4 ms·

It'd be nice for Newsweek and other outlets to cover Mayer and her good work without it repeatedly being yet another spin of the old "Girls can do it, too!" tro

by theDoug 16y ago

It'd be nice for Newsweek and other outlets to cover Mayer and her good work without it repeatedly being yet another spin of the old "Girls can do it, too!" trope. Yes, they can do it, they've always been able to do it. Stop pretending it's surprising or 'news,' and you'll have fewer people incorrectly feel women are out of place in technology.

ars 16y ago
Till that 15 to 17 percent changes (and it doesn't look like it will any time soon), that won't happen.
- lucasjung 16y ago
  Interestingly, that's about the same as the percentage of women in the military. I wonder how much of that is coincidence, and how much is driven by common factors (culture/climate? self-selection?).
  - _delirium 16y ago
    In tech's case, the extreme imbalance is fairly recent, though. Women are currently around 18-20% of new CS degrees, but in the early 1980s, they were 35-37%. Still a minority, but 2:1 rather than 4:1.
    - lucasjung 16y ago
      That's very interesting. Is this happening because fewer women are going into CS, or because way more men than women have gone into the field? A good way to answer this would be to look at some different statistics: what percentage of women college graduates majored in CS in the early '80s vs. today, and the same comparison for men. Of course, that doesn't answer the underlying question of why more men than women choose to major in CS. CS was a relatively young discipline in the early '80s, so its share of total graduates has probably grown significantly since then. I'd be willing to bet that growth is due to both more men and more women entering the field, but disproportionately men. CS graduates back then were, in a sense, all "early adopters," so both the men and the women in the field were outside of the mainstream. It could be that men now consider CS to be mainstream, but women don't: among men, the discipline has grown as one would expect, but among women the discipline is stuck at an earlier stage. Of course, this just leads to further questions about why this disparity in adoption exists.
- gregable 16y ago
  I'm curious if this is not only an effect, but also a cause. If the news reports that it is unusual for women to be in computing, doesn't that in a small way reinforce that message within popular culture? Newsweek should know better.
  - ars 16y ago
    So basically you want newsweek to lie in order to promote a social cause? Because right now it is unusual, so that is how they should report it. Isn't that called propaganda, and is the job of the government and ad agencies? (And they've both certainly done it successfully for plenty of causes they've decided were important.) Journalistic integrity is important - even if it goes against your social cause. This is a very common complaint about journalists, that by reporting on it, they are causing it. It might be a valid complaint, but any attempt to fix it makes it worse.
    - dannyb 16y ago
      I think that article was essentially a propaganda piece, albeit unintentionally. My guess is that Newsweek puts out blurbs like that in order to reach out to a targeted demographic, in this case women. The whole question of media bias really comes down to the bottom line. If a format of words plus carefully chosen images favored traditionally conservative causes (which for the most part they don't) there would be widespread complaints about right wing media bias. AS it is, I think there is very little remanent of journalistic ethics in mass media.
    - scott_s 16y ago
      It's unusual, but it's also obviously unusual. So, do you take the obvious story, or do you figure out something new? Not that I'd expect Newsweek to do anything else.
- baddox 16y ago
  Will the industry actually benefit if additional women join its workforce, rather than anyone (regardless of gender) who is competent and wants to? I suppose it's possible that there's something to gain from diversity, perhaps from morale or just diversity of mindsets/ideas/backgrounds, but that seems like a bit of an immeasurable stretch.
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    From the article: > Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] said, “You know, we have seven engineers, and they’re all guys. But we’ve thought a lot about how we want to start our company, and we’ve read a lot of books, and we know that organizations work better when there is gender balance. So it’s important to us that we have a strong group of women, especially technical women, in the company.”
Qz 16y ago
Yeah, this definitely seems like old news to me. Many of the girls I know consider themselves geeks in one way or another (and most of my friends aren't in the tech circle, so that's not an issue).
- haploid 16y ago
  And therein lies the problem with a definition whose meaning has been diluted to near meaninglessness. "Geek" doesn't mean the same thing it used to, or even close to it. Teenage girls running around calling themselves geeks because they spend a lot of time playing angry birds on their phone is a far cry from the MIT Media Lab. The same goes for latte-sipping hipsters who can use Garage Band on their MBP, or any other person who uses consumer technology as an end-user, then proceeds to proclaim themselves a geek, or FSM forbid, a hacker.
  - Qz 16y ago
    I don't see dilution of the definition as a problem. Video games used to be geeky. Now everyone plays video games. Everyone is geeky. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, 'Geeky is Good.' And for the record, many of them consider themselves geeks for legitimately geeky things, not 'playing angry birds on their phone' as you so derisively mention.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    Are you slightly angry at the outside world? Whenever I hear someone ranting about teenage girls and "hipsters" I think "social issues."
taylorbuley 16y ago
I agree with your point, but before you bashed Newsweek did you read any of their previous Mayer coverage? http://www.newsweek.com/search.html?q=marissa+mayer http://www.newsweek.com/search.html?q=marissa+mayer I think you'd have a hard time putting together a collection of "Girls can do it, too!" articles that outweigh all the regular coverage of Mayer and her work at Google
Jun8 16y ago
In addition to the media bias, I'm also thinking that Google is using Mayer as their "look how diverse we are" showcase. In almost all such stories about Google I see Mayer, aren't there equally accomplished women in Google? With a great 40-60 ration of women to men they should be. Also, why have her wear that photomodel outfit? This is like asking Larry or Sergei wear a suit for photo shoot. I've seen her in many videos from her talks and she tends to wear normal stuff. Edit: Here's an extensive look at Meyer's outfits: http://gawker.com/5174126/lesley-stahl-investigates-marissa-mayers-matchless-fashion-sense http://gawker.com/5174126/lesley-stahl-investigates-marissa-...

by theDoug 16y ago

ars 16y ago

Till that 15 to 17 percent changes (and it doesn't look like it will any time soon), that won't happen.

lucasjung 16y ago
Interestingly, that's about the same as the percentage of women in the military. I wonder how much of that is coincidence, and how much is driven by common factors (culture/climate? self-selection?).
- _delirium 16y ago
  In tech's case, the extreme imbalance is fairly recent, though. Women are currently around 18-20% of new CS degrees, but in the early 1980s, they were 35-37%. Still a minority, but 2:1 rather than 4:1.
  - lucasjung 16y ago
    That's very interesting. Is this happening because fewer women are going into CS, or because way more men than women have gone into the field? A good way to answer this would be to look at some different statistics: what percentage of women college graduates majored in CS in the early '80s vs. today, and the same comparison for men. Of course, that doesn't answer the underlying question of why more men than women choose to major in CS. CS was a relatively young discipline in the early '80s, so its share of total graduates has probably grown significantly since then. I'd be willing to bet that growth is due to both more men and more women entering the field, but disproportionately men. CS graduates back then were, in a sense, all "early adopters," so both the men and the women in the field were outside of the mainstream. It could be that men now consider CS to be mainstream, but women don't: among men, the discipline has grown as one would expect, but among women the discipline is stuck at an earlier stage. Of course, this just leads to further questions about why this disparity in adoption exists.
gregable 16y ago
I'm curious if this is not only an effect, but also a cause. If the news reports that it is unusual for women to be in computing, doesn't that in a small way reinforce that message within popular culture? Newsweek should know better.
- ars 16y ago
  So basically you want newsweek to lie in order to promote a social cause? Because right now it is unusual, so that is how they should report it. Isn't that called propaganda, and is the job of the government and ad agencies? (And they've both certainly done it successfully for plenty of causes they've decided were important.) Journalistic integrity is important - even if it goes against your social cause. This is a very common complaint about journalists, that by reporting on it, they are causing it. It might be a valid complaint, but any attempt to fix it makes it worse.
  - dannyb 16y ago
    I think that article was essentially a propaganda piece, albeit unintentionally. My guess is that Newsweek puts out blurbs like that in order to reach out to a targeted demographic, in this case women. The whole question of media bias really comes down to the bottom line. If a format of words plus carefully chosen images favored traditionally conservative causes (which for the most part they don't) there would be widespread complaints about right wing media bias. AS it is, I think there is very little remanent of journalistic ethics in mass media.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    It's unusual, but it's also obviously unusual. So, do you take the obvious story, or do you figure out something new? Not that I'd expect Newsweek to do anything else.
baddox 16y ago
Will the industry actually benefit if additional women join its workforce, rather than anyone (regardless of gender) who is competent and wants to? I suppose it's possible that there's something to gain from diversity, perhaps from morale or just diversity of mindsets/ideas/backgrounds, but that seems like a bit of an immeasurable stretch.
- pbiggar 16y ago
  From the article: > Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] said, “You know, we have seven engineers, and they’re all guys. But we’ve thought a lot about how we want to start our company, and we’ve read a lot of books, and we know that organizations work better when there is gender balance. So it’s important to us that we have a strong group of women, especially technical women, in the company.”

Qz 16y ago

Yeah, this definitely seems like old news to me. Many of the girls I know consider themselves geeks in one way or another (and most of my friends aren't in the tech circle, so that's not an issue).

haploid 16y ago
And therein lies the problem with a definition whose meaning has been diluted to near meaninglessness. "Geek" doesn't mean the same thing it used to, or even close to it. Teenage girls running around calling themselves geeks because they spend a lot of time playing angry birds on their phone is a far cry from the MIT Media Lab. The same goes for latte-sipping hipsters who can use Garage Band on their MBP, or any other person who uses consumer technology as an end-user, then proceeds to proclaim themselves a geek, or FSM forbid, a hacker.
- Qz 16y ago
  I don't see dilution of the definition as a problem. Video games used to be geeky. Now everyone plays video games. Everyone is geeky. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, 'Geeky is Good.' And for the record, many of them consider themselves geeks for legitimately geeky things, not 'playing angry birds on their phone' as you so derisively mention.
- coderdude 16y ago
  Are you slightly angry at the outside world? Whenever I hear someone ranting about teenage girls and "hipsters" I think "social issues."

taylorbuley 16y ago

I agree with your point, but before you bashed Newsweek did you read any of their previous Mayer coverage? http://www.newsweek.com/search.html?q=marissa+mayer http://www.newsweek.com/search.html?q=marissa+mayer I think you'd have a hard time putting together a collection of "Girls can do it, too!" articles that outweigh all the regular coverage of Mayer and her work at Google

Jun8 16y ago

In addition to the media bias, I'm also thinking that Google is using Mayer as their "look how diverse we are" showcase. In almost all such stories about Google I see Mayer, aren't there equally accomplished women in Google? With a great 40-60 ration of women to men they should be. Also, why have her wear that photomodel outfit? This is like asking Larry or Sergei wear a suit for photo shoot. I've seen her in many videos from her talks and she tends to wear normal stuff. Edit: Here's an extensive look at Meyer's outfits: http://gawker.com/5174126/lesley-stahl-investigates-marissa-mayers-matchless-fashion-sense http://gawker.com/5174126/lesley-stahl-investigates-marissa-...