4 ms·

> The article is taking it as fact that we should fix it. Assuming that women are every bit as intelligent as men, our field is missing out on roughly half the

> The article is taking it as fact that we should fix it. Assuming that women are every bit as intelligent as men, our field is missing out on roughly half the population of brilliant minds that could be inventing the Next Big Thing. No? Edit: OK. Summary of the answers so far. A) Cannot necessarily make the above assumption. B) Women on average may be as intelligent as men but they will never be geniuses like Einstein (or likely to go to prison). and C) We don't need that many engineers anyways. Conclusion: they should stay in the kitchen

T-hawk 16y ago
Well, the key is in that assumption, and also in the shape of that data. It could be that the average woman is slightly more intelligent than the average man: 55% of American college freshmen are female. But men have a greater variance which brings them out at both ends. So the outlying geniuses like Einstein and Jobs and Feynman tend to be male, and at the other end so does the prison population.
- cosgroveb 16y ago
  Steve Jobs is a genius of the likes of Einstein and Feynman? I know that Apple fanboyism is rampant in tech circles but it's getting out of hand, really. ;)
gloob 16y ago
Only if you believe there is enough demand for software to double the number of people producing it.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Assuming that women are every bit as intelligent as men, That is a) an unproven assumption and b) irrelevant. The right thing to measure is the integral of P(inventing next big thing | intelligence = g, enters computing) P(intelligence = g) dg. (This also assumes g is the only factor, not ambition or other factors, but whatever). A not so terrible substitute for that would be measuring the ratios of men and women with intelligence over some cutoff . This could bew considerably lower even if women are every bit as intelligent as men, if for example the variance of women's intelligence was lower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence
geebee 16y ago
No way is the conclusion that they should stay in the kitchen. The conclusion is that maybe women are better off in medicine, law, dentistry or other processions, not because they're women, but because most people would be better off in these fields. I think that the reason people fail to understand why there are so few women in software development is because they frame the issue the way you just did. They think about how to convince a young woman that engineering is better than home economics. Instead, try this as an exercise: imagine you're a career counselor at a university, and a very bright young woman has just entered your office asking for advice. She's a top student who can handle math, science, and arts/humanities, and she's got the chops to score in the high percentiles on whatever standardized test is required for a grad program. Imagine a conversation where you try to talk her out of becoming a cardiologist and sell her on a grad program in computer science. Make sure you consider employment prospects, earnings potential, social prestige, job stability at age 48, and so forth. This conversation will demonstrate why it's not engineering vs staying in the kitchen. Young women are starting to out-achieve young men in the US, and I'd be surprised if this isn't the case in the UK. People (who are aware that the achievement gap is now starting to favor women) often think of the scarcity of women in engineering as a dark spot in an otherwise bright picture, but one that should still be remedied. I think they're missing the possibility that the evident aversion women have to engineering or CS is actually a positive thing for women - that women have realized that they can achieve more real power and influence in other fields. By "better off" I'm not talking about some condescending "oh, you'll be happier at home with the kids" kind of thing. I mean wealthy, high income, highly influential, positions of power in business and government kind of "better off". Now for a slightly lame backtrack - I actually do think that science and engineering are amazing fields, and the scarcity of women is a complicated thing - especially at the undergraduate level (after all, the most common academic background at the bachelor's level for fortune 500 CEOs is engineering in the US). However, I do think that the perspective I described above needs to be a big part of the analysis. People seem to view the low participation of women in certain technical fields as a negative for women without adequately understanding the other things women are doing and the possibility that they may be making better choices than men.
- jdp23 16y ago
  > maybe women are better off in medicine, law, dentistry or other processions, not because they're women, but because most people would be better off in these fields. really? if you had a teenage son or younger brother, would you be encouraging them to be a doctor, dentist, or lawyer? or would you be encouraging them to learn about computers, software, networking, mobile phones, social networks, the cloud, the web, and all the other cool things we love that are changing the world?
jdp23 16y ago
Great summary of the responses. Discussions like this have a way of revealing guys' sexist (A, B) or self-serving (C) attitudes.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Discussions like this have a way of revealing people who, when the facts don't support their assumptions, like to resort to making ad-hominem attacks on people who disagree with them.
  - jdp23 16y ago
    This conversation was so priceless, i excerpted it at http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2091&cpage=1#comment-124405 http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2091&cpage=1#comment-...
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      If you search through my history, you'll find lots of material for your "HN is so mean" page. Not just sexism, anti-gay/pro graph theorist material as well (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183868 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183868). But just a nit - I'm no longer at Courant, my webpage is stale.

T-hawk 16y ago

Well, the key is in that assumption, and also in the shape of that data. It could be that the average woman is slightly more intelligent than the average man: 55% of American college freshmen are female. But men have a greater variance which brings them out at both ends. So the outlying geniuses like Einstein and Jobs and Feynman tend to be male, and at the other end so does the prison population.

cosgroveb 16y ago
Steve Jobs is a genius of the likes of Einstein and Feynman? I know that Apple fanboyism is rampant in tech circles but it's getting out of hand, really. ;)

gloob 16y ago

Only if you believe there is enough demand for software to double the number of people producing it.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

Assuming that women are every bit as intelligent as men, That is a) an unproven assumption and b) irrelevant. The right thing to measure is the integral of P(inventing next big thing | intelligence = g, enters computing) P(intelligence = g) dg. (This also assumes g is the only factor, not ambition or other factors, but whatever). A not so terrible substitute for that would be measuring the ratios of men and women with intelligence over some cutoff . This could bew considerably lower even if women are every bit as intelligent as men, if for example the variance of women's intelligence was lower. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence

geebee 16y ago

No way is the conclusion that they should stay in the kitchen. The conclusion is that maybe women are better off in medicine, law, dentistry or other processions, not because they're women, but because most people would be better off in these fields. I think that the reason people fail to understand why there are so few women in software development is because they frame the issue the way you just did. They think about how to convince a young woman that engineering is better than home economics. Instead, try this as an exercise: imagine you're a career counselor at a university, and a very bright young woman has just entered your office asking for advice. She's a top student who can handle math, science, and arts/humanities, and she's got the chops to score in the high percentiles on whatever standardized test is required for a grad program. Imagine a conversation where you try to talk her out of becoming a cardiologist and sell her on a grad program in computer science. Make sure you consider employment prospects, earnings potential, social prestige, job stability at age 48, and so forth. This conversation will demonstrate why it's not engineering vs staying in the kitchen. Young women are starting to out-achieve young men in the US, and I'd be surprised if this isn't the case in the UK. People (who are aware that the achievement gap is now starting to favor women) often think of the scarcity of women in engineering as a dark spot in an otherwise bright picture, but one that should still be remedied. I think they're missing the possibility that the evident aversion women have to engineering or CS is actually a positive thing for women - that women have realized that they can achieve more real power and influence in other fields. By "better off" I'm not talking about some condescending "oh, you'll be happier at home with the kids" kind of thing. I mean wealthy, high income, highly influential, positions of power in business and government kind of "better off". Now for a slightly lame backtrack - I actually do think that science and engineering are amazing fields, and the scarcity of women is a complicated thing - especially at the undergraduate level (after all, the most common academic background at the bachelor's level for fortune 500 CEOs is engineering in the US). However, I do think that the perspective I described above needs to be a big part of the analysis. People seem to view the low participation of women in certain technical fields as a negative for women without adequately understanding the other things women are doing and the possibility that they may be making better choices than men.

jdp23 16y ago
> maybe women are better off in medicine, law, dentistry or other processions, not because they're women, but because most people would be better off in these fields. really? if you had a teenage son or younger brother, would you be encouraging them to be a doctor, dentist, or lawyer? or would you be encouraging them to learn about computers, software, networking, mobile phones, social networks, the cloud, the web, and all the other cool things we love that are changing the world?

jdp23 16y ago

Great summary of the responses. Discussions like this have a way of revealing guys' sexist (A, B) or self-serving (C) attitudes.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Discussions like this have a way of revealing people who, when the facts don't support their assumptions, like to resort to making ad-hominem attacks on people who disagree with them.
- jdp23 16y ago
  This conversation was so priceless, i excerpted it at http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2091&cpage=1#comment-124405 http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2091&cpage=1#comment-...
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    If you search through my history, you'll find lots of material for your "HN is so mean" page. Not just sexism, anti-gay/pro graph theorist material as well (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183868 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183868). But just a nit - I'm no longer at Courant, my webpage is stale.