Comment by alexholehouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexholehouse | Hacker News Reader

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As mentioned in the memo, gendered interests are predicted by exposure to prenatal testosterone – higher levels are associated with a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood. Lower levels are associated with a preference for people-oriented activities and occupations. This is why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields tend to be dominated by men.

And why we see fields like law being dominated by women, right?

EDIT: I, and I suspect most other scientists wouldn't disagree that there are [edit - had this as aren't previously, woops!] physiological differences between men and women, but as I read the memo, that was not what was being argued. What was being argued was that those differences were the reason for the gender imbalance in tech (i.e. women are predisposition to be less interested/capable in STEM fields), in other words, the effect size associated with biological sex is larger (and indeed must be significantly larger) than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects.

This is anecdotal. But a testament on how difficult this problem is.

I have two nieces and 1 nephew, all of which I've tried to encourage into programming. I have tried to get my nieces interested in programming with great difficulty but my nephew has taken to it almost instantly and effortlessly.

I suspect I am framing the activity wrong.

This is also anecdotal. I'm a female working as a technical lead. When trying to describe what I do to non-tech-worker female friends that ask, I often find that they get a look of slight confusion and state things such as "wait, that actually sounds like an interesting job!". It's as if their entire experience of computers, maths and tech is boring, so they think working with them must be as well.

I think how girls get introduced into STEM subjects has to change. I also think it would be worthwhile continuing to encourage adult females to give things like programming a go as well, even if they've tried in the past and didn't like it. Most of the barriers to interest seem to be how the subjects are talked about, as opposed to the subjects themselves.

Interesting. Do you have any insights into how the way you talk about it is different?

We do see people-focused fields like psychology dominated by women. Perhaps law is somewhere in the middle.

The memo didn't say biology was "larger than any/all combined societal/'nurture' effects". In the memo there is a section with this title:

> Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech

Note "possible". No one knows the exact combination of causes of the gap, it likely has many factors. The memo is saying there may be non-bias factors too, and that Google is blind to those, so it's pointing those out. That's not the same as saying non-bias factors are larger than everything else.

> We do see people-focused fields like psychology dominated by women. Perhaps law is somewhere in the middle.

Law is a broad area. I'd expect the combination of interests and skills that lead to one becoming, say, a corporate tax lawyer are quite different from those that lead to becoming, say, a public defender, or a patent attorney, or a real estate lawyer.

It would be interesting to see what the gender distribution is for these various areas of law.

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