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One of the few >1SD ways that men and women differ is when you ask men and women what jobs they think they'd prefer. If you list jobs that have large social co

One of the few >1SD ways that men and women differ is when you ask men and women what jobs they think they'd prefer. If you list jobs that have large social components like teacher, social work, etc... more women will say they sound pleasurable than men. When you list jobs with smaller social components like carpenter, electronics technician, forester, car mechanic more men will say they are pleasurable. Is this difference entirely cultural, women being told they should prefer people jobs, and men being told they should prefer thing jobs? No entirely. It looks like biology plays a significant role too. Women(XY) with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are raised as women, but tend to show occupational choices that are less people oriented. And the degree to which these women have been exposed to prenatal testosterone predicts how much they'll prefer thing oriented jobs. Just to reiterate though, I don't think this is a valid reason to give up on getting more women into tech. It just means it'll be an uphill battle, and maybe we should expand our toolset to include things we otherwise wouldn't have tired. When I think about how we get to a profession with much better gender parity, I imagine the world that has changed how it sees developers. Right now the world sees great developers as technical geniuses sitting in a dark basement staring at a command line solving garbage collection bugs and doing memory dumps. But instead we thought about a great developer as someone who used their eloquent communication skills, amazing empathy and a generous helping bad ass technical skills to delight their end-users with features they didn't even know they needed. I think that's a job more 16 year old girls could get excited about. P.S. this doesn't mean we shouldn't stamp out sexism where ever it rears its ugly head. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/

mikeash 9y ago
Does this difference in job preference extend to times and places where different genders dominate some fields? For example, teaching used to be a predominantly male job in the US until the late 19th century. For a less extreme example, there used to be (proportionally) many more women in computing just a few decades ago than there are now. I'm highly suspicious of any claim that biology affects typically gendered jobs, whether because of suitability or just because of preference, because it seems like gender roles in employment ought to be a lot more consistent if that were true.
- belorn 9y ago
  Historical aspects carries with them the two world wars and men-only military drafts, where young men were forcibly sent to the front line while young women volunteered/took jobs to help the war effort through computing. The history of computing is soaked in historical context.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Everything is soaked in historical context, including how things are today. If what we see now is biological, then that implies we've somehow just arrived at a point where we eliminated external factors, which doesn't make sense to me. And I don't buy this explanation about the war. Women were significantly more present in computing as late as the 1980s. For example, the percentage of women majoring in computer science was over 35% in 1985, versus under 20% today.
    - belorn 9y ago
      During the second world war, it was way above 35%. Gender segregation isn't some instant state that as soon the war ends switches from 100% women to 100% men. Nothing is that black and white. Effects from wars are neither eternal nor instant. In economy people are still saying that we are seeing ripples from the world war 2, but at some point those ripple effects will be too small to be relevant. It is relevant to explain the economy during the 1960, somewhat for 1980, but less so for 2017. To claim that a profession born out of war isn't effect by war politics seems odd.
      - mikeash 9y ago
        Like I said, everything is affected by historical context. What's odd is to pretend that the present situation is somehow an exception. And the defense that the larger number of women in CS in the 80s was a long effect from the war still doesn't make sense, given that the number had been going up for quite some time at that point.
        9y ago

mikeash 9y ago

Does this difference in job preference extend to times and places where different genders dominate some fields? For example, teaching used to be a predominantly male job in the US until the late 19th century. For a less extreme example, there used to be (proportionally) many more women in computing just a few decades ago than there are now. I'm highly suspicious of any claim that biology affects typically gendered jobs, whether because of suitability or just because of preference, because it seems like gender roles in employment ought to be a lot more consistent if that were true.

belorn 9y ago
Historical aspects carries with them the two world wars and men-only military drafts, where young men were forcibly sent to the front line while young women volunteered/took jobs to help the war effort through computing. The history of computing is soaked in historical context.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Everything is soaked in historical context, including how things are today. If what we see now is biological, then that implies we've somehow just arrived at a point where we eliminated external factors, which doesn't make sense to me. And I don't buy this explanation about the war. Women were significantly more present in computing as late as the 1980s. For example, the percentage of women majoring in computer science was over 35% in 1985, versus under 20% today.
  - belorn 9y ago
    During the second world war, it was way above 35%. Gender segregation isn't some instant state that as soon the war ends switches from 100% women to 100% men. Nothing is that black and white. Effects from wars are neither eternal nor instant. In economy people are still saying that we are seeing ripples from the world war 2, but at some point those ripple effects will be too small to be relevant. It is relevant to explain the economy during the 1960, somewhat for 1980, but less so for 2017. To claim that a profession born out of war isn't effect by war politics seems odd.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Like I said, everything is affected by historical context. What's odd is to pretend that the present situation is somehow an exception. And the defense that the larger number of women in CS in the 80s was a long effect from the war still doesn't make sense, given that the number had been going up for quite some time at that point.
      - 9y ago