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Women: Learn to Program This Summer

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Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#401

Post by mywrathacademia »

leereeves wrote: post #368
protonimitate wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>3. None of this is to say that you personally are not experiencing a challenging time or are not subject to bias in any way. None of this should diminish your personal challenges in the work environment. That should be addressed. This particular individual (@jl) and this particular company (Lambda School) are just not addressing that particular cause at this moment. And that should be ok. I think you summed up perfe…

It's generally always the same groups that receive these advantages, and other groups that never do. So this is helping those who are already privileged, while the actual underprivileged are ignored once again.

This is an excellent comment. As it stands only the already privileged will be accepted into the program which I find to be disgusting. At least the financial status of applicants should be taken into account.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#402

Post by mywrathacademia »

wsy wrote: post #397
leereeves wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally always the same groups that receive these advantages, and other groups that never do. So this is helping those who are already privileged, while the actual underprivileged are ignored once again.

Which underpriviledged groups are never supported?

Isn't it obvious? Poor people. The politically favored are women but by opening this to all women you only help women who are already privileged not poor women living in ghettos or from other poor backgrounds

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#403

Post by leereeves »

I honestly do think this is a good idea. She saw a need, identified a way to help, and is generously contributing. And if some women feel more comfortable or learn better in a boot camp for women only, I wish them the best.

And yet it makes me and many others angry, not for what it is, but because of the social context in which it occurs. There's an all too common attitude these days that success for white people, men, and above all white men is something to oppose.[1,2] That cruelty toward men is acceptable.[3] That "it's impossible to be racist toward whites or sexist toward men". That sitting comfortably is "manspreading" and masculinity is toxic.

The world is divided in part because of efforts like this. Is more division really something to celebrate?

1: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-unbearable-male-privilege-...

2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-bernie-sanders-beto-orourke...

3: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/business/media/sarah-jeon...

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#404

Post by dmitrygr »

California's Unruh Civil Rights Act specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation. This law applies to all businesses in California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#405

Post by sqrt17 »

wsy wrote: post #388
sqrt17 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being r…

> Let's start to tease them apart without merely stopping at the clichés. Yes, please do so. "They are not interested in computers" is a huge cliché. So which non-cliché reasons do you see?

> "They are not interested in computers" is a huge cliché. So which non-cliché reasons do you see?

Motivation goes beyond "being interested" in something. If you ask why there aren't more men studying art history it would be rather silly to say that men are less interested in art history. Then again, if you said that men don't pursue art history because they (most often) wouldn't be able to sustain a family on an art historian salary - and are expected to do so, while women find it appealing because appreciating art and understanding social and political undercurrents is more important than earning potential to them. (I don't know many art historians but see here for an example: https://www.pomona.edu/academics/departments/art-history/why...)

We could also ask why art history is not a candidate for "new collar jobs" (i.e., having people with associate-level degrees in art history) or why we don't have art history bootcamps for men. Part of the answer is that - at least since GC languages and Ruby on Rails - we do have good uses for people with shallow CS knowledge, or at least that there are less people interested in erecting high barriers of entry. The answer to that is that CS is thought of as skills-based and shallow, another aspect that is more likely to dissuade (especially white middle-class) women from pursuing a 100% CS career while it will help pull in people combining domain expertise with at least some CS skills.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#406

Post by Grustaf »

wsy wrote: post #381
Grustaf wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people get interested in computers early on in life, when there is nothing at all stopping them. You can’t blame society that many more 12 year old boys than 12 year old girls are obsessed with computers. It is a fact that even at birth, girls are more interested in people where boys are more interested in things. This is even true for newborn chimpanzees. You can’t really blame society for this. Surely this is…

Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the gi…

Also, since medicine is so much more prestiguous than programming, and probably at least as well paid, why do you even want women to go into programming? Why not let ambitious women study medicine, law and whatever else they do, and be rich and happy?

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#407

Post by owenversteeg »

seancoleman wrote: post #28

My girlfriend, a nurse of 10+ years, just started learning to code on her own, built her first (basic) website ( https://www.nataliepeterson.dev ) and is applying to Lambda School already. I sent this to her this morning and she was elated. Programs like this really work.

I love that site! Feels refreshing and old. Nice to see that not everyone learns to code these days by following a terrible React tutorial that gives them nearly a gigabyte of dependencies for a simple project.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#408

Post by mpweiher »

msluyter wrote: post #375
camelNotation wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

Shouting "gender equality paradox!" doesn't warrant a mic drop. Aside from particular policies in Scandinavian countries that might actually limit women's options[1], the underlying issue is we don't know what a "natural" allocation by gender in STEM might look like. It's not like we can eliminate all societal/cultural barriers in a given population and run an experiment over time to observe how many women self selec…

> particular policies in Scandinavian countries

The gender-equality paradox does not just apply to Scandinavian countries, but reproduces pretty much around the world: female participation in engineering etc. is inversely proportional to HDI.

In fact, it even reproduces over time! I think we can all agree that, for example, the US is more egalitarian now than it was in the past. Yet female participation in CS has actually dropped since the 60s or 70s.

> we don't know what a "natural" allocation by gender in STEM might look like

This is both true and, maybe somewhat surprisingly, irrelevant. The reason is that the GEP is not about the absolute levels, but about the sign of the change. To be more precise:

If your hypothesis is that "societal forces/sexism/oppression are the main causes for lack of female representation", then you would expect higher levels of participation in societies that are generally more egalitarian and more free than in societies that are generally less egalitarian or not free, regardless of the absolute levels.

So your theory demands that there is a positive correlation between HDI and STEM participation.

If there were no correlation, that would probably already disprove that hypothesis.

However, it is worse than that, much worse, because the correlation is actually negative. I have to admit that this stunned me, as it apparently stunned the researchers working in the field, because it is such an unexpected and hugely significant result.

And once again, absolute levels are completely irrelevant here, it's just pretty clear that when you remove oppression, you get more gender-segregated workplaces at least when it comes to the empathising/systematising divide.

> The argument that where we're at now is where we should be

Who "should" be deciding where we "should" be? To me, it should be the people who decide what they want to do. If many more women than men now decide to go into veterinary medicine (used to be the other way around), who are we to second-guess them? If many more women than men prefer to go into early childhood education, who is to say that this is "wrong"?

That's the part I really don't understand, quite frankly.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#409

Post by Frqy3 »

sqrt17 wrote: post #314
zzzeek wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anyone who argues there should be "More women in medical school" needs to go visit a secretarial school. Completely filled with super smart women interested in typing and being secretaries." "If secretarial school women found being doctors as interesting as they did being Secretaries, we wouldn't have any shortage of women being doctors." same comment in 1950 when only 6% of doctors in the US were women (surprisingl…

The difference being, being a doctor is (in many parts of the world) both more challenging/competitive and better paid than programming. You explain with discrimination (which was real in the 50s according to most evidence we have) what is in parent's case better explained as a difference in motivation (making a five-figure salary by being responsible for humans is more attractive to the average US woman than being r…

Being a doctor also carries much greater social respect (partially linked to the pay aspect). I expect this social respect gap has eroded in SV, but is still very significant in the remainder of the world.

I started in medicine when I went to university (parent pressure), but swapped to a computer science/engineering combination from the second year. The impact on my dating prospects at that time was very significant.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#410

Post by iagovar »

ajross wrote: post #303
camelNotation wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that so many people are still unaware of the gender equality paradox. People constantly bring this up, constantly ask that same question, constantly get the same response. Women self-select into certain fields at higher rates than others, men do the exact same thing. Can we move on now? There is no problem to solve.

> There is no problem to solve. Which is exactly what people said about unrepresented demographics in career XXX, for literally every XXX of the past few centuries in which the representation has since normalized . The example above was medicine, but we can play it with any high-status career you want: law, government, corporate middle management, academics, finance... Back up a hundred years and there were effective…

Ok, so let's have 50 more years of social engineering. What would you do if the trend does not reverse? Would that be enough for you?
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