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I wouldn't call the act of attempting demographic balance in a field 'stubborn'. History often teaches us that differences between groups are contextual rather
by lemmsjid 10y ago
I wouldn't call the act of attempting demographic balance in a field 'stubborn'. History often teaches us that differences between groups are contextual rather than intrinsic. When I say contextual I mean they are often for reasons that have to do with specific social forces at work during specific historical periods.
For example, there was a time that software engineering was dominated by females. At the time, software development was considered a feminine task. Should we have concluded, at the time, that females were more inclined toward software development?
Any time a particular group dominates a particular field, we should question ourselves as to why. Because history shows that the reason is usually some form of erroneous preconception. Of course that won't always be true, but it is often true and should be questioned until it is obviously not true.
The benefit of continually questioning particular groups' dominance is obvious: once a particular narrowly conceived field is opened up to more people, the talent pool behind that field will grow.
- SerLava 10y ago>For example, there was a time that software engineering was dominated by females. At the time, software development was considered a feminine task. But I think you are talking about a menial job that doesn't exist anymore. That skew comes from basically punch card data entry. I don't think software design was ever female dominated. Is that incorrect?
- _mhr_ 10y agohttp://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... Never female dominated (at least, in terms of degrees), but there was much less of a gap. I couldn't find occupational statistics, only academic. I did find a lot of anecdotes about software being a stereotypically female activity, but I couldn't find actual data.
- dethswatch 10y ago> a time that software engineering was dominated by female ref?
- Apocryphon 10y agohttp://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-female-computers http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-female... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EA-eVWEIKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EA-eVWEIKY
- lemmsjid 10y agoI don't know how to post links, hopefully this works. http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-... http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmin... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-... http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/10/06/345799830/the-forgotten-female-programmers-who-created-modern-tech http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/10/06/345...
- FT_intern 10y ago> dominance That's not the right word. Interest is the right word. The % of females in tech resembles the % of females majoring in CS
- discodave 10y agoNo it doesn't, women leave the industry much faster than men.