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Drawing conclusions about "innate" differences between men and women from this data doesn't seem valid. There's a lot of research left to eliminate confounding

by lsy 9y ago

Drawing conclusions about "innate" differences between men and women from this data doesn't seem valid. There's a lot of research left to eliminate confounding effects on participation that aren't covered or investigated by the "Global Gender Gap Index" (e.g. cultural attitudes towards women in STEM, or on-the-job discrimination). Scatter-plotting two datasets available on the internet doesn't feel like enough research for me to dismiss reports from women that they are discouraged from CS before, and during, their careers. The trendline cited in the article isn't even conclusive, either—eliminating outliers would reduce it almost to noise. Even if it were, there hasn't, to date, been any reasonable explanation for why women's "innate" biology would make them any less interested in professions whose parameters and limitations are purely human-constructed and invented in the past century. Whatever happened during the evolution of the sexes was certainly not informed by the interestingness of C++.

moosekaka 9y ago
maybe not biology, but personality wise (either due to social upbringing/expectations or genetic imprinting etc) I noticed far more men then women who are of the type who are more comfortable to work with things rather then people. I know I fall into this category.
jochung 9y ago
Evolution was opinionated enough to create measurable differences in spatial ability, personality, drives and so on, between genders and within genders. Its velocity is directly proportional to the variance that exists in the population: you need something to differentiate in order to have differential selection pressure. Your hypothesis is in fact the radical one: that programming is somehow such an unseen before ability, that evolution until now has not evolved any machinery to repurpose for its realization. Given everything we know about the very obvious cognitive limits we do have, and where they come from, that seems implausible. The common reasoning by the way does dismiss reports from men and women alike that all this diversity mongering has poisoned the workplace atmosphere and mostly serves to enrich and flatter the egos of people who wouldn't show up unless they got special treatment for their own demographic, with special segregated events, hiring pipelines and accolades. The old "women in X" spiel. These things are most definitely constructed, and not for the reason they advertise. The standards of evidence demanded to abolish them are sky high compared to the spurious reasoning that spawned them.
- moosekaka 9y ago
  I have often wondered if one day, the skill of underwater basket weaving was suddenly prized by society as highly as STEM jobs are today....would we see the same pressure to have more more X in underwater basket weaving (where X is your underrepresented group of choice). A follow up question then to people pursuing STEM fields....are you in it because you're interested in the subject or because of the promise of money/status? An age old question I've heard since I was a young boy.
  - Hextinium 9y ago
    As someone in university and talking to a lot of both genders why they want to join engineering I get a lot of nebulous answers that don't really traceback to a main character trait or reason. Which is fine you don't have a totally define answer but I am kinda perplexed by the desire to do something with seeming no reason. As a side note I see a lot of women engineers start out as saying they want to do Biomed and the switching to something else. Not totally sure why but I find it interesting.
HappyDreamer 9y ago
No. After having removed outliers, I still see a clear line & slope like shown in the diagram. Maybe you don't see it, because you don't want to see it? Also, you cannot call all of Sweden, Norway and Finland "outliers"? To me, that looks more like you deliberately destroying data, until the remaining data set fits your world view. Hmm I live in Scandinavia and I feel mildly annoyed that you apparently want to ignore this part of the world :- P Women breast feed babies. To me it's natural and obvious that evolution has therefore made them feel happy when they take care of others, and that a bit more women like working as doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and such things. (With that said, I think it's a good idea to encourage more women to choose STEM jobs. The article seems to agree with this and that they're good at it.)
LambdaAlmighty 9y ago
I like your scare quotes around "innate" biology :-) What an outdated concept, innateness, right? Please don't confuse your personal ignorance with a lack of publicly available research. The (population, statistical) biological differences between men and women are well established, documented and non-controversial at this point, except in looney circles. (Hint: biological differences in child-bearing and physical abilities get reflected in different social aptitude and risk-management strategies, which are in turn reflected in occupational choices) Unless you deny there are gender differences in physical strength and child-bearing, of course. In which case there isn't much left to say.

by lsy 9y ago

moosekaka 9y ago

maybe not biology, but personality wise (either due to social upbringing/expectations or genetic imprinting etc) I noticed far more men then women who are of the type who are more comfortable to work with things rather then people. I know I fall into this category.

jochung 9y ago

Evolution was opinionated enough to create measurable differences in spatial ability, personality, drives and so on, between genders and within genders. Its velocity is directly proportional to the variance that exists in the population: you need something to differentiate in order to have differential selection pressure. Your hypothesis is in fact the radical one: that programming is somehow such an unseen before ability, that evolution until now has not evolved any machinery to repurpose for its realization. Given everything we know about the very obvious cognitive limits we do have, and where they come from, that seems implausible. The common reasoning by the way does dismiss reports from men and women alike that all this diversity mongering has poisoned the workplace atmosphere and mostly serves to enrich and flatter the egos of people who wouldn't show up unless they got special treatment for their own demographic, with special segregated events, hiring pipelines and accolades. The old "women in X" spiel. These things are most definitely constructed, and not for the reason they advertise. The standards of evidence demanded to abolish them are sky high compared to the spurious reasoning that spawned them.

moosekaka 9y ago
I have often wondered if one day, the skill of underwater basket weaving was suddenly prized by society as highly as STEM jobs are today....would we see the same pressure to have more more X in underwater basket weaving (where X is your underrepresented group of choice). A follow up question then to people pursuing STEM fields....are you in it because you're interested in the subject or because of the promise of money/status? An age old question I've heard since I was a young boy.
- Hextinium 9y ago
  As someone in university and talking to a lot of both genders why they want to join engineering I get a lot of nebulous answers that don't really traceback to a main character trait or reason. Which is fine you don't have a totally define answer but I am kinda perplexed by the desire to do something with seeming no reason. As a side note I see a lot of women engineers start out as saying they want to do Biomed and the switching to something else. Not totally sure why but I find it interesting.

HappyDreamer 9y ago

No. After having removed outliers, I still see a clear line & slope like shown in the diagram. Maybe you don't see it, because you don't want to see it? Also, you cannot call all of Sweden, Norway and Finland "outliers"? To me, that looks more like you deliberately destroying data, until the remaining data set fits your world view. Hmm I live in Scandinavia and I feel mildly annoyed that you apparently want to ignore this part of the world :- P Women breast feed babies. To me it's natural and obvious that evolution has therefore made them feel happy when they take care of others, and that a bit more women like working as doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and such things. (With that said, I think it's a good idea to encourage more women to choose STEM jobs. The article seems to agree with this and that they're good at it.)

LambdaAlmighty 9y ago

I like your scare quotes around "innate" biology :-) What an outdated concept, innateness, right? Please don't confuse your personal ignorance with a lack of publicly available research. The (population, statistical) biological differences between men and women are well established, documented and non-controversial at this point, except in looney circles. (Hint: biological differences in child-bearing and physical abilities get reflected in different social aptitude and risk-management strategies, which are in turn reflected in occupational choices) Unless you deny there are gender differences in physical strength and child-bearing, of course. In which case there isn't much left to say.