5 ms·

Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism. The problem is that women are already being ostracized. When you can't get hired or you can't

by Mz 9y ago

Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism. The problem is that women are already being ostracized. When you can't get hired or you can't get VC money or you can't get business connections because the only time men will talk to you is to hit on you, you are already basically dead in the water as a business person. How do we get out of this dead end?

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> How do we get out of this dead end? It's a chicken and egg problem. The biggest systemic factor is the absurd gender ratio, but if the consequences of that are self-reinforcing then the status quo remains. Many people have the instinct to turn to anti-harassment policies and enforcement, but that's like trying to fight cancer with aspirin. It might help a little bit but it's no cure no matter how much you use, and too much will cause problems without solving any. But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  > But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here. My wife and I are starting in our own tiny corner by volunteer teaching small age-appropriate and (hopefully) interesting topics in math, science, and engineering in K5, first, second, and third grade (as our kids go through those ages). The first seeds of the gender disparity in tech are sown in pre-teen years, IMO. There are also some significant selection effects later on, but I think those are smaller in magnitude than the original "Daddy, what can I be when I grow up?" programming.
- ewjordan 9y ago
  One obvious step is that we need to do what we do in every other subject: force all children to learn enough tech to figure out whether they are good at it or not by making it a required class. When schools do that, they find that tons of girls excel at programming, but probably never would have tried it if it hadn't been mandatory. Dealing with harassment in the industry is also key, but even if that was eliminated completely it wouldn't close the gender gap that exists by the time kids graduate high school. And the educational bit is much more straightforward to implement, it just takes a lot of money to be thrown at the problem.
  - solnyshok 9y ago
    "forcing all children to..." is never an answer
    - ewjordan 9y ago
      Forcing all children to go to school has been an answer for a few generations now, and even with the crappy imperfect education system that we have, it's paid off immensely. I'm merely suggesting that tech is now important enough to warrant inclusion in that curriculum as a way of making it slightly more relevant and less crappy.
  - Mz 9y ago
    "Throwing money" at cultural problems basically never, ever works.
    - ewjordan 9y ago
      Except in the cases where it does work astoundingly well to solve issues that would have been labeled cultural before they were improved, like raising literacy rates across all races (achieved by massively increasing investment in education). See https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/#historical-perspective https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/#historical-perspective for some idea how well that worked. A similar situation is AIDS prevention via safe sex education. If a cultural problem has lack of exposure and education at its root, then it is very easy to throw money at that part of the problem and just fix it. Right now girls and underrepresented minorities are woefully underexposed to coding, and via education we can right that wrong directly even if we can't figure out how to fix the underlying cultural issues (which definitely exist, and have made white and Asian boys much more likely to have early exposure to CS). I'll note that students tend to rate CS as their favorite academic subject (it's slightly below art and theater) when they are forced to take it, so "force" in this context is mostly just about getting them to take the first step. They love it once they start, so whether or not it will solve the gender imbalance problem, it's such a critical skill for the future economy that it seems irresponsible not to spend money on it and prepare people to participate in that economy, doubly so when students enjoy it so much. That's not to say at all that the cultural components should be ignored, they're just so much deeper and more difficult to fix than this particular side effect, which is amenable to solution-by-education (which necessarily means throwing money around, since training teachers takes money).
- Mz 9y ago
  The biggest systemic factor is the absurd gender ratio I grew up in Columbus, GA in the highly racist America Deep South. Blacks and whites each constitute roughly 49% of the population of Columbus, GA. This has failed to turn it into some kind of racial paradise. Also, from what I gather, black slaves on plantations often outnumbered the white owners and their family members. I don't think gender ratio has a thing to do with it. Using that metric as justification for the problem amounts to excusing it. Many people have the instinct to turn to anti-harassment policies and enforcement, but that's like trying to fight cancer with aspirin. It might help a little bit but it's no cure no matter how much you use, and too much will cause problems without solving any. I do agree with this. This is not a path forward. But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. I don't think we need more women in tech. We need to figure out how to treat the women already in tech like human beings instead of whoopi cushions. This needs to be done regardless of how many women there are. Waiting until we hit some quota is just excusing bad behavior in the here and now and that will tend to keep it alive. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here. Or maybe there are people who have some idea, but no one takes them very seriously. In part because not taking them seriously conveniently serves to keep sexism alive and well while looking totally innocent to most onlookers.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > I grew up in Columbus, GA in the highly racist America Deep South. Blacks and whites each constitute roughly 49% of the population of Columbus, GA. This has failed to turn it into some kind of racial paradise. Also, from what I gather, black slaves on plantations often outnumbered the white owners and their family members. Race and sex are different. There is no biological imperative to couple off with someone of a different race, such that an imbalanced ratio creates aggressive competitive pressure over a limited supply of partners. > I don't think gender ratio has a thing to do with it. Using that metric as justification for the problem amounts to excusing it. It's completely fair to blame individuals for their misbehavior, but when you see misbehavior at scale, there is some systemic problem. If admitting that the problem is bigger than just one person has the effect of excusing that person, that doesn't make it any less true.
    - 9y ago
rokhayakebe 9y ago
How do we get out of this dead end? Have women as your first few customers. Sell to Women initially. Only pitch to women VCs etc... When you get beyond a certain point hire men to deal with men you don't want to deal with.
- xor1 9y ago
  So how do you feel about women who don't follow along with your plan because it benefits them to deviate from it? Do you see them as traitors?
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  You're basically describing affirmative action or quotas. They worked successfully in the Nordic countries to improve the gender ratios over there. The Navy did it with great success. Many companies do it including First Horizon that's near me which tries to stay half and half. This can work but essentially you have to either make it law or convince the VC's to do it willingly. Those are big political problems that would take a lot of targeted work done right. If it can be done at all.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    The problem with quotas is that it isn't that kind of problem. It isn't predominantly that qualified women are applying and being turned away because of gender discrimination, it's that industry-wide the number of qualified women necessary for an even gender balance do not exist. They went to school for teaching or medicine or real estate and the 17 year old girls deciding which college program to apply to are still doing the same thing.
- Mz 9y ago
  First of all, MEN have the most money and power. You are literally telling me that the path to power is to limit myself to the dregs of society. Like that makes some kind of logical sense. Second, the black community in the U.S. did this sort of thing. They had a thriving, well to do community in Greenwood, Oklahoma known as The Black Wall Street. The result: Whites burned it to the ground and then promptly began changing the laws in order to hamstring their ability to rebuild on the completely made up bullshit theory that their homes needed to meet a stricter fire code since it had burned to the ground. The ONLY reason it burned to the ground is because asshole whites set it on fucking fire. http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405#axzz4lbdYZj2o http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-... So, no, this absolutely does not work. With a problem like this, you take the bull by the horns and address the root problem or it absolutely does NOT go away. You cannot tip toe around sexism, racism, etc. They are malignant forces that actively hunt down and target people. Politely avoiding them never, ever works.

by Mz 9y ago

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> How do we get out of this dead end? It's a chicken and egg problem. The biggest systemic factor is the absurd gender ratio, but if the consequences of that are self-reinforcing then the status quo remains. Many people have the instinct to turn to anti-harassment policies and enforcement, but that's like trying to fight cancer with aspirin. It might help a little bit but it's no cure no matter how much you use, and too much will cause problems without solving any. But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here.

sokoloff 9y ago
> But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here. My wife and I are starting in our own tiny corner by volunteer teaching small age-appropriate and (hopefully) interesting topics in math, science, and engineering in K5, first, second, and third grade (as our kids go through those ages). The first seeds of the gender disparity in tech are sown in pre-teen years, IMO. There are also some significant selection effects later on, but I think those are smaller in magnitude than the original "Daddy, what can I be when I grow up?" programming.
ewjordan 9y ago
One obvious step is that we need to do what we do in every other subject: force all children to learn enough tech to figure out whether they are good at it or not by making it a required class. When schools do that, they find that tons of girls excel at programming, but probably never would have tried it if it hadn't been mandatory. Dealing with harassment in the industry is also key, but even if that was eliminated completely it wouldn't close the gender gap that exists by the time kids graduate high school. And the educational bit is much more straightforward to implement, it just takes a lot of money to be thrown at the problem.
- solnyshok 9y ago
  "forcing all children to..." is never an answer
  - ewjordan 9y ago
    Forcing all children to go to school has been an answer for a few generations now, and even with the crappy imperfect education system that we have, it's paid off immensely. I'm merely suggesting that tech is now important enough to warrant inclusion in that curriculum as a way of making it slightly more relevant and less crappy.
- Mz 9y ago
  "Throwing money" at cultural problems basically never, ever works.
  - ewjordan 9y ago
    Except in the cases where it does work astoundingly well to solve issues that would have been labeled cultural before they were improved, like raising literacy rates across all races (achieved by massively increasing investment in education). See https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/#historical-perspective https://ourworldindata.org/literacy/#historical-perspective for some idea how well that worked. A similar situation is AIDS prevention via safe sex education. If a cultural problem has lack of exposure and education at its root, then it is very easy to throw money at that part of the problem and just fix it. Right now girls and underrepresented minorities are woefully underexposed to coding, and via education we can right that wrong directly even if we can't figure out how to fix the underlying cultural issues (which definitely exist, and have made white and Asian boys much more likely to have early exposure to CS). I'll note that students tend to rate CS as their favorite academic subject (it's slightly below art and theater) when they are forced to take it, so "force" in this context is mostly just about getting them to take the first step. They love it once they start, so whether or not it will solve the gender imbalance problem, it's such a critical skill for the future economy that it seems irresponsible not to spend money on it and prepare people to participate in that economy, doubly so when students enjoy it so much. That's not to say at all that the cultural components should be ignored, they're just so much deeper and more difficult to fix than this particular side effect, which is amenable to solution-by-education (which necessarily means throwing money around, since training teachers takes money).
Mz 9y ago
The biggest systemic factor is the absurd gender ratio I grew up in Columbus, GA in the highly racist America Deep South. Blacks and whites each constitute roughly 49% of the population of Columbus, GA. This has failed to turn it into some kind of racial paradise. Also, from what I gather, black slaves on plantations often outnumbered the white owners and their family members. I don't think gender ratio has a thing to do with it. Using that metric as justification for the problem amounts to excusing it. Many people have the instinct to turn to anti-harassment policies and enforcement, but that's like trying to fight cancer with aspirin. It might help a little bit but it's no cure no matter how much you use, and too much will cause problems without solving any. I do agree with this. This is not a path forward. But "we need more women in tech" is just the problem statement. I don't think we need more women in tech. We need to figure out how to treat the women already in tech like human beings instead of whoopi cushions. This needs to be done regardless of how many women there are. Waiting until we hit some quota is just excusing bad behavior in the here and now and that will tend to keep it alive. Nobody seems to actually know how to get there from here. Or maybe there are people who have some idea, but no one takes them very seriously. In part because not taking them seriously conveniently serves to keep sexism alive and well while looking totally innocent to most onlookers.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > I grew up in Columbus, GA in the highly racist America Deep South. Blacks and whites each constitute roughly 49% of the population of Columbus, GA. This has failed to turn it into some kind of racial paradise. Also, from what I gather, black slaves on plantations often outnumbered the white owners and their family members. Race and sex are different. There is no biological imperative to couple off with someone of a different race, such that an imbalanced ratio creates aggressive competitive pressure over a limited supply of partners. > I don't think gender ratio has a thing to do with it. Using that metric as justification for the problem amounts to excusing it. It's completely fair to blame individuals for their misbehavior, but when you see misbehavior at scale, there is some systemic problem. If admitting that the problem is bigger than just one person has the effect of excusing that person, that doesn't make it any less true.
  - 9y ago

rokhayakebe 9y ago

How do we get out of this dead end? Have women as your first few customers. Sell to Women initially. Only pitch to women VCs etc... When you get beyond a certain point hire men to deal with men you don't want to deal with.

xor1 9y ago
So how do you feel about women who don't follow along with your plan because it benefits them to deviate from it? Do you see them as traitors?
nickpsecurity 9y ago
You're basically describing affirmative action or quotas. They worked successfully in the Nordic countries to improve the gender ratios over there. The Navy did it with great success. Many companies do it including First Horizon that's near me which tries to stay half and half. This can work but essentially you have to either make it law or convince the VC's to do it willingly. Those are big political problems that would take a lot of targeted work done right. If it can be done at all.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  The problem with quotas is that it isn't that kind of problem. It isn't predominantly that qualified women are applying and being turned away because of gender discrimination, it's that industry-wide the number of qualified women necessary for an even gender balance do not exist. They went to school for teaching or medicine or real estate and the 17 year old girls deciding which college program to apply to are still doing the same thing.
Mz 9y ago
First of all, MEN have the most money and power. You are literally telling me that the path to power is to limit myself to the dregs of society. Like that makes some kind of logical sense. Second, the black community in the U.S. did this sort of thing. They had a thriving, well to do community in Greenwood, Oklahoma known as The Black Wall Street. The result: Whites burned it to the ground and then promptly began changing the laws in order to hamstring their ability to rebuild on the completely made up bullshit theory that their homes needed to meet a stricter fire code since it had burned to the ground. The ONLY reason it burned to the ground is because asshole whites set it on fucking fire. http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-wall-street-405#axzz4lbdYZj2o http://www.ebony.com/black-history/the-destruction-of-black-... So, no, this absolutely does not work. With a problem like this, you take the bull by the horns and address the root problem or it absolutely does NOT go away. You cannot tip toe around sexism, racism, etc. They are malignant forces that actively hunt down and target people. Politely avoiding them never, ever works.