Comment by l_t | Hacker News Reader

Comment by l_t | Hacker News Reader

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Can't agree on number 2, because it's a false dichotomy. The gender imbalance cannot be simplified to being because of any one specific cause (like a difference in personal interests). There is a whole cluster of causes, including:

1. Malicious actions by men. This undoubtedly happens, let's not pretend otherwise. However, it might not be very common.

2. Non-malicious but annoying behavior from men directed towards women. This could include unwanted flirtation, accidental condescension, inappropriate jokes, etc.

3. A male-oriented culture. Even if the guys don't act in an annoying way, being in a significant minority is usually less appealing than being in a situation where you have a more even gender split.

4. Boys and girls are nurtured in different ways, which can drive them towards having different interests as adults.

5. Biological differences between men and women. Personally, I think this is one of the least important factors, and it's also the only one that we can't change.

Whether or not (5) is an issue, (1-4) can and should be addressed, so that women who are naturally inclined to CS are not nudged away from the industry by their life experiences.

This is a great point, and it highlights something about these types of conversations that is so strange to me. So many parts of the gender/workplace conversation are quite sophisticated. But when it comes to explaining why certain industries ended up with gender imbalances, people are content to assume a monocausal theory of career "preference" on the part of women. As if that "preference" isn't shaped by problematic environmental pressures.

This is so wrong and so frequently asserted that I think a better approach to any gender/workplace convo would be to start here, recognizing the falsity of the monocausal career preference hypothesis and work backward from that toward the rest of the conversation.

Go through this list[0], a widely divergent sex ratio for a given job is the rule, rather than the exception.

Which of these divergent sex ratios are caused by "problematic environmental pressures," and which aren't?

[0]https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...

Super interesting. I'd love to see people in this thread comment on this. It is a little odd how "diversity in tech" is so over represented in the public debate when there are clearly many other jobs that are even more heavily skewed and in both directions, i.e., plenty of jobs with >80% men AND plenty of jobs with >80% women.

I don't think "diversity in tech" is actually overrepresented in the public, although the current affair has temporarily made it more prominent. But if you are in tech, you are more likely to hear about debates that involve tech. Diversity in tech, JavaScript fatigue, the Rust Evangelism Strike Force, whatever. Just because it's popular on HN doesn't mean it's popular everywhere.

I was about to write a reply saying whilst that might be true I'd never heard of big well funded initiatives to get women into firefighting, but then I decided to double check on Google and found this:

http://nypost.com/2015/05/05/fdnys-unfit-the-perils-of-pushi...

If you’re ever trapped in a burning building, just pray the firefighter climbing up to rescue you isn’t Rebecca Wax. Or someone like her, who’s been given an EZ-Pass through firefighting training for the sake of gender equity.

This week Wax, who repeatedly flunked the rigorous physical test required by the New York City Fire Department, will graduate anyway, The Post reported.

All over the nation, fire departments are easing physical standards, in response to litigation to increase the number of women firefighters.

Disturbing.

I'm having trouble following the logic here. There are different gender ratios in various career fields, therefore (!?) attribute all imbalances in all cases exclusively to womens preferences and ignore any other casual inputs.

It would make more sense to say that different careers are affected by different dynamics that need to be analyzed on their own terms, with the environmental constraints that affect "preferences" being different in each case.

1. this happens but I agree not very common

2. totally true and I'll go on the limb to say that part of it probably because of men biological differences which force men to be eager to reproduce at all times

3. yes, but you already addressed malicious and non-malicious annoyances so this has to be "annoyances" where men treat women as other men. If men treating women as other men is a problem then this is proof that we are not the same and need different approach. (I am open to be completely wrong about it, please educate me if you think this is wrong or I misunderstood something)

4. Agree

5. This could be related to #2 and #3

This. Attempting to reduce such a complex issue into a single root cause ("oh women simply aren't interested in this field") is deeply misguided, not to mention intellectually lazy.

0. Unconscious bias.

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