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> 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. There are
by speedplane 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.
There are far more male bosses than female bosses. Accordingly, assuming bad bosses are relatively rare, it's far more likely every female boss you've ever had is awful than every male boss you've ever had is awful. This is just probability.
Let's take an example. Suppose 10% of bosses are awful, regardless of gender. Further suppose that due historical societal reasons, only 20% of bosses are female. If you've had 3 different bosses in your career, there's a far likelier chance that every female boss you've had is awful (3.94%) than every male boss you've had is awful (1.4%). (I'll leave it as an exercise to derive these numbers).
So, even if men and women are just as likely to be awful, you're nearly 3 times as likely for all of your female bosses to be awful than all of your male bosses to be awful simply due to the fact that women are under-represented.
This probability may explain at least some of this common and sad bias against female bosses.
- westoncb 7y agoSomeone want to break down how to calculate the odds here?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kilotaras 7y agoAssuming gender has no impact on awfulness P(all your female bossses awful) = P(awful boss)^(number of female bosses) P(all your male bossses awful) = P(awful boss)^(number of male bosses) The lower the number of male/female bosses, the greater the probability of all of them being awful. The opposite (probability of all of them being not awful) increasing is also true. This is generally known as a small numbers fallacy[1] https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Philosophy/Book%3A_Introduction_to_Logic_and_Critical_Thinking_(van_Cleave)/03%3A_Evaluating_Inductive_Arguments_and_Probabilistic_and_Statistical_Fallacies/3.08%3A_The_Small_Numbers_Fallacy https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Philosophy/Book%3A_...
- wutbrodo 7y agoGP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur
- speedplane 7y ago> GP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur It doesn't matter if it's bosses or co-workers, the math works out the same.
- wutbrodo 7y agoNo, it doesn't. It would require all-male teams to be substantially more common than teams with 1 or more women. It's not clear to me that this is the case (it's very much not my experience: 1/6 teams I've worked on have been women-free).
- speedplane 7y ago> 1/6 teams I've worked on have been women-free If your average team size is 5 people, then on average, the gender breakdown in your company is 72% male/28% female. I assumed 80/20, so yeah, it's still pretty accurate.
- manfredo 7y agoThis doesn't hold up to scrutiny, since the opposite situation would also occur. People are also nearly 3 times as like for all of your female bosses to have been good, and exclusively had bad male bosses. If fact, if 10% of bosses are awful then there will be far more people who have exclusively had good female bosses than bad female bosses.