We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site, as stated in the site guidelines and illustrated by the tire fire below. Please don't create HN accounts to break the site rules with.
> We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle.
You seem to only take issue with one side of the "ideological battle", it's almost like you just banned the account because someone said something you didn't like.
If you would really believe what you say, you would not let "gender pay gap" and "women in tech" topics be posted at all.
The key word in your comment is 'seem'. It seems that way not because it's true—we've banned many accounts for abusing HN from the opposite ideological side—but because there's a cognitive bias in such perceptions. People with the opposite ideology have the opposite perception.
People here might be more willing to respond to your question if you didn't refer to a highly researched Washington Post article as a conspiracy theory.
> People here might be more willing to respond to your question if you didn't refer to a highly researched Washington Post article as a conspiracy theory.
People don't have to respond, trying to dodge the question with an appeal to authority proves my point just fine.
Your "highly researched" article doesn't deal with responsibility and seniority(mainly because there is no data for that) and makes funny claims such as "two very similar occupations, janitors (mostly men) and housekeepers (mostly women).", that's the equivalent of me saying "Worpdress development is similar to Enterprise Java Development" and for some reason one pays an order of magnitude more.
You don't understand what a conspiracy theory is. It's when a covert organization covers up a malicious act. You're just using inflated language to describe what's ultimately just a mistaken argument.
If my argument is "mistaken", why are you focusing on the language that I used instead of just disproving my argument?
I would also be interested that if the gender wage gap is real and it is as believers describe it, how would you explain it without going into conspiracy land.
Because your arguments are probably correct. I never claimed otherwise. I took issue with your language. You're contributing to the polarization by using unnecessary, inflammatory, and inaccurate language. That's the problem.
Claiming that across the US women get paid 20% less than men, for doing exactly the same work with exactly the same qualifications with everything aside from genitals being equal is not a conspiracy theory in your opinion? Claiming that society is sexist in that way is not a conspiracy theory?
Even if I grant you that I used harsh language, I take issue with your priorities, I would priorities truth over political correctness.
Are you saying that conspiracy theories are all true?
> I'm not sacrificing truth to point out your mistake.
You are wasting 100% of your effort on arguing semantics instead of engaging with my actual argument, sounds like a tradeoff to me. And no, it's not a mistake, don't know where you got that idea from.
What do you think should happen to people who grope other people?
> A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers.
What's the alternative? How in your world are people supposed to date?
> In all cases, what can you do to challenge these things without being seen as "the crazy one", "too sensitive", "party pooper", or whatever?
I'm not implying that you are any of those things. Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe you are too sensitive?
If you interact with a diverse group of people, they will do and say things that will offend you, such is life, the only way to avoid it is to ensure that you only interact with likeminded people. Expecting everyone to adhere to your values is tyranny.
I'm not suggesting there is one, I'm deliberately not taking a view on that. What I am saying is that if one does exist, as some commenters are saying, we're likely still not there yet as many other similar industries have far higher levels of diversity.
> The reason promoting diversity (e.g. in tech) is good is because there is a shortage of qualified people.
Are you implying that for some reason we don't hire qualified women if there are no men to fill in the roles? Would love to see your sources.
> If we have certain populations that could work in the field
Why not look to see how can we get more white men to work in the field?
> , but don't, for whatever reason, then we want to find those causes and stop them.
What if it's cheaper to just get more men instead?
> Yes, it's partially there to have equal opportunity.
It's not equal opportunity, white people won't get it.
> But (perhaps more) importantly, we know that because of past diversity, most African Americans have a harder time in education growing up.
I've heard it's because of socialism, can you prove that that's not the case?
> This probably shows up as people have e.g. lower scores on tests.
Me having a lower score on a test, doesn't mean that it's because I was historically oppressed.
> imagine what they could do if we help them out with better education!
Imagine if education would be just be better in general for all, I wouldn't leave out the uneducated white men.
> I agree, but I much prefer to show why diversity tends to be a win-win, not a "you lose so we can win" situation.
I have yet to see any solid evidence why having a majority white male tech population is a bad thing(and I'm not even going to get into the are Asians white or not argument).
Overall my issue with your point of view is that I have yet to see any proof for anything that it's based on. Most people with your point of view will point to some statistics that are convenient to them (earnings of all women vs. men) and ignore inconvenient ones(male vs. female mortality rate) and interpret it the way they want it (we less women in tech, must be because of sexism).
> Debating this memo is like debating about crime statistics every time a black person gets shot by the cops. There are people that understand the role social forces play in inequality, and there are those that don't know and don't want to know.
If I understood you correctly:
fewer women in tech -> sexism
black man getting shot by police -> racism
If these are true then:
fewer women in jail -> ????
white women getting shot by black policemen -> ????
You can convince me, if you manage to explain this to me.
> Also, the article seems to think missing out some weak-ass graph and a link to wikipedia as irrefutable proof that this guy knows what he's talking about and everyone is out to misconstrue his words. Nope.
You do realise that this is what people making the opposite arguments do, right?
> I'll tell you some bias he makes no mention of. The bias of having Disney princess for girls before they're born. Of being bought pink and told they're pretty not clever. Then getting dolls as presents instead of practical problem solving toys. The shoes and clothes bought that aren't practical for climbing trees or exploring. Then watching every Hollywood film about men while pathetic women characters look savvy and get "rescued" like the fairytales they were told when they were little.
What about times before TV existed? what about countries where computers and games weren't marketed?
> After all this, even if the adverts of scantily clad girls in both boys and girls magazines haven't dissuaded them a career in science. Perhaps they study and perhaps they do so well as to get a job at google. Where they will be surrounded by a good many male asshole engineers (it's likely because I'm a male software guy and have seen no shortage). They persist anyway.
Most software engineers where nerds and there was a huge societal pressure against nerds, that didn't stop nerdy boys from doing what the want to do.
> Then some male privileged white lad
If it's a poor black women from the ghetto making the same argument, does it make the argument better?
> Wants to talk bias in an open way? Nope
If you dare say that: it's not only women that have issues in life or that we don't live in a patriarchy, people label you as fascist, sexist, racist etc. Want to talk about double standards in an open way? Nope.
> He's missed the point. He wants to talk about the very few who've travelled that unlikely journey made all they way to Google despite the obvious barriers that were in place before they were born.
> Also, the article seems to think missing out some weak-ass graph and a link to wikipedia as irrefutable proof that this guy knows what he's talking about and everyone is out to misconstrue his words. Nope.
You do realise that this is what people making the opposite arguments do, right?
> I'll tell you some bias he makes no mention of. The bias of having Disney princess for girls before they're born. Of being bought pink and told they're pretty not clever. Then getting dolls as presents instead of practical problem solving toys. The shoes and clothes bought that aren't practical for climbing trees or exploring. Then watching every Hollywood film about men while pathetic women characters look savvy and get "rescued" like the fairytales they were told when they were little.
What about times before TV existed? what about countries where computers and games weren't marketed?
> After all this, even if the adverts of scantily clad girls in both boys and girls magazines haven't dissuaded them a career in science. Perhaps they study and perhaps they do so well as to get a job at google. Where they will be surrounded by a good many male asshole engineers (it's likely because I'm a male software guy and have seen no shortage). They persist anyway.
Most software engineers where nerds and there was a huge societal pressure against nerds, that didn't stop nerdy boys from doing what the want to do.
> Then some male privileged white lad
If it's a poor black women from the ghetto making the same argument, does it make the argument better?
> Wants to talk bias in an open way? Nope
If you dare say that: it's not only women that have issues in life or that we don't live in a patriarchy, people label you as fascist, sexist, racist etc. Want to talk about double standards in an open way? Nope.
> He's missed the point. He wants to talk about the very few who've travelled that unlikely journey made all they way to Google despite the obvious barriers that were in place before they were born.
> To me, that's a pretty extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary proof.
The extraordinary claim here is that there are less women in tech due to sexism from men and we have yet to see the extraordinary evidence.
> So do women fair better on some emotional tests because of some innate biology or because we've emphasized that kind of thing literally since they could talk?
Evolution probably favoured caring mothers, you can observe this in animals as well.
> And it's so hard because those differences are tiny. If we assumed those differences really are 100% biological (again, a big assumption), it might explain why Computer Science would be 55% men, and 45% women. It wouldn't explain the huge disparity we see today.
"Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds"
4% doesn't really explain why we are totally different form chimps. Not everything scales linear manner.
> Historically, the field of computing had lots of women.
That's both true and not, computing used to be radically different historically then it is right now.
> Why? The "it's biology and girl brains are different" argument can't account for that. Biology didn't change.
What if CS changed or what you do with your CS degree changed?
> that talks about how early home computers were marketed as a toy to buy for boys.
I can debunk that for you: look at countries where computers weren't marketed and have the still ratios.
> It's like we as a society decided that computers fell into the "boy stuff" category with GI Joe and baseball, not the "girl stuff" category like Barbie and softball.
So all companies ignored half of their potential market? It's possible, however, it's hard to explain though why would every single company would throw away half of their market.
> I think it all adds up to a pretty convincing argument that biology has nothing (or very, very little) to do with it.
