Women: Learn to Program This Summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#491

Post by 75dvtwin » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 3:40 AM UTC

I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to offer the money to women only.

> " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup, if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them, the delay alone can be enough to kill the company. …"

I have met a number of people who cannot program, but believe that they have a great idea (only if somebody could just build that app for them …).

Even random neighbors who learn that I write mobile apps just sort of assume,

that I do not have my own ideas -- and instead, just program somebody else's ideas into life (sort of like I am a typist, but an author of the novel, I am typing -- has to be somebody else).

All that gender-bias in recent, US, tech grants does, is re-enforces the stigma that women in US are 'special-needs', as far as it comes to technology.

This is not a good stigma to have, and it cannot be broken by appeal to a moral high.

As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ?

As few on this thread, I think there are better way to identify people who born into (or became over time) into a very unfair and disadvantageous environment.

And giving those, the extra help, offering them generosity -- is nothing but heart warming. And deserves huge applauds and replication.

There are boys and girls from disadvantaged environments, some lost parents to cancer, to car accidents, to wars, to terrorist attacks.

Some are in different countries suffering from horrible illnesses (that were caused by environment catastrophes).

Some were unlucky to be born to drug abusing parents.

---

It does take more work, may be more passion, to reach out to those -- but I think it would better society more.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#492

Post by BearsAreCool » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 3:49 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #408

msluyter wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 act…

I think it is misleading to use the lowering rates of women in computer science as proof of anything, especially when you look back to the 60s or 70s. Unlike many scientific fields computer science was much more of a womans field when it started off than it is now, for instance (and I am aware this is quite possibly cherry picking) if you look at images of the bletchely park codebreakers who worked on the origial turing machines to break encryption you'll notice a majority are women. One explanation I found of why this changed in america was the marketting of console video games, up until around the 90s these were not sold as toys and when it came for atari and such to choose between marketting to boys or girls, they chose to sell to boys, leading to connections between boys and computers or electronics.

I don't think this has anything to do with how sexist america is at any time, but rather how the gender roles have changed over a relatively short time period.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#493

Post by tth3uoku » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 3:49 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #424

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender equality paradox is the observation that offering men and women more freedom increases the degree to which they self-select. In other words, offering people more freedom of choice increases the under-representation. The alternative - shaming women who do not go into tech - is unpalatable to most.

The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. It's being vastly misapplied here, and the authors of that study (it was one study) would be horrified to see this rhetoric. Go back and look at the scatter plot. It's a weak, but real correlation. The random deltas between nations are well above the significance of the gender signal. There's good science to be argued about there. But it's being used here…

>The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. Lumping everyone who mentions it together and othering them does not seem constructive.

>Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude.

How can you be sure? Men are on average more interested in working with things, and women are on average more interested in working with people [1]. "...non-biology STEM majors showed lower [people-orientation] and higher [thing-orientation] interests than biology and health majors."[2] Self-efficacy and competence beliefs tend to be a factor that keep women away from tech [3]. The Gender Equality Paradox also mentions competency as a factor.

1. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018... 3. https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/will-i-...

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#494

Post by manfredo » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #424

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender equality paradox is the observation that offering men and women more freedom increases the degree to which they self-select. In other words, offering people more freedom of choice increases the under-representation. The alternative - shaming women who do not go into tech - is unpalatable to most.

The gender equality paradox is like a religion to you people. It's being vastly misapplied here, and the authors of that study (it was one study) would be horrified to see this rhetoric. Go back and look at the scatter plot. It's a weak, but real correlation. The random deltas between nations are well above the significance of the gender signal. There's good science to be argued about there. But it's being used here…

> But it's being used here to justify an outrageous outlier. Women aren't just "less interested" in sofware at the scale we see in that study, they're outnumbered by literally a whole order of magnitude. Nothing from that study argues for this kind of effect, nothing at all.

This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Tech is not an "outrageous outlier". there are plenty of jobs that are over 95% male and female respectively: https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/segregation-work-ame...

Here's a much larger list: https://fourpillarfreedom.com/visualizing-u-s-occupational-e...

Software isn't an outlier. In terms of representation of men, it's just behind "printing press operators" and just ahead of "taxi drivers and chauffeurs". Women are about as overrepresented in "File clerks" and "loan interviewers and clerks".

Software is an "outrageous outlier".

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#495

Post by AnaniasAnanas » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:09 AM UTC

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?

People in the sex offender registry. And no, not only rapists are in there, consider https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/16/nyregion/10-year-old-s-cr... and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-... for example.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#496

Post by chongli » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:17 AM UTC

lawn wrote: post #145

chongli wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may come as a shock but most people don't work with their ultimate passion. The problem is that people learning programming for the first time, who don't have a passion for it, can find themselves in a class with those who do. I have witnessed, first hand, people who were beginners getting left in the dust by their classmates on a group project and ultimately dropping out of CS/SE entirely.

Yes, I've been one of those who knew programming as well. But the problem isn't that new people join classes. The problem is experienced programmers being in the same class as beginners. I could often just do the assignments myself and skip the rest of the course. The real problem was when I was forced to partner up with someone new.

The problem is experienced programmers being in the same class as beginners.

I think the problem is deeper than that, though. Computer science is a challenging field and programming is a discipline that benefits from a large amount of experience. Universities try to sell their CS programs as accessible to beginners yet tend to be very quiet about the extremely high dropout rates.

Look at it this way. How well would I do if I enrolled in a fine arts program? I would essentially be a total beginner at drawing and painting. My classmates would include people who have been drawing and painting more-or-less nonstop since they were young children. Is it reasonable for me to expect the same level of career success as these born artists?

There may be a lot of jobs out there for people with basic programming skills, just as there may be jobs doing mundane art and design. But I think it's a bit ridiculous for a total beginner to go into an exceptionally rigorous, programming-heavy, academic CS program and expect to do well. The fact that universities try to sell people on this is disappointing, to say the least.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#497

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #316

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.

lol I love this, especially the little easter eggs.

[deleted]

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#498

Post by iliketosleep » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

75dvtwin wrote: post #491

I read the blog-post, but it does not make clear to me why Jessica chose to offer the money to women only. > " Specifically, she can’t build the first version of her product and is forced to find a cofounder who can. Because she can't judge technical ability, she'll often choose the wrong person for the job. And in a startup, if you choose the wrong programmer or cofounder and have to replace them, the delay alone ca…

> As a parent, it is also difficult to explain to my son, why my daughter would qualify for such a generous grant, but he would not... What explanation is there ?

There are explanations, but whether they are valid or not is a matter of debate. Here is one possible explanation: Women have faced all kinds of discrimination which has, for the most part, kept them out of the industry. Even if we're not actively discriminating against women now, bias still remains in this male-dominated industry. Therefore, it's necessary to do something in order to bring women back in, and we all have to do our part - in some cases this could mean men making way for women. This is the basic principle of affirmative action policies - it's about doing what we can to correct our historic mistakes. For it to work we must all play our part, and sometimes we must make small sacrifices for the greater good

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#499

Post by apta » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

krastanov wrote: post #489

tth3uoku wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0017364 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00018...

I guess I was not very clear in my statements, but to reiterate: yes, we all know these observations about interests are true, but no, we do not know whether they are biological. On the contrary, we have strong evidence that these preferences stem from the way we talk to young boys and girls.

There was a video documentary by someone in Scandinavia where they did experiments on infants, and from a very early age, the differences between male and females start to manifest, even before any sort of social input and differences in treatment. It seems to be biological. Females are more interested in "faces" and the males were more interested in "things".

That doesn't mean women are not interested in STEM though. I've seen a very interesting anecdote at a university in the middle east. It was segregated (men and women had different campuses), and for a certain amount of time, there were the same number, if not more, women than men in the engineering colleges. A nearby university, which was not segregated, and offered practically the same curriculum, had very few women in STEM, most women there ended up in business and media majors. Though things could probably change after graduation where female STEM graduates end up taking work that is less hands on and involves more dealing with people.

Re: Women: Learn to Program This Summer

#500

Post by MarkMc » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #251

DBYCZ wrote: post #246

Anyone who argues that there should be "More women in tech" needs to go visit a medical college. Completely filled with super smart women interested in science. If STEM women found Coding as interesting as they did Medicine (which is arguably more competitive and prestigious), we wouldn't have any shortage of women writing code. There is nothing wrong with either way, just let people do what they like to do.

What's the evidence that women aren't coding because they aren't "interested"? If you want to make that argument, don't you need to go and refute all the anecdotal evidence that women aren't entering tech careers because they don't feel welcome? I cite as evidence the fact that women in med schools have not, in fact, always been well represented and that the same kind of rhetoric about their "interests" was used to e…

To say that "tech is behind medicine's adoption curve with resepect to gender inclusion" suggests that the percentage of women in tech is slowly growing from a low base, on a similar trajectory to women in medicine a generation or two ago.

But that is not the case. In 1984, 37% graduates of computer science were women but in 2017 only 12% were women [0]. How can it be that with so much more focus on diversity and inclusion today so many women are choosing a non-computing career than in 1984? The tech industry does seem to be on a fundamentally different path to medicine and law in this regard.

A second point is that writing computer code seems to have a strong appeal to people close to the autism spectrum - people who love to close the door to their private office, put on their headphones and write code for 6 hours without any interaction with another human being. And men tend to be greatly overrepresented on the autism spectrum.

[0] https://www.thebusinesswomanmedia.com/stats-women-tech-worse...