4 ms·

I don't think so. I think the everyday experience for female academics still lags behind that of male academics. If you're an undergrad in an unfamiliar hard cl

by majos 9y ago

I don't think so. I think the everyday experience for female academics still lags behind that of male academics. If you're an undergrad in an unfamiliar hard class it can be tricky to approach a male fellow student without risking misinterpretation of romantic interest; if you're applying to grad school, letter writers are conditioned to talk about women in different ways ("diligent", not "brilliant", maybe); if you're a grad student choosing an advisor, you never really know if the (probably guy) you're choosing has predatory instincts underneath (most don't but enough do); if you're presenting work at a conference, navigating after-conference social activities while being awkwardly hit on gets old fast. This comes from me talking to friends who are women in CS. It made me realize that as a dude in CS I have an interesting advantage of not being noticed when I walk into a room. The field has made progress but there are still real frictions that make the everyday experience worse for women, even if the balance has shifted during the big decisions. So it may shake out as an advantage when applying for faculty positions or grad schools, but it's probably not an advantage the rest of the time. I don't think the former compensates very well for the latter.

lumberjack 9y ago
None of that stuff is because of bias though. That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  Sentence 1: > None of that stuff is because of bias though. Sentence 2: > That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
  - heavenlyblue 9y ago
    He's speaking about the boundary conditions, you're just parrotting something you have clearly misunderstood.
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      Boundary conditions, exactly.
cristianpascu 9y ago
Have you ever considered things that men have to deal with and are not being able to put them in terms of 'being male in the X industry/community/field"? This is not to minimize anything a woman has to go through, but let's, at least, not compare as if it's on equal terms. If we're able to talk about women issues at all, isn't that because women and men are different? Why compare it so easily and uni-dimensionally? BTW, what about cases where a woman approaches a man about a technical matter, but with a _romantinc_ interest? Where's the real danger in that? We, as grown ups, should have the tools to dismiss politely romantic interests. It's the same case between men and men/women, as it is between women and women/men. It's part of life. The expression 'unwanted advances' is by far the craziest accusation one could make to a person. Man or woman.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  A man worries a woman won’t like him. A woman worries a man will kill her.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    The chances of that happening with your typical Dilbertian white male software engineer are vanishingly small.
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      And then there is reality: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides..., etc.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
        The parent said that the chances of that happening are vanishingly small. Your source (and your source's source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6628a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6628a1.htm) support that statement: > The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. > The overall age-adjusted homicide rate was 2.0 per 100,000 women. 18 states, tens of millions of people, and an inconceivably small number of homicides in reality. The overwhelming majority of women are not murdered by men, but live a long life and die of heart disease, cancer, or other old-age diseases. Even when you only consider the age range in question - call it 18-64 - the leading causes of death are still unintentional injuries, cancer, heart disease, and suicide: https://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2014/all-females/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2014/all-females/index.htm There is a spike in homicides up to a staggering 7% of all deaths for the 15-24 age group, but that's only because young women almost never die, there's little real danger but an awful lot of fear surrounding this topic.
romanovcode 9y ago
People like you are given gold and they will whine it's too heavy. The graph clearly shows that women are prefered in STEM, what more proof do you need?
- majos 9y ago
  Imagine that you and your friend go to work for company X. You are put in a windowless room with an uncomfortable chair where every half hour a co-worker comes by to ask a brief technical question. Your friend gets a quiet, sunny office and is only interrupted by the meetings he organizes himself. However, management assures you that in light of your less amenable office situation, you will receive an extra 10 points out of 100 on your annual performance review, and your friend will not. Would you conclude that you are truly "preferred"? Would you rather be in your friend's place? Would you stick around this company at all, even if the work appeals to you? This is what I mean -- that having an advantage at one step in the process does not necessarily compensate for a negative experience at other steps in the process.
  - juicyfroot 9y ago
    This is retarded. No one is forcing you to work there
- juicyfroot 9y ago
  This
- dang 9y ago
  This crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed on HN. Neither is flamebait, which your comments elsewhere in the thread have crossed into by being handwavey and inflammatory. Would you please stop doing these things? As the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." You've also posted a bunch of unsubstantive and even uncivil comments in the past, and we've warned you several times before. I don't think you're breaking the site rules on purpose, but we eventually ban accounts that repeatedly do this and don't change when we ask. If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
vim_wannabe 9y ago
>romantic interest Heh, I don't know about other STEM fields but I remember a lady attending a computer science freshman social event once. There were very few women there as the majority of women in CS are in HTI. After a while she said to my friend, "Why is everyone such a nerd." She left the field, men were at fault.
- ikeyany 9y ago
  I'm not sure she's blaming men as much as she's confirming the existence of the culture around tech that non-traditional students (women or blacks/Latinos) feel very alienated from. That doesn't mean she thinks anyone is "to blame".
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    I don't think we should downvote here. As much as none of us nerds like nerd-punching, we should admit that nerd culture is a distinct thing unto itself, which co-clusters with other demographic factors (especially being middle-class with time for hobbies when you're young), and frankly isn't very welcoming in the adult stages of acculturation. If we expect people to "enter into" nerd culture to join "nerdy" professions, we're basically expecting people to learn a new language and move into a semi-foreign country just to enter a job field.
    - peoplewindow 9y ago
      "Nerd" isn't a culture anymore than "geekyness" is a culture. It's a pejorative, an insult intended to shame the person it's applied to by suggesting they are slightly disgusting, socially disagreeable, ugly, uninteresting etc. When the woman turned up to a social event and said, "why are the men such nerds" and walked away, that wasn't the men's fault or problem actually (unless they wanted to date her). That's her problem: she's the one lobbing insults against an entire group despite not knowing the individuals in question. They do not need to do anything to welcome such a person into their "culture" because she wasn't talking about a culture to begin with. The story given above, assuming the last "men were at fault" statement is related to the first part, is sadly reflective of all the worst stereotypes of young women. The woman in question decided what career to pursue because she didn't want to be seen as hanging out with uncool people during her studies. Guess what - nerds would be happy to hang out with "non nerds" too, if they came to their events and didn't act all judgey and superior. This is not something unique to women, it's rather, that men seem more willing to either embrace it or tolerate it. Presumably she is now in a field with fewer "nerds", but quite possibly earning less money than if she'd stuck with CS. Too bad for her.

by majos 9y ago

lumberjack 9y ago

None of that stuff is because of bias though. That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.

linkmotif 9y ago
Sentence 1: > None of that stuff is because of bias though. Sentence 2: > That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
- heavenlyblue 9y ago
  He's speaking about the boundary conditions, you're just parrotting something you have clearly misunderstood.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    Boundary conditions, exactly.

cristianpascu 9y ago

Have you ever considered things that men have to deal with and are not being able to put them in terms of 'being male in the X industry/community/field"? This is not to minimize anything a woman has to go through, but let's, at least, not compare as if it's on equal terms. If we're able to talk about women issues at all, isn't that because women and men are different? Why compare it so easily and uni-dimensionally? BTW, what about cases where a woman approaches a man about a technical matter, but with a _romantinc_ interest? Where's the real danger in that? We, as grown ups, should have the tools to dismiss politely romantic interests. It's the same case between men and men/women, as it is between women and women/men. It's part of life. The expression 'unwanted advances' is by far the craziest accusation one could make to a person. Man or woman.

linkmotif 9y ago
A man worries a woman won’t like him. A woman worries a man will kill her.
- megaman22 9y ago
  The chances of that happening with your typical Dilbertian white male software engineer are vanishingly small.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    And then there is reality: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides..., etc.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
      The parent said that the chances of that happening are vanishingly small. Your source (and your source's source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6628a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6628a1.htm) support that statement: > The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. > The overall age-adjusted homicide rate was 2.0 per 100,000 women. 18 states, tens of millions of people, and an inconceivably small number of homicides in reality. The overwhelming majority of women are not murdered by men, but live a long life and die of heart disease, cancer, or other old-age diseases. Even when you only consider the age range in question - call it 18-64 - the leading causes of death are still unintentional injuries, cancer, heart disease, and suicide: https://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2014/all-females/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2014/all-females/index.htm There is a spike in homicides up to a staggering 7% of all deaths for the 15-24 age group, but that's only because young women almost never die, there's little real danger but an awful lot of fear surrounding this topic.

romanovcode 9y ago

People like you are given gold and they will whine it's too heavy. The graph clearly shows that women are prefered in STEM, what more proof do you need?

majos 9y ago
Imagine that you and your friend go to work for company X. You are put in a windowless room with an uncomfortable chair where every half hour a co-worker comes by to ask a brief technical question. Your friend gets a quiet, sunny office and is only interrupted by the meetings he organizes himself. However, management assures you that in light of your less amenable office situation, you will receive an extra 10 points out of 100 on your annual performance review, and your friend will not. Would you conclude that you are truly "preferred"? Would you rather be in your friend's place? Would you stick around this company at all, even if the work appeals to you? This is what I mean -- that having an advantage at one step in the process does not necessarily compensate for a negative experience at other steps in the process.
- juicyfroot 9y ago
  This is retarded. No one is forcing you to work there
juicyfroot 9y ago
This
dang 9y ago
This crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed on HN. Neither is flamebait, which your comments elsewhere in the thread have crossed into by being handwavey and inflammatory. Would you please stop doing these things? As the site guidelines say: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." You've also posted a bunch of unsubstantive and even uncivil comments in the past, and we've warned you several times before. I don't think you're breaking the site rules on purpose, but we eventually ban accounts that repeatedly do this and don't change when we ask. If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.

vim_wannabe 9y ago

>romantic interest Heh, I don't know about other STEM fields but I remember a lady attending a computer science freshman social event once. There were very few women there as the majority of women in CS are in HTI. After a while she said to my friend, "Why is everyone such a nerd." She left the field, men were at fault.

ikeyany 9y ago
I'm not sure she's blaming men as much as she's confirming the existence of the culture around tech that non-traditional students (women or blacks/Latinos) feel very alienated from. That doesn't mean she thinks anyone is "to blame".
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  I don't think we should downvote here. As much as none of us nerds like nerd-punching, we should admit that nerd culture is a distinct thing unto itself, which co-clusters with other demographic factors (especially being middle-class with time for hobbies when you're young), and frankly isn't very welcoming in the adult stages of acculturation. If we expect people to "enter into" nerd culture to join "nerdy" professions, we're basically expecting people to learn a new language and move into a semi-foreign country just to enter a job field.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    "Nerd" isn't a culture anymore than "geekyness" is a culture. It's a pejorative, an insult intended to shame the person it's applied to by suggesting they are slightly disgusting, socially disagreeable, ugly, uninteresting etc. When the woman turned up to a social event and said, "why are the men such nerds" and walked away, that wasn't the men's fault or problem actually (unless they wanted to date her). That's her problem: she's the one lobbing insults against an entire group despite not knowing the individuals in question. They do not need to do anything to welcome such a person into their "culture" because she wasn't talking about a culture to begin with. The story given above, assuming the last "men were at fault" statement is related to the first part, is sadly reflective of all the worst stereotypes of young women. The woman in question decided what career to pursue because she didn't want to be seen as hanging out with uncool people during her studies. Guess what - nerds would be happy to hang out with "non nerds" too, if they came to their events and didn't act all judgey and superior. This is not something unique to women, it's rather, that men seem more willing to either embrace it or tolerate it. Presumably she is now in a field with fewer "nerds", but quite possibly earning less money than if she'd stuck with CS. Too bad for her.