4 ms·

The most logical explanation requires neither sexism nor damage to women.

tptacek 12y ago
My explanation is a self-reinforcing cycle of privilege accorded unintentionally and often subconsciously to in-group members who can, for instance, breeze through a job interview by looking like their interviewer, sharing the same after-work interests as their interviewers, &c. What's yours? Gingerly, I'd like also to remind you that you haven't responded to the core point of my comment, which is that the argument you chose to rebut the grandparent comment was fallacious on its face. Even if you don't believe in the concept of "privilege", which is a hot-button word, it's still not valid to argue that the lack of an evil cabal means women aren't systematically disfavored by the technology industry.
- trhway 12y ago
  >My explanation is a self-reinforcing cycle of privilege why "privilege"? it is just recently so happened that due to some quirks of human economical and technological organization the job [blue collar job of 21st century really] is relatively well paid today in some geographical areas of well developed countries. Just a sheer luck (if not count for significantly damaged eyesight). May easily be not such luck tomorrow - just ask the guys who held the good paying middle-class jobs in Detroit when it was all the rage. >accorded unintentionally well, yes. 25 years ago i didn't see any girl wanting to sneak with us at night into the University datacenter to get some machine time (on USSR clone of IBM-360), smoke cheap unfiltered cigarettes, drink watered down ethanol while gaming or reading through meters of printed out memory hex-dumps ... Definitely the environment wasn't attractive to girls [or to anybody else except us fascinated by computers], and honestly i can't even imagine how it could have been otherwise even theoretically ... That to me is the reason why there are not much women senior-level engineers around. Because one needs to sow long before one can harvest. You wanna women doing that job 20 years from now - you need to start working toward that goal at least today, if not yesterday, preferably starting at early school.
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  I never said what you want me to defend, so it makes no sense for me to defend it. The person I replied to claimed men controlled the industry. That would require some sort of cabal (evil or otherwise). I think it is preposterous to suggest such a thing. I never said women are not systematically disfavored because that cabal does not exist. Whether or not women are systematically disfavored is an entirely separate issue. I do not believe we are because my experience has not supported that, and because the low number of women in CS is easily explained without it: women have different interests than men.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    And by "different interests", you mean that women are singularly disinterested in computer science, despite strong representation in other STEM fields and other professional fields with analytical components, including such extremely demanding fields as medicine and corporate law? Some rando upthread accused me of violating Occam's Razor.
    - imanaccount247 12y ago
      No, I mean women tend to have a preference for jobs involving people rather than things. This is generally framed as "we need more women in STEM fields", so it seems odd that you feel every other STEM field is peachy and just CS is a problem. If you merely want to steal away the minority of women who are interested in STEM fields from the better options to CS then I'm afraid we might need to reconsider constantly insisting that CS is horrible for women. I do not believe that strategy attracts women very well (the corresponding drop in women in CS seems to support this).
      - tptacek 12y ago
        If women "have a preference for jobs involving people rather than things", why are they so well-represented in chemistry? Is chemistry an especially social science? That's what you want to hang the whole enormous gender gap in CS on? That CS is uniquely antisocial? To the contrary: CS seems especially social compared to the hard sciences --- people work on teams and discuss trivia endlessly in a variety of venues.

My explanation is a self-reinforcing cycle of privilege accorded unintentionally and often subconsciously to in-group members who can, for instance, breeze through a job interview by looking like their interviewer, sharing the same after-work interests as their interviewers, &c. What's yours? Gingerly, I'd like also to remind you that you haven't responded to the core point of my comment, which is that the argument you chose to rebut the grandparent comment was fallacious on its face. Even if you don't believe in the concept of "privilege", which is a hot-button word, it's still not valid to argue that the lack of an evil cabal means women aren't systematically disfavored by the technology industry.

trhway 12y ago
>My explanation is a self-reinforcing cycle of privilege why "privilege"? it is just recently so happened that due to some quirks of human economical and technological organization the job [blue collar job of 21st century really] is relatively well paid today in some geographical areas of well developed countries. Just a sheer luck (if not count for significantly damaged eyesight). May easily be not such luck tomorrow - just ask the guys who held the good paying middle-class jobs in Detroit when it was all the rage. >accorded unintentionally well, yes. 25 years ago i didn't see any girl wanting to sneak with us at night into the University datacenter to get some machine time (on USSR clone of IBM-360), smoke cheap unfiltered cigarettes, drink watered down ethanol while gaming or reading through meters of printed out memory hex-dumps ... Definitely the environment wasn't attractive to girls [or to anybody else except us fascinated by computers], and honestly i can't even imagine how it could have been otherwise even theoretically ... That to me is the reason why there are not much women senior-level engineers around. Because one needs to sow long before one can harvest. You wanna women doing that job 20 years from now - you need to start working toward that goal at least today, if not yesterday, preferably starting at early school.
imanaccount247 12y ago
I never said what you want me to defend, so it makes no sense for me to defend it. The person I replied to claimed men controlled the industry. That would require some sort of cabal (evil or otherwise). I think it is preposterous to suggest such a thing. I never said women are not systematically disfavored because that cabal does not exist. Whether or not women are systematically disfavored is an entirely separate issue. I do not believe we are because my experience has not supported that, and because the low number of women in CS is easily explained without it: women have different interests than men.
- tptacek 12y ago
  And by "different interests", you mean that women are singularly disinterested in computer science, despite strong representation in other STEM fields and other professional fields with analytical components, including such extremely demanding fields as medicine and corporate law? Some rando upthread accused me of violating Occam's Razor.
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    No, I mean women tend to have a preference for jobs involving people rather than things. This is generally framed as "we need more women in STEM fields", so it seems odd that you feel every other STEM field is peachy and just CS is a problem. If you merely want to steal away the minority of women who are interested in STEM fields from the better options to CS then I'm afraid we might need to reconsider constantly insisting that CS is horrible for women. I do not believe that strategy attracts women very well (the corresponding drop in women in CS seems to support this).
    - tptacek 12y ago
      If women "have a preference for jobs involving people rather than things", why are they so well-represented in chemistry? Is chemistry an especially social science? That's what you want to hang the whole enormous gender gap in CS on? That CS is uniquely antisocial? To the contrary: CS seems especially social compared to the hard sciences --- people work on teams and discuss trivia endlessly in a variety of venues.