
Let’s Use Hard Science to Help Tech Companies Advance Women - mpweiher
http://www.gurianinstitute.com/blog--newsletter/lets-use-hard-science-to-help-tech-companies-advance-women
======
yk
The fundamental problem is, that hard science fundamentally can not do that
job. A policy document is a normative document, science produces descriptive
accounts. Even if we assume for a moment that we had a full scientific theory
of gender, then we would still need to know what to do with that. Should we
then optimize for worker satisfaction, worker of female sex productivity,
welcoming to female gendered customers, inspiring the next generation of
engineers averaged on the likelihood of them joining the company? This is just
an instance of the well studied is/ought problem [0], that you can not deduce
from a list statements about how the world looks, how the world should look.
(And looking through the objections on wiki and sep, they all seem to rely at
least on the assumption of a full theory of gender above.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem)

~~~
PeterStuer
Science might not do that job, but a least it can point out to you the flaws
in your reasoning, and, once you have settled on an reasoned objective, help
you construct effective tools, techniques and programs to reach that
objective. In other words, Science is what keeps you from insisting earth is
the center around which the universe revolves, sacrificing virgins to the rain
gods in a drought, or investing in gyms to get to the moon by improving the
high jump.

------
toomchsauce
The number of women studying computer science rose dramatically during the
tech bubble and dropped off after the crash. I think we're going through a
similar cycle.

When programming is lucrative and viewed as high status, it becomes a target
for feminists and they push for more female coders. When it's not high status
anymore (when the funding environment contracts again), girls will stop
enrolling in CS as much and feminists will stop targeting it as a powerful job
that needs more women.

It's my opinion that most women probably don't want to be programmers/ICs deep
down, but in a bubble environment many women will gravitate towards CS because
it's where the action is in the economy, and affirmative action makes it an
artificially attractive choice for them.

We're depicting programming and software as the way of the future in business
in order to hype startups, so if most women don't really enjoy coding, that's
very problematic for feminists. So there is huge resistance to the idea that
most women aren't that into coding.

It's like James mentions in his memo, from a logical perspective it's
completely arbitrary to want to move women into software because it's mostly
men, just like it would be arbitrary to advocate for more female miners or
waste managers. The key to understanding the reaction to his memo is to
acknowledge that it's born out of a feminist anxiety that if software is run
by men, and the future of business is software, the future of business is
still going to be dominated by men. So in context, his memo is really
challenging the idea that women prefer economic equality.

~~~
tepe1
> It's my opinion that most women don't want to be programmers/ICs deep down,
> but in a bubble environment many women will gravitate towards CS because
> it's where the action is in the economy, and feminists pave the way with
> aggressive affirmative action campaigns that make programming an
> artificially attractive choice for women.

Why is this your opinion?

Have you spoken to a lot of women? Have you conducted any kind of surveys or
polls? Or are you just making up whatever fits your biases?

> It's like James mentions in his memo, from a logical perspective it's
> completely arbitrary to want to move women into software because it's mostly
> men

The naivete of HN never fails.

It's perfectly rational for any business to want more women. Or minorities. Or
even more children. Every business in the world wants the deepest and biggest
talent pool possible.

And of course, this is the real issue. Once programming is demystified and
women do enter the field in force it'll be pretty hard for deeply mediocre
javascript monkeys to command six figure salaries, won't it?

All the fuss, all the whining -- it's completely self-serving. The idea that
women can thrive in law, medicine and hard sciences but they can't master CSS
is laughable.

But here's the thing: it's not mastermind feminists who are driving this. It's
capitalism. People can whine about feminism and uppity women taking their
jerbs -- this is absolutely nothing new. Still, despite pervasive
discrimination, the market is going to produce that talent. There was a time
when people thought programming was difficult. Only eleet hackers could thrive
in Sillicon Valley. Now middle schoolers build Android Apps in a couple of
days.

In the end businesses are going to search endlessly for more and better
talent, people will gravitate to the jobs that produce the most stable income
streams, and everybody is going to strive to keep the market open and fair.
You can fight this or whine about fantasy feminist schemes or you can embrace
a future where the field has been dramatically opened to all comers.

~~~
ViktorV
You were right on calling him out with his opinion. But you make the same
mistake:

> But here's the thing: it's not mastermind feminists who are driving this.
> It's capitalism.

"Have you conducted any kind of surveys or polls? Or are you just making up
whatever fits your biases?"

To be honest: It is probably a mix of the societal pressure from feminists,
and you are right capitalism too. The hard thing is that this is not hard
science, no one can know the real ratio of the two. For me it seems you're
stating this like every societal changes root was better productivity (
communism, French revolution ? ).

> The idea that women can thrive in law, medicine and hard sciences but they
> can't master CSS is laughable. I don't see women thrive in math, physics,
> engineering science, but I might be wrong. Biology is a good counter example
> though.

To be honest I think it is perfectly possible that you are right in
everything! But I'm also sure that there is no human being on this planet who
could say that he understands this problem 100% while being fully rational,
and not let the emotions punch trough here and there.

The point of my comment is that: I see one side as "There might be other
factors" and the other is "There are no other factors". The second one is a
much harder statement.

------
kbuchanan
I wish more people could see that if Damore is right about biological
variation underpinning sex disparity in tech, this exposes an _opportunity_
for women. In the absence of affirmative action, women who pursue engineering
roles will reveal themselves as having above average interest in tech—not only
above women generally, but above men too.

My evidence is anecdotal, but it's strong. I first noticed this after months
of teaching at a coding school, but I found, with cohort after cohort, women
reliably outperform the men. Note they're dramatically underrepresented (15 to
1). The interesting thing is that _whatever_ the reason for their
underrepresentation—be it oppression or biology, or a mix of the two—these
women self-select into an elite group by braving a predominantly male
environment. Odds are they're good at programming.

My point is that if you belong to a minority in a competitive environment,
it's important to consider the upsides too, in addition to the real and steep
obstacles.

------
rdtsc
> Hostility is, by its very nature, a violent attack on a person or group.

Remember reading about how what Damore wrote was "violence". Wonder what those
who suffered from physical violence such as rape think when "violence" is used
in such a context...

Then in general it seems like firing him was admitting defeat. Google could
have responded by compiling a set of studies to disprove what they claimed
were obviously wrong and misguided ideas. Surely they have enough people who
know how to compile a research survey.

At the same time I bet Damore knew that this was going to lead to termination.
He forced their hand publicly and they responded as any beaurocracy would be
expected. There was basically 0 chance they would have said "oh thanks for the
research and suggestions we will review and redesign some of our policies
after you've publicly shamed us".

It seemed to them on the surface they won that battle but at the same time the
admitted defeat too. It is a bit like someone responding to an argument where
peer reviewed research is presented with "well, your mom is fat and you're
stupid". That ends the argument, for sure, and the person saying it feels
they've won the argument. But everyone else sees it as admitting defeat more
or less.

The more interesting thing I found was that some "news" outlets like Gizmodo,
chose to publish the letter but omitted the research. That seems strange. If
one didn't know any better, they might assume they secretly agreed with the
points made and did everything they could to promote them further. Few things
work as well as deliberate and obvious censorship to make people pay
attention.

------
ktRolster
Harvey Mudd had some good success getting their enrollment up:
[https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-
bia...](https://qz.com/730290/harvey-mudd-college-took-on-gender-bias-and-now-
more-than-half-its-computer-science-majors-are-women/)

~~~
caseysoftware
Less than one year after that article, Harvey Mudd's President says the last
year was the school's worst ever resulting in a suicide, nearly 10% of the
students on suicide watch, and having to simplify the curriculum from hard
STEM with more electives.

As someone who nearly went there (accepted but opted for one of their rivals),
it's disappointing to see.

Ref:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/08/02/540603927/a-colleg...](http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/08/02/540603927/a-college-
president-on-her-schools-worst-year-ever)

~~~
Animats
Harvey Mudd internal report mentioned: [1]

(That's now inaccessable (403 Forbidden), and the page that linked to it,
"[http://tsl.news/news/6611/"](http://tsl.news/news/6611/"), is failing with a
Ngnix error (502 Bad Gateway).)

I got to read it before it went down, and it sounded like they'd reached the
student workload levels associated with the first two years of any serious
engineering school. Their restructured student body wasn't ready for that.

[1]
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/content_link/S4gumhMUSUdKB...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/content_link/S4gumhMUSUdKBJ5MO6vsEF6EiRtQCDE1hBRJCsIlq4fAzL9JryWeOWdWGtmGnTLZ/file)

~~~
caseysoftware
Ha. It's funny that it's gone now. I read it just after I posted my comment.
That's just a coincidence.. right?

Also, the first two years at an engineering school is awful by definition.
Generally by then you learn to a) prioritize, b) take the right combo of
classes, or c) go somewhere else. I opted for a & b but many friends and smart
people opted for c.

~~~
Animats
If you go here [1] sometimes you can get the report. They may have a caching
server that's out of sync. If the document is too small to read, open its
frame in a new window.

[1] [http://tsl.news/news/6611/](http://tsl.news/news/6611/)

------
unityByFreedom
By all means, be data driven.

The science is out when it comes to determining a biological basis gender
preferences for tech or leadership.

------
nippples
> The anti-science bias in this explanation has two faces, both well-meaning
> but both untrue. First, the science of gender difference is not gender
> stereotyping but, in fact, real, as the sources above will prove to any
> executive or person who studies them. Second, even if someone felt like that
> gender trait difference constituted untrue gender stereotypes, there is no
> hostility in the science. Hostility is, by its very nature, a violent attack
> on a person or group. Damore was not hostile nor violent; he was measured
> and scientifically accurate. Similarly, Larry Summers was not hostile, nor
> were Barbara Annis, my coauthor and I, in Leadership and the Sexes.

The whole idea that we have to dress up a topic in well-meaning white lies
because feelings might get hurt is what has been making me less and less
receptive to certain messages and points of view.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
I may be missing something in that quote. What are the white lies in that
paragraph?

~~~
mpweiher
"both well-meaning but both untrue"

The way I understood it is that the paragraph talks about white lies, not that
the paragraph itself tells white lies.

------
evangelista
This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will
converge on an intelligent point at the end.

Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk
down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic
brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in
tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help.

In the richest country in the world, at the very heart of the tech
industry...let me repeat this again, we have scores of people living in abject
poverty...exactly like animals.

After multiple viewings of this situation, I stopped looking at the homeless
people and I started noticing the people walking past these individuals:
Staring down at their phones, the residents of Silicon Valley have trained
themselves to wear blinders to the abject, deplorable poverty of their fellow
men. They are Tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, SnapChatting their lunch.

Solving easy problems. Making easy statements. Liking the right comments and
the right posts, retweeting the appropriate social messages. So simple and
easy! Click! Like! Done!

As I stood in line at one bodega, I noted the professional and skilled manner
in which a white collar worker like myself standing in line completely failed
to look at, respond to or acknowledge the presence of a drug addict who was
begging him for change.

What a wonderful technique, I thought to myself. I had been doing it all wrong
previously by even remotely acknowledging the homeless whenever they hassled
me on the street. After observing this man's behavior, I adopted it. I
learned: Just pretend they don't exist and they will go away.

So back to my main point:

Silicon Valley is a corrupt, horrible place that has decided it's #1 problem
to be solved is the gender imbalance in software engineering. Instead of
focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them, the
entire tech industry has collectively jammed it's head deep, far into it's own
anal cavity and decided that the optimal use of all of it's social justice
time should be on ensuring that highly privileged women who have attended
universities and received educations which fairly guarantee that they will
achieve salaries that only .01% of the entire globe will ever achieve are the
most pressing concern of the moment.

Every single day I see nothing but a relentless circular pounding on this
topic. Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code! Women must learn to
code!

The other half of the issue is just as fun: Our #1 issue as an industry is
that women who are in the very upper 0.5% of the world must earn slightly more
money. About 3%-5% more money. Yes, THAT is the issue we must harp on
constantly all day, every single day online.

And the people living like animals on the streets we are ignoring? Yeah, fuck
them, lets teach girls to code.

~~~
neilwilson
"Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty
around them"

That requires ensuring everybody that wants a job has one unless exempted by
age or infirmity.

Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in
wage negotiations. They always have another option.

And if there is one thing business hates, it's having to compete -
particularly for workers.

A society that cannot work out that healthcare should be based upon need, not
ability to pay, is already moribund and dying on the inside.

~~~
droidist2
> Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in
> wage negotiations. They always have another option.

Businesses would never let this happen though, they would just lobby the
government to let them bring in more workers from other countries until they
have the upper hand again. The third world has virtually an endless supply.

~~~
PeterisP
It's naturally that they'll lobby the government for that, but it doesn't mean
that they should or will succeed in that, after all, the (current) workers
have all the votes that politicians want.

