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Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show th

Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise. For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation? No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.

wsy 8y ago
I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies? I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls. Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.
- Grustaf 8y ago
  I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!
  - wsy 8y ago
    Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions? Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, not with grown-ups
    - Grustaf 8y ago
      I’m not saying hiring managers should favour men for developer jobs. I’m saying many more men are into computers, so it’s natural that people hire more male developers. You are aware that men are much more likely to be autistic, right? Don’t you feel that it’s at least conceivable that men are also more likely to be interested in spending their day writing instructions to computers?
      - wsy 8y ago
        Yes, I think it is conceivable. But at the same time, I have a hard time explaining a 10%/90% distribution just with biological differences. It seems to me that the biological differences are too small to explain such a huge skew. In particular, because the gender distribution for programmers was very different in the 1940s/1950s. At the same time, the cultural biases seem so obvious to me, that I think acknowledging them too would be a better basis for further discussion.
        Grustaf 8y ago
        Why do you find such a skew unbelievable? For example, close to 95% of colorblind people are men. 80%+ of people with autism and like 99.9% of bald people. But it’s not all bad, men have 20 times more testosterone, which makes them stronger and faster. So clearly there are lots of biological differences with a 90/10 distribution.
        wsy 8y ago

wsy 8y ago

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies? I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls. Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.

Grustaf 8y ago
I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!
- wsy 8y ago
  Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions? Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, not with grown-ups
  - Grustaf 8y ago
    I’m not saying hiring managers should favour men for developer jobs. I’m saying many more men are into computers, so it’s natural that people hire more male developers. You are aware that men are much more likely to be autistic, right? Don’t you feel that it’s at least conceivable that men are also more likely to be interested in spending their day writing instructions to computers?
    - wsy 8y ago
      Yes, I think it is conceivable. But at the same time, I have a hard time explaining a 10%/90% distribution just with biological differences. It seems to me that the biological differences are too small to explain such a huge skew. In particular, because the gender distribution for programmers was very different in the 1940s/1950s. At the same time, the cultural biases seem so obvious to me, that I think acknowledging them too would be a better basis for further discussion.
      - Grustaf 8y ago
        Why do you find such a skew unbelievable? For example, close to 95% of colorblind people are men. 80%+ of people with autism and like 99.9% of bald people. But it’s not all bad, men have 20 times more testosterone, which makes them stronger and faster. So clearly there are lots of biological differences with a 90/10 distribution.
        wsy 8y ago