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Comment by wsy | Hacker News Reader

Society still has an immense effect on what children and teenagers prefer to do, via instilling role models. There is an amazing small experiment with primary school children. First, no girl in the class even has the idea she could become a pilot, because this is seen as a boy's/men's profession. Then a female pilots and a female car mechanic visit the kids, and explain what they are doing. Afterwards, half of the girls want to become pilot. Excerpts from this feature are available here (only in German): https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/no-more-boys-and-girls/beru...

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Ok, for how long did this wish remain? Of course society has an effect on people, but you really have to ask yourself, if it is known that even newborns show these tendecies, can’t you at least entertain the idea that women actually on average prefer medicine to programming? At some point, with enough scholarships, free code schools for women, female founder conferences etc, you need to just accept that there is a pretty significant difference between what men and women like, on average, it will just become ridiculous otherwise.

For example, especially young men are much much more risk loving than women. They are also much more aggressive and competitive. This is true for a lot of social animals, but definitely for humans. You can imagine that there used to be strong evolutionary advantages from this. These differences may have arisen in a very different world, but they are still here today, in men and women born in 2019. Testosterone is real. Why insist on denying and fighting these biological realities? Better to accept them, let people make their choices and make the best of the situation?

No matter how many awareness campaings and female coding scholarships you launch, women will still prefer to work with people rather than computers if they can help it. And that’s not a bad thing. The issue if anything is that some people centric jobs are underpaid. Nurses and kindergarten teachers do some of the most valuable work in society.

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies?

I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls.

Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.

I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!

Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions?

Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, not with grown-ups

I’m not saying hiring managers should favour men for developer jobs. I’m saying many more men are into computers, so it’s natural that people hire more male developers.

You are aware that men are much more likely to be autistic, right? Don’t you feel that it’s at least conceivable that men are also more likely to be interested in spending their day writing instructions to computers?

Yes, I think it is conceivable. But at the same time, I have a hard time explaining a 10%/90% distribution just with biological differences. It seems to me that the biological differences are too small to explain such a huge skew. In particular, because the gender distribution for programmers was very different in the 1940s/1950s. At the same time, the cultural biases seem so obvious to me, that I think acknowledging them too would be a better basis for further discussion.

Why do you find such a skew unbelievable? For example, close to 95% of colorblind people are men. 80%+ of people with autism and like 99.9% of bald people.

But it’s not all bad, men have 20 times more testosterone, which makes them stronger and faster. So clearly there are lots of biological differences with a 90/10 distribution.

We are talking about software developers. In the 1950s, most programmers were female. It doesn't seem to be a profession where male biological characteristics are essential to be successful. All the examples you mentioned are non-essential for being a good software developer.

We were talking about the existence of gender based 90/10 skews.

As to femle programmers in the 1950’s, do you really think that is comparable?

Yes, in the context of a program to educate women specifically about how to code.

Comparable to what? I mentioned programming in the 1950s because all traits labeled in this discussion as "boys/males biologically have more of it than girls/women" have been as important for programming in the 1950s as they are now, it seems to me

So you think the women that worked as “computers” in the fifties entered the field because they had a passion for electronic machines?

These women were much more into 'things' than 'people'.

It would be your turn now to explain which biological characteristics of men cause a 90/10 distribution in coders today, and do not apply to coding in the 1950s.

Not the person you were talking to, but to me this just feels like a MASSIVE straw man. If you can show that some company prefers men and actually discriminates against women, I think most people would agree with taking action against this. Unfortunately, you are very far from being able to show such a thing AFAICS. Instead it seems you are working backwards and inferring that there must be some discrimination because the outcomes are so skewed.

For large parts of my life I've seen massive and explicit discrimination against men. In junior high/high school various programs intended to increase interest in tech enforced a quota on 50% girls. Of course, this quota was never written down in public anywhere, I just accidentally overheard the organizers talking about this. Then at university I had male friends who wanted to help out on a similar program, and apparently their applications were "lost". Then the next year the organizers added text in small print somewhere that they were going to enforce a quota on the genders. Similarly, I've heard professors comment on hiring decisions with saying that if they don't hire a woman, then they've basically failed.

Again, at work I very often hear similar things when people talk about hiring in both private and even more in public sector, "Wouldn't it be very nice if we hired a woman", "You know it will look very good if had a few more women on the team", bla bla bla.

I can't say I've ever heard anything remotely similar to this which is negative to women. Maybe I'm wrong or biased here, idk. Maybe this discrimination occurs in different places/positions in the organizations to where I am at. I'm trying to keep an open mind about this, but nothing really comes to mind.

I think there are two things which concerns me. Firstly, there is the difference between how explicit and clear the discrimination against men are when you are "backstage". From this side it is completely clear and there is no real attempt to hide it. But from the side of the person applying for the job/position/program, it really isn't very visible at all in most cases. If you are lucky there is some fine print somewhere. From my experience, like I write above, the discrimination against men/whatever is extremely frequent and pervasive in today's society, but of course, I just have my own observations and maybe it's different in other companies, etc.

Secondly, I feel the proponents of discrimination against men never point to anything remotely specific. It's always just "oh, there isn't enough women in tech", there is some "glass ceiling" stopping women, there are "hidden structures acting against women", etc. And at some point this starts to get ridiculous, like I've pointed out above, for more or less my whole life I've seen massive and completely open discrimination against men, and now I'm supposed to believe in some "invisible structure" which is acting against women all over the place?

Let me just finish by saying that I don't really claim to know why the world works the way it does, or why things are the way they are. And I don't think one should pay too much attention to all of these biology based explanations for why there are fewer women than men in tech. To me they are more just like "this could be one possible explanation for the phenomena as well". The main take away from them should, in my opinion at least, be that we don't understand this area very well. Unfortunately, I think people who propose biology based explanations often pushes these theories like we know they are true and that this is the explanation. I have not looked at the studies they refer to in any detail, but I have a hard time believing this is the case.

It seems that we mainly disagree about what constitutes discrimination. In my opinion, it is about opportunities. When 90% of the developer jobs are performed by men, it is really hard for me to see how men as a group can be disadvantaged.

It might be that the 91st man will not get a job because it is given to the 10th woman. But as 90 out of 100 jobs are given to men, it seems obvious to me that the group of men has all the opportunities they can wish for.

Note that every explicit action taken to even out a disadvantage will hit individuals in the group which is not disadvantaged. For example, if a prestigious university hands out scholarships to poor students, fewer students from rich families will be accepted as a result. This is not disadvantaging the rich applicants, it is reducing their advantage a little.

So, OK, taking a step back and thinking about this. So my impression from the public debate and so on in the western world is that discrimination is seen as unacceptable and really not at all OK. From the impression I get it is probably something like a less severe human rights violation or something like that. Of course, not comparable to truly horrible things, but still it has no real place in any civilized society. So this the background I'm coming from, I'm not sure if I've misunderstood something, I'm not sure.

So based on this, society then wants to discriminate men as an extraordinary measure, because women has been discriminated in the past and there is a feeling this needs to be done in order to give women a fair chance etc etc etc. And so far I'm following the story and it seems at least understandable.

But now I'm starting to see a situation where it is very unclear to me what "advantage" men have over women. In particular, one thing I tried to raise with my previous post, even if I did not spell this out explicitly, was the question of proportionality. And again, maybe I'm missing something, but to me the discrimination against men seem very much out of proportion to any problems a modern day girl/woman have. (To be clear, say someone in their early/mid 20s.) In particular, given the amount of discrimination we are talking about I would expect something a lot more solid and rigorous than the explanations I'm seeing (e.g. men as a group being more advantaged, whatever this means).

In particular, given the background I give in the first paragraph, I'm honestly a bit shocked to see discrimination being proposed more as some kind of policy tool used to get society to where some people want it to go. Like let's raise the taxes on the rich and discriminate men a bit more. Again, I guess I have misunderstood something, because this conclusion certainly seems absurd, at best.

tl;dr either discrimination is really not OK, but then there needs to be a very good reason why we can discriminate men. Or, discrimination is not a big deal, but then why is this even a question up for discussion?

WSY:

“It seems that we mainly disagree about what constitutes discrimination. In my opinion, it is about opportunities. When 90% of the developer jobs are performed by men, it is really hard for me to see how men as a group can be disadvantaged.”

If e.g. 95% of the qualified people are men, but only 90% of the accepted applicants (just making up numbers here) then clearly there is discrimination against men. Outcome by itself says nothing about discrimination.

I agree that your hypothetical is possible. However, in a field where men occupy 90% of all positions, I still find it hard to imagine that they discriminate against their own group, i.e. treat their fellow males "in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discrimi...)

I wasn’t the one claiming discrimination against men, and I don’t think it comes much from other employees. I will say that at every place I’ve worked men have been much more welcoming and helpful towards women than men, but as an okd-fashioned conservative I think that’s as it should be.

It’s undeniable that formal discrimination against men is common though, with lots of “women can code” programs and similar. Only last week PGs wife launched some initiative to pay women to go to some code camp, that jind of thing is very common. If you don’t think that is discrimination imagine it was exclusively for men or white people.

If there was a program exclusively for men to support male primary school teachers, it would be a really great initiative.

Male software developers are already well off, that's why a program "men can code" already sounds a bit ridiculous. But if any rich guy or girl thinks that this is a great idea, I wouldn't mind. Opening paths that were closed before is always good, regardless if for women or men.

I tried to explain it before, but would like to repeat here again. By opening paths for people who couldn't go there before, you will make life for the ones already traveling on that path less nice. This is not discrimination.

So without these initiatives it would not be possible for women to learn to program? What exactly is stopping them?

Of course it is discrimination to have programs that ezclude one gender. You might think it is justified but there's no doubt that it is discrimination.

Also, since medicine is so much more prestiguous than programming, and probably at least as well paid, why do you even want women to go into programming? Why not let ambitious women study medicine, law and whatever else they do, and be rich and happy?

Because any male dominated space is seen as a threat and must be eliminated, even if men initially gravitated into that space partly due to social rejection outside of it.

It's sad how far down you have to go to find the truth in these comments, even if it's only for a moment while the drones downvote it out of visibility.

All these kinds of studies just expect me to believe that the result is a good thing. Girls want to become pilots? Why is that good? Do we have a shortage of pilots? Would having a female pilot improve your flying experience?

How about making more women want to do manual labour? There is a huge shortage of women in those industries.

It is an empirical experiment, it only expects you to acknowledge that girls will become interested in male-dominated professions when getting in contact with the right role models. That is a fact, good/bad does not apply.

Now, indeed it is an additional question if we should foster such career choices for girls. My personal opinion is: the people most talented for it should become pilots. By further opening this career for girls, the talent pool is increased. Consequently, the pilots who make it will be more talented on average.

Some boys who could have become pilots in the past will now not be able to, because now their talent isn't sufficient anymore. Why should they be protected from the competition?

And to get back to the original topic, we indeed do have a shortage of software developers, so having more female developers would also benefit our economy.

You see, this is the problem when logic is expounded using clever syllogisms.

First of all, If an empirical experiment expects me to only acknowledge something, then it will raise my suspicions higher for nefarious intentions of controlling what I should think or conclude. You laid out its intentions clearly here.

Second, you say talent pool will increase if opening this career for girls and at the same time say some boys aren't able to be pilots for lack of talent. Now combining these two, having more female women in this sector would benefit our economy. Tada!

You didn't consider the case where some women won't be pilots for lack of talent and with opening up of new generation of men to this sector, the talent pool expands just as much.

Look, here are one fact: The tech industry will do fine and surprise itself with high quality talent even without women in it. This is true had the industry been without men in it as well. It doesn't increase or decrease had one sex been not allowed. The economy doesn't benefit except for maybe by diversification and that too can be compensated by methods of reaching out to those spaces where only one class of people could have immensely benefited. So lets say sexual harassment apps. Most of them are made by men only teams in Google Play store and they get reviewed great! Lets say Periods and menstrual conscious exercises and diet. Men have designed great apps in this as well.

This in itself is not reason for discrimination of women or men either way. That is to say, neither women nor men should not be excluded by this reason.

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