I don't get this. Maybe it's because I'm a white male, but it still doesn't make sense to me.
Why is there such a resistance to the idea that there might be differences in what groups of people are interested in at any given time? Not an issue of genetics or competence, but a complicated web of social influences that make people less likely to be interested in one path or the other?
If there are truly unjust and discriminatory barriers, then by all means let's remove them. But if we succeed, and it doesn't change the numbers much, does it matter?
If certain groups really think it's a problem then let them do the work of encouraging their group members (alert, this feels condescending - who says they'll even self-identify with that group) to get into tech.
It's certainly not my fault. I'm a cheerleader for tech careers. The more, the merrier. But if you're not into it, then you're not into it. There's a lot of things I'm not into, either. Whose fault is that? And why should it matter?
The resistance comes from the fact that this idea -- lack of diversity is explained by differences in some fundamental, intrinsic way -- is offered and accepted without serious proof!
But the complicated web is what's called "life". It's infinitely diverse and complex, and if some optimal configuration could be discovered and enforced that would lead to this banal goal of "more members of group X in programming jobs", it could only have untold deleterious effects elsewhere.
The demographic makeup of tech careers may simply be the result of billions of people just doing what it is they do.
It's less about individual goals than about the mismatch between talent and opportunity.
There are people out there who could make meaningful contribution to this profession. There is a demand for people who could make a meaningful contribution to this profession. There are artificial barriers, based on gender/race/class/whatever that make it marginally harder for some people to contribute.
A more concrete example: The unemployment rate in my country is very huge, and yet my organization is still having a hard time finding talent. Is it because none of the millions of people looking for work could possibly do what I need done? It seems more likely that the complex system of forces has dissuaded talented people from getting skills in this profession.
> There are artificial barriers, based on gender/race/class/whatever that make it marginally harder for some people to contribute.
Can you provide an example of the barriers of which you speak? I find that a lot of the time I'm told about how people with qualities distinct from mine should be cut some slack or given extra incentives to get into industry to correct some sort of imbalance, and that the imbalance is somehow evidence of barriers that we can't see, and that incentivising these groups (and in effect putting barriers up against people like me) is the way forward.
To me, discrimination is discrimination, regardless. I don't take issue with any qualities of anyone - the right person for the job is the right person for the job. Perhaps historically barriers meant that the right person for the job was a white male (bearing in mind societal pressures, the availability of education and options etc.) and the prevalence of white males is a hangover, if so like all hangovers it will die down.
What I do know is that in my profession (technical infosec) there's a hard time finding talent, but that's because your average graduate student won't cut it. So we're stuck in a pool where you have a subset of CS grads, with some security interest and experience, subset of which have a particular mindset and abilities, and in turn a subset of which won't run away at the prospect of learning a staggering amount of information about systems, programs and all kinds of stuff are what you're after. Then on top of that I get told that because there's a skew further up the chain that I should incentivise particular groups to 'correct an imbalance' I have no direct control over.
Can you provide an example of the barriers of which you speak?
Here's a real-world example: A workplace where most of the (all-male) development team is using the same "bikini babe" screensaver. It's a small thing to a guy, something you may not even notice. It's a small thing to plenty of women, too. Some other women may see that as an implicit message that they aren't taken seriously as anything but a sex object.
Sure, it's a small thing, but small things add up.
I don't want to say that you are the problem or that you should hire unqualified people to correct an imbalance. All I want is for people to be honest with themselves that this world isn't a pure meritocracy and that you may be (as I am) the beneficiary of privilege based on sex or race or class. Is that really controversial?
Women getting their panties in a bunch about something as minor as that is the reason they aren't taken seriously in the workplace (to the extent they aren't, I mean).
Thank you monochromatic for provide an example for iuguy.
What he described is illegal in the US, by the way, and can get both you and your employer sued. It's not minor: it's part of culture bonding based on women-as-sex-objects rather than as possible equal participants.
So you're saying that women aren't taken seriously because they feel like they aren't taken seriously? Did you even read the part of the article about circular logic?
Of course it seems minor to you, that doesn't mean that it's not a real thing. You have to be mature enough to realize that your perspective isn't the only valid one.
Turn it around for a moment. Imagine you work in a mostly female industry. There's something that you, as a man, care about, that your women co-workers don't (I don't know, scheduling you to be on-call during the World Cup finals). What do you do?
Option 1: Say nothing, suffer in silence, and feel like they don't know or care.
Option 2: Say something to try to improve the situation, and have people accuse you of getting your boxers in a bunch over something minor.
Writing correct software is so close to impossible that we would actually be be better off without a large majority of the people who are already charging big money for utter crap. I don't see how we can expect more meaningful contributions from anyone who isn't irrestibly drawn to this Sisyphean work.
What is more, the more barriers are removed the harder and more convoluted it gets to explain any such differences.
If we assume there aren't any differences between men and women, but speculate on what the world would look like with significant differences, what would the distributions be like (as compared to today).
On the reason why, I would say the level interest is very tied up with ability in any case. What is more innate ability probably causes interest. I don't think it is a scientific statement to say it is only a social phenomenon (or vica-versa).
I have similar thoughts. But also, it bothers me that the imbalances in tech are considered to be somehow more pathological or worse than the imbalances that exist in all kinds of other professions. We seem to be the only profession flogging ourselves over this issue (I'm sure there are some others, but I doubt there are many).
Are people in nursing worried about the field underperforming as a whole because it has so many women?
I'm sort of a broken record in this thread, but every time the question comes up I like to respond. Yes, there is a nursing shortage, and actively recruiting and retaining men is a high priority. Please see: http://www.minoritynurse.com/men-nursing/recruiting-men-nurs...
If we keep going with your excellent point, it's not hard to see a hypothetical argument for aiming to make everyone in the world equally interested in everything.
Proponents of this theory in tech jobs don't seem to understand this. They just see that if the numbers don't add up to a perfectly even split, there's something nefarious going on.
This is absolutely 100% not true. You may not be familiar with fields like nursing or dietetics but there is an equally imbalanced gender distribution in both those fields that skews the other way.
Both fields are concerned and do talk about ways they can address the imbalance (and act in limited capacities).
Edward de Bono once talked about how words become loaded with emotional connotations and value judgements to the point where it is hard to argue for or against certain positions.
Eg: You can make an argument for or against a mixture of two things in differing ratios, but the moment you use the words "balanced" and "unbalanced" to represent the two states, the it is harder to argue for the "unbalanced" side. Likewise for "core" vs "surface" (de Bono's example) Who would want to argue against balance, 'core', or in this case, "diversity"?(What are you, some kind of bigot?).
"Diversity" is automatically assumed to be a positive, before the argument on whether it is desirable begins, and there isn't a value neutral or value positive word that is its opposite.
Specifically in this post, there are plenty of value laden words - 'diversity', 'meritocracy' etc put together to slant in a particular direction. Not much solid argument or content there - the power of the argument comes instead from the values attached to the specific words used, which makes it a bit iffy - Martin is a gifted writer and clear thinker - this just isn't one of his better efforts.
[Due Disclosure: I know Martin from my days at ThoughtWorks. I respect him immensely and think he is a very impressive person, who has given me a lot of very useful advice on many occasions.]
"/more programmers/", as long as the new set has a different and "better" distribution ratio among its members than exists presently. Just reinforces my point. As to "wider variety of thinking" this is immeasurable and is sufficiently vague so you can take it to mean anything you want it to mean.
Fwiw, I am not saying Martin is wrong - he is a smart guy and he is a probably right. I am just saying his argument uses subtle tricks of rhetoric to, essentially, circle back to his assumptions.
He talks about diversity of sex and race being necessary to have a diversity of viewpoints. If that is true doesn't that imply that that different sexes and races have fundamental differences based on those attributes? If so shouldn't we expect a diversity imbalance in every occupation. That is, people with fundamental differences will tend to want to do different things. If it's not true then why care about diversity of sex or race.
Also I disagree with this line from the article:
"A diversity imbalance suggest that there are many women, who would have good careers as programmers, who are not getting the opportunity to do so." If women are denied opportunities as programmers there will be an imbalance. An imbalance can be caused by any number of other factors.
I was under the impression that most people had accepted that the reason more men than women do software development is that more men find it interesting than women do, not because women are less intelligent or because there's a conspiracy to keep them out. Too bad, I guess not.
As an aside, my boss at the moment is a woman, and a few years ago she had to staff up significantly and hired several young women at the junior level. The interesting thing is that her team hasn't really changed because of "the diversity" since it turns out that women who like programming act pretty much like the men who like programming: they're kind of socially awkward, have sometimes unreasonable expectations that the world will be a meritocracy, make a fetish out of liking cartoons and movies that most people don't, and so on.
At least, I've certainly seen no research suggesting that is true; you may believe it but "most" people don't and if they did they haven't provided evidence for that belief. If your hypothesis is correct, how do you explain the massive variation over time in gender gap even just in the United States? (citation: http://phrogram.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityS...)
If you're talking about the sharp decline in computer science degrees granted to women around 1984, I have a couple of guesses.
First, no one really knew what kind of career path getting a computer science degree entailed until around then anyway, and once women had figured it out they decided they didn't want it.
Second, in my opinion women are much more sensitive to their career's stability and predictability than men are, for the simple reason that they're the ones who have to plan out when to have children. You'll notice that the drop-off more or less coincided with the first (or second, or maybe third - I forget which) big bust in the PC industry in the 80s. Mainframes and even microcomputers did not have boom-and-bust cycles like PCs did in the 80s, although individual companies might blow up the industry as a whole was relatively stable. College students looking for stability around that time might sensibly decide "computing" wasn't for them any more.
My favorite reference in this discussion (well, about women in science and engineering as a whole) is Philip Greenspun's article (http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science) who basically makes the argument that the median scientist who doesn't win Noble Prizes actually has a pretty crappy career and that women are smart enough to stay away.
Although it's easy to become accustomed to it, it's pretty obvious the child care world has some serious issues in diversity. By this I mean that it has some notable differences in proportions of people compared to the general population. One of the most obvious differences is the low proportion of men, which is true all over the world. In the US, where I spend a good chunk of my time, the over-representation of Latinos is also obvious.
One point of view I hear fairly regularly is that these diversity imbalances are natural - because men don't have the aptitude or inclination for child care. The big flaw here is a simple one of evidence. There are (roughly) 50% men in the world, so we should expect the ratio for men in child care to be 50% - unless there's real evidence that some other ratio is natural.
This waste hurts our society, too. We need more and better child care to nurture and support the next generation. By not bringing enough men into the profession, we are handicapping ourselves. How can we say we are hiring the best people when we ignore significant chunks of our population?
Your rewrite is completely valid. Were you expecting it to be absurd? It's not. The same interesting questions arise. I'm sure you can come up with reasons why men may choose not to make their living caring for children, even though they'd prefer to do so. Is this not a problem we should attempt to fix?
Your rewrite is completely valid. Were you expecting it to be absurd? It's not. The same interesting questions arise.
I think the point is, that when "women in tech" comes up, the default assumption that people (particularly feminists) tend to jump to is that sexism is keeping women out of tech. More specifically, that sexist guys in tech are keeping women out. Even when not stated explicitly, this accusation has been made many, many times, and underlies every discussion about this topic.
But the immediate assumption when it comes to nursing is almost never that women in nursing programs mistreat men. In fact, I've almost never heard that accusation, even though it's considered the null hypothesis when it comes to "women in tech". People are much quicker to look for other explanations, for instance that men are more likely to be bothered by the working conditions, pay, autonomy, etc. than women are.
I'm sure you can come up with reasons why men may choose not to make their living caring for children, even though they'd prefer to do so. Is this not a problem we should attempt to fix?
Absolutely, we should address these problems. First we need to know what they are, though, and I think the discussion about this topic has been much more productive in nursing than it has been in tech, because sexism is not considered the null hypothesis there.
I'm about to get on a plane and don't have time to fully rebut, but I assure you the treatment of men in nursing school is a problem taken very seriously. Google "recruiting men in nursing," to see more.
I'm afraid I didn't see this response until just now, so it's a bit late, but if you're still following this, I'd love to see some more specific references - I googled "recruiting men in nursing" and I see a ton of stuff about how to try to make nursing seem more appealing to guys, but nothing about accusations that the nursing establishment is hostile to men, certainly nothing similar to what is accused against the tech status-quo on a regular basis.
In particular, most of the links related to nursing seem to be making arguments analogous to the much derided "women aren't interested in tech because the work doesn't appeal to women" theory, arguing that men don't like nursing because the work is not perceived by them as male enough in various ways, not that they have any perceptions of anti-male bias in the nursing community. Quite frankly, I'd reject any such notions, since there is no such general feeling, at least none that I've ever heard, so that's not what's keeping people from walking through the nursing school door in the first place (otherwise, I figure I would have been at least cognizant of such a general perception).
Similarly, I'm skeptical whether tech really has any significant misogynist reputation once we look beyond feminist-in-tech bloggers and male me-too hangers-on - none of the women I know seem to have that impression (though granted, they're from pretty varied and non tech-centric backgrounds), and I certainly have not seen where I've worked.
When I have asked my female friends about their impressions of the computer world, they tend to think that yeah, it's a circle-jerk of forever-alone dorks, but they generally assume that they'd be more welcoming to women and more accepting of them than guys in most fields, not less. When asked why they don't do programming-ish stuff themselves, most have said stuff like "that's for the math geeks", and "I study people, not code" (crank the superiority knob to the max on both of those, btw - when I asked this, I got the definite sense that they thought the subject matter was distinctly below them). Not once have I heard "because I've heard that guys in tech treat women like shit" as an answer, which makes me very suspicious when people point to that as the definitive root cause...
In fact, my wife works in Early Childhood education at the Laboratory School at Stanford, and they do think and worry about exactly those kinds of things.
[reads all the comments about how no one wants ladies in their field anyway]
And people wonder why the ladies don't want to hang out with you kids all day. Could it be that ladies are smart enough to figure out when and where they are unwelcome? UNPOSSIBLE
Thank you for your kind words. I confess that I am completely taken aback that in 2012 there are still people postulating that women are not capable of or inclined toward intellectually rigorous or difficult work.
Oh those ladies and their feeble, overheating lady-brains!
I want more competent people in all jobs regardless of their genetic and cultural makeup.
In software development, we seem to be beset by an astonishing array of incompetence. The bar is so low that nobody should argue that any particular sub-group of the population would, by nature, be worse.
However, I am always intrigued that when people talk about "diversity", they always look to balance the high end of the spectrum, and never the low end.
For example:
Between 2003 and 2008, over 39 out of every 40 deaths in (US) military operations in Iraq were men. Where's the outcry about gender imbalance?
Who is in prison, the world over as criminals or political prisoners? The vast majority are men. Where's the outcry about gender imbalance?
In the US, most homeless people are men. Where's the outcry about gender imbalance?
Over 90% of people killed while performing their job are men. Where's the outcry about gender imbalance?
Men on average die three of four years younger than women. Where's all the research into finding out why?
Why on the news, when reporting exam results, is it a triumph that girls have outperformed boys for the last several years?
I read an article once that said that two industries showing the greatest gender imbalance were "programming" and janitoring. The article then went on to talk about systematic gender discrimination in the software field (yes... "geeks" and "nerds" came into it a lot). But why did the article make no more mention of the need to get more women into janitoring?
Recommended reading on this topic: Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over", or the more scholarly "Gender Codes" edited by Thomas Misa.
The latter in particular gives lots of detail, not just in describing the situation (the imbalance isn't the same everywhere, in every company or in every job description) but also in in explaining how (historically) and why (causally) the situation became what it is today.
>Men have spent centuries using this kind of argument to deny women equal rights in all sorts of fields. Over the last century we've seen tons of evidence that this isn't true elsewhere, so why should it be true in software?
True. But are underrepresented groups being actively denied access as was the case in the example above? Apple and oranges. Not saying there isn't a problem, just saying it's a different problem. I think in this case more passive cultural than active cultural problem.
There are imbalances everywhere. Line cooks. Where are the women line cooks? Photography. Where are the women in professional photography -how many women street photographers do we know, other than Vivian Maier? Where are the straight people in fashion? I think, at least in some cases, there is self selection going on. Different airports have different pluralities of ethnicities doing lots of the service work. SFO is different from JFK is different from BOS, in that regard.
It's fun to take apart the logic, rhetoric, and nitpick on every word of this post. We could argue the premise all day long -- and 5 years from now there will be fewer women, minorities, etc, than there are now.
Instead I prefer to take constructive action to change this, without worrying if (1) it is natural or unnatural or (2) it would be better. I accept that the current state is unnatural and a more balanced population would be better.
If you agree, please post replies here with what you think can/should be done (or what you are already doing). If you disagree, please reply to one of the other threads.
I agree with you. Not sure about the "unnatural" qualifier though. That presumes an active agent present.
What can be done. I think that's difficult. It has to be something pervasive, insidious in the culture. Via TV, internet, radio, entertainment, education, propagated by not only peers but all via all media. Everywhere. There needs to cease the archetyping of human roles. Something on that scale could happen, but it would take a generation or two. Kind of like the deprogramming of National socialism in Germany, or deprogramming of Religion in (soviet) Russia. 100% success isn't necessary, just enough to overcome the momentum or steady state.
Very vast, very pervasive with both incentives and punishment. Piecemeal I don't think would result in fast enough turn-around in attitude.
To me the problem is cultural. It's not men or women, it's the whole body of the culture which results in the skewed numbers.
What I am doing is trying to bring up the conversation with as many people as I can -- saying I think it's worth solving and asking for ideas. We need more software developers, and this is an untapped pool. If we increase it a little, we'll have a lot more programmers.
I have also noticed behaviors that work to systematically lower participation by women, and I have worked to reverse them. For example -- noting that invitations to speak at a tech conference included no women, even though there were many qualified choices (I gave the conference organizers a list). I think the issue was that we invite who we know -- we need to break out of that -- our networks are probably overwhelmingly male.
I suggest more discussion (not here -- everywhere) -- but focused on ideas to increase the number of women in programming -- not meta-discussions. Try to notice when the ratio is bad and comment on it -- insist on something being done. And --- if you notice behaviors that work against changing the ratio -- do something about it.
And, I don't think it's very constructive to keep meta-arguing about it. If you want to, go ahead, but it's starting to sound a little silly. Almost all of these arguments were used to stop women from becoming lawyers 100 years ago. When, instead, we started working to include women -- their numbers grew to half the profession. 100 years from now, many of these arguments will seem outdated, especially the ones arguing natural aptitude.
While I disagree with your post, I think you make a peculiar error to which I am responding (and it is this error that is the source of my disagreement), and my post will only make sense in the context of this thread. Furthermore, I too am advocating for constructive change, just of a different sort. By adherence to what I see as the spirit of your request (discussing constructive action) I hope I may justify a lack of adherence to to the letter of your request.
What kind of constructive action am I advocating? Nothing less than to continue the argument, in the most charitable and reasonable spirit we can attain. We are arguing about the most important of things: our moral aim. That is, "what is it we ought to do?" Should we promote diversity in computing? Tied up with this question of aims is the question of facts, namely: "Does promoting the politically correct notion of diversity mean the same as promoting the kind of diversity which will make computing as a profession more capable at achieving its ends?" Certainly, if there is a kind of diversity that brings the profession of computing closer to its ends (whatever those may be, and that too is in question) then I imagine that promoting such diversity is considered wise by all here.
What is primarily in debate is whether or not politically correct diversity (diversity of gender and race, primarily) is the same as effective diversity. If, like you seem to think, both kinds of diversity are the same, then doing what you suggest is in fact constructive. However, if politically correct diversity is orthogonal or (Ada Lovelace forbid) contrary to effective diversity, then your actions will be at best ineffective and at worst destructive. The whole point of this argument is that we want our profession to do what is constructive, and recognize that we need to sort out as a profession what in fact is constructive.
Hacker News is a great place to have this kind of discussion since a) you have willing and able participants, and b) the clear tree structure of posts helps considerably since well-formed arguments all tend to take such a structure. There are other sites for discussing what "can/should be done (or what you are already doing)" for a particular agenda.
The attitude you give off in your post is one of "deeds, not words", which in my experience is equivalent to an attitude of "words, not thoughts". You are dealing with a crowd which is perhaps best known acting upon those beliefs of which they have been rationally convinced. Do you not agree that it is better for people to hold and act upon beliefs of which they have been convinced by means of reason? If so, why then do you speak so glibly of "tak[ing] apart the logic, rhetoric, and nitpick[ing] every word" which is nothing less then the process of analytic reasoning? If not, why are you here?
P.S. Note that I have not actually taken a stance on the issue in question in this post.
I'm having a problem with this as well. I'm sure I get the bozo bit flipped on me but...
Let's pick some other topics. What's the percentage of men vs women that knit as a hobby? Crochet? Cross Stitch? Scrapbook? Ok, those are hobbies. But I'll bet if you asked most programmers, at least the good ones, they got started programming as a hobby and that happened to end up leading to a career.
How about nurses? In the USA is 93% women. 7% men (or was 14 years ago, not sure about today)
Are you going to argue that 50% of the participants of all those things should be men and that something is wrong because they are not at 50%?
I 100% want to see more women programmers but I'm at a loss on how to get more women interested in being a programmer. Should we try to do more? Of course! But there's a part of me that feels it's like saying "I wish more people didn't like pop music". I can wish all I want but if the biggest problem is culture it's going to take some serious concentrated effort to change. I'm talking like every 5th Hollywood movie and every 4th TV show needs to start showing women as programmers and in positive light the same way in the 70s they all started making anti-discrimination stories and girls can do anything stories. It's going to take women's magazines running articles on how awesome programming every month for years. It's not enough just to say women can do anything. If you want to change culture it's going to take a lot more than just a few words on a blog or a few more male geeks being aware of things they do that drive women off.
As noted above, the lack of men in nursing is something that the nursing community worries about.
What I do think anyone who wants to see more women programmers can do is this: if you hear that women (or a woman) is discouraged from X for reason Y do not dismiss their concern. First, reason Y is probably a symptom not the main reason. Second, dismissal is in itself a discouragement, as it implies that their opinion is not worth anything. It would better to reflect on what the main reason might be (or what assumption are you making that may be false).
I feel like this imbalance is going to correct itself over the coming decades. As people become more connected, and are introduced to computers at a younger age, the diversity of those interested in them to the point of wanting to work with them as a career will increase.
The stereotype of the white pasty male computer nerd is vanishing. With it is the pressure for those who don't fit that stereotype to choose a different field (Fowler mentioned this). I feel like this lack of diversity was almost purely societal and as society changes this will.
You are already seeing the enrollment of women at universities increase from its post-bubble years. It will probably keep going up. I don't think it will ever be on par, but it will get closer.
Some people bring a cult-like mentality to the discussion of diversity and related issues. Dissent is not welcome, unpleasant facts and observations explained away often in contrived ways. Why is it so hard to imagine that maybe there are meaningful group variations within the human species?
Why is it so hard to imagine that maybe there are meaningful group variations within the human species?
The worst things humans have ever done to each other have all centered around the notion of "meaningful group variations within the human species". Without hard science, it's a scary and dangerous place.
I was under the impression that communism was centered around the notion that people are all equal and highly malleable, not that there were intrinsic and immutable differences between human groups.
But assuming you are actually referring to nationalists (who probably rank #2 on the list of "worst things humans have done to each other"), I'll just quote a blog post Bryan Caplan wrote today:
We've learned so much from human genetic research. But when I read Fisher, I understand why the subject terrifies so many people. Hereditarianism combined with inane, half-baked moral philosophy does indeed logically imply Nazi-style homicidal mania. But don't blame the facts of human genetics. Blame the inane, half-baked moral philosophy.
Wasn't referring to nationalists specifically. I was thinking of the broad ranger range of things like slavery, genocide, segregation, apartheid, etc.
If you think that communism is worse, that's fine by me. It doesn't change the fact that history is littered with cautionary examples of group-based determinism gone terribly wrong. It's naive to pretend otherwise.
History is also littered with cautionary examples of [belief in] equality and malleability gone terribly wrong.
"Meaningful variations between groups" does not logically imply that concentration camps are good policy, just as a belief in equality does not imply that gulags are.
Supposing that Jews are only half as smart as Aryans, it doesn't imply that they should be killed. Similarly, if I'm twice as smart as my maid, it doesn't follow that I should murder her. In both cases, you need some intrinsic moral belief that killing is acceptable - and that's where the real problem lies.
Also, need I point out that you are employing the logical fallacy of "appeal to consequences"?
I'm not even sure what the argument is here. I gave an honest and legitimate reply to the question "Why is it so hard to imagine that maybe there are meaningful group variations within the human species?"
I'm not saying it should be so hard. If we had a greater understanding of differences, that would probably be great. But it is hard, and it helps to be honest about that.
"The worst things humans have ever done to each other have all centered around the notion of 'meaningful group variations within the human species'."
That is an extremely strong statement to make without justification. It sounds like a forbidden knowledge-type of argument. Science should decide if there are statistically significant intergroup variations. But right now, that is strictly verboten by the type of arguments you just gave me. This strikes me as an echo of the resistance to understanding human evolution, but by a group that considers itself to be rational and scientific. It seems some people literally have taken the notion of universal human equality as a revealed truth in the religious sense. These people are hostile to inquiry into the matter because it would literally upset their entire worldview.
To be fair, if the gates of acceptance of HBD (human biodiversity) were thrown open, people fear there would be a lot more social friction. And I think you're right about the worldview bit, too - people not being seen as quite equal would be a major change. Gah, I wish HBDers would discuss the repercussions of acceptance of HBD instead of just sniping from the sidelines (not meaning you, now), as the mainstream won't accept it until they're comfortable with the consequences.
No, it's just saying that in the absence of any such evidence it's sensible to adopt the null hypothesis that there's no intrinsic difference and that you'd need very high level of confidence in such research before making policy based on it.
That's why I said that without hard science it's a scary and dangerous place.
With hard science, you can do things like determine that some ethnic groups are more likely to develop particular kinds of illnesses or respond differently to some kinds of medications. That's great!
But looking at the status quo and saying "I guess women just aren't any good at this whole programming business" isn't hard science, it's ex-post-facto rationalization.
"But making statements with inclination is little better than with aptitude - there's still no evidence and it has just the same shoddy history"
Sorry, but that is just bullshit. Everybody who is in IT and has talked to a bunch of women in his life has collected some evidence on this. When would Fowler accept it as evidence? If you have asked 100 women, or one million, or one billion, if they are inclined to go into IT? What do you suppose would be the result if we asked everybody on HN "what percentage of women you know have an inclination to go into IT"? I think there would be thousands of samples with a fairly obvious result.
Why there is little inclination is another question, but the logic Fowler employs here is simply bullshit. It matters because I don't think he'll be able to sway people's opinions if he simply dismisses the evidence they personally collected for themselves. Who are people supposed to trust, if they can't even trust themselves? Also, if he deals with evidence like that, I can not trust his argumentation because it seems as if he only wants to see or accept "evidence" that supports his viewpoint.
My argument for improved diversity (racial, gender, economic, et al.) in the software world is simple and wildly unscientific. It would be lots more fun. Every time I've worked on diverse technology teams it's been more enjoyable and I feel like I've done better work. I know this is a facile argument, but it's definitely the driving reason I work for this change in the software world.
I hate to pick apart Fowler -- probably a good way for folks to call me an idiot -- but I have to.
here are (roughly) 50% women in the world, so we should expect the ratio for women in computing to be 50% - unless there's real evidence that some other ratio is natural.[2] So far there's no such evidence.
But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"? Aside from direct observation, what other definition of "evidence" would you use? Or are you assuming that because one ratio exists in one set (the general population of humans) it must exist in any subset? This would require that the subset have no defining characteristics, which effectively prevents it from being a subset. (A bit loose with my language, but you get the gist)
Then his sheer audaciousness when he calls observation of the data circular logic! If I there are 20% blue trees in the world, and I see a lot with 40% blue trees, is it not natural to conclude there is some agency at work here? The question becomes one of intelligent design -- was there a external intelligent agent causing the blue tree delta? With complex systems, this is as much a religious question as anything else. We simply don't know. Very intelligent people could creatively speculate on all sorts of prime movers, natural or not.
Men have spent centuries using this kind of argument to deny women equal rights in all sorts of fields. Over the last century we've seen tons of evidence that this isn't true elsewhere, so why should it be true in software? As far as I'm concerned this shoddy history should make us doubly wary of the any suggestion that a diversity imbalance is natural.
I'm really not sure what to do with this. Is he arguing that since a certain type of rhetoric has been used to ill purpose in the past that it should be looked upon extra critically now? If so, how would I go about picking and choosing which methods of reasoning might be better or worse to use? It seems to me that he's arguing that based on some conclusion to the argument (there might be a natural difference) that we should hold the methods of reasoning suspect. But if we got a different conclusion using the same methods, that would be okay? This is like a generic ad hominem -- don't trust that reasoning because it's been faulty in the past! Well sure, all kinds of ways of reasoning have been faulty in the past. This has nothing to do with anything.
That is, given we have a unnatural imbalance, is it a problem that's sufficiently serious to spend energy on fixing it?
But he hasn't shown an unnatural imbalance at all, he's just made broad statements about how he feels about certain kinds of tools being used in the discussion.
Lack of diversity is itself a problem. Different people think differently, and consequently come up with different ways to solve problems. If you have a bunch of people with the same background, they miss lots of ideas - leading to inefficiencies and lack of innovation. A diverse group is usually more effective.
See here I completely agree with him -- a lack of various backgrounds, opinions, and personalities hurts small groups. But he seems to be saying that these good qualities -- opinions, backgrounds, personalities -- are inherently part of being a female, being a Norwegian, or of being black. So it's okay for him to say that in general being Norwegian is cause to make you so different you have value as a team member, at the same time he's saying that there are no natural differences to account for the difference in observed ratios? Huh? Who is using circular logic again?
Fowler seems like a nice guy, and I'm sure he likes puppies and ice cream and all of that, but this is tripe. I am a firm believer in having as much possible diversity as possible in my teams as long as we can hold the group together. So count me in as being a huge proponent of diversity.
But diveristy is all about things that you can't see -- not bullshit like your skin color, how tall you are, or your gender. Lots of teams fail because nobody on the team had good empathy skills. Nobody fails because there wasn't a person on there wearing glasses. Don't confuse the true greatness of diversity with some kind of flavor-of-the-week political bullshit.
Here it is: nobody knows. It's a complex system full of individuals all acting in their best interests, not something you can perform a logical proof on. The variables and systems involved are legion. If you would like to discuss the story of just one person, we could do that with some clarity. But if you start waving your hands around and claiming you already know the answer -- whether you want it to be a natural ratio or whether you see prejudice in the world -- we're not going to get very far. I can assure you that whatever happening is natural, but by "natural" I mean it might be that the society at large has major problems that need to be fixed. Or maybe not. Beats me. This is a topic for moral discussion, not logical discussion, and bringing these kinds of logic tools to the table only makes things worse, not better.
Must be in angry-old-guy mode again today. Sorry about that. I'm just really disappointed that Fowler couldn't see the errors of his own thinking and then presumes to lecture us about it. Man I find that really annoying.
This report also pushes the intolerance hypothesis, as well as women being less dedicated, being fearful of text interfaces, and preferring more collectivist environments: http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource.... (Please go read the report before criticizing me for citing it. It's written by a woman who is allegedly a feminist.)
It's safe to say that none of this is ironclad proof that the only cause of women not being present in computing is natural causes. But the author's claims that "there's no such evidence" is utterly wrong. There is evidence, he just ignores it.
Lastly, the author completely ignores the fact that computing is very diverse. We have whites, all different types of asians, israelis and a smattering of euros (and of all sexual orientations). Our diversity may not be statistically identical to the general US population, but it's nonsensical to claim a lack of diversity in computing.
I was told I'd never be a programmer because I didn't get good marks in math and physics, that was sixteen years ago. Let's kill the myth.
I can't see any reason why being genuinely good at math is more important to effective programming than being good at chemistry (layers and sequence), biology (complex systems) or languages (building meaning from abstract or incomplete signals). You do not need to be good at late high-school math to understand Big-O.
I suspect people who are good at or passionate about math are far more likely to stroke their ego with premature optimisation.
Also, there's a vast difference between aptitude for maths, and performing well in maths tests. Attention to detail, regard for the education system, interest in the topic all play a part.
> There is evidence women avoid computing because
> they are intolerant of geeks
I see a different pattern that goes in mostly the reverse direction. Young men are a strange bunch, but young nerds in particular tend to act bizarrely towards women, and are therefore undesirable to be around. It can be more effort to deal with someone bizarre (has feelings but is draining) than someone who is just a bastard (quickly tell them to get stuffed). If you sense a concentration of draining people - avoid!
I can't see any reason why being genuinely good at math is more importnat to effective programming...
I would strongly suspect that just as math and CS ability are correlated, so would math and chemistry. Biology less so, since biology is mostly just memorizing (at least for the first 3-4 years of college).
Anyway, I cited math data mainly because it's so widely studied. I get so many downvotes when I discuss this topic with data that I'm not even going to attempt to write about stuff I have no readily available data on.
I see a different pattern that goes in mostly the reverse direction. [...] young nerds [...] are therefore undesirable to be around.
Um, that's not the reverse direction. That's the same direction as what I said: women avoid computing because they are intolerant of geeks.
Note that young nerds also often act "bizarrely" towards men and each other. I certainly did before I learned to pass. But the claim of the author of the studies I cited is that women are less tolerant of "bizarre" behavior.
> I get so many downvotes when I discuss this topic with data
It's a bit like the flying spaghetti monster book where they correlate the decline of piracy with global warming. You need to present data, and then also provide a link between it and the point you're making. I dispute the strong link between math and programming.
I accept your correction in that we're making the same point about young men. What I should have said is that the way you phrase it makes it seem like it's women that initiate the pattern. I don't think that's so. Although perhaps you could go back further and ask, what made the men neurotic in the first place, was it cruel rejection or bullying by prom queens - no idea. I just found the phrasing backwards.
I would strongly suspect that
just as math and CS ability are correlated,
so would math and chemistry.
I am not sure about that. In my experience, mathematics and chemistry were not noticeably correlated (either way). On the other hand, such ostensibly different subjects as mathematics and music were positively correlated. Experience is anecdotal but includes math classes in high school, applied math in college, and computer science in grad school.
Music and computer programming are correlated as well. Once upon a time orchestras were overwhelmingly male, but now there are a lot more women in orchestras, not to mention world-class soloists. This is partly due to the blind audition process that became common ~40 years ago.
I'd assume music and CS would be more closely correlated, and there is lots of research into music too. Most relevantly, the transition to blind auditions wiping out gender disparities in orchestra makeups.
Anecdotal evidence here: I'm pretty good at math, but failed several chemistry exams in high scool. I just didn't "get" it. Maybe I would be able now, because I'm better at thinking abstractly and systematically than when I was 16, but that would be because I'm a programmer today. For me the correlation definitely doesn't hold. Same goes (to a lesser extent) for biology for me.
Sorry to be so brutally honest....but personally with women rejecting me everywhere in a downright rude manner as an undesirable nerd it is hard not to have a bias against them!
Agreed that perhaps not all women are like that...but for one that is nice there is at least a hundred shallow bitches around!
I've been called a bitch to my face during architectural debates. I've had responses to my technical comments come back as "whatever, sudo make me a sandwich". Been asked while doing interviews, "Oh wait you're not HR?" I've gone to many presentations contain sexist images, etc. Throughout my career I've been constantly had to deal with implications that I don't belong - and that my opinions can be dismissed..
Yet, somehow I manage to keep the perspective that technology isn't populated by sexist assholes - sure the ones that are there stand out and make up a lot of the things that come to mind when I'm stressed. But really it's a small percentage [even though that small percentage can really get to you].
Try to keep the same perspective about women, the vast majority of us aren't "bitches".
Trust me I try....but being a nerd and a racial minority it is hard to keep a straight mind when nine out of ten women look the other way when you try to approach them to start a conversation.
I dont think you have been in a situation where "Can I buy you a drink" is replied with a "you're ugly ...go away".
I don't know you, so I can only make assumptions and extrapolations from what you've revealed here, but it sounds to me like you're crossing up "let's have a conversation" and "let me buy you a drink so we can go play some horizontal mambo."
Now it's totally possible that you just want to chat, but "can I buy you a drink" is often interpreted as the latter.
As lots of us on HN trend towards the geekier side of life, social cues sometimes don't come as naturally to us as they do to many others - it takes time and effort to not be socially awkward, but it's 100% worth it.
The next time something like that happens, try reviewing exactly what happened, how things might have been misinterpreted, and how you can learn & grow from it.
Also keep in mind that there are lots of people who _are_ jerks, but gender has nothing to do with it.
Most importantly, don't let it bias you, and keep your chin up!
Thanks for the kind words man!...My situation is actually not as hopeless as I am leading people to believe here.
The point I was trying to make was that a bunch of negative experiences with women when you are young leaves very deep scars and these scars manifest themselves as unconscious biases so much that whenever you see a beautiful woman (who will most probably reject you if you tried!) you are automatically biased against her.My brain does this to me so often even though I think I am logical than most other people.
Now I will make another point that is also controversial.(someone needs to say these things!)
See when you grow your skills interacting with women a point comes when the things you cant change matter much more than the things you can, so much that the situation seems pretty helpless.
So at that point even if I bought really expensive clothes and bought myself a mercedes or say became a really smooth talker, how women respond to me would only marginally improve as compared to the non-possible changes such as changing my race to become white...changing my height to become six feet tall etc.
So no matter what I do a six feet tall white guy or a good looking muscular black guy will always have significantly higher odds of attracting a given woman over me.
The more you approach the limit the more you begin to see this brutal truth of the dating world.The things that matter most are things you are born with and this sometimes causes you develop significantly negative feelings towards women as a whole.
> The things that matter most are things you are born with and this sometimes causes you develop significantly negative feelings towards women as a whole.
Wrong. You're suffering from confirmation bias.
Guys obsess about money and looks to prove their worth to females, but most of that shit doesn't matter, actually. (It's held against you if you're severely deficient, of course.)
What does? A strong sense of self-identity, confidence, the ability to be both a risk-taker and a stable provider, and, more generally, being an interesting person. These are much harder to work on, so you don't hear as much talk about them. You need to be able to enjoy your life without a girlfriend. You need to have something you love to talk about, and, preferably something you can be good at.
Suck up your pride, ask for help, and start working toward taking responsibility for more of your life.
I find it sad that the dating world has come up in this discussion. While I understand where the points came from, I don't believe that anyone's perception of anyone else as a potential sexual/romantic partner has a place in a discussion about the working world. Whether or not women are attracted to a particular person, to a particular programmer, or to the stereotype of a "programmer", has no bearing on their ability to program.
Nope, but I bet she's be in a situation where men expected her to drop everything to make herself sexually available for a stranger.
Everyone wants to be seen as desirable, but it is not an entire gender's fault that the specific women you've approached don't respond to your advances. It may seem counter-intuitive, but the best way I've found to get dates is to treat women like interesting people instead of potential dates, while putting effort into making myself conventionally attractive (working out, getting regular hair cuts, careful grooming, conversational techniques). It's a lot of work, but it's been more effective than deciding the problem is women. Women talk to each other: the friend you make today has a bunch of friends she can set you up with tomorrow. I mean, if the problem is "all women" you might as well give up.
Plus, in the meantime I've met a bunch of interesting people and had interesting conversations I'd otherwise have missed out on because I was only considering women as potential romantic partners. It is possible to have fulfilling intellectual, emotional and social relationships that have nothing to do with sex. If you do care exclusively about sex, I recommend escorts or online hookups.
Although I fully agree with what the advice you are giving me.....I think you are wrongly viewing my motivations being primarily sexual...and the point is that most women do it too!
So, about 20% of college-aged women and 20% of college-aged men enjoy casual sex based on superficial characteristics. They tend to populate bars. Because you mentioned offering to buy women a drink I had, perhaps unfairly, assumed that was your target market.
If you are interested in relationships, those 20% are unlikely to provide them. I think online dating is a much better choice: I know several friends, including married friends, who met on OkCupid.
The problem I have observed is that nerds assume the problem is women. It's like if you're linking in a common library and it's failing to load: what's more likely, that there's a bug in the library that thousands of other people use or that you accidentally linked against the debug version?
Someday I'll get around to writing my "How to Hack Dating: an iterative approach to acquiring relationships" book. Lean Startup principles apply surprisingly well.
While saying such things is really ugly (I don't want to defend such women), maybe it could help you a little to think about the asymmetry in dating. Attractive women get approached all the time, a feeling most men probably can't begin to appreciate. If you are a programmer, compare it to the emails from recruiters you get all the time... There are certainly lots of such emails that I have taken to delete without reply now.
yes...but when you get a lot of rejections from recruiters dont you console yourself by saying/fantasizing that one day when you are truly successful you will ignore all recruiters and maybe get one or two out of a job...if you see all the threads on HN about recruiters people are easily biased against recruiters.
We are all human beings with weakly rational brains.Only thing wrong here is that it is not socially acceptable to be biased against women!
He's not talking about rejections from recruiters... he's talking about getting too many crappy recruitment mails.
I get about 5 mails per week pimping some junior job to me that would probably pay 40% less than my current job. I don't reply to these emails because these people haven't done their homework.
The poster above you is saying that maybe that's how attractive women fail...
Assuming that you are commenting here because you favor the theory that women are inhibited in some way from being effective software engineers -- and that is why they are underrepresented:
For women not to be represented in the population that practices software engineering indicates some intrinsic flaw or inability with them --
but for one that is nice there is at least a hundred shallow bitches around
-- But for you to fail to achieve representation in the population which can acquire a mate or find a willing sex partner is ALSO a flaw with women!
If you're having trouble of the sort of ratios you're talking about, you're doing something that alienates people. That doesn't have to be the end of things, because if you work at it eventually it'll change.
You can't change other people. Focus on the things you can affect, like finding ways to make yourself a more relaxed and relaxing person to talk to.
Some people are trying to give you feedback in other parts of this thread. Much of it is not constructive, but some is. But you seem to be focussed on reiterating your points rather than taking it on.
Work out how you can be more open to feedback. Find someone who will give you honest feedback. Distinguish between people who give good, direct feedback and people who get off by demeaning you.
I assume you created this account as a throwaway because you had an idea what you were saying would be controversial but this stuff is troubling you you and you wanted to talk about it. Good move. Now take the next step.
I either gravitate toward women who tend to respond to my advances negatively or have some behavior that puts women off. Therefore, I'm sexist and consider most if not all women inferior to men in ways including ability in math, engineering. Because I can't get them to sleep with me.
Umm no...but let me try to reword what I said in that language:
Although I absolutely agree that it is totally irrational to think of women as inferior in anything , my primate human brain cannot be convinced by reason alone to discard all its biases.Therefore I stand as an example of a young male nerd who as a result of his interactions with the opposite sex is developing negative biases towards them.
Brutally honest? You're projecting your own personal failings onto all women, and it has absolutely no bearing on this discussion whatsoever. What's more, it will haunt you if you don't deal with it now.
Go talk it out, either with a friend or a therapist. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.
>You're projecting your own personal failings onto all women, and it has absolutely no bearing on this discussion whatsoever.
I think like all other people you are missing my point.Please read my other responses on this thread.
But Yes I am certainly a failure so far by all conventional standards......but that does'nt mean I have the magical ability to get rid of all my biases....dealing with them is going to take time and in case of this particular bias ,perhaps a lot of positive experiences of interacting with women.
I didn't call you a failure per se; it was more an exhortation to quit the pity party, take responsibility for your misguided thinking, and do something about it. That is the point of my thread.
The specious arguments you put forth in the thread are not worth addressing.
It definitely is me....the point is about why as a young male with a not perfectly rational human brain I cant seem to be able to stop myself from developing biases.
You realize that doesn't make it acceptable to harbor prejudices, right? The only reason you're not directly penalized for having them is that they're hard to screen for in job interviews... or were, before you gave the Google crawler trace evidence about one of yours.
a) Most people dont have any prejudices.
b) I care about the societal acceptability of my thoughts before thinking them
c) One's thoughts should be discarded if they can somehow be negatively viewed in job interviews
d) I cannot have my own business and therefore not need anyone to give me a job.
This report also pushes the intolerance hypothesis, as well as women being less dedicated, being fearful of text interfaces, and preferring more collectivist environments: http://web.archive.org/web/20091007234852/http://opensource..... (Please go read the report before criticizing me for citing it. It's written by a woman who is allegedly a feminist.)
That is a misleading characterization of the paper, which aims at establishing an analytical framework rather than offering itself as a 'report,' within an existing analytical framework. For example, rather than suggesting that women are 'fearful' of text interfaces, the author observes that their continuing popularity in the FLOSS community exacerbates past educational disparities: 'Instead of deducting from biological sex difference, the phenomenon suggests a lingering deficiency of women’s IT education and women-unfriendly products and tools.' The writer goes on to posit that many staples of geek culture (eg long coding pushes) act as exclusionary factors for women who may have to juggle coding with other tasks such as child-rearing, and that women's contributions in areas such as documentation or design are seriously undervalued.
Your summary of the paper is so far off base that I find myself wondering if you inadvertently linked to the wrong document.
The article certainly does not suggest a "lingering deficiency of women's IT education" w.r.t. the use of text. It suggests that women "usually obtain their programming expertise through the formal
education system" and that schools teach primarily "Microsoft visual basic, visual C++ or Java." The only "educational disparity" is that women don't teach themselves to use the shell whereas men do.
You are correct, however, that my use of the term "fearful" was wrong. Thanks for the correction. In actuality, the article doesn't explain why women don't teach themselves how to use gcc.
And yes, you are also correct when you point out that one specific reason women are less dedicated and less willing to put the time in is that they have other interests (such as child rearing and housework).
Apart from the minor issue of whether "fearful" was correct, what do you object to about my characterization?
The January 2012 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society presents a comprehensive review article disagreeing that there is "plenty of evidence" women are less likely to be very good at math based on "natural causes" (whatever the hell that kind of nonsense phrase is supposed to mean), and provides plenty of evidence that any disparity is due to attitudes toward women and other sociocultural factors:
Now for the anecdotes: in my experience there has been plenty of outright racial and gender discrimination in computing, science, math, and even medicine. I've seen it. I suspect most if not all of you have seen it. It persists into the 21st century.
It agrees completely with the data I cited. It shows a variance ratio of 1.1-1.2 across many countries (though not all).
Interestingly, it also shows very little correlation between gender equity and gender disparities in math performance. The strongest correlation it shows is that gender equity is positively correlated with math performance disparities! Gender equity seems to increase [1] math performance of both boys and girls, but it increases boy's scores more.
[1] Of course, the article only shows correlation, not causation, but I didn't feel like rephrasing what I wrote.
While I do think the variance ratio in math is significantly different from unity (without speculating as to the cause), it's worth pointing out that while this does explain a lot of the gender imbalance in math, it doesn't come close in computing. Off the top of my head, in math it's something like 35% women, a 1:2 ratio, whereas in tech it's closer to 10%, or 1:9.
To explain a gap that wide based on variance, we'd have to assume that men are way more than 10% more variable in computer ability than women, probably more on the order of 100%, and that seems very unlikely to me (there's not really any data to look at there because CS performance is not as commonly measured as math is).
It agrees completely with the data I cited. It shows a variance ratio of 1.1-1.2 across many countries (though not all).
This was the most glaring example of statistical dishonesty in this paper: their data shows with perfect clarity that there's a > 1.0 male/female variance ratio for almost every country in the set, and I encourage anyone interested in this to look at their graphs and draw your own conclusions (http://imgur.com/39pja). To me, it looks like a typical noisy measurement (the authors note that the variation within a single country was about 20% from test to test, so we should expect a decently wide distribution (well, the authors don't actually admit that - as a first mathematical blunder in a series of many, they claim that 20% variation is very small and means we should expect a tight distribution)) with a mean somewhere between 1.12 and 1.15, a variance of maybe .1 (just about right for a measurement with around 20% variation, no?), and a decent bit of skew. Pretty good jumping off point for some analysis and explanation, I would think...
But not in this article. The authors merely point to those graphs and claim that they obviously disprove the greater male variance hypothesis. In other words - they point to a distribution of admittedly noisy measurements that is clearly centered around ~1.13 or so, with almost zero density below 1.0, and claim that it proves that the mean of the distribution is 1.0, (with an implicit "STFU Larry Summers"). When I first read this, I thought they were trolling me, the result is so clearly wrong.
[As an aside, it's worth noting that a variance ratio in the 1.1 to 1.2 range is enough to explain away most, if not all, of the gender imbalance in mathematics, if we make the assumption that the variance ratio is the same throughout all of mathematics education (which is not likely true - IIRC these measurements were all at the 8th grade level)]
Their argument? Because the measured variance ratios are not identical, we should ignore the mean of the distribution. Seriously, that's it. I'm not talking about a statistical calculation showing that the null hypothesis (that the variance ratio is 1.0) should not be rejected, mind you (because such a calculation would not allow us to accept the null hypothesis - a quick look at the graph is enough to be sure of that), or in fact any statistical argument at all. They quite literally claim that any variation in the measured variance means that the entire distribution is meaningless.
They also try to confuse the issue a little bit by pointing out that there's a bit of correlation between the variance ratio and the variance; while interesting and certainly worthy of further explanation (not done in this paper), this is completely and utterly irrelevant to the variance hypothesis, yet they imply that it somehow disproves it as well.
Quite frankly, the referees should have caught this, I can't remember the last time I've seen such bad statistical reasoning in a legitimate math journal. There are glaring issues all over the rest of the paper, too, where they've filtered and re-filtered data many times until they obtain the correlations that they want, where they chop data into bins in suspect ways, etc., but to actually enumerate all these errors in detail would make this a much longer rant.
It's a shame, too, because it appears that some of the article is solid, and it presents some interesting data that definitely warrants more investigation; unfortunately, they went absolutely bananas in several places, drawing completely unfounded conclusions from the data they generated, so I would be hesitant to cite this paper as proof of anything.
That study; I do not think it means what you think it means.
Especially the first one: women are better at math in some cultural settings and worse in others, suggesting that the gender gap is culturally determined.
In order to prove that these things were biologically determined you would either need to show that they were present at birth, across a large number of different cultural contexts, or had direct, traceable biological causation. In the absences of any of those three, I and most social scientists will assume that gender differences are the product of culture.
the difference here is on the meaning of "natural". you're taking it to mean something like "what we have" and then your argument makes sense: we see what we have because of some process that exists (is natural).
but fowler is using "natural" in a sense more like "unbiased by historical accident" or "what we would get if a bunch of people were suddenly created out of nothing and formed a society from zero".
so there's nothing new here. grumpy, indignant old men (self aware or not) believe the status quo (which only incidentally favours them) to be natural. people like fowler do not.
[edit: i've removed fowler's superlatives to be less unpleasant (sorry - in my defense i have been configuring maven all day...); the grumpy old man characterisation is from the parent post]
Is it really 'grumpy' vs 'smart' and 'inquisitive'. You're rather close to making a value judgement here, to say the least.
He is clearly starting from a conclusion and looking for the evidence and/or complicated logic to satisfy his own conclusion. In discussions of inequalities you will always find evidence to support the 'but it should be equal stance', because
a) Egalitarian assumptions invalidate otherwise valid explanations (which as sherlock holmes/bayes have it means all other explanations are more likely)
b) The world is a big complicated place, with lots of unknowns and ambiguities
c) Positive feedback may have reenforced an inequality, exaggerating it and thus making it hard to explain the magnitude using only simple explanations.
In this argument, he is only smart in the sense that he is taking a socially acceptable/convenient position.
Yes, you are correct. I made an edit to that effect.
If I observe something, it is occurring, correct? Or I could not have observed it.
The question becomes why is it occurring? We can observe "simple" things like trees and rocks and disagree on the reasons happen the way they do.
I'm not trying to argue from ignorance here. Certainly you could ask each and every person and draw some general conclusions. But that kind of approach is very fluffy and you could spin the results to say just about anything you wanted. If you have a master's degree in computer science and decided to be stay-at-home dad, is that because the system is flawed? Perhaps you just prefer being with your kids? Most people don't make those kinds of decisions for any one reason. It's complex.
Like I said, I love diversity. I think my biggest problem is this continuing thing we do where we define diversity as external characteristics. It's the internet age. I could care less what your sexual organs are or skin color is.
EDIT: Just to be sure I am advancing the discussion, the moral question is this: Assume I run a company with 100 employees. Only 20 of them are a member of a sub-group that is 30% in the larger population. Is it the moral thing for me to do to hire another 10 people of this subgroup, even if it means not hiring people of another group that might be better qualified just so the ratios match up?
If the answer to that question is "yes", then I have two follow-up questions. One, how many kinds of subgroups do I need to track? One-armed people? People who have beards? Who gets to decide what subgroups are special or not? Two, is it moral for a voter to make somebody do something because they personally find that it has a moral outcome? If I wanted people to be nicer in the world, could I pass a law that required all of them to give 10% to charity? Does something I feel morally outraged about automatically mean I should go mucking around with somebody else's freedom? If so, where's the stopping point?
As for Jim Crow laws, please note that I am not saying that society shouldn't evolve. I'd argue that some degree of legislating morality is necessary for society to move along -- even though I find it most distasteful. But there should be time limits on these things. That's why I bring up the internet. I really don't need grandpa's generation telling me how I should think. This is something each generation needs to settle for itself.
...there's nothing wrong with being extra critical of rhetoric that's historically dubious.
Yes there is. It biases our thinking.
Here is a non-controversial example of this: "Millikan measured the charge on an electron...got an answer which we now know not to be quite right...It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of - this history - because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong - and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that..."
(The narrative comes from Richard Feynman.)
If we look on some hypothesis extra critically, and others only reasonably critically, we will bias our views towards the beliefs which we apply less scrutiny to.
Good point, but that narrative feels a lot like a specific example of sloppy science and poor measurement.
I'm going to stand by the notion that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, even if that may create a small bias toward conventional thinking.
What's an "extraordinary claim"? And also, why do claims that are "historically dubious" automatically fall into the category of "extraordinary"?
In Bayesian terms, it sounds like you are merely stating that you assign a very small prior to the "natural reasons" hypothesis. I.e., you are claiming that before looking at the evidence, you believe "natural reasons" has a 1 in 1 million (or some similarly large number) chance of being true. Is this correct?
Because oppression hurts real people, with real consequences. Any argument that will be used to deny people equal rights and justify mistreatment of them requires extraordinary evidence, because otherwise we end up at eugenics.
These discussions aren't theoretical; to pretend they are is actively harmful.
Further, it's not even a correct use of the Appeal to Consequences fallacy. If the natural causes hypothesis is true, it does not logically follow that anyone should be oppressed.
It does, however, logically follow from the "natural causes" hypothesis that you can't have both equal rights and equal proportions (i.e., either you discriminate against men, or you have fewer women).
Not just angry-old-guy, but angry-obtuse-old-guy. The facts are not in question, just the reasons and the result. The fact that there are fewer women in computing than there are in the general population does not imply that women are ill-suited for the profession or even that there is a correlation between women's capabilities/inclinations and their representation in computing, because the facts about abilities/inclination have not been established. Fowler, in fact, said he doesn't know what the reason is. And by the way, the word is 'audacity', not 'audaciousness'. Use in a sentence: I am struck by the audacity of ranting on at length arguing with things Fowler didn't actually say.
But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"?
Fowler's point is that lopsided ratios existed many times in the past, and people argued that they were natural, but they turned out not to be, as was proven when the barriers were torn down and the ratios equalized. So in that sense, he's arguing that ratio observations do not count as "evidence" in this context.
However, what he's overlooking is the fact that in most cases, those imbalanced ratios in the past were buttressed by direct barriers to entry - women and minorities were usually actively excluded, and then when the active discrimination stopped, things started to equalize, often very rapidly (the "Jackie Robinson" effect).
We have seen this happen in most fields (tech has just about the worst gender imbalance in any field apart from nursing). And now we're at a point where explicit barriers to entry are all but absent. So as time goes on, the observation that the ratios are not approaching 1:1 in tech suggests more and more strongly that there's something else going on, and that the methods used to create parity in other fields (fighting -isms, mainly) are not addressing the root cause of inequality in tech.
That's not to say that this is evidence that there's not some other sort of more subtle discrimination going on; that's certainly possible, and I'm open to evidence that something in tech is somehow worse than in other fields (I've never seen any numbers to suggest this, and when looking at data like salary gaps, tech appears to be more equal than most fields). But it does mean that we should be wary about drawing the same causal conclusions that we drew 60 years ago when the situation was very different...
But, er, doesn't the observation that the actual ratio is different evidence constitute "evidence"?
No. That tells you there's a difference, but absolutely nothing about the causes. You may not know of an artificial causal effect that inhibits greater participation in software by women, but not knowing about it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist (unless you have falsified all available hypotheses, naturally).
Unless you indicate causation of biology, cultural evolution is inherently cheaper and faster than biological evolution. It should be the null hypothesis. Additionally, there is evidence against any biological explanation; that he doesn't feel the need to recite a huge body of evidence isn't a sign of anything other than hacker news commenters appears to be willing to talk about subjects they know nothing about.
People: please make some attempt at a precise and concise argument. I read your whole argument -- it could have been said with 75% fewer words. The worst part is that, even with all these words, you went directly past the point!
I thought someone would have mentioned this by now, but in other cultures (my sample: India, China, Ukraine), there /are/ more women programmers. At least, I've worked with proportionately more women from the above nations, than white American women. Meaning it's culture and not ability or /native/ inclination, at least.
Diversity is a good thing. That's been stated as axiomatic on these discussions and it's probably true.
But what kind of diversity will have the greatest effect? I posit that there are far greater kinds of diversity that will have a bigger impact than gender: language, culture, education.
I would also be interested in studies in why girls aren't as interested in science and computing as boys. When I started no one around me knew what a computer was. I'm kind of puzzled why I was interested at the age of 11.
I was also discouraged from doing it at school, but it didn't stop me.
I take issue with te while geek thing. It may be true of some devs, but most I know don't fit into that stereotype, they have a wide range of other interests. I wish people would drop it.
"Girls aren't supposed to get involved in robotics" was the answer I got from a high school girl on why more girls weren't in the robotics club. All the stats about girls not doing well in math etc. just tell me that gender stereotyping is alive and well.
Although female programmers are rare now, that wasn't the case in the 70's. That shift is another argument against the natural balance hypothesis.
I am too young to know, but is this the experience of others as well?
Again, this is based purely on anecdotal experience, but I wonder if women programmers tend to concentrate into particular industries (for whatever reason). My wife was a programmer at a contractor for a large government agency, and it struck me that there was a higher concentration of women there than in other industries or in the start-up scene.
If this is generally the case, I am not sure to what extent this would support any given hypothesis.
Back in the day I think the popular perception of programmers was kind of an extension of a secretary (it's just typing on toggle panels instead of a typewriter, right?) so there were lots of women stuck in secretarial positions who tried it out.
...and those secretaries were good at it. And so were the women math PhDs who could not get jobs elsewhere. And so were the women who had female mentors, and therefore failed to be chased away. All of which dumps water on the "innate abilities" trope that people keep bringing up as the null hypothesis which must be disproved, instead of the claim which requires proof.
It genuinely weirds me out how many white males in tech see no conflict or even feel a shiver of historical echoes when they argue the premise that they (white men) are intrinsically genetically gifted in ways which other groups are not, and that is why they are superior (at technology). Every other time it has ever been argued, it has been false.
Unless the argument was that white men are better at the combination of having penises, privilege, and low amounts of melanin --- we have that hat trick down.
I wasn't arguing the "women aren't good at programming" position.
My personal opinion is that the most important reason there are few women programmers, next to which any other factor fades into insignificance, is that women are simply less interested in doing it. Now that I think about it, the fact that there used to be many more women programmers when women's career options were more limited is pretty strong evidence that this is true: Now that women have more options, there are fewer women programmers.
http://rarlindseysmash.com/images/entries/degrees.png This is a graph that shows the percent of women receiving degrees in each field - you'll notice that there is a peak and then a sudden drop off for computer science. Though, for actual numbers in the 1970's a lot of programmers in general weren't getting CS degrees.
When computer programming first became a thing mostly women had been taught to type. Men would dictate, women would type things up. Think Mad Men.
It was assumed that programming would be basically the same thing. Male mathematicians would write up algorithms and women would type them up. If you read math papers that relied on computer calculation from the 50's and 60's you'll often see women's names in the acknowledgments for having programmed the algorithms.
As it became clear that it was a more involved job, men began moving into the field. Someone else in these comments listed the books that describe the process.
Also: This sentiment that women should be interested in programming jobs, but aren't because they've been damaged by the patriarchy in some way, and now it's up to (predominantly) men to fix this for them - strikes me as a bit sexist.
We could potentially take the Avatar/Dances With Wolves approach. A really awesome superstar male programmer could start dressing in drag and lead female programmers to victory. Or at least 50% representation.
It's up to everyone in the community to fix this. No matter what their sex or race. It's just a matter of being a more open and welcoming community.
I'm sure there are fellow female (and other minority) programmers reading the comments on this article feeling completely unwelcome in the programming community.
I'm one of those lady-types reading the comments here and getting the message loud and clear that no matter how interested I may be, or how talented I may become, I am not a welcome addition to this community.
Women: "We feel unwelcome. It's kind of lonely."
Dudes: crickets
Women: "Well, fine, we can make more money elsewhere working fewer hours." leave
Nerdy Girls: "Video games are for boys, except the stupid ones. All those programmers are men, and all the technical women I've seen got pushed into program management. Guess I should go be a computational biologist instead. I'm not regarded as a strange alien in those classes."
Dudes: "Hey, there's a lot fewer women here. Maybe there's a problem like those women said."
Other Dudes: "Nah; let's just keep doing what we're doing. They probably just want to pop out kids or something. Besides, it's not like they wanted to sleep with me anyway."
The Woman Who Didn't Leave: "It's totally cool guys; I'm not a bitch like those other women! I think it's awesome being the only girl!"
This thread is part of a much bigger context. As long as the response to someone just pointing out the consequences of the sexism women have reported happening repeatedly for decades is a bunch of dudes bickering among each other about whether the problem exists or whether it is more important than nerds having trouble propositioning women for sex in bars, I'm not sure what message women are supposed to receive.
Well, the fact that people are attempting to argue that, as a lady, I am somehow 'naturally' unfit for intellectual/mathematical/logical tasks is pretty insulting. I know that you (general) are not talking about me (specifically), but it's pretty hard not to take it a little personally.
Then there is the tone of "No, there could not possibly be a problem with US" that permeates so many comments on this thread. There are very few voices that are even willing to entertain the idea that there is an aspect of this culture that is unwelcoming or hostile to women.
And finally, there are all the comments that seem to be saying that who cares why there is a strong gender imbalance in this field, they don't see a problem with the status quo, and that including more women in the field is completely unnecessary and not worth considering, much less actually doing anything about.
So yeah. Not feeling like I could ask any of these people and a question about something I'm studying or make a comment about something technical without getting either a lot of "pat pat little girl" or otherwise insulting and unhelpful reactions.
How about comments like "Women getting their panties in a bunch about something as minor as that is the reason they aren't taken seriously in the workplace (to the extent they aren't, I mean)"? Not even so much the message as the way it was said.
That's like one guy on this whole thread. Everyone else would be more than happy to see you in an interview.
We all would. We're just not seeing you gals come in. We've got quite a few female project managers and business devs at my company, but no programmers.
(The other answers to the first question are better and I agree with them.)
It is possible (I don't actually know in your case) that there are other factors that make women not want to apply to your company. For example, right now (and in the US) women are more likely than men (for this argument it doesn't matter whether it is cultural or innate) to seek companies that reward people (or at least don't punish people) for wanting a balanced between work and home. A company's career website (or benefits website) can turn off potential applicants if it looks like that balance is not respected. That is particularly true in software because there are software companies that do both.
It turns out that there is a 12:1 ratio of males to females with the Asperger's diagnosis.
I wonder if the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in males contributes to behaviors that might give one an advantage in the software development field? It only takes a quick reading of the characteristics of the disorder to see that many of them are common among software developers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
Of course, there are exceptions and I don't mean to imply that one cannot create good software without these characteristics. I only suggest that perhaps these characteristics provide some advantage in a field that is young and constantly changing.
Martin says that we are turning away qualified female candidates right now. That's not the case. Only one female candidate comes through my door for every 7 or 8 males. We are meritocrats like Martin and would be happy to hire females. But first they have to show up.
I don't believe he said anything close to that. Part of the reason posts like this get people fired up is that they assume that they are being accused of shutting women out unfairly. He left open the possibility that women (for example) select themselves out of programming careers for whatever reason.
Imagine if you threw a party and invited half men, and half women, but only the men showed up. Wouldn't you be displeased with those results and conclude that you need to do something different to make your party more appealing to women? I know I would.
As Martin says "Personally I find it troubling when software professionals, who ought to be good at logical thinking, can reach so easily for such circular logic."
I don't mind the downvotes, but I think my comment was misunderstood. Of course, whenever there is any type of gender-related article on HN, it gets pretty nasty pretty quickly. HN, for all the good things I can say about it, is firmly entrenched in the mindset that Martin is writing against.
Having been dinged by PG for rewriting the title of a posted link - common practice on HN - it particularly annoys me when it's done by people who can't spell.
Does this mean the problem will take care of itself? That is, if it is true that a diverse group is usually more effective, the products and startups that succeed should have teams which tend to be more diverse than the ones that fail. And as that happens, founders interested in succeeding would pay more attention to the diversity of their firms.
Not necessarily, because it's starting from inequality.
Here's a simple example. Assume hypothetically that due to historical differences the vast majority of investment decisions are made by a non-diverse demographic who prefer to invest in people like themselves. So even though the diverse groups outperform, it may not be enough to overcome the "unfair advantage" of easier access to capital.
There's also the problem of confounding variables. All else being equal, a diverse group is usually better. However, if you have to fudge those other factors in order to get a diverse group then perhaps you've completely erased that advantage.
The bottleneck to success isn't simply the effectiveness of implementation groups. You've heard the old line of it being about who you know instead of what you know?
There are (real and perceived) barriers to entry, entrenched good-old-boys networks, gatekeepers, stereotypes, etc. Even if it's more like a minor obstacle than a brick wall, those tiny disparities add up can make a huge difference.
Why is there such a resistance to the idea that there might be differences in what groups of people are interested in at any given time? Not an issue of genetics or competence, but a complicated web of social influences that make people less likely to be interested in one path or the other?
If there are truly unjust and discriminatory barriers, then by all means let's remove them. But if we succeed, and it doesn't change the numbers much, does it matter?
If certain groups really think it's a problem then let them do the work of encouraging their group members (alert, this feels condescending - who says they'll even self-identify with that group) to get into tech.
It's certainly not my fault. I'm a cheerleader for tech careers. The more, the merrier. But if you're not into it, then you're not into it. There's a lot of things I'm not into, either. Whose fault is that? And why should it matter?