Title IX was an overreaction at the time, too.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#297

Post by womanwhocodes »

how exactly are they helping women? I am on their mailing list and it is not particularly useful. Once got interested in a "free" scholarship, contacted them, and the person tried to sell me a course for almost $10K.

It's impossible for a woman after 35 to get back in tech

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#298

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

lucio wrote: post #295
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how it's always "women prefer higher-status men" and never "men prefer lower-status women".

It's because women have specific preferences, and men just want women.

I don't think that's supported by evidence such as in those famous okcupid blog posts.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#299

Post by wpietri »

vanattab wrote: post #145
wpietri wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is some biology here. Sure. But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of. So at the very least, we need to carefully consider both biology and possibility when we talk about this. But if we're going to err, I think it's worth leaning the other way for a whil…

> But there's also centuries of entrenched societal structure that is only slowly dissolving. And much of that structure was built up with bogus explanations of what women were biologically capable of. I don't think the centuries old explanations are as bogus as you imply. The differences between men and women that we can all agree on such as avg. strength, breast feeding composed a lot more constraint on the divisio…

"Natural differences" was used to explain all sorts of things. E.g., why women couldn't be writers or doctors or lawyers or senators. I think those were bogus. Women weren't allowed to vote in the US until 1920 (and we were early adopters). I'm pretty sure that voting didn't require brute strength before then.

"Natural differences" was also used to justify slavery. That goes back to Aristotle, and up through the US Confederacy. I think that was bogus too.

I also assert that the claim of individual differences can only ever justify individual situations. If a strong person ends up having to carry the coal because a weak one can't, fine. But we're talking about systems where millions of people were judged on hypothetical averages and the crudest of stereotypes. E.g., firefighters need to be strong, but there's no reason to think that the US's weakest fireman was stronger than the US's strongest woman.

And I think that the reason women were forced to do all the childrearing was mainly not biology. Even if we ignore things like cow's milk and wet nurses, dads are perfectly capable of doing all the work once a child is 2 or so. Women were forced to do it because they lived in patriarchal societies where women were nearly property.

So I think we should always be deeply suspicious of any justification that comes down to natural differences. The history of it as an argument is absolutely terrible.

Re: Women Who Code (YC S16) helps female engineers level up in their careers

#300

Post by andrepd »

zepto wrote: post #182
andrepd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that your single anecdote (or "data point" or whatever you want to call it) isn't indicative of the statu quo. Does it mean there are places where men are discriminated against? Yes. Does it mean the statu quo is discrimination against men? No.

Actually that single data point does a lot. It shows an example of something important. In the absence of more data points, it is not reasonable to assume this is an isolated case. Unless you have statistics or evidence to support your position that discrimination against men is negligible, we have data to support that there is discrimination, and no data to support the countervailing position - only your assertion.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works. A single anecdote (which in true "data engineer" fashion you insist on calling a "data point") does not demonstrate _anything_. Otherwise the face that there has been one rape this year demonstrates the existence of rape culture, the fact that someehere someone was fired for being an immigrant demonstrates a climate of xenophobia, etc. I repeat, a single anecdote is not enough to draw any conclusion, and the fact that you can't recognise this one simple fact boggles the mind.
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