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I have a question. How come the brouhaha is always about tech jobs but never about bricklaying? As a corollary, how come it's always okay that there are far mo

I have a question. How come the brouhaha is always about tech jobs but never about bricklaying? As a corollary, how come it's always okay that there are far more female nurses but immediately sexism when it comes to less females in tech?

pron 9y ago
Very simple: As a first approximation, we are concerned about women being marginalized from positions of power, not about them being underrepresented in any particular profession. Tech (and politics, law, finance, entertainment, journalism, medicine and upper management) is a position of power; bricklaying, nursing and k-12 education aren't (it's not necessarily an intrinsic property of the professions, but rather an empirical observation). Sexism (and racism) is an unequal distribution of power; feminism is simply the attempt to rectify that. That's the whole story in a nutshell. However, you will find concern over the lack of women in construction, as well as the lack of male nurses. This is due to less direct effects on power distribution. E.g., some of the power that a profession endows on its practitioners is related to its perceived prestige, and it's known that an over representation of women in a profession lowers its prestige -- another sexist effect -- and therefore its power. When it comes to construction work and other "low power" blue-collar professions, I believe that the desire to increase women participation is mainly due to a general desire to reduce (though not necessarily eliminate) the gender association of professions in general.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  > Very simple: As a first approximation, we are concerned about women being marginalized from positions of power, not about them being underrepresented in any particular profession. ... I think that's all I need to know here. So feminists think that it's okay to go into an industry and demand that there be more women because it is a "powerful industry"? And somehow those of us who support Damore are the unreasonable ones?
  - pron 9y ago
    What? No! After researchers having established, with thorough researched that's available for all to see, that women have been marginalized from positions of power -- which includes the tech industry, where women participation, in the US, has been declining in the past three decades or so -- we feminists demand that the practice stop. That's all.
    - deepnotderp 9y ago
      > we feminists demand that the practice stop. You literally just stated that you are interested in the tech industry because it is a "powerful" industry, and you feel that women have been historically marginalized from positions of power. Consequently, you feel that females are entitled to obtain these positions in order to "balance this power distribution". Am I correct?
      - pron 9y ago
        No, you are certainly not correct, although right now I would be happy to balance the very unequal distribution of knowledge you and I have on this subject (although I am far from being an expert myself), because I feel like Richard Dawkins debating evolution with some Christian from Kansas who insists there is no evidence for evolution because that's what they read on a Christian website that scientifically debunks evolution. Seriously, you are so engaged with a topic that you clearly haven't even bothered to read a couple of Wikipedia articles about.
        deepnotderp 9y ago
        Then in concrete terms, what do you want?
        pron 9y ago
        We want the marginalization of women from power, that has been going for centuries, to end. In other words, we want society to lift its hand from the scale against women.
ubernostrum 9y ago
I have a question: why does anyone think this tired soundbite is a smashing knock-down utterly destructive CHECKMATE FEMINISTS rebuttal when anyone who thinks about it for a moment can discover that 1. Advancement and representation in high-status positions has a strong normalizing effect which spreads beyond just those specific job titles, and 2. Plenty of people do acknowledge and want to encourage better gender balance in professions like nursing, teaching, etc.? For someone who claims elsewhere to be making serious rebuttals, you're curiously resorting to some pathetically-weak talking points instead.
DanBC 9y ago
Both those industries have programmes to increase gender diversity, and it's trivially easy to check. The fact you don't know about them suggests you don't know as much about this topic as you think you do.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  Far less than women in tech programs. And the key difference (at least for me) is that these programs encourage men and don't accuse women of coordinated sexism. By contrast, the women in tech movement is happy to paint us all sexist.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    You are a sexist, so why do you care if people say you are?
    - deepnotderp 9y ago
      Of course I'm a sexist. That's what everyone who doesn't agree with you is. Just like Pinker and everyone else...
      - pron 9y ago
        Huh? Everyone is sexist. That's the whole idea of sexism. Just like everyone is covered in germs and potentially spreads disease. Just like proactive action is required in order not to spread disease, proactive action is required in order not to spread sexism. When we point out people (or, more commonly, actions or policies) as "sexist", we mean that they either choose not to take that proactive action, or worse, choose to take action to increase sexism. So yeah, of course you're a sexist, and so am I.

pron 9y ago

Very simple: As a first approximation, we are concerned about women being marginalized from positions of power, not about them being underrepresented in any particular profession. Tech (and politics, law, finance, entertainment, journalism, medicine and upper management) is a position of power; bricklaying, nursing and k-12 education aren't (it's not necessarily an intrinsic property of the professions, but rather an empirical observation). Sexism (and racism) is an unequal distribution of power; feminism is simply the attempt to rectify that. That's the whole story in a nutshell. However, you will find concern over the lack of women in construction, as well as the lack of male nurses. This is due to less direct effects on power distribution. E.g., some of the power that a profession endows on its practitioners is related to its perceived prestige, and it's known that an over representation of women in a profession lowers its prestige -- another sexist effect -- and therefore its power. When it comes to construction work and other "low power" blue-collar professions, I believe that the desire to increase women participation is mainly due to a general desire to reduce (though not necessarily eliminate) the gender association of professions in general.

deepnotderp 9y ago
> Very simple: As a first approximation, we are concerned about women being marginalized from positions of power, not about them being underrepresented in any particular profession. ... I think that's all I need to know here. So feminists think that it's okay to go into an industry and demand that there be more women because it is a "powerful industry"? And somehow those of us who support Damore are the unreasonable ones?
- pron 9y ago
  What? No! After researchers having established, with thorough researched that's available for all to see, that women have been marginalized from positions of power -- which includes the tech industry, where women participation, in the US, has been declining in the past three decades or so -- we feminists demand that the practice stop. That's all.
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    > we feminists demand that the practice stop. You literally just stated that you are interested in the tech industry because it is a "powerful" industry, and you feel that women have been historically marginalized from positions of power. Consequently, you feel that females are entitled to obtain these positions in order to "balance this power distribution". Am I correct?
    - pron 9y ago
      No, you are certainly not correct, although right now I would be happy to balance the very unequal distribution of knowledge you and I have on this subject (although I am far from being an expert myself), because I feel like Richard Dawkins debating evolution with some Christian from Kansas who insists there is no evidence for evolution because that's what they read on a Christian website that scientifically debunks evolution. Seriously, you are so engaged with a topic that you clearly haven't even bothered to read a couple of Wikipedia articles about.
      - deepnotderp 9y ago
        Then in concrete terms, what do you want?
        pron 9y ago
        We want the marginalization of women from power, that has been going for centuries, to end. In other words, we want society to lift its hand from the scale against women.

ubernostrum 9y ago

I have a question: why does anyone think this tired soundbite is a smashing knock-down utterly destructive CHECKMATE FEMINISTS rebuttal when anyone who thinks about it for a moment can discover that 1. Advancement and representation in high-status positions has a strong normalizing effect which spreads beyond just those specific job titles, and 2. Plenty of people do acknowledge and want to encourage better gender balance in professions like nursing, teaching, etc.? For someone who claims elsewhere to be making serious rebuttals, you're curiously resorting to some pathetically-weak talking points instead.

DanBC 9y ago

Both those industries have programmes to increase gender diversity, and it's trivially easy to check. The fact you don't know about them suggests you don't know as much about this topic as you think you do.

deepnotderp 9y ago
Far less than women in tech programs. And the key difference (at least for me) is that these programs encourage men and don't accuse women of coordinated sexism. By contrast, the women in tech movement is happy to paint us all sexist.
- DanBC 9y ago
  You are a sexist, so why do you care if people say you are?
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    Of course I'm a sexist. That's what everyone who doesn't agree with you is. Just like Pinker and everyone else...
    - pron 9y ago
      Huh? Everyone is sexist. That's the whole idea of sexism. Just like everyone is covered in germs and potentially spreads disease. Just like proactive action is required in order not to spread disease, proactive action is required in order not to spread sexism. When we point out people (or, more commonly, actions or policies) as "sexist", we mean that they either choose not to take that proactive action, or worse, choose to take action to increase sexism. So yeah, of course you're a sexist, and so am I.