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To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball

To all the men saying/thinking “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” I invite you on a journey with me back to my first basketball game in the 4th grade. I had seen sports my whole life but had never played them, and was also very good at being a good little girl. So while I got that sports was a competition (duh), in my first game I was dumbfounded as to how I was supposed to compete, because I was supposed to be nice and kind and not cause trouble. I literally passed the ball back to my teammates every time. After the game, my Dad pulled me aside and said what would become a catchphrase of his and would change my life: “Meghan, be aggressive.” This was mind blowing. No person, no movie, no tv show had told me in the 90s that I could (and should!) be aggressive. And still be a good girl. Two years later, I was the kid on the team that came close to fouling out bc I would use the box out very enthusiastically. My dad never stopped telling me to be aggressive. I ended up an all state field hockey athlete in high school, primarily because of my skills as a defender who was not afraid to get in the way. For those who say women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things: Do you think my biology changed? Was I always born an aggressive woman, or was it a learned behavior? This example is a microcosm of thousands of other examples from a life where the messages one absorbs can shape action. (Others: Had I never been sexually propositioned by sources as a reporter, would I have been more aggressive about who i invited to drinks? Or in tech world, if a woman wasn’t the only woman on their team/division/whatever for the past few decades, would they have stayed longer?) If you want to measure my testosterone, fine, but please also control for the fact that I never got any sort of message about how it could be a good thing if I was aggressive until I was 10 (plus a million other things like that.) On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. I would love to see more male engineers give up six figure salaries to learn what it takes to be a nurse or a teacher and wonder why they make so much less in return. Perhaps it’s because things considered “women’s work” was never highly valued to start?

belorn 8y ago
> “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” ... "women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things" No one has said that. Please assume some good faith that when people say they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender, it means they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender. There is not a single comment under this article that has said or implied that there are difference in the ability of men and women to perform skillfully with technology tasks. > On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. Sure, lets bring in a universal affirmative action law that dictate that any industry that has more than 60% women or men must apply affirmative action for any new hire. I would enjoy to see that experiment. For reference, the top 3 most gender segregated professions (99.4% or higher) in Sweden a few years ago was midwife, dentist nurse, and stone layer. Engineers didn't even breach top 50, and is pretty average in gender segregation.
- roguecoder 8y ago
  Why would you expect her to assume good faith of men arguing against her inclusion? Especially when we know that men from white nationalist groups have purposefully infiltrated technical spaces in order to fight the inclusion of women and underrepresented racial minorities? (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuck-into-seattles-super-secret-white-nationalist-convention https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuc...) These men are making a political argument, not an intellectual one. They are arguing that nothing should be done in the face of obvious injustice. If they cared to read it, there is significant peer-reviewed work that says they are wrong, but because they are making a political argument not an intellectual one evidence does not matter. Expertise does not matter. Has any one of these guys offered a shred of evidence for their beliefs? Have any of them offered the credentials that qualify them to opine on this topic? Someone who comes in and says "you shouldn't use C because it is slow as shit" wouldn't be taken seriously or treated as though they were arguing in good faith. Neither should these obviously-wrong dudes. Just like with Holocaust deniers, engaging with these people only legitimizes them and their politically-motivated beliefs. (See for https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subreddit-banned-holocaust-deniers-and-facebook-should-too.html https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subre... effective strategies to engage with people who are arguing for political reasons.) To do otherwise demands that women participate in their own marginalization, which explains why most of them don't bother and just quit, creating an echo chamber where men can keep reassuring themselves that these political beliefs are more important than facts. Frankly, it is a disgrace that Hacker's News is willing to host this tired bullshit, and YC should seriously consider the impact doing so has on their brand.
  - belorn 8y ago
    When it comes to gender segregation we are all marginalized in one place or an other. That is what 88.6% gender segregation for women and 88.4% gender segregation for men means in raw Swedish data. There is no data to support that affirmative action is an effective strategy in dealing with this problem. There is also no support to the idea that a failure with inclusions is the reason why 88.6% women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated professions here in Sweden. The very little of real scientific data, in the several research studies I have read, is ones that simply say that people feel more confident being around people who share the same trait as themselves. Multiply that effect with every challenge a person goes through from selecting a professions to being a student to graduation to seeking a job to staying in a professions for several years and what we get is a significant increase risk for members of the minority group to not select the profession or quit. A solution need to fit the problem. 88.5% of the population has ended up gender segregated in Sweden. Is the method that the article suggest an effective strategy for that goal, and if so where is that evidence? Someone suggested that gender difference in preference is the cause but similar the data I have read on preference differences are not significant enough to explain such extreme segregation that exist here. The parent posts here suggest misogyny, which then would imply misandry to explain why an equal amount of men do not end up in professions dominated by women, but that seems poorly supported by peer-reviewed work that looks to explain gender segregation in general. But as I suggested above, I would not mind seeing a experiment where people tried applying affirmative action as a general solution to fix gender segregation. Similar ideas has been tested before in smaller scales, like Sweden when it tried to do it in higher education. They had to scrap it because a court deemed it discrimination to give benefits to individuals based on gender, even if they were a minority. Norway is currently testing a different version, which will be interesting to see develop. I do expect it to run foul of the same issue as here in Sweden but they do have different laws and their relation with EU laws is complicated.

belorn 8y ago

> “hey this isn’t equal and maybe women just aren’t as good at tech,” ... "women are predisposed biologically to not be good at things" No one has said that. Please assume some good faith that when people say they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender, it means they don't want speakers to be selected based on gender. There is not a single comment under this article that has said or implied that there are difference in the ability of men and women to perform skillfully with technology tasks. > On the topic of bring more gender parity to nursing and teaching, please do. Sure, lets bring in a universal affirmative action law that dictate that any industry that has more than 60% women or men must apply affirmative action for any new hire. I would enjoy to see that experiment. For reference, the top 3 most gender segregated professions (99.4% or higher) in Sweden a few years ago was midwife, dentist nurse, and stone layer. Engineers didn't even breach top 50, and is pretty average in gender segregation.

roguecoder 8y ago
Why would you expect her to assume good faith of men arguing against her inclusion? Especially when we know that men from white nationalist groups have purposefully infiltrated technical spaces in order to fight the inclusion of women and underrepresented racial minorities? (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuck-into-seattles-super-secret-white-nationalist-convention https://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuc...) These men are making a political argument, not an intellectual one. They are arguing that nothing should be done in the face of obvious injustice. If they cared to read it, there is significant peer-reviewed work that says they are wrong, but because they are making a political argument not an intellectual one evidence does not matter. Expertise does not matter. Has any one of these guys offered a shred of evidence for their beliefs? Have any of them offered the credentials that qualify them to opine on this topic? Someone who comes in and says "you shouldn't use C because it is slow as shit" wouldn't be taken seriously or treated as though they were arguing in good faith. Neither should these obviously-wrong dudes. Just like with Holocaust deniers, engaging with these people only legitimizes them and their politically-motivated beliefs. (See for https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subreddit-banned-holocaust-deniers-and-facebook-should-too.html https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/the-askhistorians-subre... effective strategies to engage with people who are arguing for political reasons.) To do otherwise demands that women participate in their own marginalization, which explains why most of them don't bother and just quit, creating an echo chamber where men can keep reassuring themselves that these political beliefs are more important than facts. Frankly, it is a disgrace that Hacker's News is willing to host this tired bullshit, and YC should seriously consider the impact doing so has on their brand.
- belorn 8y ago
  When it comes to gender segregation we are all marginalized in one place or an other. That is what 88.6% gender segregation for women and 88.4% gender segregation for men means in raw Swedish data. There is no data to support that affirmative action is an effective strategy in dealing with this problem. There is also no support to the idea that a failure with inclusions is the reason why 88.6% women and 88.4% of men work in gender segregated professions here in Sweden. The very little of real scientific data, in the several research studies I have read, is ones that simply say that people feel more confident being around people who share the same trait as themselves. Multiply that effect with every challenge a person goes through from selecting a professions to being a student to graduation to seeking a job to staying in a professions for several years and what we get is a significant increase risk for members of the minority group to not select the profession or quit. A solution need to fit the problem. 88.5% of the population has ended up gender segregated in Sweden. Is the method that the article suggest an effective strategy for that goal, and if so where is that evidence? Someone suggested that gender difference in preference is the cause but similar the data I have read on preference differences are not significant enough to explain such extreme segregation that exist here. The parent posts here suggest misogyny, which then would imply misandry to explain why an equal amount of men do not end up in professions dominated by women, but that seems poorly supported by peer-reviewed work that looks to explain gender segregation in general. But as I suggested above, I would not mind seeing a experiment where people tried applying affirmative action as a general solution to fix gender segregation. Similar ideas has been tested before in smaller scales, like Sweden when it tried to do it in higher education. They had to scrap it because a court deemed it discrimination to give benefits to individuals based on gender, even if they were a minority. Norway is currently testing a different version, which will be interesting to see develop. I do expect it to run foul of the same issue as here in Sweden but they do have different laws and their relation with EU laws is complicated.