8 ms·

> sexism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. To play devils advocate, sexism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reason

by adekok 9y ago

> sexism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. To play devils advocate, sexism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why men and women are treated differently, e.g. child care (mostly women) versus hard physical labor (mostly men) Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same. But even with that, there may be biological reasons why men and women are interested in different things. Which may mean more women in job A, or more men in job B. > Maybe other industries suffer less from these things because they have a longer history and have more guild-like working practices, where professional behavior is more clearly defined. Any job which has "guild-like working practices" is very likely going to be male dominated. Because most guilds were based on men working. e.g. construction, stone masons, electricians, etc. And those jobs are rife with sexism, because of their historical roots. > I studied CS and I never learned about what it means to be a professional software developer. Because schools teach concepts, not social skills. They should probably teach social skills and social practices, IMHO. Everyone would be better off for it.

pencilcode 9y ago
Just to nitpick an issue that some people mix up. On average more interest does not equate on average more skilled within the interested population. Also this gender diff does not play out so starkly in other sciences, eg biology, physics, etc. And, some decades ago in the west, and currently in other countries/civilizations, this gender difference does not pan out. This seems to point to other factors beyond genetic differences.
- SBCRec 9y ago
  Could you provide a source please? Interested to read about it! Thanks in Advance!
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    Here's a piece in response to the damore memo, written up by an evolutionary biologist. https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on-what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9 https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'
    - 0xbear 9y ago
      Damore didn't fail at providing citations. You did apparently fail at reading the original document, however. References were deliberately stripped out by Gizmodo, and then republished by everyone else.
      - xenadu02 9y ago
        Please don't do this. There have been many take-downs of his full document (that include the so-called citations). The one legit paper he linked to (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173.2077&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173...) didn't reach the conclusion he was claiming. That paper demonstrates that in egalitarian developed societies men are less oppressed by other men, not that there are innate differences. In all cases women's behavior is the result of being oppressed to a greater or lesser degree. In other words in less developed societies many men are just as oppressed by the powerful as women and use the same coping strategies. He also failed to address the fact that interest doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. Research shows men and women don't differ in empathy unless men know they are being judged, which suggests it is a culturally-imposed trait and definitely not universal. He makes a lot of assumptions without bothering to explain them, eg: assuming effective meritocracy and blindly ignoring his own caveats, never resolving the conflict with his own arguments. He never once presents ANY evidence that cognitive differences between men/women influence performance in software engineering. Here are just a few papers: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00006.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.tb01323.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-papers/papers/walby-weupayandproductivity.pdf http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-p... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/ There are plenty of books and articles on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troublesome/dp/0547394594/ https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troubleso... https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-differences-in-cognitive-abilities https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-diff... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to-human-evolution.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to... https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-against-nature https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-... https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-dimorphism https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-... http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-diversity/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-div... One interesting result is if you can get women to picture themselves as men most of the cases where we do see differences disappears, again suggesting the vast majority of differences are cultural: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s... Honestly it doesn't take much effort to stop with the confirmation bias. Do some actual research on your own and don't just look for sources that reinforce your existing biases. James Damore wrote a document mostly describing his feelings and sprinkled in a few footnotes to make it look like he had done some research. He is woefully out of date with the current research (because he obviously didn't do any). That's pretty much what everyone does regarding this topic, both on HN and elsewhere. It has become a demoralizing slog to repeatedly attempt to educate people when they are both a) so ignorant on a topic and b) so absolutely certain they are correct despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I suppose this issue falls into the category of things that "everyone knows" so people Dunning-Kruger themselves into a position without giving it any thought. The question of whether there are biological differences that make men and women suited for different tasks has been studied for decades. There are mountains of data. Brilliant men and women have written extensively on the topic. For the love of God, please take the time to educate yourself. Even if you want to cling to the idea that women aren't as suited to programming (despite the evidence to the contrary) you could at least avoid doing an incompetent job by being aware of the research in the field.
- Banthum 9y ago
  I do believe it's notable that in other sciences (including subsciences of biology, psychology, and others), these differences do play out - in the opposite direction. There's a useful graph somewhere of various degrees earned by gender split. The numbers run the gamut.
- ralfn 9y ago
  > On average more interest does not equate on average more skilled within the interested population. But it might impact supply and demand of applicants with a certain background (either educational or self-study). Companies can take responsibility for the demand, but not the supply of human capital. Solutions are more likely found within education, family and youth culture. The top tier companies (like Google) can't hide behind that fact, since they generally get first pick, but that would make it even harder for lower tier companies to uphold an effective diversity policy. There may be a strong business opportunity to exclusively invest in and hire minorities. If you have (a lot of) money and believe minorities to be discriminated against due to culture, hiring policy or financial rewards, it logically follows that you should invest in minorities. You would get, on average, better people that are more competitive. Nothing argues quicker than profit. And the end of the day, we live in a capitalistic society. The economic arguments are the only types of arguments that will change anything. If the invisible hand of the free market has a bias where it does not properly allocate its resources for maximum profitability, go bet against it and get rich.
enraged_camel 9y ago
>>But even with that, there may be biological reasons why men and women are interested in different things. Which may mean more women in job A, or more men in job B. You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has been going on for ages. Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society. Consider this: back in the 50s and 60s, women dominated computer programming. It was seen as an obvious career choice for young, talented women. This article explains the history much better: 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-...
- Clubber 9y ago
  I'm not sure why this was down voted. I would say other than lifting heavy things and childbirth, every other difference would be social programming, or just societal norms. I mean read about female Russian snipers in WWII. Read about Confederate women during the Civil War running their farms by themselves while their husbands were off to war. Hell the whole pink for girls and blue for boys is a recent social phenomenon of the latter 20th century. FDR had his baby pictures wearing a dress. The person who programmed the Apollo guidance system (it was 100% guided) was a woman. My point is women aren't into programming because lack of biological ability.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  I agree with you, and I feel like the downvotes are completely unwarranted. People downvoting: why don't you bring an argument against what's being expressed, instead of just downvoting?
- adekok 9y ago
  > You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The science says biological reasons: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publication/232430614_The_Essential_Difference_The_Truth_About_The_Male_And_Female_Brain/links/547cdb7a0cf2cfe203c1fde2/The-Essential-Difference-The-Truth-About-The-Male-And-Female-Brain.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publi... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice-unearthin_b_941426.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice... Among others... > Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society. That isn't true, either. Let's look at Sweden, which is a modern egalitarian society. If society is largely gender-blind, then people should overwhelmingly make "free" choices. i.e. choices which are strongly influenced by biology. And we see that. Jobs in Sweden are still overwhelmingly split by gender. Engineers are overwhelmingly male, and people-oriented jobs (nurse, etc.) are overwhelmingly female. Here's another discussion of gender differences: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201201/gender-differences-in-personality-are-larger-previously-thought https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201... To deny that men and women are psychologically different is to claim that evolution / biology works on the physical attributes, but does not work on the corresponding mental attributes. That claim just cannot possibly be true.
sangnoir 9y ago
Counter devils advocate - let me remap what you're saying to race: >> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. >To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites) If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.
- samstave 9y ago
  Just because you can substitute words doesn't invalidate the point. Replace with religion and blacks and whites with Jews and muslims, sure the paragraph can still be written as such, but still doesn't change the original meaning.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    Perhaps you'd like to expand on what "the original meaning" was to you? If it wasn't obvious, one of my points was that being good at swimming is just that - it has nothing to do with software engineering. The whole "inherently different" argument is a red-herring if it has no provable bearing on the ability to do the (software engineering) work. edit: my main point though, was that differences in statistical sport affinities are not, and do not explain "racism" - just as difference in statistical career-affinity is not, and doesn't explain "sexism".
    - joshuahutt 9y ago
      The person you replied to already pointed out that the difference has no bearing on their ability to do the work in question, and that, as such, men and women should be treated equally in that area. >Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same. You argued against a strawman.
- RoyTyrell 9y ago
  While I appreciate your point of view, I do think there are more differences between men and women than there are between the various "races" of humans. That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.

by adekok 9y ago

pencilcode 9y ago

Just to nitpick an issue that some people mix up. On average more interest does not equate on average more skilled within the interested population. Also this gender diff does not play out so starkly in other sciences, eg biology, physics, etc. And, some decades ago in the west, and currently in other countries/civilizations, this gender difference does not pan out. This seems to point to other factors beyond genetic differences.

SBCRec 9y ago
Could you provide a source please? Interested to read about it! Thanks in Advance!
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Here's a piece in response to the damore memo, written up by an evolutionary biologist. https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boots-on-what-the-evidence-says-about-mr-damores-google-memo-bc93c8b2fdb9 https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    Damore didn't fail at providing citations. You did apparently fail at reading the original document, however. References were deliberately stripped out by Gizmodo, and then republished by everyone else.
    - xenadu02 9y ago
      Please don't do this. There have been many take-downs of his full document (that include the so-called citations). The one legit paper he linked to (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173.2077&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.173...) didn't reach the conclusion he was claiming. That paper demonstrates that in egalitarian developed societies men are less oppressed by other men, not that there are innate differences. In all cases women's behavior is the result of being oppressed to a greater or lesser degree. In other words in less developed societies many men are just as oppressed by the powerful as women and use the same coping strategies. He also failed to address the fact that interest doesn't necessarily correlate with ability. Research shows men and women don't differ in empathy unless men know they are being judged, which suggests it is a culturally-imposed trait and definitely not universal. He makes a lot of assumptions without bothering to explain them, eg: assuming effective meritocracy and blindly ignoring his own caveats, never resolving the conflict with his own arguments. He never once presents ANY evidence that cognitive differences between men/women influence performance in software engineering. Here are just a few papers: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-11115-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-01642-012 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00006.x/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.tb01323.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9450.1963.... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3438111 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10666324 http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-papers/papers/walby-weupayandproductivity.pdf http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-p... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951011/ There are plenty of books and articles on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troublesome/dp/0547394594/ https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Brain-Blue-Differences-Troubleso... https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-differences-in-cognitive-abilities https://sites.google.com/site/dianehalperncmc/books/sex-diff... http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-aren-t-really-different-study-finds http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/brains-men-and-women-... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to-human-evolution.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/science/monogamys-boost-to... https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-against-nature https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-struggle-for-equality-a-fight-... https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-dimorphism https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/sexual-body-size-... http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-diversity/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/11/179827-the-data-on-div... One interesting result is if you can get women to picture themselves as men most of the cases where we do see differences disappears, again suggesting the vast majority of differences are cultural: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-s... Honestly it doesn't take much effort to stop with the confirmation bias. Do some actual research on your own and don't just look for sources that reinforce your existing biases. James Damore wrote a document mostly describing his feelings and sprinkled in a few footnotes to make it look like he had done some research. He is woefully out of date with the current research (because he obviously didn't do any). That's pretty much what everyone does regarding this topic, both on HN and elsewhere. It has become a demoralizing slog to repeatedly attempt to educate people when they are both a) so ignorant on a topic and b) so absolutely certain they are correct despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I suppose this issue falls into the category of things that "everyone knows" so people Dunning-Kruger themselves into a position without giving it any thought. The question of whether there are biological differences that make men and women suited for different tasks has been studied for decades. There are mountains of data. Brilliant men and women have written extensively on the topic. For the love of God, please take the time to educate yourself. Even if you want to cling to the idea that women aren't as suited to programming (despite the evidence to the contrary) you could at least avoid doing an incompetent job by being aware of the research in the field.
Banthum 9y ago
I do believe it's notable that in other sciences (including subsciences of biology, psychology, and others), these differences do play out - in the opposite direction. There's a useful graph somewhere of various degrees earned by gender split. The numbers run the gamut.
ralfn 9y ago
> On average more interest does not equate on average more skilled within the interested population. But it might impact supply and demand of applicants with a certain background (either educational or self-study). Companies can take responsibility for the demand, but not the supply of human capital. Solutions are more likely found within education, family and youth culture. The top tier companies (like Google) can't hide behind that fact, since they generally get first pick, but that would make it even harder for lower tier companies to uphold an effective diversity policy. There may be a strong business opportunity to exclusively invest in and hire minorities. If you have (a lot of) money and believe minorities to be discriminated against due to culture, hiring policy or financial rewards, it logically follows that you should invest in minorities. You would get, on average, better people that are more competitive. Nothing argues quicker than profit. And the end of the day, we live in a capitalistic society. The economic arguments are the only types of arguments that will change anything. If the invisible hand of the free market has a bias where it does not properly allocate its resources for maximum profitability, go bet against it and get rich.

enraged_camel 9y ago

>>But even with that, there may be biological reasons why men and women are interested in different things. Which may mean more women in job A, or more men in job B. You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has been going on for ages. Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society. Consider this: back in the 50s and 60s, women dominated computer programming. It was seen as an obvious career choice for young, talented women. This article explains the history much better: 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-...

Clubber 9y ago
I'm not sure why this was down voted. I would say other than lifting heavy things and childbirth, every other difference would be social programming, or just societal norms. I mean read about female Russian snipers in WWII. Read about Confederate women during the Civil War running their farms by themselves while their husbands were off to war. Hell the whole pink for girls and blue for boys is a recent social phenomenon of the latter 20th century. FDR had his baby pictures wearing a dress. The person who programmed the Apollo guidance system (it was 100% guided) was a woman. My point is women aren't into programming because lack of biological ability.
dguaraglia 9y ago
I agree with you, and I feel like the downvotes are completely unwarranted. People downvoting: why don't you bring an argument against what's being expressed, instead of just downvoting?
adekok 9y ago
> You say biological reasons, I say social programming. The science says biological reasons: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publication/232430614_The_Essential_Difference_The_Truth_About_The_Male_And_Female_Brain/links/547cdb7a0cf2cfe203c1fde2/The-Essential-Difference-The-Truth-About-The-Male-And-Female-Brain.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Baron-Cohen/publi... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice-unearthin_b_941426.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spice... Among others... > Basically, we have no way of knowing what portion of women's tendencies to gravitate towards certain jobs and careers can be attributed to biological factors vs. to the way they were raised by their parents and conditioned by society. That isn't true, either. Let's look at Sweden, which is a modern egalitarian society. If society is largely gender-blind, then people should overwhelmingly make "free" choices. i.e. choices which are strongly influenced by biology. And we see that. Jobs in Sweden are still overwhelmingly split by gender. Engineers are overwhelmingly male, and people-oriented jobs (nurse, etc.) are overwhelmingly female. Here's another discussion of gender differences: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201201/gender-differences-in-personality-are-larger-previously-thought https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201... To deny that men and women are psychologically different is to claim that evolution / biology works on the physical attributes, but does not work on the corresponding mental attributes. That claim just cannot possibly be true.

sangnoir 9y ago

Counter devils advocate - let me remap what you're saying to race: >> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. >To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites) If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.

samstave 9y ago
Just because you can substitute words doesn't invalidate the point. Replace with religion and blacks and whites with Jews and muslims, sure the paragraph can still be written as such, but still doesn't change the original meaning.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  Perhaps you'd like to expand on what "the original meaning" was to you? If it wasn't obvious, one of my points was that being good at swimming is just that - it has nothing to do with software engineering. The whole "inherently different" argument is a red-herring if it has no provable bearing on the ability to do the (software engineering) work. edit: my main point though, was that differences in statistical sport affinities are not, and do not explain "racism" - just as difference in statistical career-affinity is not, and doesn't explain "sexism".
  - joshuahutt 9y ago
    The person you replied to already pointed out that the difference has no bearing on their ability to do the work in question, and that, as such, men and women should be treated equally in that area. >Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same. You argued against a strawman.
RoyTyrell 9y ago
While I appreciate your point of view, I do think there are more differences between men and women than there are between the various "races" of humans. That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.