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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

275 points by andrenth 9y ago

jankotek 9y ago
From my experience location dependence is the greatest obstacle for women to join high earning STEM jobs. With paygap women find it more difficult to live in expensive cities. Also remote work allows more life balance for care givers (who are mostly women). It should be seen as sexism, if company does not offer remote jobs.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  Your first two sentences seem like a circular argument. Women can't get the high paying jobs because they don't live in the right places, they can't live in the right places because they can't get the high paying jobs.
  - jankotek 9y ago
    Not really. If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). Big cities are unaffordable even at the same salary.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      >>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. The counter argument to this is that if this was true, companies would only hire women, since apparently they do the same work for less money!
      - jankotek 9y ago
        > What's ping tax? Google that... > How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. > In a normal case Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends.
        shard972 9y ago
        I hate to be rude but I googled for a ping tax and maybe it's because I live in Australia, but all I can find is the ato answering questions about ping-pong tables and otherwise random economics subjects from china that use the word ping (eg: "Ping insurance", Gui Ping Wu). I can't find anything specific to women.
        benmmurphy 9y ago
        I'm guessing they meant pink tax. They might not be a native English speaker so didn't pick up on the mistake.
        shard972 9y ago
        Ah that does it. Yea i think the issue is that google knows im australian so it doesn't correct the mistake where the americans it's a big talking point. And since we are more closely related to asian happenings, it decided to not correct it due to the misspelling being an asian name :P
        gambiting 9y ago
        >>Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192... "The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports" Maybe I should have said "usual" not "normal" - being a single mother is a normal thing. But so is being a single dad. Claiming that women are somehow worse off because they spend more on childcare is completely bizarre. >>Google that... Or you could just tell me - I googled it and there's absolutely nothing that relates to women, several pages of results on google are just taking about filing my taxes with HMRC when I search for ping tax. >>Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. And? What's the argument here? You were saying that women are paid less for the same work(something which you completely ignored in my reply) and that they have more expenses than men(I would say a subset of people who are raising children on their own have more expenses than people who don't. They don't have more expenses because they are women, they have more expenses because of the choices they made).
    - romanovcode 9y ago
      If one doesn't want to do daycare he/she should not have children. This applies for both men and women.
    - tom_mellior 9y ago
      > If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. In other words, we have a sexism problem.
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    This can indeed be a problem but it is more of a class one. To find a job in some location it may be necessary to live there or have means to go there on a regular basis (for job interviews and so on). For somebody without means this can be difficult.
- nodejsblogger7 9y ago
  Hahahaha sexism if they don't offer reomte jobs?? You're a loonie!!
- mantas 9y ago
  Are you saying that men pay less for housing in the expensive cities?
cousin_it 9y ago
This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be political or not. More specifically, some arguments are rational (based on evidence) while other arguments are political (based on who benefits and who loses). You can be a very civil person, but still reach for political arguments when defending your beliefs, and thus cause net harm. Or you can be a rude person, but drawn to arguing based on evidence, and thus cause net benefit. It's up to you. Now go forth and make a flamewar :-)
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  I'll be dammed. Opened the comments expecting a shit show and saw yours first. Thank you for brightening my day.
- jabot 9y ago
  As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you divorce a belief itself from its consequences. As there are a lot of beliefs that have immediate and direct political and social consequences, i think that this separation is questionable. If you have a belief, you probably will act on that belief. Having a belief and _not_ acting on it _at all_ seems rather useless and abstract to me. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but in general, if some person has a belief, he (or she) will act on that belief. So, to be blunt: for some beliefs, having them is a political act.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    > People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Nearly all beliefs are of this type. I believe the Earth orbits the Sun because it's helps me predict the seasons.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xt00 9y ago
I think people will always be scared of losing their job or their way of life changing.. so coming up with reasons why somebody who is different from you is somehow not as good at what you do, is a comforting path to go down for many people. It will be a battle between people that don't want things to change and the people who want to see things change. I do think that when anybody says "hey ya know you should just be happy about more women or minorities or whatever being helped to get into your field, or "you can't complain you've had a bunch of advantages to get where you are.." I do think that causes a bunch of push-back from people who do have a reasonable basis to say that whatever advantage they may have had may also have been tiny or in their case non-existent or whatever. So I do hope the narrative does eventually shift toward something more constructive like saying lets support women and minorities getting into the STEM area, but should also help to remove from the discourse statements that undermine the hard work that the men did to get into these challenging fields. If somebody makes a statement like "and you look at this math department and they are all men.. clearly something is going on.." that is implying that those men don't deserve to be there, which obviously creates a very negative situation for everybody involved both the men and the women seeking to be in those fields that historically have large percentages of men.
- kirillkh 9y ago
  Not sure what all of this has to do with the linked article, which discusses purely the scientific merit of claims of bias in STEM.
natch 9y ago
it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, teachers, parents of friends, other adults, and other children. Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting to the news that Sally wants to be a programmer, where Joey gets no such wide eyes for the same news. Any study that overlooks that cause, in order to focus only on the causes highlighted in recent dramatic episodes, is an example of the phenomenon mentioned in the title of the book their chapter appears in: Groupthink.
- SidiousL 9y ago
  > the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon It doesn't look like you read the article. It clearly stated that in countries like Finland and Sweden, where such cues are less likely to be given, there is a larger inequality in STEM. Meanwhile, in Iran there are more women in STEM. Do you think that in Iran young girls are more or less likely to be subjected to "harmful gender stereotypes" than in Sweden or Finland? > Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting ... This was precisely addressed in the article. It goes by the name of micro-aggression. Go back and read about it.
  - natch 9y ago
    >This was precisely addressed in the article. It goes by the name of micro-aggression. No. As I said above to another person who also made the same mistake: They only describe it in the context of the workplace and in degree-granting institutions, not in earlier schools or in the home where minds are in their formative stages. It’s microagression for sure, but they are overlooking the more powerful instances of it.
- shard972 9y ago
  > the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. Would you say that is a problem that can or should be fixed after the fact? For instance, if we assume that we know the major cause to be social conditioning at young ages should we then try to correct that after they leave education?
imartin2k 9y ago
It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing.” This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender imbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields (an example: the recent study about facial recognition being less accurate on female faces). Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. Edit: In other words: no matter where one stands in the debate about the reasons for gender imbalance in STEM, it is totally reasonable not to be too concerned about imbalances among plumbers or car mechanics, because this imbalance does have less consequences. It doesn’t matter for any other aspect in life whether a woman or man fixes the car, but it matters who creates the algorithms that control everyone’s lives.
- shard972 9y ago
  > This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics? Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?
  - imartin2k 9y ago
    Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this. That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.
jakecopp 9y ago
I'm sure it starts from before university and careers. I was lucky enough to take a Mechatronics class (software + electronics) in high school a couple of years ago (Australia, year 11). One (very talented) female chose to take the class along with probably 15 males, though physics & maths seemed about a 50/50 split. That's an even worse percentage than the engineering faculty at my university, which at 23% has the highest ratio of women in engineering faculties nationally.
scarmig 9y ago
This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that can be used to explain the gap. By itself, I don't take any issue with it. It's true. But if you turned it around and explained the CS gap starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there'd be an uproar. Petitions would be signed, scalps would be taken. I say that as someone who thinks much of those differences can be explained by childhood socialization. And you're not even allowed to talk about it. I'm hesitant to post this comment, for fear someone might hunt me down and dox me to my employer. (Even now, I ponder if I should be making a throwaway account.) In real life, I had been willing to have conversations about this because I find it an interesting and nuanced topic. But now both sides have taken to treating anyone who doesn't take a stance of complete agreement with their respective ideologies as the Enemy. It's creating a class of people who know just to shut up and withdraw from any discussion about the topic, because there's clearly no good that can come from it, either socially or professionally. Even academics. And I genuinely don't get why anyone would want that. [0] http://www.nber.org/papers/w24274 http://www.nber.org/papers/w24274
- psyc 9y ago
  Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. women, black vs. white. To paraphrase Yudkowsky, "Arguments are soldiers, this is war, and it's life or death." This account began as a throwaway. I used to comment with my real name, in the days before the war broke out. In the days when pg used to comment here regularly. The days when, if someone disagreed with you, they'd tell you so, or why you're wrong, or maybe that you're a dumb-dumb. Now, if you don't follow approved talking points in your social media communiqués, you're in real danger of being pilloried, and - as these things go - you're more likely to be attacked by fellow members of the party. I've identified as left-leaning my entire life, but I've never for a moment feared this sort of personal sabotage from a right-leaning person. This is a pursuit of ideological purity at any cost.
Noos 9y ago
What's really annoying about this is that women are not underrepresented in STEM careers! The article mentions if anything, they are overrepresented in the life sciences, and are only underrepresented in math at the doctoral level. The issue is that we are suddenly defining STEM as computer science and engineering only, and that those are apparently the only worthwhile aspects of STEM. The sexism thing and message thing is odd when you realize women in general can make up to two thirds of science teachers. I think the problem with computer science in general is that it's one of the few careers you need to like at an early age and do a lot of self-directed study before you even enter college, or you are at a disadvantage compared to others. This affects both men and women, and keep in mind most men aren't interested in those fields either.
- ghaff 9y ago
  >I think the problem with computer science in general is that it's one of the few careers you need to like at an early age and do a lot of self-directed study before you even enter college, or you are at a disadvantage compared to others. I do strongly suspect that has a lot to do with the fall-off in women working in CS. (It's probably not limited to that though it probably also leads to some self-perpetuating feedback loops.) It's almost unique among careers in that regard with the arts (playing music, etc.) or sports being the only other major exceptions. You don't just decide in high school you'd like to do the violin thing and apply to Juilliard. But it's considered perfectly normal to decide you really liked high school chemistry, even if that's the extent of your exposure to it, and consider majoring in it once you hit college. On the other hand, I've taken a couple of programming MOOCs based on intro programming courses at a couple of elite schools. The idea that I could have made it through them as a freshman never having touched a text editor/IDE is farcical. Yet [EDITED for clarity: when I took an intro programming course as a mechanical engineer in college way back when there was no expectation that I had ever touched a computer]. (I had done a little BASIC programming in high school but it was very rudimentary.)
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  I don't think it's just Engineering and Maths that have a problem. There's this joke where someone says "A man and his son are in a car crash and they're taken to hospital. The doctor sees the child and goes 'Oh no! It's my son!'". Then they ask you "who is the doctor"? The point is that you are supposed to struggle with the answer because you can't imagine the doctor to be the boy's mother. That there exists an assumption that people will find this difficult to answer suggests that there is some sort of expected cultural bias about doctors being male or female. An anecodte, of course- literally.
tome 9y ago
Does HN have the equivalent of shadow banning for stories? This story is on the second page but has many more votes than front page stories that were posted at the same time.
- detaro 9y ago
  Flagging affects ranking (quite strongly), which is what I would assume in this case, as do other things like vote-to-comment ratio.
  - tome 9y ago
    Interesting. The ranking of this story has been bouncing around a lot! It's now halfway up the front page again.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    The mods can also manually down-weight and up-weight stories, independent of any user flagging. Some guy did an analysis some months back: https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15507821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15507821
trextrex 9y ago
On one hand, the author takes a lot of effort (with a lot of references) to explain that stereotype threat, implicit bias, etc. may only be a small contributor to the unequal representation of women in STEM. But, on the other hand, his counterargument for the existence of other potential factors seems to me to be quite weak and lacking the same rigor. The existence of "basic sex differences" is not discussed in detail, with only a couple of references. And a lot of his counterargument seems to be based on a few example countries with high gender equality rankings and low STEM participation. Is there any validation that these gender equality rankings are a useful indicator of gender equality? What about factors that surface only after school/college in these countries? What about network effects in various fields? Not that I'm saying such factors do exist. But the author makes a somewhat strong (IMO) argument against stereotype threat, implicit bias etc. and a very weak argument for the existence of other factors.
drakonka 9y ago
> The real issues concern the magnitude of these effects on women’s STEM participation and the foregone opportunities of not focusing on other factors that might have an even stronger impact on their participation. I am not sure that I agree with the entire article, but this part stood out to me. I never know how to express this in a way that sounds appropriate, but I feel that some of us might be better off if we focused more of our energy on actually developing in our chosen field and less on dwelling on how sexist everyone says the field is. I understand that the above comes with a lot of caveats. "What if the sexism is the thing _preventing_ me from developing?", etc. And I do think there are legitimate problems, and that they need to be addressed. But sometimes it seems like the flood of media and popular opinion constantly shoved at us about how bad we have it only makes us more tuned to focus on things that may not even matter (and may not _all_ come from a place of gender bias, but are now prone to being categorized that way). This then results in us wasting our time being affected by/thinking about/dwelling on those things rather than a) actually growing in our chosen field and b) focusing on more _serious_ gender issues that may be a little bit more concrete than "This guy was rude to me, obviously it's because I'm woman and not because he's an asshole to everybody." At the same time I'm not sure if the above is the right viewpoint to have. Is it better to potentially be blind to actual "microaggressions" or other "smaller" issues that might build up and keep trudging along in a state of ignorance, or is it better to not see those things and keep working in a field you enjoy? I don't speak about this much because to be honest I don't have the energy, and prefer to spend my time on making things. This may be bad: one day I too may have a "MeToo"-esque story of working in tech, and maybe I will suddenly realize I've been blind this whole time.
- badosu 9y ago
  > I am not sure that I agree with the entire article, but this part stood out to me. I never know how to express this in a way that sounds appropriate, but I feel that some of us might be better off if we focused more of our energy on actually developing in our chosen field and less on dwelling on how sexist everyone says the field is. For some agendas, exarcebating an issue and exposing a divide between groups of people is more desirable than solving the issue itself (which is counter-productive to the agenda )
cosmic_ape 9y ago
People talk about research involving indicators such as "ability" and social factors. But have anyone asked the boys and girls before college, or before starting a graduate degree why and how they make their choices? It seems to me that doing it on scale, like 1000 participants, in a given fixed country, would clear the picture. In a way, they are voting with their choices, and all we need is a focus group.
- anon12345690 9y ago
  From the article: "It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects.9 This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. If stereotype threat discourages girls from pursuing math-intensive STEM coursework and careers, its effect should be evident in high-school. The fact that a large and well-designed study could not find any effect, in our opinion, suggests either the effect does not exist or it is unmeasurably small."
  - cosmic_ape 9y ago
    Yes, but I'm not interested in works where researchers are trying to validate a hypothesis like "stereotype threat discourages girls from pursuing math-intensive STEM coursework and careers". I'm asking about what these adolescents are actually saying. Raw answers, perhaps in two paragraphs, to a simple question of how they think they would choose. edit: and then of course, such dataset should be anonymized and made public, so anyone could see what we are talking about.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked in the UK as a developer, before starting my PhD. Of the women developers I worked with, (in this case, not so many) the majority were Indian or Eastern or Southern European. The same goes for the students in my data science Masters (also in a UK university). Other women I've discussed this with, have similar experiences. In particular Greek women (like myself) don't remember any perception of a strong bias in numbers against women in STEM subjects. I have a fair few Greek women friends who have bachelors or master's degrees in computer science. All this is of course anecdotal but it makes me think there is some sort of bias that is not explained by "interest in things" vs "interest in people", or any such difference between the sexes, because it is particular to specific cultures, rather than to the sexes around the globe. In any case "gendered interest" sounds like a convenient oversimplification that seeks to confirm cultural bias as natural and spontaneous, rather than an attempt to understand it. Instead of answering any questions it passes the buck; it leaves someone else to wonder why girls and boys are interested in different things (e.g. fire trucks vs barbie dolls). The same goes for academic performance in school: that is also an observation that requires an explanation- not an explanation in and of itself.
- donkeyd 9y ago
  I'd never really paid attention to this, but now that you mention it, the Dutch company I work for has 4 female developers, 3 of which are Indian.
  - bloak 9y ago
    I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills, such as engineering or music, rather than law or advertising, say. Some of my engineer colleagues are very hard to understand on the phone because of their language. It's hard to imagine them getting anywhere as a lawyer, for example.
edna314 9y ago
I don't get it. Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology? These authors only try to disprove theories which potentially explain the inequality and then conclude that there is no injustice. This is logically flawed in my opinion. In order to justify the inequality they would need to come up with a plausible theory why the inequality is inevitable and then support it with sound facts. Otherwise social pressure from "feminists" is well justified.
- tscs37 9y ago
  Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. Of course, for Equality of Chance to be properly implemented you need to do away with as many barriers to it as possible but you should be willing to accept that no matter what you do, there won't be a perfect 50/50. From all evidence we have, there is strong evidence that male and female humans grow up differently independent of their social surroundings, for example, we found that the brains of newborns can be easily distinguished into female and male as little as 1 month after birth, before any social factors have had much chance to get deep into development. From that I find it easier to believe that there will be some statistical biases in one direction or another (like how will have, on average, a bit more height) outside of the purely physical domain. I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind.
  - edna314 9y ago
    > Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. More desirable to whom? To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance. Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal? > I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind. You cannot even properly define what you mean by "brain and/or mind", which is why it's impossible to convince you that there actually is injustice if your opinion relies on that. But, for the moment suppose there is some convincing theory which explains naturally why less women are in STEM. Then why would we have to adjust our society to it, as it would benefit from less social tensions if there was equal outcome? Your point has to be much stronger to justify the inequality, as in everything would go downhill super fast if we had equal outcome. Otherwise there will always be social tensions and you have to learn to live with the "feminists".
andrepd 9y ago
I wish this article spent more time on substance and facts and less time on expounding their very obvious ideology.
skywhopper 9y ago
This is a very poor article, masquerading as a scientific paper, but published in a political publication. The authors pick a few jargon-heavy effects, claim there's no evidence for those effects, and dismiss the entire argument, and fall back on the lazy "boys like things, girls like people" explanation, and is laced throughout with accusations of politically based dishonesty in opposing views. In other words, it's no scientific paper, but a political polemic. Whether or not these few specific effects they claim to have debunked are real or not, to explain the gaps, you have to go far beyond a few narrow sociological effects. There's a self-reinforcing culture of same-hiring-same that glorifies algorithmic intuition as the end-all be-all of software development. There are cultural and fashion trends in the social media landscape that reinforce what's appropriate to be interested in based on your self-identity. The authors claim that gendered interest in CS and the like has remained "stubbornly low" because "women prefer working with people", ignoring huge evidence that even as CS has become far more human-centered and collaborative since the 80s, the numbers of women declaring it as a major have plummeted.
- bloak 9y ago
  It explicitly calls itself an "essay".
tptacek 9y ago
Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed in than the computer software industry. Clearly, they have something else in common. We just need to figure out what it is. This essay, which invokes the "Google Memo", is subtly attacking a straw man. Even those almost the entire rest of STEM is better than CS, it's true that it's not balanced; it remains deeply imperfect. Physics and mechanical engineering, clustered with CS, remain the province of men. There's a expanse of STEM fields with female participation between 25-40% that you'd want to explain or correct. Is it stereotype threat? Implicit bias? Who knows? Probably not? But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. The work that a commercial software engineer does --- even at the lofty heights in which the profession is practiced in such a cathedral of software design as the Alphabet Corporation --- is simply not that hard; most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways. Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty.
- jabot 9y ago
  I was with you until you wrote: > But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. Uh. What? As far as I can tell, it has _everything_ to do with that. These two things are so closely related i cannot fathom how you can make such a statement... Also... You make the same point twice. To paraphrase you: a) "academic CS is less intellectually rigorous and less hard to succeed in than chem/etc -- but there are less women in it" b) "work as google is simply not that hard, just wiring form fields to databases -- but there are less women in it" For both a) and b) you then point out that they are problematic and that we cannot explain them (and, for the record, I agree with you on both counts) - but they are still unrelated? EDIT: To reiterate: I think you are right in that the gender imbalance is a problem and is hard to explain. It's just this disconnect that i don't get here...
  - tptacek 9y ago
SiempreViernes 9y ago
> Let’s start with the magnitude of stereotype threat on girls’ and women’s mathematics achievement. [...] It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects. This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. Well, what was actually tested was if showing girls and boys a video declaring that girls are bad at math would make them perform worse at a math test right after[0]: > Students in the two groups were brought to separate classrooms and watched the video that either activated stereotype threat or nullified the stereotype and then completed the mathematics test. The testing session took approximately 40 min. > The video shown to the stereotype threat group depicted a scientist telling students that recent research “shows that math intelligence levels among students do not change as students get older. Students are born with a certain amount of natural math ability which does not change.” Students were then shown brain imagery and were given a detailed explanation regarding how some students are born with better mathematics skills (as indicated by more brain activity). In this condition, the students were also told that “females have lower levels of this kind of brain activity than males. This makes sense because girls often get lower scores on standardized tests compared to boys.” These students were also told that the “test that you will take today is a very good measure of your natural math ability.” [0]: An examination of stereotype threat effects on girls’ mathematics performance. Developmental Psychology Vol. 49, Iss. 10, (Oct 2013): 1886-1897.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The abstract ( https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1050056 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1050056 ) says: Stereotype threat has been proposed as 1 potential explanation for the gender difference in standardized mathematics test performance among high-performing students. At present, it is not entirely clear how susceptibility to stereotype threat develops, as empirical evidence for stereotype threat effects across the school years is inconsistent. In a series of 3 studies, with a total sample of 931 students, we investigated stereotype threat effects during childhood and adolescence. Three activation methods were used, ranging from implicit to explicit. Across studies, we found no evidence that the mathematics performance of school-age girls was impacted by stereotype threat. In 2 of the studies, there were gender differences on the mathematics assessment regardless of whether stereotype threat was activated. Potential reasons for these findings are discussed, including the possibility that stereotype threat effects only occur in very specific circumstances or that they are in fact occurring all the time. We also address the possibility that the literature regarding stereotype threat in children is subject to publication bias. Did you read a different paper, or do you disagree with the author's own abstract?
pron 9y ago
> Many academics in the modern world seem obsessed with the sex difference in engagement with science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) fields. Or rather they are obsessed with the fact that there are more men than women in some of these fields. ... Proponents of these theories and their activist followers believe that some significant proportion of the sex differences in STEM fields – but curiously only those in which men outnumber women ... Completely leaving aside the rest of content, the only obsessed people here are those who are obsessed with not understanding what the issue is about perceiving it to be an obsession. We are not obsessed with the number of women in STEM for its own sake (it's an important but a secondary concern) but obsessed with the inequality of power. As women happen to be underrepresented precisely in those areas that confer power -- including some STEM fields -- that is what we care about. If women were underrepresented in software engineering but commensurately overrepresented in, say, politics, banking or high management, this would have been a matter of less concern. As women happen to be underrepresented in all of these, we're attacking each of these individually. Of course, those of us who are in STEM also feel that women underrepresentation (aside from the much more important issue of power equality) is a huge loss of talent for our field.
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  But what if the under-representation is due to women not being as interested in the field?
  - pron 9y ago
    First, why are they less interested? Second, like I said, the problem is an overall unfair distribution of power. I find it very hard to believe that women are so uninterested in all professions that confer power to the point that they're willing to give up power (and therefore freedom) to not practice them.
    - jeffreyrogers 9y ago
      I've worked in the finance industry and the tech industry, both industries where women are underrepresented. These industries would love to employ more women. When I worked in finance the recruiters spent a ton of effort trying to get women to apply, but they couldn't get anywhere close to 50/50 in terms of number of applicants. Maybe women (on average, not outliers obviously) value other things more than power? At least in finance it's incredibly demanding to be at the top. The work is consuming and if you aren't willing to put in the time someone else will and will take your job. It isn't really compatible with a traditional family life.
ac2018-02-14 9y ago
Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously. A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with men more likely to prioritize status at the expense of family, the opposite of women). Another notable difference (again in the summary statistics, not the entire distribution) is that men prefer careers that are thing-centered over people-centered. I wish statistics were better understood by the general population. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw
novia 9y ago
Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the things I read on this website. But just imagine for a moment how all this appears to an aspiring programmer when she wakes up in the morning and checks her favorite technical content aggregator. Like, yeah, none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men, but what I'm reading here is the subtext. When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me? Will I be treated with respect? Or will I be seated next to someone who is convinced that there is a gender war going on, and thereby offended by my very presence?
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  > "When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me?" In all honesty, recently I've seen underperforming women get promoted to positions they shouldn't have been promoted to because of political pressures, so there is going to be some sense of "is she competent or is she a diversity hire/promotion?" They also might think, does she really enjoy tech, is she a nerd like me, or is she just looking for a cushy office job in software that the "diversity/women-in-X" groups are so loudly promoting.
  - icefox 9y ago
    > They also might think, does she really enjoy tech, is she a nerd like me, or is she just looking for a cushy office job in software that the "diversity/women-in-X" groups are so loudly promoting. Hell I think that about all my colleagues whatever their gender is. Seen plenty of males don't really want to code, but it pays too well to not.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- auggierose 9y ago
  I think a lot of people here don't really think about the effects their words have on other people, no matter the topic. I have been guilty of that too, both in online comments and in real life. "Guilty" is maybe even the wrong word, it can be very useful! I've asked Timothy Gowers once at a conference if he has ever written a program, and he said no! So you know more than he does when it comes to computer programming, just take that as a starting point and not the comments here :)
jenthoven 9y ago
I’m a CS graduate and female founder. I disagree with many parts of this essay, but I actually agree with this part: “The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science“ I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives and care more than boys do about relationships with people. But I think the perception that CS is less beneficial towards people or that technologist don’t work with people as often as other professionals is false. My job as a PM at Google was incredibly social, and I felt had a huge impact on “living things”, much more so than my female friend’s role as a psychology researcher or operations associate at an insurance company. There’s a belief in society that all CS grads do is sit in caves alone and make video games, whereas the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create. Now, a related problem is that CS actually is less social for woman than in it is for men. I had very few friends in my advanced classes, whereas the dudes took those classes together in packs. I benefited a huge amount from women in CS community at my university because I felt like I knew more people in my classes, could sit, chat, and work with them. IMO, all of the dollars going towards women in STEM that this author criticized are and should continue to target these two problems: that CS is perceived as less to do with “living things” and that it actually is less social for girls because there isn’t a strong community.
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  > I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this. My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.
  - bluthru 9y ago
    >Women are socially smarter What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man. Women also have a reputation of being more adversarial and catty: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-compete-with-each-other.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-...
alexandercrohde 9y ago
To get a little meta: I think discussions like these make progress, but very slow progress. I think the root of the issue for many people is more than factual at this point, it's become emotional for both sides. And I think progress will come when both sides can get a handle on their frustrations and then articulate their feelings gracefully. At the end of the day, I think only a very small percentage of people commenting here care too much about what a new study finds. I don't think it will move many viewpoints. So I think I'll propose a template for resolving this conflict (a longshot, I know). Pursuit of agreement: A) Do I want to understand the feelings of the people I'm talking to? If not, don't expect progress. B) Do I want to understand my personal feelings? Do I recognize why this topic is emotional to me, why I'm spending my Thursday morning arguing this? C) Do I see how tangential the connection is between my feelings and the article at hand? D) Do I care about reaching a point of agreement, or is my motivation more around rewarding myself/punishing others? E) Am I willing to describe my feelings/worries/motivations without using emotionally charged-words?
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  Why is it accepted that feelings should be relevant here? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm genuinely open to listen to your response to that. To paraphrase Data O'Briain, "zombies are at an all-time low but the fear of zombies could be incredibly high, doesn't mean we should have government policies to deal with the fear of zombies": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopCDSK69gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopCDSK69gs If we're getting meta, I think that the first thing that should be discussed is: What are we optimizing for, and how do we measure it?
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    We are optimizing for the minimization of outrage from mainstream and social media. There's not much else to go on.
    - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
      Why? Who cares? Shouldn't we be optimizing towards everyone having at least the chance to do the thing they like for a living, or something along those lines?
gu56esfhi5 9y ago
Shut tab when they first drop “microaggression” 2017 saw a number of papers that found little evidence to support the notions often pushed by groups that back use of the term Given the failure to reproduce issue in humanities, I’m inclined to take theories there with a brick of salt If someone wants to talk a real platform for universal healthcare, mental health svcs, funding education, infrastructure, and lifelong education/study type way of life, I’m all about it Papers like this just scream “bourgeoisie peddling a minor update to traditional values and neoliberalism.” “Let these groups into our factories and labs.” Sure, all for it. Have been for decades. What about the social structures that have us focused on profit motives over discovery and self agency? Now that they’re in the labs are they just stuck being bored wage slaves, having their work expropriated because they’re not rich? Same with women and the draft. It should go away for all. But it’s somehow more equal to oblige them to their death should the call arise. Well, more equal for the proles. Here we have people who could afford and education telling the world how to behave, based on evidence that in my digging and serious conversations with scholars and proponents of microagression theories, is based mostly upon the frequency with which certain words appear in our discourse. That just seems vain as hell. Here’s my theory for fixing a problem. It relies on some basic stats but ignores looking for other explanations
mhneu 9y ago
Info about Quillette (the source of this article): https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-conservative-snowflakes https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-co... Conservatives love playing the victim The website Quillette is trying to convince people conservatism is subversive. Unsurprisingly, Quillette has become a hub for reactionary thought. The website, which started publishing in 2015 and is funded by a modest Patreon account, The best way to get a sense of the typical Quillette reader is by perusing the comments section under any essay, especially those about feminism and the leftist threat to western civilization. Quillette’s readers see themselves as inheritors of the western tradition of dispassionate, boring debate instead of what they likely are: people trying to kill time at work by sounding off in the comments. They hate “leftist identitarians” and “corrosive marxists” who ruin this dispassionate, boring debate by deigning to have an emotional stake in the subjects they study. It's also important to keep in mind that 90% of hard science professors lean liberal (PKrugman, paraphrased: because those whose jobs involve evaluating facts tend to reject propaganda). And that US conservatives have a propaganda agenda to attack universities: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/a-history-of-the-conservative-war-on-universities/547703/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/a-hist... Yet the trope of portraying American universities as a threat to society emerged with particular intensity in the 1970s and ‘80s. Neoconservatives including the journalist Irving Kristol and the philosopher Allan Bloom developed a discourse around what they saw as the moral laxity and corrosiveness of the 1960s counterculture. In other words, when it comes to America’s colleges and universities, conservative anxiety is best expressed as being about a small set of marquee positions of honor and prestige in the liberal arts that happen to be largely staffed at present by those whose political commitments lean left
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  The site you quote on Quillette doesn't seem very objective.
strangeloops85 9y ago
I find the notion that this topic is NOT being discussed and being suppressed somewhat hilarious. Find me a single women in STEM who has not read or heard extensively about the idea that men are biologically predisposed to be better than women at 'abstract reasoning' etc. Historically, the notion that women might be just as capable at men at technical disciplines is what's NEW! I personally know of at least a dozen gifted young women scientists at the very best institutions in the world quitting the field because of advisors and others explicitly belittling them based on their gender. While these are anecdotes, they're representative for the question of who becomes faculty in STEM since that's my world: These were people who were identified from a young age as being likely to be future faculty in the sciences, performed off-the-charts well on every metric you can think of, publishing papers in journals in undergrad, and you know what? They heard this discussion ad nauseam, and in combination with the random sexism thrown their way, decided to bail (as frankly I would have in their shoes). A related read that I found quite illuminating: http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Kitrosser.pdf http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05... (I run in fairly left-leaning liberal circles and you know what I hear about? NOT actually being PC (whatever that is -- define it, I dare you) but people complaining about something being PC. This has been going on since the year 2000 so much that I'm pretty sure jokes about something being PC are PC, while actually being PC is not PC..)
peterwwillis 9y ago
Why does this article keep conflating gender and sex? As supposed academics, they know there's multiple of both, and they don't always coincide - right?
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  Humans have male or female genitalia (outside of some rare cases) and gender corresponds to what sex organs you have, no? So there are two of each, right?
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    No, not really. Gender corresponds to the societal and cultural difference between the sexes, as opposed to the biological, and is socially constructed [4]. Gender is part of what changes how we act and think, both as normal psychological and behavioral processes, and in more inherent ways as determined by some studies [3]. It commonly is assigned based on sex, but in many cases, some people innately feel that their gender is different than the one assigned to them. In biological terms, sex may be determined by a number of factors present at birth, including the number and type of sex chromosomes, the type of gonads (ovaries or testicles), the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females), and the external genitalia. People whose characteristics are not either all typically male or all typically female at birth are intersex. [1] There are many different conditions in which a person's sex organs may not match up with levels of hormones in their body, primary or secondary sex characteristics[2], or someone's internalized gender identity. It's important to note that these are not deformities, but simply conditions that different people are born with. Doctors around the world have for centuries actually been surgically intervening and modifying the sex organs of babies to fit the surgeon's or parents' expectations, which is now considered a human rights violation and widely condemned by the international community [5]. So some people are born with one set of chromosomes, and/or one set of genitalia that may not be typical, yet exhibit some or all of the other characteristics and thoughts of someone with a different set. Their gender may not correspond to their sex, or sex organs. Hence, it is better to refer to gender differences than sex differences when talking about the roles of people in society. Unless we're specifically talking about making babies, and even then it's not totally simple. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virilization [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_humans#Psychological_and_behavioral_differentiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_huma... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment#Controversy
jancsika 9y ago
> Many academics in the modern world seem obsessed with the sex difference in engagement with science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) fields. Or rather they are obsessed with the fact that there are more men than women in some of these fields. There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing. Obsessed as in "doing science on socially relevant topics?" > These differences are socially important because these tend to be prestigious occupations, and practically important because the different numbers of men and women in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex difference in earnings.1 So... "doing science on relevant topics." Why misrepresent that as an "obsession?"
- alexandercrohde 9y ago
  I think you're making a fair point, that there's a value judgment going on there. But I also think it's a fair question why gender differences are such a huge focus right now, as compared to say class problems (MOST Americans don't have $500 in savings [1]), or environmental problems (Men's sperm counts have gone down by half in the last 30 years [2]). Obviously these aren't mutually exclusive, but there is a case to be made that the amount of energy/money going into this problem isn't proportional to its severity. 1. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings... 2. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plummet-in-western-men-study-finds https://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plumme...
deleted 9y ago
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pwinnski 9y ago
I read "obsessed" and "surprisingly" (for something which surprises me exactly zero) and "intimidating" and I keep reading, even though literally the first sentence has revealed a pretty strong bias. Then I read that "there should be gender equity" is "an extreme agenda," and I finally roll my eyes. I did keep reading, and I find that I do agree somewhat with their conclusion, but I wonder if they're aware of how ridiculous their framing is. Of the many points I found objectionable, I'll focus on only one, the most egregious silliness: It is neither "surprising" nor "curious" that "there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing." Two paragraphs later they go on to spell out why it should be completely unsurprising: "the different numbers of men and women in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex difference in earnings." If there's a problem with both A and B, and B generally pays 10x what A pays, I'm going to focus on the problem with B. Duh.
dlwdlw 9y ago
I'd say that in general, due to cultural expectations, men are better at anything that requires a domination mindset. Winning in zero-sum games. The non-domination mindset focuses on non zero-sum win win results. This requires creating something out of nothing. An example is relationships. There is nothing directly measurable or improveable, but meaning is can still be derived purely through reorganization of actors and the interfaces between actors. The degenerate win-win situation is when both actors win due to the loss if a third party. A wealthy country can have win-win between all sorts of actors as long as the negative consequences can be outsourced. This implies that all existing win-win methodologies are probably corrupt in some way because there are very few people who expand their bubble of humanity recognition to all humans. Whether it's a different country or a different ideology, the tendency to dehumanize is trigger-happy. I'd say that society creates two mindsets. One geared to winning. The other to living. Culture specializes these two mindsets into 2 groups. The male/female divide being one that matches fairly well due to physical difference. This isn't the case now since mentally there is no large difference. At least in potential. To focus nowadays though is too much on having the "living" mindset learn how to win. Instead it should focus on the winning mindset learning how to live.
rphlx 9y ago
> publication bias – the tendency for positive but not negative results to be published Many years ago Feynman expressed concern and regret about the harm that causes to experimental physics. One can imagine it being a far bigger issue in some of the social sciences, where there is nothing nearly as consistently apolitical as Nature to gradually separate reality from comforting delusion.

275 points by andrenth 9y ago

From my experience location dependence is the greatest obstacle for women to join high earning STEM jobs. With paygap women find it more difficult to live in expensive cities. Also remote work allows more life balance for care givers (who are mostly women). It should be seen as sexism, if company does not offer remote jobs.

OscarCunningham 9y ago
Your first two sentences seem like a circular argument. Women can't get the high paying jobs because they don't live in the right places, they can't live in the right places because they can't get the high paying jobs.
- jankotek 9y ago
  Not really. If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). Big cities are unaffordable even at the same salary.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    >>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. The counter argument to this is that if this was true, companies would only hire women, since apparently they do the same work for less money!
    - jankotek 9y ago
      > What's ping tax? Google that... > How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. > In a normal case Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends.
      - shard972 9y ago
        I hate to be rude but I googled for a ping tax and maybe it's because I live in Australia, but all I can find is the ato answering questions about ping-pong tables and otherwise random economics subjects from china that use the word ping (eg: "Ping insurance", Gui Ping Wu). I can't find anything specific to women.
        benmmurphy 9y ago
        I'm guessing they meant pink tax. They might not be a native English speaker so didn't pick up on the mistake.
        shard972 9y ago
        Ah that does it. Yea i think the issue is that google knows im australian so it doesn't correct the mistake where the americans it's a big talking point. And since we are more closely related to asian happenings, it decided to not correct it due to the misspelling being an asian name :P
      - gambiting 9y ago
        >>Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192... "The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports" Maybe I should have said "usual" not "normal" - being a single mother is a normal thing. But so is being a single dad. Claiming that women are somehow worse off because they spend more on childcare is completely bizarre. >>Google that... Or you could just tell me - I googled it and there's absolutely nothing that relates to women, several pages of results on google are just taking about filing my taxes with HMRC when I search for ping tax. >>Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. And? What's the argument here? You were saying that women are paid less for the same work(something which you completely ignored in my reply) and that they have more expenses than men(I would say a subset of people who are raising children on their own have more expenses than people who don't. They don't have more expenses because they are women, they have more expenses because of the choices they made).
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    If one doesn't want to do daycare he/she should not have children. This applies for both men and women.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    > If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. In other words, we have a sexism problem.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  This can indeed be a problem but it is more of a class one. To find a job in some location it may be necessary to live there or have means to go there on a regular basis (for job interviews and so on). For somebody without means this can be difficult.
nodejsblogger7 9y ago
Hahahaha sexism if they don't offer reomte jobs?? You're a loonie!!
mantas 9y ago
Are you saying that men pay less for housing in the expensive cities?

cousin_it 9y ago

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be political or not. More specifically, some arguments are rational (based on evidence) while other arguments are political (based on who benefits and who loses). You can be a very civil person, but still reach for political arguments when defending your beliefs, and thus cause net harm. Or you can be a rude person, but drawn to arguing based on evidence, and thus cause net benefit. It's up to you. Now go forth and make a flamewar :-)

duncan_bayne 9y ago
I'll be dammed. Opened the comments expecting a shit show and saw yours first. Thank you for brightening my day.
jabot 9y ago
As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you divorce a belief itself from its consequences. As there are a lot of beliefs that have immediate and direct political and social consequences, i think that this separation is questionable. If you have a belief, you probably will act on that belief. Having a belief and _not_ acting on it _at all_ seems rather useless and abstract to me. I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but in general, if some person has a belief, he (or she) will act on that belief. So, to be blunt: for some beliefs, having them is a political act.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  > People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Nearly all beliefs are of this type. I believe the Earth orbits the Sun because it's helps me predict the seasons.

deleted 9y ago

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xt00 9y ago

I think people will always be scared of losing their job or their way of life changing.. so coming up with reasons why somebody who is different from you is somehow not as good at what you do, is a comforting path to go down for many people. It will be a battle between people that don't want things to change and the people who want to see things change. I do think that when anybody says "hey ya know you should just be happy about more women or minorities or whatever being helped to get into your field, or "you can't complain you've had a bunch of advantages to get where you are.." I do think that causes a bunch of push-back from people who do have a reasonable basis to say that whatever advantage they may have had may also have been tiny or in their case non-existent or whatever. So I do hope the narrative does eventually shift toward something more constructive like saying lets support women and minorities getting into the STEM area, but should also help to remove from the discourse statements that undermine the hard work that the men did to get into these challenging fields. If somebody makes a statement like "and you look at this math department and they are all men.. clearly something is going on.." that is implying that those men don't deserve to be there, which obviously creates a very negative situation for everybody involved both the men and the women seeking to be in those fields that historically have large percentages of men.

kirillkh 9y ago
Not sure what all of this has to do with the linked article, which discusses purely the scientific merit of claims of bias in STEM.

natch 9y ago

it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, teachers, parents of friends, other adults, and other children. Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting to the news that Sally wants to be a programmer, where Joey gets no such wide eyes for the same news. Any study that overlooks that cause, in order to focus only on the causes highlighted in recent dramatic episodes, is an example of the phenomenon mentioned in the title of the book their chapter appears in: Groupthink.

SidiousL 9y ago
> the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon It doesn't look like you read the article. It clearly stated that in countries like Finland and Sweden, where such cues are less likely to be given, there is a larger inequality in STEM. Meanwhile, in Iran there are more women in STEM. Do you think that in Iran young girls are more or less likely to be subjected to "harmful gender stereotypes" than in Sweden or Finland? > Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting ... This was precisely addressed in the article. It goes by the name of micro-aggression. Go back and read about it.
- natch 9y ago
  >This was precisely addressed in the article. It goes by the name of micro-aggression. No. As I said above to another person who also made the same mistake: They only describe it in the context of the workplace and in degree-granting institutions, not in earlier schools or in the home where minds are in their formative stages. It’s microagression for sure, but they are overlooking the more powerful instances of it.
shard972 9y ago
> the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. Would you say that is a problem that can or should be fixed after the fact? For instance, if we assume that we know the major cause to be social conditioning at young ages should we then try to correct that after they leave education?

imartin2k 9y ago

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing.” This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender imbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields (an example: the recent study about facial recognition being less accurate on female faces). Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. Edit: In other words: no matter where one stands in the debate about the reasons for gender imbalance in STEM, it is totally reasonable not to be too concerned about imbalances among plumbers or car mechanics, because this imbalance does have less consequences. It doesn’t matter for any other aspect in life whether a woman or man fixes the car, but it matters who creates the algorithms that control everyone’s lives.

shard972 9y ago
> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics? Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?
- imartin2k 9y ago
  Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this. That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.

jakecopp 9y ago

I'm sure it starts from before university and careers. I was lucky enough to take a Mechatronics class (software + electronics) in high school a couple of years ago (Australia, year 11). One (very talented) female chose to take the class along with probably 15 males, though physics & maths seemed about a 50/50 split. That's an even worse percentage than the engineering faculty at my university, which at 23% has the highest ratio of women in engineering faculties nationally.

scarmig 9y ago

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that can be used to explain the gap. By itself, I don't take any issue with it. It's true. But if you turned it around and explained the CS gap starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there'd be an uproar. Petitions would be signed, scalps would be taken. I say that as someone who thinks much of those differences can be explained by childhood socialization. And you're not even allowed to talk about it. I'm hesitant to post this comment, for fear someone might hunt me down and dox me to my employer. (Even now, I ponder if I should be making a throwaway account.) In real life, I had been willing to have conversations about this because I find it an interesting and nuanced topic. But now both sides have taken to treating anyone who doesn't take a stance of complete agreement with their respective ideologies as the Enemy. It's creating a class of people who know just to shut up and withdraw from any discussion about the topic, because there's clearly no good that can come from it, either socially or professionally. Even academics. And I genuinely don't get why anyone would want that. [0] http://www.nber.org/papers/w24274 http://www.nber.org/papers/w24274

psyc 9y ago
Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. women, black vs. white. To paraphrase Yudkowsky, "Arguments are soldiers, this is war, and it's life or death." This account began as a throwaway. I used to comment with my real name, in the days before the war broke out. In the days when pg used to comment here regularly. The days when, if someone disagreed with you, they'd tell you so, or why you're wrong, or maybe that you're a dumb-dumb. Now, if you don't follow approved talking points in your social media communiqués, you're in real danger of being pilloried, and - as these things go - you're more likely to be attacked by fellow members of the party. I've identified as left-leaning my entire life, but I've never for a moment feared this sort of personal sabotage from a right-leaning person. This is a pursuit of ideological purity at any cost.

Noos 9y ago

What's really annoying about this is that women are not underrepresented in STEM careers! The article mentions if anything, they are overrepresented in the life sciences, and are only underrepresented in math at the doctoral level. The issue is that we are suddenly defining STEM as computer science and engineering only, and that those are apparently the only worthwhile aspects of STEM. The sexism thing and message thing is odd when you realize women in general can make up to two thirds of science teachers. I think the problem with computer science in general is that it's one of the few careers you need to like at an early age and do a lot of self-directed study before you even enter college, or you are at a disadvantage compared to others. This affects both men and women, and keep in mind most men aren't interested in those fields either.

ghaff 9y ago
>I think the problem with computer science in general is that it's one of the few careers you need to like at an early age and do a lot of self-directed study before you even enter college, or you are at a disadvantage compared to others. I do strongly suspect that has a lot to do with the fall-off in women working in CS. (It's probably not limited to that though it probably also leads to some self-perpetuating feedback loops.) It's almost unique among careers in that regard with the arts (playing music, etc.) or sports being the only other major exceptions. You don't just decide in high school you'd like to do the violin thing and apply to Juilliard. But it's considered perfectly normal to decide you really liked high school chemistry, even if that's the extent of your exposure to it, and consider majoring in it once you hit college. On the other hand, I've taken a couple of programming MOOCs based on intro programming courses at a couple of elite schools. The idea that I could have made it through them as a freshman never having touched a text editor/IDE is farcical. Yet [EDITED for clarity: when I took an intro programming course as a mechanical engineer in college way back when there was no expectation that I had ever touched a computer]. (I had done a little BASIC programming in high school but it was very rudimentary.)
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
I don't think it's just Engineering and Maths that have a problem. There's this joke where someone says "A man and his son are in a car crash and they're taken to hospital. The doctor sees the child and goes 'Oh no! It's my son!'". Then they ask you "who is the doctor"? The point is that you are supposed to struggle with the answer because you can't imagine the doctor to be the boy's mother. That there exists an assumption that people will find this difficult to answer suggests that there is some sort of expected cultural bias about doctors being male or female. An anecodte, of course- literally.

tome 9y ago

Does HN have the equivalent of shadow banning for stories? This story is on the second page but has many more votes than front page stories that were posted at the same time.

detaro 9y ago
Flagging affects ranking (quite strongly), which is what I would assume in this case, as do other things like vote-to-comment ratio.
- tome 9y ago
  Interesting. The ranking of this story has been bouncing around a lot! It's now halfway up the front page again.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  The mods can also manually down-weight and up-weight stories, independent of any user flagging. Some guy did an analysis some months back: https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15507821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15507821

trextrex 9y ago

On one hand, the author takes a lot of effort (with a lot of references) to explain that stereotype threat, implicit bias, etc. may only be a small contributor to the unequal representation of women in STEM. But, on the other hand, his counterargument for the existence of other potential factors seems to me to be quite weak and lacking the same rigor. The existence of "basic sex differences" is not discussed in detail, with only a couple of references. And a lot of his counterargument seems to be based on a few example countries with high gender equality rankings and low STEM participation. Is there any validation that these gender equality rankings are a useful indicator of gender equality? What about factors that surface only after school/college in these countries? What about network effects in various fields? Not that I'm saying such factors do exist. But the author makes a somewhat strong (IMO) argument against stereotype threat, implicit bias etc. and a very weak argument for the existence of other factors.

drakonka 9y ago

> The real issues concern the magnitude of these effects on women’s STEM participation and the foregone opportunities of not focusing on other factors that might have an even stronger impact on their participation. I am not sure that I agree with the entire article, but this part stood out to me. I never know how to express this in a way that sounds appropriate, but I feel that some of us might be better off if we focused more of our energy on actually developing in our chosen field and less on dwelling on how sexist everyone says the field is. I understand that the above comes with a lot of caveats. "What if the sexism is the thing _preventing_ me from developing?", etc. And I do think there are legitimate problems, and that they need to be addressed. But sometimes it seems like the flood of media and popular opinion constantly shoved at us about how bad we have it only makes us more tuned to focus on things that may not even matter (and may not _all_ come from a place of gender bias, but are now prone to being categorized that way). This then results in us wasting our time being affected by/thinking about/dwelling on those things rather than a) actually growing in our chosen field and b) focusing on more _serious_ gender issues that may be a little bit more concrete than "This guy was rude to me, obviously it's because I'm woman and not because he's an asshole to everybody." At the same time I'm not sure if the above is the right viewpoint to have. Is it better to potentially be blind to actual "microaggressions" or other "smaller" issues that might build up and keep trudging along in a state of ignorance, or is it better to not see those things and keep working in a field you enjoy? I don't speak about this much because to be honest I don't have the energy, and prefer to spend my time on making things. This may be bad: one day I too may have a "MeToo"-esque story of working in tech, and maybe I will suddenly realize I've been blind this whole time.

badosu 9y ago
> I am not sure that I agree with the entire article, but this part stood out to me. I never know how to express this in a way that sounds appropriate, but I feel that some of us might be better off if we focused more of our energy on actually developing in our chosen field and less on dwelling on how sexist everyone says the field is. For some agendas, exarcebating an issue and exposing a divide between groups of people is more desirable than solving the issue itself (which is counter-productive to the agenda )

cosmic_ape 9y ago

People talk about research involving indicators such as "ability" and social factors. But have anyone asked the boys and girls before college, or before starting a graduate degree why and how they make their choices? It seems to me that doing it on scale, like 1000 participants, in a given fixed country, would clear the picture. In a way, they are voting with their choices, and all we need is a focus group.

anon12345690 9y ago
From the article: "It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects.9 This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. If stereotype threat discourages girls from pursuing math-intensive STEM coursework and careers, its effect should be evident in high-school. The fact that a large and well-designed study could not find any effect, in our opinion, suggests either the effect does not exist or it is unmeasurably small."
- cosmic_ape 9y ago
  Yes, but I'm not interested in works where researchers are trying to validate a hypothesis like "stereotype threat discourages girls from pursuing math-intensive STEM coursework and careers". I'm asking about what these adolescents are actually saying. Raw answers, perhaps in two paragraphs, to a simple question of how they think they would choose. edit: and then of course, such dataset should be anonymized and made public, so anyone could see what we are talking about.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked in the UK as a developer, before starting my PhD. Of the women developers I worked with, (in this case, not so many) the majority were Indian or Eastern or Southern European. The same goes for the students in my data science Masters (also in a UK university). Other women I've discussed this with, have similar experiences. In particular Greek women (like myself) don't remember any perception of a strong bias in numbers against women in STEM subjects. I have a fair few Greek women friends who have bachelors or master's degrees in computer science. All this is of course anecdotal but it makes me think there is some sort of bias that is not explained by "interest in things" vs "interest in people", or any such difference between the sexes, because it is particular to specific cultures, rather than to the sexes around the globe. In any case "gendered interest" sounds like a convenient oversimplification that seeks to confirm cultural bias as natural and spontaneous, rather than an attempt to understand it. Instead of answering any questions it passes the buck; it leaves someone else to wonder why girls and boys are interested in different things (e.g. fire trucks vs barbie dolls). The same goes for academic performance in school: that is also an observation that requires an explanation- not an explanation in and of itself.

donkeyd 9y ago
I'd never really paid attention to this, but now that you mention it, the Dutch company I work for has 4 female developers, 3 of which are Indian.
- bloak 9y ago
  I would expect immigrants to more frequently choose careers that require fewer linguistic skills, such as engineering or music, rather than law or advertising, say. Some of my engineer colleagues are very hard to understand on the phone because of their language. It's hard to imagine them getting anywhere as a lawyer, for example.

edna314 9y ago

I don't get it. Why is equality of outcome not a desirable goal, especially in science and technology? These authors only try to disprove theories which potentially explain the inequality and then conclude that there is no injustice. This is logically flawed in my opinion. In order to justify the inequality they would need to come up with a plausible theory why the inequality is inevitable and then support it with sound facts. Otherwise social pressure from "feminists" is well justified.

tscs37 9y ago
Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. Of course, for Equality of Chance to be properly implemented you need to do away with as many barriers to it as possible but you should be willing to accept that no matter what you do, there won't be a perfect 50/50. From all evidence we have, there is strong evidence that male and female humans grow up differently independent of their social surroundings, for example, we found that the brains of newborns can be easily distinguished into female and male as little as 1 month after birth, before any social factors have had much chance to get deep into development. From that I find it easier to believe that there will be some statistical biases in one direction or another (like how will have, on average, a bit more height) outside of the purely physical domain. I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind.
- edna314 9y ago
  > Equality of Chance is more desirable than Equality of Outcome as it values the decisions of a neutral individual more than the later. More desirable to whom? To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance. Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal? > I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind. You cannot even properly define what you mean by "brain and/or mind", which is why it's impossible to convince you that there actually is injustice if your opinion relies on that. But, for the moment suppose there is some convincing theory which explains naturally why less women are in STEM. Then why would we have to adjust our society to it, as it would benefit from less social tensions if there was equal outcome? Your point has to be much stronger to justify the inequality, as in everything would go downhill super fast if we had equal outcome. Otherwise there will always be social tensions and you have to learn to live with the "feminists".

andrepd 9y ago

I wish this article spent more time on substance and facts and less time on expounding their very obvious ideology.

skywhopper 9y ago

This is a very poor article, masquerading as a scientific paper, but published in a political publication. The authors pick a few jargon-heavy effects, claim there's no evidence for those effects, and dismiss the entire argument, and fall back on the lazy "boys like things, girls like people" explanation, and is laced throughout with accusations of politically based dishonesty in opposing views. In other words, it's no scientific paper, but a political polemic. Whether or not these few specific effects they claim to have debunked are real or not, to explain the gaps, you have to go far beyond a few narrow sociological effects. There's a self-reinforcing culture of same-hiring-same that glorifies algorithmic intuition as the end-all be-all of software development. There are cultural and fashion trends in the social media landscape that reinforce what's appropriate to be interested in based on your self-identity. The authors claim that gendered interest in CS and the like has remained "stubbornly low" because "women prefer working with people", ignoring huge evidence that even as CS has become far more human-centered and collaborative since the 80s, the numbers of women declaring it as a major have plummeted.

bloak 9y ago
It explicitly calls itself an "essay".

tptacek 9y ago

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed in than the computer software industry. Clearly, they have something else in common. We just need to figure out what it is. This essay, which invokes the "Google Memo", is subtly attacking a straw man. Even those almost the entire rest of STEM is better than CS, it's true that it's not balanced; it remains deeply imperfect. Physics and mechanical engineering, clustered with CS, remain the province of men. There's a expanse of STEM fields with female participation between 25-40% that you'd want to explain or correct. Is it stereotype threat? Implicit bias? Who knows? Probably not? But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. The work that a commercial software engineer does --- even at the lofty heights in which the profession is practiced in such a cathedral of software design as the Alphabet Corporation --- is simply not that hard; most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways. Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty.

jabot 9y ago
I was with you until you wrote: > But that has nothing to do with why Google has so few women engineers. Uh. What? As far as I can tell, it has _everything_ to do with that. These two things are so closely related i cannot fathom how you can make such a statement... Also... You make the same point twice. To paraphrase you: a) "academic CS is less intellectually rigorous and less hard to succeed in than chem/etc -- but there are less women in it" b) "work as google is simply not that hard, just wiring form fields to databases -- but there are less women in it" For both a) and b) you then point out that they are problematic and that we cannot explain them (and, for the record, I agree with you on both counts) - but they are still unrelated? EDIT: To reiterate: I think you are right in that the gender imbalance is a problem and is hard to explain. It's just this disconnect that i don't get here...
- tptacek 9y ago

SiempreViernes 9y ago

> Let’s start with the magnitude of stereotype threat on girls’ and women’s mathematics achievement. [...] It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects. This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. Well, what was actually tested was if showing girls and boys a video declaring that girls are bad at math would make them perform worse at a math test right after[0]: > Students in the two groups were brought to separate classrooms and watched the video that either activated stereotype threat or nullified the stereotype and then completed the mathematics test. The testing session took approximately 40 min. > The video shown to the stereotype threat group depicted a scientist telling students that recent research “shows that math intelligence levels among students do not change as students get older. Students are born with a certain amount of natural math ability which does not change.” Students were then shown brain imagery and were given a detailed explanation regarding how some students are born with better mathematics skills (as indicated by more brain activity). In this condition, the students were also told that “females have lower levels of this kind of brain activity than males. This makes sense because girls often get lower scores on standardized tests compared to boys.” These students were also told that the “test that you will take today is a very good measure of your natural math ability.” [0]: An examination of stereotype threat effects on girls’ mathematics performance. Developmental Psychology Vol. 49, Iss. 10, (Oct 2013): 1886-1897.

yorwba 9y ago
The abstract ( https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1050056 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1050056 ) says: Stereotype threat has been proposed as 1 potential explanation for the gender difference in standardized mathematics test performance among high-performing students. At present, it is not entirely clear how susceptibility to stereotype threat develops, as empirical evidence for stereotype threat effects across the school years is inconsistent. In a series of 3 studies, with a total sample of 931 students, we investigated stereotype threat effects during childhood and adolescence. Three activation methods were used, ranging from implicit to explicit. Across studies, we found no evidence that the mathematics performance of school-age girls was impacted by stereotype threat. In 2 of the studies, there were gender differences on the mathematics assessment regardless of whether stereotype threat was activated. Potential reasons for these findings are discussed, including the possibility that stereotype threat effects only occur in very specific circumstances or that they are in fact occurring all the time. We also address the possibility that the literature regarding stereotype threat in children is subject to publication bias. Did you read a different paper, or do you disagree with the author's own abstract?

pron 9y ago

> Many academics in the modern world seem obsessed with the sex difference in engagement with science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) fields. Or rather they are obsessed with the fact that there are more men than women in some of these fields. ... Proponents of these theories and their activist followers believe that some significant proportion of the sex differences in STEM fields – but curiously only those in which men outnumber women ... Completely leaving aside the rest of content, the only obsessed people here are those who are obsessed with not understanding what the issue is about perceiving it to be an obsession. We are not obsessed with the number of women in STEM for its own sake (it's an important but a secondary concern) but obsessed with the inequality of power. As women happen to be underrepresented precisely in those areas that confer power -- including some STEM fields -- that is what we care about. If women were underrepresented in software engineering but commensurately overrepresented in, say, politics, banking or high management, this would have been a matter of less concern. As women happen to be underrepresented in all of these, we're attacking each of these individually. Of course, those of us who are in STEM also feel that women underrepresentation (aside from the much more important issue of power equality) is a huge loss of talent for our field.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
But what if the under-representation is due to women not being as interested in the field?
- pron 9y ago
  First, why are they less interested? Second, like I said, the problem is an overall unfair distribution of power. I find it very hard to believe that women are so uninterested in all professions that confer power to the point that they're willing to give up power (and therefore freedom) to not practice them.
  - jeffreyrogers 9y ago
    I've worked in the finance industry and the tech industry, both industries where women are underrepresented. These industries would love to employ more women. When I worked in finance the recruiters spent a ton of effort trying to get women to apply, but they couldn't get anywhere close to 50/50 in terms of number of applicants. Maybe women (on average, not outliers obviously) value other things more than power? At least in finance it's incredibly demanding to be at the top. The work is consuming and if you aren't willing to put in the time someone else will and will take your job. It isn't really compatible with a traditional family life.

ac2018-02-14 9y ago

Whenever this comes up, I like to mention this video [0]. The video speaks for itself, but generally it advances the position that human behavior and preferences are a distribution, and the distributions for women are in some cases different from the distributions for men (in the sense that summary statistics like mean and variance differ), but there is always significant overlap. The position that men and women are indistinguishable behaviorally and in their preferences is not taken seriously. A notable point advanced in the video is that there is a difference in the summary statistics (not the entire distributions) which indicate men prioritize status and family different from women (with men more likely to prioritize status at the expense of family, the opposite of women). Another notable difference (again in the summary statistics, not the entire distribution) is that men prefer careers that are thing-centered over people-centered. I wish statistics were better understood by the general population. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw

novia 9y ago

Hi everyone. I'm a woman with a math degree who just completed a computer programming certificate. I've wanted to study math my whole life, and I wasn't exposed to programming as a field of study until college. I just wanted to state that, for the record, having these sorts of discussions on hacker news is extremely distressing to me. I've worked hard to get the accreditations that I have, and I usually enjoy the things I read on this website. But just imagine for a moment how all this appears to an aspiring programmer when she wakes up in the morning and checks her favorite technical content aggregator. Like, yeah, none of you are saying that ALL women are less capable than ALL men, but what I'm reading here is the subtext. When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me? Will I be treated with respect? Or will I be seated next to someone who is convinced that there is a gender war going on, and thereby offended by my very presence?

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
> "When I pursue a career in this field, how will my coworkers perceive me?" In all honesty, recently I've seen underperforming women get promoted to positions they shouldn't have been promoted to because of political pressures, so there is going to be some sense of "is she competent or is she a diversity hire/promotion?" They also might think, does she really enjoy tech, is she a nerd like me, or is she just looking for a cushy office job in software that the "diversity/women-in-X" groups are so loudly promoting.
- icefox 9y ago
  > They also might think, does she really enjoy tech, is she a nerd like me, or is she just looking for a cushy office job in software that the "diversity/women-in-X" groups are so loudly promoting. Hell I think that about all my colleagues whatever their gender is. Seen plenty of males don't really want to code, but it pays too well to not.
deleted 9y ago
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auggierose 9y ago
I think a lot of people here don't really think about the effects their words have on other people, no matter the topic. I have been guilty of that too, both in online comments and in real life. "Guilty" is maybe even the wrong word, it can be very useful! I've asked Timothy Gowers once at a conference if he has ever written a program, and he said no! So you know more than he does when it comes to computer programming, just take that as a starting point and not the comments here :)

jenthoven 9y ago

I’m a CS graduate and female founder. I disagree with many parts of this essay, but I actually agree with this part: “The sex difference in interest in people extends to a more general interest in living things, which would explain why women who are interested in science are much more likely to pursue a career in biology or veterinary medicine than computer science“ I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives and care more than boys do about relationships with people. But I think the perception that CS is less beneficial towards people or that technologist don’t work with people as often as other professionals is false. My job as a PM at Google was incredibly social, and I felt had a huge impact on “living things”, much more so than my female friend’s role as a psychology researcher or operations associate at an insurance company. There’s a belief in society that all CS grads do is sit in caves alone and make video games, whereas the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create. Now, a related problem is that CS actually is less social for woman than in it is for men. I had very few friends in my advanced classes, whereas the dudes took those classes together in packs. I benefited a huge amount from women in CS community at my university because I felt like I knew more people in my classes, could sit, chat, and work with them. IMO, all of the dollars going towards women in STEM that this author criticized are and should continue to target these two problems: that CS is perceived as less to do with “living things” and that it actually is less social for girls because there isn’t a strong community.

corpMaverick 9y ago
> I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this. My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.
- bluthru 9y ago
  >Women are socially smarter What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man. Women also have a reputation of being more adversarial and catty: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-compete-with-each-other.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-...

alexandercrohde 9y ago

To get a little meta: I think discussions like these make progress, but very slow progress. I think the root of the issue for many people is more than factual at this point, it's become emotional for both sides. And I think progress will come when both sides can get a handle on their frustrations and then articulate their feelings gracefully. At the end of the day, I think only a very small percentage of people commenting here care too much about what a new study finds. I don't think it will move many viewpoints. So I think I'll propose a template for resolving this conflict (a longshot, I know). Pursuit of agreement: A) Do I want to understand the feelings of the people I'm talking to? If not, don't expect progress. B) Do I want to understand my personal feelings? Do I recognize why this topic is emotional to me, why I'm spending my Thursday morning arguing this? C) Do I see how tangential the connection is between my feelings and the article at hand? D) Do I care about reaching a point of agreement, or is my motivation more around rewarding myself/punishing others? E) Am I willing to describe my feelings/worries/motivations without using emotionally charged-words?

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Why is it accepted that feelings should be relevant here? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm genuinely open to listen to your response to that. To paraphrase Data O'Briain, "zombies are at an all-time low but the fear of zombies could be incredibly high, doesn't mean we should have government policies to deal with the fear of zombies": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopCDSK69gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zopCDSK69gs If we're getting meta, I think that the first thing that should be discussed is: What are we optimizing for, and how do we measure it?
- ihsw2 9y ago
  We are optimizing for the minimization of outrage from mainstream and social media. There's not much else to go on.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    Why? Who cares? Shouldn't we be optimizing towards everyone having at least the chance to do the thing they like for a living, or something along those lines?

gu56esfhi5 9y ago

Shut tab when they first drop “microaggression” 2017 saw a number of papers that found little evidence to support the notions often pushed by groups that back use of the term Given the failure to reproduce issue in humanities, I’m inclined to take theories there with a brick of salt If someone wants to talk a real platform for universal healthcare, mental health svcs, funding education, infrastructure, and lifelong education/study type way of life, I’m all about it Papers like this just scream “bourgeoisie peddling a minor update to traditional values and neoliberalism.” “Let these groups into our factories and labs.” Sure, all for it. Have been for decades. What about the social structures that have us focused on profit motives over discovery and self agency? Now that they’re in the labs are they just stuck being bored wage slaves, having their work expropriated because they’re not rich? Same with women and the draft. It should go away for all. But it’s somehow more equal to oblige them to their death should the call arise. Well, more equal for the proles. Here we have people who could afford and education telling the world how to behave, based on evidence that in my digging and serious conversations with scholars and proponents of microagression theories, is based mostly upon the frequency with which certain words appear in our discourse. That just seems vain as hell. Here’s my theory for fixing a problem. It relies on some basic stats but ignores looking for other explanations

mhneu 9y ago

Info about Quillette (the source of this article): https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-conservative-snowflakes https://theoutline.com/post/2307/quillette-claire-lehmann-co... Conservatives love playing the victim The website Quillette is trying to convince people conservatism is subversive. Unsurprisingly, Quillette has become a hub for reactionary thought. The website, which started publishing in 2015 and is funded by a modest Patreon account, The best way to get a sense of the typical Quillette reader is by perusing the comments section under any essay, especially those about feminism and the leftist threat to western civilization. Quillette’s readers see themselves as inheritors of the western tradition of dispassionate, boring debate instead of what they likely are: people trying to kill time at work by sounding off in the comments. They hate “leftist identitarians” and “corrosive marxists” who ruin this dispassionate, boring debate by deigning to have an emotional stake in the subjects they study. It's also important to keep in mind that 90% of hard science professors lean liberal (PKrugman, paraphrased: because those whose jobs involve evaluating facts tend to reject propaganda). And that US conservatives have a propaganda agenda to attack universities: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/a-history-of-the-conservative-war-on-universities/547703/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/12/a-hist... Yet the trope of portraying American universities as a threat to society emerged with particular intensity in the 1970s and ‘80s. Neoconservatives including the journalist Irving Kristol and the philosopher Allan Bloom developed a discourse around what they saw as the moral laxity and corrosiveness of the 1960s counterculture. In other words, when it comes to America’s colleges and universities, conservative anxiety is best expressed as being about a small set of marquee positions of honor and prestige in the liberal arts that happen to be largely staffed at present by those whose political commitments lean left

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
The site you quote on Quillette doesn't seem very objective.

strangeloops85 9y ago

I find the notion that this topic is NOT being discussed and being suppressed somewhat hilarious. Find me a single women in STEM who has not read or heard extensively about the idea that men are biologically predisposed to be better than women at 'abstract reasoning' etc. Historically, the notion that women might be just as capable at men at technical disciplines is what's NEW! I personally know of at least a dozen gifted young women scientists at the very best institutions in the world quitting the field because of advisors and others explicitly belittling them based on their gender. While these are anecdotes, they're representative for the question of who becomes faculty in STEM since that's my world: These were people who were identified from a young age as being likely to be future faculty in the sciences, performed off-the-charts well on every metric you can think of, publishing papers in journals in undergrad, and you know what? They heard this discussion ad nauseam, and in combination with the random sexism thrown their way, decided to bail (as frankly I would have in their shoes). A related read that I found quite illuminating: http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Kitrosser.pdf http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05... (I run in fairly left-leaning liberal circles and you know what I hear about? NOT actually being PC (whatever that is -- define it, I dare you) but people complaining about something being PC. This has been going on since the year 2000 so much that I'm pretty sure jokes about something being PC are PC, while actually being PC is not PC..)

peterwwillis 9y ago

Why does this article keep conflating gender and sex? As supposed academics, they know there's multiple of both, and they don't always coincide - right?

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
Humans have male or female genitalia (outside of some rare cases) and gender corresponds to what sex organs you have, no? So there are two of each, right?
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  No, not really. Gender corresponds to the societal and cultural difference between the sexes, as opposed to the biological, and is socially constructed [4]. Gender is part of what changes how we act and think, both as normal psychological and behavioral processes, and in more inherent ways as determined by some studies [3]. It commonly is assigned based on sex, but in many cases, some people innately feel that their gender is different than the one assigned to them. In biological terms, sex may be determined by a number of factors present at birth, including the number and type of sex chromosomes, the type of gonads (ovaries or testicles), the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females), and the external genitalia. People whose characteristics are not either all typically male or all typically female at birth are intersex. [1] There are many different conditions in which a person's sex organs may not match up with levels of hormones in their body, primary or secondary sex characteristics[2], or someone's internalized gender identity. It's important to note that these are not deformities, but simply conditions that different people are born with. Doctors around the world have for centuries actually been surgically intervening and modifying the sex organs of babies to fit the surgeon's or parents' expectations, which is now considered a human rights violation and widely condemned by the international community [5]. So some people are born with one set of chromosomes, and/or one set of genitalia that may not be typical, yet exhibit some or all of the other characteristics and thoughts of someone with a different set. Their gender may not correspond to their sex, or sex organs. Hence, it is better to refer to gender differences than sex differences when talking about the roles of people in society. Unless we're specifically talking about making babies, and even then it's not totally simple. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virilization [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_humans#Psychological_and_behavioral_differentiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_differentiation_in_huma... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_assignment#Controversy

jancsika 9y ago

alexandercrohde 9y ago
I think you're making a fair point, that there's a value judgment going on there. But I also think it's a fair question why gender differences are such a huge focus right now, as compared to say class problems (MOST Americans don't have $500 in savings [1]), or environmental problems (Men's sperm counts have gone down by half in the last 30 years [2]). Obviously these aren't mutually exclusive, but there is a case to be made that the amount of energy/money going into this problem isn't proportional to its severity. 1. http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings... 2. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plummet-in-western-men-study-finds https://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/539517210/sperm-counts-plumme...

deleted 9y ago

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pwinnski 9y ago

I read "obsessed" and "surprisingly" (for something which surprises me exactly zero) and "intimidating" and I keep reading, even though literally the first sentence has revealed a pretty strong bias. Then I read that "there should be gender equity" is "an extreme agenda," and I finally roll my eyes. I did keep reading, and I find that I do agree somewhat with their conclusion, but I wonder if they're aware of how ridiculous their framing is. Of the many points I found objectionable, I'll focus on only one, the most egregious silliness: It is neither "surprising" nor "curious" that "there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing." Two paragraphs later they go on to spell out why it should be completely unsurprising: "the different numbers of men and women in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex difference in earnings." If there's a problem with both A and B, and B generally pays 10x what A pays, I'm going to focus on the problem with B. Duh.

dlwdlw 9y ago

I'd say that in general, due to cultural expectations, men are better at anything that requires a domination mindset. Winning in zero-sum games. The non-domination mindset focuses on non zero-sum win win results. This requires creating something out of nothing. An example is relationships. There is nothing directly measurable or improveable, but meaning is can still be derived purely through reorganization of actors and the interfaces between actors. The degenerate win-win situation is when both actors win due to the loss if a third party. A wealthy country can have win-win between all sorts of actors as long as the negative consequences can be outsourced. This implies that all existing win-win methodologies are probably corrupt in some way because there are very few people who expand their bubble of humanity recognition to all humans. Whether it's a different country or a different ideology, the tendency to dehumanize is trigger-happy. I'd say that society creates two mindsets. One geared to winning. The other to living. Culture specializes these two mindsets into 2 groups. The male/female divide being one that matches fairly well due to physical difference. This isn't the case now since mentally there is no large difference. At least in potential. To focus nowadays though is too much on having the "living" mindset learn how to win. Instead it should focus on the winning mindset learning how to live.

rphlx 9y ago

> publication bias – the tendency for positive but not negative results to be published Many years ago Feynman expressed concern and regret about the harm that causes to experimental physics. One can imagine it being a far bigger issue in some of the social sciences, where there is nothing nearly as consistently apolitical as Nature to gradually separate reality from comforting delusion.