Comment by BDGC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BDGC | Hacker News Reader

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I appreciate your comment, and I second your point about the education and social structure being different for girls/women. In my experience, it can be difficult for folks to understand just how different it can be - whether by gender, race, or lower socioeconomic status - which is completely fair. There are always exceptions to generalizations, which makes making progress in these arguments difficult.

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.

Not to detract from your general point, but there are serious doubts over the validity of the Implicit Association Test:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12288/abstra... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288582440_Toward_a_...

Seriously, why do you need to post this? This is the sort of thing that makes it hard to be a woman in tech. Everyone is constantly nitpicking everything you say.

Especially in tech, nitpicking should not be allowed. Approximate is good enough for everyone, it's not like a battery is suddenly gonna catch fire.

You're kidding, right? Wanting to have accurate information is sexist now?

   https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-st...

How is that a serious contribution to the discussion? The authors Hall, Phillips and Williams don't for a second reflect on their own confirmation bias.

   feminist conspiracy

The authors Hall, Phillips and Williams are self-described feminists.

Shocking that the only people actually researching this are feminists!

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.

What you do is called "whataboutism" [1] as the scientific value (or otherwise) of evolutionary psychology doesn't affect the lack of methodological self-awareness of Hall, Phillips and Williams, in particular the complete absence of reflection on their own confirmation bias.

    the only people actually researching this

They are not the only people researching this, but in the current political climate, any alternative research is unlikely to get funded.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I just mentioned entire fields that are funded doing research that suggests the alternative. What you're doing is selectively ignoring the implications of cross-disciplinary research.

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