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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

This is an essay that knocks down two extrinsic causes for gender disparity in STEM and then suggests, using Finland as an example, that the cause of disparity is probably intrinsic.

It may be the case that some intrinsic difference between men an women keeps the field of chemical engineering at 40-60 women/men, or mathematics at 35-65.

But those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software development or, for that matter, undergraduate computer science. No cognitive ability or innate affinity explains the degree of disparity in computer science as practiced in industry. If it did, you'd see it in related STEM fields.

The term for an argument gerrymandered around the data to the degree "CS participation disparity is innate" is is special pleading.

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Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS.

What those two have in common are shitty working conditions. Yes, coding is done sitting in climate controlled offices. But it is mostly shit: shit doc, shit managers, shit clients, shit hours, shit tools. Only dumbfucks who don't mind shit conditions for more money would do it.

I'm sure if you checked the gender balance in government coding jobs and in gamedev you'd discover how it is more about working conditions than sexism.

> Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS.

Well, it's more physically demanding, isn't it?

But your point is that there are areas where society screws men over, and that nobody cares, right?

So... Why do you raise that point when the topic is how society screws women over?

Wouldn't it be better to improve society? In both places?

> Well, it's more physically demanding, isn't it?

Not anymore, a lot of it is automated now so if you can drive and operate some buttons (and a broom if need be) you should be able to get a job in that area.

I suspect arkh's point is something like the following (as made in an article I can't locate at the moment, from about 20 years ago):

1) There are multiple fields available for new entrants to the labor force to pick from.

2) Some of these have better working conditions than others.

3) Women tend to be a bit more mature than men at the age at which one picks a career and are more likely to consider working conditions when doing so.

This has nothing to do with whether people are caring that someone is screwing someone else or not per se. What it does mean is that improving working conditions in some fields would likely draw more women in, if the above theory is correct. I have no opinion on the theory itself.

We like to tell ourselves how awesome our jobs are: generally good salaries, decent office conditions, flexible work hours, no dress code, etc.

There's a big "but": SW dev requires a certain mentality to be able to stick at it for a long time, without becoming bored out of your mind or going crazy about all the inefficiencies, dysfunction and utter meaninglessness of it all.

Assuming you’re right about programming being so horrible, how is programming any worse than other clerical jobs?

More responsibility, i.e. it's easier to monumentally screw up and get rightfully blamed for it.

In 4 words: maintenance programming and debugging.

Most clerical jobs don't have a lot of surprises hidden in the middle of some undocumented feature. And things are not improving with the multiplication of dependence on SaaS and build and deploy mechanism.

While I can agree with maintenance, I usually find debugging the most exciting part of software development. Problem solving is the essence of this job and I don't really understand what keeps people that hate it in this field.

One difference is that most other clerical jobs don't depend as much on long-term focus and flow, and so allow much more work socialization and frequent casual chatter. That difference matters heavily to those for whom such socialization is important. It neutralizes the pain of confined spaces and boredom for such socially inclined people.

> No cognitive ability or innate affinity explains the degree of disparity in computer science as practiced in industry. If it did, you'd see it in related STEM fields.

We do see it in related fields. Women comprise at least 50% of medicine, but they are not evenly distributed like men. Men are disproportionately surgeons, and women are disproportionately gynecologists and pediatricians. Similar distributions occur in actual STEM fields.

As I said in my other post, things-vs-people explains all of this data, but the sexism/oppression hypothesis does not. It's not a matter of cognitive ability, but it is a matter of affinity.

Ok, I see your point now.

And I think you are right. CS is not that special imho, and the gender imbalance should be more similar to e.g. maths.

> The term for an argument gerrymandered around the data to the degree "CS participation disparity is innate" is is special pleading.

I'm curious, though... Do you have any kind of research that would back your point up? Anything that would refute this "special pleading"?

I mean... I think you are right, but then again I (and you?) are CS experts and not experts at chemical engineering. Could it be that we underestimate the difficulties in CS, and overestimate these in chemical engineering?

What does “cognitively more demanding“ mean?

Probably means you have to be smarter to do them.

Not sure how from

> those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software development or, for that matter, undergraduate computer science

... you arrive at

> No cognitive ability or innate affinity explains the degree of disparity in computer science as practiced in industry.

Even if software development is "cognitively less demanding" in every sense (though I'm not convinced there is just one universal kind of cognitive ability), it may still be that women do not possess the "innate affinity" for it - namely, they do not like working in it, preferring other fields instead. To my understanding, there is nothing to contradict this explanation, and it makes perfect sense.

> it may still be that women do not possess the "innate affinity" for it - namely, they do not like working in it, preferring other fields instead. To my understanding, there is nothing to contradict this explanation, and it makes perfect sense.

There's no evidence supporting the supposition that there is an innate ability gap. Social explanations are supported by the evidence and that's why people are trying to change the field to be more welcoming.

One of the key things to remember is that this isn't some fixed quantity – any argument for innate characteristics would have to explain why the rates started going down in the 1980s despite the field becoming increasingly popular and lucrative over the same decades and not seeing a similar trend in comparable fields such as math:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

> There's no evidence supporting the supposition that there is an innate ability gap.

First, this is a straw man argument: I never argued for "innate ability gap". I argued for "innate affinity", which I understand as (quoting myself) "they do not like working in it".

Second, I never claimed there was evidence to support the correctness of "innate affinity" argument. I only claimed that it is a possibility, and OP should not have ignored it.

Third, there is no consistent evidence supporting "social explanations", and that's why people resist attempts to "change the field to be more welcoming" at the expense of hard-working, deserving white males.

> any argument for innate characteristics would have to explain why the rates started going down in the 1980s despite the field becoming increasingly popular

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

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