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Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

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Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#81

Post by shriya »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #36

I wonder why nobody has brought up the fact when most women are starting to climb the corporate ladder, or just come into their career, they start having babies, starting their families and are less interested in ruling the corporate world as they are being with their families and raising their kids. And who can blame them really?

I wondered why the author didn't bring that up either. Just talking about how women are nurturing / expected to be nurturing isn't the whole story. These expectations translate into the idea that women have to be the primary caretakers of their kids, but men do not unless they really want to and decide to go against the grain. And lots of women feel guilty if they are a "bad mother"!

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#82

Post by thatthatis »

ninjac0der wrote: post #72
thatthatis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that we should have to disprove equality repeatedly, consistently, and summarily before we accept inequality. The standard for proving the hypothesis of inequality should be extremely high. All people created equal until summarily proven otherwise, and even then still treated as equal in every way that matters.

Except it doesn't seem like people are saying "lets get this measurement right so we know what needs to be done". Instead it sounds a lot more like a self-righteous group determining what isn't and isn't the correct way to do things so that we can begin getting noise free measurements.

But all of that self righteousness is driving in the direction of lets try to fix the disparity through social change. I'm saying that even if we believe they're going to be wrong, we should try what they propose (in a structured and measurable way).

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#83

Post by thatthatis »

ivanca wrote: post #63
octo_t wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty much every genocide ever?

Nope, just the biggest one (Holocaust), the second biggest being Holodomor, an Stalin's attack to Ukranian Nationalism. Genocides in Nigeria and similar ones are ethnic ones for political power, without justification over biological differences.

If you're mass murdering without justification in biological/cultural/racial differences, isn't that by definition not a genocide?

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#84

Post by shriya »

rguzman wrote: post #9
cthom06 wrote: post #2

I'm sure black people just aren't genetically apt for STEM either? Just because there's evidence for a correlation between gender and math scores doesn't mean there's a genetic reason for the disparity.

If I understand correctly, the idea here is that IQ is measurable (even if the measurement is noisy) and real (has predictive power, doesn't change). This is accomplished by studies that look to test individuals at different points in life. Secondly, IQ is mostly genetic. This is evidenced mostly by twin studies. Thirdly, math tests are okay IQ tests. Note that I'm not saying that things are one way or another, or th…

But IQ is not that important when we're talking about being successful, making money, or building a good tech tool. Otherwise people with genius IQs would be the only ones ruling our society...but that's definitely not the case.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#85

Post by prodigal_erik »

makomk wrote: post #56
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world at large isn't ready to hear these statistics Not the "world at large". Just (provincial) middle/upper class America. > We shouldn't accept these disparities as driven by natural forces until we've tried everything we can imagine to try to bring the differences in line. Shouldn't we in fact try to understand what's going on, instead of trying to change it because of a priori notion that there shouldn't be…

IT's white-collar whereas the jobs you're talking about aren't. Apparently there's never been a huge amount of feminist interest in getting women into male-dominated blue-collar jobs or in working-class women in general; it's an old and fairly well documented issue.

It's money more than status. In the early 1990s, programming was still white collar but paid about the same as accounting, and nobody cared how few women were doing it.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#86

Post by ivanca »

thatthatis wrote: post #83
ivanca wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, just the biggest one (Holocaust), the second biggest being Holodomor, an Stalin's attack to Ukranian Nationalism. Genocides in Nigeria and similar ones are ethnic ones for political power, without justification over biological differences.

If you're mass murdering without justification in biological/cultural/racial differences, isn't that by definition not a genocide?

In that case, the grandparent-comment is not actually asking anything and just pointing out that a word for defining such events exists.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#87

Post by shriya »

tomp wrote: post #35
arrrg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but people would argue that mostly men are truck drivers due to rigid gender roles and strict gender policing of the patriarchy.

Do you have any statistics/reasoning that support this argument? I'd say it's simply because it's a crappy, low-paying, exhausting job with too many working hours, which not many people want. Men usually get such jobs.

Teaching is a low-paying job with too many working hours. Women work at places like Target, Wal Mart, and McDonalds which are not exactly known for how intellectually stimulating and high-paying they are. This is a weak argument. People who are uneducated and/or have life circumstances that force them into low paying crappy jobs are the people who end up with those...women, men, white people, black people, asian people...people in general.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#88

Post by shriya »

dnautics wrote: post #11

I invited three women to be on the board of my corporation. All of them turned me down. All of the men I invited onto my board accepted.

Maybe it's like the conference speakers. Now that everyone's getting flack if their conference doesn't have female speakers, but there's only a handful of successful female leaders in heavy rotation in the media, they can't go to everything so they inevitably turn stuff down.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#89

Post by ninjac0der »

thatthatis wrote: post #82
ninjac0der wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it doesn't seem like people are saying "lets get this measurement right so we know what needs to be done". Instead it sounds a lot more like a self-righteous group determining what isn't and isn't the correct way to do things so that we can begin getting noise free measurements.

But all of that self righteousness is driving in the direction of lets try to fix the disparity through social change. I'm saying that even if we believe they're going to be wrong, we should try what they propose (in a structured and measurable way).

So you want me to agree that it's a problem that the male to female ratio isn't equal before you've proven that the inequality is brought about by a bad reason as opposed to a natural and just reason? That greatly reduces my frustration as to why I'm not on board with any of this.

edit: "lets try to fix the disparity through social change" ...as soon as you do the due diligence and convince me it's broken first. Evidence of disparity in no way tells me there is a problem in need of being fixed. It's a lazy way to try and get people behind a misguided white-knighting movement.

Re: Why There Are No Women on Twitter’s Board, and So Few in Technology

#90

Post by Spooky23 »

discolemonade wrote: post #10
cthom06 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that many different countries have a similar cultural attitude towards females. And again, taking a correlation between gender and math scores and extrapolating a genetic predisposition of a gender to fail in an entire class of industries is a stretch to say the least.

But then you have to go back to the original question: what is it about maleness and femaleness that makes it possible that in so many societies around the world, the same patterns exist? You can't have culture without brains to create it. And the brains of males and females in different cultures seem to be producing similar patterns.

Women have babies. Doing that has a profound impact.

Think of that fact as a marketing funnel. Some number of women will make a prioritization decisions. Some will choose to focus 100% on child rearing. Others will focus on career. Other will balance both.

Of the women who focus on career, some are in work environments that are family-friendly and will thrive. Some strive. Others are in environments where not being able to do hackathons or do conference calls at 9PM will close doors to career advancement.

Unless you're a well-researched person who can cite real research, genetic arguments are just anecdotes or vague facts interpreted through a journalists' lens. We should focus research in this area on the anti-patterns -- house husbands. What happens to men in their careers when they take a few years away from the workforce? My guess is a story similar to what we see with women.

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