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Truth hurts. If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many wo

Truth hurts. If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many women do you work with? It's not the type of work that drives women out of IT, it's the people they have to work with.

cousin_it 15y ago
Truth isn't the only thing that can hurt, though. Ignorance and malice can hurt too, especially when combined... Let me try to explain how I understand this issue. When some subgroup is underrepresented in some area even though there's no statistical difference in innate ability, many people tend to automatically blame discrimination. I don't see how that can be right. For example, you could notice that Asians are overrepresented in US universities. The theory concludes that either all US universities are racist in favor of Asians (obvious bullshit), or Asians are innately smarter than whites (more obvious bullshit). Hmm. Isn't it more likely that the theory is mistaken and there can be other factors at work? Same goes for the small number of women programmers. Sorry, you don't get to attack me for sexism until you have data proving sexism is the real culprit. Otherwise it's like blaming witchcraft.
- bmcleod 15y ago
  There is an interesting issue in the philosophy of science regarding the "hard center" of theories. Basically any prediction about a reasonably complicated situation will rely on a large number of premises. If you happen to be committed to one premise more than the others, you will always blame one of the other premises when an observation doesn't fit your hypothesis. In the case of sexism there are so many confounding factors that you'll never be able to say with certainty that sexism is the root cause, only that there is a good chance that it is. If there is a good chance that something bad is happening then it seems like you could reasonably be expected to produce a non-zero amount of effort in avoiding it.
- roguecoder 15y ago
  We have data. A brief sampling: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924, http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA.html http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA..., http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-New-Technology-Firms-A-Comparison-by-Gender http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-... There is plenty more out there, all suggesting that women are promoted differently, treated differently, more likely to experience active gender-based harassment and are more likely to be excluded from the camaraderie and informal networking that leads to job satisfaction. Don't assume that just because you are ignorant everyone else is too. Some of us have been engaging with, measuring, quantifying and attempting to change these destructive culturally-sanctioned behaviors for a very long time.
  - cousin_it 15y ago
    Only the first of those four articles deals with women in IT jobs. It is behind a paywall but I found a freely available copy here: http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/leavescience_all.pdf http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/leavescience_all.pdf . It's a nice article. I don't think it supports laying the blame on sexism, though. The paper focuses on something called the "exit rate", that is, how many people with a certain education are working at a job unrelated to their education. The average exit rate over all professions and both genders is 21%. Female engineers have a pretty low exit rate of 12.9% - that is, 12.9% of women who studied engineering now work in other areas. Male engineers, on the other hand, have an extremely low exit rate of 9.8%. The author then tries to explain the difference between "pretty low" for women and "extremely low" for men. She observes that the differentials in exit rate, across all fields including engineering, can be mostly predicted by the gender makeup of the field. Quote from the paper's conclusion: > The results would appear to point to problems for women specic to the engineering profession. However, I show that the excess exits of women trained as engineers, as well as their excess exits for pay and promotion reasons, are no larger than would be expected given the share of men in the field: the higher the male share, the greater the excess female exits from the field, both in total and for pay and promotion reasons. Then the author hypothesizes that improving mentoring and reducing "possible discrimination" might help reduce the gap, without giving any specific arguments. It seems to me that the really important figure in the paper is 9.8%, not 12.9%-9.8%. That is, more males are behaving abnormally by staying programmers despite possible problems with pay and promotion, while the behavior of female engineers is closer to the average rational human being. What do you think? Also, I'd be really interested in seeing what you think are the best papers proving that the lack of women of IT is due to sexism. Taking apart random vaguely related papers is fun, but I don't have infinite time.
bermanoid 15y ago
If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many women do you work with? The fact that there are few women in tech does not necessarily mean that IT is self-absorbed and sexist. Do you look at the nursing community and assume that it is self-absorbed and misandrist simply because there are not many men in it? Then again, personally I work at an office that is a 50/50 male/female split, so perhaps I'm not the best one to comment on these matters, I don't know what it's like at a "real" tech shop...
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  My girlfriend is a health visitor and a nurse with 30 years experience. Let me give you a quote from her, solicited over breakfast: "Men, like shit, rise to the top". The NHS is largely a female institution - the managers are overwhelmingly men. I worked in Direct/Call Centre banking. The overwhelming majority of the staff were women, the senior staff were overwhelmingly men.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - cousin_it 15y ago
    http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Management%20in%20the%20NHS.pdf http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Management%2... > 59 per cent of managers and senior manages are female and three quarters of entrants onto the NHS Management Training Scheme over the past five years have been women.
    - gordonguthrie 15y ago
      Good, I hope things are getting better. My other half works for Lothian NHS Trust - their board is 17-8 men to women (for a majority female workforce): http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/OurOrganisation/BoardCommittees/LothianNHSBoard/BoardMembers/Pages/default.aspx http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/OurOrganisation/BoardCommi...

cousin_it 15y ago

Truth isn't the only thing that can hurt, though. Ignorance and malice can hurt too, especially when combined... Let me try to explain how I understand this issue. When some subgroup is underrepresented in some area even though there's no statistical difference in innate ability, many people tend to automatically blame discrimination. I don't see how that can be right. For example, you could notice that Asians are overrepresented in US universities. The theory concludes that either all US universities are racist in favor of Asians (obvious bullshit), or Asians are innately smarter than whites (more obvious bullshit). Hmm. Isn't it more likely that the theory is mistaken and there can be other factors at work? Same goes for the small number of women programmers. Sorry, you don't get to attack me for sexism until you have data proving sexism is the real culprit. Otherwise it's like blaming witchcraft.

bmcleod 15y ago
There is an interesting issue in the philosophy of science regarding the "hard center" of theories. Basically any prediction about a reasonably complicated situation will rely on a large number of premises. If you happen to be committed to one premise more than the others, you will always blame one of the other premises when an observation doesn't fit your hypothesis. In the case of sexism there are so many confounding factors that you'll never be able to say with certainty that sexism is the root cause, only that there is a good chance that it is. If there is a good chance that something bad is happening then it seems like you could reasonably be expected to produce a non-zero amount of effort in avoiding it.
roguecoder 15y ago
We have data. A brief sampling: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1508924, http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA.html http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/fall2002/FERREIRA/FERREIRA..., http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-New-Technology-Firms-A-Comparison-by-Gender http://www.scribd.com/doc/18370009/Sources-of-Financing-for-... There is plenty more out there, all suggesting that women are promoted differently, treated differently, more likely to experience active gender-based harassment and are more likely to be excluded from the camaraderie and informal networking that leads to job satisfaction. Don't assume that just because you are ignorant everyone else is too. Some of us have been engaging with, measuring, quantifying and attempting to change these destructive culturally-sanctioned behaviors for a very long time.
- cousin_it 15y ago
  Only the first of those four articles deals with women in IT jobs. It is behind a paywall but I found a freely available copy here: http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/leavescience_all.pdf http://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/leavescience_all.pdf . It's a nice article. I don't think it supports laying the blame on sexism, though. The paper focuses on something called the "exit rate", that is, how many people with a certain education are working at a job unrelated to their education. The average exit rate over all professions and both genders is 21%. Female engineers have a pretty low exit rate of 12.9% - that is, 12.9% of women who studied engineering now work in other areas. Male engineers, on the other hand, have an extremely low exit rate of 9.8%. The author then tries to explain the difference between "pretty low" for women and "extremely low" for men. She observes that the differentials in exit rate, across all fields including engineering, can be mostly predicted by the gender makeup of the field. Quote from the paper's conclusion: > The results would appear to point to problems for women specic to the engineering profession. However, I show that the excess exits of women trained as engineers, as well as their excess exits for pay and promotion reasons, are no larger than would be expected given the share of men in the field: the higher the male share, the greater the excess female exits from the field, both in total and for pay and promotion reasons. Then the author hypothesizes that improving mentoring and reducing "possible discrimination" might help reduce the gap, without giving any specific arguments. It seems to me that the really important figure in the paper is 9.8%, not 12.9%-9.8%. That is, more males are behaving abnormally by staying programmers despite possible problems with pay and promotion, while the behavior of female engineers is closer to the average rational human being. What do you think? Also, I'd be really interested in seeing what you think are the best papers proving that the lack of women of IT is due to sexism. Taking apart random vaguely related papers is fun, but I don't have infinite time.

bermanoid 15y ago

If you took offence to the characterisation of the IT community as generally self-absorbed and sexist, you really need to look around. How many women do you work with? The fact that there are few women in tech does not necessarily mean that IT is self-absorbed and sexist. Do you look at the nursing community and assume that it is self-absorbed and misandrist simply because there are not many men in it? Then again, personally I work at an office that is a 50/50 male/female split, so perhaps I'm not the best one to comment on these matters, I don't know what it's like at a "real" tech shop...

gordonguthrie 15y ago
My girlfriend is a health visitor and a nurse with 30 years experience. Let me give you a quote from her, solicited over breakfast: "Men, like shit, rise to the top". The NHS is largely a female institution - the managers are overwhelmingly men. I worked in Direct/Call Centre banking. The overwhelming majority of the staff were women, the senior staff were overwhelmingly men.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- cousin_it 15y ago
  http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Management%20in%20the%20NHS.pdf http://www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Management%2... > 59 per cent of managers and senior manages are female and three quarters of entrants onto the NHS Management Training Scheme over the past five years have been women.
  - gordonguthrie 15y ago
    Good, I hope things are getting better. My other half works for Lothian NHS Trust - their board is 17-8 men to women (for a majority female workforce): http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/OurOrganisation/BoardCommittees/LothianNHSBoard/BoardMembers/Pages/default.aspx http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/OurOrganisation/BoardCommi...