Comment by rewqfdsa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rewqfdsa | Hacker News Reader

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You misunderstand. I'm not making a statement on the cause of the gender disparity in computer science. I'm making a higher-order argument about why we're so apt to attribute this difference to discrimination. I hope you understand the distinction even if you disagree with my argument.

The idea is that if you believe that humans have no innate differences and you observe group differences, then you must attribute these group differences to external discrimination, and hence injustice.

If you accept that groups of humans might have innate differences, you are no longer required to attribute group differences to discrimination. Some group differences might arise from discrimination, but it's plausible that they might not.

A lot of people take it as an article of faith that there are no human group differences, so they're forced to look for discrimination in order to explain the world. For these people, no amount of evidence can prove the fairness of the CS world, since the idea that (gender disparity -> discrimination) is a necessary logical consequence of their worldview.

Indeed. You can show by simple calculations that slight innate differences giving slightly different preferences lead to significant differences in recruitment if you select entirely fair and purely by merit. In fact, restoring the 50/50 split requires significant amount of discrimination to counter the natural disproportions.

We do that in CS because it's a hot sexy field with shittons of money, so everyone wants in (also makes this field sucks more, it was better when people actually cared about doing great work instead of earning a lot, but I digress). Nobody cares that there is serious (intentional) gender imbalance among e.g. shop clerks or bank tellers. Those are not sexy jobs.

> Nobody cares that there is serious (intentional) gender imbalance among e.g. shop clerks or bank tellers. Those are not sexy jobs.

On the contrary, most of those who are interested in addressing gender imbalances in fields like computer science are simultaneously interested in addressing the gender imbalances in "unsexy" jobs, since these are just two sides of the same coin. Since higher paying jobs in fields like computer science tend to be had by men, the individuals who tend to hold the "unsexy" low-wage jobs tend to be women. The fact that people don't explicitly name the unsexy occupations does not entail that nobody cares about their gender imbalances.

The reason that high-wage positions are usually the positions of focus may simply be a product of our tendency to be more interested in leveling up rather than down when it comes to addressing distributive injustices.

> On the contrary, most of those who are interested in addressing gender imbalances in fields like computer science are simultaneously interested in addressing the gender imbalances in "unsexy" jobs, since these are just two sides of the same coin.

That's another claim that, if true, would be pretty, but happens to be false. (Just like "men are mean to women in technology and so keep them out of the field.") It's just another bromide to smooth over unpleasant reality.

A Google News search for "women in technology" yields 61 million results. A Google News search for yields 1.5 million. There's nowhere near as much attention to getting men into traditionally women's roles as there is increasing the number of women in technology.

>A lot of people take it as an article of faith that there are no human group differences, so they're forced to look for discrimination in order to explain the world. For these people, no amount of evidence can prove the fairness of the CS world, since the idea that (gender disparity -> discrimination) is a necessary logical consequence of their worldview.

I think that you would be hard pressed to find people who actually believe that. Most who point out problems with the CS environment probably feel no need to have any sort of robust view of innate differences between groups, and many are likely to be open to the possibility that some of the gender gap can be explained by such differences.

Note that much of the discussion of this issue has focused upon ways in which the CS culture is one which is overtly and unnecessarily hostile to women. It's not just that men vastly outnumber women in the field, it's that those men frequently engage in behaviors that are hostile, threatening, and demeaning to women. It is not implausible that these behaviors play a significant role in determining the gender imbalance in CS.

> CS culture is one which is overtly and unnecessarily hostile to women...men frequently engage in behaviors that are hostile, threatening, and demeaning to women

Many people repeat this claim, but I don't think it's true.

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