Hacker News Reader

> I can't help but think she'd have an easier time maximizing her potential in the latter field, where she doesn't have to deal with the awkwardness of being the only woman on her team.

I worked for a while with a law firm that was almost 100% women. I was the only male on the team at the time, but I was okay with that. I don't need to be surrounded by my own gender to be comfortable. I think team cohesion & the quality of the work being done is more important than a specific gender balance.

Whenever people mention mandatory gender balance in business, it makes me wonder if people expect that firm to have fired some of the women just to make room for men. I definitely would not want that.

I'm not really sure I see the point. A relatively small company might have a skewed gender ratio just as a result of random variation. The issue is when a large company like Google, or the industry as a whole, has a skewed gender ratio.

> it makes me wonder if people expect that firm to have fired some of the women just to make room for men. I definitely would not want that.

No-one ever suggests doing that, so why are you bringing it up? It seems an entirely artificial concern.

> A skewed gender ratio that is the product of past discrimination is itself a form of discrimination.

I don't agree. What is your definition of discrimination? My definition is that it is giving different preference to individuals based on some prejudice - that is, believed (regardless whether true or not) average attribute of the group they come from.

But if someone has a different preference, it's not a discrimination, even if the preference is "I don't want to go to a field where there is too few women". In other words, I don't believe "self-discrimination" is a form of discrimination.

> If you want to claim to have leveled the playing field, then you have to actually level it and see if it stays level on its own.

But didn't this already happened in tech? In the 80s U.S., there were more women in tech (computing) than today. Since then, the numbers have decreased.

The "preference" of wanting to fit in isn't unique for women, especially not in your teens. I've read a number of stories about how geeks, maybe primarily in the US, felt ostracized in high school. But even though I was a geek in high school that didn't matter much for what you did. Since playing sports, socializing and other actives were not heavily associated with school. I seem to hear plenty of stories online like "I didn't think exercise was for me, but now I've started biking, weightlifting, climbing etc". Would you say that geeks who don't do certain things in high school in the US were "self-discriminating"?

> Would you say that geeks who don't do certain things in high school in the US were "self-discriminating"?

You can say that, but I don't see how it's harmful, unlike a discrimination against a different person. If someone has a preference based on incorrect world-view (in your example, association with school) and only later corrects this, that's OK. Trying to fix this by ignoring the earlier preference would be to succumb to a hindsight bias. Just because today you think your preferences were wrong in the past doesn't mean that they were wrong at the time.

In other words, preferences cannot be wrong, because there is no objective function to evaluate them against other than how your mind feels about them. The decisions based on those preferences can be wrong, but you won't know until you make them.

Anecdotally, I have read quite a lot of articles where women explained why they don't want to work in IT. Often, I get a feeling that the real reason why is a different one than what they say (they for example mention sexism or communication problems, where I think the real reason is that they just don't enjoy computers that much). But regardless what the truth is, it is their preference and it should be respected.

You seem to assume that preference is one sided. I can understand that you might not think it is a problem. What I can't understand how you think (if that is what you think) that the condition are the same. Even in your scenario men don't have to overcome "self-discrimination" to become interested in computers, women do. And they have to do so at a time in their lives where most people, maybe geeks especially, are insecure about themselves. And even if we assume that it is only women, and not men, who suffered from this "self-discrimination" we don't really do a good job of letting them correct it later. Instead people insist on focusing on "hacker culture", "having coded since you were young" and "being the right kind of computer geek" long after finishing high school.

I am sorry, I don't understand your point. You're using the word "self-discriminate" as it would be a thing - even though my whole point was that it isn't a thing.

I mean high school jocks (men) also "self-discriminate" against using computers. I don't see where I am one-sided. Everybody makes some choices, sometimes they are misinformed, and sometimes they change the choice later, and sometimes they regret.

Also you shouldn't forget that many men (lot more than women) tend to risk and make some really bad choices in their youth (like driving motorcycles, participating in crime..).

> Instead people insist on focusing on "hacker culture", "having coded since you were young" and "being the right kind of computer geek" long after finishing high school.

I don't think they are, particularly. I think if you feel that way, you just need to go out more. In any field, many people who are really good at it started at the early age.

Although you could perhaps claim that this feeling of wrong choices in youth affects women more, because they tend to self-doubt more. But, it's a feeling, it won't return you the time. Society can try to make people avoid bad choices, but only so much.

I agree with you. My journey as a woman in tech involved challenging certain belief systems within myself and was a critical though subtle part of learning to code.

However my understanding is that these policies are not put in place to correct self discrimination as you call it so much as external biases.

The question to ask is - do these policies counter balance existing prejudices and biases in tech? As a woman in tech, I say they do. You may disagree but I think this discussion requires a lot of input and studies that analyze this topic.

The article in question here - though the title appears to imply differently - gives an anecdotal example of unconscious discrimination against a woman during the hiring process that changed the authors perspective on things.

I don't disagree with what you said, I don't see how you in any way disagree with what I said in the above comment.

Discrimination is bad. But just respecting other person's preferences, even if you perceive them as biased, is not.

I am a little concerned with the 'may have been "unfair" to certain individuals' bit of your post. It takes a lot of effort to not react to such incidents- either non-violently or in the worst case violently.

This pent up frustration at being part of a pseudo meritocracy is reflected in unfortunate places - - "Oh why do you care about this appraisal <girl's name>, you can marry and settle rich" (unfortunately this actually happened to someone I know).

My point being - the people that might be victims of your 'may have been "unfair"' approach, end up as not-nice people who are proponents of the sexism that we are trying to end here.

Really well said. This matches my experience as a woman in tech. There is nothing inherently about tech that makes it unenjoyable to woman. It's just an image problem and discomfort being part of a minority. Nothing biological about it. I feel like so many more woman would love this field if they better understood what it is and why it's worth it.

One of the latest slate star codex article (http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... ) mentions how there is still gender disparity in medical specialties. Do you have any statistics about this in law?

Maybe to have more women in tech you'd have to devise tech specialties which are more about humans and less about negotiating with machines.

Not really. I can tell you as a woman in tech, one of the things I love most about my job is interacting with machines. Machines are simple, people are complex. Plenty of women spend their whole day on a computer at work with only minimal more interaction with people, if any, than a programmer. It's not for everyone but there is no need to adjust the job at all for women.

If people want more than 20% women in tech the job may have to be ajusted.

> When I think of what I'd want my daughter to do, I can't help but think she'd have an easier time maximizing her potential in the latter field, where she doesn't have to deal with the awkwardness of being the only woman on her team, or working only for men team leaders.

Women lawyers only make up 18% of the law partners.

http://www.ibtimes.com/gender-gap-female-lawyers-progress-sl...

And women make 44% less than the men.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/business/dealbook/female-...

> The legal profession fixed the problem of historic discrimination in the field by not being gender blind.

By making it gender blind, only 18% of the women made partner.