5 ms·

As an actual woman in computing, who's not particularly interested in having kids and chose her career for practical reasons, I find this article (and many othe

As an actual woman in computing, who's not particularly interested in having kids and chose her career for practical reasons, I find this article (and many other articles and comments like it, written by men and relying on stereotypes and blatant assumption) to be offensive. And before you tell me to grow a thicker skin: by calling this offensive, I don't intend to squash anyone's ability to speak. But I absolutely have the right to be pissed off when someone pretends to speak for me. It makes me lose respect for the person who thinks they can pontificate about someone else's experience and motivations.

dgabriel 12y ago
I'm an actual woman in computing WITH kids, and I found the article offensive, as well. There's something in there for all of us to dislike.
facepalm 12y ago
Didn't he explicitly not speak about women like you (who go into science/engineering), but about women who choose a different way of life?
- cauterized 12y ago
  Yes, based on stereotypes and blatant assumptions. Do you really think a significant portion of people in this world make a conscious choice to survive on child support rather than following an interesting career? He's talking about the CHOICE of whether to enter a STEM career as a woman. I faced that choice just as any other woman did, and believe me that most of the purported reasons mentioned in that article weren't part of the equation at all. Regardless, the fact that I'm in computer science doesn't make the author any more qualified to talk about women's experiences and motivations.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    Is it offensive to assume somebody is acting rationally? Some would consider the opposite offensive (and thereby the author also offends men in his article). I think the "planned alimony" accusation is offensive, but it should be easy to check (statistics on women living off alimony and their average income). I'm sure some women plan that way, but they might not be a significant fraction. I still remember reading advice on how to best become an "alimony mother" in a popular women's magazine (allegedly pick a married man, he can't afford a big fuss and will silently pay up). Not sure if it was meant as satire, but the idea has certainly crossed women's minds. I also know women who planned to become single moms from the start. However, if you include the classic plan to become a stay at home mother, I'm sure a lot of women plan that way. For sure women take into account family friendliness when planning their career. Also, you seem to assume that being a mother is not interesting. I think you being in Computer Science might not have any bearings on the authors qualifications at all.
    - cauterized 12y ago
      Right, my being in computer science has no bearing on the author's fitness to speak about other people's experiences and motivations. That he does so based on pop psychology, stereotype, and traditional gender roles rather than based on personal experience as a woman or far better, data about the personal experiences of a large random sample of women is what makes it offensive.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Is it offensive to assume somebody is acting rationally? Insofar as that involves making offensive assumptions about values by assuming that the (always flawed) perfect knowledge of future utilities aspect of the rational choice model is fulfilled, yes.
    - ArmchairEcon 12y ago
      That section of the article is not about "alimony" (may require years of marriage to obtain) but about "child support" (requires one night of work to obtain).
      - Fomite 12y ago
        One night, nine months, and a potentially fatal medical condition.
stolio 12y ago
I think the central argument is worth spending more time on: women have options that men don't. Even in choosing colleges women have more and in many ways better options. An engineering school trying to attract females has to compete with about 50 all girls colleges across the country where the girls will be treated quite well for four years. Guys don't have that path available so it's easier to sell them on the idea of four-and-a-half to five difficult years to earn a four year degree.
- cauterized 12y ago
  That wasn't the central argument I perceived. Based on how the piece was introduced, I perceived an argument that biases (which have been demonstrated over and over in scientific studies) and hostile environment have less to do with gender ratios in STEM than <long list of stereotypes about values weakly linked to data that are related only if you make some major assumptions backed only by pop psychology>. Maybe if instead of buying into traditional assumptions about gender roles we questioned them; maybe if we encouraged people to step outside traditional roles rather than spending our effort trying to insist their existence is justified; maybe then men would have more choices too (like being stay at home dads, for instance).
  - stolio 12y ago
    We have a very selective and one-sided conversation about traditional gender roles that generally hinges upon notions of male privilege and patriarchy. That's not very helpful when trying to understand why men are more likely to overwork and undervalue themselves since being privileged and overvalued (for their masculinity, of course) predicts they would do the opposite. (You can shoe-horn this into a feminist critique by saying the men who become scientists do so because they fail to meet their gender expectations, but the guys down in the coal mines or dying in wars are as manly as it gets, and they're also overworked and undervalued.) I'm not just questioning traditional gender roles, I'm also questioning the feminist framework I used for years to understand those gender roles.
    - cauterized 12y ago
cauterized 12y ago
Replying to self to add: A real live woman did some real, hard research about the same topic, inspired by the same Summers quote, and backed by actual studies (although wrapped in a boatload of anecdote - which even on its own would be more convincing than the OP's unsupported speculation): http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-... And a quote that sums it up: > As so many studies have demonstrated, success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture — a culture that teaches girls math isn’t cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics; a culture in which professors rarely encourage their female students to continue on for advanced degrees; a culture in which success in graduate school is a matter of isolation, competition and ridiculously long hours in the lab; a culture in which female scientists are hired less frequently than men, earn less money and are allotted fewer resources.
birdsareweird 12y ago
But you too seem to be pretending that your individual experiences make you an authority on women in science. No amount of pushing for women in science has worked, in fact, more gender quality is associated with more stereotypical occupation choices. We see measurable differences in newly born babies that relate gender to an interest in people vs things. We know hormones in the uterus affect the onset of the development of language skills. There's an insane amount of evidence stacking up that "women are being dissuaded from going into science" is not as big of a deal as it is, and furthermore, that it's actually women doing this. It's a funny thing I've noticed with feminism. When they can blame men, they blame men. When they would logically have to blame women, they blame society.
- cauterized 12y ago
  Where did I claim to be an authority on women in science? Where am I blaming men for anything? All I said is that I lose respect for people who make assumptions and draw conclusions about other people's experiences and motivations based primarily on speculation and stereotype. And I do not claim to be an expert on women in science, only that I am a woman in STEM and in the absence of evidence to the contrary that gives me good reason to think that the man who wrote the article is even less qualified than I to speak about women's experiences trying to enter traditionally make fields. As for the rest, I suggest you read the NY Times article I linked to in another post. Even if there is some innate component (which assertion I take with a certain amount of skepticism - and potential flaws have been pointed out in the studies with newborns), the research and experiences detailed there very strongly support the existence of a cultural component to gender imbalances in STEM.
  - birdsareweird 12y ago
    If your upset is about stereotypes and speculation, why did you bother to specify the gender of the author? "It makes me lose respect for the person who thinks they can pontificate about someone else's experience and motivations." Except this is what men have to contend with all the frickin' time. Apparently when I do it, I'm not "sharing my lived experiences", I'm "mansplaining". I also didn't deny the existence of a cultural component, merely that it is not the entire story. If the cultural component was the dominant factor, you would see cultures where the situation is reversed. We don't.

dgabriel 12y ago

I'm an actual woman in computing WITH kids, and I found the article offensive, as well. There's something in there for all of us to dislike.

facepalm 12y ago

Didn't he explicitly not speak about women like you (who go into science/engineering), but about women who choose a different way of life?

cauterized 12y ago
Yes, based on stereotypes and blatant assumptions. Do you really think a significant portion of people in this world make a conscious choice to survive on child support rather than following an interesting career? He's talking about the CHOICE of whether to enter a STEM career as a woman. I faced that choice just as any other woman did, and believe me that most of the purported reasons mentioned in that article weren't part of the equation at all. Regardless, the fact that I'm in computer science doesn't make the author any more qualified to talk about women's experiences and motivations.
- facepalm 12y ago
  Is it offensive to assume somebody is acting rationally? Some would consider the opposite offensive (and thereby the author also offends men in his article). I think the "planned alimony" accusation is offensive, but it should be easy to check (statistics on women living off alimony and their average income). I'm sure some women plan that way, but they might not be a significant fraction. I still remember reading advice on how to best become an "alimony mother" in a popular women's magazine (allegedly pick a married man, he can't afford a big fuss and will silently pay up). Not sure if it was meant as satire, but the idea has certainly crossed women's minds. I also know women who planned to become single moms from the start. However, if you include the classic plan to become a stay at home mother, I'm sure a lot of women plan that way. For sure women take into account family friendliness when planning their career. Also, you seem to assume that being a mother is not interesting. I think you being in Computer Science might not have any bearings on the authors qualifications at all.
  - cauterized 12y ago
    Right, my being in computer science has no bearing on the author's fitness to speak about other people's experiences and motivations. That he does so based on pop psychology, stereotype, and traditional gender roles rather than based on personal experience as a woman or far better, data about the personal experiences of a large random sample of women is what makes it offensive.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Is it offensive to assume somebody is acting rationally? Insofar as that involves making offensive assumptions about values by assuming that the (always flawed) perfect knowledge of future utilities aspect of the rational choice model is fulfilled, yes.
  - ArmchairEcon 12y ago
    That section of the article is not about "alimony" (may require years of marriage to obtain) but about "child support" (requires one night of work to obtain).
    - Fomite 12y ago
      One night, nine months, and a potentially fatal medical condition.

stolio 12y ago

I think the central argument is worth spending more time on: women have options that men don't. Even in choosing colleges women have more and in many ways better options. An engineering school trying to attract females has to compete with about 50 all girls colleges across the country where the girls will be treated quite well for four years. Guys don't have that path available so it's easier to sell them on the idea of four-and-a-half to five difficult years to earn a four year degree.

cauterized 12y ago
That wasn't the central argument I perceived. Based on how the piece was introduced, I perceived an argument that biases (which have been demonstrated over and over in scientific studies) and hostile environment have less to do with gender ratios in STEM than <long list of stereotypes about values weakly linked to data that are related only if you make some major assumptions backed only by pop psychology>. Maybe if instead of buying into traditional assumptions about gender roles we questioned them; maybe if we encouraged people to step outside traditional roles rather than spending our effort trying to insist their existence is justified; maybe then men would have more choices too (like being stay at home dads, for instance).
- stolio 12y ago
  We have a very selective and one-sided conversation about traditional gender roles that generally hinges upon notions of male privilege and patriarchy. That's not very helpful when trying to understand why men are more likely to overwork and undervalue themselves since being privileged and overvalued (for their masculinity, of course) predicts they would do the opposite. (You can shoe-horn this into a feminist critique by saying the men who become scientists do so because they fail to meet their gender expectations, but the guys down in the coal mines or dying in wars are as manly as it gets, and they're also overworked and undervalued.) I'm not just questioning traditional gender roles, I'm also questioning the feminist framework I used for years to understand those gender roles.
  - cauterized 12y ago

cauterized 12y ago

Replying to self to add: A real live woman did some real, hard research about the same topic, inspired by the same Summers quote, and backed by actual studies (although wrapped in a boatload of anecdote - which even on its own would be more convincing than the OP's unsupported speculation): http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-... And a quote that sums it up: > As so many studies have demonstrated, success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture — a culture that teaches girls math isn’t cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics; a culture in which professors rarely encourage their female students to continue on for advanced degrees; a culture in which success in graduate school is a matter of isolation, competition and ridiculously long hours in the lab; a culture in which female scientists are hired less frequently than men, earn less money and are allotted fewer resources.

birdsareweird 12y ago

But you too seem to be pretending that your individual experiences make you an authority on women in science. No amount of pushing for women in science has worked, in fact, more gender quality is associated with more stereotypical occupation choices. We see measurable differences in newly born babies that relate gender to an interest in people vs things. We know hormones in the uterus affect the onset of the development of language skills. There's an insane amount of evidence stacking up that "women are being dissuaded from going into science" is not as big of a deal as it is, and furthermore, that it's actually women doing this. It's a funny thing I've noticed with feminism. When they can blame men, they blame men. When they would logically have to blame women, they blame society.

cauterized 12y ago
Where did I claim to be an authority on women in science? Where am I blaming men for anything? All I said is that I lose respect for people who make assumptions and draw conclusions about other people's experiences and motivations based primarily on speculation and stereotype. And I do not claim to be an expert on women in science, only that I am a woman in STEM and in the absence of evidence to the contrary that gives me good reason to think that the man who wrote the article is even less qualified than I to speak about women's experiences trying to enter traditionally make fields. As for the rest, I suggest you read the NY Times article I linked to in another post. Even if there is some innate component (which assertion I take with a certain amount of skepticism - and potential flaws have been pointed out in the studies with newborns), the research and experiences detailed there very strongly support the existence of a cultural component to gender imbalances in STEM.
- birdsareweird 12y ago
  If your upset is about stereotypes and speculation, why did you bother to specify the gender of the author? "It makes me lose respect for the person who thinks they can pontificate about someone else's experience and motivations." Except this is what men have to contend with all the frickin' time. Apparently when I do it, I'm not "sharing my lived experiences", I'm "mansplaining". I also didn't deny the existence of a cultural component, merely that it is not the entire story. If the cultural component was the dominant factor, you would see cultures where the situation is reversed. We don't.