Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#311

Post by kesselvon » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #207

Pharylon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because each one of us is an island, and we're not influenced by society at all as it is. I have a two year old and I can tell you fighting against pinky-princess girl culture is a battle. As a parent, it's you vs basically the rest of society that sends a million little cues about what girls are supposed to do. I had this conversation with my daughter the other morning: Daughter: I want to be a boy when I grow…

No. That is the not real problem here. The problem is a certain things have a very high barrier to entry. Getting into such things requires over the natural amounts of persistence and other myriad life skills for which you need a certain level of biological independence(like not having kids for example). These barrier to entries vary with each profession. They are higher for the cool jobs, like the CS ones. Most of t…

How many fields require 18 hour workdays outside of IB? Even then, that's just shit working conditions regardless

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#312

Post by ryanx435 » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

isn't this because there were very few males left after WWII (because they all died) to enter the workforce, so women had to step up to fill in the gaps?

I think I remember reading that there were so few males left that the soviets literally bussed males around the country to impregnate women so they could rebuild their population.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#313

Post by icebraining » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #271

icebraining wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's certainly not unreasonable, the fact that current societies - even very equal ones - show gender roles is hardly good evidence, or makes the social construction theory untenable. All of our societies are also a continuum stretching for millennia, so it's very hard to say what a truly equal society looks like, let alone predict how people would behave in it.

>the fact that current societies - even very equal ones - show gender roles is hardly good evidence, or makes the social construction theory untenable. Gender roles is what you would expect from a species that developed distinct genders. For example, the simple fact that hormone levels are different between genders, should strongly imply differences in behaviour which should bleed into day to day choices. The fact th…

"strongly imply" - exactly. It certainly implies. It certainly seems the more likely explanation. What I'm saying is that there's a big leap from "strong imply not X" to "X not possibly correct".

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

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Post by Chris2048 » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #234

Chris2048 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden's on you to show it's a poor argument. I can just as easily state that it's a great argument. Also, I think it's clear that OP expects down-votes for "going against the gender narrative", rather than the incidental swipes at America; That said, it is baiting to provoke in this style, rather than stick to the point.

>> BUT statistically, far fewer women than men enjoy STEM. Women are less interested in STEM. This point has already been debunked in this thread, with links to data.

Can you link to that post, to clarify that?

Though the post I responded to didn't mention that - it just said "this is a poor argument" without reference to bad statistical claims or the other posts.

Also, what is the standard for "debunked"? links/data by themselves don't mean anything without validity, and what you and I consider valid may differ.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#315

Post by rimliu » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #119

rimliu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of work you do in STEM field is not the same across them.

Mathematics is so thematically similar to CS that it used to house the CS departments. Please don't waste your time trying to conjure an argument about how CS somehow requires a different kind of brain than mathematics.

I am not talking about different kind of brains. I am talking that maybe day to day work is quite different. I have no idea, what does mathematician's day look like, but I guess they don't have scope creep, arbitrary deadlines, bug reports from users and crunch times.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#316

Post by wwwater » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

This article massively exaggerates the positive attitude Russians have towards women in tech. My Russian mother keeps telling me time to time that there must be something wrong with me that I have this genuine interest in tech things being a girl, because "all this physics and computers is not a girl's business"...

As some commentators already mentioned, Soviet Union tried to make no distinction between male and female professions. But nowadays social roles of men and women are strongly polarized and Stem mostly considered as not women's business.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#317

Post by rimliu » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

milquetoastaf wrote: post #185

rimliu wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because there is no hostility towards women? Have you seen a bunch of programmers who were not happy about prospect of getting some girls among coworkers?

Yep there's no hostility at all towards women in any tech field, ever. It's all just a made up problem by feminists trying to spread cultural marxism

I have never witnessed any. I'd even say that girls were treated with more respect. Maybe it has something to do with me living in exUSSR country. But for some reason there are mostly males talking about this problem, and for some reason they cannot except the possibility of women making the choice by themselves — there must always be some evil male forcing them and succeeding.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#318

Post by abecedarius » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #302

abecedarius wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's like that in, say, game development, but I've never seen these absurd hours in my career. A certain willingness to learn and do more than the standard curriculum is valued, yes, and there's crunch mode and harder-working startup jobs, but I haven't seen this hazing and exploitation from any of my employers.

>>I haven't seen this hazing and exploitation from any of my employers. Most employers won't. But yet some people pour in a lot of time to make themselves better. That is precisely the whole point. Its exactly a bit like school. Schools won't force you to put any hours. But people putting in late nighters and burning the midnight oil end up scoring high marks and getting better grades. How do you suggest we help low…

My top advice would be to look for their comparative advantage. For some that's an ability to work very hard at something they're not obviously talented at or attracted to. OTOH I knew someone who fit just that description who still failed to make the move from technician to programmer, after a lot of personal time studying.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#319

Post by acdha » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #244

Pharylon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because each one of us is an island, and we're not influenced by society at all as it is. I have a two year old and I can tell you fighting against pinky-princess girl culture is a battle. As a parent, it's you vs basically the rest of society that sends a million little cues about what girls are supposed to do. I had this conversation with my daughter the other morning: Daughter: I want to be a boy when I grow…

> that sends a million little cues about what girls are supposed to do. Why do you assume this is cause rather than effect? I find it hard to imagine we set out to define gender roles, rather than those roles evolving over a long time due to a billion factors.

Because researchers have been looking for those factors for a long time but haven't found anything significant. Yes, if you give people a pull-up test men will do better on average but there's a shortage of strong examples of more complex skills where there's a significant innate difference. This is especially true for professional skills where there are multiple paths to success relying on many different mental abilities, decreasing the odds that any single innate difference could be make or break.

Re: Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

#320

Post by wongarsu » Fri, Apr 21, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

ashark wrote: post #225

kamaal wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That is the not real problem here. The problem is a certain things have a very high barrier to entry. Getting into such things requires over the natural amounts of persistence and other myriad life skills for which you need a certain level of biological independence(like not having kids for example). These barrier to entries vary with each profession. They are higher for the cool jobs, like the CS ones. Most of t…

> They are higher for the cool jobs, like the CS ones. Well, for the cool CS jobs, yeah, which is maybe 1% of the total. The rest aren't cool—they're brain-meltingly boring, often frustrating, health-destroyingly sedentary, and often (not always) fairly low-status, despite the pay[0]. The way-above-median pay's just about all a CS career's got going for it, for most. [0] Compare especially the status boost granted by…

But those 1% are all that matter in this context, because they are the only ones doing outreach and are thus the only ones being perceived by outsiders. Nobody (outside the industry) knows what the other programmers do or what their work conditions are, because they don't actively tell anybody.

Partly that's because those 1% have to do outreach to get enough workers willing to endure those conditions, and partly it's because those are entire companies filled with passionate people (because everyone who doesn't love the job quickly quits) and they want to share their passion.