Seems to me people are confusing conformity with social/political equality.
Sure, perhaps in theory. In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women are immediately blamed on discrimination and the like. There is an implicit assumption that men and women are mathematically equal, which leads to the conflation of equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, exaggerating the effects of discrimination and leading to poor allocation of resources in an attempt to correct a "problem" without consideration for part of all of the actual cause.
> In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by [discrimination] are immediately blamed on [psychological and physiological differences between men and women]. There is an implicit assumption that men and women are [inherently different], which leads to the conflation of equality of opportunity with [disparity of outcome], exaggerating the effects of [inherent differences] and leading to poor allocation of resources in an attempt to correct a "problem" without consideration for part of all of the actual cause.
1.Brain scans showing differences in structure and/or function, used to identify transgenderism
2. Physical sexual dimorphism, which through a lifetime of social interaction can lead to different average behaviors (like growing up being stronger/weaker than 50% of the population)
3. Different concentrations of and responses to behavior altering hormones (testosterone/estrogen in particular)
4. Millions of years of evolutionary specialization through sexual dimorphism
5. Consistent differences in performance on various psychological aptitude tests (e.g. men and women have different average scores in spatial reasoning tests)
This is only a partial list, and I won't put the effort into citing any of this but it's all a Google search away, if you're willing to accept the unpopular but, IMO, glaringly obvious opinion and actually look for it. Of course there is also a well established bias in academia and the subject is sort of off limits, except in the case of transgender studies.
At the very least one shouldn't be so quick to immediately scream discrimination when there are so many alternative explanations rooted in genetics.
That's a bit of circular reasoning though.
- Look how men and women behave differently!
- But why do they behave differently?
- Because they're different.
- How do you know that?
- Because they behave differently.
It's not logically consistent and doesn't answer anything.
I think there are real differences, other than the two I mentioned, but there is probably a lot of overlaps where you can find plenty of exceptions.
But software is, what, less than a century old? What possible evolutionary differences could have risen in that time frame?
I mean, the number zero is very unintuitive and the ancient Romans/greeks/chinese/whatever didn't discover it, despite the fact all evidence shows they were very smart in many things.
Yet you want me to believe that men understand that arrays are zero based better than women.
Apply that to any software principle.
But guns are, what, less than a millennia old? What possible evolutionary differences could have arisen in that time frame? No way that women and men would perform differently in competitive shooting [0], right? And as it turns out, men shoot faster, women shoot more accurately.
There's all sorts of things that have only existed for a century or two where men and women perform differently. Adaptation for one task often has effects on similar tasks, after all.
This doesn't mean men are better than women at CS! But "this field didn't exist a century ago" isn't sufficient reason to assert no differences can exist.
0: http://www.realbiathlon.com/2011/11/who-shoots-better-men-or...
- Women and men are equal! - But they behave differently - Because women are discriminated against - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently.
What now?
- How do you know that?
- Because women told us!!
This is not about generic workplace disagreements. Yes, those happen all the time.
> How do we know this? _Because men told us_!
I know that's tongue in cheek and only half serious but I'll reply anyway.
Even if 99% of men are more accommodating, that 1% would still make employment unbearable. After 10 years you probably met a few dozen assholes and just want to quit the industry because it's not worth it.
To give a few examples of preferential treatment for which I have first-hand information:
- a hiring committee at Google is officially more likely to rule in favor of hiring a female in "borderline" cases; men go straight down the shitter in that case. Promo committees similarly treat women more favorably.
- at Microsoft a hiring manager can't hire a male candidate, especially, god forbid, a _white_ male candidate, unless they filled their diversity quota, without first obtaining an exception from their VP (which very few people bother to do). This is extremely frustrating to them, because MS gets FANG rejects as it is.
I suspect similar policies exist at other tech companies as well. This is special treatment already. This is "accommodation" to the fullest extent.
We can both be right/wrong independent of each other.
The frustrating thing is most of the analysis completely leaves this part out.
I would be interested to hear from women about ways they have been discriminated against, and how the industry can improve to make that less likely to happen.
But most analysis I see on line is just "Most programmers are men! That is sexist!" With no analysis going beyond that.
Pretty much everything else isn't as clear cut. We know that more men than women go into STEM - but we don't know if it is because men fundamentally like those jobs better, or if it is because our culture makes it less acceptable for women to go into STEM. Often culture things are subtle and people will say things that do not match their actions.
> Between 30 and 50 percent of programmers were women in the 1950s, and it was seen as a natural career for them, as evidenced by a 1967 Cosmopolitan feature about “Computer Girls.” [1]
[1] https://timeline.com/women-pioneered-computer-programming-th...
Feminists made big advances at the same time and so it is hard to separate which factor (or something I can't think of) is important and which an irrelevant coincidence.
I won't be so uncivil as to suggest that your perspective is "bullshit". I suppose the 'successful' qualification is sufficiently ill-defined to give a lot of wiggle room, but if I take that to mean financially successful, a minority of the programmers I know would describe themselves as lifelong machine lovers. Certainly some do, but I'd say more are the sort to get cross with you if you try to "talk shop" outside of work; they have interests and hobbies unrelated to computers and use work with computers to fund those interests and hobbies. And those that do have programming as a hobby rarely work on hobby projects that resemble the work they're paid for.
As an aside, if the industry really were filled with technophiles as you suggest, I think I'd enjoy it a lot more. As it stands, relatively few around me seem to share my interests. I've found the best way to find people who share my technophile inclinations is to look for groups and clubs that form around technical hobbies. And what I've found in doing so is that many lifelong technophiles don't work in tech at all, and of those that do work in tech, most don't get paid to work on the sort of tech they're actually passionate about.
I'm a woman. I AM A WOMAN IN STEM. You know what makes my blood pressure rise? People in real life and in this thread who tell me that I'm naturally not suited to it, that I like people more than things. Go away! Shut the f(*& up! I want to sit here and deal with my code and not have people tell me that I either don't know what I like or I'm not a real, normal woman. Maybe we won't get to 50-50 in some STEM fields. Who cares. People telling me for forty years that I'm a weirdo for existing with this brain in this body is not equality.
And you know what? I've got family in STEM in Scandinavia, and the horrifying discrimination stories I've heard directly about their working conditions (down to classic, "You shouldn't be here because when you get pregnant you'll stop doing science" conversations with superiors) dwarf anything I personally have experienced in STEM in the US. The homophobic comments in the sauna are direct and cruel. Scandinavian STEM is not the egalitarian paradise that Americans think it is.
This is a misrepresentation of what people are writing in this thread. People are not saying that women who work in STEM are "not natural" or are working in a field they are unsuited for. They're saying that natural population-wide differences mean that the fact that women choose to enter computing at lower rates than men is not indicative of sexism. Saying that computing is 20% women because of biological differences is not making any statement of the capabilities of those women that go into computing.
> Maybe we won't get to 50-50 in some STEM fields. Who cares.
Many people do indeed subscribe to the belief that STEM should have parity between the sexes, and many companies are employing discriminatory policies to achieve this. And this doesn't just hurt men. When people witness discrimination in their companies' hiring processes, they look around and at their co-workers and wonder, "would this person have been hired if they didn't belong to a 'diverse' demographic?" Do you think this helps women?
Well... most men aren't suited for STEM, either.
I think that there may be some validity in saying that women, on average, have a temperament difference or focus difference or whatever that makes them want STEM less. But there is NO validity in saying to any particular individual "therefore you are not suited". No, you judge the individual by the individual, not by the group.
What I'm trying to better understand, is whether women who are not applying for programming jobs at the same rate as men, are due to lack of interest, or are they somehow being actively discouraged from the field?
I've worked with many women programmers, some of them better than me, so I know it's not the case women are inherently worse at programming than men. But I don't know the reason there are fewer women in the field.
Obviously you can't speak for all women, but maybe you have some insights as a woman that I don't as a man?
In seventh grade a great (male) teacher of mine recommended a summer program for me, at the dawn of the internet (Gopher!). I joined the math & computer class and was the only girl. None of the boys would talk to me at all. At lunch every day they ditched me and I went to find some kids from the theater class to sit with. Is it malicious? No; it's seventh-grade boys. Is it encouraging? No. I was lonely six hours a day because no one would speak to me.
In my engineering college, it was the dating thing. From being a nerd who was ignored in high school, not exactly prime dating material, I was suddenly transformed into a 'female'. I got asked out constantly. Sounds great, right? But if your classmates only want to have sex with you, and don't want to do homework with you, you're cut off from much of the joy of intellectual discovery of college. I was ignored by the profs and couldn't do a senior project, even though it was in the catalogue, because no prof would sponsor me. When I waitressed, the guys would first flirt with me and then upon discovering I was an undergrad in a tough major they'd turn very serious and gush about how important it was for women to be involved in that field, how special I was. Is it evil? No. It's like being a stay-at-home dad at the park with your kids in the middle of the day. Alienating. (My husband reports he hasn't made it past the none-of-the-moms-talking-to-him phase when he's made his forays.)
From college into grad school the emphasis on me as a potential romantic partner didn't stop. I remember joining the Linux Users Group in the town I went to grad school in. Some great guys, some good parties & good times. All juxtaposed with, for instance, the guy who I thought invited me over to talk about compilers... but when I showed up, candles were lit and the dinner table set for two. Is that evil? Is that an active discouragement from the field? It's just deflating. I thought I'd found someone I could talk to. He didn't want to talk to me after I'd declined to get involved.
I wore baggier and baggier clothes and never figured out how to do makeup or hair (now holding me back in corporate America) but simply trying to disappear into sweatshirts did not enable me to be 'one of the guys'.
In one research center I was involved with in grad school, it was more textbook-style discrimination. The women did all the work and wrote the grants that got the money. How can I say that? Surely it's unfair! But it is true, because everyone in the research group besides the director and one guy was female -- there was literally no one else. The director was phasing into retirement and was trying to groom the guy employee -- taking him to golf on Saturdays, taking guy to drink South African wine with director and director's wife. The problem was that guy employee wasn't very good, and once director retired, guy couldn't do the work and wasn't able to keep that position or the next two. The women found varied levels of success and failure elsewhere, but didn't get the chance at leadership at that center!
Later in grad school and into my postdocs, it was the constant assumption that I was primarily interested in education, not research. Put into a job code where I actually couldn't get funding from the research grants I won, asked last year to contribute to the education components of three guys' research grants to boost their 'broader impacts' score. Not everyone did this -- one colleague actually talked with me about research, and it was really nice.
When I was a prof, one or two (male) students tried to physically intimidate me into giving a higher grade. That's 1, 2 out of thousands... but an experience that my male colleagues did not have. I taught a lot of extra independent studies because people felt 'comfortable' with me; my super-friendly and wonderful and cuddly male colleague didn't experience that. I had to serve on the diversity committee and run a diversity event: I did not want to, but it was strongly implied that my promotion was linked to this service. (Right: I'd forgotten I was 'voluntold' for this by a senior male colleague who then didn't mention my name in the acknowledgements and took all the credit at the opening, because he's a "champion for diversity".) Students also came to me with personal concerns a lot, like roommate problems, family being evicted, needing to schedule an abortion, money trouble. I asked my male colleagues what they did about this and they said they'd never been asked about any of these things! Were these kids in college actively discouraging me from a STEM career? No way in hell! They were lovely young people! But the extra burden of teaching additional independent studies, running this stupid diversity event, and providing tissues to students in real trouble took time away from writing up research, and that's how you get promoted.
I couldn't win the battle with being tracked more and more into education rather than the research I love and left academia for industry this year. Hooray! Now I'm paid more and I 'program all day', and get to do the experimental CS/math/stats I enjoy. Am I a success story or not? I'm the example of the 'leaky pipeline' in academia.
Several replies to my previous comment said things like 'literally no one has said that' there's a conflict between me being female and liking STEM. But from this thread alone:
"I'm my experience women tend to be more interested in human facing parts of software like web and ui development, but less interested in the back end parts." "What if women were calling those environments toxic because they had a hard time doing well in there?" "I don't understand why modern society doesn't understand/want to believe that men and women have different career interests than men. Men and women value things differently, and it's not all because of society." "Ask women and you'll find that most aren't interested in programming a computer all day. Which one could argue is a sane choice. If anything it's more sane. Stop trying to make them feel like something is wrong if they don't have this inclination. Males and females have different preferences on average, some as early as birth[1]." Are any of these commenters actively discouraging me from pursuing my STEM career? No. They're just repeating the message again and again and again that women just like different things. Yeah, I do like different things. But it's always code for "you're not normal". And it's true that I'm statistically not in the majority. Folks, I know that. You don't have to tell me every day. I've been able to calculate percentages for thirty years. I've known I'm outnumbered for thirty years. I'm always aware that I'm a minority. Always. And that's what is tiring. It's not discouraging -- it's the surprise that I exist, then either the turning to talk to someone else or the gush of fake or real 'encouragement' that I'm so brave to be so different.
As a man in tech, I honestly have no idea what the women around me experience, so it’s valuable for me to get some perspective.
It’s interesting to me how you don’t blame any one specific person for actively trying to discourage you, just the constant exhaustion from being treated differently from those around you.
So one take away, is by recruiting more girls and women into coding, the girls and women who do want to pursue it won’t feel so out of place. So it is difficult to determine the “true” number of female people who like programming, until we have a critical mass of women programmers.
That’s given me something to think about.
Not a single person in this thread has said anything like that. Perhaps your perception is skewed. I know the consensus is different in certain pockets of our society, and especially online, but being [female|minority race|LGBT] does not automatically make your interpretation of your experiences valid.
Kind of like the humorous rule of thumb: if everyone around you is an asshole, maybe you're the asshole.
> - Look how men and women behave differently!
> - But why do they behave differently?
> - Because they're different.
> - How do you know that?
> - Because differences are observed at birth, are relatively consistent across countries with vastly different cultures, and the differences in behavior are observed even when raising children in a controlled environment free of gendered roles.
Fixed that for you.
I mean the article literally says different countries/cultures see vastly different results.
As far as this post's article, the rates are not vastly different results, most of the countries that observed fall within a range of 30%. If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology. That is not the case, all countries have majority male tech workforces, and they're mostly in the 15-35% range with some outliers on both ends.
Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of women in tech. Countries with some of the strictest gender roles like south Korea and Algeria see the highest rates of women in tech.
That's huge
> If this were socially determined, we'd expect some countries to have 80-90% women in technology
That's assuming social pressures are randomly distributed. But we don't observe 50/50 split between patriarchy and matriarchy.
> Furthermore, what differences that are observed contradict the idea that rigid gender roles cause lower rates of women in tech
Maybe because it depends which gender roles are applied and not their rigidity?
The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example.
Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations.
Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech.
I'm not sure if it's even possible to put countries in a binary between patriarchy and matriarchy. Instead, the study presented put countries on a scale that measures overall gender equality. And what difference we do observe is that patriarchal countries have higher rates of women in tech, but still lower than parity. Countries with gender equality (is this what you mean by "matriarchy"?) have low rates of women in tech often in the 20-10% range. So in "patriarchies" we see more female representation, but still lower than the majority and in egalitarian countries we see
> The nerd/geek being an awkward boy with glasses troppe is specifically a western concept for example.
And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries. Thus, attributing the disparity between men and women in tech to tropes like these is not effective line of reasoning. This is exactly the point that I'm making: attributing the gender distribution in tech to social factors is difficult when said distribution is observed across a wide variety of societies.
> Women in Eastern Europe worked in factories side by side with men for generations.
This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact.
> Gender roles does not equal your concept of gender roles like women not liking/belonging/choosing not to be in tech.
I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies.
And for what it's worth, while 20% representation in tech in the united states might seem low at first glance it's actually not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another. Tech is on par with "Health practitioner, support technologists, and technicians", "Loan interviewers and clerks", "Printing press operators", and a couple percent above "Couriers and messengers" as far as gender disparities go [1].
1. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce...
No... I mean the dictionary definition.
Where men didn't have the right to vote, work or own property until recently, where women are expected to own and make all the money, where men are raised to be married away, where men are expected to make the coffee and women to run the meeting. So on and so forth.
I'm afraid that entire paragraph does not address my comment because you misunderstood what matriarchy means.
> And yet, the disparity between women and men in technology exists outside of western countries
Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears.
These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all.
> This was the same case in Western Europe and Asia as well - I'm not sure why you chose to highlight this fact.
But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages.
I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM.
Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies.
What do they have in common? They are not the West.
They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM.
That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy.
> I'm not sure what you're writing about here, this sentence does not make sense to me. The point is that highly unequal societies with strict gender roles see more women in technology than more egalitarian societies.
And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures.
There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall.
Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier.
If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case.
Correlation broken.
> not at all uncommon to have fields that are >95% one gender or another
That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.
We would expect to see even lower rates of women in STEM. The data shows an inverse relationship between women gaining more rights and resources and women's representation in STEM.
> Not if you take into consideration the labour participation rate... If you do, the disparity basically disappears. These societies with rigid gender rules tend to have less women overall working at all.
Yes, they do. Differences in labor force participation do not hold up to scrutiny. Plenty of the countries with less women's equality also have high labor force participation [1].
> But they were forced to do that until the 90s under communism, I'm not talking about peasants in the middle ages. I mention Eastern Europe because I'm trying to give you alternative explanations for women participation in STEM. Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies. What do they have in common? They are not the West. They don't have the West's cultural norms. Ergo, one of those norms is stopping women from going into STEM. That, to me, sounds more likely. Much easier to explain vs trying to find something in common between India and Eastern Europe, which is pretty crazy.
But India and Eastern Europe still see low rates of women in technology. In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States.
You're pointing out these differences, and these differences do not yield higher rates of women in technology. So why do you seem to think that these differences are significantly affecting rates of women in technology.
> And my point is your cultural expectation do not translate to other cultures. There might be a specific gender inequality that stops women from entering STEM. That may or may not exist in a society, independent on what gender inequality is overall. Vastly different societies like India and Eastern Europe have similar participation rates, despite the fact that Eastern Europe is much wealthier. If what you said is true, you'd expect Eastern Europe to have lower participation rate than India, but that's not the case. Correlation broken.
Eastern Europe does have lower rates of women in technology than India. India has ~30% women in STEM [2]. Whereas the Eastern European countries have representation mostly in the range of 20-25%.
> That just means the problem is beyond just STEM, not an explanation.
Correct. The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies.
Does social influence have some effect? Probably. We observe that countries with less rights and opportunities for women do have higher rates of women in technology than more egalitarian countries. But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%.
1. https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/female_labor_force...
2. https://research.swe.org/2018/07/india-undergraduate-educati...
That's just disingenuous, we literally don't have that data to make any claims on it. You're the one which said you'd expect women participation rates to be randomised, as in some countries to have more women in STEM than men. I simply counterpointed with the fact that societies aren't randomised, they are all patriarchal on some level, that's why you never see more women in tech in any country.
> In fact, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic see the same or lower rates of women in technology than in the United States.
Oh, so your correlation that stricter gender roles and women getting into STEM is not true? Did you just prove yourself wrong?!
Also, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia have higher participation rates than the US...
It's almost like your alleged correlation is BS and random, even within similar countries and cultures.
> The "problem" is that men and women have difference interests, and this difference is largely universal across different societies.
You're literally reading an article claiming the opposite (with sources) mate. Did you read it?!
> But this influence only shifts the representation of women in tech by 10-15%.
That's like gigantic. It's almost parity in the workplace. How can you dismiss it?!
The small difference is explained by the difference in labour participation rates.
We already talked about this but it's like you didn't read my comment.
The core thesis of the article posted is that societies that are more egalitarian - closer to "matriarchy" - on average have less female representation in tech. The more countries drift away from "patriarchy" and towards "matriarchy" the fewer women go into tech.
> Oh, so your correlation that stricter gender roles and women getting into STEM is not true? Did you just prove yourself wrong?!
Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less egalitarian than the US.
> Also, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia have higher participation rates than the US... It's almost like your alleged correlation is BS and random, even within similar countries and cultures.
The correlation is between gender equality and women's representation in tech. Yes, the rates of women in tech in Eastern European countries varies because different Eastern European countries have different levels of gender equality.
You're the one who erroneously claimed that "Eastern Europe and India have similar rates of participation but are vastly different societies" when in fact Eastern European countries have a variety of rates of women in tech, many of which are lower than the United States' 25% let alone India's 30%. I agree, the alleged correlation between Eastern Europe and rates of female representation in tech is BS and random - but that was your alleged correlation...
But what doesn't vary? The fact that these rates are overwhelmingly in a relatively narrow band between 20-35%.
> You're literally reading an article claiming the opposite (with sources) mate. Did you read it?!
If this is your takeaway from the article, I would suggest re-reading it. There is some variation across societies - but not much. The overwhelming majority of countries studied had female representation in tech between 15-30%. This is indeed a fairly consistent rate.
The slight variation that does exist demonstrates an inverse correlation between women gaining more rights and authority and female representation in tech.
> That's like gigantic. It's almost parity in the workplace. How can you dismiss it?!
It is nowhere near parity in the workplace. The countries with the greatest gender equality like Finland and Norway have 20% female representation in tech. Countries on the other end of the spectrum like Turkey and Indonesia have 35%. This is still barely over 1/3rd.
> The small difference is explained by the difference in labour participation rates.
> We already talked about this but it's like you didn't read my comment.
I did read your comment, and provided data that demonstrated that differences in labor participation does not hold true. This is factually incorrect. These countries with less gender equality have female labor participation rates that are often the same or higher than the US and other western countries. For example, Indonesia has a female labor participation rate of 52% as compared to the United States' 56%. Vietnam has a female labor participation rate of 76%. It we adjusted its female representation in tech to account for differences in labor participation, the percent of women in tech would go down.
Adjusting for this does not explain the difference in representation in tech. Furthermore, even if it were you are erroneously assuming that if more women entered the workforce those women would.
> You're supposed to compare between women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate in the US has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.
We literally don't have matriarchies, there's no data about it. And I also don't know why you put that in quotes, it's an actual word.
> Many of these countries are more egalitarian than the US as per the data in the original post. Perhaps you should not have assumed that all Eastern European countries are less egalitarian than the US.
Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't.
You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.
> The fact that these rates are overwhelmingly in a relatively narrow band between 20-35%.
> The overwhelming majority of countries studied had female representation in tech between 15-30%. This is indeed a fairly consistent rate.
I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment...
It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!
And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.
It's like saying unemployment falls between 5-40% in the majority of countries. Well d'oh, it's expected. It says nothing about the health of the countries in questiom.
> I agree, the alleged correlation between Eastern Europe and rates of female representation in tech is BS and random - but that was your alleged correlation...
Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?
> Countries on the other end of the spectrum like Turkey and Indonesia have 35%. This is still barely over 1/3rd.
You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it.
> For example, Indonesia has a female labor participation rate of 52% as compared to the United States' 56%. Vietnam has a female labor participation rate of 76%.
You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam.
You don't get it.
> Adjusting for this does not explain the difference in representation in tech.
Yes it would, you just don't know how to adjust for it.
> Furthermore, even if it were you are erroneously assuming that if more women entered the workforce those women would.
It doesn't matter if they would or not, it won't affect the statistics, you still need to adjust for it.
We may or may not have matriarchies - a couple countries like Spain do have more women in parliament than men so maybe they fit your definition of a matriarchy. But we do have data on how the female representation in tech varies with respect to increases in women's rights and resources, and the data shows that the more rights and resources women have the less they go into technology. This would indicate that a matriarchy would have among the lowest rates of women in technology.
> Of really? Which ones? Because Hungary certainly isn't. You just proved yourself wrong and you're not addressing what the core of the argument of what I said.
I did indeed address this. In this comment [1] You had claimed that Eastern Europe has similar shares of women in STEM fields as India, and that this is due to cultural factors. I pointed out that Eastern Europe does not, in fact, have similar rates of women in tech as India - only Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia do. Eastern European countries with lower rates of women in tech as compared to India include: Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, Slovakia, and Croatia (if you consider it Eastern European).
Furthermore, your comment rested on the assumption that gender roles in Eastern European countries are monolithic. This is not the case. Hungary, as you pointed out has very low gender equality as does Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Slovenia, on the other hand, is the 5th highest on this list. Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Moldova, and Lithuania have the same or higher ratings for gender equality as the United States.
So to recap:
1. Eastern Europe does not similar rates of women in tech than India's 30%, most have lower rates of women in tech than the United States' 25%.
2. Eastern European countries are diverse and have varied degrees of gender equality, they are not a monolith so talking about gender roles in "eastern europe" rests on the false understanding that these countries have the same culture with respect to gender.
I pointed out that your argument with respect to Eastern Europe is contradicted by the data we have, and is based on the false notion that women in Eastern Europe have a similar experience with respect to gender equality. This seems like this thoroughly addresses your point, care to explain what you feel is missing?
> I'm ignoring the fact that you can't even keep your numbers straight within the same comment. It's not consistent at all, it's almost the entire range!
Can you please read the article before posting comments like this? Every country including outliers falls between 15% (Chile) and 41% (Algeria). That's 36%. That's barely over half of the range, let alone "almost the entire range".
> And given that close to 0% or 50% is unlikely to happen in any country, that's pretty much where you expect the probability distribution to land anyway. It says nothing.
Why? Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?
> Wait, what exactly is your allegation then, if not that?
You're the one that originally brought up Eastern Europe and India. You falsely claimed that Eastern Europe has similar rates of women in tech as India, and I pointed out that this is factually incorrect - most Eastern European countries have lower rates of women in technology than India.
> You're still not addressing the labour participation rates between women and men. You don't get it. You're suppressed to compare bergen women and men in the same country. Women's labour participation rate has less than nothing to do with Vietnam. You don't get it.
What do you mean by adjusting for women's labor participation rate. You say that I'm not doing this correctly, but you neglect to explain what you mean by this. If a country that has 100% female labor participation had 30% women in technology, and another country has 50% labor participation and 15% women in tech then the latter's rate of women in tech is actually the same if you account for labor participation rates.
If you insist that the better way is to compare the ratio of men to women in the labor force, here's that data [2]. It does not significantly alter the results. The United States has a ratio of 0.82 female to male. Norway has 0.885 - so its share of women in tech would actually go down even further if we adjust it to match the US. Viet Nam has 0.889.
There are some that do have significantly different participation rates. Chile has 0.657, so its share of women in tech would rise by ~20% from 15% to 18% if we made its labor participation ratio the same as the US. Qatar has 0.531 so its ~23% women in tech would rise to 35%. But notice that these adjustments move these countries closer towards the trend line. In other words, adjusting for the differences in labor participation rates makes the inverse relationship between gender equality and women's participation in STEM even stronger.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21786037
2. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/labour-force-participation-ra...
We don't.
> Furthermore, your comment rested on the assumption that gender roles in Eastern European countries are monolithic.
Neither is India but I feel this is splitting hairs.
> I pointed out that your argument with respect to Eastern Europe is contradicted by the data we have, and is based on the false notion that women in Eastern Europe have a similar experience with respect to gender equality.
Ok... but that's true in India, the US... they are all varied cultures. You're just pointing holes in you argument really.
I always said women equality and women participation in STEM is pretty random.
Once again, you're really arguing against yourself. There is no correlation between women in STEM and women's rights.
> Why? Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?
Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it.
> You're the one that originally brought up Eastern Europe and India. You falsely claimed that Eastern Europe has similar rates of women in tech as India, and I pointed out that this is factually incorrect - most Eastern European countries have lower rates of women in technology than India.
Oh ok, I should clarify then. Some countries in Eastern Europe have similar rates as India. It does not change my argument one bit, except you win some semantic nonsense.
I can rephrase my argument from before with "some Eastern European countries" instead. Will that change your mind?
> What do you mean by adjusting for women's labor participation rate. You say that I'm not doing this correctly, but you neglect to explain what you mean by this. If a country that has 100% female labor participation had 30% women in technology, and another country has 50% labor participation and 15% women in tech then the latter's rate of women in tech is actually the same if you account for labor participation rates.
Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?
> The United States has a ratio of 0.82 female to male. Norway has 0.885 - so its share of women in tech would actually go down even further if we adjust it to match the US.
> Chile has 0.657, so its share of women in tech would rise by ~20% from 15% to 18% if we made its labor participation ratio the same as the US.
Can you stop comparing things to the US? What's wrong with you? You're supposed to compare with men's labour participation rates, in the same country.
I already told you this.
0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men.
How are you not getting this?
Qatar has 0.531 so its ~23% women in tech would rise to 35%. But notice that these adjustments move these countries closer towards the trend line. In other words, adjusting for the differences in labor participation rates makes the inverse relationship between gender equality and women's participation in STEM even stronger.
This hinges on how you define a matriarchy. Spain, as I pointed out earlier, has a majority female national leadership. If it isn't a matriarchy, one could still argue that's closer to a matriarchy than a patriarchy.
You insist that we don't have any matriarchies, yet my request for you to explain how you're choosing to define matriarchy remains unfulfilled.
> Ok... but that's true in India, the US... they are all varied cultures. You're just pointing holes in you argument really. I always said women equality and women participation in STEM is pretty random. Once again, you're really arguing against yourself. There is no correlation between women in STEM and women's rights.
The correlation between gender equality (of which women's rights is a component) is the core thesis of the article posted by OP: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
> Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it.
And why would we think that a matriarchy would have over 50% women in technology? As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down. Why would one conclude from this that a matriarchy would see a majority of women in technology?
> Oh ok, I should clarify then. Some countries in Eastern Europe have similar rates as India. It does not change my argument one bit, except you win some semantic nonsense. I can rephrase my argument from before with "some Eastern European countries" instead. Will that change your mind?
Sure, some Eastern European countries have similar rates as India. And most do not.
Regardless, rather than examining individual regions how about we look at the world as a whole: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2018/02/S...
> Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?
You adjust for labor participation by selecting a baseline, and adjusting the other countries to match this baseline. Sure, I could have used any country for the baseline.
> Can you stop comparing things to the US? What's wrong with you? You're supposed to compare with men's labour participation rates, in the same country. I already told you this.
I am very confused as to what you're saying here. I am comparing women's labor participation rates with men's labor participation rates, in the same country. When I say that Chile has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.657 it means 66 women work for every 100 men. By comparison the US has 82 women in the workforce for every 100 men.
So if Chile has 15% women in tech, and we want to know what this percentage would be if its female/male labor participation ratio was the same as the US we adjust for that: 15% * (.82 / .657) = 18.2%.
Why do you think that I'm not comparing women's labor participation rates with men? You do realize that the ratio of female to male labor participation is, fundamentally, comparing women and men's labor participation rates?
> 0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men. How are you not getting this?
Again, what am I not getting?
Dictionary definition. There's no opinion about it.
> Spain, as I pointed out earlier, has a majority female national leadership.
Not what defined a matriarchy.
> If it isn't a matriarchy, one could still argue that's closer to a matriarchy than a patriarchy.
Not how it works. It's a gradient, yes. Spain being a matriarchy? No.
> You insist that we don't have any matriarchies, yet my request for you to explain how you're choosing to define matriarchy remains unfulfilled.
I gave several examples...
Like, have any modern countries denied men to vote before women? No.
> And why would we think that a matriarchy would have over 50% women in technology?
You. You f-ing asked that. You expected some countries to have over 50% representation, which is stupid since every country is patriarchal on some level.
We don't have matriarchies. I can't stress this enough.
You can't make claims on what we can't observe.
> As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down.
You yourself told me of several countries where that's not true. How are you not getting this?!
> Why would one conclude from this that a matriarchy would see a majority of women in technology?
I don't, matriarchies don't exist.
> Sure, some Eastern European countries have similar rates as India. And most do not.
Population wise, they do.
>> Than why are you comparing these countries with the US's women participation rate in the workforce?! What does the US have to do with this?
> You adjust for labor participation by selecting a baseline, and adjusting the other countries to match this baseline. Sure, I could have used any country for the baseline.
No... My point was about how many women were in that country's workforce... Do you not get maths?
> I am very confused as to what you're saying here.
Yes, you clearly are.
> By comparison the US has 82 women in the workforce for every 100 men.
Nobody cares. It does not matter.
> Why do you think that I'm not comparing women's labor participation rates with men?
Because you're not? You keep bringing up the US for some reason.
> You do realize that the ratio of female to male labor participation is, fundamentally, comparing women and men's labor participation rates?
Yeah, I told you that. Yet, still, you bring up the US. Why, ffs, why?
> 0.657 means only 65 of women work for every 100 men. How are you not getting this?
I told you that, thanks.
There are a variety of dictionaries with different definitions. Some of them define it as a country where the majority of political rulers are women. As explained above, some countries can fit that definition.
> You. You f-ing asked that. You expected some countries to have over 50% representation, which is stupid since every country is patriarchal on some level. We don't have matriarchies. I can't stress this enough. You can't make claims on what we can't observe.
In a previous comment I wrote, "Why wouldn't we expect countries to be 60% women in tech, or 70%, or 80% women in technology? Why do you take it for granted that there won't be any countries with majority women in technology?" To which you responded, "Again. Because we don't have matriarchies. You really don't seem to grasp the concept. Please take a minute to think about it."
I asked why we wouldn't expect some countries to have majority women in tech and your response was that this was because there are no matriarchies. This definitely seems to indicate that you believe matriarchies would have majority women in tech. If not, then this response doesn't make sense.
If one does not suspect that matriarchies would have majority women in tech, then what does the absence of matriarchies justify your claim that it's unreasonable to expect any country to have over 50% women in technology?
I agree that such an expectation is unreasonable - but not because of the absence of any matriarchies. Quite the opposite, when look at the women's representation in technology patriarchal societies that are repressive towards women have the highest representation of women in tech and egalitarian countries have the least. The world, overall, is trending towards gender equality (though some regions are progressing considerably slower than others).
> > As countries move away from patriarchy and towards gender equality the percentage of tech worker that are women go down.
> You yourself told me of several countries where that's not true. How are you not getting this?!
I have re-read my comments and have not found any instance where I wrote such a thing. I believe I have been consistent in my two core claims: 1) The overall distribution of women's representation in technology is fairly narrow, occupying a total range of 15-41% and with 20-30% accounting for the majority of countries. 20-35% accounts for effectively all save for some outliers on either end. 2) What variation does exist shows that women's representation in technology is inversely associated with gender equality. The more equal countries are, the lower the representation of women in technology on average.
Your rest of your comments about my failure to compare men's labor participation and women's labor participation seem to reveal fundamental misunderstandings of what a ratio is.
A female/male ratio of X means that for every man there are X women in the workforce. So when I say that the US has a female to male labor participation ratio of 0.82 it means that there are .82 women in the workforce for every man. Or 82 women for every 100 men. Comparing ratios is comparing the women's labor participation rates to men's labor participation rates. Let me use a an example to put this in practice:
If one country has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.75 and has 30% tech workers that are women, and another country has a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.5 and 20% of its tech workers are women then one could argue that these countries actually have the same rate of women going into tech. Although women's share in the latter is smaller, the labor participation rate is lower. If we used the former as the baseline, and adjusted the latter's female/male labor participation ratio to match it then the latter country would see it's representation of women in tech go up by 50%, rising from 20% to 30%.
You seem to be fixated on the choice of the US as the baseline. But the choice of baseline does not matter. I could have gone about it in the opposite direction in the above example. I could have taken the first country with a female/male labor participation ratio of 0.75 and adjusted it down to have a female/male labor ratio of 0.5 and its female representation in tech would have dropped to 20%. The conclusion is the same: when adjusted for female/male labor participation the two countries have identical rates of women in tech. So the fact that you're pointing towards choice of the US as the baseline and erroneously saying that I'm not comparing men's and women's labor participation rates reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how this normalization works.
I am indeed comparing the men and women's labor participation rates. To say otherwise is factually incorrect.
What constitutes an artificial restraint?
For classical liberals, that means being free from the constraint imposed by other individuals.
Today the definition of "restraints" is being expanded beyond the artificial to the point where everything is being declared a "human right" without any consideration for the fact that some of those things can only be provided by taking from someone else (resources and/or labor). Basically, more and more people feel that people should be free from natural restraints like the responsibility of having to provide for oneself (or at least trying to). But the rub is that the only way to free some people from those natural restraints is bondage of others to provide for them.
If you are capable of solving the toughest scientific or technical challenges, but you are prevented from doing so because of some attribute of your circumstance (your color, your gender, your age, your wealth level, your current job title, etc.), then you are being artificially restrained.
If you can solve the toughest challenge, but you choose not to because you would rather throw clay on a pottery wheel, then you are also free from constraints. (There are plenty of people that are practically forced into careers because they are technically capable, and because their elders believe that if one can, one should.)