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Struggling with the Gender Gap

jeanhsu.com

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Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#31

Post by gaius »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #28
auganov wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She quit Google and found a place for herself somewhere else, I don't see any gender-gap specific stuff there. You make a distinction of amazing people being on the "wrong side" and the "right side". Ones on the right side do have some trouble but can progress in a fairly fluid manner aka did have some setbacks but could still progress without major environmental changes (got that right?). Those on the wrong side get…

Okay, well, years before I got there, someone made the comment that "the company doesn't want women engineers, it wants boys with boobs". That is, there's talking the talk about diversity, and then there's actually living it. An example, because you asked: I had a manager tell me I was not doing anything more than meeting expectations because folks at my level are expected to be "fire and forget". Apparently, because…

I was not meeting his expectations of how engineers are supposed to behave

Everyone, male or female, is expected to meet or exceed the expectations of their boss, male or female. It's called "employment".

Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#32

Post by jasonyyun »

gaius wrote: post #12
tuhin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: The author of the post has been nothing but helpful to me in my latest endeavor and I have never met her in real life (yet). If she [the author] cares so much about the social aspects of being in IT industry then I don't know why she cannot accept the way it is. Why should she have to accept it the way it is? As human beings we all have the basic right and duty to improve things for the better. If the sit…

WHY should she try NOT IMPROVE them? Because she's not trying to improve them - she's trying to skew the game. Maybe it's "male-centric" to insist that only the quality of the work matters - but personally I say that quality of work transcends gender and speaks for itself. Because my long experience of this industry is that we are the least biased people on the planet, gay, straight, black, white, boy, girl, fat, the…

Here's the problem though: if you're interested in meritocracy, it has to be a true meritocracy all the way through. You can't ignore other parts of the process and then, only at the very end, say that the quality of work is the only thing that matters. Sure, if boys and girls at home and in our education system were treated equally, encouraged to pursue the same things, given the same opportunities...then yes, you could make this argument.

The problem, though, is that this isn't the case. Women in the United States aren't shying away from STEM disciplines because they're generally intellectually incapable of it; it's because they encounter strong societal pressures against doing so. Other countries--I'm thinking of Romania in particular, which sent a large number of IMO medalists to my university during my years there--have many more women in math and science. (And no, they're not bad at what they do.) Unless you're going to try to claim that Romanian women are somehow different or more talented than American women, it seems clear that the ways that our society and educators are affecting them are responsible for this disparity.

And once you take that into consideration, the argument for improving this problem starts to become a lot more reasonable. It bears a lot of similarity to that line from Lyndon Johnson: " You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair." It's pretty similar here. Jean (and others dedicated to this cause) aren't interested in "skewing" the game unfairly. Instead, they contend that because of issues earlier in the process, whatever they may be, the gender gap isn't and shouldn't be the natural order of things.

Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#33

Post by eru »

pyre wrote: post #23
wnoise wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True equality is not when a female Einstein is recognized as such, but when an average female schlub has the same opportunities as an average male schlub. People beside the top 1% are still people, and the impact on their life does matter.

I actually think that it would be much easier to recognize a 'female Einstein' just because her intelligence would be so exceptional. But it wouldn't be equality if only the brightest women were treated with respect, while the rest of the women were treated with less respect than males with an equivalent intelligence/skillset.

> I actually think that it would be much easier to recognize a 'female Einstein' just because her intelligence would be so exceptional.

Sorry, I don't get it. What are you trying to say?

By the way, the most beautiful result in physics was discovered by a woman, Emmy Noether. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noethers_theorem)

Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#34

Post by pyre »

eru wrote: post #33
pyre wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think that it would be much easier to recognize a 'female Einstein' just because her intelligence would be so exceptional. But it wouldn't be equality if only the brightest women were treated with respect, while the rest of the women were treated with less respect than males with an equivalent intelligence/skillset.

> I actually think that it would be much easier to recognize a 'female Einstein' just because her intelligence would be so exceptional. Sorry, I don't get it. What are you trying to say? By the way, the most beautiful result in physics was discovered by a woman, Emmy Noether. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noethers_theorem )

The idea that we should focus on trying to get respect/acceptance for female super geniuses. My point is that getting respect for ultra smart women is less of an issue because it's easy to recognize that they are exceptional.

Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#35

Post by eru »

pyre wrote: post #34
eru wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually think that it would be much easier to recognize a 'female Einstein' just because her intelligence would be so exceptional. Sorry, I don't get it. What are you trying to say? By the way, the most beautiful result in physics was discovered by a woman, Emmy Noether. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noethers_theorem )

The idea that we should focus on trying to get respect/acceptance for female super geniuses. My point is that getting respect for ultra smart women is less of an issue because it's easy to recognize that they are exceptional.

OK, that makes sense.

Re: Struggling with the Gender Gap

#36

Post by wnoise »

auganov wrote: post #27
wnoise wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True equality is not when a female Einstein is recognized as such, but when an average female schlub has the same opportunities as an average male schlub. People beside the top 1% are still people, and the impact on their life does matter.

Just a small note: True equality is when everything is the same. Period. If we want man and woman to be truly equal than men have to equal women. If you have to make a distinction of a female schlub and a male schlub then you have an inequality right there.

Under that definition, "equality" is a useless concept. If it helps, read all these uses of "equality" as "equity" or "equitably" instead.
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