3 ms·

Sure, "so long as you can deliver". Are we going to be treated equally when we fail? Even worse, are we going to be treated as representatives of half the spe

by rw140 17y ago

Sure, "so long as you can deliver". Are we going to be treated equally when we fail? Even worse, are we going to be treated as representatives of half the species (someone's already linked to that XKCD cartoon). It may be paranoia, but it doesn't help. PS. Mostly I try not to guilt my co-workers about stuff. I don't think it makes them or me any more productive.

jlouis 17y ago
Failure is an important step towards mastering. Sure hell you are going to be treated equally from the professional standpoint if you have the courage to fail a couple of times. It depends wholly on if and how you play the gender-card in the game. Or how you can be coerced/forced to play it.
tayssir 17y ago
I'm reminded of Smolin's _The Trouble with Physics_: > Note that whereas there have always been talented women musicians, the number of women hired by orchestras rose significantly when candidates began auditioning behind a screen. This is why there is affirmative action. In all my experience, I have never seen a woman or an African American hired through an affirmative-action program who didn't strongly deserve it -- that is, who wasn't already arguably the best applicant. When hiring committees are no longer composed only of white men and we stop hearing expressions of open prejudice, then we can relax affirmative action. As it stands, people who are different -- who, for one reason or another, make powerful older male physicists uncomfortable -- are not hired. (This was in the context of an argument about how physics institutions often filter out challengers to orthodoxy: including those who think differently, not just look differently.)
Tichy 17y ago
"Are we going to be treated equally when we fail?" I don't get this. You think men don't get problems if they fail? And why do you even ask, how about trying it out? It sounds as if you don't even want to try it because of all the prejudice.
- rw140 17y ago
  Well, I've not been employed all that long, no-one's waved a study at me, and I don't know so many girls in my field that I can figure this out just by talking about it to other people (I'd have to talk to an equal number of boys as well, but for some reason they're a lot easier to find). I already have one (fairly minor) failure under my belt. I seem to have got away with it. I'm still in my job, still working on the same kind of stuff I was before, and no-one told me not to bother my pretty little head about that bit because I'm clearly not so good at things like that. Yes, I think everyone gets problems if they fail. But my worry is about second chances, and blocking off areas of computing for other people. Someone I know made an off-hand comment about every girl who has worked in this department has worked on the UI. I don't know if they've ever had a girl on the build team. I don't know if they've ever had a girl working on the really low-level stuff. There certainly aren't any at the moment. Is there an underlying current of 'girls are better at the touchy-feely UI stuff'? Do girls overall really tend to work better with UIs? Am I comparing teams with a high turnover with teams with a low one? Am I trying to generalise from too little data again? So, let's have a hypothetical opportunity for me to go and work on some arbitrary low-level stuff. Maybe it's to do with networking protocols. And maybe for one reason or another I'm blindingly obviously no good at it whatsoever. Will this affect my ability to go into unrelated areas with similarly few past examples of successful ladies later? Will it affect Alice (who knows not just about networking protocols, but also basic cryptography) when she is hired next week? Will she then have to work harder than Bob to persuade everyone that she is competent in that area? Maybe I should play it safe and work on something that is less challenging and that I know I can succeed at. After all, if Alice fails as well, then Eve may be looked over entirely. And that would make me feel really guilty. So the penalty for failure is higher. Of course, there's a good chance there is no bias whatsoever. And I'm fairly likely to take a few risks. But you don't need actual bias for this to have an effect. If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour, and thus under-performing ladies.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    "If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour" But why start out with the fear of bias? For what it's worth, there are a lot of bad male programmers. I even suspect most programmers think that most other programmers are bad. And for men, there can be bias, too, like "we have always been disappointed by coders who did not study to university level" or "coders from India" or "Java developers" or whatever.

by rw140 17y ago

jlouis 17y ago

Failure is an important step towards mastering. Sure hell you are going to be treated equally from the professional standpoint if you have the courage to fail a couple of times. It depends wholly on if and how you play the gender-card in the game. Or how you can be coerced/forced to play it.

tayssir 17y ago

I'm reminded of Smolin's _The Trouble with Physics_: > Note that whereas there have always been talented women musicians, the number of women hired by orchestras rose significantly when candidates began auditioning behind a screen. This is why there is affirmative action. In all my experience, I have never seen a woman or an African American hired through an affirmative-action program who didn't strongly deserve it -- that is, who wasn't already arguably the best applicant. When hiring committees are no longer composed only of white men and we stop hearing expressions of open prejudice, then we can relax affirmative action. As it stands, people who are different -- who, for one reason or another, make powerful older male physicists uncomfortable -- are not hired. (This was in the context of an argument about how physics institutions often filter out challengers to orthodoxy: including those who think differently, not just look differently.)

Tichy 17y ago

"Are we going to be treated equally when we fail?" I don't get this. You think men don't get problems if they fail? And why do you even ask, how about trying it out? It sounds as if you don't even want to try it because of all the prejudice.

rw140 17y ago
Well, I've not been employed all that long, no-one's waved a study at me, and I don't know so many girls in my field that I can figure this out just by talking about it to other people (I'd have to talk to an equal number of boys as well, but for some reason they're a lot easier to find). I already have one (fairly minor) failure under my belt. I seem to have got away with it. I'm still in my job, still working on the same kind of stuff I was before, and no-one told me not to bother my pretty little head about that bit because I'm clearly not so good at things like that. Yes, I think everyone gets problems if they fail. But my worry is about second chances, and blocking off areas of computing for other people. Someone I know made an off-hand comment about every girl who has worked in this department has worked on the UI. I don't know if they've ever had a girl on the build team. I don't know if they've ever had a girl working on the really low-level stuff. There certainly aren't any at the moment. Is there an underlying current of 'girls are better at the touchy-feely UI stuff'? Do girls overall really tend to work better with UIs? Am I comparing teams with a high turnover with teams with a low one? Am I trying to generalise from too little data again? So, let's have a hypothetical opportunity for me to go and work on some arbitrary low-level stuff. Maybe it's to do with networking protocols. And maybe for one reason or another I'm blindingly obviously no good at it whatsoever. Will this affect my ability to go into unrelated areas with similarly few past examples of successful ladies later? Will it affect Alice (who knows not just about networking protocols, but also basic cryptography) when she is hired next week? Will she then have to work harder than Bob to persuade everyone that she is competent in that area? Maybe I should play it safe and work on something that is less challenging and that I know I can succeed at. After all, if Alice fails as well, then Eve may be looked over entirely. And that would make me feel really guilty. So the penalty for failure is higher. Of course, there's a good chance there is no bias whatsoever. And I'm fairly likely to take a few risks. But you don't need actual bias for this to have an effect. If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour, and thus under-performing ladies.
- Tichy 17y ago
  "If there is enough fear of bias you'll end up with too much risk-averse behaviour" But why start out with the fear of bias? For what it's worth, there are a lot of bad male programmers. I even suspect most programmers think that most other programmers are bad. And for men, there can be bias, too, like "we have always been disappointed by coders who did not study to university level" or "coders from India" or "Java developers" or whatever.