7 ms·

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work

Why does US have these diversity problems? Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men? I can tell you, in Belgium, in my experience and what I hear, this is not an issue whatsoever. Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Do you really care so much whether the person you work with is male, female, black, white, comes from a different background, etc? I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job.

ribfeast 9y ago
Eh-- work in tech in Norway and our female engineers definitely feel outnumbered and sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there. That's in egalitarian Scandinavia.
- makarb 9y ago
  The fact that women prefer to be around women just highlights the simple fact that men and women are fundamentally different and that egalitarianism is a pipe dream.
  - knorker 9y ago
    Is that a "fact"? http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-study/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-stud...
- vertex-four 9y ago
  > sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there I do this, regularly, in the UK. I really, really don't want to be the sole target of the one bigot in the room who none of the other men think is a problem (or at least not enough to speak to) - I'm meeting people to enjoy myself, and navigating the social complexities involved in accommodating people who attack me based on gender (plus other visible things I can't do much about) is not fun. Having another woman present tends to result in such behaviour being dialed down a tonne, or at least the ability to step out with her for a few minutes.
- Consultant32452 9y ago
  Norway is 97% white people, 95% of Norwegian descent. It's hard to say a country is egalitarian if it doesn't really have any diversity.
  - tpolzer 9y ago
    On the contrary, an egalitarian society is much easier to achieve if your population is homogeneous (it's just not a big achievement).
contergan 9y ago
This is mainly because academia - the humanities primarily - in the US has been infiltrated by postmodernists and cultural marxists and colleges pump out social justice warriors like crazy nowadays. After it became obvious that the classic marxist idea of proletariat and bourgeoisie and the practical implementation of ideologies based on this idea led to some of the worst crimes on humanity, marxist academics replaced the whole thing with oppressed and oppressor, which has now become the basis for the ideology these SJWs operate on today. Everyone who belongs to a group that does well for themselves is now an oppressor, while the people belonging to groups that do badly are the oppressed. That's why White people, Asians and Jews (who usally count as White) are the oppressors who need to be diversified to ensure social justice, while women, "Minorities", LGBTQI+ people etc. are the oppressed "diversity". Skill and abilities take a backseat. Of course these SJW bullies find an easy footing in software development, a discipline that is not exactly known for being pursued by the most assertive and confident males (or women for that matter). In Europe the problem isn't quite as bad yet, though here in Germany it's getting worse with increasingly more university activites relating to feminism, diversity, history revisionism through marxist lenses etc. popping up. But since (at least in Germany) we don't have the admixture of humanities and STEM many US colleges and universities have, this stuff is mostly contained within the social sciences so far. The Twitter feeds of some of the people linked in this article read like a Conservative's caricature of an SJW btw.
jesstaa 9y ago
> I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job. As do other people. People just want to do work in an industry they want to work in with people they want to work with and don't want people to use use their gender, sex, racial or cultural background to prevent them doing it.
ryderm 9y ago
> Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but that is nonsense and all the evidence points to the former.
- fvdessen 9y ago
  > all the evidence points to the former. There is an interesting documentary called "The Norway Paradox"[1] that explores why do we see a much higher rate of gender segregation in developed countries. The thesis the documentary advances is that there are indeed innate differences between the sexes, and with higher freedom that can be found in advanced societies, the people are freer to choose a job that fits their innate tendencies rather than be forced into something else by economic or social circumstances. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
  - denzil_correa 9y ago
    The question then I would like to pose is : Are these innate tendencies genetic or are they due to social conditioning?
    - vcjohnson 9y ago
      That question appears to be addressed in the post to which you are responding. I won't be as bold as some to lay causation purely on biological differences, maybe there could be some factor we're not accounting for on why socially flattened societies tend to have larger exaggerations in traditional gender roles. However, if your policy platform wants to push equality of outcome for career paths on the sexes then this deviation from expectation should be disconcerting.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    Another video worth watching on this subject is the debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke on The Science of Gender & Science[1] which was held in the wake of the Larry Summers controversy at Harvard in 2005. They both make many good points, and it is clear that while discrimination exists, it is probably not adequate to explain outcomes which are aligned with innate preferences and distribution of specific skills. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTKRkmwtGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTKRkmwtGY
espadrine 9y ago
> Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Have you considered survival bias? The women that were bothered would have left those conditions in greater numbers. The problem in not caring about this statistical filtering is that it creates a blind spot for your company. It is harder to empathize with the unknown. When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger.
- koonsolo 9y ago
  > When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger. Sorry, but that is just bullshit. I'm currently making a tool to create RPGs. I'm the sole male developer. To my surprise, I have more women creating games in it than men. It seems that they really love the whole storytelling aspect of it. So to say that you can only build something that is only useful to people similar to yourself, is just plain wrong. I'm a programmer building something for non-programmers. If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them, see how they use your product, look at their interests etc. Is it really mandatory to hire the same demographic as a product manager???
  - espadrine 9y ago
    > If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown. However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it. For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know. Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs. A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.
usmeteora 9y ago
This is interesting. I'm a female Electrical Engineer in the United States. Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S. I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate that they experience more sexism by men, or that overall its more of a topic brought up by women, but they did say there were more issues with men here. I think alot of the issues with women in the U.S. vs Europe are due to the fact that Europe is more urbanized and concentrated. Women and men live and work in closer quarters with more socialized economics where women are overall more educated, urbanized, financially independent, and the sexual and in general culture is more liberally progressive. In the U.S., we are way behind when it comes to womens socioeconomic equality, and education quality in general. Concurrently, there are large number of men live suburban lives, with housewives who are to some degree financially dependent on them, and the idea of an a women who doesn't fit the housewife/trophy wife/soccer mom/etc etc whateve that American culture props up as a way of life for women to idolize, causes more cultural friction and results in more emotional isolation for women working in male dominated work forces. Not all of it is intentional. Most guys I work with are fine, but older than me, married. I'm 27 single and don't intend to settle down anytime soon, maybe travel more if anything. So every company I've worked for, is filled with men who golf together or do other things. I'm not explicitly excluded anymore than I'm not interested in doing those things and they know that. If I was invited, I wouldnt go. This is overall pretty a pretty trivial example, but I am trying to emphasize how the undercurrent of culture in America is a large contributer to this, and not necessarily any one persons fault or a mans conscious decision to come across as exclusionary. Regardless, the document this article refers to goes far beyond that, and I have to say, as an INTJ female, this biology crap is ridiculous. I am introvert and would prefer any day to stay inside and read, code, play video games than go out and "socialize". In my experience, as an educated female introvert, I am demonized for NOT being a social butterfly, I have been called a bitch for not smiling when I say something in a meeting, because there is a subconscious expectation that girls are supposed to be adorably cute in everything that they do, or ease poltiical or social tension and are viewed as "out of line" for being the source of it, and men are rewarded for agressive aberrhant behavior and lauded as the leader of the group for equally outlier behavior. If a man is confident in his capabilities, I've found him to be considered respected, but if a women is confident in her opinion in a meeting or her belief in her own capabilities, I've often been told I'm a know it all, and am reminded immediately why I need to be "knocked" down a peg to be reminded how I'm not as great as I think I am. It can be a little confusing to work in male dominated environment and be punished for the same behavior that men are rewarded for. This does not happen to me as much at my current job, or on my team or my department, but you have to wonder how much day to day life in the long term impacts what paths women take in their lives and careers based on the rewards and punishments they receive and their economic incentive to act and perform like a man, which is all subject to current socioeconomics and politics, moreso than a woman's "biology" This document serves one purpose and on purpose only, to perpetuate stereotypes that many women do not meet, and recategorize all actions and behaviors they have that women DO meet the "White male" stereotype and according to this document I mean "objectively qualified software engineer with an open mind and idealogical diversity" as non lady like. Furthermore, the fact that this document is even being considered as potentially accurate to some degree by any "intelligent" software engineer is more of a testament to how they probably should supplement some of their tech education with history. The last time I checked: The very first compiler: Grace Hopper Nuclear Power: Lise Mitner Code that got us to the moon: Margaret Hamilton Spread Spectrum Technology/Wireless Communication: Hedy Lamar Inventor of Acorn Computer and ARM Processor: Sophie Wilson Current CEO of AMD: Lisa Su Those are just off the top of my head and by the top of my head I mean Nuclear power, which is the most abundant clean energy source on the planet right now, First flight to the moon, the precedents for Wifi etc etc, I'm probably missing some awesome women, there is no proof whatsoever that a females biology makes her less capable of being an equally qualified software engineer. This general argument has been used for thousands of years in various flavors to justify a lack of womens rights or capabilities and they have never in retrospect sounded anything less than ridiculous, with their conclusions implying nothing less than the ONE thing ANY software engineer, and anyone who listened to day 1 of Intro to Science in the 5th grade should know, and that is correlation is not causation. Women used to suck at math before they were allowed to go to school. In the same way, technology is a new industry, and women are already a minority status in so many other industries its bound to reflect here as well, but the existence of a gap is a correlation to biology, as well as the many contributing factors to the cultural differences that influence the mass aggregation of how far women go when it comes to being socioeconomically independent individuals with advanced careers. less than 50 years ago it was argued women shouldnt have careers because how can we procreate our species if women are working passed when the can have kids. Well now we have technology and better healthcare to enable women to be healthier live longer and have kids much later in life. Every excuse about biology as an objectively and permanently limiting factor to womens capabilities is a blatant lie that has shown itself to be one time and time again throughout history . And to answer your last question, I personally really don't care about the diversity of my team if they are all good people who can work well, but I WOULD care if a coworker propogated a document saying I'm inferior to them because of my biology as a female. On a very similiar note, to further this argument with studies and words that are not mine, by some of the mst lauded Economists of our time, I recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" which goes through many countries and places in history showing that the socioeconomic advancement of a people or a country, despite many arguments about certain countries or ethnicities being "less evolved over time" which was and in some places still is an argument and justification to why so many countries and millions of people persist in poverty, and actually that the ability for a country and a people to advocate for themselves is very much a result of the soecioeconomic system they live in, supplementing studies of groups of people an entire cities with the same biology and ethnic evolution and history who live in prosperous countries or not, entirely based on the political structure of that country incentivizing venues for massive growth in healthcare, education, human rights etc. I would argue the existence of highly educated competitive female software engineers is just like most of history and people in the world upon objective studies, based on a complex structure of what incentivizes people and how much their culture allows/encourages/or punishes the advancement of womens education and independence, and this is a snapshot in time of which it would be irresponsible for us to make permanent conclusions about the mental capabilities of women due to their "biology" without efforts to extracate and analyze nature vs nurture in mass.
edanm 9y ago
"Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men?" Yes, for various reasons. 1. There is less diversity of experience/thought. 2. Programming/engineering fields are generally good for society (and hence highly rewarded). There is a lot of unfulfilled demand for more engineers. If we can increase the number of people available for these jobs, that's good for society, and if we are for some reason "excluding" or "depressing" some people from entering, that's bad. 3. Not sure about this, but I think the incidence of sexual harassment or similarly bad things goes way up when there are fewer women. None of this is to say we should be forcing anyone to work in something they don't want to. But as I heard it, it seems like there are societal reasons why women tend to be less interested in technology than men, and these are not biological. Again, not clear on the science here, but I'm just answering your main objection, which is "should we even care" assuming it is a cultural problem and not something biological. (For what it's worth, it seems clear to me that it's at least partly societal).
drdeadringer 9y ago
You may be interested in looking over the Society Of Women Engineers for some of your questions.

ribfeast 9y ago

Eh-- work in tech in Norway and our female engineers definitely feel outnumbered and sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there. That's in egalitarian Scandinavia.

makarb 9y ago
The fact that women prefer to be around women just highlights the simple fact that men and women are fundamentally different and that egalitarianism is a pipe dream.
- knorker 9y ago
  Is that a "fact"? http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-study/ http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/08/04/men-women-work-stud...
vertex-four 9y ago
> sometimes avoid outings unless another woman will be there I do this, regularly, in the UK. I really, really don't want to be the sole target of the one bigot in the room who none of the other men think is a problem (or at least not enough to speak to) - I'm meeting people to enjoy myself, and navigating the social complexities involved in accommodating people who attack me based on gender (plus other visible things I can't do much about) is not fun. Having another woman present tends to result in such behaviour being dialed down a tonne, or at least the ability to step out with her for a few minutes.
Consultant32452 9y ago
Norway is 97% white people, 95% of Norwegian descent. It's hard to say a country is egalitarian if it doesn't really have any diversity.
- tpolzer 9y ago
  On the contrary, an egalitarian society is much easier to achieve if your population is homogeneous (it's just not a big achievement).

contergan 9y ago

This is mainly because academia - the humanities primarily - in the US has been infiltrated by postmodernists and cultural marxists and colleges pump out social justice warriors like crazy nowadays. After it became obvious that the classic marxist idea of proletariat and bourgeoisie and the practical implementation of ideologies based on this idea led to some of the worst crimes on humanity, marxist academics replaced the whole thing with oppressed and oppressor, which has now become the basis for the ideology these SJWs operate on today. Everyone who belongs to a group that does well for themselves is now an oppressor, while the people belonging to groups that do badly are the oppressed. That's why White people, Asians and Jews (who usally count as White) are the oppressors who need to be diversified to ensure social justice, while women, "Minorities", LGBTQI+ people etc. are the oppressed "diversity". Skill and abilities take a backseat. Of course these SJW bullies find an easy footing in software development, a discipline that is not exactly known for being pursued by the most assertive and confident males (or women for that matter). In Europe the problem isn't quite as bad yet, though here in Germany it's getting worse with increasingly more university activites relating to feminism, diversity, history revisionism through marxist lenses etc. popping up. But since (at least in Germany) we don't have the admixture of humanities and STEM many US colleges and universities have, this stuff is mostly contained within the social sciences so far. The Twitter feeds of some of the people linked in this article read like a Conservative's caricature of an SJW btw.

jesstaa 9y ago

> I just want to work with people that I like and who can handle the job. As do other people. People just want to do work in an industry they want to work in with people they want to work with and don't want people to use use their gender, sex, racial or cultural background to prevent them doing it.

ryderm 9y ago

> Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? If this is because they have been systematically discriminated against in tech and primed at a young age with BS like "cars are for boys and dolls are for girls" then yes, absolutely this is a huge deal. If it just so happened that they were not interested because they don't have the "technology gene" then this would not be a big deal, but that is nonsense and all the evidence points to the former.

fvdessen 9y ago
> all the evidence points to the former. There is an interesting documentary called "The Norway Paradox"[1] that explores why do we see a much higher rate of gender segregation in developed countries. The thesis the documentary advances is that there are indeed innate differences between the sexes, and with higher freedom that can be found in advanced societies, the people are freer to choose a job that fits their innate tendencies rather than be forced into something else by economic or social circumstances. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  The question then I would like to pose is : Are these innate tendencies genetic or are they due to social conditioning?
  - vcjohnson 9y ago
    That question appears to be addressed in the post to which you are responding. I won't be as bold as some to lay causation purely on biological differences, maybe there could be some factor we're not accounting for on why socially flattened societies tend to have larger exaggerations in traditional gender roles. However, if your policy platform wants to push equality of outcome for career paths on the sexes then this deviation from expectation should be disconcerting.
- krrrh 9y ago
  Another video worth watching on this subject is the debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke on The Science of Gender & Science[1] which was held in the wake of the Larry Summers controversy at Harvard in 2005. They both make many good points, and it is clear that while discrimination exists, it is probably not adequate to explain outcomes which are aligned with innate preferences and distribution of specific skills. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTKRkmwtGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bTKRkmwtGY

espadrine 9y ago

> Most women I worked with actually preferred working in teams of mainly men. Have you considered survival bias? The women that were bothered would have left those conditions in greater numbers. The problem in not caring about this statistical filtering is that it creates a blind spot for your company. It is harder to empathize with the unknown. When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger.

koonsolo 9y ago
> When you build products that extend the world's social experience, this becomes a severe competitive danger. Sorry, but that is just bullshit. I'm currently making a tool to create RPGs. I'm the sole male developer. To my surprise, I have more women creating games in it than men. It seems that they really love the whole storytelling aspect of it. So to say that you can only build something that is only useful to people similar to yourself, is just plain wrong. I'm a programmer building something for non-programmers. If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them, see how they use your product, look at their interests etc. Is it really mandatory to hire the same demographic as a product manager???
- espadrine 9y ago
  > If you want to make something for your customers, listen to them That is absolutely good advice. Note that I only said it was harder to empathize with the unknown. However, an obvious result of the Two Generals' Problem is that you can only communicate through common knowledge. Getting it takes more work than having it. For instance, it is likely that when you first built the tool, you made its UI use a language you understand. Let's say there is suddenly a large amount of interest in having that tool from a country with a language and culture you do not know. Learning the specifics of that culture takes more work than having someone with that knowledge in your company. They may know what keyboard those people have, how they expect their right-to-left language to be input, how they react to specific UIs. A company that has this knowledge in-house is more likely to get that market than one which relies on surveys. For companies that target a large number of markets with shifting needs, it makes diversity a business requirement to outpace competitors.

usmeteora 9y ago

This is interesting. I'm a female Electrical Engineer in the United States. Females are obviously a minority in the Engineering teams, but interestingly enough, there are a few older female Engineers I know who came from Eastern Europe after spending 10-15 years doing Engineering there, and said they never had an issue with sexism until they came to the U.S. I'm not sure whether an elaboration by them would indicate that they experience more sexism by men, or that overall its more of a topic brought up by women, but they did say there were more issues with men here. I think alot of the issues with women in the U.S. vs Europe are due to the fact that Europe is more urbanized and concentrated. Women and men live and work in closer quarters with more socialized economics where women are overall more educated, urbanized, financially independent, and the sexual and in general culture is more liberally progressive. In the U.S., we are way behind when it comes to womens socioeconomic equality, and education quality in general. Concurrently, there are large number of men live suburban lives, with housewives who are to some degree financially dependent on them, and the idea of an a women who doesn't fit the housewife/trophy wife/soccer mom/etc etc whateve that American culture props up as a way of life for women to idolize, causes more cultural friction and results in more emotional isolation for women working in male dominated work forces. Not all of it is intentional. Most guys I work with are fine, but older than me, married. I'm 27 single and don't intend to settle down anytime soon, maybe travel more if anything. So every company I've worked for, is filled with men who golf together or do other things. I'm not explicitly excluded anymore than I'm not interested in doing those things and they know that. If I was invited, I wouldnt go. This is overall pretty a pretty trivial example, but I am trying to emphasize how the undercurrent of culture in America is a large contributer to this, and not necessarily any one persons fault or a mans conscious decision to come across as exclusionary. Regardless, the document this article refers to goes far beyond that, and I have to say, as an INTJ female, this biology crap is ridiculous. I am introvert and would prefer any day to stay inside and read, code, play video games than go out and "socialize". In my experience, as an educated female introvert, I am demonized for NOT being a social butterfly, I have been called a bitch for not smiling when I say something in a meeting, because there is a subconscious expectation that girls are supposed to be adorably cute in everything that they do, or ease poltiical or social tension and are viewed as "out of line" for being the source of it, and men are rewarded for agressive aberrhant behavior and lauded as the leader of the group for equally outlier behavior. If a man is confident in his capabilities, I've found him to be considered respected, but if a women is confident in her opinion in a meeting or her belief in her own capabilities, I've often been told I'm a know it all, and am reminded immediately why I need to be "knocked" down a peg to be reminded how I'm not as great as I think I am. It can be a little confusing to work in male dominated environment and be punished for the same behavior that men are rewarded for. This does not happen to me as much at my current job, or on my team or my department, but you have to wonder how much day to day life in the long term impacts what paths women take in their lives and careers based on the rewards and punishments they receive and their economic incentive to act and perform like a man, which is all subject to current socioeconomics and politics, moreso than a woman's "biology" This document serves one purpose and on purpose only, to perpetuate stereotypes that many women do not meet, and recategorize all actions and behaviors they have that women DO meet the "White male" stereotype and according to this document I mean "objectively qualified software engineer with an open mind and idealogical diversity" as non lady like. Furthermore, the fact that this document is even being considered as potentially accurate to some degree by any "intelligent" software engineer is more of a testament to how they probably should supplement some of their tech education with history. The last time I checked: The very first compiler: Grace Hopper Nuclear Power: Lise Mitner Code that got us to the moon: Margaret Hamilton Spread Spectrum Technology/Wireless Communication: Hedy Lamar Inventor of Acorn Computer and ARM Processor: Sophie Wilson Current CEO of AMD: Lisa Su Those are just off the top of my head and by the top of my head I mean Nuclear power, which is the most abundant clean energy source on the planet right now, First flight to the moon, the precedents for Wifi etc etc, I'm probably missing some awesome women, there is no proof whatsoever that a females biology makes her less capable of being an equally qualified software engineer. This general argument has been used for thousands of years in various flavors to justify a lack of womens rights or capabilities and they have never in retrospect sounded anything less than ridiculous, with their conclusions implying nothing less than the ONE thing ANY software engineer, and anyone who listened to day 1 of Intro to Science in the 5th grade should know, and that is correlation is not causation. Women used to suck at math before they were allowed to go to school. In the same way, technology is a new industry, and women are already a minority status in so many other industries its bound to reflect here as well, but the existence of a gap is a correlation to biology, as well as the many contributing factors to the cultural differences that influence the mass aggregation of how far women go when it comes to being socioeconomically independent individuals with advanced careers. less than 50 years ago it was argued women shouldnt have careers because how can we procreate our species if women are working passed when the can have kids. Well now we have technology and better healthcare to enable women to be healthier live longer and have kids much later in life. Every excuse about biology as an objectively and permanently limiting factor to womens capabilities is a blatant lie that has shown itself to be one time and time again throughout history . And to answer your last question, I personally really don't care about the diversity of my team if they are all good people who can work well, but I WOULD care if a coworker propogated a document saying I'm inferior to them because of my biology as a female. On a very similiar note, to further this argument with studies and words that are not mine, by some of the mst lauded Economists of our time, I recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" which goes through many countries and places in history showing that the socioeconomic advancement of a people or a country, despite many arguments about certain countries or ethnicities being "less evolved over time" which was and in some places still is an argument and justification to why so many countries and millions of people persist in poverty, and actually that the ability for a country and a people to advocate for themselves is very much a result of the soecioeconomic system they live in, supplementing studies of groups of people an entire cities with the same biology and ethnic evolution and history who live in prosperous countries or not, entirely based on the political structure of that country incentivizing venues for massive growth in healthcare, education, human rights etc. I would argue the existence of highly educated competitive female software engineers is just like most of history and people in the world upon objective studies, based on a complex structure of what incentivizes people and how much their culture allows/encourages/or punishes the advancement of womens education and independence, and this is a snapshot in time of which it would be irresponsible for us to make permanent conclusions about the mental capabilities of women due to their "biology" without efforts to extracate and analyze nature vs nurture in mass.

edanm 9y ago

"Is it such a huge deal that most women are not interested in technology? Is it such a huge deal that you have to work with a few women? Is it such a huge deal that as a technical woman, you have to work mostly with men?" Yes, for various reasons. 1. There is less diversity of experience/thought. 2. Programming/engineering fields are generally good for society (and hence highly rewarded). There is a lot of unfulfilled demand for more engineers. If we can increase the number of people available for these jobs, that's good for society, and if we are for some reason "excluding" or "depressing" some people from entering, that's bad. 3. Not sure about this, but I think the incidence of sexual harassment or similarly bad things goes way up when there are fewer women. None of this is to say we should be forcing anyone to work in something they don't want to. But as I heard it, it seems like there are societal reasons why women tend to be less interested in technology than men, and these are not biological. Again, not clear on the science here, but I'm just answering your main objection, which is "should we even care" assuming it is a cultural problem and not something biological. (For what it's worth, it seems clear to me that it's at least partly societal).

drdeadringer 9y ago

You may be interested in looking over the Society Of Women Engineers for some of your questions.