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I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people)

I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name. Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it. It would be great if engineering could get to this point.

spangry 6y ago
What country is this? In my country (Australia), the percentage of licensed female architects is around 20%, and this percentage seems to be about the same in the USA and UK. Europe seems a little better with around 30% female representation.
- somewhereoutth 6y ago
  UK. The architecture schools are certainly evenly mixed for students, though I agree this may not yet have fed through to the higher reaches of the profession.
zozbot234 6y ago
Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development. Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.
  - mdorazio 6y ago
    1. It does follow if you add in the money & prestige aspect. For a long time software development was neither lucrative nor prestigious so a lot of men simply weren't interested. As economic expectations for computer science careers grew, so did the number of men. 2. I personally don't find software dev collaborative or social in any meaningful way compared to other careers or industries.
  - pnako 6y ago
    Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries. In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
    - fzeroracer 6y ago
      Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads. So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm. That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).
      - pnako 6y ago
        The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc. The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory Another example: what is the gender balance in pilots versus flight attendants?
- foldr 6y ago
  How is architecture any less about 'things' than software engineering? The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit. Is Facebook not about people? Airbnb? Uber? It may be that these companies, perhaps inadvertently, choose to hire people who don't focus on the people-related aspects of their roles. But it's obvious that empathy and an interest in people would in fact be very useful at many tech companies.
  - pdubs1 6y ago
    >"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit." Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research? Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example: "Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. "Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. "Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. " [1] Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6):859-84 · November 2009 Here's another: "Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. "We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. "Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People." [2] Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. Horm Behav. 2011 Sep; 60(4): 313–317. Published online 2011 Jun 12. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002
    - 6y ago
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Microbiology is “things, not people” and is far more balanced.
  - pas 6y ago
    One counterexample doesn't "disprove" the correlation. (Mostly because the example is in the correlation already, and the correlation holds, plus it's just a correlation.)
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      The comment I responded to very clearly implies that this "things, not people" is the reason for gender imbalance in CS. They are doing far more than identifying a correlation.
      - afiori 6y ago
        That can be one of many factors. The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model", whether microbiology also fits is a different question. Also microbiology is closer to medical field than engineering.
        UncleMeat 6y ago
        > The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model" And there is no evidence provided for this at all.
        pas 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 sorry for crude link to links
dhhwrongagain 6y ago
Damore never claimed women were intrinsically less inclined to engineering. He cited the big five personality trait model as evidence for why engineering culture is not welcoming to women.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Personality traits that are intrinsic, thus suggesting women are intrinsically less inclined to engineering. (Note: I don't agree with the thesis, but that's the implication).
  - pas 6y ago
    I think the good-faith view of this is that Damore claimed that were engineering changed a bit it'd be more appealing to women. So women - according to the thesis - intrinsically less inclined to do SW engineering as currently practiced. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-...
  - dhhwrongagain 6y ago
    No, he explicitly states that women roughly have same average iq as men and are equally competent and capable to do engineering work. OTOH personality traits aren’t distributed equally between men and women. Personality traits don’t impact your ability to do engineering work, but they influence What type of workplace culture / communication protocols in which you can thrive. Damore advocated for making engineering cultures more accommodating to people who have personality traits resembling the distribution that women exhibit.
door99 6y ago
Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women! The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?
- pinkfoot 6y ago
  > The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    Just because something is obvious doesn't make it trivial to fix. A lot like fixing a bug you know exists, but can't fix it because it's never brought in scope. One of the more obvious problems is that software especially seems to have issues with sexual harassment. An example of that can be readily found with Susan Fowler's blogpost about Uber's rotten workplace culture.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    > Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? Techbros. Techbros everywhere. It's not what people want to hear, most people would love it if the field and the educational pipeline leading to it had more professional norms all-around. But it's a real thing. (FWIW, I don't think of Damore as part of the problem, indeed his proposals would help a lot if widely adopted.)
    - thu2111 6y ago
      "Techbros" isn't "a real thing", it's not even a term that means anything. It's just an insult and not even an effective one; what exactly is it meant to imply? A "bro" (young man?) works in tech? So what? This is why so many men are coming to realise that feminism is propaganda. Someone asks a reasonable question - how exactly is this industry unfriendly to women? It's a simple question, it should be easy to answer. The response is some meaningless schoolyard name calling? There's no discrimination against women in our industry, only discrimination against men and the men who point it out.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throw0101a 6y ago
> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it. It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus: > Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait).[15] Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.[1][14] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber#Course_of_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... He argued that if Google wanted to change the gender balance in their engineering divisions, they had to change the types of things that can be worked on: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory Google wants more women in engineering (which isn't a bad thing), but do they have a similar program for getting more men into HR? As to gender balance in professions: are there initiatives to get more men into nursing or kindergarten / primary education, and women into plumbing or carpentry?
- hpcjoe 6y ago
  There are economic factors associated with being a primary educator. The pay, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks. This impacts men and women. My wife and I went through Physics grad school together. To say that the experience was hostile for her, and many other women, would be an understatement. My daughter is contemplating grad school for next year (senior in college, its been an interesting year). We've been open/honest about the challenges she'll face in Physics, but the state of things is much better now than it was when we went through 30 years ago (ouch). Given that she runs circles around most of her fellow students, I'm not the least bit worried on the academic side. My concern, as all fathers of exceptional daughters should be (I guess that's all of us?) is the cultural aspects of programs, and potential jobs. I use the word "place" below to discuss grad school and/or jobs. If the place is overtly hostile, its a hard pass. No need to waste time with that. Think Uber, and other tech-bro places. If the place is passive aggressive hostile, there are strategies to cope, but again, biased towards pass. Passive aggressive hostility wears on you. If the place is open, and sane. Worth a look. Think about the economic aspect of this. You the enlightened consumer/producer of product (grad school, job) have more information than ever about the quality of life at these places. If a place is just bad, they will lose at attracting sufficient consumers/producers of producers. Which means they will have lower ability to operate in market. Bigger picture. Women are not intrinsically less able to do quantitative or analytical work. Environments that are not conducive to them doing this work will tend to depress the population of them doing this work. Environments which are freer from these stresses will tend to accumulate population doing this work. I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.
milankovic 6y ago
Why would that be great? And what the hell does "the profession is richer for it" even mean? Satisfaction of the practitioners in the field? You surely agree that this is not the only valid possible metric here. And not even the only way to achieve such ends. Has it ever occurred to you, that maybe, just maybe, there are promises made, but they actually have no base in reality? As in, is a whole profession really better off? Have you ever seen even one shred of evidence, that there are tangible benefits, better results in the end, or something? Always funny to me how easily critical thinking gets thrown out of the window by persons who one would expect that they should know better.
thestu 6y ago
This post does the best job that I've seen of laying out the 'less inclined' argument: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. We have to have this discussion is virtue signalers and far leftists keep spewing lies. > It would be great if engineering could get to this point. If it were, then it would mean that a significant number of women are forced into the field out of poverty or familial pressure. "Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... We have decades of research on this already. The wealthier a nation is and more equal a nation is, the greater the disparity in STEM. "What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at."

spangry 6y ago

What country is this? In my country (Australia), the percentage of licensed female architects is around 20%, and this percentage seems to be about the same in the USA and UK. Europe seems a little better with around 30% female representation.

somewhereoutth 6y ago
UK. The architecture schools are certainly evenly mixed for students, though I agree this may not yet have fed through to the higher reaches of the profession.

zozbot234 6y ago

Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

fzeroracer 6y ago
That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development. Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  1. It does follow if you add in the money & prestige aspect. For a long time software development was neither lucrative nor prestigious so a lot of men simply weren't interested. As economic expectations for computer science careers grew, so did the number of men. 2. I personally don't find software dev collaborative or social in any meaningful way compared to other careers or industries.
- pnako 6y ago
  Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries. In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
  - fzeroracer 6y ago
    Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads. So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm. That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).
    - pnako 6y ago
      The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc. The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".
throw0101a 6y ago
> If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory Another example: what is the gender balance in pilots versus flight attendants?
foldr 6y ago
How is architecture any less about 'things' than software engineering? The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit. Is Facebook not about people? Airbnb? Uber? It may be that these companies, perhaps inadvertently, choose to hire people who don't focus on the people-related aspects of their roles. But it's obvious that empathy and an interest in people would in fact be very useful at many tech companies.
- pdubs1 6y ago
  >"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit." Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research? Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example: "Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. "Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. "Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. " [1] Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6):859-84 · November 2009 Here's another: "Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People. "We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure. "Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People." [2] Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. Horm Behav. 2011 Sep; 60(4): 313–317. Published online 2011 Jun 12. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002
  - 6y ago
UncleMeat 6y ago
Microbiology is “things, not people” and is far more balanced.
- pas 6y ago
  One counterexample doesn't "disprove" the correlation. (Mostly because the example is in the correlation already, and the correlation holds, plus it's just a correlation.)
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    The comment I responded to very clearly implies that this "things, not people" is the reason for gender imbalance in CS. They are doing far more than identifying a correlation.
    - afiori 6y ago
      That can be one of many factors. The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model", whether microbiology also fits is a different question. Also microbiology is closer to medical field than engineering.
      - UncleMeat 6y ago
        > The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model" And there is no evidence provided for this at all.
        pas 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 sorry for crude link to links

dhhwrongagain 6y ago

Damore never claimed women were intrinsically less inclined to engineering. He cited the big five personality trait model as evidence for why engineering culture is not welcoming to women.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Personality traits that are intrinsic, thus suggesting women are intrinsically less inclined to engineering. (Note: I don't agree with the thesis, but that's the implication).
- pas 6y ago
  I think the good-faith view of this is that Damore claimed that were engineering changed a bit it'd be more appealing to women. So women - according to the thesis - intrinsically less inclined to do SW engineering as currently practiced. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-...
- dhhwrongagain 6y ago
  No, he explicitly states that women roughly have same average iq as men and are equally competent and capable to do engineering work. OTOH personality traits aren’t distributed equally between men and women. Personality traits don’t impact your ability to do engineering work, but they influence What type of workplace culture / communication protocols in which you can thrive. Damore advocated for making engineering cultures more accommodating to people who have personality traits resembling the distribution that women exhibit.

door99 6y ago

Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women! The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?

pinkfoot 6y ago
> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  Just because something is obvious doesn't make it trivial to fix. A lot like fixing a bug you know exists, but can't fix it because it's never brought in scope. One of the more obvious problems is that software especially seems to have issues with sexual harassment. An example of that can be readily found with Susan Fowler's blogpost about Uber's rotten workplace culture.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? Techbros. Techbros everywhere. It's not what people want to hear, most people would love it if the field and the educational pipeline leading to it had more professional norms all-around. But it's a real thing. (FWIW, I don't think of Damore as part of the problem, indeed his proposals would help a lot if widely adopted.)
  - thu2111 6y ago
    "Techbros" isn't "a real thing", it's not even a term that means anything. It's just an insult and not even an effective one; what exactly is it meant to imply? A "bro" (young man?) works in tech? So what? This is why so many men are coming to realise that feminism is propaganda. Someone asks a reasonable question - how exactly is this industry unfriendly to women? It's a simple question, it should be easy to answer. The response is some meaningless schoolyard name calling? There's no discrimination against women in our industry, only discrimination against men and the men who point it out.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throw0101a 6y ago

> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it. It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus: > Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait).[15] Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.[1][14] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber#Course_of_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... He argued that if Google wanted to change the gender balance in their engineering divisions, they had to change the types of things that can be worked on: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory Google wants more women in engineering (which isn't a bad thing), but do they have a similar program for getting more men into HR? As to gender balance in professions: are there initiatives to get more men into nursing or kindergarten / primary education, and women into plumbing or carpentry?

hpcjoe 6y ago
There are economic factors associated with being a primary educator. The pay, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks. This impacts men and women. My wife and I went through Physics grad school together. To say that the experience was hostile for her, and many other women, would be an understatement. My daughter is contemplating grad school for next year (senior in college, its been an interesting year). We've been open/honest about the challenges she'll face in Physics, but the state of things is much better now than it was when we went through 30 years ago (ouch). Given that she runs circles around most of her fellow students, I'm not the least bit worried on the academic side. My concern, as all fathers of exceptional daughters should be (I guess that's all of us?) is the cultural aspects of programs, and potential jobs. I use the word "place" below to discuss grad school and/or jobs. If the place is overtly hostile, its a hard pass. No need to waste time with that. Think Uber, and other tech-bro places. If the place is passive aggressive hostile, there are strategies to cope, but again, biased towards pass. Passive aggressive hostility wears on you. If the place is open, and sane. Worth a look. Think about the economic aspect of this. You the enlightened consumer/producer of product (grad school, job) have more information than ever about the quality of life at these places. If a place is just bad, they will lose at attracting sufficient consumers/producers of producers. Which means they will have lower ability to operate in market. Bigger picture. Women are not intrinsically less able to do quantitative or analytical work. Environments that are not conducive to them doing this work will tend to depress the population of them doing this work. Environments which are freer from these stresses will tend to accumulate population doing this work. I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment.

milankovic 6y ago

Why would that be great? And what the hell does "the profession is richer for it" even mean? Satisfaction of the practitioners in the field? You surely agree that this is not the only valid possible metric here. And not even the only way to achieve such ends. Has it ever occurred to you, that maybe, just maybe, there are promises made, but they actually have no base in reality? As in, is a whole profession really better off? Have you ever seen even one shred of evidence, that there are tangible benefits, better results in the end, or something? Always funny to me how easily critical thinking gets thrown out of the window by persons who one would expect that they should know better.

thestu 6y ago

This post does the best job that I've seen of laying out the 'less inclined' argument: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. We have to have this discussion is virtue signalers and far leftists keep spewing lies. > It would be great if engineering could get to this point. If it were, then it would mean that a significant number of women are forced into the field out of poverty or familial pressure. "Some would say that the gender STEM gap occurs not because girls can’t do science, but because they have other alternatives, based on their strengths in verbal skills,” she said. “In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less." https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... We have decades of research on this already. The wealthier a nation is and more equal a nation is, the greater the disparity in STEM. "What’s more, the countries that minted the most female college graduates in fields like science, engineering, or math were also some of the least gender-equal countries. They posit that this is because the countries that empower women also empower them, indirectly, to pick whatever career they’d enjoy most and be best at."