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What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

nytimes.com

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Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#381

Post by Myrmornis »

kmicklas wrote: post #231
Myrmornis wrote: post #220

> Yet I wonder how many young men would choose to major in computer science if they suspected they might need to carry out their coding while sitting in a pink cubicle decorated with posters of “Sex and the City,” with copies of Vogue and Cosmo scattered around the lunchroom. In fact, Dr. Cheryan’s research shows that young men tend not to major in English for the same reasons women don’t pick computer science: They…

How is this relevant at all?

It is a response to a passage quoted from the article under discussion in this thread on hacker news, an internet site that is structured around discussion of articles.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#382

Post by ashworth »

shultays wrote: post #341
ashworth wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What??? My childhood best friend and college roommate shocked me by calling one of our CS classmates a "huge bitch" for not going on a date with him after they had lunch together our first week of college. I've lost track of how many sexist lines I've heard, like: "make me a sammich bitch, haha", "don't be an emo bitch about it, haha", "if we don't let people freely express themselves on the CS listserv, then this is…

> A was male, 21 years old, a stoner and business school drop-out with a portfolio consisting of a Java tower defense game. > B was female, 30 years old, with several years experience doing QA on computer peripheral drivers who had re-trained herself as a web developer and had a Rails StackOverflow clone and a Meteor KhanAcademy clone for her portfolio. > A got offered a six-figure full time position. > B got offered…

I wish it was a lie, but it is not.

Anyway, the story ends well. B is a front-end engineer at Google now, A didn't take the offer and went to a different start-up.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#383

Post by ashworth »

solofounder2 wrote: post #243
ashworth wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What??? My childhood best friend and college roommate shocked me by calling one of our CS classmates a "huge bitch" for not going on a date with him after they had lunch together our first week of college. I've lost track of how many sexist lines I've heard, like: "make me a sammich bitch, haha", "don't be an emo bitch about it, haha", "if we don't let people freely express themselves on the CS listserv, then this is…

> "emo bitch" "that guy was kind of a dick" is an offhand comment that just means "rude" or "jerk" and you hear it all the time from college age women when referencing the slightest deviations from their standards of behavior. It refers to the male genitalia in a negative connotation and is terefor far more explicit than the dog word.

It sounds like you're trolling, but if you aren't:

1. One wrong does not make another wrong right.

2. "Dick" is used as an offhand comment usually because it is considered less offensive than other words with the same meaning, like "asshole" or "piece of shit".

3. I agree that women treat men badly as well. People suck.

4. Imagine your daughter or mother being called an "emo bitch" because they reacted angrily to an insult. Would you tell her "well at least they didn't explicitly insult your genitalia?"

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#384

Post by rewqfdsa »

memu wrote: post #378
rewqfdsa wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand. I'm not making a statement on the cause of the gender disparity in computer science. I'm making a higher-order argument about why we're so apt to attribute this difference to discrimination. I hope you understand the distinction even if you disagree with my argument. The idea is that if you believe that humans have no innate differences and you observe group differences, then you must attribute the…

>A lot of people take it as an article of faith that there are no human group differences, so they're forced to look for discrimination in order to explain the world. For these people, no amount of evidence can prove the fairness of the CS world, since the idea that (gender disparity -> discrimination) is a necessary logical consequence of their worldview. I think that you would be hard pressed to find people who act…

> CS culture is one which is overtly and unnecessarily hostile to women...men frequently engage in behaviors that are hostile, threatening, and demeaning to women

Many people repeat this claim, but I don't think it's true.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#385

Post by rewqfdsa »

memu wrote: post #371
TeMPOraL wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. You can show by simple calculations that slight innate differences giving slightly different preferences lead to significant differences in recruitment if you select entirely fair and purely by merit. In fact, restoring the 50/50 split requires significant amount of discrimination to counter the natural disproportions. We do that in CS because it's a hot sexy field with shittons of money, so everyone wants in…

> Nobody cares that there is serious (intentional) gender imbalance among e.g. shop clerks or bank tellers. Those are not sexy jobs. On the contrary, most of those who are interested in addressing gender imbalances in fields like computer science are simultaneously interested in addressing the gender imbalances in "unsexy" jobs, since these are just two sides of the same coin. Since higher paying jobs in fields like…

> On the contrary, most of those who are interested in addressing gender imbalances in fields like computer science are simultaneously interested in addressing the gender imbalances in "unsexy" jobs, since these are just two sides of the same coin.

That's another claim that, if true, would be pretty, but happens to be false. (Just like "men are mean to women in technology and so keep them out of the field.") It's just another bromide to smooth over unpleasant reality.

A Google News search for "women in technology" yields 61 million results. A Google News search for yields 1.5 million. There's nowhere near as much attention to getting men into traditionally women's roles as there is increasing the number of women in technology.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#386

Post by kefka »

majormajor wrote: post #30
gaius wrote: post #7

if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with “Star Wars” posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor — art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines This would seem to be a bit of a bait-and-switch... If you aren't interested in "computer parts and tech magazines" then what exactly is it about computing t…

How well correlated are those things with CS or Engineering studies? Star Wars and science fiction won't help you write software. Building a computer from scratch won't really either, these days. (And magazines are a weird one because they're very much a relic of the past, and not as much of a realistic way to pick this stuff up for the past 15 years.) Tech posters also seem entirely like a high-school/college-age cu…

Science fiction gives the ideas that we can eventually implement ourselves.

How many people working on the first customer mobile phone didn't think it was the Communicator from Star Trek?

In 2001 A Space Odyssey, the book describes the tablet computer.

Scifi has a great cultural and technological precedent in computing: it gives the ideas of what to do next. And that doesn't matter what sex you are (or aren't).

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#387

Post by rewqfdsa »

aninhumer wrote: post #379
rewqfdsa wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does, however, make it harder for most women to participate here I've seen many people make this claim, but I haven't seen anyone back it up with evidence. What do you mean by "harder"? Do you mean "more difficult"? In what way? Right now, I believe claims that tiny linguistic differences create meaningful barriers to female participation in technology are all specious. I could be convinced otherwise, but have s…

>English is not structured to be gender-neutral. I'm not going to use awkward circumlocutions to avoid the possibility of offending someone. Using singular they is hardly a "circumlocution", I do it without thinking about it. It's not hard to learn once you actually decide to take responsibility for your own speech. And it's not a "possibility of offending", it's a "certainty of papercuts". If you habitually use male…

> Once you actually decide to take responsibility for your own speech.

I accept responsibility for the content of my speech. I do not accept responsibility for feelings of offense others may feel in response to my speech. It's not my job to manage their emotional state.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#388

Post by rewqfdsa »

icanhackit wrote: post #295
rewqfdsa wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the next big battle in workplace equality is going to focus on treating introversion fairly. What do you think such an effort would look like? One problem is that in big companies, it's frequently not enough to do good work. To get recognition, you have to _advertise_ that you're doing good work.

> What do you think such an effort would look like? Good question. I see two simple avenues - organizations having a better understanding of human psychology, certainly at the human resources level but ideally org-wide. And better metrics, such as mapping human networks from email exchanges so you can find who is really driving the strong relationships with clients or stakeholders. I guess the condensed version would…

> And better metrics, such as mapping human networks from email exchanges

I don't think this metric survives Goodhart's Law. It's too easy to game.

> I guess the condensed version would be: understand humans better.

It's not that simple.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#389

Post by aninhumer »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #387
aninhumer wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>English is not structured to be gender-neutral. I'm not going to use awkward circumlocutions to avoid the possibility of offending someone. Using singular they is hardly a "circumlocution", I do it without thinking about it. It's not hard to learn once you actually decide to take responsibility for your own speech. And it's not a "possibility of offending", it's a "certainty of papercuts". If you habitually use male…

> Once you actually decide to take responsibility for your own speech. I accept responsibility for the content of my speech. I do not accept responsibility for feelings of offense others may feel in response to my speech. It's not my job to manage their emotional state.

>I do not accept responsibility for feelings of offense others may feel in response to my speech.

If you know some people will be offended by a particular usage and you choose to use it anyway, then you are responsible for the resulting offence, whether you accept it or not.

Sometimes there are benefits which make the offence worthwhile, particularly when the offence is exceptionally uncommon. But using gender specific speech in generic/unknown contexts has no such benefits, and will cause offence fairly often. Singular they is easy and idiomatic, and I don't see any real excuse not to use it, other than laziness.

>It's not my job to manage their emotional state.

No, it's just a nice thing to do.

Re: What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech

#390

Post by RogerL »

kisstheblade wrote: post #317

One question. Why is it important to make, quote: "computer science more attractive to women..."? I mean I get that the sex discrimination stuff and treatment of women we read here on hacker news is bad and of course it would help if there were more women in tech. But other than that, if you think of the women in general and not some "diversity would be good" (which it probably would be), why the worry? Why aren't we…

Because they are human beings, and if we are doing something culturally insensitive or repressive to them we should stop?
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