Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashelmire | Hacker News Reader

I think a perception problem occurs if less-qualified women get more funding than men. That means that the male scientists who get funded will actually just be better at their jobs, which is going to have the effect of perpetuating the perception that men make better scientists (which I think is obviously untrue, but this has always been a problem with affirmative action policies). I don't really see a way to solve this at the grant funding level.

View on HN

This perception problem is in fact a problem, but this also ignores another explaination (speculatively) that less-qualified men are getting more funding over more-qualified women due to unconscious biases of the reviewers. Which at least has studies that say this might be the case.

I don't know if we have studies that indicate evidence that less-qualified women are getting more funding than more-qualified men. For example this comment chain is mostly anecdata, which makes it difficult, as it relies on how good-faith we wish to take the anecdote and how that anecdote either enforces one's existing biases or can just be dismissed as anecdotal and not genuine studies. But even the "genuine" studies are in a field where we have a replication crisis.

So, what I'm saying is: I don't know, and I don't think anyone else knows, the whole truth and breakdown of the matter. And I'd be suspicious of anyone claiming they are under a broadsale impression of anything regarding the quality of women in STEM.

   unconscious biases 
   of the reviewers

This can of course also be turned the other way around: "less-qualified women are getting more funding over more qualified men due to unconscious biases of the reviewers"

   studies that say this might be the case.

Those 'studies' generally suffer from various forms of bias, in particular social desirability bias [1], and never reflect upon their social desirability bias. Often the authors of such studies also have a direct financial in the claimed outcome of the 'studies': To paraphase Upton Sinclair "It is difficult to get a woman to understand something, when her salary depends upon his not understanding it!". I challenge you to show me studie along the lines of what you suggest that even mention social desirability bias and financial interest as threats to validity.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias

I feel you are making rebuttals to portions of my comment without actually reading the full comment to realize that everything you're rebutting is actually in agreement with your rebuttal. This behavior is confusing. Could you explain yourself?

EDIT: In clarification, I'm essentially saying 'Well, X, but Y. On the other hand, P, but Q.' and you're demanding I prove X to arbirary metric M, even though Y evidences that I'm not in the interest of proving X at all.

I apologise if I was unclear. What I tried to do was subtly to entice my readers to reflect on the validity of the ruling beliefs about women in STEM -- knowing full well that I'm flying outside the tech crowd's Overton window. Let me try to express my belief in a different way, using four bullet points. I hope it's more clear this way.

(α) All the studies that claim show that the reason we have more men than women is due to malice (eg. misogyny, unconscious bias) are not standing up to scrutiny. They have no scientific validity.

(β) The reason that there are so many 'studies' of the kind I criticise as scientifically baseless is political. There is a political will to have more women in STEM positions.

(γ) The overt explanation for this political will is structurally rather similar to the explanation given by the early Soviet Union for the promotion of non-Russian ethnicities over Russians in the policy of constructing the New Soviet man (новый советский человек). This reason is cogently described in Marxism and the National Question [1].

(δ) I'm generally worried about policies similar to those carried out by the author of [1].

[1] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913...

I'd love to see what your basis for your first point is. Misogyny is hardly unproven, and unconscious bias has also been shown through various studies. Sexism is sadly still common in many areas.

I think there's mostly an economic need for more people in STEM positions, and with women being underrepresented, that's an obvious place to look for more talent. And there are countries that do have more women in STEM or other scientific positions. So for countries that don't, figuring out what's stopping those women is a valid concern.

   basis for your first point is

I have read 100s of such 'studies' over the years, they are not meeting even the most basic scientific standards. I have brought one such case to the attention of the university of its author -- to no avail, the university buried it. Publication hoaxes like [1] don't exactly increase confidence, as far as I'm aware the author who exposed the publishing hoax was punished. And then there's the replication crisis (which is not limited to the question at hand), e.g. try to find a suitable replication of stereotype threat.

   Misogyny ... Sexism

Misogyny and Sexism are political terms, they are "Essentially Contested Concept" [2].

   mostly an economic need for more
   people in STEM

I agree with this, but note that this is a political reason in a general sense, not one of 'oppression'. So you seem to be agreeing.

   countries that do have more women in STEM

Yes, and the best example are the former Soviet block countries. Note that they did not engage in modern affirmative action as we now know them for STEM in the west -- they more or less allocated people to jobs.

   is a valid concern.

Indeed, but I don't see any reason to believe that the current approach in the west is the best possible one. Mostly it seems to be creating an unaccountable, non-democratic industry of enforcers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentially_contested_concept

[2] https://retractionwatch.com/2016/04/07/philosophy-journal-sp...

"What I tried to do was subtly to entice my readers to reflect on the validity of the ruling beliefs about women in STEM"

This may sound rude, by why are you even talking to me if you're not desiring to engage with me and my literal words? Wouldn't a blog be more suitable for you? Because I'm still not entirely sure how your points interact with me, and why you're responding to me.

   everything you're rebutting is 
   actually in agreement with your rebuttal.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you are saying. I read your post as: "X is the case, arguments for not-X are anecdata, we have to take not-X on trust, nobody knows if X or not-X but I'm suspicious of not-X" I apologise if that's not what you are trying to say.

It's an extreme situation. I'd assume that, given more hurdles for women than for men, the women who do make it are likely to be more qualified than men, not less.

When the few women you can find are less qualified, you should ask yourself why. Why are the more qualified women avoiding you? If either your company or your industry had developed a reputation for being toxic and sexist, I can totally see why qualified women would avoid it. Giving more money to women is not going to solve the real problem here. It's also possible that your culture has somehow decided this is not a job for women. I work at a Dutch company that employs plenty of female developers, but all the female developers are from India. I don't think I know even a single female Dutch programmer here, which is weird. Why is this?

Those are the real issues we need to figure out. Simply occasionally throwing money at people, even if it's a lot, is unlikely to fix the structural problems here.

> I'd assume that, given more hurdles for women than for men, the women who do make it are likely to be more qualified than men, not less.

Sure — ashelmire's point was that right now there are more hurdles for men, which leads to men being more likely to be more qualified than women, which perpetuates and amplifies a stereotype.

Maybe in some very specific situations there are indeed more hurdles for men than for women, but in general, in STEM in particular, there are clearly more hurdles for women than for men, as evidenced by the fact that more men than women make it through.

Though I don't think the solution is to compensate by creating more hurdles for men; we need to identify and remove the hurdles for women. And whatever hurdles remain for men.

> there are clearly more hurdles for women than for men, as evidenced by the fact that more men than women make it through

This has three very large assumptions:

1. Men and women share the same distribution of relevant abilities

2. Men and women share the same distribution of relevant interests

3. Men and women share the same distribution of societal expectations and external opportunities

A lot of people seem to assume that either #1 or #2 are false, and there's research to support #2 being false. #3 being false also seems intuitively obvious to me, given that it's stereotypically more acceptable to be a housewife than a househusband (as one example of many).

A couple of links related to these assumptions, which have somehow become truisms in our culture.

Re: 1, the Variability Hypothesis[1] argues that men have a different, "wider" distribution than women in many categories, including intelligence.

Re: 2, this Slate Star Codex article[2] is full of relevant pointers.

Discrimination sucks and we must push back when we see it, but not every difference in representation is automatically a sign of discrimination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis#Modern_...

[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge...

3 is the big one. I once heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk about how every time he said he'd want to become an astrophysicist, people would ask him if he shouldn't become an athlete. He was a good wrestler, wasn't he? Athlete is a socially acceptable career for black men. I can't help but wonder how many potential astrophysicists became athletes instead due to such social pressure.

Social expectations can be a real hurdle.

   Why is this?

Intuition pump for the curious: why doesn't Melania Knauss work as a programmer?

I'm struggling to imagine women (as a category) being any more incompetent or unqualified than the men (as a category) I've worked with.

There's always a bell curve distribution of skill, talent, aptitude, whatever. When the work force population (mostly) reflects the general population (gender, ethnicity, age, whatever), we'll see that people are just people. Some good, most meh, and a few whoopers (who should be paid to stay home, for the benefit of the rest of us).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com