Women rise through the ranks of IT more rapidly than men
i-cio.com
i-cio.com
I know it's hard to believe, but women don't usually get sent to coding summer camp as teenagers. Our parents don't usually encourage us to take AP computer science, and our best friends aren't in CS and don't refer us for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google.
If you're a woman in this industry, it's GENERALLY because it is something that you very much care about and want to do.
It's not some feminist conspiracy that women are being promoted, it's just that the women who go into tech are usually already pretty gritty people. You're comparing a very driven and passionate subset of women to a very general subset of men.
Here's a really great article I read once -- "I need terrible female engineers": https://medium.com/@amyngyn/i-need-terrible-female-engineers...
Is it hard to believe most men don't do those things, too? Some do, sure. And of people that do these things, historically more have probably been men than women (don't have the stats, but it sounds reasonable). But how many men do you think do those things, vs those that don't? Some anecdata: I didn't do any of those. Of all the engineers I can think of, male and female, very very few went to coding summer camps or took AP computer science. Few had best friends in CS in university, but sure, more did this than AP computer science or coding summer camp. And few had sweet internships at tech companies.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/techs-g...
>"It's already too late," Paul Graham, founder of the tech entrepreneur boot camp Y Combinator, said last month in a controversial interview. "What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that."
>Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the [AP computer science] exam were women.
Who makes high school students' schedules? Parents and teachers, at least in the US.
So let's put aside anecdotes and reactionary attitudes and just look at the facts.
The students. AP comp sci at my high school was an elective that people took. The people who didn't take it chose whatever elective they were interested in (water basket weaving, guitar, etc.).
And what motivated the people to choose AP comp sci? This is just an anecdote but almost everyone in my AP comp sci class was into gaming/nerdy hobbies/internet forums/etc.
This was before knowledge of comp sci salaries have gone mainstream (before 2012), although it's still a relevant, anecdotal reflection on the backgrounds of current software engineers.
My AP comp sci class was actually composed of non-high achieving people. AP comp sci was the only AP class many of the students took. The high achieving students didn't take AP comp sci for whatever reason.
I think AP comp sci was actually considered lower status/prestige compared to the sciences Physics/Chem/Bio among the high achieving students.
Maybe they didn't like to take classes filled with spiteful boys with chips on their shoulders? The 'whatever reason' is the important part.
Social stigma plays a large role at that age; this is also when they start thinking about boys and having self expression (clothes, music, books). It's _nerdy_ to be interested in computers. The know-it-all also becomes the outcast. That's the geek or loser. There's nothing more important than social status. It's really unfortunate.
Why do you think social stigma only apply to girls?
Again, men don't usually do the things you're claiming, either. You're claiming it with the language "women don't usually" because usually means more often than not - over half. But I'm open to changing my mind with stats. I'm happy to look at any you provide.
Do you have stats on most men being sent to coding summer camp as teenagers? Most men having parents that encourage them to take AP computer science? Most men having best friends who are in CS? Most men who refer them for sweet internships at Microsoft and Google?
Men usually don't do those things either. Just because more of the people that do those things are men than women, does not mean men, in general, do those things. That's my point.
In a weird sort of coincidence, I was recently talking to all of my couple friends at a large party. Of the 5 couples there, only 1 person had any desire to see their child(ren) go into programming. That particular child was a boy.
So there's some more anecdata, but basically I've never heard a non-programmer parent say they want their child to go into programming. It's always been something along the lines of "I want my child to do the same thing I do" or "I want my child to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer"
You could argue that it's not a filter against women but a magnet towards men, but that doesn't actually change the crux of the argument. There is clearly something that causes only 18% of AP CS exams being taken by women.
However, the implication of saying that something "usually" doesn't happen to women, is that it usually happens to men. These were very specific benefits that do not usually happen to anyone. The statement is just as invalid as a privilege denyer saying "poor white people have less privilege than rich black people", except they were made for "your side" rather than "the enemy's side".
Usually means "under normal conditions; generally." Generally means more often than not, meaning over half / most.
I did NOT, you are misquoting me. I claimed (and cited) that OF the people who take AP CS and have the other resources I mentioned, most are men. That is all I claimed and you are all over this thread misinterpreting this.
You can check my original comment's edit history. I've changed nothing about what I said and I stand by it 100%.
You sound like a bad politician here. All I said is that GIRLS don't take AP CS and do not go to coding summer camp. The people who are doing these things are boys.
You have terrible reading comprehension and your pedantic citations of dictionaries and incorrect use of set theory belong on /r/iamverysmart
You have terrible reading comprehension and your pedantic citations of dictionaries and incorrect use of set theory belong on /r/iamverysmart
Ad hominems aren't appropriate on HN. It might be better if you took a breather at this point:
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
At most, it implies that "more men than women generally do ______," which is totally true. Even that implication would be a bit of a leap were it not for parent's later explicit clarifications on the point.
Above, did I imply something about tall people's abilities to reach items on very high shelves? I didn't claim anything about tall people specifically. But I think I did make a claim about their abilities here, by implication, given the context. It's natural to infer the claim - this is just part of how people communicate. The claim is strongly implied - tall people can reach items on very high shelves.
I believe OP's clarified claim (of people in AP CS classes, most are men; of people at summer coding camps, most are men; etc), rather than OP's initial claim (most men take AP CS classes; etc). The clarified claim seems accurate. The initial claim is clearly inaccurate - and OP "stand[s] by it 100%".
It feels like we're dancing around the issue. There's no reason for this line of thought to have continued like it has. "My side" should have made a polite comment, and when rebuffed, thought "they don't think it's a problem," and moved on. "Your side" should have thought "a slight rephrase could increase clarity and address their concerns." Instead we're just pointlessly banging our heads against a wall.
As is, both sides of this argument are actually pretty stupid. Mine included.
Good point, thanks for introducing some sanity.
But your argument distracts from the fact that the phenomenon she described is very real. Women face challenges at every turn as they try to get into tech. One of those challenges is people like you who want to nitpick everything they say.
Why are you arguing with her? What is the point of it? Can't you accept that the general argument that women struggle to exist in the tech industry is real?
You're like a global warming denier fixating over some discrepancy in the data. You're not wrong, it's just beside the point. We need to be arguing over how to fix our gender issues, not whether they exist. And one of those ways, without a doubt, is getting more women to take the AP CS exam and go to programming summer programs.
Just because you're factually correct (which I'm not conceding here, but it shouldn't matter) doesn't mean your point has any merit.
As you were blasting "anecdotes", please note that this isn't even anecdote, just blind assertion, so: "Citation needed". In my experience, high school students largely decide their own schedules according to their interests and abilities.
Ahh, speaking of interests, and facts/data:
https://scientificfemanomaly.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/fem...
Interest by high school students in STEM fields. Girls 15% and falling, boys 45% and rising.
More facts/data:
http://mjperry.blogspot.de/2009/08/2009-math-sat-scores-are-...
Gender gap in SAT scores persists.
Yes, let's look at the facts!
How many men do you know who are ballet dancers? Do you think that's because there's actually something present in the DNA of little girls that's not present in the DNA of little boys that makes them interested in ballet?
Or could it be because if you're a little girl who dances it's cute/pretty and if you're a boy it's because you're gay/weak?
This is the problem. If men hold a monopoly on powerful or lucrative roles in society, that monopoly will reign through the establishment of gender-dichotomous "interests and passions." Of course gender doesn't play any intrinsic role in whether you're into ballet. Nor does it play any intrinsic role in whether you're into computer science.
Applying this to interests, however, implies that there is a neurological difference that makes women worse at computer science. There is not methodologically sound data to back this up.
Of course there are biological differences that surface in all of these things. The question is whether these differences by themselves account for the disparities. Of course the answer is no.
Yes, probably related to the production of testosterone or a similar mechanism.
It's hardly surprising in a sexually dimorphic species.
I did a master's degree in computer science at the University of Texas at Arlington about 10 years ago. When I was there, I was one of only two white people (male or female) in the entire program, and one of only about five that weren't Indian citizens on special student visas. So Indian citizens, while making up a minuscule portion of the US population, represented 95+% of the CS student population at an American university.
So, which is it? Did UT Arlington commit a massive conspiracy to discriminate against white men? Or is it just that the people who were most interested and most inclined happened to be the ones that ended up there?
I think this is more of a "of the people that get these things, most are men" than a "all men get these things."
Good for you for pulling it together. Seriously. I went the service industry to community college route myself.
I never mentioned men, but since you decided to make it a point, her generalization is that women are being denied these things. Given that there are two genders, I'll leave it as an exercise as to which one she's referring to when she lists these activities.
one half is not given the opportunity and other half is not participating out of their own will. So what's the point of talking about this at all if no one is doing it at all. Unless your assuption is girls need extra help while boys just get it on their own. Benevolent sexism?
http://www.listen-tome.com/save-me/
I too find these HN threads really troubling. I'm very glad to hear you speak up.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/usually https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/generally
My original use of "usually". I was talking about women with the "usually", not men. It is a FACT that 82% of the people taking AP computer science are boys. I am arguing that some of this discrepancy is because parents and society nurture this talents in boys, including boys that don't have a lot of natural ability. Which is fine! We need programmers, even mediocre programmers. I am saying nothing against the men who seized these opportunities, nor against the parents who encouraged them.
Read the medium article I linked.
Yes, that was part of your original use of "usually." The way you used it in context implied the opposite group experiences the list of things the other group usually doesn't. You communicated that while most women don't do x, y, and z, most men do x, y, and z. My claim is they don't. Yes - of those that do x, y, and z, most are men - but most men still do not do x, y, and z. What percentage of people take AP CS? Most men do not take AP CS (very few men take AP CS in the U.S. or world). Realize the experience you described as common among men isn't most men's experience, and not most people's experience in general. Even if most of the people who had it were men.
The implication is that this must be true for men; otherwise this is a complete non-sequitur.
However, the only thing we really know for sure, and for which there is a mountain of evidence, is that women as a group face significantly greater challenges in this industry than men do. That may filter for various traits in women such as greater levels of grit, but I'm going to wait until this particular survey is corroborated by further study before I buy into the idea that women and men in our industry are significantly differentiated by something like personal drive. I can believe it, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion based on this evidence alone.
Great Medium article by the way.
Males aren't either. The difference in participation is caused by men engaging in nerdy hobbies more than women (trawling BB boards, playing online video games, etc.). Why this happens, no one really knows.
> it's GENERALLY because it is something that you very much care about and want to do.
Given that there is a higher demand for IT jobs than supply makes this impossible. You just have to be good at it.
>>It's not some feminist conspiracy that women are being promoted
You have to admit though that "diversity" is mentioned a lot and striving for "diversity" in fact makes it easier for women to get into management position. I am not saying it's the only factor but it is one impossible to deny.
My ex husband was career army. While in the military, he double majored in CS and history. He was a socially awkward nerd. He rose though the ranks quickly. He once admitted that while excelled at the technical stuff, the fact that he was married to me was a big part of why he was a decent manager once he got promoted to the military equivalent of mid level manager.
There have been studies that indicate women think of "morality" different from men -- that their idea of morality is more about caring about people. Perhaps the same traits -- caring about others -- that help make women good mothers also help make them good managers. The paternal role is typically different from the maternal one.
Not necessarily. You can be really talented and completely overlooked due to discrimination/bias/prejudice. There is plenty of evidence that people expect leaders to be tall, have deep voices, broad shoulders, etc -- ie look and sound like a man. They have studied this.
Others here are suggesting that women get promoted faster in IT because only the best and most dedicated stay. If you are already good and also happen to have traits that are beneficial when assigned managerial tasks, then that could go hand-in-hand.
They may be approaching diversity efforts all wrong. I suspect they are and I do my best to advocate for another path. However, most men who criticize this stuff do not genuinely seem to be interested in a better path forward. They seem to be interested in coming up with some justification for "we should keep advantaging men the way we do now -- that works for me! -- and stop trying to do anything to dismantle the very real barriers women face."
There is no institutional conspiracy to suppress women, the problem is strictly cultural:
NONE of my daughter's female friends in high school thought it was cool to take on any of the math/physics/programming classes. They were all interested in environment, film/acting, fashion, literature...
This self-selection came predominantly from mass-media/pop-culture, and also, to some extent, from their mothers, none of whom works in tech (we are talking a wealthy suburb in the northeast US here). They never encouraged their daughters to go into tech. The fathers did, but not too convincingly, either.
Popular culture in the US massively lionizes professional sports, and shames younger people who are into programming and other non-social hobbies like nobody's business.
In my opinion, if "women in tech" programs put half of their resources into solving these problems, they'd be hugely more successful. Unfortunately, that involves taking on fields other than professional programming (like television, media, and such), which they are either not ready or equipped to do.
Neither did any of the men. Not when I was in school, and not now. Being nerdy is not cool, whether you're a boy or a girl. In fact, you're more likely to get beaten up for it as a boy than as a girl.
Interesting that when men statistically seem to have an advantage in any area, it's a "problem" that "needs to be corrected", but if women start to statistically dominate, it's clearly because "women are just better".
Mediocre women in tech just aren't allowed, whereas mediocre men are accepted. Try to read the article she linked.
Poor or even worse bullshit articles and poor citations just make the backlash worse, and even harder to get accepted without having to prove I'm at the least a mythical 2x-5x developer.
But, here you go, let's try showing you a survey and a study amongst the top Google hits for "women have to work harder for the same recognition" and see what you think:
https://news.virginia.edu/content/surveys-british-and-americ...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2013/02/24/superio...
---
[1] http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-backfire-effect-why-facts...
When I discuss these and sometimes any issue really with engineers or scientists, I try to find technical research papers with null hypothesizes and methodology.
My point being for technical people like engineers, you aren't convincing a lot of people with light fluffy pieces without links to hard data, in fact you get them even more entrenched in their current way of thinking because they think you don't have real scientific evidence.
I've found in personal experience, technical people are far more open minded then the general population, but they tolerate far less bullshit.
I don't understand what you're looking for. I don't have juicy information you don't have, so I imagine if there is something out there that you searched and couldn't find, I don't think I'll succeed in finding it either.
I guess that means all that remains is intolerable bullshit?
For those who still believe it's a feminist conspiracy, I encourage you to read this brief report (with links to an excellent full report) with hard numbers on the experience of women in STEM: https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-st...
And if you think you're above bias, or that it doesn't exist against women, please challenge yourself with the unconscious bias test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html Stats are available after the test. I am a woman with a PhD in a STEM field, and guess what - I have biases against my own sex.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12288/abstra... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288582440_Toward_a_...
https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-st...
feminist conspiracy
The other side of the coin is represented by neuroscientists trying to prove that the ladybrain is inferior at mathematics or evolutionary psychologists trying to assert that evolution has made women excel at caregiving and men at being hyperlogical.
the only people actually researching this
White males can have problems fitting in, too. Being born into a low social class is probably more damning to your future than any external quality you might have.
We need to accept that being inclusive isn't about focusing on a single group - that's singling people out again - but realize that people are being left out of whatever good thing we have as a society for any number of reasons.
Understand this, and just be more accepting of people in general.
e.g. "Women don't ask" - a book with concepts on salary negotiation vital to many men I know.
That said, historically there was clear gender/race discrimination. There is today in pockets, just as there is reverse discrimination.
We just have to stop the discrimination.
There is a low supply of female engineers, but rather than addressing the problem organizations implement various forms of affirmative action. Trying to fix discrimination with more discrimination.
My partner is in tech. My organization has a network to support women in their careers which my female coworkers view as outright anti-male discrimination.
Unfortunately, the bell curve doesn't support these policies. We have both worked with women who would have not held their position as men.
It's quite frustrating, as we now have capable women forging ahead while less competent women are riding the wave of feminism and tarnishing their reputations.
I'm curious. Have you not suffered this, or at least heard of it?
We can't make progress on this if we all continue to willfully ignore the flaws in our arguments.
1. Selection- because so much of IT is hostile to women, the only ones who become senior in the field are the very good ones.
2. Affirmative action- companies promoting women regardless of merit to seem progressive.
3. Some sort of inate or socialized advantage– the "women are better at people stuff" philosophy. If this is the case, then you'd expect more women to be in management.
4. Methodological flaws in the survey. I can't find any detailed discussion of their process, but phrases like "Of the senior developers who responded to the survey" seem to imply there could easily be significant selection bias.
Feel free to take your pick based on what you already believe. Personally, I'm going to wait for more data before forming any solid conclusions based on this.
Probably a good TLDR for any HN discussion around gender.
that's an unproven premise
A mother who thinks that programming isn't something for her girls in high school does damage that no amount of work at making things friendlier later on can repair.
I think it's counterproductive to associate selection exclusively or even strongly with IT culture specifically. It lets wider culture off the hook.
[1] http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Senior-Techni...
How about: women are more likely to go into less technical roles in their careers, possibly because they prefer them?
EDIT: the same link is in my parent comment -- going back to your previous comment: "reading helps".
Your comment is entirely tangential, it has no clash with any of the arguments that I've been making.
"The Clayman Institute for Gender Research"
From the site: "Founded in 1974, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University creates knowledge and seeks to implement change to promote gender equality."
Implement change. As I said: advocacy.
Just one hypothesis on this data, but that would help explain why those women who are hired then get promoted faster - because they are actually outperforming their peers.
In order to even survive, the average woman has to be at the very top of their game, or else theyd be gone because it isn't worth it to put up with all the BS that they have to.
That doesn't seem to be the standard though.
I do see one issue though: women are far more likely to be sick (at least around here statistics are quite clear IIRC).
That's only the case for younger workers. For older workers, men are more likely to be sick, according to insurance statistics.
I'll accept it for now but I guess I'll have to look that up before I feel confident to tell that as fact.
Edit: why was parent downvoted?
True, over 40% of women leave SET (science, engineering, technology, math) mid-career (https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenint... page 9).
Interestingly, in engineering 39% leave mid-career, and in technology occupations 56%.
How does that compare to other fields?
Edit: Found it, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483751
e.g. the other explanation could be that women applicants are just better than men, and that they aren't discriminated against.
Simply put, few women work in technical IT, but end up in management, business analysis, etc. And management has a faster and higher career path to elevated positions, while techs will top out at "senior engineer/developer" after about 5 years, and will be still stuck there after 20 unless they basically give up their passion and become a manager.
Of course, there are far fewer management positions than tech roles, as the are far fewer women working in tech generally.
For example, I know that Asians are generally 'over-represented' in tech yet if you look stats which compare professionals by ethnicity (https://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...), Asians (both male and female) get promoted at a lower rate than white men and women (https://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/inline...). And we could look at specific company's like Intel, Yahoo, and LinkedIn to find similar patterns, namely white people have a much higher likelihood to achieve higher executive positions compared to Asians (even when controlling for difference in company demographic composition).
If men or any other subgroup are not rising through the ranks as fast, that is a clear discrimination and it is a problem, not an 'achievement'. It's this kind of ill-logic that brings pro-women policies in a bad light.
As long as the vast majority of programmers are men, it's ludicrous to complain that men are being discriminated against. There are dozens of studies showing that men have it way easier in a multitude of ways. But it's good that there are more visible women in tech, and hopefully that will lead to even out the balance in the future.
Let me stop you here. This is a flawed argument. It's very possible that men gravitate to a certain field more than women but there is discrimination against men in that field (for example if companies think it's good PR to have more women at top positions). I am not arguing if that actually happens or not here. I am just pointing out that your argument is logically flawed.
I can even give you an example of discrimination against majority group: it's beneficial to be tall white man in many Asian countries. You get more respect and bring prestige to the company. Tall white men are not majority but still they are favored and their Asian counterparts are discriminated against.
If the majority of programmers were, say, Asian, then, would that imply that white people were being discriminated against?
Though if a company only hire people who already established themselves at other companies, and hire them blindly, only knowing their gender and nothing about their performance, I suppose hiring women would be the better bet.
You can be a great manager with solidly average technical skills, so long as you can find a resource to advise you. (Dunning-Krueger trap: You may not know enough to understand if you truly understand the advice.) A team managed by such will usually outperform an average manager with great technical skills.
Alexander the Great would probably have conquered more of the world, if he had personally fought less.
I doubt it. It's much easier to inspire people when you are in the trenches (wrong era of warfare) with them. It's not a conincicidence that many of the greatest generals in history (napoleon, Hannibal, Alexander) were known for being in the thick of the action.
On the other hand, I've left those companies because I could notice there was no career path for me, and created my own. I identify to a generation of men who've been sacrified for women equality. I'm all for equality, as long as everyone has equal chances, which we currently don't have. I'm very happy that we now start having studies supporting that men are less promoted than women today in some context (a minima in Luxembourg, France and Australia for what I'm concerned).
It's now time we study across all countries the mean-time-to-promotion, and it's time we include talks in conferences about the difficulties of men.
And it's time we stop having differentiated education and career paths for women. Today, women are equal in the mind if most men, and have a large swathes of explicit advantages granted by laws.
But that will keep a status quo if one group is starting out as a serious minority. That's the whole point of equality movements: you have to adjust upwards for a bit, until it's actually equal. Then you can go back to being fair.
EDIT: This thread is blowing up, so I want to clarify my comment: I'm talking about affirmative action, and I think it's a good idea in the case of women in tech, presently.
Just to clarify: That's absolutely not the "whole point of equality movements". This is a stance some people take on it. By far not all.
- https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/st...
- http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-...
- http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bias-hiring-0504-b...
Look at the top 1000 names from 1995, the next birth year that will be graduating from college en masse. "Jessica" is the top name for girls, while it doesn't even appear in the top 1000 for boys. http://www.babynames.it/top100/1/year-1995.html
Premise: in STEM fields, female- and POC-signifying names receive significantly fewer responses to otherwise identical résumés
Conclusion: in the hiring process in STEM fields, people are discriminated against based solely on their perceived gender and race
That is the literal definition of sexism and racism. How is that not unfortunate or problematic?
My original point was that in addition to gender and race, names signal cultural affiliation. Many Asian immigrants to the West adopt Western first names in order to signal Western cultural affiliation. I would hypothesize they get more resume responses. This plays into gender as well. I might be comfortable with "Jessica" as my accountant but less so with "Envy" or "Desiree" or whatever. The preferences being expressed are not based solely on gender/race as in your conclusion, but rather likelihood to adhere to various cultural norms, some pertaining to direct job-related productivity, and others pertaining to general socialization and fitting in. I see no problem with Western companies expressing preference for Western cultural norms anymore than Chinese companies doing the same (respectively) in China.
Another interpretation of the study is simply that the companies historically have had more success with whitemale name hires and are simply using the cheapest predictive signal available to maximize hiring ROI. This is unfair to good hires with off-culture names, but I'm not sure what a fix is.
If it makes you feel better I would presume white males are discriminated against in non-Western societies but I have no hard evidence for that, except for maybe South Africa where it's explicit law.
Sooooo "female culture" isn't a part of Western cultural norms? Or Black culture? Asian culture? These are all peoples that have been here for hundreds of years. The culture they share is certainly different from that of their home country. When do they get to call their culture "Western?" When white people say it's okay?
You don't want to cop to it, but all you're doing is making excuses for white men to discriminate against others. It's not okay.
In America during the '50s, did black people demand white people to not be allowed to sit in the front of the bus until everyone was "actually equal"?
But I think you make a good point.
Only the companies with enough profit margins can afford to concern themselves with this inclusion/empowerment drivel, because they can hire "fluff" employees to boost their diversity or whatever other metrics they want to use to make them feel good about themselves.
That's how you maximize your productivity and efficiency and, by extension, profit. It also motivates people because they know they are much closer to a true meritocracy.
There's no point at which feminists stop looking out for women at the expense of men.
My point was that even if the model you described in that sentence part is broadly correct, the "nobody" part is inconsistent with the rest of the model because at some level people respondent to public opinion must care about the those "yelling:.
TL;DR: genital integrity (no circumcision), no draft, parental rights, privileged in courts. Differs by country, of course (e.g. in some EU countries, men have to work longer to retire).
There has not been a draft in 50 years.
Privilege in courts has been shown to be bullshit time and time again. Men who attempt to receive custody of their children actually get them more than 50% of the time.
I'm at work and don't feel like googling in depth circumcision articles, but "genital integrity" is a ridiculous minimization of the issues faced by women who have actually had their genitals mutilated. If anyone wants to dig up the citations for me, I'd appreciate it. But, this isn't a circumjerk article, so this is as far down the chain as I'll go.
You're misremembering your studies -- women who are sentenced to prison (for felonies) receive roughly the same prison sentences as men. They are however, significantly less likely to be sentenced. But, they are also significantly less likely to commit violent crimes, which you have to take into account in your analysis.
"Starr's research incorporates disparities found at those earlier stages, and finds that "more disparity is introduced at each phase of the justice process.""
(my emphasis).
https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_g...
[1] http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-j... [2] http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/02/06/009385481456...
"After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." "
Same link as before. My emphasis.
"Pre-charge characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain about 80% of these disparities" [1]
1. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377
Sigh.
The study you linked is titled "Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences", says so right at the top, you just have to read it. It is not the study talked about in the press-release I linked to. It is referenced in said press-release as the "previous study" that found racial disparities, which were found to be 6 times smaller than the gender disparities found in the study that the press release is about.
Which is this one:
Here is another contradictory study [1], along with a link to an ABA article explaining why some differences in sentencing should not only be expected, but potentially encouraged [2].
1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1993.... 2. http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_mag...
There has not been a draft in 50 years.
It's sad that blatantly obvious differences between genders are fought when they are bad for women (STEM employement, rape, home violence) and ignored when they are bad for man (suicide rate, life expectancy, rights after divorce).
I doubt we will ever see positive discrimination for male patients in hospitals for example, even if it could decrease the life expectancy gap :)
Also car insurance https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/05/car-insurance-...
it's only 3-4 years at 25 y.o. Still significant. Also I would like data from other countries, I suspect they are worse.
So don't circumcise your son.
If all rapists realized today that they shouldn't rape, and stopped doing it, then no more rape.
Now the only way to even start down a path like that is to start letting people know "don't rape". She's too drunk to walk straight? Don't. She says no? Don't. etc...
Opposing male circumcision doesn't require complaining about how females are privileged. Educate people on why they don't really need to chop up their babies penis.
Extra points for higher education, even in studies traditionally dominated by women like nurse and chemistry.
- In France, the last law about gender equality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12688339
- In France, organizations which support only women, by statute (see last link). In USA, "Girlz In Web" and all similar ventures.
- In France, aid and support that is only dedicated to women (excluding child-bearing support, which is deserved), where there's no mirror support for male problems.
That leads men to leave such companies and start their own businesses. Small companies are often more agile and innovative and far more likely to make founders and skilled employees rich.
So the programs to promote women (and underrepresented minorities) that are intended to achieve equality just promote even more unfair advantages for men. It's a common pattern: even the best designed policies need to be constantly expanded so that unfair advantages for men can be mitigated.
But no one can say that the proliferation of small innovative companies is bad for society. New innovative ideas make all our lives better, and some of that is owed to big corporate HR departments encouraging more entrepreneurship by limiting promotion opportunities for men.
Women who decide they want to join a high risk, high gain startup and have the skills to do so, are free to and do just that.
Men who decide they want to be treated equally have to leave their stable jobs for startups.
edit: formating
Were the discriminatory practices that led Jews to start their own business also an "unfair advantage for the Jews"?
Also, do you have any principle beyond "I have negative feelings" which suggests I shouldn't discuss certain human experiences? If so, what is it?
Someone, I'm sure, will rebut this comment with an example of a successful founder who started their company due to oppressive affirmative action policies. But you worded your comment as if this was some kind of obvious industry norm. It is not; you should reword.
Also, you mention your experience is focused in the startup world, which differs from the employment scene at large.
OP's study about women being promoted 25% faster than men just means it's an industry norm to promote women.
At least nowadays. I'd like to attract your attention that the world is changing, I'm happy with more equality at my workplace, and women were obviously oppressed in workplaces I've been to 10 years ago. Just, at least, not today in UK anyway.
Could you name some of those advantages, and link to the relevant laws? I'm interested to see what you're talking about.
I'm French, so unfortunately I'll quote the French law. On the upside this law was an election promise of the current government (left-wing, socialist), so you're really reading the outcome of a current debate: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...
- First, let's note overall that there's no law that reserves something to men. It would be illegal. Obviously.
- Let's also drop that women have a 10% longer life. It means their retirement is 6 years longer than men's average of 18 years.
- Point #5 says "Fight against the poverty of women". What about the poverty of men? There are twice more homeless men than women. There are 30 times more men in prison than women. I see what they mean when they think about the poverty of women, but men need specific help that's attached to their gender. Failing their education and dealing drugs falls in that bucket.
- Point #8 says "Equality of women headcount in politics". It's great, I like it, I'm all for equality of women in all areas including politics. But what about sectors where men are less frequent? One argument I often hear about women equality is "We're also fighting for a men, look at male nurse for example", where, in fact, those laws about "equality" don't fight for the equality of men in the nurse area.
- Point #10 says "Make studies known about the social construction of gendered roles." One very actual gendered construct is that, as a woman, you'll get much more help. First because you naturally inspire kindness and solidarity, thanks to your body, gender and image. Second because there are big budgets allocated to women equality (e.g. benefits for creating a company[1], organizations that support you while you create your company[2]). And last, the social construct of genders is built upon years of communicating to women that they need help, and the government especially participates to this when they have http://femmes.gouv.fr but don't have http://hommes.gouv.fr .
All in all, this law only cares about equality when women are impacted. If it were for men, you would see sections like "Fighting against the men-related prejudices", "Fighting for male dropouts", "Fighting for dad custody", "Fighting against street violence" (which mostly impacts men), "Fighting for kids who don't like football" (as a gay man, I can tell you it's really tough to feel abandoned when all your schoolmates play ball in so many occasions).
Anyway, I don't feel like we're trying to close the gap: We're rather generating more hate both ways by increasing the care about one gender and not the other [3]. If you want peace, don't tease the losers.
[1] Benefits reserved for women: http://www.familles-enfance-droitsdesfemmes.gouv.fr/dossiers...
[2] Organizations that support women only: http://www.ellesentreprennent.fr/pid14416/les-reseaux-au-ser...
[3] Common-life example of increasing the resent between men and women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhB3l1gCz2E
I guess you have to get used to such "configurations", given that in a fully equal world having both a female team lead and manager is entirely possible. Or how does this confirm your claim that women are unfairly promoted more frequently?
The reason for quicker promotions is probably a skewed distribution of personalities, as also mentioned further below. Men of all personalities are more likely to start science and engineering degrees because they are nurtured into it by society anyway. Women have to be the kind of person that does not care about such biases, and develops and follows interests.
Therefore we had between 0% and 5% women in technical teams, and 75% in management.
Furthermore, so many men in tech are quick to explain away statistics about women/minorities being hired less by saying, "There's no bias! It's because they're not as skilled!" But when stats show that women advance faster, the story flips, and suddenly it's, "This proves bias! There's no way it's due to skill!"
Come on, HN, we're better than this.
It's not a hard argument to make that women (and many other underrepresented people) are subjected to a stricter filter in the tech world, playing with a deck socially and structurally stacked against them. It's no surprise at all that people who can find success despite playing on a harder difficulty level will be among the most capable. An article like this is actually heartening, as it indicates that achievement and ability are internally recognized.
And now I've broken one of my cardinal rules (don't engage with social flamewar threads on HN), but you're exactly right - many of these comments are too embarrasing to let pass.
edit: calex just made this point far better than I in another comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12687015
Then suddenly when women are promoted more often than men, your story becomes "Women are just smarter than men, it's normal". Can't you just have a little compassion for men who didn't have the skills and deserve to be pushed and taught a little bit? And the prejudice about "men are stupid" is repeated in many innocent settings:
- https://pics.onsizzle.com/i-wish-i-was-strong-like-him-i-wis...
- Everyone can cite 10 qualities of women, especially smartness [1].
- You can't quote any quality attributed to men. There's none, no quality attributed to men in any newspaper, in any document, in any culture. "What about muscles?" The thing about muscles is, women reckon we have strength because it would be hard to deny it and it helps construct the idea that we're violent. But muscles also help build the image of men being stupid, and it doesn't give us a skill.
This prejudice does have real-world effects:
- Men are twice more likely to be homeless or to fail their studies,
- Men are 30 times more likely to land in prison.
THIRTY times! But somehow, women succeed to capture all the work we do for equality.
The fact you're unconscious about male difficulties shows how much work there's left to do about male equality. The progress we've made for women about equality of chances and freedom of pursuing good jobs, we now need to make it for men too. Since you're talking about politics, the fact that the only way to "vote for men equality" is to vote for Trump is a horrible abomination: I want equality, I'm keen to vote for a woman, but if that means that she'll do even more to accentuate the "privileged path" for women and accentuate messages breeding hate between women and men, then you're asking a voter to make... a dangerous choice.
[1] Qualities that are generally attributed to women: "Women are better at multitasking" – where scientific studies are much more gray-area than that; "Women are better at communication" – where in fact it's males who are handicapped about communication and who deserve some equality budget for "education to communication" and "education to feelings"; "Women are better at tastes and decoration" which harms the participation of many interested men in decoration topics; "Women are more mature, earlier" when in fact this maturity is judged on a biased set of responsabilities; "Women are better at raising children" which creates unprecedented disadvantages for men who want the custody of their child, and finally, "Women are better at school" when in fact it's teacher bias which gives them better marks ( http://www.bbc.com/news/education-32302022 ) – As you can see I'm very well documented on every quality which is theoretically attributed to women and where, in fact, it's just that many papers are unfairly condescending towards men.
---
To put this very dispassionately, filtering more aggressively reduces both total count and false positives (if the filter shares any correlation with success). The population subjected to the stricter filter will have a higher percentage of people who are deserving of promotion.
This would be true even if we limited our entire workforce to ivy league white men and then applied an additional filter to a random subset of them. If the filter correlates, the subset will outperform. I don't mean to say this is the only thing impacting who works where and how successful they are, but it is certainly present.
You're responding to an argument that I didn't make. The global population statements about which gender is "smarter" are your own.
Regarding Trump (I'm pretty sure I didn't bring this up, either), his recent exhibit of repeatedly mentioning that he was being shortchanged on time during the debate while actually having (negligibly) more time to speak (~40min vs ~39min) is a perfect illustration of the “prejudice” you're describing. When used to a privileged position, equality feels like bias.
(Debate time to speak, pick your source: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+clinton+time+to+speak)
Companies can't legally discriminate against men, but they can (and many do) post up at women engineer conferences and give interviews out like candy to people from that conference. They're discriminating based on where they source the resume from. The source just happens to be made up of all females. That's what Grace Hopper is for.
You're correct, I answered to both parents in one comment, and found it useful to put my comment under yours because you had a very common objection, although I forgot to address it.
Concerning the "filter" story, how do you know girls just aren't just less interested in programming? Example that may be the norm: I've tried many times to get my god-daughter interested in computers, but the computer/tablet/phone/electricity/mechanics/woodworks/Mythbusters thingy really doesn't raise any interest or even bare curiosity. She just does it because she loves spending time with me, but remembers nothing.
If there were a genetic or social construct that made that fewer girls identify with programming, then it would kill the argument that "due to filtering, women are better" and reinforce the argument that "Women are promoted, not because they're better, but because companies are required to promote women".
And in fact, studies have demonstrated that fewer girls are interested in programming because of society.
I agree! But why? And when? And is it just girls? The filter I'm talking about extends far beyond and is applied far earlier than the job interview, or the application to college, or which classes someone takes in high school. The paths laid out for all of us have varying degrees of difficulty, and shape how we grow.
Speaking as a white male from California who grew up with a computer in the house, in many ways my own career in tech is the path of least resistance. Sure, I've worked hard and chose to invest myself in these skills and this career, but the impediments to doing so were much, much less significant than the social and structural biases that people with other backgrounds run into at every. single. step.
Simply recognizing that I got to shoot for the hoop from a few feet closer than the rest of the population has given me a great respect for those who made the same shot from farther out. It's not that an individual like myself (like you?) with an advantaged position couldn't overcome the same challenges, we simply have not been tested in the same ways. I don't mean to speak for you as an individual, only that over a large enough group you're going to see a lot more people make it who got to take the easier shot.
I think our fundamental disagreement is that you're saying people like me (perhaps us?) don't actually get that easier shot. And that I simply do not believe, because of my experience in and observation of this industry, and because of the near-endless supply of evidence to the same. [citation needed: plenty in this thread, and every thread like it]
It could be a social construct of genders where male babies are exposed to other things than female babies, it wouldn't matter. The girl (e.g. my god-daughter) who likes chemistry goes into chemistry and is not being "discriminated against because she didn't go into programming". And your argument is in the same family that says there should be 50% women in programming because there's 50% females at birth.
You're also focussed on demonstrating that men get an easier shot. But if women who want to do programming can do it with no more barriers than men, then no-one is being discriminated against. And in fact, today, if a girl takes programming, she'll have a better career than men, because we promote women. There are countless stories that "women are harassed in IT", but they are all anecdotal and match with the global story told to girls since birth: "You're a victim, and you should spend your whole life finding occurrences where you can prove that you're a victim". It's not a tin-hat stuff I've invented, it's what, for example, the brand Always teaches to little girls with the #LikeAGirl video.
To come back to stories about girls being harassed: Is there a scientific experiement that we could do to prove that women really have a harder time than men, when we include sexual harassment of course, but also include when a weak male like me have been victims of some alpha manager, and include stories of men being fired because a woman doesn't like them (And I have live examples such as: Douglas Crockford, the PyCon conference story, the GitHub ceos, the GitHub's white males who've been fired, and two colleagues from my Australian company)?
All in all, I see women promoted all the time, I see women receiving a warm welcome in every team, I see many males being extra carful about including women, I see many downvotes and condemnation when someone posts a sexist remark on HN, I see corporate help to ensure women are untouchable and promoted: Not to paint the real world with rainbows, but I won't just buy into a story of a few women saying "You can't learn programming when you're a girl".
I also receive 20-50 upvotes when I remind people that women need to work too, so the feeling that women are too unfairly advantaged before they're really competent seems to be a common resentment across the community. Just try to think about what we'd do if we wanted peace. We certainly wouldn't try to accentuate victimization so much, and wouldn't try to have different paths for men and women (hard lonely work with no help for men who'll stay programmers, little programming but a lots of socializing and girls-in-web groups for women who'll become managers). And we certainly wouldn't have the following video, which is both dishonest towards men and an incitation to hate for female viewers:
Unity, peace and solidarity is something we build together, unless it's not unity, peace or solidarity that we want. And women certainly aren't currently working for that.
So, why isn't it?
Edit: maybe it's a sign of things getting "better". Women already working are on average better at what they do, and as people become more aware of the problem it's easier for them to become promoted because the filter isn't as strict when compared to X years ago.
At the hiring stage, it is mostly a crapshoot, and they don't really know if you are good or not, so it is easier for biases to get in the way.
It's not that "Wimmin' are takin' our jerbs!", he was just pointing out that promoting women because they have a vagina is just as bad as promoting someone because they have a penis or white skin.
Why not promote how well you do your job?
That statistically can not be the case, right?
There are about 50/50 men women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals.
So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women.
Right?
I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
#2: In a system in which women are discriminated against, it takes extra grit for women to push through, get hired, and do the work anyway. These are women who really want it very badly. The cream of the crop. Therefore it's not surprising to see them perform better than their male peers on average.
#3: In a system in which women have historically been discriminated against, there will be lots of men with jobs they don't deserve. When women begin to enter the workforce in greater numbers, these men will be the first to lose their jobs to rising women.
I could go on. There are plenty of reasons why women might be getting promoted faster. One should not immediately jump to the conclusion that it's solely due to affirmative action quotas with no evidence to back that up. The world is more complex than that.
If favoritism (or some sort of -ism) is/was responsible for all of men's achievements or stations -- isn't the converse true?
Doesn't that mean that if women rise through the ranks faster than men, that there is preferential treatment?
Otherwise, you would pretty much have to say that men and women are different on some fundamental intellectual level. Is that what you are saying?
Or are you just saying that preferential treatment is ok, just if it is your preference that is being treated?
You were suggesting in the top comment that women are being given jobs because they are women (rather than men), and that that is unjust. I don't see the difference between that statement and the idea that women are "taking" (i.e., unjustly acquiring) jobs (which would otherwise have been men's.)
I did not.
However, since you bring it up, women statistically can not move up the ranks faster than men, right?
There are about 50/50 men/women in the country. They are the same in every way but genitals.
So about half of those rising through the ranks should be men and about half women. Right?
I mean this is literally the argument that sexism explains our current workforce distribution, so I presume the argument holds the other way around?
I am suggesting that "we should hire more women" is every bit as sexist as "we should hire more men".
If you want to get rid of all -isms, why not do blind hires based on resume/testing (weighted some way)?
Yes you are. You have completely confused everything I have written, even though I thought it was in plain English.
> Do you think women are being given jobs that should have gone to men in a fair world or not?
I think people should hire blindly using blind job tests and weighted experience/education. That would get rid of all "-isms".
I imagine that people would still find something to bitch about, though.
It appears that you are more opposed to his stance on the issue.
It doesn't mean there aren't problems and discrimination against women but you act like his point is not valid and not even worth acknowledging. You just feel "embarrassed". You should feel that way but not because of the comment but because your attitude.
This, despite the fact that, per the very article we're discussing, 94% of senior devs are men, 92% of IT managers are men, and 93% of the heads of IT are men. This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects.
None of tajen's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever. It's hyperbolic unsubstantiated fear-mongering in an attempt to minimize another group's problems while magnifying his own. He has to resort to such tactics, otherwise women's problems will be treated with greater urgency than men's (as they should be). I was embarrassed to see these comments at the top of HN, and I'm happy that people have since come to their senses and downvoted them to where they belong.
Yep. It's not incompatible. Maybe most women don't want to spend their life in front of a computer. Maybe, as Margeritte Yourcenar used to mention, being a head of IT is a shit life and women are more clever than men in not trying to get so high. Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion.
> This, despite the fact that studies continue to show that simply changing the name on a resume from a man's to a woman's has significant negative effects.
This is a much more serious offense, and straight illegal in any developed economy (I hope). But if I had to hire a woman in my company, I'd be very afraid that hiring a woman leads to an (unwarranted) harassment accusation against the CEO like it so often did (GitHub and so many others, I'm looking at you), so I'd probably weigh whether it's worth sticking with a discrimination lawsuit risk. I'd probaboy still hire the woman, though, for ethics. But I would probably keep her in a separate room from me, just to dodge sexual harassment claims. What a f'cked world we live in. Can't even have a normal behaviour with women.
> None of taken's ridiculous assertions are supported by any evidence whatsoever.
Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is:
- Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact,
- OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf),
- There are laws that require companies to promote women as much as men and to reach quotas of managers.
- ...along with the dozen other comments with factual references and links I've posted today.
My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.
Maybe women want to be at the bottom of the workplace totem poll? Are you seriously going to begin your hypothesizing there? Every single racist from the past said, "I've met plenty of coloreds and they're happy being slaves/segregated/living in ghettos!" It is absolutely ridiculous to begin there while discrimination is still looming large.
> Maybe if you start with an all-male community and overpromote women, then 10 years is still not enough to become head of IT. Those numbers are little proof of discrimination. We need to know the mean-time-to-promotion.
I never claimed these numbers alone are proof of discrimination. The discrimination has been proven in other ways, and these numbers simply highlight how effective it's been.
> Thank you for the insult, which tells a lot about the soundness of your personality. My evidence is:
Readers, note that I attacked his evidence, and his response is to attack my personality.
> - Around me, I see women be promoted, it's a pretty strong fact,
Strong fact? Your anecdotal evidence is worth zero. Around me I see <1% Trump voters. Doesn't change the fact that he has 43% of the nation's vote.
> - OP's study says women are promoted faster than men, so it corroborates my supposedly "magnified own problems" (If men aren't allowed to have problems, wtf),
Numerous people in this thread (and elsewhere, e.g. pg) have produced competing hypotheses for why women might be getting promoted faster. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore their reasoning, I suppose I can't stop you. It makes you look sexist, though, and it's why I and many others were embarrassed to see your comment.
> My position is very well documented because of people like you, and you're welcome if you want to discuss facts. On the other hand, if a rational reasoning triggers so much of your emotions, then it means you're associating my position with macho personalities like Trump, fascists or racists, and that means you're making a generalization about me. Did you know that generalizations trump the acurate perception? I'm much more in favour of women's rights than you think – I just can't stand the men-disparaging that we repeat over and over.
Rational reasoning? I'm not the one who needs to resort to ridiculous hyperboles to make my point. You speak of a generation of men being sacrificed, but there's no solid evidence to show that we're doing worse than women (quite the opposite). You speak of sexism being dead, but evidence shows women are still discriminated against in the workplace. You've completely failed to defend either of the claims I attacked.
Does this include your own? Because based on the rest of your comment, I'm not so sure.
A separate thread has a much more plausible explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12686822
What? The article in the title just says "Women are promoted in 9 years against 12 for men", and you qualify examples as anecdotal?
Yes clearly overall women have much lower chances to rise to the top. You are complaining that a tiny section of the pipeline from birth to CEO potentially favours women while obviously the vast majority of parts of the pipeline favour men. Cumulatively they do so heavily.
What you experienced is a tiny fraction of what women experienced to get to the point where you felt blocked.
> However, the survey also reveals a colossal gap between the numbers of men and women working in top IT roles. Of the senior developers who responded to the survey, only 6% were women; with IT managers the figure was 8%, and of those heading up IT only 7% were female.
These statistics are weird together. How can this be?
Speculation: There is a bias against average/underperforming women relative to men entering and staying in tech. This means that the women who do stay in are from the upper end of the distribution. It's as if you took a normal distribution (as skill often is distributed) and truncated some segment of the lower half. This would explain why there are much fewer women reaching managerial positions but why the ones that do reach it do so very quickly.
Is there any data on how qualified and performant female engineers are relative to male engineers who occupy the same position? A result that would support this hypothesis would be something like women in the same position as men in tech have beefier academic credentials or more awards.
I know plenty of male engineers who, to put it nicely, are underperformers. All of the female engineers I know, and there are much fewer of them, are what I would call exceptional engineers. Because I know so many more male software engineers, I still know more exceptional male engineers than female. However anecdotes don't matter for scientific inference which is why I asked if anyone had such data.
The gender gap in tech starts with children, is seen in STEM enrollment rates and continues in the job market where a multitude of diversity initiatives exist to promote underrepresented groups in tech.
So, an alternative speculation for the abnormally high promotion rate for women is there are fewer women interested in IT in the first place and companies are scrambling to compete for women because it makes them look better (via diversity initiatives).
There is a great documentary examining actual science on the subject and interviewing both scientific researchers and social scientists on opposite sides of the issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
Should we attempt to combat the gender gap in the nursing industry with the same vigor that we are focused on tech? How about the gender gap we see with garbage workers or psychology?
edit: clarity.
Wouldn't you also blame discrimination had this study revealed women were promoted at half the rate of men?
> Another explanation is there are fewer women interested in IT in the first place and companies are scrambling to compete for women because it makes them look better.
Those aren't even mutually exclusive explanations. It seems likely that both are true as the people that go into it despite the lack of interest from the rest of their cadre will be better candidates vs. borderline candidates.
I believe it is misguided to shoehorn discrimination as the goto explanation for every statistical difference between groups of people. In this scenario the data literally implies the opposite conclusion yet danharaj was able to contrive an explanation that leaves women as the victim despite lliterally being promoted twice as fast. You can bet danharaj would still be arguing the same conclusion if the data had born out the opposite results.
I like to step back and just say that it's not something that has to be fixed if a cadre of people appear to "collectively decide" based on individual decisions. It sucks that if you are in the cadre and have to fight the perception that you should(n't) be doing something. But I think (as I suspect you do as well) that saying that your individual decision should be different simply because you share an identifying trait with others is broken.
Ideas that men or women are some collective that needs to be pushed one way or another are difficult. You can generalize based on the apparent preferences of the group, but then judging an individual based on those preferences is where it starts to get troublesome.
It was consistently implied that a young male would only want to teach young children for puerile reasons.
Even when he was given the benefit of the doubt, it'd only be to say "oh, so you'll take your education degree and enter administration?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
There is growing scientific evidence (discussed in the video) that men and women have preferential differences that are exhibited as early as we are capable of measuring them. (Toys chosen days after birth)
The differences in choice of profession are seen globally across all cultures and are in fact stronger in places like Scandinavia which are arguably world leaders in gender equality and provide women with the most choice.
When you see something that all cultures have in common it hints that it is not a cultural phenomena and that there is something biological going on.
I am speaking by and large here and paraphrasing the evidence laid out by researchers in the video. There are plenty of exceptional outliers which buck the trend and any individual's choice in profession doesn't imply that the group as a whole has a poor aptitude or are incapable of it. It simply states that they prefer to do something else.
It's sad because it reinforces the mistake where women are allowed to be incompetent, whereas we should keep them in a programmer job until they gain skills, like young men do, instead of promoting them too quickly. As opposed to the article, I witnessed a mean-time-to-promotion to the job of Team Lead of 3 years for women instead of 7 years for males – but that could be because the article considers "management" as a higher job than Team Lead.
Field is male dominated.
Women enter and the ones that enter raise faster than men. One can speculate whether there is a promotion bias or the ones that enter have an above average pioneering spirit but...
...it takes time and experience to raise to the top. And not that many women have 15+ years relevant tech experience.
The only mystery is why journalist not see that. In any case it is good to see some hard data at least on the engineering and first management level dispelling the myth that women are discriminated against.
Women in tech are more closely scrutinized out of the sheer virtual of being a novel demographic within a company.
Upon close scrutiny it is discovered that these women are actually amazing practitioners, because all the women who were on the wrong side of the bell curve dropped out under their close scrutiny experienced in high school or university.
Thus women are promoted faster.
It's survivor bias.
Most people have a 'spotlight effect' in that they believe they are noticed more than they really are, but for a woman in tech it might actually be true.
[0] http://www.menteach.org/resources/data_about_men_teachers
Turns out, there's a real ceiling on where I can go. Not because I lack talent. I am very good with people. My last manager believed I would be a VP at the company someday. I maxed out at that fake "architect" role made for people that require more money but can't be promoted to management. This was a large F-50 type organization.
We found that the HR departments at very large companies definitely improve diversity up and down the ranks. But there is a blockade that eventually presents itself.
This blockade can probably be summed up mathematically: The first females to go up stream will always be white. As the number of females up the ranks increases, the less obligation white males feel to grant other minorities the same privilege. Eventually, it works out to where there will be a multitude of white women paving the way at VP level, and until they die off or retire, the blockade prevents advancement for anyone else.
I call it the "wall of white women" with a sub-wall of "white male architects" waiting for their chance. If the minority applicant is not blindingly obviously superior to the wall of white males just beneath the wall of white women, there's no chance.
Unfortunate. I find it kind of hilarious and enjoy watching it form at every single major corporation.
So I've been bouncing around startups,and even started contracting under my own c-corp to make connections and money. The respect difference has been unreal. I've had to toughen up significantly, you have to really learn to read bs and move on without emotion.
That's another option you can take, I'm personally enjoying it right now.
To your point, I left my large F-50 employer this summer and started at a smaller company. I am strongly considering contracting. Your response is encouraging.
Ironically nobody wanted to have more women on construction sites, in the military service or as a surgeon...
Article: "£52,000 ($74,000)"
Current day: "£52,000 ($63,020)"
Despite?
Its use here means something like "contrary to the expectation that women face barriers in IT (as evidenced by lower numbers of women in the top positions in IT and in general), they rise through the ranks faster than men."
Hasn't this been debunked already? AFAIK the percentage of women in IT is about the same as the percentage of women graduating from CS.
Not saying that those statistics can be heavily biased due to imbalanced classes - but other commenters already mentioned that multiple times.
Perhaps more importantly the article does not mention confirmation bias, which is surely at play here. (e.g. "average" women are being discouraged from CS degrees before they even start, so only superstars stick it through, so of course they move faster through the ranks after graduation.)
Unless you are awesome, it just isn't worth it to put up with the crap that they have to.
A similar example: in the UK about 20% of girls and 40% of boys study physics at A-level (the final school exam before university). Every year everybody seems surprised that the girls outperform the boys.
However, it is likely that the students who study physics are mostly the students with the greatest aptitude for the subject. If you split the students into any two arbitrary groups then the top fifth from one group are going to outperform the top two fifths from the other. This is unremarkable. Yet when the groups are boys and girls, people are surprised.
Anyway, I would be surprised if something similar isn't happening in CS. With so few women studying the subject, it's likely that those who do are fairly dedicated.
Am I the only person who dated a senior analyst and is now married to an IT Director?
Sort of breaks with the victim narrative, but provides a more plausible story.
Some even go for junior manager (a lot lower pay) even thought they have the degree and skills to be mid developers without any problems.
I guess it's all pretty anecdotal, though.