4 ms·

Maybe because like men all over the world, Russian women aren't specially "encouraged" to go into tech? Maybe nobody has to tell them or tell anyone to 'like sc

Maybe because like men all over the world, Russian women aren't specially "encouraged" to go into tech? Maybe nobody has to tell them or tell anyone to 'like science'. People just do. The same argument goes for women in science. Albert Einstein was told he wouldn't amount to much. Doesn't mean he 'got discouraged' and quit physics. That's not why we do science - for public appreciation - we do it because we love it no matter what anyone else says. This is the point that the girls in tech people miss I think. Instead of buying your daughters lego sets with women wearing fancy lab coats and looking into telescopes, buy them gyroscopes, or electronics kits, or lego's own DIY robot? None of the toys mentioned above feature gender and actually give a sense of what science is about. I'm open to hear your thoughts, especially from women.

raducu 9y ago
Do you have any data on this? I'd be willing to bet women are nowhere near as interested in a pure science career in Russia as they are in IT. I think it has to do with psycho-evolutionary factors -- men have much more incentives to take risks, women much more so to play it safe.
- laughingman2 9y ago
  Yeah right, and how did you arrive at your reasoning, any list of scientific studies? This is good old sexist/racist talk "X is inferior in math because genes"
  - eof 9y ago
    This is not just humans, virtually every species has obvious gender roles and proclivities. Where humans differ, is our faculty for reason and (to some degree) overcoming our intuition. In my opinion, it's obvious that women being under represented in STEM is caused significantly by both evolutionary /and/ cultural factors.
  - raducu 9y ago
    That is not what I was saying, far from it. My evidence is anecdotal, but think about it -- Russia recently decriminalized domestic violence, not exactly the hallmark of gender equality, that's surely not the reason why more females are interested in IT in Russia. I was not suggesting that females are inferior to men, just that males and females will make vastly different life choices because of psycho-evolution. It's a scientific fact that while male and female median IQ is the same, men have much more variability (more men at the extremes). Just think about your reproductive strategy(not necessarily in the modern monogamous society)-- you have bilions upon billions of sperm replenished every day while females produce one egg per month. A smarter/fitter man can produce much more offsprings than a smarter/fitter female. That has got to produce some profound differences in the way men and women behave.
    - laughingman2 9y ago
      Anecdotal evidence means shit, of course there is biological difference between men and women. The point is you making arbitrary claims using it without evidence is stupid. Centuries ago there were no women scientists, now there are, so does that mean the people like you in the transitory period claiming "Women can never be scientists due to psycho-evolution (whatever bullshit that is)" are right. Without scientific evidence, your psycho-evolutionary boundary on what is achievable by men or women is just convenient excuse for sexism because it changes and is arbitary.
      - raducu 9y ago
        That's a straw man, I never said either sex should or shouldn't be a scientist or whatever they choose to be. What I AM saying is maybe, just maybe there's no conspiracy against women and that women and men make different life an career choices which can simply be explained by bullshit psycho-evolution.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    I don't see the parent comment saying anything about either race, or inferiority. Just proclivity to want to do something. Maybe chill out a bit on the accusatory kneejerk reaction, this is meant to be a forum for civil discussion.
    - bigtimeidiot 9y ago
      >Maybe chill out a bit on the accusatory kneejerk reaction, this is meant to be a forum for civil discussion. Without fail, during any discussion about tech and gender on these boards, "nice guys" come out of the woodwork as staunch advocates of equality in the workplace, their message couched in accusatory and bullying language. I'll bet they're closer to being part of the problem with the industry, rather than the solution.
      - beaconstudios 9y ago
        I know the type you mean, and I agree. However, that's not what the previous commenter was doing. I don't think it's sexist to suggest that on average, men and women may have different interests - whatever you think it's caused by, it's observable from reality. If they had said that women aren't as capable as men at programming I'd be right there with you, but kneejerk accusations of sexism do nothing but stifle debate and make people feel attacked. At least determine whether what the person said was indeed sexist before launching into attacking them.
        beaconstudios 9y ago
        [if I could edit, I would] I later realised you were referring to laughingman2 as being the niceguy. Yeah, totally agree.
- gkya 9y ago
  Maybe it's just because most men don't want to do feminine jobs and most women don't want to do masculine jobs. We're all social human beings at the end of the day, and we want to be cool, attractive individuals, and most of us care about others' eyes on us.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  There are a lot of female young (and not-so-young too!) scientists in Russia today. The pay is not great and a lot of hoops to jump, but the hours are usually flexible. Maybe some women don't feel pressure to be breadwinners, so they can choose a career in science, but men feel that they have to make more money than science ever promises in Russia.
gkya 9y ago
This. I think encouraging women is discouraging in itself. It includes an assumption of power and superiority, and opens them up to doubts and criticism about their technical merits. The best would be not discouraging anybody at all, then those naturally inclined towards the field will be attracted by themselves. A thing that all of us can do is to get rid of their prejudices for real. We like calling things mysogny and racism and attack, but what they profoundly are is hereditary prejudice which only heals through self-education. Edit: prejudices are not limited to white males, but we all have them (obviously me too, thus having to do this edit).
- brango 9y ago
  I went to a new city and wanted to see what entrepreneurs were up to. Too bad, because the only networking events were female only. What a waste. "Encouraging" women actually leads to them having fewer opportunities.
Pharylon 9y ago
Yes, because each one of us is an island, and we're not influenced by society at all as it is. I have a two year old and I can tell you fighting against pinky-princess girl culture is a battle. As a parent, it's you vs basically the rest of society that sends a million little cues about what girls are supposed to do. I had this conversation with my daughter the other morning: Daughter: I want to be a boy when I grow up. Me: Why is that? Daughter: So I can be an astronaut! Of course, I explained that girls can be astronauts too. And I've never done anything to set her expectations differently. But they just absorb this stuff from the ether of our culture. At her age, she's picked up on the idea that only boys are astronauts, and girls are ballerinas and princesses and shit.
- karrotwaltz 9y ago
  Honest question, where do you think your daughter learned this expectation from? Medias/advertising, other childs' parents...? How would one go about preventing this from happenning without segregating the child?
  - droopyEyelids 9y ago
    You prevent it from putting an item on your agenda to tell your daughter about cool women with different awesome careers. You the parent have to go out of your way to make a list of women astronauts, scientists, stateswomen, authors, captains, professors-- everything-- so your daughter grows up in a world women can do anything.
- kamaal 9y ago
  No. That is the not real problem here. The problem is a certain things have a very high barrier to entry. Getting into such things requires over the natural amounts of persistence and other myriad life skills for which you need a certain level of biological independence(like not having kids for example). These barrier to entries vary with each profession. They are higher for the cool jobs, like the CS ones. Most of these career type jobs where continued work is required. Taking long breaks, asking for lesser working hours(While having colleagues at office who would be pushing 15-18 hour workdays) and other such things makes you a bad worker even if you were to somehow work hard and gain initial access. Net result is people feel they are better off doing things where their contributions have some meaning than having to compete with 16 hr shift workers against whom you are set up to lose by default. This is the whole difficulty with the diversity problem. There is a inherent assumption that things be made easier to accomodate minorities of all kids. Whereas doing well in any profession requires the exact opposite. Harder the things, the better you get by doing them. But that also means, people who are not tough enough for the job get filtered out every iteration along the way. You just come down to the point that you can't make people do, what they are not ready to put over the necessary efforts to make happen.
jordigh 9y ago
> Maybe because like men all over the world, Russian women aren't specially "encouraged" to go into tech? I don't know how true this is now, but there's plenty of Soviet propaganda aimed at women telling them how they're an important part of the workforce too. They were certainly specially encouraged to go into "technology" of the time (or industry, as it was more commonly known in Soviet times). http://russiatrek.org/blog/art/the-image-of-a-woman-in-soviet-propaganda/ http://russiatrek.org/blog/art/the-image-of-a-woman-in-sovie... Witness for example how much more of a celebration international women's day is in the ex-Soviet countries than elsewhere.

raducu 9y ago

Do you have any data on this? I'd be willing to bet women are nowhere near as interested in a pure science career in Russia as they are in IT. I think it has to do with psycho-evolutionary factors -- men have much more incentives to take risks, women much more so to play it safe.

laughingman2 9y ago
Yeah right, and how did you arrive at your reasoning, any list of scientific studies? This is good old sexist/racist talk "X is inferior in math because genes"
- eof 9y ago
  This is not just humans, virtually every species has obvious gender roles and proclivities. Where humans differ, is our faculty for reason and (to some degree) overcoming our intuition. In my opinion, it's obvious that women being under represented in STEM is caused significantly by both evolutionary /and/ cultural factors.
- raducu 9y ago
  That is not what I was saying, far from it. My evidence is anecdotal, but think about it -- Russia recently decriminalized domestic violence, not exactly the hallmark of gender equality, that's surely not the reason why more females are interested in IT in Russia. I was not suggesting that females are inferior to men, just that males and females will make vastly different life choices because of psycho-evolution. It's a scientific fact that while male and female median IQ is the same, men have much more variability (more men at the extremes). Just think about your reproductive strategy(not necessarily in the modern monogamous society)-- you have bilions upon billions of sperm replenished every day while females produce one egg per month. A smarter/fitter man can produce much more offsprings than a smarter/fitter female. That has got to produce some profound differences in the way men and women behave.
  - laughingman2 9y ago
    Anecdotal evidence means shit, of course there is biological difference between men and women. The point is you making arbitrary claims using it without evidence is stupid. Centuries ago there were no women scientists, now there are, so does that mean the people like you in the transitory period claiming "Women can never be scientists due to psycho-evolution (whatever bullshit that is)" are right. Without scientific evidence, your psycho-evolutionary boundary on what is achievable by men or women is just convenient excuse for sexism because it changes and is arbitary.
    - raducu 9y ago
      That's a straw man, I never said either sex should or shouldn't be a scientist or whatever they choose to be. What I AM saying is maybe, just maybe there's no conspiracy against women and that women and men make different life an career choices which can simply be explained by bullshit psycho-evolution.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  I don't see the parent comment saying anything about either race, or inferiority. Just proclivity to want to do something. Maybe chill out a bit on the accusatory kneejerk reaction, this is meant to be a forum for civil discussion.
  - bigtimeidiot 9y ago
    >Maybe chill out a bit on the accusatory kneejerk reaction, this is meant to be a forum for civil discussion. Without fail, during any discussion about tech and gender on these boards, "nice guys" come out of the woodwork as staunch advocates of equality in the workplace, their message couched in accusatory and bullying language. I'll bet they're closer to being part of the problem with the industry, rather than the solution.
    - beaconstudios 9y ago
      I know the type you mean, and I agree. However, that's not what the previous commenter was doing. I don't think it's sexist to suggest that on average, men and women may have different interests - whatever you think it's caused by, it's observable from reality. If they had said that women aren't as capable as men at programming I'd be right there with you, but kneejerk accusations of sexism do nothing but stifle debate and make people feel attacked. At least determine whether what the person said was indeed sexist before launching into attacking them.
      - beaconstudios 9y ago
        [if I could edit, I would] I later realised you were referring to laughingman2 as being the niceguy. Yeah, totally agree.
gkya 9y ago
Maybe it's just because most men don't want to do feminine jobs and most women don't want to do masculine jobs. We're all social human beings at the end of the day, and we want to be cool, attractive individuals, and most of us care about others' eyes on us.
thriftwy 9y ago
There are a lot of female young (and not-so-young too!) scientists in Russia today. The pay is not great and a lot of hoops to jump, but the hours are usually flexible. Maybe some women don't feel pressure to be breadwinners, so they can choose a career in science, but men feel that they have to make more money than science ever promises in Russia.

gkya 9y ago

This. I think encouraging women is discouraging in itself. It includes an assumption of power and superiority, and opens them up to doubts and criticism about their technical merits. The best would be not discouraging anybody at all, then those naturally inclined towards the field will be attracted by themselves. A thing that all of us can do is to get rid of their prejudices for real. We like calling things mysogny and racism and attack, but what they profoundly are is hereditary prejudice which only heals through self-education. Edit: prejudices are not limited to white males, but we all have them (obviously me too, thus having to do this edit).

brango 9y ago
I went to a new city and wanted to see what entrepreneurs were up to. Too bad, because the only networking events were female only. What a waste. "Encouraging" women actually leads to them having fewer opportunities.

Pharylon 9y ago

Yes, because each one of us is an island, and we're not influenced by society at all as it is. I have a two year old and I can tell you fighting against pinky-princess girl culture is a battle. As a parent, it's you vs basically the rest of society that sends a million little cues about what girls are supposed to do. I had this conversation with my daughter the other morning: Daughter: I want to be a boy when I grow up. Me: Why is that? Daughter: So I can be an astronaut! Of course, I explained that girls can be astronauts too. And I've never done anything to set her expectations differently. But they just absorb this stuff from the ether of our culture. At her age, she's picked up on the idea that only boys are astronauts, and girls are ballerinas and princesses and shit.

karrotwaltz 9y ago
Honest question, where do you think your daughter learned this expectation from? Medias/advertising, other childs' parents...? How would one go about preventing this from happenning without segregating the child?
- droopyEyelids 9y ago
  You prevent it from putting an item on your agenda to tell your daughter about cool women with different awesome careers. You the parent have to go out of your way to make a list of women astronauts, scientists, stateswomen, authors, captains, professors-- everything-- so your daughter grows up in a world women can do anything.
kamaal 9y ago
No. That is the not real problem here. The problem is a certain things have a very high barrier to entry. Getting into such things requires over the natural amounts of persistence and other myriad life skills for which you need a certain level of biological independence(like not having kids for example). These barrier to entries vary with each profession. They are higher for the cool jobs, like the CS ones. Most of these career type jobs where continued work is required. Taking long breaks, asking for lesser working hours(While having colleagues at office who would be pushing 15-18 hour workdays) and other such things makes you a bad worker even if you were to somehow work hard and gain initial access. Net result is people feel they are better off doing things where their contributions have some meaning than having to compete with 16 hr shift workers against whom you are set up to lose by default. This is the whole difficulty with the diversity problem. There is a inherent assumption that things be made easier to accomodate minorities of all kids. Whereas doing well in any profession requires the exact opposite. Harder the things, the better you get by doing them. But that also means, people who are not tough enough for the job get filtered out every iteration along the way. You just come down to the point that you can't make people do, what they are not ready to put over the necessary efforts to make happen.

jordigh 9y ago

> Maybe because like men all over the world, Russian women aren't specially "encouraged" to go into tech? I don't know how true this is now, but there's plenty of Soviet propaganda aimed at women telling them how they're an important part of the workforce too. They were certainly specially encouraged to go into "technology" of the time (or industry, as it was more commonly known in Soviet times). http://russiatrek.org/blog/art/the-image-of-a-woman-in-soviet-propaganda/ http://russiatrek.org/blog/art/the-image-of-a-woman-in-sovie... Witness for example how much more of a celebration international women's day is in the ex-Soviet countries than elsewhere.