14 ms·

There seem to be more women in QA in general. Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism?

by lexapro 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
havblue 4y ago
I think QA is inherently unpopular. "Oh God are you really going to make me document this before you sign off???"
lyaa 4y ago
At least partly. When I was starting out, I would apply to dev positions only to get offers to interview for lower-paid QA positions. After changing to a gender-neutral nickname and removing all female-identifying terms from my resume, I got the interviews for dev positions.
- walkhour 4y ago
  You claim "at least partly" and then proceed to prove it with anecdotal evidence. You'd need to prove it with a study similar to the ones that send identical CVs to companies, just changing one thing, which is what they want to discover if there's bias against.
  - caente 4y ago
    I think anecdotal evidence is almost literally what "partly" means.
    - walkhour 4y ago
      Obviously not, see my other comment. Anecdotal evidence is part of the evidence, it doesn't allow you to claim part of the explanation is your anecdotal evidence.
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    No. A single anecdote is sufficient to merit "at least partly." You can say it's not generally proved. But it also wasn't a universal claim.
    - walkhour 4y ago
      At least partly means part of the explanation is what follows. Not that there's at least single case of what follows in the world. Do you realize how absurd language would be if what you claim is true? For example: - Is is true latino men are discriminated against when applying for florist positions? - Yes, it happened once. Literally any group would be "party discriminated" in every possible scenario according to how you define "at least partly".
      - yarrel 4y ago
        Every number is a number, including zero. Therefore some number of members of any given group have been discriminated against. Therefore any group is indeed discriminated against. You can't argue with objective mathematical proof. Slightly more seriously, if someone is discriminated against for being part of a group, you don't get to appeal to the fallacy of composition applied to all groups in order to claim that there is no discrimination against that individual. Yes, yes, you're not actually writing out that argument, you're just leaving its ingredients lying around next to a naked flame. Entirely seriously, here is your proof: https://www.r-bloggers.com/2019/12/modeling-salary-and-gender-in-the-tech-industry/ https://www.r-bloggers.com/2019/12/modeling-salary-and-gende... Now switch to some other attempt at distraction via reducio of the actual argument.
  - vijaybritto 4y ago
    The onus is on the victims. Hmm, this sounds very familiar..
    - walkhour 4y ago
      Hmmm yes, we can't just make universal rules out of personal experiences, this sounds very familiar.
  - lyaa 4y ago
    I am not obliged to defend every statement I make with a study for my thoughts and experiences to be worth sharing. Also, anecdotal evidence is evidence. Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to think. In any case, I have done the five minutes of googling you seem to want. Biases in evaluating resumes based on gender and other such factors are not new nor unknown: here is an early study from 1986[1], 1988[2], 1999[3], 2001[4], 2007[5]. Feel free to visit google scholar and look more studies by yourself. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103186900466 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103186... [2] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.55.2.178 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.5... [3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698 [4] https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-4537.00239 https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-4... [5] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007
    - walkhour 4y ago
      You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out it's not proven your personal experience proves discrimination is part of the explanation. None of those studies support your original claim. They support the more broader claim that women are discriminated in the job market. > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to think. Sorry, a single data point, by itself, when you share it attempting to generalize, is worse than worthless, since it can be terribly misleading.
      - lyaa 4y ago
        Do you not see the logical link by which these more general studies contextualize and support my earlier statements?
        walkhour 4y ago
        I see why you may think that way, but I don't think you're right. I guess for you it's a given QA jobs are "inferior" to SWE jobs. I guess you believe the articles you linked proof women tend to get "inferior" jobs just because they're women? (I haven't read the articles, although I believe this to be true). I just can't make the jump that this applies to QA jobs (granting they are "inferior"). That would imply "inferior" jobs are always overrepresented by women, and there are counterexamples to this, by almost any definition of "inferior".
dahart 4y ago
> Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism? One way to look at it is that the disparity may be a symptom of complicated cultural biases, and we may not know the specific reasons. Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, then if the disparity actually is measurable and widespread, it does reveal cultural bias. This is currently true for nurses and for elementary school teachers in the US, for example. It’s important to note that this can happen without individuals who have any overtly “sexist” behavior at all. It can be the result of cultural attitudes and not prejudiced hiring practices. This is why using the word “sexism” on it’s own might not be the best word for it, even if it’s technically true. Perhaps better terms are “cultural sexism”, or “cultural bias”. I’m sure there are better terms. The problem with using the bare word “sexism” is it tends to be accusatory and out people on the defensive, where the issue may literally be with all of us.
- burrows 4y ago
  > Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, How do you know this to be true? > cultural bias What definition are you using for this term?
  - vijaybritto 4y ago
    >> How do you know this to be true? Goto LinkedIn and search for QA engineers in Indian cities. I think that should be a very good proof for you
    - burrows 4y ago
      Searching LinkedIn will show me that “there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA”?
  - dahart 4y ago
    The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not been any point in time where we can demonstrate it’s gone, precisely because we have evidence it’s not gone yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between schooling and employment still exist, etc.) We know for a fact that bias hasn’t been completely eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not settled, and they are not the same from country to country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is affecting today’s distributions. You can’t even reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job depends on sex or gender until after you’ve eliminated cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as gender based preferences. This page for cultural bias is as good any any other definition for my purposes here, which was purely to say that “cultural bias” is less inflammatory than “sexism”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias
walkhour 4y ago
The truth is that there are no studies (that I'm aware of) that research into whether there's sexism in QA. So the answers to your question are going to be filled with speculation.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  There's no sexism until I see a study, and I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. Doing a study at all when there are no previous studies would be a clear case of anti-male bias.
  - walkhour 4y ago
    > I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. Presumably you wouldn't know without a study, thus you do the study.
drewcoo 4y ago
Yes. Institutional sexism. Often perpetuated by women as well as men, so this isn't man-blaming. And having a few token women in dev doesn't change the situation so much as it cements the status quo in place.
chowells 4y ago
Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism. However, a lot of people seem to think that describing reality is an insult to them, so I have to explain further - this is a result of systemic sexism starting at early childhood. It starts with what toys children are given to play with. It continues via socialization in schools. It's propagated via every surprised face when a woman shows up to learn about technology. No individual person involved in the process might have any malice at all. It's the result of entire systems of behavior, no individual part of which can be described as "the problem". You might call it systemic sexism. You don't have to be able to explain the entire method of operation to see the result. Is there a statistical difference in outcomes between groups that isn't explained by a difference between the groups? Then there's a systemic bias at work.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  >Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism. Car mechanics aren't all women, even though women's hands fit much better into all those tiny spaces in the dashboard and engine bay? Sexism Nurses aren't overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that a significant part of the job is wrangling patients, who overwhelmingly skew obese? Sexism
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Your point here is unintelligible for me.
    - QuarterReptile 4y ago
      I was trying to show by example that grandparent's definition of sexism is ridiculously expansive to the point of choking out all other dimensions of life. I chose them as two things that don't often get cited as evidence of sexism (though mechanic isn't so dirty a job, and isn't dangerous at all. I have more personal awareness if mechanics, so that's what I chose.)

There seem to be more women in QA in general. Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

havblue 4y ago

I think QA is inherently unpopular. "Oh God are you really going to make me document this before you sign off???"

lyaa 4y ago

At least partly. When I was starting out, I would apply to dev positions only to get offers to interview for lower-paid QA positions. After changing to a gender-neutral nickname and removing all female-identifying terms from my resume, I got the interviews for dev positions.

walkhour 4y ago
You claim "at least partly" and then proceed to prove it with anecdotal evidence. You'd need to prove it with a study similar to the ones that send identical CVs to companies, just changing one thing, which is what they want to discover if there's bias against.
- caente 4y ago
  I think anecdotal evidence is almost literally what "partly" means.
  - walkhour 4y ago
    Obviously not, see my other comment. Anecdotal evidence is part of the evidence, it doesn't allow you to claim part of the explanation is your anecdotal evidence.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  No. A single anecdote is sufficient to merit "at least partly." You can say it's not generally proved. But it also wasn't a universal claim.
  - walkhour 4y ago
    At least partly means part of the explanation is what follows. Not that there's at least single case of what follows in the world. Do you realize how absurd language would be if what you claim is true? For example: - Is is true latino men are discriminated against when applying for florist positions? - Yes, it happened once. Literally any group would be "party discriminated" in every possible scenario according to how you define "at least partly".
    - yarrel 4y ago
      Every number is a number, including zero. Therefore some number of members of any given group have been discriminated against. Therefore any group is indeed discriminated against. You can't argue with objective mathematical proof. Slightly more seriously, if someone is discriminated against for being part of a group, you don't get to appeal to the fallacy of composition applied to all groups in order to claim that there is no discrimination against that individual. Yes, yes, you're not actually writing out that argument, you're just leaving its ingredients lying around next to a naked flame. Entirely seriously, here is your proof: https://www.r-bloggers.com/2019/12/modeling-salary-and-gender-in-the-tech-industry/ https://www.r-bloggers.com/2019/12/modeling-salary-and-gende... Now switch to some other attempt at distraction via reducio of the actual argument.
- vijaybritto 4y ago
  The onus is on the victims. Hmm, this sounds very familiar..
  - walkhour 4y ago
    Hmmm yes, we can't just make universal rules out of personal experiences, this sounds very familiar.
- lyaa 4y ago
  I am not obliged to defend every statement I make with a study for my thoughts and experiences to be worth sharing. Also, anecdotal evidence is evidence. Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to think. In any case, I have done the five minutes of googling you seem to want. Biases in evaluating resumes based on gender and other such factors are not new nor unknown: here is an early study from 1986[1], 1988[2], 1999[3], 2001[4], 2007[5]. Feel free to visit google scholar and look more studies by yourself. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103186900466 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022103186... [2] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.55.2.178 https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.5... [3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018839203698 [4] https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-4537.00239 https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-4... [5] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-23339-007
  - walkhour 4y ago
    You can sure share your thoughts, and I can share my thoughts on whether you're correct, I'm just pointing out it's not proven your personal experience proves discrimination is part of the explanation. None of those studies support your original claim. They support the more broader claim that women are discriminated in the job market. > Not as generalizable as controlled studies but not as worthless as you seem to think. Sorry, a single data point, by itself, when you share it attempting to generalize, is worse than worthless, since it can be terribly misleading.
    - lyaa 4y ago
      Do you not see the logical link by which these more general studies contextualize and support my earlier statements?
      - walkhour 4y ago
        I see why you may think that way, but I don't think you're right. I guess for you it's a given QA jobs are "inferior" to SWE jobs. I guess you believe the articles you linked proof women tend to get "inferior" jobs just because they're women? (I haven't read the articles, although I believe this to be true). I just can't make the jump that this applies to QA jobs (granting they are "inferior"). That would imply "inferior" jobs are always overrepresented by women, and there are counterexamples to this, by almost any definition of "inferior".

dahart 4y ago

> Genuinely asking: Is this also sexism? One way to look at it is that the disparity may be a symptom of complicated cultural biases, and we may not know the specific reasons. Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, then if the disparity actually is measurable and widespread, it does reveal cultural bias. This is currently true for nurses and for elementary school teachers in the US, for example. It’s important to note that this can happen without individuals who have any overtly “sexist” behavior at all. It can be the result of cultural attitudes and not prejudiced hiring practices. This is why using the word “sexism” on it’s own might not be the best word for it, even if it’s technically true. Perhaps better terms are “cultural sexism”, or “cultural bias”. I’m sure there are better terms. The problem with using the bare word “sexism” is it tends to be accusatory and out people on the defensive, where the issue may literally be with all of us.

burrows 4y ago
> Since there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA, How do you know this to be true? > cultural bias What definition are you using for this term?
- vijaybritto 4y ago
  >> How do you know this to be true? Goto LinkedIn and search for QA engineers in Indian cities. I think that should be a very good proof for you
  - burrows 4y ago
    Searching LinkedIn will show me that “there’s nothing gender or sex related to doing the job of QA”?
- dahart 4y ago
  The question you need to be asking is the opposite: how can you demonstrate that bias has been eliminated? Sex bias was absolute and baked into law 100 years ago, and it has been slowly getting eliminated, but there has not been any point in time where we can demonstrate it’s gone, precisely because we have evidence it’s not gone yet. (Pay gap still exists, gender disparities between schooling and employment still exist, etc.) We know for a fact that bias hasn’t been completely eliminated, because the ratios and disparities of many jobs including QA are changing quickly, they have not settled, and they are not the same from country to country. That is proof that cultural bias exists and is affecting today’s distributions. You can’t even reasonably ask the question of how to know how much a job depends on sex or gender until after you’ve eliminated cultural bias, because cultural bias masquerades as gender based preferences. This page for cultural bias is as good any any other definition for my purposes here, which was purely to say that “cultural bias” is less inflammatory than “sexism”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_bias

walkhour 4y ago

The truth is that there are no studies (that I'm aware of) that research into whether there's sexism in QA. So the answers to your question are going to be filled with speculation.

pessimizer 4y ago
There's no sexism until I see a study, and I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. Doing a study at all when there are no previous studies would be a clear case of anti-male bias.
- walkhour 4y ago
  > I'm not doing a study if there's no sexism. Presumably you wouldn't know without a study, thus you do the study.

drewcoo 4y ago

Yes. Institutional sexism. Often perpetuated by women as well as men, so this isn't man-blaming. And having a few token women in dev doesn't change the situation so much as it cements the status quo in place.

chowells 4y ago

Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism. However, a lot of people seem to think that describing reality is an insult to them, so I have to explain further - this is a result of systemic sexism starting at early childhood. It starts with what toys children are given to play with. It continues via socialization in schools. It's propagated via every surprised face when a woman shows up to learn about technology. No individual person involved in the process might have any malice at all. It's the result of entire systems of behavior, no individual part of which can be described as "the problem". You might call it systemic sexism. You don't have to be able to explain the entire method of operation to see the result. Is there a statistical difference in outcomes between groups that isn't explained by a difference between the groups? Then there's a systemic bias at work.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
>Of course. Women are not physiologically better at QA than other roles in tech companies. That's it. That's 100% of the information required to determine that this is the result of sexism. Car mechanics aren't all women, even though women's hands fit much better into all those tiny spaces in the dashboard and engine bay? Sexism Nurses aren't overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that a significant part of the job is wrangling patients, who overwhelmingly skew obese? Sexism
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Your point here is unintelligible for me.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    I was trying to show by example that grandparent's definition of sexism is ridiculously expansive to the point of choking out all other dimensions of life. I chose them as two things that don't often get cited as evidence of sexism (though mechanic isn't so dirty a job, and isn't dangerous at all. I have more personal awareness if mechanics, so that's what I chose.)