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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#511

Post by wutbrodo »

roenxi wrote: post #479
koonsolo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. "Men are more honest and straightforward, women more jealous and backstabbing". Their words, not mine. But since the whole upheaval of women in workplaces that flowed to Europe from US, I have the feeling that this sentiment has changed.

That anecdote tells you precisely nothing; women who prefer working in all-female teams, etc, etc, have already been weeded out. Talking to people in the industry is sampling from a population of people who probably don't see a problem regardless of the actual situation.

Quote from the parent comment:

> 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women.

It's not comparing all-male to all-female teams, but all-male to teams with any women. As you say, There are roughly zero all-female teams in tech[1], but the proportion of any-female teams is much much higher.

[1] Yes, I know there are teams who have explicitly sought after this for ideological reasons, but theyre a rounding error.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#512

Post by belorn »

foldr wrote: post #497
belorn wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, the military mostly drafted people, especially if we look at the last 100 years. Conscription has very little to do with choices, and male only conscription has a long history. There is a good discussion to be had over why conscription has mostly been male only. Is it powerful men wanting to get rid of young expendable men in some form of evolutionary benefit to themselves? It it because of historical b…

Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. As you point out, the people in charge were all men. It was up to them to make the rules about who could or couldn't volunteer and who would or wouldn't be conscripted. >Most people would agree that white men used their power and influence to get a pass on military service. This perfectly illustrates my point.…

> Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription.

Most worlds armies are conscription, and even the US army had conscription during the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It culturally defines the military.

> This perfectly illustrates my point.

No it does not. Men as a group did not keep women out of conscription so men alone could get the privilege of being conscripted. It not a privilege. A better claim is that society pick which ever demographic is most expendable and force them to pick up arms during major conflicts. Young men, especially men of color, is consistently seen as expendable. It is racism, sexism, ageism, and a bunch more isms, and part of it favor women over young men.

During world war 2 almost all nations involved used prison population for conscription purposes. It is the most obvious place to find a lot of expendable people.

Voluntary military service still carries with it that culture and non-expendable people tend to not be near the front line.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#513

Post by silveroriole »

tmh79 wrote: post #318
lgleason wrote: post #130

It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always) because of different interests. Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in. And that is before you get into interests vs natural talent and how that does or does not affect ones success in a field. On a fundamental l…

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument... I think its a lot more complicated than this. Yes, men and women can be jerks. The bigger issues seem to be when a team is 80%+ one gender or another, and the issues aren't about "being mean" the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs. A huge problem is that we have a lot of 6 person tech teams with…

> the women naturally feel alienated

Why “naturally”? Is it really natural for men and women to alienate each other just by existing?

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#514

Post by [deleted] »

westoncb wrote: post #490
speedplane wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. There are far more male bosses than female bosses. Accordingly, assuming bad bosses are relatively rare, it's far more likely every female boss you've ever had is awful than every male boss you've ever had is awful. This is just probability. Let's take an example. Suppo…

Someone want to break down how to calculate the odds here?

[deleted]

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#515

Post by TulliusCicero »

foldr wrote: post #493
TulliusCicero wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the 60's and 70's are when the representation levels started really diverging. That's the key part. That they may be less sexist now, after having achieved gender parity or something close to it, is hardly unexpected. Of course a field with roughly even numbers is usually going to be less sexist than one dominated by one gender or another.

You'll have to spell the argument out. My claim is that relative sexism in STEM puts women off now. This does not require me to commit to the claim that relative sexism was a dominant factor in women's career choices in the 60s. Note, however, that the issue is sexist attitudes in society as a whole, not just engineers being sexist. Even if 60s lawyers are just as sexist as 60s engineers, the idea of a female lawyer…

Asserting that a gender balanced field is less sexist than a gender imbalanced one isn't very interesting. The interesting part is that law and medicine used to be just as gender imbalanced, and then steadily became less so.

This is the crux of the issue that you're avoiding grappling with. Saying "well I don't care about the history" is irrelevant, it's still the most important part whether you personally care or not.

It's like looking at which countries are desirable to immigrate to without grappling with patterns of development, despite the obvious fact that the biggest thing that makes countries more desirable is being rich/developed.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#516

Post by TulliusCicero »

foldr wrote: post #400
coldtea wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how it implies this In the sense that if sexism is the major force that prevented women from going into IT, then the much higher sexism of doctors and lawyers in the 60s and 70s would have prevented women from going into those fields too. But women were far more in those fields then, than they are in IT now.

I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.

This is ridiculous, changes in the 60's led to a more gender balanced field, which obviously made for less sexism. Pretending that root causes don't matter isn't helping your case.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#517

Post by foldr »

belorn wrote: post #512
foldr wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. As you point out, the people in charge were all men. It was up to them to make the rules about who could or couldn't volunteer and who would or wouldn't be conscripted. >Most people would agree that white men used their power and influence to get a pass on military service. This perfectly illustrates my point.…

> Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. Most worlds armies are conscription, and even the US army had conscription during the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It culturally defines the military. > This perfectly illustrates my point. No it does not. Men as a group did not k…

>Most worlds armies are conscription,

Yes, but so what? The gender requirement on front-line service has never been limited to conscription.

>It not a privilege.

This is a well-worn argument. When women wanted to vote and join the workplace, they also got told that these things were terrible burdens that they ought to be glad not to have to bear.

Clearly, there are women who do want to join the military, just as there have always been men who want to join the military.

In a modern context, in the US and Europe, the question is not about whether women should be forced to serve in the military against their will, but whether they should have the same right to volunteer for service as men, and the same range of opportunities subsequently.

Until recently, the men in charge thought that they should not.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#518

Post by throwaway8548 »

m0zg wrote: post #459
throwaway8548 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But men _are_ in fact more accommodating to women nowadays than to _other men_ This is not about generic workplace disagreements. Yes, those happen all the time. > How do we know this? _Because men told us_! I know that's tongue in cheek and only half serious but I'll reply anyway. Even if 99% of men are more accommodating, that 1% would still make employment unbearable. After 10 years you probably met a few dozen…

It's not "workplace disagreements". In the workplace you're generally competing against other people, including men. But that doesn't mean that men don't compete against each other. I never got a break/accommodation from anybody just because there's some mythical network of "men" in the workplace that makes things easier for men. I quite routinely see women get a break where a man would not nowadays, however. Yes, 1%…

I think we're talking past each other about very different things here.

We can both be right/wrong independent of each other.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#519

Post by foldr »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #516
foldr wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.

This is ridiculous, changes in the 60's led to a more gender balanced field, which obviously made for less sexism. Pretending that root causes don't matter isn't helping your case.

Aren't you then acknowledging that as a result, tech now is more sexist than law and medicine?

If so, I can't see where we substantially disagree. As I've repeatedly said, I make no claims about why the gender balance shifted in law and medicine in the 60s. You appeared to suggest that this had nothing to do with levels of sexism. I'm skeptical of that claim (broader societal attitudes are important too, not just the sexism level of lawyers and doctors vs. the sexism level of scientists and engineers), but it's not as if either of us has actually researched this in detail.

The key point is that tech now is disproportionately sexist, as you appear to acknowledge.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#520

Post by foldr »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #515
foldr wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to spell the argument out. My claim is that relative sexism in STEM puts women off now. This does not require me to commit to the claim that relative sexism was a dominant factor in women's career choices in the 60s. Note, however, that the issue is sexist attitudes in society as a whole, not just engineers being sexist. Even if 60s lawyers are just as sexist as 60s engineers, the idea of a female lawyer…

Asserting that a gender balanced field is less sexist than a gender imbalanced one isn't very interesting. The interesting part is that law and medicine used to be just as gender imbalanced, and then steadily became less so. This is the crux of the issue that you're avoiding grappling with. Saying "well I don't care about the history" is irrelevant, it's still the most important part whether you personally care or no…

I covered this in a response to another one of your comments, so I'll cut this thread short.
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