
How Women Came to Dominate Neuroendocrinology - yaseen-rob
http://nautil.us/issue/63/horizons/how-women-came-to-dominate-neuroendocrinology
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throwaway19342
> _Women, of course, have clearly played a major role in their own successes
> in the field. But that is only half the story: They were also helped by
> early feminist men like Daniel Lehrman._

A few years ago, I started at company that had a tech department of 15, all
male. I made the case to the department that it was in the interest of the
company to have a diverse tech team, and my colleagues and management
responded. Three years later, the department was 5 women and 11 men.

People who care can make a difference.

~~~
ralusek
People who care about, what, exactly? People who care about diversity of their
technical team along arbitrary immutable characteristics which have no bearing
whatsoever on the technical work are...capable of increasing their technical
team's diversity along arbitrary immutable characteristics which have no
bearing whatsoever on the technical work. I think that is to be expected, it's
not exactly surprising.

Unless you felt as though you were specifically choosing your initial 15
employees because they were men, however, I fail to see where you had a
problem to begin with.

I'm sorry for even participating in the beating of this dead horse, but this
might just be an argument destined to endure indefinitely.

~~~
dpc59
Women bring different perspective on a vast variety of issues. It has obvious
bearing on the technical work.

~~~
rosser
For a great many products that technical teams make, women are on the order of
_half of their users_.

I can not comprehend why you would not want them helping to build that thing.

~~~
trgv
I don't think anyone in this comment chain is saying "we don't want women
building stuff". Rather, some commenters are uncomfortable with the assumption
that moving from 15 males to 11 males + 5 females is necessarily an
improvement.

Maybe 5 of the original 15 males were gay. Does that change your perspective?
I find this whole way of thinking unsettling. Doesn't it simply depend on who
these people are as individuals?

I'd also be careful with the argument you've (implicitly) made. It doesn't
seem to follow that the distribution of gender of programmers should match the
distribution of gender of users. Besides, there must be software projects
where 95%+ of users are male or female.

In general, I think most of us here agree that gender discrimination is bad,
people being discouraged from making career choices due to gender is bad, and
sexual harassment is bad. We may disagree on the frequency with which these
things occur or how to fix them, but I think we're a lot closer than it
appears from these contentious comments.

~~~
rosser
I said nothing about matching engineering's gender distribution to the user
base's. Please don't put words in my mouth.

The thread-parent's comment made it clear that, in his situation, it _made
things better_. Is it going to in every case? No. But using edge cases to
argue against the median is even more specious than the argument you assert I
was trying to sneak in.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> I said nothing about matching engineering's gender distribution to the user
> base's.

Then why say this?

> women are on the order of half of their users.

~~~
rosser
Because if you're ignoring (by simply not hearing) the perspective of a
meaningful representation of that ~half of your user-base, you do not, and
probably _can not_ understand them.

You don't need to have parity between those ratios, but you might want to do
better than the "token diversity hire" — assuming you do _at all_.

------
gumby
One of my startups, at one point had eight employees, all but me female. The
company also had seven employees with PhDs. I don't have one.

(it was just for a period of a few months. This was a pharma company; there
seem to be more women in biology, analytic chemistry, medical statistics etc)

------
solidsnack9000
The article doesn't explain how they came to dominate it, actually. Did fewer
men sign up than women? Did more women than men pass the coursework or exams?
Did men in the middle of the pipeline end up making a different choice and
going somewhere else?

------
crimsonalucard
I want to hear the story of why all the sciences have been dominated by men
consistently. I want to know why all cultures have anthropologically been
dominated by men.

What we see today in modern society is more of a phenomenon then a norm from
an anthropological and historical standpoint. I want to know why.

It seems however that the default explanation is that men have always
oppressed women.

I believe that political correctness has colored the true reason that is more
complex, nuanced and not as one sided.

You may get voted down.

~~~
kiliantics
Survivorship bias. Agrarian societies that were based on male dominance,
hierarchical social strata, and conquest of competitors were the ones that
developed into the early empires that today's societies are descended from.
There are and have been matriarchal societies and also more egalitarian and
less confrontational ones, but they did not expand at the same rates or
compete as well with those that ultimately won out on geographic and resource
control.

This does not mean male dominance and social hierarchy are preferable. It just
explains why they are the norm. There are many good reasons to reject them as
the norm now that we can.

~~~
crimsonalucard
>This does not mean male dominance and social hierarchy are preferable. It
just explains why they are the norm. There are many good reasons to reject
them as the norm now that we can.

I agree.

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BadassFractal
90% of the attendees were women. Given that correlation implies causation in
the world of social justice, doesn't this demonstrate that there must be
rampant systemic sexism in the field that keeps otherwise eager men from
breaking in? Where's the uproar?

~~~
dang
The gender flamewar comments you posted to this thread are just the kind of
flamey things we don't want on HN. We eventually ban accounts that won't stop
ranting about divisive topics. If you don't have something substantive and
thoughtful to say, please don't post.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
subjectsigma
_Clearly_ , the entire field is sexist and we should use gender quotas to
correct this horrible behavior in the name of diversity.

