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I notice that Engineering and Math/CS are still heavily male-dominated, though. So are these departments particularly hostile to women, or are women less inter
by jfk13 5y ago
I notice that Engineering and Math/CS are still heavily male-dominated, though.
So are these departments particularly hostile to women, or are women less interested in pursuing these subjects? If so -- in either case, actually -- why might that be?
- JohnWhigham 5y agoare women less interested in pursuing these subjects? This has always been the case. Just as men are less likely to be nurses/grade school teachers, they don't play to each sex's strengths. And that's ok
- ghaff 5y ago"Preferences" is probably a better term than "strengths" in that context though that doesn't really say anything about root causes.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoUnfortunately HR departments just look at the employment statistics and decide that the numbers need to be 50/50, for some reason. Well they do at my work place anyway.
- nicoburns 5y agoThere may be an effect like this, but it’s worth noting that you don’t see these biases in the same way in single-sex high schools, which would indicate a high degree of social norms influencing things.
- danShumway 5y agoThis ignores many of the larger historical trends in fields like computing: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmi... It can often be a surprising exercise to look at the history of fields that are supposed to play to "natural" gender strengths and examine how they've evolved over time. > As computer scientist Dr. Grace Hopper told a reporter, programming was "just like planning a dinner. You have to plan ahead and schedule everything so that it's ready when you need it... Women are 'naturals' at computer programming." James Adams, the director of education for the Association for Computing Machinery, agreed: "I don’t know of any other field, outside of teaching, where there's as much opportunity for a woman." Swap out some of the specifics, and the general tone of argument hasn't changed much since back then. It's just that we've now decided to substitute in other "obvious" conclusions about who is suited for which jobs.
- TheFreim 5y agoI don't have any specific criticisms but I do think it's relevant to point out that the nature of things like computing, and other subjects, changed over time. To say computing is the same today as it was back then would be an error (not trying to insinuate you say otherwise, just believe it's important to note).
- danShumway 5y agoI agree in general, but my understanding is that if anything the technical challenges that people point out today as attracting analytical male brains were even harder in the past. The earliest computer programs were written by hand without access to the computers themselves. I don't think programming was a field that used to be about people skills and slowly morphed into something analytic and technical today, programming today seems to me to be much more user-friendly and social.
- snek_case 5y ago> As computer scientist Dr. Grace Hopper told a reporter, programming was "just like planning a dinner. I have no doubt that Grace Hopper turned out to be a great programmer and made many great contributions to the field, but it turns out she was in the army, and she was ordered to go work on a computing effort, it wasn't her choice: "In 1944, Lt. Grace Hopper was ordered to report to Harvard University to work on the Mark I, the behemoth digital computer that had been conceived by Harvard's Howard" The idea that there may be some natural differences in preferences (things that interest you the most) between men and women is controversial for some reason, but this idea shouldn't be seen as sexist. If it turns out that men really are more drawn to engineering (on average, this is obviously not true for everyone) because of some underlying biological development factors, shouldn't we try to understand why? Being more drawn to engineering doesn't mean you're automatically better at it. It just means you're probably more likely to go into the field and more likely to spend long hours studying it. Right now the politically correct thing to do is to just reject that hypothesis and insist that all of these differences have to be nurture. I mean, why spend precious capital studying these things when we've already decided what is the correct answer, right?
- czbond 5y agoI fear your comment will be downvoted once the "this is HN, but I'll act like it is Reddit" crew arrive because you hurt someones feelings.
- mywittyname 5y agoI know a few male nurses, and it's still a profession where men are somewhat looked down upon. There's nothing about nursing that is gender-specific (except that being large & strong is an asset at times). But for some reason, a male nurse is seen as someone who wasn't good enough to be a doctor.
- 908B64B197 5y ago> a male nurse is seen as someone who wasn't good enough to be a doctor. With advanced degrees becoming more and more common, it's also more and more likely the nurse seeing you has the same number of years of schooling as the doctor.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoIn the UK, experienced NHS nurses can be better than doctors. I don't think anyone looks down on nurses in the UK if they have spent anytime in hospital.
- mywittyname 5y agoI'm coming from a USA perspective. It's great to hear that this non-sense is no prevalent everywhere.
- fsckboy 5y ago>There's nothing about nursing that is gender-specific There is everything about nursing that is gender specific. Men are interested in things, women are interested in people https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19883140/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19883140/
- mywittyname 5y agoSo do you think other medical professions are also gender specific and should be heavily weighted towards women? Because they aren't. Physicians skew male, yet, physicians deal with people! Why is it different when a woman is taking vitals and walking through a diagnostic checklist than when a man is doing it? Is there something special about being a women that makes the better at drawing blood or placing IVs?
- rrose 5y agoit may be true that women are and always have been less interested in pursuing STEM subjects, but it is basically impossible to draw any conclusions about each sex's "strengths" from that fact. The tech world is notoriously unwelcoming to women, tons of unconscious biases push women away from STEM, societal pressure/general atmosphere tends to encourage women to focus on things other than their career, etc. In light of all that it is hard to say whether women don't want to get into STEM because of some natural disinclination, or simply because all of these other things make STEM less desirable for them.
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- grimjack00 5y agoOr are women not pursuing those fields because of the _impression_ that they are hostile.
- ajkjk 5y agoProbably some of both, but it seems empirically true that men are more likely to be interested in these from a relatively young age, at least the way society is structured right now. By that I mean: there were way more 'nerdy' boys than girls in every school I attended growing up, and those tend to be the ranks that feed the math/CS/engineering programs.
- ghaff 5y agoAnd many people (reasonably IMO) also observe that, more or less uniquely outside of the arts, CS (or programming really) at the university level often seems to assume prior background. It's not a hard prerequisite but programs at better universities that I've seen don't seem to be designed for people who go into college and decide to dip their toe into CS for more or less the first time. The evidence is that the percentage of women in CS programs started declining pretty much in line with home computing and gaming started to become common.
- ajkjk 5y agofwiw there are a few people who dip their toes in at that point, and sometimes it works. In fact in my program I think most of the women in the field got in that way (especially because the department was heavily advertising to women -- and really just to anyone who wasn't already into it). The bigger issue, though, I think is that computer-savviness is such a.. skill ... that it's super hard to get _really_ good at it in a college degree; you need to be heavily computer-literate already to excel. Not as a rule exactly: these days, anyone reasonable savvy person can learn CS well enough to be employed in tech and any math-savvy person can certainly end up in CS research. But it is, I think, _super_ hard to start learning programming in college and actually end up good at _low_-level computing like Kernel/Systems level stuff, which really requires like total immersion in the space, similar to learning a language by living in the country. In my program this meant that the really technical classes were filled with the students who came in already very computer-literate and into programming, and they tended to be 90+% male.
- ghaff 5y ago
- tptacek 5y agoMath and CS are not the same thing. CS skews sharply male; mathematics significantly less so. That's borne out in the stats (there's like a 10-15% gap between CS and mathematics in PhDs), but you also notice it immediately if you've been to academic CS conferences (very male) and academic cryptography conferences (lots more women).
- Jensson 5y agoCS is basically an engineering degree. They are mostly focused on learning how to build things with a few theoretical courses as a foundation. There are fully theoretical CS degrees out there, but that isn't the norm. Look at Stanford for example, one of the top rated schools in the world on this subject, and you can graduate with less theory courses than a typical engineer has to take. So you'd expect CS to have a gender balance similar to most engineer degrees, which is what we see. https://cs.stanford.edu/degrees/undergrad/Requirements.shtml https://cs.stanford.edu/degrees/undergrad/Requirements.shtml Edit: Just want to note that I am not correcting you on this, just noting the difference between the subjects.
- tptacek 5y agoChem is also generally taken as an applied science degree, and it's even closer to gender parity, so that argument doesn't really seem to hold up.
- Jensson 5y agoThere are exceptions within engineering, yes. But it is mostly related to what you are building, chemical engineering is closely related to medicine, and women like medicine so it has better gender parity. In the degrees where you build/program things that moves you see more men. In order to bridge that gap you'd need to tie programming to something women love as much as men loves working on machines that has moving parts. Edit: And I've seen CS degree variants with heavy UX focus that tends to get 50/50 gender balance. It is really easy to shift gender balance in degrees this way, just shift it more to humans and you get more women, more to moving things and you get more men.
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- szastamasta 5y agoI think that big part of it is due to women being not really interested in tech. I’m pretty sure there’s some hostility there, but never seen anything particularly bad or on a big scale. All women I worked and studied with never really complained on gender discrimination (while quite openly complaining on other things :). On the other side my wife always say, that if she would have job like I have she would shoot herself. It looks like the most boring thing on earth. And you always have all these issues and bugs to fix. Nothing ever works as expected… She also never really wants to tinker with stuff. When something is broken, she just wants it fixed. Also from what I’ve read, the most ‘equal’ countries in the world are nowhere near 50/50 distribution. So while we should fight all discrimination and try to give access to education to everyone. I think we should also respect, that people have different interests and don’t pressure them to pursue career they don’t really want. Just so we have 50/50 distribution that ideal world should have.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoTotally agree. Men and women's brains work differently, and therefore have vastly different interests. No matter how much I tried to get my daughter into "boy stuff", she would just want the pink pretty things, even from a very young age. Growing up she spent most of her time with her male cousins, so it's not like she wasn't exposed to lots of boy's toys. Not that I mind get being into girly things... In fact it is pretty awesome :)
- Ansil849 5y agoCan't tell if this comment is missing a /s tag.
- CodeGlitch 5y agoJust speaking from experience :) Not sure why people find this idea so controversial - it's not a bad thing that men and women are different.
- Ansil849 5y ago
- yardie 5y agoWell I was in an engineering class where the professor said to the female students, "you shouldn't be taking this class because you are taking up valuable space from better engineers." Shortly after he was forced to retire. This was early 00s. Even if those departments aren't hostile to women now they were hardly welcoming to them in the past. Engineering and CS have the perception of being hostile to women in a way that other science departments (biology, math, even physics) do not.
- isitdopamine 5y agoThat’s a very inappropriate comment and the professor who made it must be reprehended. However, in order to get a PhD you must face much harder challenges. Whoever left engineering because of that comment is not fit for a PhD.
- nineplay 5y agoDespite what a lot of people believe, girls in the US still are given the message that engineering, computers, and hard sciences aren't 'right' for them. Things are slowly changing but its not there yet, not when most of the population of the UI also thinks girls aren't suited to these professions. HN, by and large, also happily insists that men are naturally better than women at logical thinking. You'll see it all over this thread. It's not hard to challenge this belief once one starts looking outside the US. We had female poster here, a couple of months ago, who said that in Gaza the computer science courses were 60-70% female. It's hard to reconcile that with hand-wavey statements about 'brain chemicals' so it's easy to ignore.
- Manuel_D 5y agoI went to elementary school in the 1990s and middle and high school in the 2000s. I was heavily into math, science, and technology since elementary school. There was extensive messaging and outreach trying to get girls and women into these interests. The lack of women in these fields was despite extensive resources trying to appeal to them, and it's been this way for at least several decades. The disparity with places like the middle east is an example of the gender equality paradox [1]. The more patriarchal and oppressive a place is, the greater women's interest are in high paying fields as it provides a path to security and independence. In more egalitarian societies, women are more free to pursue fields in accordance with their own iterests. 1. 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...
- nineplay 5y agoI've got a girl in public school right now. I've seen the outreach programs and they're pathetic. To start with, they start with the belief that they need to reach out only to girls. Guess what - if the boys don't think the girls can do science and math than there are still a lot of problems to overcome. Easy example - any girl who started reading the HN message boards at a young age would probably give up on a future career in engineering. Why try when a bunch of educated men don't think you can succeed? The article is interesting but not definitive. Even granting ( which I wouldn't ) that girls have a greater aptitude for reading instead of science and math, being a good _engineer_ is also about being a good reader. If boys are naturally better at math, that doesn't at all mean they are better professionals. If they can't read the instructions for using Vivado to design firmware, than they are in the wrong profession.
- isitdopamine 5y ago> why might that be Man and women having different interests had innate, biological roots. It has been observed in children only a few weeks old. I am not saying this explains the whole imbalance, but for sure it can explain part of it.