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That claim in Damore's memo shouldn't be controvertial. Here's what Deborah Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience) had to say about it: > Within the field of neurosc

That claim in Damore's memo shouldn't be controvertial. Here's what Deborah Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience) had to say about it: > Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at. http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-respond/ http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-... More from her about Damore's memo and scientific research in this space: > Despite how it's been portrayed, the memo was fair and factually accurate. Scientific studies have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour. > As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men. > We see evidence for this in girls with a genetic condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who are exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb. When they are born, these girls prefer male-typical, wheeled toys, such as trucks, even if their parents offer more positive feedback when they play with female-typical toys, such as dolls. Similarly, men who are interested in female-typical activities were likely exposed to lower levels of testosterone. > As well, new research from the field of genetics shows that testosterone alters the programming of neural stem cells, leading to sex differences in the brain even before it's finished developing in utero. This further suggests that our interests are influenced strongly by biology, as opposed to being learned or socially constructed. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manife... EDIT: I wish I understood why I've been downvoted so that I could improve my comments in the future. Is the problem that it's too verbose? OK, I've tried to shorten it and replaced the links to three studies with a link to Deborah's article above.

rayiner 9y ago
You (and she) are focusing on the wrong part of the chain of reasoning. The issue is not whether there are gender differences in preferences, but why we have any reason to believe that programming is a “masculine” profession. The fact that men and women sometimes prefer different things due to biological factors does not mean that if you observe men and women preferring different things, that can be explained by biological factors. That’s the basic logical fallacy underlying Damore’s screed. (Pointing to articles validating the scientific assertions doesn’t help, because the challenge isn’t the scientific premise, but the inferences Damore is drawing from that.) For example, for many years Law was 95% male. You could say that it was a masculine profession because it’s all about conflict while women prefer peacemaking. But today 50% of new large firm attorneys are women. Law isn’t any softer or gentler now—in fact it’s probably less civil. Same for teaching. We explain teaching being dominated by women on the basis that teaching is about nurturing. But in India, the vast majority of teachers are men. You could easily say that programming is feminine. It’s not at all physical, all about cooperating and communicating with other people, it’s about managing expectations, etc. Also, the truck analogy has been debunked. It’s explained by the fact that girls have a higher affinity for faces than boys. Which makes sense: infants don’t have any association between trucks and masculine professions like construction work. They can’t. Any gender difference observable at a very young age has to be unrelated to the associations adults have between trucks and masculinity.
- Pyxl101 9y ago
  Thank you for clarifying. Let’s not characterize programming as masculine or feminine (since that would begging the question and stereotyping). Let’s characterize it in terms of properties that have been scientifically studied. I would characterize programming as very far on the “Things” side of the axis that is “People vs Things”. See: Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/47af/4a7e87267aba681fb6971590ec80effce0c3.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/47af/4a7e87267aba681fb69715... The fundamental task of programming – sitting in front of a computer, reasoning about the machine and the system, and writing code and debugging systems for hours on end — is about as “thing”-oriented as I can conceive of. One needs to do a great deal of this to get a CS degree. Another dimension to consider is Systematizing versus Empathizing (citations omitted). Programming seems to be far on the systematizing side. As a thought experiment, what jobs might be further on the side of “things“ and “systematizing” than programming? (I don’t know of any studies that characterize the programming in these dimensions. I’m providing my intuition.) I’m not super familiar with the practice of law, but I would guess that it’s actually fairly close to the middle of both of those spectrums. The law itself is systematic but practicing it involves working with people at every level (client, counterparty, judge, regulator). It’s possible to write and deliver code, or root-cause and fix a bug report, without interacting with another soul.

rayiner 9y ago

You (and she) are focusing on the wrong part of the chain of reasoning. The issue is not whether there are gender differences in preferences, but why we have any reason to believe that programming is a “masculine” profession. The fact that men and women sometimes prefer different things due to biological factors does not mean that if you observe men and women preferring different things, that can be explained by biological factors. That’s the basic logical fallacy underlying Damore’s screed. (Pointing to articles validating the scientific assertions doesn’t help, because the challenge isn’t the scientific premise, but the inferences Damore is drawing from that.) For example, for many years Law was 95% male. You could say that it was a masculine profession because it’s all about conflict while women prefer peacemaking. But today 50% of new large firm attorneys are women. Law isn’t any softer or gentler now—in fact it’s probably less civil. Same for teaching. We explain teaching being dominated by women on the basis that teaching is about nurturing. But in India, the vast majority of teachers are men. You could easily say that programming is feminine. It’s not at all physical, all about cooperating and communicating with other people, it’s about managing expectations, etc. Also, the truck analogy has been debunked. It’s explained by the fact that girls have a higher affinity for faces than boys. Which makes sense: infants don’t have any association between trucks and masculine professions like construction work. They can’t. Any gender difference observable at a very young age has to be unrelated to the associations adults have between trucks and masculinity.

Pyxl101 9y ago
Thank you for clarifying. Let’s not characterize programming as masculine or feminine (since that would begging the question and stereotyping). Let’s characterize it in terms of properties that have been scientifically studied. I would characterize programming as very far on the “Things” side of the axis that is “People vs Things”. See: Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/47af/4a7e87267aba681fb6971590ec80effce0c3.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/47af/4a7e87267aba681fb69715... The fundamental task of programming – sitting in front of a computer, reasoning about the machine and the system, and writing code and debugging systems for hours on end — is about as “thing”-oriented as I can conceive of. One needs to do a great deal of this to get a CS degree. Another dimension to consider is Systematizing versus Empathizing (citations omitted). Programming seems to be far on the systematizing side. As a thought experiment, what jobs might be further on the side of “things“ and “systematizing” than programming? (I don’t know of any studies that characterize the programming in these dimensions. I’m providing my intuition.) I’m not super familiar with the practice of law, but I would guess that it’s actually fairly close to the middle of both of those spectrums. The law itself is systematic but practicing it involves working with people at every level (client, counterparty, judge, regulator). It’s possible to write and deliver code, or root-cause and fix a bug report, without interacting with another soul.