Still the problem here is we don't _really_ know whether this is genetic or shaped by our upbringing even when it comes to the most egalitarian societies. I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.
"Considering gender inequality, the authors report that “in countries of higher gender inequality, women’s stronger preference for working with people versus things compared to men was smaller.” However, this effect disappeared when cultural dimensions were taken into account.
"Instead, it was those countries with greater uncertainty avoidance that had larger differences in interests in people/things between men and women. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to which a culture teaches its members to feel unpleasant in situations that are new, not previously known, surprising, or generally just different from usual."
The view that every group of people you care to select is "equal" (whatever that means) is manifestly false.
It's funny that you write this comment in this specific thread, because as far as I know, it's literally the only gender difference we've observed truly since birth. (Besides some physical ones like which reproductive organs are in place, obviously.)
It's not that effect being caused by upbringing makes it somehow unimportant, or unworthy of being there.
Look at Sweden, it's been trying really hard and dumping lots of money into gender equality, but there's still very few women in tech. The fraction of women among Iran's CS graduates is greater than Sweden's. And, ironically, plenty of those Iranian women (I'm saying this offhand) go to do PhD in Sweden, to bring up the "gender balance" of CS departments that Sweden is so concerned about.
I'm really unsure whether society is easier to engineer than biology.
It has little margin for loss of function, so a poor performer is better and more likely to survive then losing the performance of the function entirely.
> I'd like to see the same study done on the little left hunter-gatherers bands.
I don't see what that would prove. Men being biologically better suited for many types of primitive hunting, and women having the responsibility of pregnancy and nursing infants, would have a massive influence on the culture and structure of those societies.
The women do a lot of work digging ants [1], digging lizards, trawling through sands for cockles [2] (and leaving massive midden piles in their wake over centuries), and retire to a life of painting and laughing at the quaint notions of the clueless.
Many such cultures share childcare across a wide network of extended kinship [3], both male and female - everybody works to bring food, tools, and culture to the group.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-16/honey-ant-hunters-and...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tegillarca_granosa
[3] https://aifs.gov.au/resources/policy-and-practice-papers/str...
This is not an argument.
> The women do a lot of work digging ants [1], digging lizards, trawling through sands for cockles [2] (and leaving massive midden piles in their wake over centuries), and retire to a life of painting and laughing at the quaint notions of the clueless.
Great.
> Many such cultures share childcare across a wide network of extended kinship [3], both male and female - everybody works to bring food, tools, and culture to the group.
And yet despite having nary a biology degree among them, even they will tell you that men can not gestate or nurse a child. And that men are biologically more suited to some types of primitive hunting.
To go back to your other comment:
> Why is that a problem, and if it was due to upbringing then why that would be a problem?
It would be a problem for upbringing as that is something adults have agency over. It's a bias that may not need to exist.
A great example of that is when women were highly represented in computer science as it was initially becoming a field of study, but later got pushed out by boys who'd had technical skills nurtured in them when they were young while the girls did not. Oversimplifying that a little bit, but most of us have experienced it or seen it in action.
Women in STEM is a supply issue that starts with parenting, and continues all the way along the pipeline, with schools, universities and peers all filtering girls out of the pipeline that puts butts in seats in tech roles, even though they're perfectly capable of the roles.
There's no evidence that adults are creating this bias. They are not.
On average women find tech work grindingly boring.
Why is it a problem? It isn't. Just let people do what they want with their lives.
No evidence of that.
> There's no evidence that adults are creating this bias. They are not.
Are you absolutely certain? It's the subject of quite a bit of research.
> Why is it a problem? It isn't. Just let people do what they want with their lives.
Kids don't know what they want to do with their lives, they get lead down various paths by their upbringing. Plenty of people end up in careers they don't like because it's what their parents wanted them to do, regardless of gender.
> No evidence of that
Are you for real? Have you ever tried to talk to any women about technology? With occasional exceptions, the response you will get is a face that has completely glazed over.
This is only a problem for people who believe in egalitarian ideology - where every group is supposed to be at all times "equal" in ways that are simply not bourne out in reality.
All the time - they love technology.
Sue <redacted> runs all the books on the local family farm (which is a large multi million $ enterprise), she pulls in all the GPS logs to a NAS, databases the livestock tags, has bots watching the stock sales.
Robyn runs a super computing facility for the local SKA project (Square kilometre array) after being the Vice C. of the local university, after consolidating the Comp Sci, Math, Engineering Streams overlap into a specialised STEM course.
Danni next door hacks J.Deere software and runs an agronomy consulting group with web prescence.
Joy left running a heavy industry electrical contract company behind after selling it and now runs a GIS consulting group.
I'm guessing it's you and where you are - in this part of the world there are plenty of women into tech.
This doesn't in any way negate the existence of a mean difference between groups. In the real world innate sex differences are a fact of life.
That's the whole point of the paper attached to this thread.
Egalitarians believe that society would be better off if we made all efforts to flatten these differences out or ignore them. This is an article of faith, that is in no way reflected in the real world.
You can't prove any of these things. They are dogmatic assertions
I'm not advocating you change wherever you're at, I'm just delighted that where I am women drive road trains & haul paks, design ships, wire buildings, advance astrophyysics, etc (and, for that matter, so do the men).
It certainly makes your bemoaning "have you tried talking to women about tech?" a non issue hereabouts.
If you're happy with your bit of "the real world" (ie. a subset of the actual real world) then good on you, go forth and enjoy - and perhaps bemoan less.
Of course there are local differences which is why these need to be normalized with a population-wide sample. In that case, sex differences present themselves clearly.
As the article states, surprise surprise, on average compared to men, women are more interested in people than things.
Differences by country and culture - the reason why are the interesting questions.
> these need to be normalized with a population-wide sample.
Need to be?
The US (for example) has a large population ( ~360 mill ) with a poor system of government and an excess of hold over odd little religious groups (and home grown product like Mormons, etc).
Other countries have smaller populations (eg 25 million here), better more responsive system of government with better oversight, better education, better health, etc.
I see no benefit in being blended in with a bloated mass of objectively worse and dragged down to US levels.
You can be right that it's common to see and still wrong that it's an innate part of being a woman.
It's not "an innate part of being a woman".
It's an innate part of being human.
Last I checked, around 2% of people go into tech. That means that 98% of all people prefer something else.
Is there something wrong with them that needs explaining? Don't think so.
Is there something wrong with society because these 98% of people enjoy something else more? I don't think so.
Who made the 2% of people who like being in tech the standard? So that any deviation from this standard must be explained by ... evil forces? Genetics?
Is there something wrong with the 2% of people who do enjoy going into tech because 98% of people do not? I don't think so.
Now the genders skew slightly differently, for men it's more like 97% prefer to do something else, and with women it's 99% who prefer to do something else. So what? Let people do what they want to do.
That's the point I am making. My point is not that everyone should be in tech, my point is that there is a disparity and if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be.
> Now the genders skew slightly differently, for men it's more like 97% prefer to do something else, and with women it's 99% who prefer to do something else. So what? Let people do what they want to do.
That is exactly what I want, for people do to what they want, but one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to. I am frankly disappointed that this has to be spelled out, that is surprising for this forum.
Incorrect assumption. Everyone is obviously not equal.
For example: 2% of people like tech enough to work there, 98% do not. These two groups are obviously not equal.
> but one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to
What evidence do you have for this "systematic discouragement"? Of the 98% of people who do not go into tech? How so?
I was quoting you. There are some practical differences obviously, but I don't believe any of them should mean women are less inclined to enjoy technical jobs.
> What evidence do you have for this "systematic discouragement"? Of the 98% of people who do not go into tech? How so?
Speak to women who are in tech, ask them what their experience was like. I haven't got any studies for you I'm afraid, it would seem we're debating in experiences so I don't think this will be constructive.
No you were not. I did not write "everyone is equal" anywhere in the post you responded to. In fact, I neither wrote 'everyone' nor 'equal'.
> Speak to women who are in tech, ask them what their experience was like.
Anecdote ≠ data and is not evidence for anything "systematic".
> I haven't got any studies for you I'm afraid
Because there aren't any that show this, because it's not an actual thing.
> we're debating in experiences
I am debating facts, you are debating what appear to be anecdotal experiences and subjective evaluations of those experiences from which you then extrapolate mightily.
If I told you what my experience has been in tech, you probably wouldn't believe me. And if I were to present my personal experience as that of a woman, you would think it proof for the systematic discrimination against women in tech. Except that it isn't, of course, because it all happened to a man.
Anyway, people have studied this empirically, and this is what they found:
"Our early analysis suggests that men and women actually appear to leave engineering at roughly the same rate and endorse the same reasons for leaving."
https://sites.uwm.edu/nsfpower/gears/
And of course this is why "just ask <group x>" is not a valid method for ascertaining discriminatory practice. You also have to ask other groups to see if the practices differ based on what group you belong to.
In tech, they don't. In fact, women in tech generally report slightly better treatment than men do (different survey). Tech is a shit show for everyone.
A very well-compensated shit-show, mind you.
(And since men are und greater pressure to earn, they are probably also more likely to tolerate a shit show if the pay is good).
Yes but why do you assume that? What if your assumption is wrong, as the above study shows? Then the disparity would be explained simply by the natural proclivities of different groups of people.
> one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to
Again this in another article of faith.
Notice how feminists always use the passive voice: women are "discouraged", not "these specific people are conspiring to discourage women for this specific reason".
It's a motte-and-bailey trick to prevent anyone being able to call out their nonsense claims.
Why does anyone want to discourage women from going into tech? My own daughter shows some interest in these things. Perhaps she will enter the field - or perhaps she'd prefer something else. I don't mind. She should do whatever would make her happy.
It just turns out that women on average are slightly more likely to choose something else than man are.
Yeah, that one took me a while to figure out, but once you notice it you see how pervasive this trick is.
For me, it was the thing about women doing more housework in relationships. Or rather "women are required to do more housework". But it wasn't actually their partners requiring this. Men generally don't give a crap, and this doesn't really change whether they are in a relationship or not.
"But women are held to a higher standard". Ah, the passive to the rescue! But by who? Again, men don't give a crap. Well, it turns out that it is women holding each other to higher standards, more or less exclusively. But "women are oppressing each other" just doesn't have the same ring to it...
> "these specific people are conspiring to discourage women for this specific reason".
Turns out there actually are people making that claim. Can't find the actual text right now (it was a PhD thesis turned into a book, IIRC), and it claimed that the move to make CS more like engineering was a cabal of men in CS trying to kick the women out.
The mind boggles.
> Why does anyone want to discourage women from going into tech?
Exactly. No one, that's who. And in fact, if you look around, you see tons and tons of encouragement, special events, special courses, special bootcamps etc. A recruiter here in Europe recently told me she has to get approval from US headquarters if she wants to suggest a straight white male for a role (although that was senior executive recruiting, not tech).
That is indeed an article faith - one that is disproven in reality
Sex differences manifest more strongly in more egalitarian countries:
I think it does add a lot of weight. Certainly it casts doubt to the idea that you could observe a primitive hunter gatherer society to rule out any kind of cultural bias.
> It would be a problem for upbringing is that is something adults have agency over. It's a bias that may not need to exist.
This is just restating the assumption. Why is that bad? Culture causes an innumerable number of "biases" to exist, not just between different sexes either. Would there be a problem if people living in one state liked country music and in another liked rap? Should such a learned bias be stamped out? How about pizza vs hot dogs?
> A great example of that is when women were highly represented in computer science as it was initially becoming a field of study, but later got pushed out by boys who'd had technical skills nurtured in them when they were young while the girls did not. Oversimplifying that a little bit, but most of us have experienced it or seen it in action.
I've never heard of it before and I'm skeptical it's true, so I don't know how great the example really is. But let's set that aside for a minute and think about it if it was true it's not a case of a learned cultural personal preference by the women, it was that they got "pushed out". That is the problem.
But that's really besides the point here I think. I don't see why you go to a different situation to claim this one is bad. Because we have the actual at hand, which is that women like working with people and men like working with things. I'm asking specifically why that would be bad, not whether there are any aspects of culture and learned behavior that could be bad (certainly there are many examples that can easily be argued are bad, and many others could be argued are good).
Why do female chimpanzees prefer to play with human dolls more than male chimpanzees if it's not a DEEP GENETIC DRIVE?
On one single occasion, some female chimps were observed carrying some logs and "slapping" them. This was interpreted as playing with dolls and then it was all over the news that female chimps play with dolls.[2]
Humans aren't the only primates with culture. Chimp behaviour varies significantly according to the culture they are in, just like human behaviour does.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6387611.stm
[2]https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(10)...