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I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics be

I don't think that the parent comment is assuming one way or another, just offering a plausible explanation given the very limited perspective of the metrics being quoted. For example, how does this compare to other trends for female jobs in other sectors? How do the figures compare when you separate the population between those with children and those without? When someone wants to make a claim like: "These numbers reflect two problems: 1) the percentage of women who work in tech is low, and 2) women are leaving tech jobs in droves." I would expect more analysis than simply: "In 2014, 26% of computing jobs were held by women – and that’s down from 36% in 1991" I think there are a lot of bogus statistics/conclusions being drawn when it comes to many social issues, female equality being one of them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc). I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest.

nostrebored 10y ago
And to say that people are making their decisions in a vacuum is intellectually dishonest. Unless of course you just assume that women have different brains, that make them too intellectually feeble to have interests in computing, engineering, machinery.
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  I don't have an interest in forwarding the notion that one gender is superior to the other in anyway shape or form. But neither are both genders identical. For example, the video I linked above, there is a brief observation made about how more female doctors drifted towards pediatrics than men. I don't think that says anything about the potential of either gender, but I would possibly describe it as a gender preference. And ultimately, I think we should aim for freedom of choice. And if we do that, I don't think we can expect to split our population up by any characteristic, examine flat participation percentages and think that anything other than 50-50 is caused by prejudice.
  - nostrebored 10y ago
    >"But neither are both genders are identical." I'm going to take a step back and substitute gender for sex. Saying that the two sexes are not identical is a very interesting, and strong stance. Especially seeing as it is impossible to prove with socialization and neuroplasticity. I don't doubt that there are preferences based on gender. Gender is the word that we use to describe a set of sex-stereotypes that we project onto members of our society. Aiming for freedom of choice makes sense sans socialization. I overuse this example, but imagine Douglas Adams' cow that was raised to be eaten -- if we raise girls with the notion that they should love children, be self sacrificing, value helping others over money, not be selfish, and raise boys with a completely separate set of traits, is it reasonable to not apply a critical lens to these choices when they cause a detrimental effect on the quality of life of one group, and the set of available experiences to both groups? Is raising a cow that chooses to be eaten any better than raising one that doesn't? Is it even worse?
    - andrepd 10y ago
      I'm not saying it's true that biological sex creates certain predispositions, but it's also not unreasonable. The people who dogmatically deny it outright are as bad as the people who strongly affirm such differences despite lack of evidence.
      - nostrebored 10y ago
        Would you say the same about any other causal relationship? Are there any implications of it that don't perpetuate the idea that women are intellectually inferior? That don't shift the burdens of emotional labor and child rearing onto children? The idea is so obviously sexist...
        andrepd 10y ago
        How do you mean? A common stereotype is that men are aggressive while woman are kinder and gentler (the former true to some extent because of testosterone). Surely that's a good trait, so not all stereotypes disfavour women? Point being, recognizing differences between the sexes (which it exists in areas such as the aforementioned aggressiveness, or in kids where you can see boys are more restless and prone to suffer ADHD, but almost certainly not in intellect like you suggest) is not "so obviously sexist". It's the reality.
ksenzee 10y ago
TFA isn't a position piece intended to argue the point. It was saying, "hey, this is a problem, here are two numbers indicating the scope of the problem, and here are some people who are working on it." Not "This is a problem, and here are statistics to prove it to skeptics." The data on why women leave tech is out there if you're genuinely interested.
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  In general, complete data on population trends is very lacking. So if you have a source I would genuinely be interested in examining it. But I guess where you and I disagree is whether or not the problem identified actually is the problem. Which I think makes creating essentially sexist sub-networks/organizations questionable. If the crux of the issue isn't some sort of gender discrimination (nefarious or not, structural or cultural, etc.) then the proposed solution doesn't actually address the underlying issue leading to the observed macro trend.
rayiner 10y ago
> I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest. It's not academically dishonest, it's the application of a reasonable epistomological presumption: we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity. It's not that people are unwilling to acknowledge biological differences between genders. Nobody argues that women have as much upper body strength as men. Rather, people are aware of the longstanding practice of chaulking things up to biological differences, and adopt a presumption against such explanations. You can see that clearly in this thread, where people are arguing that women might be biologically predisposed to being primary caregivers without any concrete evidence backing that up.
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  > "we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity." Ummm...the first part is fine, the corollary reasoning is what is academically dishonest. Prima facie is not academically acceptable when determining causal relationships in statistics. The illustration of this is why the power of Hypothesis testing is centered around rejecting the Null hypothesis. Failure to reject the null hypothesis doesn't confirm/prove the null hypothesis as true.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter. What else could it be? Also, what is acceptable for proving a causal relationship in a statistical sense is not coextensive with what's academically honest. In the real world people have to make decisions and set policies based on imperfect information. Requiring premises underlying those policies to be proven with scientific certainty before condoning political action just establishes a default policy of preserving the status quo.

nostrebored 10y ago

And to say that people are making their decisions in a vacuum is intellectually dishonest. Unless of course you just assume that women have different brains, that make them too intellectually feeble to have interests in computing, engineering, machinery.

gshulegaard 10y ago
I don't have an interest in forwarding the notion that one gender is superior to the other in anyway shape or form. But neither are both genders identical. For example, the video I linked above, there is a brief observation made about how more female doctors drifted towards pediatrics than men. I don't think that says anything about the potential of either gender, but I would possibly describe it as a gender preference. And ultimately, I think we should aim for freedom of choice. And if we do that, I don't think we can expect to split our population up by any characteristic, examine flat participation percentages and think that anything other than 50-50 is caused by prejudice.
- nostrebored 10y ago
  >"But neither are both genders are identical." I'm going to take a step back and substitute gender for sex. Saying that the two sexes are not identical is a very interesting, and strong stance. Especially seeing as it is impossible to prove with socialization and neuroplasticity. I don't doubt that there are preferences based on gender. Gender is the word that we use to describe a set of sex-stereotypes that we project onto members of our society. Aiming for freedom of choice makes sense sans socialization. I overuse this example, but imagine Douglas Adams' cow that was raised to be eaten -- if we raise girls with the notion that they should love children, be self sacrificing, value helping others over money, not be selfish, and raise boys with a completely separate set of traits, is it reasonable to not apply a critical lens to these choices when they cause a detrimental effect on the quality of life of one group, and the set of available experiences to both groups? Is raising a cow that chooses to be eaten any better than raising one that doesn't? Is it even worse?
  - andrepd 10y ago
    I'm not saying it's true that biological sex creates certain predispositions, but it's also not unreasonable. The people who dogmatically deny it outright are as bad as the people who strongly affirm such differences despite lack of evidence.
    - nostrebored 10y ago
      Would you say the same about any other causal relationship? Are there any implications of it that don't perpetuate the idea that women are intellectually inferior? That don't shift the burdens of emotional labor and child rearing onto children? The idea is so obviously sexist...
      - andrepd 10y ago
        How do you mean? A common stereotype is that men are aggressive while woman are kinder and gentler (the former true to some extent because of testosterone). Surely that's a good trait, so not all stereotypes disfavour women? Point being, recognizing differences between the sexes (which it exists in areas such as the aforementioned aggressiveness, or in kids where you can see boys are more restless and prone to suffer ADHD, but almost certainly not in intellect like you suggest) is not "so obviously sexist". It's the reality.

ksenzee 10y ago

TFA isn't a position piece intended to argue the point. It was saying, "hey, this is a problem, here are two numbers indicating the scope of the problem, and here are some people who are working on it." Not "This is a problem, and here are statistics to prove it to skeptics." The data on why women leave tech is out there if you're genuinely interested.

gshulegaard 10y ago
In general, complete data on population trends is very lacking. So if you have a source I would genuinely be interested in examining it. But I guess where you and I disagree is whether or not the problem identified actually is the problem. Which I think makes creating essentially sexist sub-networks/organizations questionable. If the crux of the issue isn't some sort of gender discrimination (nefarious or not, structural or cultural, etc.) then the proposed solution doesn't actually address the underlying issue leading to the observed macro trend.

rayiner 10y ago

> I am a libertarian so ultimately I believe that everyone should be free to make their own decisions even if there are gender preferences at play. Not saying there aren't issues, but simply saying, "X is anti-women, because only Y% are female," is academically dishonest. It's not academically dishonest, it's the application of a reasonable epistomological presumption: we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity. It's not that people are unwilling to acknowledge biological differences between genders. Nobody argues that women have as much upper body strength as men. Rather, people are aware of the longstanding practice of chaulking things up to biological differences, and adopt a presumption against such explanations. You can see that clearly in this thread, where people are arguing that women might be biologically predisposed to being primary caregivers without any concrete evidence backing that up.

gshulegaard 10y ago
> "we presume that observations are not caused by biological differences without concrete evidence of those differences. The corollary to that is that disparities in outcome are prima facie evidence of disparities in opportunity." Ummm...the first part is fine, the corollary reasoning is what is academically dishonest. Prima facie is not academically acceptable when determining causal relationships in statistics. The illustration of this is why the power of Hypothesis testing is centered around rejecting the Null hypothesis. Failure to reject the null hypothesis doesn't confirm/prove the null hypothesis as true.
- rayiner 10y ago
  The corollary follows from the first part because of the nature/nurture dichotomy. It's either biological, or sociological. If you presume it's not the former, unless we have evidence thereof, we must presume it's the latter. What else could it be? Also, what is acceptable for proving a causal relationship in a statistical sense is not coextensive with what's academically honest. In the real world people have to make decisions and set policies based on imperfect information. Requiring premises underlying those policies to be proven with scientific certainty before condoning political action just establishes a default policy of preserving the status quo.