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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 wit

by 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?
- natch 9y ago
  Your question is orthogonal to my point. You seem to be wanting to be get to a different point. All I’m saying is that these social cues are often overlooked in these discussions. As far as fixing the problem, no we can’t correct all limiting stereotypes overnight or even for a very long time. But we should work on it. The least we can do is be supportive of those who try to succeed in spite of the stereotypes.
joshvm 9y ago
The authors describe this as microagression. >Microaggressions are subtle behaviors (e.g., facial expressions) or statements that are not explicitly hostile but are nevertheless interpreted by the receiver as conveying contempt, stereotypical attitudes, or other negative beliefs.
- natch 9y ago
  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.
mbruce 9y ago
Is there any data on your ‘possible partial cause”?Otherwise, it supposition. As the article indicates it is easy to fear causes.
bitL 9y ago
Many girls decide at around age 12 that a better life strategy is for them to get a husband that will do all the heavy lifting. This obviously worked for thousands of years and is likely a result of evolution and specialization. I always admire when I meet an independent woman that rejected this conditioning but it's very rare :( Maybe there should be a better approach to early-teenage girls to help them to make a different choice that would not render them uncompetitive in STEM fields later? 10,000 hours to achieve mastery or childhood dedication seem to be increasingly more relevant in STEM, similarly to piano/violin virtuosos.
- roenxi 9y ago
  > likely a result of evolution and specialization Economically speaking, I suspect this is more to do with the superior position of women, as a class, in setting the standards of what an acceptable relationship looks like. If husbands are willing to do heavy lifting, wives would be economically irrational to do their own heavy lifting. I'm pretty suspicious that the deal offered to a housewife comes with better quality of life outcomes than the deal offered to most engineers. I've always assumed it is linked to the relative excess of young men to the number of young women (something like 107:100 or close to [1]). It makes sense to me that the group with most power in establishing a relationship would choose not to be an engineer if they could be, say, mind the house. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio
- mantas 9y ago
  Independent non-family women lead to less children. Thus society as a whole has motive to lead girls towards this specialization.
  - bitL 9y ago
    This could be the culprit - those women, that became independent removed themselves and their traits from genetic pool due to not having children or having fewer of them. That might also explain persistence of religions that emphasize sexual relationships for reproduction only and banning abortions, as it leads to higher probability of carrying on with one's genotype. So what we are observing could be some stochastic optimum in some game theory of natural conditions. A question is if our civilization that could seemingly solve cutthroat problems of the past leading to brutal competition like food scarcity will have completely different, stable stochastic optima. I guess we will see (or generations after us).
thinkingemote 9y ago
the article does address this topic. I think the implication is that these effects are lower in the Scandinavian countries, where children are given less bias as their societies are more equal. The article suggests that these effects are very low.
Veelox 9y ago
While this theory makes sense, I find a rather large issue with it. The basis for this argument is that both boys and girls are equally likely at birth to go into a given field. As they grow society gives cues to them that X is for boys and Y is for girls. These cues end up shaping preference and explain the large difference we see in the ratio of boys/girls in X. The issue I have with this theory is that it shouldn't apply only to STEM, it should work for all fields. Thus if instead of STEM we say Law or Finance or Medicine have cues then that should mess with the ratios there. If you go back several decades the ratio of men/women in Engineering, Law, Finance, and Medicine were all equally low. As time moved on the ratios improved in Law, Finance, and Medicine but not in Engineering/STEM. If you want to claim cues as a major factor in the current STEM ratio you have to explain either 1) why unchanging cultural cues were not the reason for the improvement in Law/Finance/Medicine but still negatively affected STEM or 2) why the cultural cues when away for the other fields and not STEM I haven't been able to find an answer to either of those points and so I think that while some cultural cues exist, it isn't the main reason for the ratio differences and doesn't need to be address to fix the issue.
- pthreadses 9y ago
  I think a major issue with CS in particular is that the numbers have actually gone down significantly in the past few decades: > Before 1970, women took between 10% and 15% of computer science bachelor’s degrees. By the early 1980s, the number rose to 37%. However, the trend began to reverse in 1985. In 2013, 18% of bachelor’s degrees in computing were earned by women. Part of this decline is due to the fact that computer science became a male-identified field. But during the 1990s, hiring practices also began to favor men, according to the AAUW study, and “the creation of professional organizations, networks, and hierarchies” that supported the entry of men into the field helped pushed women out. In fact, as the study notes, once employed in the field, women are more likely to leave than men. They tend to suffer from isolation. http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/report-the-number-of-women-entering-computing-took-a-nosedive/ http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/report-the-number-of-women-ent...
- pseudalopex 9y ago
  Believing that cultural cues are a major factor doesn't mean believing the natural ratio is 50/50. The current ratio varies widely between STEM fields. It would be helpful to understand how the culture came to accept women as lawyers and doctors, but why would that be necessary to identify cultural factors as a reason for the imbalance in CS?

by natch 9y ago

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?

natch 9y ago
Your question is orthogonal to my point. You seem to be wanting to be get to a different point. All I’m saying is that these social cues are often overlooked in these discussions. As far as fixing the problem, no we can’t correct all limiting stereotypes overnight or even for a very long time. But we should work on it. The least we can do is be supportive of those who try to succeed in spite of the stereotypes.

joshvm 9y ago

The authors describe this as microagression. >Microaggressions are subtle behaviors (e.g., facial expressions) or statements that are not explicitly hostile but are nevertheless interpreted by the receiver as conveying contempt, stereotypical attitudes, or other negative beliefs.

natch 9y ago
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.

mbruce 9y ago

Is there any data on your ‘possible partial cause”?Otherwise, it supposition. As the article indicates it is easy to fear causes.

bitL 9y ago

Many girls decide at around age 12 that a better life strategy is for them to get a husband that will do all the heavy lifting. This obviously worked for thousands of years and is likely a result of evolution and specialization. I always admire when I meet an independent woman that rejected this conditioning but it's very rare :( Maybe there should be a better approach to early-teenage girls to help them to make a different choice that would not render them uncompetitive in STEM fields later? 10,000 hours to achieve mastery or childhood dedication seem to be increasingly more relevant in STEM, similarly to piano/violin virtuosos.

roenxi 9y ago
> likely a result of evolution and specialization Economically speaking, I suspect this is more to do with the superior position of women, as a class, in setting the standards of what an acceptable relationship looks like. If husbands are willing to do heavy lifting, wives would be economically irrational to do their own heavy lifting. I'm pretty suspicious that the deal offered to a housewife comes with better quality of life outcomes than the deal offered to most engineers. I've always assumed it is linked to the relative excess of young men to the number of young women (something like 107:100 or close to [1]). It makes sense to me that the group with most power in establishing a relationship would choose not to be an engineer if they could be, say, mind the house. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio
mantas 9y ago
Independent non-family women lead to less children. Thus society as a whole has motive to lead girls towards this specialization.
- bitL 9y ago
  This could be the culprit - those women, that became independent removed themselves and their traits from genetic pool due to not having children or having fewer of them. That might also explain persistence of religions that emphasize sexual relationships for reproduction only and banning abortions, as it leads to higher probability of carrying on with one's genotype. So what we are observing could be some stochastic optimum in some game theory of natural conditions. A question is if our civilization that could seemingly solve cutthroat problems of the past leading to brutal competition like food scarcity will have completely different, stable stochastic optima. I guess we will see (or generations after us).

thinkingemote 9y ago

the article does address this topic. I think the implication is that these effects are lower in the Scandinavian countries, where children are given less bias as their societies are more equal. The article suggests that these effects are very low.

Veelox 9y ago

While this theory makes sense, I find a rather large issue with it. The basis for this argument is that both boys and girls are equally likely at birth to go into a given field. As they grow society gives cues to them that X is for boys and Y is for girls. These cues end up shaping preference and explain the large difference we see in the ratio of boys/girls in X. The issue I have with this theory is that it shouldn't apply only to STEM, it should work for all fields. Thus if instead of STEM we say Law or Finance or Medicine have cues then that should mess with the ratios there. If you go back several decades the ratio of men/women in Engineering, Law, Finance, and Medicine were all equally low. As time moved on the ratios improved in Law, Finance, and Medicine but not in Engineering/STEM. If you want to claim cues as a major factor in the current STEM ratio you have to explain either 1) why unchanging cultural cues were not the reason for the improvement in Law/Finance/Medicine but still negatively affected STEM or 2) why the cultural cues when away for the other fields and not STEM I haven't been able to find an answer to either of those points and so I think that while some cultural cues exist, it isn't the main reason for the ratio differences and doesn't need to be address to fix the issue.

pthreadses 9y ago
I think a major issue with CS in particular is that the numbers have actually gone down significantly in the past few decades: > Before 1970, women took between 10% and 15% of computer science bachelor’s degrees. By the early 1980s, the number rose to 37%. However, the trend began to reverse in 1985. In 2013, 18% of bachelor’s degrees in computing were earned by women. Part of this decline is due to the fact that computer science became a male-identified field. But during the 1990s, hiring practices also began to favor men, according to the AAUW study, and “the creation of professional organizations, networks, and hierarchies” that supported the entry of men into the field helped pushed women out. In fact, as the study notes, once employed in the field, women are more likely to leave than men. They tend to suffer from isolation. http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/report-the-number-of-women-entering-computing-took-a-nosedive/ http://fortune.com/2015/03/26/report-the-number-of-women-ent...
pseudalopex 9y ago
Believing that cultural cues are a major factor doesn't mean believing the natural ratio is 50/50. The current ratio varies widely between STEM fields. It would be helpful to understand how the culture came to accept women as lawyers and doctors, but why would that be necessary to identify cultural factors as a reason for the imbalance in CS?