Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> It's such a superficial appraisal of the reality

The reality is exactly as described, namely:

As the feminist movement gradually took hold, women conquered one of these fields after another. 51% of law students are now female. So are 49.8% of medical students, 45% of math majors, 60% of linguistics majors, 60% of journalism majors, 75% of psychology majors, and 60% of biology postdocs. Yet for some reason, engineering remains only about 20% female.

These figures are accurate, as far as I can see. The only objection could be to the word "conquered", which sounds to me like an attempt to mine outrage out of nothing. The discussion is about why there's 51% of female law students (despite huge gap existing not so long before) but only 20% of CS students (despite having 40% 20 years ago). Clearly, there is something going on, and that's the interesting part, not discussing whether 51% of female students is "conquering".

> it's insulting that he then mocks people who think there may be systemic issues

I still had no examples of "mocking", but given the reality as described, there should be explanation why "systemic issues" exist in CS and engineering, but not in law, medicine, math, biology, etc. If the concept does not explain that, it is not fitting the facts, and as such can be dismissed.

So 30% of judges being women is what, the natural state of things? This is the highest heights that women can reach? Or are you just ignoring the state of gender in the law, even as you present it as a success story, just as the original blog did?

Is there some collective blind spot here?

Let me spell it out. The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors. Pretending those don't exist, so that you can mock people who think systemic issues apply elsewhere, as if the very thought of it amuses you, is bizarre.

> So 30% of judges being women is what, the natural state of things?

What you mean by "natural state of things"? In nature, there are no judges at all :) I'm not sure what you understand by "natural" here.

> This is the highest heights that women can reach?

I don't see any reason why any specific figure would be "highest heights that women can reach" (excepting obvious cases of 100% :). Statistics doesn't work that way. Statistics shows what happened now. Why it happened is a different question - i.e. why female law students become female judges less than male law students. I personally have no idea and no opinion on this, I didn't research that question. But I think there's a very high probability there is nothing sacred in "30%" number.

> Or are you just ignoring the state of gender in the law, even as you present it as a success story, just as the original blog did?

I am not ignoring anything. The discussion was about the difference in student numbers. Which needs to be explained. The difference of post-education numbers needs to be explained too, certainly, but to be workable, the hypothesis has to explain both (actually, all) facts. That's the whole point - if we have a mismatch between law and CS students, we need to account for it or invalidate or hypothesis if it does not. It is pointless to switch the discussion to other point if we aren't done with this one. You can't reach parity in CS employment starting with 20% of CS students. Unless of course one wants to cause massive unemployment and discrimination against male graduates, which I believe nobody is considering.

> The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors.

What is "systemic factors"? It sounds like placeholder that could mean anything. How can I check why "systemic factors" influence judges but not pediatricians? Why they influence CS students but not psychology students? Engineers but not mathematicians or veterinarians?

> Pretending those don't exist

I can't pretend those don't exist because I have no idea what "systemic factors" are. A definition would be nice. Maybe I agree with you 100% that they exist - I just don't know you call them "systemic factors".

> so that you can mock people who think systemic issues apply elsewhere,

Since I asked to give examples of "mocking" twice and none followed, I conclude that this claim is false, and respectfully ask to stop mentioning any "mocking" until example would be produced. I didn't "mock" anybody, neither did Scott, as becomes clear from absence of examples despite repeated asking for them.

Let me spell it out. The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors.

Since there are other possible explanations, like men and women having different interests and drives and following different paths in pursuing those interests, there's no tight logical proof dictating that "systemic factors" ipso facto is definitely the cause of the outcome we are evaluating because there are no other possible causes.

There are other possible causes, so given this reality of multiple possible causes, what evidence would suffice to convince you that "systemic factors," aren't the primary cause?

If we want to stick with the premise that "systemic factors" are a problem, what are they specifically? How are the remedied specifically?

If it turns out after following these prescriptions there is still a divergence in the sex ratio, then what? Should we basically just force some number of women to work as judges so that the sex ratio in the field is equal?

There are far more occupations than judge that have a divergent sex ratio, should we work tirelessly to equalize sex ratios for all occupations where this is the case?

If your understanding of "systemic factors" basically means the system of sexual evolutionary history extending over millions of years, then we can agree.

Thinking that the natural state of affairs is 50% of both genders [1] in everything is exactly the assumption that Scott shows to be unsupported by data. And just to be sure: unsupported does not mean 'false'. The 'opposite' assumption is not supported either.

If there was no sexism, no racism, no *ism, no history and no cultural predisposition towards anything whatsoever, it could still be that only 30% of all leaders would be women, simply because women would be found to be less biologically predisposed to wanting to be the leader and leadership would go to the best suited person that wants to do the job.

Some women argue that in that situation 70% of all leaders would be women, because everyone would recognize them as better leaders and would ask them to lead. I recognize and acknowledge that as a fully valid option. That could also be. The point is that we simply do not know.

[1] 'all identities in ratio of their self-identification'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com