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Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Eventually women will have to take some leadership here and not expect men to say, "we're firing half our company and onl

by dikdik 11y ago

Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Eventually women will have to take some leadership here and not expect men to say, "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line." At some point women HAVE to stand up and take the lead for themselves.

dllthomas 11y ago
Your original comment seemed to be arguing that this wasn't an issue because these women probably wanted first order to be doing other things. If that's the case, then we probably shouldn't be pushing too hard to get them to do things they don't want to do. I'm sure that is the case for some individuals; I don't know the distribution. My point was to demonstrate that it's also the case, for some individuals (I still don't know the distribution), that they were turned away for reasons other than first order lack of interest in the field; and in fact, reasons we have something of an impact on. My wife was turned away not simply because she thought she'd be working with men, but because of her impression of the particular men in STEM fields that she had experience of. I don't know if her impression was fair - looking back, she doesn't know if her impression was fair. But we do collectively have the ability to work to make sure such an impression is not fair and to work to make sure we're giving the correct impression. Given a negative impression of likely experiences in the field, expecting outsiders to fix it is a collective action problem. If a woman correctly judges that the existing population working in a field are likely to make that field painful to work in, and she is the only one (or part of a small minority) who "stand up", then she's chosen a painful career for herself. Those of us already in the industry can work to address the problem with substantially less risk. I'm pretty sure "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line" is effectively a straw-man. It's certainly not what I would advocate, and I don't see how my comment would have implied it.

by dikdik 11y ago

dllthomas 11y ago

Your original comment seemed to be arguing that this wasn't an issue because these women probably wanted first order to be doing other things. If that's the case, then we probably shouldn't be pushing too hard to get them to do things they don't want to do. I'm sure that is the case for some individuals; I don't know the distribution. My point was to demonstrate that it's also the case, for some individuals (I still don't know the distribution), that they were turned away for reasons other than first order lack of interest in the field; and in fact, reasons we have something of an impact on. My wife was turned away not simply because she thought she'd be working with men, but because of her impression of the particular men in STEM fields that she had experience of. I don't know if her impression was fair - looking back, she doesn't know if her impression was fair. But we do collectively have the ability to work to make sure such an impression is not fair and to work to make sure we're giving the correct impression. Given a negative impression of likely experiences in the field, expecting outsiders to fix it is a collective action problem. If a woman correctly judges that the existing population working in a field are likely to make that field painful to work in, and she is the only one (or part of a small minority) who "stand up", then she's chosen a painful career for herself. Those of us already in the industry can work to address the problem with substantially less risk. I'm pretty sure "we're firing half our company and only hiring women who aren't even in the field anymore so we can even it out and attract more people down the line" is effectively a straw-man. It's certainly not what I would advocate, and I don't see how my comment would have implied it.