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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks

I'd say the bigger point against the idea that women aren't in CS purely* because of men being sexist, is that this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. Does anyone actually believe this?

* of course, it may still be a partial factor

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>this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today.

I don't see how it implies this. The more relevant question is whether STEM has higher levels of sexism than other similarly attractive fields.

How could it not imply it? That's when women started entering those fields en masse and really increasing their numbers. Going by the "the problem is men being sexist" reasoning, that they were able to do this successfully implies that the lawyers and doctors in charge then were less sexist than engineers today.

It does not imply this, because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant.

I don't think the field is sexist. I think fewer women choose to study and excel at it. The field is open to whomever wants to have a go at it. Due to "corporate diversity policy" I think (as a man) have less of a chance of actually breaking into software engineering than, say, 10 years ago.

I mean, that doctors and lawyers were substantially less sexist compared to engineers in the 60's and 70's also strikes me as less than plausible, though I'll grant that'd be a closer competition than comparing them to engineers now. Do you have any evidence of an advantage there?

I am talking about relative levels of sexism in the present, not in the 60s and 70s.

But the 60's and 70's are when the representation levels started really diverging. That's the key part.

That they may be less sexist now, after having achieved gender parity or something close to it, is hardly unexpected. Of course a field with roughly even numbers is usually going to be less sexist than one dominated by one gender or another.

You’re correct. Good point.

You'll have to spell the argument out. My claim is that relative sexism in STEM puts women off now. This does not require me to commit to the claim that relative sexism was a dominant factor in women's career choices in the 60s. Note, however, that the issue is sexist attitudes in society as a whole, not just engineers being sexist. Even if 60s lawyers are just as sexist as 60s engineers, the idea of a female lawyer (especially a junior one) may still be more socially acceptable.

Asserting that a gender balanced field is less sexist than a gender imbalanced one isn't very interesting. The interesting part is that law and medicine used to be just as gender imbalanced, and then steadily became less so.

This is the crux of the issue that you're avoiding grappling with. Saying "well I don't care about the history" is irrelevant, it's still the most important part whether you personally care or not.

It's like looking at which countries are desirable to immigrate to without grappling with patterns of development, despite the obvious fact that the biggest thing that makes countries more desirable is being rich/developed.

I covered this in a response to another one of your comments, so I'll cut this thread short.

Measuring these things by outcomes is always wrought with errors. For example, how do you compare women's interest in medicine 50 years ago to their interest in comp sci today? If raw interest is low even a trivial scale issue might dissuade you.

It's also dangerous to treat all software development the same. 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. Is this the result of sexism? Maybe, but regardless I bet the gender stats are very different if you consider front end as different than back end development.

>because it's likely to be relative rather than absolute levels of sexism that are relevant

Relative to what? IT remains less sexist relative to doctors and lawyers, so...

What's your basis for saying that?

the highest levels of sexism I have personally seen are in Finance, followed by construction workers; the highest levels of complaining I have personally seen are in FOSS UnConferences and PhD level academia.

It makes sense that higher levels of complaining would correlate with lower levels of sexism. Things don't usually get fixed unless people complain.

The rise in complaining has not been correlated with a drop in "sexism", even the kind that is a bit of a stretch.

Could be more the other way around: in a really Xist field, there are fewer complaints because a) there are probably fewer [minority group] to complain, b) complaining feels riskier and less likely to achieve anything, c) complaints that do get made are more likely to be quickly shut down rather than amplified.

> I don't see how it implies this.

Gender disparity fell in those professions, while in roughly the same time frame, gender disparity dramatically increased in STEM. If women could put up with the sexism in those two professions, is it really plausible that sexism is the reason they didn't similarly push into STEM?

Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.

>Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.

I think in general among engineers there is a lot of awareness about sexism and diversity issues but that doesn't always extend to people on the periphery of the engineering world (I'm from non-software engineering world).

Tradespeople such a boilermakers, fitters and welders as well as suppliers, technicians etc don't always have the same attitudes. These are people you have to work closely with on engineering projects which are often in remote locations like mines, construction sites etc where management is not typically present (or visible). Attitudes are improving, for example its not common these days to see pornography in site sheds and similar out on construction sites, 10 years ago this was rife, but I still feel culture out on sites is maybe 5 to 10 years behind where it is in the office.

My sister and I are both engineers (I'm Chem/materials and she is a mech. eng) the way she gets treated and I am treated there is a noticeable difference. People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world.

> People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world.

Absolutely, but the question being debated is whether this is worse in STEM than other professions. Every profession still has strides to make for true equality.

>I don't see how it implies this

In the sense that if sexism is the major force that prevented women from going into IT, then the much higher sexism of doctors and lawyers in the 60s and 70s would have prevented women from going into those fields too. But women were far more in those fields then, than they are in IT now.

I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.

This is ridiculous, changes in the 60's led to a more gender balanced field, which obviously made for less sexism. Pretending that root causes don't matter isn't helping your case.

Aren't you then acknowledging that as a result, tech now is more sexist than law and medicine?

If so, I can't see where we substantially disagree. As I've repeatedly said, I make no claims about why the gender balance shifted in law and medicine in the 60s. You appeared to suggest that this had nothing to do with levels of sexism. I'm skeptical of that claim (broader societal attitudes are important too, not just the sexism level of lawyers and doctors vs. the sexism level of scientists and engineers), but it's not as if either of us has actually researched this in detail.

The key point is that tech now is disproportionately sexist, as you appear to acknowledge.

>I don't follow this argument. Levels of sexism in the 60s and 70s are irrelevant to decisions that women are making in the present.

The argument is not about that.

It's that "Those very sexist 60s/70s fields still had a lot of women going in, more than women in IT today. If women could go into those very sexist fields then, it's not sexism that keeps them out of IT today".

Eh, pain is relative. If you think hospitals today are less sexist workplaces than software companies, you might pick med school.

I hope that it's clear to most people that there isn't a single reason for the disparity though. People are complicated.

I'm not talking about hospitals today. I'm talking about potential gatekeepers in the 60's and 70's.

I (and others from looking at some sibling comments) didn't see your comment as being about gatekeepers, but rather about the environment being perceived as unfriendly towards, so women seeking out different fields.

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