> Suggesting a thing as a possible factor and explicitly stating a thing is a factor are two different actions.
I wrote that you "alleged that there may be discrimination against women in university education". Saying instead that you "suggested [discrimination against women in admissions] as a possible factor" is just rephrasing the same thing. I posted evidence that refutes your suggestion, which absolutely is relevant to this conversation.
> It seems like a reasonable person would understand this concept - that statistics at one level are not evidence of an argument, in either direction
So you're saying you also have no evidence that bias works against women, because "statistics at one level are not evidence of an argument, in either direction"? If we have no evidence of bias against women, then why is it justified to explicitly discriminate in favor of women? Almost every justification for affirmative action in hiring women I've heard has been that discrimination is necessary to counteract bias against women.
How is someone going to prove that women face bias when statistical arguments are invalid? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if we continue down this line of reasoning (or lack thereof) it's going to boil down to statistics magically becoming relevant again when they indicate bias against women.
> Numerous studies have shown that bias exists. This is not generally argued by anyone but the most ardently privileged.
These studies better not rely on statistics... :)
> I mean, you do agree that bias did exist, right? Like, slavery, women disenfranchised. Those things happened and bias was the cause, right? So if it did exist, when exactly did it cease to exist?
Slavery did exist, but that is overwhelmingly on the basis of race. This comment chain has so far been about women. This smells like whataboutsim.
Women's disenfranchisement ended a century ago. By now women make up the majority of university graduates. Premiere technology universities like MIT, Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, and Carnegie Mellon admit women at significantly higher rates than men - often more than 2x. At my company, we hire female tech graduates at over twice the rate of men. We're setting a quota (despite this being probably illegal) to make our company's tech workforce 33% women even though women make up 20% of Does this sound like bias against women?
> No, there is literally zero evidence.
I'm sorry but if you really did read through all the sources I posted, then at this point I really do feel that you're being willfully ignorant in writing this. I can respect people who don't find the evidence convincing, but to say that "there is literally zero evidence" immediately after being presented several pieces of evidence is a very strong indicator that you're not participating in this discussion with good faith. But to give you the benefit of the doubt I'll assume you are and will address your last point:
> Your interpretation of various cultures and evidence that men are not genetically identical to women is not evidence that men have a genetic aptitude/predilection towards STEM.
You're right, showing that all cultures and societies have disproportionately larger male graduates in STEM does not, in and of itself, prove that men have any sort of genetic predisposition. But it does prove that society and culture is not a strong factor regarding the low representation of women in STEM. Every society has a lower percentage of women in STEM. From the North America, to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to South America. Rich countries and poor countries. Secular countries and religious countries. So culture and society does not have a strong effect of women in STEM. There is some correlation between gender equality and women's participation in STEM - but it's the opposite of the prevailing narrative; the data suggest that more women go into STEM when countries are misogynistic. So, I guess we could roll back women's rights to boost female participation in STEM but that's probably not a good idea.
Now, we've ruled out culture as a determining factor in why women have low participation rates in STEM so what else could it be? There's really only a couple ways to explain population-wide differences, the proverbial "nature vs. nurture" question. And we've ruled out nurture, so that leaves nature as a feasible cause. And again, I posted several other pieces of evidence including evidence that shows that men and women have different predilection towards people vs. things immediately after birth.
> Slavery did exist, but that is overwhelmingly on the basis of race. This comment chain has so far been about women. This smells like whataboutsim.
Nonsense. This comment chain is about diversity hiring practices, which involves gender and race.
> Women's disenfranchisement ended a century ago.
So was it the day after that women made up an equal share of university graduates? Or was it a progression over time, picking up more recently in the last few decades? And is that coincidental with the increase in affirmative action policies. Interesting. I suppose you could argue that women's genes have evolved towards an interest in STEM in the past few decades. I bet you could even find a link or two to share as "evidence".
> Nonsense. This comment chain is about diversity hiring practices, which involves gender and race.
My original response to your comment, and every single comment in the subsequent chain, referenced diversity in terms of gender. Every discussion in terms of the share of women in STEM in different countries has been on the basis of gender. All the sources you asked for (and I provided) were in relation to gender.
> So was it the day after that women made up an equal share of university graduates? Or was it a progression over time, picking up more recently in the last few decades?
Women's disenfranchisement ended on August 18, 1920. The date when the 19th amendment was passed. That's where the reference of a century ago comes from, though if you want to be pedantic it is 99 years and 6 months ago. That's what I thought you were referring to with disenfranchisement. You have consistently rejected statistics as evidence of bias, so it seemed to me you were basing this claim of bias on de-jure discrimination against women in the past.
If you're referring to women's disadvantaged position in society, then there's really no answer to that question as it's a subjective judgement. Women long faced restrictions in education and employment. Men long faced (and continue to face) disparities in incarceration, violent death, suicide, workplace injuries and illnesses. How many instances of harassment of equate to one murder of a man? How much of a pay gap are men entitled to if they make up >90% of workplace injuries and deaths? There's no right answer to these questions as these are subjective value judgments.
As far as when women broadly became more or less equal to men, the consensus is that this occurred a few decades after the civil rights movement. At this point women born after the civil rights movement were reaching adulthood. Around the 1990s and 2000s is when women became a majority in university, and reached parity (and eventually became a majority) in workplace participation.
> And is that coincidental with the increase in affirmative action policies. Interesting.
Most of the affirmative actions policies in tech are more recent than that. My company enacted it's aggressive affirmative hiring policies in the early to mid 2010s. By comparison the percentage of women in tech was higher before they experienced large advancements towards equality in the 90s. Women's share of computer science degrees peaked in the early 1980s [1]. So the answer to your question is no. There was no increase in women in computer science that coincided with the affirmative hiring policies.
This is not surprising. When companies discriminate to hire more women, it doesn't change the percentage of women in computer science. The impact of these policies it that companies which discriminate hire a larger portion of the women that choose to go into computer science. The number of women in compute science remains relatively flat, but companies expect to increase their percentages of female tech workers. Every company is competing for the same limited pool of women in tech, so many employ discrimination to try and get an edge over the others.
> I suppose you could argue that women's genes have evolved towards an interest in STEM in the past few decades. I bet you could even find a link or two to share as "evidence".
I have no idea why you think I would claim that women "genes have evolved towards an interest in stem". This is ridiculous. Evolution takes place over millennia, at least. Usually over tens of millennia or millions of years for substantial evolutionary changes.
Not to mention, the idea that women's interest in computing has increased over time is counterfactual. At least I think this is your line of reasoning - you're being awfully ambiguous as to why you'd think that I would claim that "women's genes have evolved towards an interest in STEM over the past few decades. In truth, women's interest in computing has seen some spikes (and these spikes also coincided with spikes in men's participation) but has otherwise been pretty flat over time: https://i0.wp.com/d24fkeqntp1r7r.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/18003326/Screen-Shot-2018-06-18-at-01.32.25.png?resize=594%2C394&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/d24fkeqntp1r7r.cloudfront.net/wp-content/u... The source is the National Center for Education Statistics.
These closing statements strike me as argumentum ad hominem.
1. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...