18 ms·

It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always

It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always) because of different interests. Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in. And that is before you get into interests vs natural talent and how that does or does not affect ones success in a field. On a fundamental level I personally prefer equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks, creating toxic work environments or harassing people. Personally I've seen bad behavior from both sides. I've also seen exceptional talent, skill, empathy etc. come from both groups. Many corporate cultures are toxic to everybody, irregardless of your gender. I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is.

TulliusCicero 7y ago
> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks I'd say the bigger point against the idea that women aren't in CS purely* because of men being sexist, is that this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. Does anyone actually believe this? * of course, it may still be a partial factor
- foldr 7y ago
  >this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. I don't see how it implies this. The more relevant question is whether STEM has higher levels of sexism than other similarly attractive fields.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    How could it not imply it? That's when women started entering those fields en masse and really increasing their numbers. Going by the "the problem is men being sexist" reasoning, that they were able to do this successfully implies that the lawyers and doctors in charge then were less sexist than engineers today.
    - foldr 7y ago
      It does not imply this, because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant.
      - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
        I don't think the field is sexist. I think fewer women choose to study and excel at it. The field is open to whomever wants to have a go at it. Due to "corporate diversity policy" I think (as a man) have less of a chance of actually breaking into software engineering than, say, 10 years ago.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        I mean, that doctors and lawyers were substantially less sexist compared to engineers in the 60's and 70's also strikes me as less than plausible, though I'll grant that'd be a closer competition than comparing them to engineers now. Do you have any evidence of an advantage there?
        foldr 7y ago
        I am talking about relative levels of sexism in the present, not in the 60s and 70s.
        TulliusCicero 7y ago
        But the 60's and 70's are when the representation levels started really diverging. That's the key part. That they may be less sexist now, after having achieved gender parity or something close to it, is hardly unexpected. Of course a field with roughly even numbers is usually going to be less sexist than one dominated by one gender or another.
  - mistrial9 7y ago
    the highest levels of sexism I have personally seen are in Finance, followed by construction workers; the highest levels of complaining I have personally seen are in FOSS UnConferences and PhD level academia.
    - foldr 7y ago
      It makes sense that higher levels of complaining would correlate with lower levels of sexism. Things don't usually get fixed unless people complain.
      - microcolonel 7y ago
        The rise in complaining has not been correlated with a drop in "sexism", even the kind that is a bit of a stretch.
      - retsibsi 7y ago
        Could be more the other way around: in a really Xist field, there are fewer complaints because a) there are probably fewer [minority group] to complain, b) complaining feels riskier and less likely to achieve anything, c) complaints that do get made are more likely to be quickly shut down rather than amplified.
  - naasking 7y ago
    > I don't see how it implies this. Gender disparity fell in those professions, while in roughly the same time frame, gender disparity dramatically increased in STEM. If women could put up with the sexism in those two professions, is it really plausible that sexism is the reason they didn't similarly push into STEM? Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.
    - bigger_cheese 7y ago
      >Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data. I think in general among engineers there is a lot of awareness about sexism and diversity issues but that doesn't always extend to people on the periphery of the engineering world (I'm from non-software engineering world). Tradespeople such a boilermakers, fitters and welders as well as suppliers, technicians etc don't always have the same attitudes. These are people you have to work closely with on engineering projects which are often in remote locations like mines, construction sites etc where management is not typically present (or visible). Attitudes are improving, for example its not common these days to see pornography in site sheds and similar out on construction sites, 10 years ago this was rife, but I still feel culture out on sites is maybe 5 to 10 years behind where it is in the office. My sister and I are both engineers (I'm Chem/materials and she is a mech. eng) the way she gets treated and I am treated there is a noticeable difference. People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world.
      - naasking 7y ago
        > People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world. Absolutely, but the question being debated is whether this is worse in STEM than other professions. Every profession still has strides to make for true equality.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >I don't see how it implies this In the sense that if sexism is the major force that prevented women from going into IT, then the much higher sexism of doctors and lawyers in the 60s and 70s would have prevented women from going into those fields too. But women were far more in those fields then, than they are in IT now.
    - foldr 7y ago
      I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        This is ridiculous, changes in the 60's led to a more gender balanced field, which obviously made for less sexism. Pretending that root causes don't matter isn't helping your case.
        foldr 7y ago
        Aren't you then acknowledging that as a result, tech now is more sexist than law and medicine? If so, I can't see where we substantially disagree. As I've repeatedly said, I make no claims about why the gender balance shifted in law and medicine in the 60s. You appeared to suggest that this had nothing to do with levels of sexism. I'm skeptical of that claim (broader societal attitudes are important too, not just the sexism level of lawyers and doctors vs. the sexism level of scientists and engineers), but it's not as if either of us has actually researched this in detail. The key point is that tech now is disproportionately sexist, as you appear to acknowledge.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present. The argument is not about that. It's that "Those very sexist 60s/70s fields still had a lot of women going in, more than women in IT today. If women could go into those very sexist fields then, it's not sexism that keeps them out of IT today".
- aidenn0 7y ago
  Eh, pain is relative. If you think hospitals today are less sexist workplaces than software companies, you might pick med school. I hope that it's clear to most people that there isn't a single reason for the disparity though. People are complicated.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    I'm not talking about hospitals today. I'm talking about potential gatekeepers in the 60's and 70's.
    - aidenn0 7y ago
      I (and others from looking at some sibling comments) didn't see your comment as being about gatekeepers, but rather about the environment being perceived as unfriendly towards, so women seeking out different fields.
jayd16 7y ago
Implicit bias also guides interests and choice. Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career, not that they were forced out of it. We look to outcome equality to gain some kind of insight into this.
- izzydata 7y ago
  It sounds like informing everyone that these options exist is part of creating a more equal opportunity. If two people didn't have the same information for available options then there wasn't an equal opportunity.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    I'm not following you. Girls don't know that there's such a thing as programming or Computer Science degrees?
    - izzydata 7y ago
      If they aren't convinced it is a real option than they didn't have the same opportunity. Either way it isn't a problem that can be solved by pushing people into the field to create a more equal ratio.
    - jayd16 7y ago
      It's about internalizing the idea that it's a feasible choice you give actual thought to.
      - jimbokun 7y ago
        How to distinguish between "I didn't know that was a feasible choice for me" and "I know what programming is like and I don't want to do that as a career"? How many girls and women fall into each category?
        jayd16 7y ago
mixmastamyk 7y ago
s/irregardless/regardless
UncleMeat 7y ago
> I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is. It's currently the number one post.
jxramos 7y ago
I was curious if these terms were formally defined anyplace, looks like there's actually wikipedia articles devoted to them: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  They've been defined concepts in social science for a while. Also equality vs equability, etc.
pj_mukh 7y ago
"As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks, creating toxic work environments or harassing people" This is a red herring. If you ask women they won't say their bosses were "jerks" or "toxic" (though a lot of time they are), they'll say they made them "uncomfortable", "un-accommodating". It reminds me of a friend who got pregnant and left the STEM field because the dudes at her office made her feel like she was SUCH a huge drag on them. None of them were jerks, just not accommodating. Its a subtle but substantial difference. "I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is." Actually, its the top comment, the popularity of this opinion among programmers is the crux of the issue. Nobody wants to work at a company where a majority of people think you are "unnatural" or an "outlier" for being there.
- y4mi 7y ago
  > If you ask women they won't say their bosses were "jerks" or "toxic" Most women I know do exactly that though if you speak with them in a private setting? I'll have to take your word for the rest of your opinion, as I don't know your friend nor her colleagues. I'm a little surprised you expect them to be totally accommodating though. It's a professional setting after all. It's nice if you can create good friendships there, but expecting it is just asking for trouble
  - pj_mukh 7y ago
    "Most women I know do exactly that though if you speak with them in a private setting?" Proves my point even more then.
Buldak 7y ago
Practically no one endorses "equality of outcome" in itself. It's a question of whether disparate outcomes evidence disparate opportunities (findings like those in question suggest that they may not).
- ajuc 7y ago
  Gender quotas are basically enforcing equality of outcome. If the reason for disparity in some trades isn't discrimination but preferences (as this article strongly suggests) - gender quotas make both man and women less happy to satisfy statistics and ideology. It's insane. BTW I wonder if people proposing gender quotas because of pay gap would also support gender quotas in hospitals to fight life expectance gap, and gender quotas in psychiatry to fight suicide percentage gap.
  - yibg 7y ago
    Also prison populations. Women are severely under represented there.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
I've seen pretty much both sexes being equally abrasive at work, it's a pretty co-equal trait of the two (plus) sexes.
throwaway09851 7y ago
I am a woman, and this pervasive opinion that women are leaving STEM fields because of toxic behavior feels more sexist to me than anything else. It seems to me that if you have a genuine passion for STEM stuff, it takes a lot more than a bad environment to completely redirect your career path. Every woman I know with a genuine and deep interest in STEM subjects has had to deal with some level of toxic/sexist/whatever stuff in their life, and they persevered and dealt with it because they weren't going to let it get in the way of their passion. It might sound harsh, but I don't feel terribly concerned about keeping these displaced women in STEM; if their interest isn't strong enough to overcome a bad environment, then maybe they just weren't that interested to begin with. That's not a bad thing, it just means that they misjudged the interest:difficulty ratio. Of the cases I know of personally, most of these women ended up in a job working fairly close with STEM stuff, writing manuals, doing graphic design, etc, and are perfectly fine with those jobs. To be clear, I'm not accounting for cases where an entire university or business or whatever is made up of toxic sexism, but that's been pretty uncommon in my experience in the US. Women of STEM: if you've got a bad environment, do something about it! Tell your higher-ups, talk to people directly, seek a different position, endure what you can, and for God's sake stand up for yourself. tl;dr the implication that most women in STEM can't handle a toxic work environment without giving up entirely doesn't seem that progressive at all NB disclaimer, most people I know are computer scientists, plus a few mathematicians, so maybe engineering is different
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > Every woman I know with a genuine and deep interest in STEM subjects has had to deal with some level of toxic/sexist/whatever stuff in their life, and they persevered and dealt with it because they weren't going to let it get in the way of their passion. I grew up in an era when kids interested in STEM were "nerds" and were harassed, denigrated, and had lower social status. This changed when Bill Gates made his first billion. Suddenly, people realized that STEM was a ticket to the good life. The title of the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" was no accident. A Seattle local comedy show "Almost Live" regularly ran skits about Microsoft engineers being socially inept and unable to get dates. (Of course, the joke turned out to be on Almost Live, as the super wealthy Microsoft engineers transformed the city.) I suppose my point is that men who liked STEM had persevered in spite of the negative image of it.
dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
I too, look forward to being downvoted.
koonsolo 7y ago
I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. "Men are more honest and straightforward, women more jealous and backstabbing". Their words, not mine. But since the whole upheaval of women in workplaces that flowed to Europe from US, I have the feeling that this sentiment has changed.
- jholman 7y ago
  Agreement in the form of an anecdatum: More than one baby-boomer woman I know has said that every time she has a male boss, things are okay, and every time she has a female boss, the whole office gradually goes insane. I'm in particular thinking of my aunt, working in banks (all of her peers were women), but I've heard it elsewhere too. But then again, it's anecdata. I try not to take it seriously (I mean, I take it seriously about the individual's experience, but not as a description of large-scale patterns). But also when people have just-so stories about how male bosses are toxic to female underlings, I have the same "maybe that was true for you, but I don't see any reason to generalize" reaction.
- roenxi 7y ago
  That anecdote tells you precisely nothing; women who prefer working in all-female teams, etc, etc, have already been weeded out. Talking to people in the industry is sampling from a population of people who probably don't see a problem regardless of the actual situation.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Quote from the parent comment: > 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. It's not comparing all-male to all-female teams, but all-male to teams with any women. As you say, There are roughly zero all-female teams in tech[1], but the proportion of any-female teams is much much higher. [1] Yes, I know there are teams who have explicitly sought after this for ideological reasons, but theyre a rounding error.
  - koonsolo 7y ago
tmh79 7y ago
> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument... I think its a lot more complicated than this. Yes, men and women can be jerks. The bigger issues seem to be when a team is 80%+ one gender or another, and the issues aren't about "being mean" the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs. A huge problem is that we have a lot of 6 person tech teams with 5 guys and 1 women and the women naturally feel alienated and either aren't actually able to do well or are at least perceived as not doing well due to their situation. This holds back women's career development as a group and reduces the numbers of women in higher ranks in corporate life.
- silveroriole 7y ago
  > the women naturally feel alienated Why “naturally”? Is it really natural for men and women to alienate each other just by existing?
  - holstvoogd 7y ago
    yes! now get back into your box! ;)
  - JohnClark1337 7y ago
    The goal is to categorize and organize humanity in order to achieve absolute equality.
- banads 7y ago
  The same is true is in fields dominated by women, such as education
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    And lots of people are investing lots of time and effort into trying to fix that problem in education, healthcare, etc.
    - briandear 7y ago
pkghost 7y ago
Downvoted for this: > Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in What?! Equality of outcome, as I've encountered it, is always downstream of individual choice. That is, it's up to the hiring committee to enforce gender parity by selecting from available applicants, and not up to educators or policy-makers to force equal amounts of women to be in STEM. No one has ever, to my knowledge, made the argument the way you represented it (except, ironically, incels calling for mandated marriage). I'd have taken you more seriously if you hadn't straw-manned the shit out of equality of outcome.
tj-teej 7y ago
This article implies that the correlation between gender-opportunity and representation in STEM is a causation. Look at the chart in the article, look at the countries on each end of the opportunity spectrum. There are many obvious economic, societal, and cultural differences between the countries on one side and the other of that spectrum. To take this correlation and use it to forward a sexist idea (that women PREFER different, often worse-paying, fields and that's why there's less women, and thus we don't need to change anything in our industry's culture) is the reason I would downvote this article and the OP's comment.
- toxik 7y ago
  Please don’t spread moral panic by labeling other people’s worldviews sexist. It does not sell your argument but only serves to polarize the debate. I know a lot of women in tech who feel uncomfortable with all the special treatment they get — entire conferences dedicated to “women in tech.” I find the idea so patronizing, just like I would a “men in daycare” conference. It is an extension of coddling the incapable and meek servile woman. Get out of here.
  - foldr 7y ago
    It's not patronizing. We have, e.g., men in nursing conferences (https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference). I don't find that patronizing as a man. It makes sense for a field where men are a minority.
    - toxik 7y ago
      “Looks Like This Domain Isn't Connected To A Website Yet!“ Hm.
      - foldr 7y ago
        https://web.archive.org/web/20191108010658/https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference https://web.archive.org/web/20191108010658/https://www.aamn.... It was up when I posted the comment.
partiallypro 7y ago
I don't understand why modern society doesn't understand/want to believe that men and women have different career interests than men. Men and women value things differently, and it's not all because of society.
- yibg 7y ago
  Animals have behavioral differences between males and females, I also don't understand why it's so hard to believe that humans will have differences between the genders as well.
- smadurange 7y ago
  There's a whole lot of people who have studied fields that are irrelevant to today's industry needs and have ended up with no real marketable skill. Various forms of activist movements have money in it. Modern developed societies have solved most of the serious, basic problems making it easier for a group of people to capitalise on solving more lofty problems. I have seen someone who did a degree in communication studies or something like that going after video games for sexism and raise millions for the cause. This trend will probably continue until we have more serious things to worry about. This is very eloquently described in "Fate of empires" by Sir John Glubbs.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    You can just say Anita Sarkeesian, no need to beat around the bush.
    - smadurange 7y ago
      Wasn't beating about the bush. I just forgot her name. Either way, her name wasn't important enough for me to look it up. The point was, someone who has no credentials about gender equality, video games or psychology were raising millions to fix a "problem" outside her expertise.
- tarsinge 7y ago
  What I don’t understand is the obsession to draw conclusions as soon as possible. We just don’t have the data yet. From my experience developers are still seen as black magicians by other roles. Being initiated is having been a weird unpopular boy which used computer since he was young. It’s slowly starting to change, and maybe real trends will emerge in 20 years, but why the hurry? Our only responsibility is that we provide welcoming environment and equality of opportunity. But I may be missing some US context on the obsession here.
yibg 7y ago
I'm all for equality of opportunity, remove unconscious bias and creating a welcoming environment for all groups, including women. But equality of outcome I think pretty quickly breaks down. If we force 50% of software engineers to be women, we'd pretty quickly run out of women. This cascades as well, as we're not getting gender balance for CS enrollment in colleges either.
rishav_sharan 7y ago
Unrelated to the topic but can you even downvote in HN? I only have an upvote button. Does it have something to do with how much the HN equivalent of karma that you have?
- gnicholas 7y ago
  Yep, not sure what the current threshold is, but in the past it was 500. You're close!
thrower123 7y ago
Women are unbelievably toxic if they achieve critical mass in a department. I cannot believe the level of petty conflict that my wife endures in her female-dominated PM team; my male-exclusive band of semi-autistic programmers seems like fiddler's green in comparison.
- _lacroix 7y ago
  Not totally related but being the one socially adept developer on a team of semi-autistic devs is the absolute worst. I was also the only woman but it wasn't the gender ratio that bothered me as I've been on great all-male teams in the past. But my god is it hard to enjoy your workday when you're the only person on the team with social skills and nobody ever wants to talk to you or go out for lunch occasionally!
  - hailk 7y ago
    Are you sure it's the lack of social skills? Lot of my male colleagues don't socialize with women at work. They are completely normal outside of work. They just don't want to take risks in today's socio-political climate where any interaction is looked through hyper-deconstructed sexism lens.
SenHeng 7y ago
> I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is. I totally agree with you but I hate that you had to end with that line. It's pointless and simply shuts down any useful discussion and implies that 'you disagree/downvote with me because I'm right'.
- Cougher 7y ago
  That was my thought as well. I read a good post, then my dominant thought was changed to a negative slant because of an entirely unecessary -- and probably very inaccurate -- note of paranoid self-defense.

TulliusCicero 7y ago

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks I'd say the bigger point against the idea that women aren't in CS purely* because of men being sexist, is that this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. Does anyone actually believe this? * of course, it may still be a partial factor

foldr 7y ago
>this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. I don't see how it implies this. The more relevant question is whether STEM has higher levels of sexism than other similarly attractive fields.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  How could it not imply it? That's when women started entering those fields en masse and really increasing their numbers. Going by the "the problem is men being sexist" reasoning, that they were able to do this successfully implies that the lawyers and doctors in charge then were less sexist than engineers today.
  - foldr 7y ago
    It does not imply this, because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant.
    - TurkishPoptart 7y ago
      I don't think the field is sexist. I think fewer women choose to study and excel at it. The field is open to whomever wants to have a go at it. Due to "corporate diversity policy" I think (as a man) have less of a chance of actually breaking into software engineering than, say, 10 years ago.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      I mean, that doctors and lawyers were substantially less sexist compared to engineers in the 60's and 70's also strikes me as less than plausible, though I'll grant that'd be a closer competition than comparing them to engineers now. Do you have any evidence of an advantage there?
      - foldr 7y ago
        I am talking about relative levels of sexism in the present, not in the 60s and 70s.
        TulliusCicero 7y ago
        But the 60's and 70's are when the representation levels started really diverging. That's the key part. That they may be less sexist now, after having achieved gender parity or something close to it, is hardly unexpected. Of course a field with roughly even numbers is usually going to be less sexist than one dominated by one gender or another.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  the highest levels of sexism I have personally seen are in Finance, followed by construction workers; the highest levels of complaining I have personally seen are in FOSS UnConferences and PhD level academia.
  - foldr 7y ago
    It makes sense that higher levels of complaining would correlate with lower levels of sexism. Things don't usually get fixed unless people complain.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      The rise in complaining has not been correlated with a drop in "sexism", even the kind that is a bit of a stretch.
    - retsibsi 7y ago
      Could be more the other way around: in a really Xist field, there are fewer complaints because a) there are probably fewer [minority group] to complain, b) complaining feels riskier and less likely to achieve anything, c) complaints that do get made are more likely to be quickly shut down rather than amplified.
- naasking 7y ago
  > I don't see how it implies this. Gender disparity fell in those professions, while in roughly the same time frame, gender disparity dramatically increased in STEM. If women could put up with the sexism in those two professions, is it really plausible that sexism is the reason they didn't similarly push into STEM? Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.
  - bigger_cheese 7y ago
    >Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data. I think in general among engineers there is a lot of awareness about sexism and diversity issues but that doesn't always extend to people on the periphery of the engineering world (I'm from non-software engineering world). Tradespeople such a boilermakers, fitters and welders as well as suppliers, technicians etc don't always have the same attitudes. These are people you have to work closely with on engineering projects which are often in remote locations like mines, construction sites etc where management is not typically present (or visible). Attitudes are improving, for example its not common these days to see pornography in site sheds and similar out on construction sites, 10 years ago this was rife, but I still feel culture out on sites is maybe 5 to 10 years behind where it is in the office. My sister and I are both engineers (I'm Chem/materials and she is a mech. eng) the way she gets treated and I am treated there is a noticeable difference. People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world.
    - naasking 7y ago
      > People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world. Absolutely, but the question being debated is whether this is worse in STEM than other professions. Every profession still has strides to make for true equality.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >I don't see how it implies this In the sense that if sexism is the major force that prevented women from going into IT, then the much higher sexism of doctors and lawyers in the 60s and 70s would have prevented women from going into those fields too. But women were far more in those fields then, than they are in IT now.
  - foldr 7y ago
    I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      This is ridiculous, changes in the 60's led to a more gender balanced field, which obviously made for less sexism. Pretending that root causes don't matter isn't helping your case.
      - foldr 7y ago
        Aren't you then acknowledging that as a result, tech now is more sexist than law and medicine? If so, I can't see where we substantially disagree. As I've repeatedly said, I make no claims about why the gender balance shifted in law and medicine in the 60s. You appeared to suggest that this had nothing to do with levels of sexism. I'm skeptical of that claim (broader societal attitudes are important too, not just the sexism level of lawyers and doctors vs. the sexism level of scientists and engineers), but it's not as if either of us has actually researched this in detail. The key point is that tech now is disproportionately sexist, as you appear to acknowledge.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present. The argument is not about that. It's that "Those very sexist 60s/70s fields still had a lot of women going in, more than women in IT today. If women could go into those very sexist fields then, it's not sexism that keeps them out of IT today".
aidenn0 7y ago
Eh, pain is relative. If you think hospitals today are less sexist workplaces than software companies, you might pick med school. I hope that it's clear to most people that there isn't a single reason for the disparity though. People are complicated.
- TulliusCicero 7y ago
  I'm not talking about hospitals today. I'm talking about potential gatekeepers in the 60's and 70's.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    I (and others from looking at some sibling comments) didn't see your comment as being about gatekeepers, but rather about the environment being perceived as unfriendly towards, so women seeking out different fields.

jayd16 7y ago

Implicit bias also guides interests and choice. Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career, not that they were forced out of it. We look to outcome equality to gain some kind of insight into this.

izzydata 7y ago
It sounds like informing everyone that these options exist is part of creating a more equal opportunity. If two people didn't have the same information for available options then there wasn't an equal opportunity.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  I'm not following you. Girls don't know that there's such a thing as programming or Computer Science degrees?
  - izzydata 7y ago
    If they aren't convinced it is a real option than they didn't have the same opportunity. Either way it isn't a problem that can be solved by pushing people into the field to create a more equal ratio.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    It's about internalizing the idea that it's a feasible choice you give actual thought to.
    - jimbokun 7y ago
      How to distinguish between "I didn't know that was a feasible choice for me" and "I know what programming is like and I don't want to do that as a career"? How many girls and women fall into each category?
      - jayd16 7y ago

mixmastamyk 7y ago

s/irregardless/regardless

UncleMeat 7y ago

> I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is. It's currently the number one post.

jxramos 7y ago

I was curious if these terms were formally defined anyplace, looks like there's actually wikipedia articles devoted to them: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity

blaser-waffle 7y ago
They've been defined concepts in social science for a while. Also equality vs equability, etc.

pj_mukh 7y ago

"As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks, creating toxic work environments or harassing people" This is a red herring. If you ask women they won't say their bosses were "jerks" or "toxic" (though a lot of time they are), they'll say they made them "uncomfortable", "un-accommodating". It reminds me of a friend who got pregnant and left the STEM field because the dudes at her office made her feel like she was SUCH a huge drag on them. None of them were jerks, just not accommodating. Its a subtle but substantial difference. "I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is." Actually, its the top comment, the popularity of this opinion among programmers is the crux of the issue. Nobody wants to work at a company where a majority of people think you are "unnatural" or an "outlier" for being there.

y4mi 7y ago
> If you ask women they won't say their bosses were "jerks" or "toxic" Most women I know do exactly that though if you speak with them in a private setting? I'll have to take your word for the rest of your opinion, as I don't know your friend nor her colleagues. I'm a little surprised you expect them to be totally accommodating though. It's a professional setting after all. It's nice if you can create good friendships there, but expecting it is just asking for trouble
- pj_mukh 7y ago
  "Most women I know do exactly that though if you speak with them in a private setting?" Proves my point even more then.

Buldak 7y ago

Practically no one endorses "equality of outcome" in itself. It's a question of whether disparate outcomes evidence disparate opportunities (findings like those in question suggest that they may not).

ajuc 7y ago
Gender quotas are basically enforcing equality of outcome. If the reason for disparity in some trades isn't discrimination but preferences (as this article strongly suggests) - gender quotas make both man and women less happy to satisfy statistics and ideology. It's insane. BTW I wonder if people proposing gender quotas because of pay gap would also support gender quotas in hospitals to fight life expectance gap, and gender quotas in psychiatry to fight suicide percentage gap.
- yibg 7y ago
  Also prison populations. Women are severely under represented there.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

I've seen pretty much both sexes being equally abrasive at work, it's a pretty co-equal trait of the two (plus) sexes.

throwaway09851 7y ago

I am a woman, and this pervasive opinion that women are leaving STEM fields because of toxic behavior feels more sexist to me than anything else. It seems to me that if you have a genuine passion for STEM stuff, it takes a lot more than a bad environment to completely redirect your career path. Every woman I know with a genuine and deep interest in STEM subjects has had to deal with some level of toxic/sexist/whatever stuff in their life, and they persevered and dealt with it because they weren't going to let it get in the way of their passion. It might sound harsh, but I don't feel terribly concerned about keeping these displaced women in STEM; if their interest isn't strong enough to overcome a bad environment, then maybe they just weren't that interested to begin with. That's not a bad thing, it just means that they misjudged the interest:difficulty ratio. Of the cases I know of personally, most of these women ended up in a job working fairly close with STEM stuff, writing manuals, doing graphic design, etc, and are perfectly fine with those jobs. To be clear, I'm not accounting for cases where an entire university or business or whatever is made up of toxic sexism, but that's been pretty uncommon in my experience in the US. Women of STEM: if you've got a bad environment, do something about it! Tell your higher-ups, talk to people directly, seek a different position, endure what you can, and for God's sake stand up for yourself. tl;dr the implication that most women in STEM can't handle a toxic work environment without giving up entirely doesn't seem that progressive at all NB disclaimer, most people I know are computer scientists, plus a few mathematicians, so maybe engineering is different

WalterBright 7y ago
> Every woman I know with a genuine and deep interest in STEM subjects has had to deal with some level of toxic/sexist/whatever stuff in their life, and they persevered and dealt with it because they weren't going to let it get in the way of their passion. I grew up in an era when kids interested in STEM were "nerds" and were harassed, denigrated, and had lower social status. This changed when Bill Gates made his first billion. Suddenly, people realized that STEM was a ticket to the good life. The title of the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" was no accident. A Seattle local comedy show "Almost Live" regularly ran skits about Microsoft engineers being socially inept and unable to get dates. (Of course, the joke turned out to be on Almost Live, as the super wealthy Microsoft engineers transformed the city.) I suppose my point is that men who liked STEM had persevered in spite of the negative image of it.

dwnvoted2hell 7y ago

I too, look forward to being downvoted.

koonsolo 7y ago

I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. "Men are more honest and straightforward, women more jealous and backstabbing". Their words, not mine. But since the whole upheaval of women in workplaces that flowed to Europe from US, I have the feeling that this sentiment has changed.

jholman 7y ago
Agreement in the form of an anecdatum: More than one baby-boomer woman I know has said that every time she has a male boss, things are okay, and every time she has a female boss, the whole office gradually goes insane. I'm in particular thinking of my aunt, working in banks (all of her peers were women), but I've heard it elsewhere too. But then again, it's anecdata. I try not to take it seriously (I mean, I take it seriously about the individual's experience, but not as a description of large-scale patterns). But also when people have just-so stories about how male bosses are toxic to female underlings, I have the same "maybe that was true for you, but I don't see any reason to generalize" reaction.
roenxi 7y ago
That anecdote tells you precisely nothing; women who prefer working in all-female teams, etc, etc, have already been weeded out. Talking to people in the industry is sampling from a population of people who probably don't see a problem regardless of the actual situation.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Quote from the parent comment: > 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. It's not comparing all-male to all-female teams, but all-male to teams with any women. As you say, There are roughly zero all-female teams in tech[1], but the proportion of any-female teams is much much higher. [1] Yes, I know there are teams who have explicitly sought after this for ideological reasons, but theyre a rounding error.
- koonsolo 7y ago

tmh79 7y ago

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument... I think its a lot more complicated than this. Yes, men and women can be jerks. The bigger issues seem to be when a team is 80%+ one gender or another, and the issues aren't about "being mean" the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs. A huge problem is that we have a lot of 6 person tech teams with 5 guys and 1 women and the women naturally feel alienated and either aren't actually able to do well or are at least perceived as not doing well due to their situation. This holds back women's career development as a group and reduces the numbers of women in higher ranks in corporate life.

silveroriole 7y ago
> the women naturally feel alienated Why “naturally”? Is it really natural for men and women to alienate each other just by existing?
- holstvoogd 7y ago
  yes! now get back into your box! ;)
- JohnClark1337 7y ago
  The goal is to categorize and organize humanity in order to achieve absolute equality.
banads 7y ago
The same is true is in fields dominated by women, such as education
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  And lots of people are investing lots of time and effort into trying to fix that problem in education, healthcare, etc.
  - briandear 7y ago

pkghost 7y ago

Downvoted for this: > Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in What?! Equality of outcome, as I've encountered it, is always downstream of individual choice. That is, it's up to the hiring committee to enforce gender parity by selecting from available applicants, and not up to educators or policy-makers to force equal amounts of women to be in STEM. No one has ever, to my knowledge, made the argument the way you represented it (except, ironically, incels calling for mandated marriage). I'd have taken you more seriously if you hadn't straw-manned the shit out of equality of outcome.

tj-teej 7y ago

This article implies that the correlation between gender-opportunity and representation in STEM is a causation. Look at the chart in the article, look at the countries on each end of the opportunity spectrum. There are many obvious economic, societal, and cultural differences between the countries on one side and the other of that spectrum. To take this correlation and use it to forward a sexist idea (that women PREFER different, often worse-paying, fields and that's why there's less women, and thus we don't need to change anything in our industry's culture) is the reason I would downvote this article and the OP's comment.

toxik 7y ago
Please don’t spread moral panic by labeling other people’s worldviews sexist. It does not sell your argument but only serves to polarize the debate. I know a lot of women in tech who feel uncomfortable with all the special treatment they get — entire conferences dedicated to “women in tech.” I find the idea so patronizing, just like I would a “men in daycare” conference. It is an extension of coddling the incapable and meek servile woman. Get out of here.
- foldr 7y ago
  It's not patronizing. We have, e.g., men in nursing conferences (https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference). I don't find that patronizing as a man. It makes sense for a field where men are a minority.
  - toxik 7y ago
    “Looks Like This Domain Isn't Connected To A Website Yet!“ Hm.
    - foldr 7y ago
      https://web.archive.org/web/20191108010658/https://www.aamn.org/2019-annual-conference https://web.archive.org/web/20191108010658/https://www.aamn.... It was up when I posted the comment.

partiallypro 7y ago

I don't understand why modern society doesn't understand/want to believe that men and women have different career interests than men. Men and women value things differently, and it's not all because of society.

yibg 7y ago
Animals have behavioral differences between males and females, I also don't understand why it's so hard to believe that humans will have differences between the genders as well.
smadurange 7y ago
There's a whole lot of people who have studied fields that are irrelevant to today's industry needs and have ended up with no real marketable skill. Various forms of activist movements have money in it. Modern developed societies have solved most of the serious, basic problems making it easier for a group of people to capitalise on solving more lofty problems. I have seen someone who did a degree in communication studies or something like that going after video games for sexism and raise millions for the cause. This trend will probably continue until we have more serious things to worry about. This is very eloquently described in "Fate of empires" by Sir John Glubbs.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  You can just say Anita Sarkeesian, no need to beat around the bush.
  - smadurange 7y ago
    Wasn't beating about the bush. I just forgot her name. Either way, her name wasn't important enough for me to look it up. The point was, someone who has no credentials about gender equality, video games or psychology were raising millions to fix a "problem" outside her expertise.
tarsinge 7y ago
What I don’t understand is the obsession to draw conclusions as soon as possible. We just don’t have the data yet. From my experience developers are still seen as black magicians by other roles. Being initiated is having been a weird unpopular boy which used computer since he was young. It’s slowly starting to change, and maybe real trends will emerge in 20 years, but why the hurry? Our only responsibility is that we provide welcoming environment and equality of opportunity. But I may be missing some US context on the obsession here.

yibg 7y ago

I'm all for equality of opportunity, remove unconscious bias and creating a welcoming environment for all groups, including women. But equality of outcome I think pretty quickly breaks down. If we force 50% of software engineers to be women, we'd pretty quickly run out of women. This cascades as well, as we're not getting gender balance for CS enrollment in colleges either.

rishav_sharan 7y ago

Unrelated to the topic but can you even downvote in HN? I only have an upvote button. Does it have something to do with how much the HN equivalent of karma that you have?

gnicholas 7y ago
Yep, not sure what the current threshold is, but in the past it was 500. You're close!

thrower123 7y ago

Women are unbelievably toxic if they achieve critical mass in a department. I cannot believe the level of petty conflict that my wife endures in her female-dominated PM team; my male-exclusive band of semi-autistic programmers seems like fiddler's green in comparison.

_lacroix 7y ago
Not totally related but being the one socially adept developer on a team of semi-autistic devs is the absolute worst. I was also the only woman but it wasn't the gender ratio that bothered me as I've been on great all-male teams in the past. But my god is it hard to enjoy your workday when you're the only person on the team with social skills and nobody ever wants to talk to you or go out for lunch occasionally!
- hailk 7y ago
  Are you sure it's the lack of social skills? Lot of my male colleagues don't socialize with women at work. They are completely normal outside of work. They just don't want to take risks in today's socio-political climate where any interaction is looked through hyper-deconstructed sexism lens.

SenHeng 7y ago

> I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is. I totally agree with you but I hate that you had to end with that line. It's pointless and simply shuts down any useful discussion and implies that 'you disagree/downvote with me because I'm right'.

Cougher 7y ago
That was my thought as well. I read a good post, then my dominant thought was changed to a negative slant because of an entirely unecessary -- and probably very inaccurate -- note of paranoid self-defense.