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Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

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Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#331

Post by ivan_gammel »

rsanek wrote: post #200
callalex wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any citations to back up this “fact”?

take a look at the gender breakdowns for employment in the Nordics. probably the best social support structures / 'equality' in the world, and yet the ratios are among the most extreme anywhere. when you're taken care of, you do what you like. when you have an economic need, you'll take the job that pays and will pull you out of poverty, even if you don't care for it.

This argument is pretty common, but blaming the victim is wrong. It is not like Nordics solved the problem but women still choose different jobs.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190831-the-paradox-of...

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#332

Post by mike_hearn »

simplicio wrote: post #224
itsoktocry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will result in some professions with extreme sex imbalance, and we should accept that outcome. We do accept it, for the most part. I don't see many Men-as-Teachers or Men-in-Nursing advocacy groups.

There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy, in part because its thought having male teachers tends to be beneficial for male students[1]. I think stuff like that is the main reason to be worried about gender imbalances. A 40-60 imbalance probably isn't a big deal, but once you get to like, 90-10 or worse, as is the case with early education, you start to get a bunch of secondary social problems. Kids who associate lea…

Your link isn't men-in-teaching advocacy, it's specifically about:

> adding 1,000 male teachers of color into the teacher pipeline

White men need not apply. If they were actually trying to solve a gender imbalance they wouldn't impose that criteria.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#333

Post by simplicio »

jimbokun wrote: post #297
simplicio wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy, in part because its thought having male teachers tends to be beneficial for male students[1]. I think stuff like that is the main reason to be worried about gender imbalances. A 40-60 imbalance probably isn't a big deal, but once you get to like, 90-10 or worse, as is the case with early education, you start to get a bunch of secondary social problems. Kids who associate lea…

> There's a lot of Men-in-Teaching advocacy There are pundits saying this should be supported. Are there programs with real dollars behind them making actual changes?

The one I linked to? But that was just the first one that came up on google, seems to be a fair number of similar programs in other states.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#334

Post by cauch »

jimbokun wrote: post #302
elric wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you seem to have very little curiosity into WHY those ratios are so skewed That's a weird take. How would you know what I'm curious about? Pardon the strawman, but I'm not interested in handwavy explanations which tend to border on bigotry ("$category simply isn't interested in $topic"). I suspect the fundamental reasons are myriad and complex, but that doesn't mean $field wouldn't benefit from more diversity. > It…

> ("$category simply isn't interested in $topic"). First link that came up in my Google search: https://www.psypost.org/women-like-working-with-people-men-l... It is almost certain that differences in interest play a large role in the different distributions of men and women in different occupations. The studies showing this are well known and I have not seen them debunked. Please note that labelling a claim with str…

I find that interesting because I see more and more successful developers that explain that a successful developer is someone who has good people skills.

If you think about it, there not intrinsic ground to support the idea that computer science activities in themselves are more "things" than "people". They may be more "things-oriented" right now _because_ it is currently male dominated, but it does not mean it is a fundamental characteristic of the computer science activities.

I find it interesting because it shows the vicious circle of bias:

step1: "Computer science is male dominated" + "men prefer X and women prefer Y" -> "Computer science is therefore fundamentally X"

step2: "men prefer X and women prefer Y" + "Computer science is fundamentally X" -> "Computer science is therefore male dominated"

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#335

Post by Melomololotolo »

anal_reactor wrote: post #250
burutthrow1234 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a change in the past 10 years but I would say women are still systemically under-compensated, under-levelled, and encouraged to move into less prestigious roles like product, design, etc. The perception that women are better at "soft skills" means that we get pushed out of technical tracks into coordinating work, managing people, and sometimes just straight up babysitting male devs. Those career paths lead…

As a student I have personally experienced "sorry, you cannot join the event, you're a boy we're looking for a girl" and instead of me they picked a girl whose only job was to stand, smile, and tick the box "yes I'm a girl, this makes the team diverse". Having such an experience makes my brain heavily biased against all actions supporting gender equality. Which are many. And they're almost always about improving the…

The problem is that for you personally it feels shitty.

But you know what? For a lot more woman it feels like this compared to man.

It's your duty if an educated person to see thisaccept it and move on for equality sake. And I do not mean this ironic.

We are not changing our society without some people having less chances for having a highly undermined group of other people.

I would prefer for all of us just sitting down and actually talking how we all want to life but this mental gymnastics is too much for most people

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#336

Post by tardy_one »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #110
igor47 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. You'd think all the organizations that attribute their challenges in hiring non-male engineers to a "pipeline problem" would've spent a small fraction of their recruiting budgets helping to fund Girls in Tech...

If the problem is solved, the funding disappears.

Except in the real world, where the infrastructure to raise money for a previous problem can out compete new infrastructure.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#337

Post by jimbokun »

cauch wrote: post #334
jimbokun wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ("$category simply isn't interested in $topic"). First link that came up in my Google search: https://www.psypost.org/women-like-working-with-people-men-l... It is almost certain that differences in interest play a large role in the different distributions of men and women in different occupations. The studies showing this are well known and I have not seen them debunked. Please note that labelling a claim with str…

I find that interesting because I see more and more successful developers that explain that a successful developer is someone who has good people skills. If you think about it, there not intrinsic ground to support the idea that computer science activities in themselves are more "things" than "people". They may be more "things-oriented" right now _because_ it is currently male dominated, but it does not mean it is a…

At some point, some one has to sit down and write or debug the code.

It's never going to be as human oriented as something like teaching, being a therapist, or managing people full time.

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#338

Post by tptacek »

jimbokun wrote: post #277
elric wrote: post #269

This is such a difficult topic. When I started my undergraduate in CompSci, the department of 300 students had exactly 3 women. The faculty had way more female instructors than it did students. The Commucation Sciences department, which was on the same campus, had the inverse student population. I'm all in favour for letting students making their own study (and career) choices, but when the imbalance is this great, I…

[flagged]

Why do you think they're so skewed? Why are there so many women working in mathematics and particularly in cryptography compared to general computer engineering? Why are women so well represented in other hard science fields, both in absolute terms (especially in fields like biochemistry) and in relative terms compared to computer science and engineering?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#339

Post by tptacek »

jimbokun wrote: post #337
cauch wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that interesting because I see more and more successful developers that explain that a successful developer is someone who has good people skills. If you think about it, there not intrinsic ground to support the idea that computer science activities in themselves are more "things" than "people". They may be more "things-oriented" right now _because_ it is currently male dominated, but it does not mean it is a…

At some point, some one has to sit down and write or debug the code. It's never going to be as human oriented as something like teaching, being a therapist, or managing people full time.

It's more human oriented than writing math proofs! Why is the gap between those two fields double digit percentage points?

Re: Girls in Tech closes its doors after 17 years

#340

Post by autoexec »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #322
autoexec wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make sure that your wife feels accomplished in her own line of work "make sure that your wife feels accomplished" sounds very strange to me. Ultimately it should be his wife's responsibility to make sure that she feels accomplished right? I get that it's not a bad idea to talk with your spouse about what the two of you want in life and to consider other options from time to time though. > Raising kids is great, but…

> Ultimately it should be his wife's responsibility to make sure that she feels accomplished right? No. In a healthy relationship partners care about each other. This means also enabling them to pursue their dreams. It’s not just talking, it’s also doing something, e.g. taking parental leave or sacrificing your own opportunities so that your wife could use hers. Without this kind of support she won’t have much choice…

> it’s also doing something, e.g. taking parental leave or sacrificing your own opportunities so that your wife could use hers. Without this kind of support she won’t have much choice.

Even in a relationship, you have to own your own choices and be responsible for your own happiness. Seems like an ideal situation at least. As one of the few couples who can afford to live a good life on a single income, she'd already have far more opportunities than most. All choices involve sacrifices. If she wanted to work or they wanted to hire someone to come in to help take care of the house/kids it wouldn't necessarily change much for him.

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