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Contrary to a popular straw man, few people deny that men and women are different in some respects. The point is that there is no reason to think that these dif
by foldr 7y ago
Contrary to a popular straw man, few people deny that men and women are different in some respects. The point is that there is no reason to think that these differences should, in a healthy culture, put women off becoming programmers, or make them less capable of doing a good job.
- milankovic 7y agoBut maybe they are? I mean, if you agree on differences ("in some respects"), how can you then seriously expect to not see any differences in outcome at the end?
- spangry 7y agoSure, and that's not an argument I'd make. But, as Damore suggested in his memo, mightn't these innate differences mean that women are less likely, on average, to prefer careers in software engineering? And mightn't these innate differences also explain why women are strongly over-represented in certain other professions like nursing (91%), elementary and middle school teaching (81%) and social work (80%)?
- foldr 7y agoAny difference between two things might turn out to be responsible for some other difference between the two things. Perhaps men are better at software engineering because they're taller. Perhaps women don't enjoy programming because they have breasts. It is pointless -- and in this context, often harmful -- to speculate.
- spangry 7y agoSo, because the cause is uncertain, we should not discuss female under-representation in software development at all?
- foldr 7y agoI don't think that the cause is uncertain. Broadly speaking, the cause is sexism. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence whatever for a biological cause, and it is harmful to speculate wildly on biological causes in the absence of evidence.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoThere is far more evidence for biological causes than there is for sexism.
- foldr 7y agoIf you look closely, there is very little evidence for biological causes. There are many alleged biological differences which are alleged to be relevant, but rarely, if ever, evidence for a causal link.
- fastball 7y agoThis seems like a strange argument, given the start to this entire subthread ("women used to be the majority"). Let me get this straight: 1. Most women were programmers. 2. Women aren't sexist, so they let men in. 3. Men overwhelmed the women. 4. Men are sexist, so they stopped letting women in. 5. Now we need to deliberately reverse the results of stage (4). Is that the sequence of events as you see it?
- foldr 7y agoYou have 1 the wrong way round. Women would not have been in charge of hiring, so no to 2. (The programming jobs men were hired for would likely not have been considered the same kind of job.) Not sure what you mean by 3. Roughly yes to 4, although the issue is systematic sexism, not the personal prejudices of men and women. Society in general, including many women, disapproved of women becoming programmers once it began to be seen as a high-status high-skill profession. Yes to 5, with the preceding caveats.
- fastball 7y ago
- pydry 7y ago>Damore suggested in his memo, mightn't these innate differences mean that women are less likely, on average, to prefer careers in software engineering? As far as I understood it, this wasn't the bit of the memo that people were attacking.