14 ms·

> It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that a front line, if not the trench of the global gender war, is in Silicon Valley. I agree that parts of the tech wor

by raldi 12y ago

> It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that a front line, if not the trench of the global gender war, is in Silicon Valley. I agree that parts of the tech world are really horrible, and I think we need to be doing everything we can to make women feel more welcome in our industry (not just for them, but for us), but isn't it at least a little exaggeration to say that Silicon Valley is the main "trench of the global gender war"? I'd think we'd be ranked after at least a couple of these: * The construction industry * The Bible Belt * The restaurant industry * West Africa * The movie industry * The Vatican * The sportswriting industry * The people who make Superbowl ads * Japan * The adult entertainment industry * The Middle East * Wall Street * Nepal * The upper echelons of American politics

Hytosys 12y ago
You aren't wrong that the author probably exaggerated with that sentence, but I think I am not alone in being awfully tired of your conversation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation EDIT: I guess I am alone.
- raldi 12y ago
  I'm not saying the article should be dismissed; just that I think the author is overplaying her hand a bit in this one particular sentence.
  - Hytosys 12y ago
    We agree, then! Should have worded my thoughts carefully.
- irishcoffee 12y ago
  Not alone, just on your own island here.
nl 12y ago
Most of the things you listed are places where women's rights are well behind those of men. I think those are all places that need to be fixed. But at the same time it's possible to think of the front line as being the place where the battle to move forward is being fought now, instead of places where little progress has been made. From that perspective talking of SV as a front line isn't wrong: if women can't be treated equally in the supposedly progressive environment of SV, then other places will be even further behind.
- wozniacki 12y ago
  But at the same time it's possible to think of the front line as being the place where the battle to move forward is being fought now, instead of places where little progress has been made. How is that line of thinking, rational? So you want people who are already putting up with plenty of progressive dogma to put up with more progressivism, when the rest of those areas that raldi [1] mentioned haven't seen a lick of the same progressivism, impacting their lives in decades?[2] Dont you think that such unfair pressure solely on the tech world, will only serve to alienate them? Won't it cause them to dig their heels in? Is that kind of retrenchment desirable? In what way does that make any sense? This is isn't even the first time I've heard this line of fuzzy thought-leadership. I find it grating when people offer such silly twisted logic to prop up their premises. When any form of change is imposed on any section of society, at too fast a rate, there will be resistance. When any form of change is unfairly imposed on ONLY one section of society or in ONLY one geographic region, within the same country, there is bound to be a even greater degree of resistance. [1] The construction industry, The Bible Belt, The restaurant industry, West Africa, The movie industry, The Vatican, The sportswriting industry, The people who make Superbowl ads, Japan, The adult entertainment industry, The Middle East, Wall Street, Nepal, The upper echelons of American politics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8964102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8964102 [2] I'm by no means advocating less than progressive conditions to prevail in any industry or any geographic region. This could be just as well, said of the conservative end of the spectrum. In other words, there are conservative pockets, hell bent on turning their already conservative professions even more rigid and unyielding.
  - 12y ago
Alex3917 12y ago
The bible belt isn't exactly eating the world. We live in a society where more people now aspire to be tech CEOs than pro athletes or rock stars, and tech is one of the main centers of power both politically and economically. It's easy to dismiss the article because there are a few mischaracterizations and exaggerations. But you need to remember that most people get their information about the tech world from second hand sources, and SV is largely opaque and closed off to the general public. If you actually read it for what it is rather than just judging the author based on her knowledge of obscure inside-baseball tech scandals then I think there are some valuable points.
- parennoob 12y ago
  > We live in a society where more people now aspire to be tech CEOs than pro athletes or rock stars, and tech is one of the main centers of power both politically and economically. Citation? I would say this is a huge assumption, presumably backed by your anecdotal experiences. To offer an anecdotal counterpoint - from what I have seen of the majority of the college-going American generation, they do aspire to leadership positions in general, but seldom through purely technical means.
- raldi 12y ago
  Ah, you're saying SV is the front line not because it treats women worse than anyone else in the world, but rather (to use the military analogy) because it's an extremely strategic piece of territory.
  - Alex3917 12y ago
    People aren't complaining because they think SV treats women badly, they're complaining because they perceive SV as preventing women across the country from being as successful in business as men are.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    It doesn't treat women worse than every other place in the world, no, but it treats them worse than many other places. Computer science has a sharply worse gender participation gap than other professions, and even from other STEM fields. It also continues to allow that gap to reinforce itself, for instance with apologia about how women aren't taught computers when they're younger and (by implication) how they're too far gone by the time they're 20 to remedy that problem. And that's one of the more charitable pathologies to focus on.
dropit_sphere 12y ago
Wars are only fought where at least one side thinks they can win. SV is the front line because it is more egalitarian than those arenas you mention.
- s_baby 12y ago
  Also "winning" the right to working in a coal mine or laying roofing wouldn't really be a victory after all compared to SV. These people want the upside of being a male without the risk that it carries. Yea some of us get to play this game in SV. What about the vast majority of us that have to work a shit job to support our family? Giving one gender privileged access to industries like SV while simultaneously sheltering them from industries like the coal mining industry would also be a horrible form of marginalization.
  - dperny 12y ago
    This argument is as terrible as it is old. Feminists have been fighting for the right to work in coal mines, and fight on battlefields, and everything else.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      You are correct. That said, from within Silicon Valley it sure looks like the feminists are coming for the supposedly easy money of engineering while ignoring the risky things like policing. True or not, it's sometimes the perception that matters.
      - tobr 12y ago
        This says more about Silicon Valley than about feminism, though.
        Kalium 12y ago
        My statement could be interpreted that way, yes.
rajacombinator 12y ago
Out of curiosity why did Nepal make its way on to your list?
- raldi 12y ago
  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Nepal#Women.E2.80.99s_Rights http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Nepal#Women.E...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
falcolas 12y ago
OK. Maybe I don't get this, but doesn't framing this as a "war" make the situation even worse? Isn't viewing the opposite gender as "enemy combatants" a really terrible thing to do? I would think that women face enough challenges in their workplace without being viewed by their coworkers as being hostile and out for their livelihoods. Maybe I have this all wrong, but this seems that "news" pieces like this do not help anybody but the media (though perhaps it makes those on either side of the gender divide who already view the others as enemy combatants feel validated).
- saraid216 12y ago
  > Isn't viewing the opposite gender as "enemy combatants" a really terrible thing to do? Except that's not what's happening. The war is between the ideology that genders are equal and the ideology that genders are not equal. Framing it the way you have is a standard tactic employed by people who are entirely aware they are at war and have set up feminists as enemy combatants already.
  - nl 12y ago
    The war is between the ideology that genders are equal and the ideology that genders are not equal. I think a better summary would be this: The war is between the ideology that genders should have equal opportunities and the ideology that genders should not.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      I don't think anyone outside certain religions[1] asserts that genders should not have equal opportunities. Could you link to such a person? A better statement: The war is between the ideology that individual humans should have equal opportunities, and the ideology that certain groups should be statistically equally represented in all fields. (Or sometimes it's all fields that result in "power", a poorly defined term.) [1] Interestingly, those religions usually have more women than computing. I've never been to a church where women didn't outnumber men.
michaelochurch 12y ago
Wall Street is much less sexist than Silicon Valley. I've been there. I know. Yes, there are some young men on Wall Street who act boorish, drunkenly hit on women, and generally cause a great deal of discomfort for those around them. They don't get promoted. They aren't trusted. They'll eventually get fired if they keep that shit up. In the Valley, they do get promoted. Misbehavior actually makes a young man more attractive to the VCs, deep in the throes of midlife crisis. That makes the difference. In one place, it's discouraged and relatively uncommon. In the other, it's rampant. The amount of impropriety that you see in the VC darlings is off-the-charts. I worked (briefly) at an ed-tech where the married executives openly flirted with female subordinates (and one was fired for refusing advances). You'd never see that shit in finance, these days. That era ended when the people raising VC now were in diapers. I would guess that "the upper echelons of American politics" are also less sexist than Silicon Valley, given that there are women succeeding in US politics, but wouldn't know from direct experience.
- raldi 12y ago
  I've spent a fair amount of time working for Wall Street and the broader NYC financial industry as well, and got a quite different impression. And I'm not the only one. Examples: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/03/goldman_sachs_discrimination_suit_lawsuit_alleges_sexism_strip_club_meetings.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/03/goldman_sach... http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-michael-bloombergs-public-sexism http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-micha... BTW, who's the Sheryl Sandberg, Meg Whitman, or Marissa Mayer of Wall Street?
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    Take your pick: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-most-powerful-women-on-wall-street-2013-3 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-most-powerful-women-on...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
geofft 12y ago
I don't see active fights over the gender war happening in those fronts. It's certainly true that those aren't territories that we control firmly, but it's also not territory that we're disputing very hard. Gender is what it is in the Bible Belt, and most of the pushback is from a younger generation who grew up on the Internet. Gender is what it is in film, but the Bechdel test entered popular consciousness on the Internet. Gender is what it is in the minds of the old advertising firms, but the new ones are often technology companies, their clients are often technology companies, and when you say "Super Bowl ads" and "what they think of women" I can't help but think "GoDaddy". Gender is what it is in the minds of the current elected officials, but Obama's election has been credited, in part, to his ability to use technology more effectively than his opponents (and, therefore, to effective technologists wanting to work for him). Silicon Valley is the trench and the fortification; if it falls, we can then march on the cities. Now, of course, there's a question as to whether the gender biases of the makers of the Internet impact the gender biases of the things that happen on the Internet. But I think they do. At the least, for fora like Reddit and HN where the platform and editorial direction are linked, it seems obvious that they must. For platforms like Twitter or G+, policies such as harassment response and tradeoffs, whether real names are common or uncommon[0], what speech is considered appropriate or inappropriate, etc. can all impact what voices are heard and who is empowered by the platform. [0] I don't mean by this to imply that there's a standard feminist answer on whether real-name policies are good or not. There are feminist arguments on both sides.
MrDom 12y ago
but isn't it at least a little exaggeration to say that Silicon Valley is the main "trench of the global gender war" It's an exaggeration to say there's a gender war at all. It's feminists against the patriarchy. Feminists are real people. What's the patriarchy?
windlep 12y ago
Many of the industries/groups you cited don't have nearly as much wealth wrapped up in them. That's what makes the tech one worse, more wealth concentrated with less gender equality than others. Once you reduce that list to ones with as much wealth as tech, its a pretty dang short list and it'd be interesting at that point to compare gender % in each.
blueMist 12y ago
I am a WIT. an actual, technical woman in tech, annoyed with myself for letting Newsweek basically troll me. I've noticed the MSM has "discovered" SV, and is doing the usual pieces (sexism! drugs! too much money!, etc.). While there are obviously so many problems in SV, they never seem to find any of the many, many, many (shudder! older) technical women at Google, FB, Intel, etc. to talk with. Everything is written through the more attractive, yet limited, prism of "young person asking for money, bad behavior ensues". I will not comment on the hypocrisy of bemoaning the limited access of women to the spotlight while turning to a self-styled male "expert" on WIT - it's easier to do that than track down actual women in SV to interview directly. I didn't feel represented by the article, I thought it was pretty opportunistic and to be honest, I don't think Newsweek cares for the "plight of women in SV", just about trying to become relevant again. And here I am, talking about it, so they were successful in their trolling.
- raldi 12y ago
  If you don't mind me asking a personal question, I'm rather curious what your exposure to computers (or electronics that you could take apart, toys with gears, etc.) was like when you were a girl (say, ages 6-16).
  - blueMist 12y ago
    Btw, I see some discussion on the thread about SAT Math, GRE Quantitative being skewed towards men (!) - every time I see this, I think of not just my experience, but that of so many girls I grew up with who _loved_ math and were good at it cause nobody had informed them they shouldn't. Look at the Eastern bloc, China, etc. - some of their idiotic policies had the unintended (perhaps) effect of making generations of women realize they can do math, physics, etc. I am not talking about being Alan Turing here, I can't comment on that. But calls to drop math from CS programs - no, just no :).
  - blueMist 12y ago
    I am an immigrant. Grew up in the Eastern Bloc - no exposure to computers until high-school (given country), but tons of exposure in school to math, etc. Even in high-school, CS was absolutely more popular with boys and they were enacting the "hacker" model as they perceived it from distance, so there was some "girls don't belong here" attitude, but frankly, once you know you can do it, that stuff is much easier to ignore :). Again, they didn't know what "hacker" meant, more like adolescent posturing.

by raldi 12y ago

Hytosys 12y ago

You aren't wrong that the author probably exaggerated with that sentence, but I think I am not alone in being awfully tired of your conversation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation EDIT: I guess I am alone.

raldi 12y ago
I'm not saying the article should be dismissed; just that I think the author is overplaying her hand a bit in this one particular sentence.
- Hytosys 12y ago
  We agree, then! Should have worded my thoughts carefully.
irishcoffee 12y ago
Not alone, just on your own island here.

nl 12y ago

Most of the things you listed are places where women's rights are well behind those of men. I think those are all places that need to be fixed. But at the same time it's possible to think of the front line as being the place where the battle to move forward is being fought now, instead of places where little progress has been made. From that perspective talking of SV as a front line isn't wrong: if women can't be treated equally in the supposedly progressive environment of SV, then other places will be even further behind.

wozniacki 12y ago
But at the same time it's possible to think of the front line as being the place where the battle to move forward is being fought now, instead of places where little progress has been made. How is that line of thinking, rational? So you want people who are already putting up with plenty of progressive dogma to put up with more progressivism, when the rest of those areas that raldi [1] mentioned haven't seen a lick of the same progressivism, impacting their lives in decades?[2] Dont you think that such unfair pressure solely on the tech world, will only serve to alienate them? Won't it cause them to dig their heels in? Is that kind of retrenchment desirable? In what way does that make any sense? This is isn't even the first time I've heard this line of fuzzy thought-leadership. I find it grating when people offer such silly twisted logic to prop up their premises. When any form of change is imposed on any section of society, at too fast a rate, there will be resistance. When any form of change is unfairly imposed on ONLY one section of society or in ONLY one geographic region, within the same country, there is bound to be a even greater degree of resistance. [1] The construction industry, The Bible Belt, The restaurant industry, West Africa, The movie industry, The Vatican, The sportswriting industry, The people who make Superbowl ads, Japan, The adult entertainment industry, The Middle East, Wall Street, Nepal, The upper echelons of American politics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8964102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8964102 [2] I'm by no means advocating less than progressive conditions to prevail in any industry or any geographic region. This could be just as well, said of the conservative end of the spectrum. In other words, there are conservative pockets, hell bent on turning their already conservative professions even more rigid and unyielding.
- 12y ago

Alex3917 12y ago

The bible belt isn't exactly eating the world. We live in a society where more people now aspire to be tech CEOs than pro athletes or rock stars, and tech is one of the main centers of power both politically and economically. It's easy to dismiss the article because there are a few mischaracterizations and exaggerations. But you need to remember that most people get their information about the tech world from second hand sources, and SV is largely opaque and closed off to the general public. If you actually read it for what it is rather than just judging the author based on her knowledge of obscure inside-baseball tech scandals then I think there are some valuable points.

parennoob 12y ago
> We live in a society where more people now aspire to be tech CEOs than pro athletes or rock stars, and tech is one of the main centers of power both politically and economically. Citation? I would say this is a huge assumption, presumably backed by your anecdotal experiences. To offer an anecdotal counterpoint - from what I have seen of the majority of the college-going American generation, they do aspire to leadership positions in general, but seldom through purely technical means.
raldi 12y ago
Ah, you're saying SV is the front line not because it treats women worse than anyone else in the world, but rather (to use the military analogy) because it's an extremely strategic piece of territory.
- Alex3917 12y ago
  People aren't complaining because they think SV treats women badly, they're complaining because they perceive SV as preventing women across the country from being as successful in business as men are.
- tptacek 12y ago
  It doesn't treat women worse than every other place in the world, no, but it treats them worse than many other places. Computer science has a sharply worse gender participation gap than other professions, and even from other STEM fields. It also continues to allow that gap to reinforce itself, for instance with apologia about how women aren't taught computers when they're younger and (by implication) how they're too far gone by the time they're 20 to remedy that problem. And that's one of the more charitable pathologies to focus on.

dropit_sphere 12y ago

Wars are only fought where at least one side thinks they can win. SV is the front line because it is more egalitarian than those arenas you mention.

s_baby 12y ago
Also "winning" the right to working in a coal mine or laying roofing wouldn't really be a victory after all compared to SV. These people want the upside of being a male without the risk that it carries. Yea some of us get to play this game in SV. What about the vast majority of us that have to work a shit job to support our family? Giving one gender privileged access to industries like SV while simultaneously sheltering them from industries like the coal mining industry would also be a horrible form of marginalization.
- dperny 12y ago
  This argument is as terrible as it is old. Feminists have been fighting for the right to work in coal mines, and fight on battlefields, and everything else.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    You are correct. That said, from within Silicon Valley it sure looks like the feminists are coming for the supposedly easy money of engineering while ignoring the risky things like policing. True or not, it's sometimes the perception that matters.
    - tobr 12y ago
      This says more about Silicon Valley than about feminism, though.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        My statement could be interpreted that way, yes.

rajacombinator 12y ago

Out of curiosity why did Nepal make its way on to your list?

raldi 12y ago
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Nepal#Women.E2.80.99s_Rights http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Nepal#Women.E...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

falcolas 12y ago

OK. Maybe I don't get this, but doesn't framing this as a "war" make the situation even worse? Isn't viewing the opposite gender as "enemy combatants" a really terrible thing to do? I would think that women face enough challenges in their workplace without being viewed by their coworkers as being hostile and out for their livelihoods. Maybe I have this all wrong, but this seems that "news" pieces like this do not help anybody but the media (though perhaps it makes those on either side of the gender divide who already view the others as enemy combatants feel validated).

saraid216 12y ago
> Isn't viewing the opposite gender as "enemy combatants" a really terrible thing to do? Except that's not what's happening. The war is between the ideology that genders are equal and the ideology that genders are not equal. Framing it the way you have is a standard tactic employed by people who are entirely aware they are at war and have set up feminists as enemy combatants already.
- nl 12y ago
  The war is between the ideology that genders are equal and the ideology that genders are not equal. I think a better summary would be this: The war is between the ideology that genders should have equal opportunities and the ideology that genders should not.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I don't think anyone outside certain religions[1] asserts that genders should not have equal opportunities. Could you link to such a person? A better statement: The war is between the ideology that individual humans should have equal opportunities, and the ideology that certain groups should be statistically equally represented in all fields. (Or sometimes it's all fields that result in "power", a poorly defined term.) [1] Interestingly, those religions usually have more women than computing. I've never been to a church where women didn't outnumber men.

michaelochurch 12y ago

Wall Street is much less sexist than Silicon Valley. I've been there. I know. Yes, there are some young men on Wall Street who act boorish, drunkenly hit on women, and generally cause a great deal of discomfort for those around them. They don't get promoted. They aren't trusted. They'll eventually get fired if they keep that shit up. In the Valley, they do get promoted. Misbehavior actually makes a young man more attractive to the VCs, deep in the throes of midlife crisis. That makes the difference. In one place, it's discouraged and relatively uncommon. In the other, it's rampant. The amount of impropriety that you see in the VC darlings is off-the-charts. I worked (briefly) at an ed-tech where the married executives openly flirted with female subordinates (and one was fired for refusing advances). You'd never see that shit in finance, these days. That era ended when the people raising VC now were in diapers. I would guess that "the upper echelons of American politics" are also less sexist than Silicon Valley, given that there are women succeeding in US politics, but wouldn't know from direct experience.

raldi 12y ago
I've spent a fair amount of time working for Wall Street and the broader NYC financial industry as well, and got a quite different impression. And I'm not the only one. Examples: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/03/goldman_sachs_discrimination_suit_lawsuit_alleges_sexism_strip_club_meetings.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/03/goldman_sach... http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-michael-bloombergs-public-sexism http://gawker.com/5979679/id-do-her-a-brief-history-of-micha... BTW, who's the Sheryl Sandberg, Meg Whitman, or Marissa Mayer of Wall Street?
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Take your pick: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-most-powerful-women-on-wall-street-2013-3 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-most-powerful-women-on...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

geofft 12y ago

I don't see active fights over the gender war happening in those fronts. It's certainly true that those aren't territories that we control firmly, but it's also not territory that we're disputing very hard. Gender is what it is in the Bible Belt, and most of the pushback is from a younger generation who grew up on the Internet. Gender is what it is in film, but the Bechdel test entered popular consciousness on the Internet. Gender is what it is in the minds of the old advertising firms, but the new ones are often technology companies, their clients are often technology companies, and when you say "Super Bowl ads" and "what they think of women" I can't help but think "GoDaddy". Gender is what it is in the minds of the current elected officials, but Obama's election has been credited, in part, to his ability to use technology more effectively than his opponents (and, therefore, to effective technologists wanting to work for him). Silicon Valley is the trench and the fortification; if it falls, we can then march on the cities. Now, of course, there's a question as to whether the gender biases of the makers of the Internet impact the gender biases of the things that happen on the Internet. But I think they do. At the least, for fora like Reddit and HN where the platform and editorial direction are linked, it seems obvious that they must. For platforms like Twitter or G+, policies such as harassment response and tradeoffs, whether real names are common or uncommon[0], what speech is considered appropriate or inappropriate, etc. can all impact what voices are heard and who is empowered by the platform. [0] I don't mean by this to imply that there's a standard feminist answer on whether real-name policies are good or not. There are feminist arguments on both sides.

MrDom 12y ago

but isn't it at least a little exaggeration to say that Silicon Valley is the main "trench of the global gender war" It's an exaggeration to say there's a gender war at all. It's feminists against the patriarchy. Feminists are real people. What's the patriarchy?

windlep 12y ago

Many of the industries/groups you cited don't have nearly as much wealth wrapped up in them. That's what makes the tech one worse, more wealth concentrated with less gender equality than others. Once you reduce that list to ones with as much wealth as tech, its a pretty dang short list and it'd be interesting at that point to compare gender % in each.

blueMist 12y ago

I am a WIT. an actual, technical woman in tech, annoyed with myself for letting Newsweek basically troll me. I've noticed the MSM has "discovered" SV, and is doing the usual pieces (sexism! drugs! too much money!, etc.). While there are obviously so many problems in SV, they never seem to find any of the many, many, many (shudder! older) technical women at Google, FB, Intel, etc. to talk with. Everything is written through the more attractive, yet limited, prism of "young person asking for money, bad behavior ensues". I will not comment on the hypocrisy of bemoaning the limited access of women to the spotlight while turning to a self-styled male "expert" on WIT - it's easier to do that than track down actual women in SV to interview directly. I didn't feel represented by the article, I thought it was pretty opportunistic and to be honest, I don't think Newsweek cares for the "plight of women in SV", just about trying to become relevant again. And here I am, talking about it, so they were successful in their trolling.

raldi 12y ago
If you don't mind me asking a personal question, I'm rather curious what your exposure to computers (or electronics that you could take apart, toys with gears, etc.) was like when you were a girl (say, ages 6-16).
- blueMist 12y ago
  Btw, I see some discussion on the thread about SAT Math, GRE Quantitative being skewed towards men (!) - every time I see this, I think of not just my experience, but that of so many girls I grew up with who _loved_ math and were good at it cause nobody had informed them they shouldn't. Look at the Eastern bloc, China, etc. - some of their idiotic policies had the unintended (perhaps) effect of making generations of women realize they can do math, physics, etc. I am not talking about being Alan Turing here, I can't comment on that. But calls to drop math from CS programs - no, just no :).
- blueMist 12y ago
  I am an immigrant. Grew up in the Eastern Bloc - no exposure to computers until high-school (given country), but tons of exposure in school to math, etc. Even in high-school, CS was absolutely more popular with boys and they were enacting the "hacker" model as they perceived it from distance, so there was some "girls don't belong here" attitude, but frankly, once you know you can do it, that stuff is much easier to ignore :). Again, they didn't know what "hacker" meant, more like adolescent posturing.