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>Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2]
by swatow 12y ago
>Here's an intellectual way to approach the problem: Stepping back from our society, in some meritocratic system why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners? And is it coincidence that the 38% group has controlled power, wealth, and privelege for hundreds of years, and still does in most other situations (governnment, non-tech business, etc.)?
That is actually the least intellectual way you could approach the issue. You are relying on people self-censoring (and we may see some downvotes to provide some real censorship). But I will give you the uncensored answer. There are, in fact, a number of possible reasons apart from the one you have in mind. Here are some.
1) Tech is meritocratic so it attracts men who are less physically attractive or socially capable, because they mainly need technical skill. This in turn makes the field less attractive to women.
2) Tech is a monotonous job with low social status, and so it attracts people driven by ambition and desire for money, who tend to be male.
3) Women are fundamentally less interested in technology because they prefer fields with human interest (though this doesn't explain the gap between programming and, for example, math or physics).
I have only really addressed the gender issue above, but I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sago 12y ago"I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem." Then I don't think much of your thinking. Making up scenarios that are trivially refuted by a moment's thought is silly. How about 4) Aliens come down every night and surgically remove the bits of women's brains that are used in programming tasks. There, now I've really addressed the issue. See why 'making stuff up' isn't actually some mark of intellectual superiority? Or how about 1) How many jobs that are known for attracting socially adjusted, good looking men can you name where most of the winners are women? 2) How many high social status, well varied jobs can you name where most of the winners are women? 3) You defeat your point in your own parentheses. You've addressed nothing. You've made up some nonsense and pretended to be smarter than the person you're responding to, but you've directly avoided addressing the actual point.
- swatow 12y ago1) How many jobs that are known for attracting socially adjusted, good looking men can you name where most of the winners are women? 2) How many high social status, well varied jobs can you name where most of the winners are women? Law is both high status and favors people who are attractive and have good social skills. According to [1], women are 34% of the law industry compared with 12.33% of software engineers [2]. 3) You defeat your point in your own parentheses. Not really, because there is still a gender gap in math and physics, and so this just means (3) does not explain all of the gender gap in CS. EDIT: I'm not going to reply to any comment that isn't a reply to this. You don't have to agree with the way that the delay before you can respond to a post grows exponentially as thread depth increases, but threads are unreadable if you try to circumvent it. [1] http://www.americanbar.org/groups/women/resources/statistics.html http://www.americanbar.org/groups/women/resources/statistics... [2] http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statistics-show-its-worse-than-you-think/ http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...
- sago 12y agoRight, so even in fields you've been able to pick, you've not been able to show that women are the majority of the winners. You can say they're a little less frequently trumped by men. But you still have minorities in both cases. Where are all these competent women who are eschewing tech because of the lack of hot guys? Which fields are they dominating?
- krakensden 12y agoHealth care- nurses and new doctors (still more legacy male doctors). Although the strict quotas on doctors distort things.