Earlier quoted context omitted.
Science doesn't back stereotypes.
But stereotypes can be backed by science.
Stereotypes aren't backed by anything. They're just things people beleive for no good reason.
A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
471–480 of 482 posts
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
And how often do you think this happens--where there is an accusation with absolutely no basis in reality? From what I have seen, it happens fairly often. Would you really cast out all women from your professional circles because of it? What!? Strawman much? Put words into another's mouth much? Sheesh! Let me tell you this. I was pretty much a butthead (lowercase b) in my 20's. The older I get, the stupider 20-someth…
You're right, taken out of context this would be a strawman. But you responded in the context of someone explaining why making friends with women in the workplace, in this day and age, is just too risky a proposition. Your critique is in support of _that_ mentality, and it's _that_ mentality that I'm arguing against. You say this isn't about men vs. women. But specifically, all of this is in response to (what I assum…
But you responded in the context of someone explaining why making friends with women in the workplace, in this day and age, is just too risky a proposition.
Don't strawman me again. I never said that it's too risky to make friends with women in the workplace, and that men should never do this. My actual position is this: Right now, in many different contexts, it's a bit too easy for a woman to make a fabricated accusation against a man. There's an imbalance here, both socially/culturally and institutionally.
But specifically, all of this is in response to (what I assume is) a man refusing to make friends with a woman, because of whatever politics they think currently govern _that_ specific dynamic in the workplace.
So what? He's free to associate as he wishes. It's not what I would want, however. It's not how most men behave in most contexts, from what I have seen. Furthermore, there have been adjustments and readjustments of the politics and the balance of power in the workplace, between workers and bosses, between men and women, etc. It's an unlikely one sided fallacy to suppose that justice means that all of the power should flow to one side, only. In our history, an important inflection point was when we realized that due process was required, to prevent the abuse of power by authorities and the powerful.
It _is_ what this is about, fundaments be damned.
Men and women are of the same species. Groups of men and women have been cooperating productively since time immemorial. Again, it is you who are coming out with the idea that anyone should be cast out. No one need be cast out, so long as we are honest about everyone's humanity -- both the good and the bad sides of that.
I was a part of an organization in college that naturally maintained a 50-50 male female ratio. There was no system of quotas or any attempt at adjusting populations. Women who were a part of it, years after graduating, talk glowingly (sometimes longingly) of the equality they experienced in that environment. If men and women -- really people in general -- are to get along, people need to do four things: 1) Be tough. 2) Be kind. 3) Respect. 4) Trust. It also seems to work in culturally Chinese companies in SF. (One good thing about a lot of Communists, is that many of them really are sincere about the equality of men and women.) It's the organizations where people act like they're in Mad Men and the organizations where people have bought into Social Justice where all the drama seems to happen.
"Fundaments be damned?" When you abandon principles, you get chaos. That's precisely when you get injustice.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#473Total aside, but where did her "baggy-eyed programmer in a dark cave with Red Bull or a unintelligible savant who can’t get a date" picture come from? Know Your Meme just says "unknown".
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9L-mUL4tDVCe322V-fYpUHbQxP...
Was it a staged stock photo, or was it just some guy? If the latter, I wonder how he'd feel about his role in her article?
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maths is clearly warmer. Go look at the stats for undergrad vs postgrad. There's a huge difference. Women get maths degrees to become teachers, more or less.
Women do not get math PhD's to become math teachers, nor do they publish cryptography research to do that.
Playing devil's advocate, it's possible that someone winds up getting a PhD or publishing crypto research after finding out that they really like doing math, after initially choosing it with the intent to teach.
I have absolutely no idea whether that matches reality for enough people to make any kind of a difference.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#475The cited statistic "Women make up 57% of the workforce" is very misleading. Chasing down the chain of citations, this number appears to be the percentage of "Professional and related occupations" jobs occupied by women according to the BLS ( https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm ). But by far the largest sub-category of this is "Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations" which is heavily female--outside of t…
You can't just cut out parts of the workforce that you don't want to include in your data.
I'm not advocating that. I'm just saying that this is, contrary to how it is cited, a specific subset of "the workforce", and pointing out that this subset furthermore is not necessarily representative of what one might think of as the "professional" workforce.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#476The first part of this had great citations to cite that women are more social. Where the data was lacking is that 1) software is perceived as anti-social and 2) that other anti-social careers face similar problems to software engineering. For example if socialization was such a critical decider, why are some many women maids or professional housekeepers? Most people in this career don't get much on-the-job socializat…
Or what about accounting and book keeping; which is a professional, white collar career that also happens to employ more women than men? Women were programmers very early on. I think we should look for some common thread between computer programming in the late 1950's/early 60's and accounting and book keeping today. While socialization may be a part of the equation, there's a lot more going on here and simply blamin…
The way I've read it, "programming" was the name of a job where you take a flowchart from a "systems analyst" and punch machine code onto card decks. Then computers became cheap enough to run compilers, and that job was automated away.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#477The first part of this had great citations to cite that women are more social. Where the data was lacking is that 1) software is perceived as anti-social and 2) that other anti-social careers face similar problems to software engineering. For example if socialization was such a critical decider, why are some many women maids or professional housekeepers? Most people in this career don't get much on-the-job socializat…
Pedantic, but > why are some many women maids or professional housekeepers? Most people in this career don't get much on-the-job socialization. is this actually true? I've gotten the impression that housekeeping services often send multiple people to the site.
Maybe safety? Hotels seem to have just one housekeeper cover a block of rooms.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Because it IS entirely possible to befriend a women and not come across creepy, regardless of your physical appearance. This depends on a lot more than your social abilities such your the way you look and your social status, none of which can be changed easily.
If you are referring to ethnicity, than yes, I definitely agree. If you are referring to your clothes, then yes, there are definitely cultural biases (e.g. reactions to burkas). With that said, I still do see some people (albeit rarely) still find a way to bridge the gap using what seems like infinite patience and grace on their part (which I would say are part of social intelligence). But even then, there are people…
I'm not quiete sure what you're suggesting, sorry. I think there is a distinction between people who are very attractive and very unattractive. If a very attractive person does something stupid -- like getting hella drunk and asking a random stranger out -- people laugh and it's a fun memory. If an unattractive person does the exact same thing it's creepy. I think that's just a fact of life for me, I also don't care how much people here will tell me this is not true, I have seen consistently that the probability of attractive people being labelled "creepy" is significantly less than unattractive people.
It is also true that some people are really adept at social skills maybe due to experience or maybe due to innate, genetic factors. Some people are really fun and fascinating to talk to. Even nerdy, unattractive people! Like, sometimes I get to know people whose only passion in life is mathematics and they're generally very unattractive but they are extremely fun to talk to. I just wanna be around then and listen to their jokes. But some people are not like that, and this makes social interactions inherently harder for them.
I wasn't thinking of cultural biases (I'm mostly thinking of Bay Area cultural context since this is the one I know but I'm assuming it's pretty much the same in most Western cultures) but I guess you can say something about that too. My main point is: talkign to women is extremely easy for some people, and the hardest thing in the world for other. When you simply can't talk to anyone comfortably in non-work context, it's almost impossible to make friends with them. I honestly do not know how to properly make women friends and I'd much rather not make women friends than make them and myself uncomfortable which for me disproves the whole article.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why men who aren’t able to read those boundaries prefer to simply avoid getting anywhere near those boundaries. The easiest way of not transgressing is to avoid contact altogether.
Reasonable enough, but if that's the case, we should be blaming the avoidance on men for their social incompetence, not on women for having boundaries.
Who is apportioning blame?
Young conflict-averse man starts life being a little socially inept. Tries breaking the ice with unreceptive women, typical human psychology sets in and this behaviour is generalised to all women. Now socially inept man continues through life with underdeveloped social skills while the people he wants to interact with are developing more complex social skills.
Who is to blame? Nobody in this scenario, Consider looking to why the man is conflict averse in the first place.
Re: A female engineer's opinion on why there are fewer women in tech
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are referring to ethnicity, than yes, I definitely agree. If you are referring to your clothes, then yes, there are definitely cultural biases (e.g. reactions to burkas). With that said, I still do see some people (albeit rarely) still find a way to bridge the gap using what seems like infinite patience and grace on their part (which I would say are part of social intelligence). But even then, there are people…
I'm not quiete sure what you're suggesting, sorry. I think there is a distinction between people who are very attractive and very unattractive. If a very attractive person does something stupid -- like getting hella drunk and asking a random stranger out -- people laugh and it's a fun memory. If an unattractive person does the exact same thing it's creepy. I think that's just a fact of life for me, I also don't care…
I see what you mean. Yea, I hear you. There've been studies showing how attractiveness can shape the perceptions and behaviors of others, so unfortunately, what you're experiencing seems to be baked into the behavior of many people. I like to believe that not everyone is like this, but I'm not going to lie and say this doesn't happen...
:(
With that said, I do think there are some situations where physical attractiveness is much less of a barrier. I've seen some friendships grow from interactions on Discord for Pokemon Go, for instance. Those people may interact in person pretty rarely, but seem to have pretty deep discussions online. Same could be said for other online communities, of course.