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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

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> If you look at the commonalities that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent by far.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing–systemizing_theory

Another example: what is the gender balance in pilots versus flight attendants?

Microbiology is “things, not people” and is far more balanced.

One counterexample doesn't "disprove" the correlation. (Mostly because the example is in the correlation already, and the correlation holds, plus it's just a correlation.)

The comment I responded to very clearly implies that this "things, not people" is the reason for gender imbalance in CS. They are doing far more than identifying a correlation.

That can be one of many factors. The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model", whether microbiology also fits is a different question. Also microbiology is closer to medical field than engineering.

> The alleged claim is that "CS fits nicely in this model"

And there is no evidence provided for this at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23129035 sorry for crude link to links

How is architecture any less about 'things' than software engineering?

The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit. Is Facebook not about people? Airbnb? Uber?

It may be that these companies, perhaps inadvertently, choose to hire people who don't focus on the people-related aspects of their roles. But it's obvious that empathy and an interest in people would in fact be very useful at many tech companies.

Architects design buildings for people, take people's needs into consideration, etc.

Software naturally has that side too. And Google is ironically pretty bad at this, because somehow it always ends up too borg-ish. They do need more people-focused people, but so far they ended up just selecting for people who are willing to work for them, but haven't really changed. (Ironically, Damore was right in this.)

Lots of architects are also pretty bad at taking people's needs into account. There's still more women in the profession.

>"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit."

Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research?

Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example:

"Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension.

"Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests.

"Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. "

[1] Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6):859-84 · November 2009

Here's another:

"Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People.

"We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

"Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

[2] Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. Horm Behav. 2011 Sep; 60(4): 313–317. Published online 2011 Jun 12. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002

You've missed what his comment was about, it's not that the things vs people dichotomy doesn't exist. It's that it has no relation to engineering. Architecture is just as much things over people as engineering, Architecture is balaanced, engineering isn't. The problem is that in reality, you can do engineering from a people first approach or from a things first approach, and in reality, only one of those approaches will get you through university and into Google.

I take the engineering-from-a-things-first-approach bridge. You feel free to enjoy the other one. I'm sure you'll feel very validated as you spiral into the abyss

Most software engineering jobs aren't predominantly about things rather than people, so I doubt any of that research is relevant, regardless of its quality. You can't just uncritically lump software engineering in with "science", "engineering" and "mathematics" (themselves enormously diverse fields).

It's dangerous to do a "little bit" of research. What you'd actually need to do to get any information (if any really exists in this domain, which I doubt) is to become an expert and read through thousands of papers and books, including all the critiques of the ones you cite.

That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have steadily rose.

1. It does follow if you add in the money & prestige aspect. For a long time software development was neither lucrative nor prestigious so a lot of men simply weren't interested. As economic expectations for computer science careers grew, so did the number of men.

2. I personally don't find software dev collaborative or social in any meaningful way compared to other careers or industries.

Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less "gender egalitarian" than Western countries.

In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's where you see the most gender imbalance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads.

So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an outlier and not the norm.

That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia article you linked (which I hope you read).

from the 80s there were huge advances in mainstream feminism. For many people it was around 1998-2008 that a lot of people in their circle became feminist

The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing. That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

I think the answer to your question is precisely that, with all the campaigns in the west telling women to follow their own path, do whatever they want, etc. they ended up predominantly choosing careers they actually like (nursing, teaching, anything that has to do with people)

There are always exceptions, obviously.

> Women were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

I believe this to be missing the point. There are many women that are 100% aligned with the personality trait of an idealized engineer, no one (or at least not Damore) contest that.

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