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The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

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Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#371

Post by tzs »

Beltiras wrote: post #247
Ajedi32 wrote: post #20

Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…

Women used to be more prevalent in STEM fields. In the 80's there were actually more female programmers than males. Something changed in the mid 80's and the culprit might have been gender stereotypes in advertising. If the reason for less women in STEM is biological, they would never have outpaced males at any timepoint.

You are assuming that the change in the 80s was something that made programming less attractive to women. But that's not the only change that could explain what happened. It could be that one or more other fields changed to become more attractive to women.

Until people stop focusing on where there women aren't, and instead focus on where the women are, we aren't going to figure out what the problem is in programming, or even figure out if there actually is a problem with programming.

There's a graph here [1] showing percent of bachelor's degrees going to women in several different fields over time, from 1970 through 2010.

The decline in women getting CS degrees starting in mid '80s really stands out. However what also stands out is that nothing else seems to have gotten a noticeable bump around the same time, so assuming that those women who are missing from CS did not leave college entirely, where are they?

It's possible that there is a bump but we just can't see it. There were only about 40000 BS CS degrees granted per year in the middle '80s. Some other fields beat that by a large factor, and so it is possible the missing CS women could have been absorbed into a few of those big majors where the bumps might be small enough to be lost in the noise.

Another interesting thing is that if you look just at CS, the total number of CS BS degrees was growing through 1985, then started falling [2]. If you look at just men, and just women, the same thing happened for each. For both, from 1970 to 1985 they were on an accelerating growth curve (almost exponential), and then for both it turned around and fell quickly (also almost exponentially) then leveled off.

During that growth phase the women's growth curve was accelerating more than the men's curve. During the decline phase, the women's decline was faster, too.

[1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

[2] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2474991/it-careers/wome...

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#372

Post by AnthonyMouse »

alkonaut wrote: post #269
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pro sports is a bit special, but it might be racist to not let a player try out because of an asian name, quoting that "thanks for your letter, but asian men are on average so short that we don't want to see you". Well of course it is, but it's inaccurate to suggest that the gender disparity in tech is entirely attributable to companies turning away female applicants on account of their gender. And if the suggestio…

> it's inaccurate to suggest that the gender disparity in tech is entirely attributable to companies turning away female applicants on account of their gender. And that's why no one makes that argument I hope!

Then what was your claim supposed to be an analogy for?

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#373

Post by Lon7 »

blahblah3 wrote: post #293

Seems like a lot of the controversy around these types of discussions comes from the consequences of bayesian inference. If you know that men and women differ in a distributional sense with respect to some trait, that gives you a prior to work off-of when you meet a new individual. This is rational from bayes theorem, so simply saying "you should treat everyone as an individual" is not nuanced enough. However, as you…

I don't think many people have a problem with any of the science or the statistics. That's not the problem with the 'manifesto'.

The author of the 'manifesto' seems to think that no one else reads these studies. I can assure you that everyone who is working on these issues has already read and understood the studies. The people in charge of these programs agree with them. He presented absolutely nothing of value. There is not a single new idea in what he wrote.

All the manifesto showed was that he thinks he you can just apply studies to your coworkers. He took a bunch of women he works with and turned them into statistics, into a problem that he alone can solve. It's incredible ignorant and arrogant.

The science, or understanding of statistics is not the problem, it is his approach to solving it that is the problem.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#374

Post by cpncrunch »

alkonaut wrote: post #308
dustinmoris wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentioned Neuroticism as a characteristic which has been observered higher on average with women and cited it with a link to wikipedia which also makes the exact same statement, which again cites other scientific resources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroticism Does that make Wikipedia sexist? Which one is sexist to you, or do you find both sexist: "Women have less stress tolerance" "Scientific studies show th…

Again: science and facts aren't sexist- the arguments and actions using those facts can in some cases be. That's why a single fact quote from the memo can't be sexist, but the memo can be, depending on who it's sent to, what arguments are made. Nothing will be racist or sexist without context. That is, for example why it's not racist for a black person to say something to another black person that would be racist if…

So why exactly is it sexist? He argues that's google's method of achieving diversity is counter-productive and unfair, and he proposes some alternative ways of increasing diversity, which may work better. Doesn't really sound sexist to me.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#375

Post by MarkMc »

snowwrestler wrote: post #33

The article hides a common but incorrect assumption. Look at this paragraph: > As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technolog…

> Google themselves have found through their own research that the best managers are defined by their people skills, not their technical skills. So why aren't the management layers of tech companies composed of mostly women?

That's a great point. So maybe Google should have said, 'This memo makes sense for programmers but not for managers'. Instead they said, 'You're fired!'

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#376

Post by kerbalspacepro »

Beltiras wrote: post #247
Ajedi32 wrote: post #20

Not much new here. This article is essentially just re-affirming all the scientific statements that were already made in the original memo, backed by links to scientific studies. Only difference being that the author of this article has a PhD in sexual neuroscience (so people might have a harder time accusing her of not knowing what she's talking about) and is female (so some people might have a harder time of accusi…

Women used to be more prevalent in STEM fields. In the 80's there were actually more female programmers than males. Something changed in the mid 80's and the culprit might have been gender stereotypes in advertising. If the reason for less women in STEM is biological, they would never have outpaced males at any timepoint.

It may also have been the type of computing that was going on. Pre-80s computing involved mainframes, data entry... secretarial tasks. Post-80s computing involved building businesses, getting heavily involved in the science, and generally hiding out in a dark room programming alone for weeks at a time.

What evidence is there for advertisement stereotyping being the causal factor? Wasn't advertisement stereotyping just as powerful in non-STEM fields like law? medicine? journalism? Why did they break the gender curse whereas STEM did not?

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#377

Post by EJTH »

monochromatic wrote: post #94
danpalmer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I could tell from the coverage (I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of the memo), it asks for more diversity in terms of right-wing/conservative thinking, and for Google to stop encouraging women to apply. On the surface – that's asking for both more and less diversity, however Google rejects the idea that conservative views (that are compatible with Google's HR policies) are discouraged, which wou…

The coverage has been near-uniformly garbage. Read the memo and make up your own mind.

The coverage has certainly been very disproportionate with what was actually written in the paper. Also I have yet to see a news outlet objectively giving references to the COMPLETE memo.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#378

Post by biggerbistro »

burner11 wrote: post #92

Why is it that nobody wants to fix the gender gap in nursing?

How about female coal miners? Female construction workers? This isn't about fairness it is all about browbeating people from a perceived moral high ground so that wages can be lowered for all (more supply of programmers = lower cost). The "useful fools" here likely have the best intentions but are being used by people without good intent.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#379

Post by omikun »

vowelless wrote: post #288
omikun wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing the way things are versus the way things should be. Evolutionary biology explains the way things are. Diversity measures combats that with the goal of getting us to the way things should be. There are a host of reasons why things are the way they are now. The memo tries to offload some of that to biological explanations and cites studies. Then he makes a leap of faith and recommends the should based…

> Evolutionary biology explains the way things are. Diversity measures combats that with the goal of getting us to the way things should be Who specifically told you how things should be? I fear I am witnessing the birth of a new religion here and I'm not done recovering from the teachings of the imams I grew up with...

No one told me. I'm still trying to figure it out. But mainstream gender equality says there should be a roughly equal split while the memo says the split should be something else and implied it should be more men than women by citing reasons for why there currently are more men than women.

Oh, am I not allowed to form an opinion on what should be? Please correct me if I am wrong but perhaps your opinion is no one should have an opinion on what should be and let things be status quo? Keep in mind the whole discussion is around what should be the goal of diversity measures.

Re: The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

#380

Post by 52-6F-62 »

peoplewindow wrote: post #90
52-6F-62 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally never called it out for sexism. I called it out for regressive-thinking as a solution based on plain fact. I can only be brief right now, but it's starting to get to me how so many people in an innovative sphere seem to have such a hard time with this. To me, it seems like it shouldn't be a second thought. If the main argument is that women do not [by nature of our scientific understanding] have minds tu…

The guy's post was science, according to scientists - 5 of them have now spoken up saying that. Maybe there'll be more. With respect to "why not try to solve it", it's a reasonable question. The guy answers that too - he is all for trying to solve it. He even makes suggestions about new ways to do it, like encouraging pair programming. But he feels the current solutions aren't working and are, in fact, causing bigger…

You're right that a number of scientists have come out to say his post was science. I'm saying that they are not the conclusive authority on the posters' intent.

He is of course entitled to feel and think whatever he wants, but maybe a little old-fashioned advice would help here: measure twice, cut once. He clearly didn't think through the effects of posting a stern essay to a company-wide board on a subject that is really quite touchy in the midst of one of the more socially-turbulent periods in the past 20 years.

If he wants to prove it's that desperate, he probably should have worked harder on his essay or social skills, and found a better way to introduce discussion.

And we haven't even confronted his perceptions yet. I have to wonder who exactly feels afraid and intimidated by the conditions. Him, and who else? Instead of resigning to anxiety that he might be confronted for such a strongly-pointed diatribe, maybe he should have considered that his understanding of the situation might be skewed?

I can't speak for anybody else, but his facts didn't support his conclusions for me. His timing was even worse. If it's a discussion he wanted, then maybe he should have researched tact first.

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