> I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives
I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this.
My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.
> My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status.
A colleague told me when out at a bar he refrains from telling women that he is a programmer because they suddenly become way more interested because they know how much $$$ programming jobs bring in. That does not sound like low social status signalling to me, but the opposite at least for males.
Having a high income gives a high status to men, but not to women. Women are not at all judged by their income like men are. Therefore, the fact that programmers make money attracts men to being programmers, but does not attract women.
What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man.
Socially smarter doesn't mean better social skills.
It simply means that they are more socially aware. If you allow the metaphor, I would say that they are more likely to "play the game" and "play it well" at that.
Social skills have very little relationship to "emotional intelligence", so I have no clue why you would bring up the point that women are more willing to talk about their feelings.
You are comparing extraversion and agreeableness. While both are statistically higher in women, you are comparing apples and oranges.
"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Maybe if women were more agreeable they wouldn't have been so offended.
Agreeableness trumps Neuroticism IMHO. Neuroticism is a knee-jerk reaction that you cannot control without a lot of self-control. To expect an individual ranking high in Neuroticism to control themselves is to be blind to other's points of view. In short, it means that you do not have enough sensibility to understand and predict the reaction of others before they happen.
Agreeableness allows you to predict those reaction and plan accordingly.
The parent above me said "Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless" and I didn't resort to calling them a misandrist. Let's stick to talking about the issue at hand.
It's not ok to use HN primarily for ideological battle, which your account appears to be doing. This site exists for intellectual curiosity, and we can't have that and war at the same time.
That doesn't mean politicized topics can't be discussed—obviously they are and should be, up to a point. But such discussions tend to consume everything else with their flames, so we have to be careful about not letting them take over HN completely.
The best way we've found so far to draw the line is the 'primarily' test. When an account uses HN primarily for intellectual curiosity, i.e. for encountering and discussing interesting things, it's not an abuse of the site to occasionally talk politics too. But if it's on HN primarily for political battle, then—regardless of the politics—we ask the user not to and ban the account if it doesn't change.
This turns out to work well because there's a gap between these two kinds of user. The first kind tends to remain civil and substantive even as topics get more divisive. The second kind tends not only to drop the gloves, but also to come armed with talking points and not be interested in conversation for its own sake. The one group fits the purpose of HN while the other does not. There are exceptions, of course. But the rule holds up well enough to be a fair standard for moderation.
Saying that you can't criticize a group because of its amount of power in a society is a completely arbitrary rule that is easily disregarded. You will never be able to shame people into following that nonsense.
You appear to still be using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site because it destroys the intellectual curiosity that HN exists for. As I've explained to you before, we ban accounts that do this, regardless of which ideology they favor. This is in the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):
Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.
I don't think you're abusing HN on purpose, but we've given you multiple warnings already. When people either can't or won't use the site as intended, we do end up banning them.
Thanks for saying this. I skimmed my past 6 months of comments and I don't share your view that I'm "using HN primarily for ideological battle". I don't believe I've previously discussed gender issues, either. If anything it looks like I've had a pro-Apple ideology, which hasn't been flagged.
I make a point to be respectful while commenting, but I don't keep an internal quota for the subjects I comment on. I don't want to add noise to a topic I can't contribute to just to drown out my other comments. The moderation is a bit stifling and doesn't feel ideologically neutral. I know moderation is nebulous so I wanted to offer some feedback, regardless of what happens.
I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this.
My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.