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Comment by schemester | Hacker News Reader

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726973 and marked it off topic.

Please don't post flamebait like this on HN. I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45729503

I’m not sure why you would think the “top N” of any given field would be men. There aren’t more men than women overall, and men aren’t inherently any smarter or more talented. If you’ve only ever worked in tech, though, maybe you have a skewed perspective.

Some traits are more variable in men. So there are more men at the top and bottom of the distribution. But not enough to explain 80% men in a field as large as computer science.[1]

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

> Almost always when you take the top N of something, there is a higher proportion of males than the general set of participants.

Try to support this with data and you run into some real messy analysis: in a few cases where testosterone matters such as sports or hand grip strength, this is true and there’s a well-understood biological explanation for it. In most other cases, however, there isn’t a known mechanism and the data usually has shifts over time which strongly suggest that it’s either an issue with data collection or learned behavior (e.g. the famed engineer gender gap showing very different results in former communist countries where girls were socially encouraged to strive for those jobs).

Programming is a complex intellectual activity so it’s pretty clear that not only is there not a simple biological factor but there isn’t even a single test which would allow for there to be one. People have a wide range of skills used to find success in different areas and even if some of the low-level cognitive skills that have been speculated about such as ability to rotate 3-D shapes turned out to have a genetic component, that would be shown with something like a gender bias in people writing simulation or game engines rather than across the board.

Lastly, even if there was a proven biological link between gender and peak performance, we haven’t established that Pycon talk slots only go to the top 1% performers on such a narrow metric. I don’t think even the angriest internet dudes try to make that claim, and once you’re saying something isn’t Olympic Games-level elite you’re saying there are a ton of women who perform just as well as the median man giving a conference talk.

> Programming is a complex intellectual activity so it’s pretty clear that not only is there not a simple biological factor but there isn’t even a single test which would allow for there to be one. People have a wide range of skills used to find success in different areas and even if some of the low-level cognitive skills that have been speculated about such as ability to rotate 3-D shapes turned out to have a genetic component, that would be shown with something like a gender bias in people writing simulation or game engines rather than across the board

CS/EE as a field is about 80% male, depending on the year

When the pipeline is that thin, it’s hard to get an equal outcome at the professional level

I definitely agree it’s a problem. I haven’t seen any evidence supporting the idea that it’s innate rather than social in origin. Human neuroplasticity is our species’ big defining trait so it seems far more likely that we have a complex mix of feedback loops based on socialization.

I'm not sure its really a "problem". Why does everything have to be 50/50 ?

Exactly 50:50 doesn’t need to be the target but when you’re talking 80:20 on a large, lucrative field it’s more likely that there are interested people being deterred rather than just lack of interest. There certainly are many reports of social pressure supporting that conclusion as well, which is why many people want to make it more welcoming.

i have no take on this comment, but i like the model in this paper for considering whether it could be possible or appropriate wrt different levels of vetting:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.03533

Misunderstanding the GP. Possibly deliberately?

In the parent’s view, the top N% is fixed.

In the GP’s view, it’s the top N% of the applicant pool, so a more diverse applicant pool leads to more diverse talks.

Talk selection is blind (per GP), so the increasing % of female-led talks is evidence for the GP viewpoint. If the Parent view were correct, the same 98% male talks would be selected because they are “objectively better” than the lower-quality female-led talks that are bulking up the applicant pool.

I have not verified the claim about talk selection being blinded. A source (or contradicting source) would be welcome.

th asserts “If 500 people submit talks and 394 are men, then ~79% will likely be by men.”

I didn’t misunderstand. That is simply nonsense.

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