The Google Firing

[fil]

Yes, the huge gender imbalance.

That evidence is rather thin. What distinguishes this gender imbalance from others or are all indicative of sexism?

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

So veterinary medicine is way more sexist than tech then?

 

[Schpyder]

Yes, the huge gender imbalance.

That evidence is rather thin. What distinguishes this gender imbalance from others or are all indicative of sexism?

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

So veterinary medicine is way more sexist than tech then?

The field itself may not be, but the gender imbalance therein is almost certainly due to sexism.

 

[Jehos]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it. Your argument would make more sense if programming were like garbage collecting, or coal mining, or assembly line work, where hours worked = productivity. It's not.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

 

[Solomonoff's Secret]

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

That's a fine default but you should be aware of the dearth of evidence and update off of a weak prior in light of new evidence.

 

[fil]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

 

[Jehos]

Yes, the huge gender imbalance.

That evidence is rather thin. What distinguishes this gender imbalance from others or are all indicative of sexism?

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

So veterinary medicine is way more sexist than tech then?

So to be clear, which gender imbalance are you using? The historical male domination of the job or the female domination of the education pipeline?

 

[fil]

So to be clear, which gender imbalance are you using? The historical male domination of the job or the female domination of the education pipeline?

Females dominate the job (2016 US numbers are 63,857 female, 43,996 male) and overwhelmingly dominate the pipeline (current students are 80.5% female, 19.5% male). And the numbers keep skewing further and further female each year.
https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/Stati ... rians.aspx
http://news.vin.com/vinnews.aspx?articleId=44613

Edit: Yes, and when considering gender imbalance, I would tend to emphasize the last 10 years or so of grads. Looking at older than that you're looking at the situation in a previous generation, not now. Last 10 years, veterinary medicine is over 75% female, pushing toward 80%.

 

[Me I'm Counting]

Relevant study from the NIH:

Veterinary medicine, previously a male-dominated profession, has experienced a significant increase in the number of women studying at veterinary colleges and practising in all fields of the profession. In Canada, and in the United States, women constitute approximately 80% of the veterinary college student population. Forty-three percent of practising veterinarians in Canada are now female, and women are predicted to represent the majority of the veterinary profession by 2007 (1).

Men are not applying for admission to veterinary colleges to the same extent as women. In the United States, men constituted 44% of the applicant pool in 1985, but only 28% of the applicant pool in 1999 (2). Canada has experienced a similar gender shift in its veterinary student applicant pool. The reasons for the relative decline in the attractiveness of the veterinary profession for male applicants, and the increased attractiveness of the profession for women, are speculative.

Explanations that have been put forward for the feminization of the veterinary profession include the following: (1) elimination of discrimination at admission based on gender; (2) improvement in chemical restraint for large animals; (3) an increase in the number of female role models, especially in physically challenging aspects of the profession; and (4) the caring image of veterinarians portrayed in books and on television (2,3).

The decreased interest of men in veterinary medicine has been attributed to: (1) the reluctance of men to enter careers with low or stagnant incomes (the case in veterinary medicine for some time); (2) loss of autonomy in the profession (associated with the proliferation of corporate practices in the United States and a general decrease in the number of practice owners relative to employed veterinarians); and (3) a “trend effect” (as more women enter the veterinary profession, it decreases the profession prestige as a male occupation) (2,3).

In an Australian study of veterinary students and recent graduates, the factors that influenced selection of veterinary medicine as a career were generally the same for both genders, but some differences did come to light (4). Factors that were of more importance in influencing males to study veterinary medicine were a desire to be independent of supervision and the financial attractiveness of veterinary practice. Factors that were of more importance to females in choosing a career in veterinary medicine included a love of animals, the image of veterinarians portrayed on television, an interest as a child in living things, and the scientific study of disease.

Is there a problem with the veterinary profession becoming feminized? Some say it will lead to declining veterinary incomes and the establishment of practices primarily centered on small animals. Others have expressed the concern that women will not participate fully in professional life, including practice ownership. Perhaps men will exclude veterinary medicine as a career choice with increasing frequency, as has been the case in the nursing profession.

Studies conducted in the United States provide some evidence that feminization has affected the economic well-being of the profession (5,6). Veterinary incomes of women in the United States (and Canada) lag behind those of men, and the income of men in the profession is already less than optimal. In the United States, women continue to accept lower salaries than men. This may affect the incomes of all veterinarians, based on the theory that low incomes usually become the measuring point for all incomes. Women (as a group) appear not to place income high enough on their list of expectations and express satisfaction with much lower salaries than do men (7). It has also been suggested that women in general judge their career satisfaction less by objective criteria (salary) than by subjective criteria, such as relationships with colleagues, staff, and clients.

Decreased participation of recent veterinary graduates in food animal practice has been hotly debated. One of the reasons proposed for this is the large proportion of women now graduating from veterinary colleges. Results of a 2001 American Veterinary Medical Association survey tend to support this contention (8). Only 4% of female veterinary graduates of the class of 2001 in the United States entered “large animal exclusive” or “large animal predominant” practice compared with 13% of male graduates. In contrast, 56% of 2001 female veterinary graduates entered “companion animal exclusive” or “companion animal predominant” practice versus only 40% of male graduates.

Authors of an American study asked early new graduates about practice ownership and discovered that the majority (86% of men and 71% of women) were interested in owning a practice (5,7). However, the study also demonstrated that over time, the desire for practice ownership decreased, particularly among women. Only 38% of established female veterinarians, compared with 61% of established male veterinarians, desired practice ownership.

The veterinary profession has undergone dramatic feminization and this trend is likely to continue. Men, in general, appear to have been discouraged from considering the profession as a career choice, and this has resulted in a lack of diversity. The feminization of veterinary medicine has also changed the profession in other ways. Many of these changes are desirable, others may be less so. The caring and nurturing aspects of the veterinary profession may have been enhanced, but income may have been compromised, there may be less interest in practice ownership, and fewer graduates may be entering large animal practice.

The challenges to the profession are to improve the business acumen of all veterinarians, including women, to encourage practice ownership; to encourage entry into food animal practice; and to increase the attractiveness of veterinary medicine as a career choice for men.

Their conclusions seem pretty uncontroversial to me.

 

[YourHero]

Yes, the huge gender imbalance.

That evidence is rather thin. What distinguishes this gender imbalance from others or are all indicative of sexism?

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

So veterinary medicine is way more sexist than tech then?

It is a dumb metric, and an even dumber standard of evidence. This dogma is basically a self licking ice cream cone; it creates Damores, which we get to tar, which creates more, which we get to tar. With the added bonus of being able to label sympathizers, which as luck would have it we get to tar.

 

[fil]

Me, I'm Counting[/url]"]Relevant study from the NIH:

That study is useful, but 14 years old, and things are much more skewed now. See my post above yours for more up to date numbers.

Perhaps relevant to this thread is that it notes preference seems to be the reason for the massive gender imbalance (with men emphasizing economic opportunity, which is arguably greater in related fields like human medicine or the pharmaceutical industry, while women emphasized other sorts of preferences more.)

 

[RisingTide]

Damore keeps doubling-down this crap, too -- recently comparing the proposition that women can be successful engineers to "assum[ing] that Santa Claus is real."

https://twitter.com/Fired4Truth/status/899319849297494016

Don't be disingenuous, that's obviously a misread of what he said. His thesis was that certain diversity programs were pointless, largely because of women's preference. That is the most reasonable candidate for what he believes those programs are wrongly assuming.

Yeah, but even if we accept the premise that these intrinsic "preferences" are a) legitimate and b) meaningful, I'm not sure we are even remotely near the point where such "preferences" are the only (or even a primary) reason we don't see more women in leadership roles in technology (or in business generally)

On this I agree 100%. This guy would be a non-issue if this was the only thing that is going on in this thread.

The thing I disagree with is the need to be disingenuous. The Streisand effect.

While that is probably the right response to the underlying premise of his "argument", I don't think it's entirely disingenuous at all for to suggest he's an asshat who deserved to be fired and call him out for his bullshit. I say that even if I were to accept his underlying premise that these so-called preferences are even a) legitimate and b) meaningful - I don't think science is nearly as settled on this matter as he suggests, and even if it were, we are so far from having it be the only casual factor that bringing it up is just some ham-fisted attempt at concern trolling ("I'm not really against diversity, I'm just saying what the science is and asking questions").

But even beyond that, you can't write stuff like his memo in a company of any sort (never mind one that prides itself on advancing the cause of diversity in the workplace), distribute it widely, and a) expect no consequences, and b) put yourself up as some sort of martyr (see his "Goolag" tshirt and his "fired4truth") when those consequences come down. Were he truly trying to have a real discussion about these issues, he wouldn't have aired his views the way he did, nor done what he did once he was fired.

 

[Horatio]

Seems clear you don't have much interest in the issues being discussed then. Why should only your personal field be relevant?

The topic is tech and I have plenty of interest (and experience) there, I could not care less about veterinarians and whatever else you've been going on about. If it is an area of interest for you, by all means, keep posting about it and I'll keep giving it the attention it deserves. Or to put it the "right" way

SELECT * from Fucks
WHERE AvailableToGive <> 0;

>>> No Rows Returned

There's an underlying assumption in almost all the discussion here that tech jobs are some kind of big prize, and anyone would be crazy not to want them. It seems anathema for many here to even consider an alternative view.

Ok, are you saying that whether or not one considers working for Google a gendered preference?

That depends very much on your metric. When you consider associated cost of living, time wasted commuting, hours worked, work environment, stress, work-life balance etc, it's pretty easy for people smart enough to get those kind of jobs (these people have lots of options, especially if they have any social skills whatsoever) to decide they'd rather do something else. What you're left with are people who really like that kind of stuff, or who think it's critical for them to emigrate to the US, or who simply don't have sufficient social skills for many other lines of work.

Yeah, Big 4 tech jobs aren't for everyone, sure. However, you said that a lot of programming jobs are crappy jobs, and that's untrue for companies like Google. At Google, if you don't like what you're doing, you can do something else. Occasionally you'll get pinged to try something else so you don't get stuck in a local maxima too. The Big 4 isn't some sort of programmer utopia or anything, but they are markedly different from the average companies that hire programmers.

 

[Me I'm Counting]

Relevant study from the NIH:

That study is useful, but 14 years old, and things are much more skewed now. See my post above yours for more up to date numbers.

Perhaps relevant to this thread is that it notes preference seems to be the reason for the massive gender imbalance (with men emphasizing economic opportunity, which is arguably greater in related fields like human medicine or the pharmaceutical industry, while women emphasized other sorts of preferences more.)

The trend continued to develop, but if there was any merit to their conclusions, they would just further reinforce the difference.

Men emphasizing economic opportunity was hardly the only thing relevant to the thread. Of interest in my opinion were:
1) Success of program to remove discrimination based on gender for women
2) The loss of prestige associated with the occupation as it became more mixed (so, sexism is partially depressing men's interest in the field.

 

[fil]

Seems clear you don't have much interest in the issues being discussed then. Why should only your personal field be relevant?

The topic is tech and I have plenty of interest (and experience) there, I could not care less about veterinarians and whatever else you've been going on about. If it is an area of interest for you, by all means, keep posting about it and I'll keep giving it the attention it deserves. Or to put it the "right" way

Well, to try to put it in techie terms for you:
You've expressed a lot of interest in the fraction of women over men (let's call that f) in the tech industry (call that f_tech).

But f_tech doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's subject to a number of constraints. An obvious one is that the weighted average of f across all US jobs, <f>, must equal the fraction of women in the US workforce, which is about 0.47 (https://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/qf-laborforce-10.htm).

So, <f>= (N_tech*f_tech + N_science*f_science + N_dvm*f_dvm + ....)/N_tot = 0.47

There exist a number of professions, like veterinary medicine, psychology etc, where f >> 0.5. Looking at these cases is (arguably at least) less politically charged, and the general consensus seems to be that these fields are dominantly female largely due to preferences (with re-inforcement from collective effects etc).

Since there are a bunch of areas where f>> 0.5 (apparently due to preference), simple math tells us that the rest of the areas, where there isn't such a preference, must have on average f significantly less than 0.47. One might speculate that preferences in the other direction would lead to some areas where f is quite small indeed (just as there are others where f is very large).

None of that means that sexism in the tech industry isn't itself a big problem - there are lots of indications that it is. But saying you're interested in f_tech but don't care anything about the rest of the equation is like saying you care about the value of X but don't care that X+Y=10 and X-Y=6.

There's an underlying assumption in almost all the discussion here that tech jobs are some kind of big prize, and anyone would be crazy not to want them. It seems anathema for many here to even consider an alternative view.

Ok, are you saying that whether or not one considers working for Google a gendered preference?

I don't know that it's gendered, but it's certainly subject to what one values in a job.

That depends very much on your metric. When you consider associated cost of living, time wasted commuting, hours worked, work environment, stress, work-life balance etc, it's pretty easy for people smart enough to get those kind of jobs (these people have lots of options, especially if they have any social skills whatsoever) to decide they'd rather do something else. What you're left with are people who really like that kind of stuff, or who think it's critical for them to emigrate to the US, or who simply don't have sufficient social skills for many other lines of work.

Yeah, Big 4 tech jobs aren't for everyone, sure. However, you said that a lot of programming jobs are crappy jobs, and that's untrue for companies like Google. At Google, if you don't like what you're doing, you can do something else. Occasionally you'll get pinged to try something else so you don't get stuck in a local maxima too. The Big 4 isn't some sort of programmer utopia or anything, but they are markedly different from the average companies that hire programmers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you (and many others here) like your tech job. But I'll bet if you think back on it, you can remember a lot of folks who burned out early on jobs at places like Google and moved on to do other things (maybe even teaching). There are also a ton of folks who you're not familiar with who are quite capable of doing such jobs but simply chose a different direction - the reality is that people smart enough to get jobs at places like Google have lots of choices in careers (particularly if they have some social skills) and lots of them vote with their feet to do something else. This is one of the key reasons why companies like Google have to import so much of their workforce.

 

[fil]

Relevant study from the NIH:

That study is useful, but 14 years old, and things are much more skewed now. See my post above yours for more up to date numbers.

Perhaps relevant to this thread is that it notes preference seems to be the reason for the massive gender imbalance (with men emphasizing economic opportunity, which is arguably greater in related fields like human medicine or the pharmaceutical industry, while women emphasized other sorts of preferences more.)

The trend continued to develop, but if there was any merit to their conclusions, they would just further reinforce the difference.

Men emphasizing economic opportunity was hardly the only thing relevant to the thread. Of interest in my opinion were:
1) Success of program to remove discrimination based on gender for women

Well, that depends on the metric for success. If one's metric for success is that expressed by several people in this thread, that the male:female ratio should be close to 50:50, then it's a miserable failure, as the ratio of recent grads is now 4:1.

2) The loss of prestige associated with the occupation as it became more mixed (so, sexism is partially depressing men's interest in the field.

The corporatization of vet clinics was already well underway before the shift to a majority female workforce. But yes, it does seem like the study is suggesting that women caring less about salary (and potentially lucrative, but exhausting and risky, ventures such as owning ones own practice) than other aspects of the job is depressing salaries for everyone in the field (female and male).

 

[shakenmartini]

blah, blah, blah, blah.. Mansplaining why it isn't sexism.

Fucking hell.

Until we deal with all this (as a quick example) all that you posted above is irrelevant bullshit. The problem and solutions are well known

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/ ... t-they-age

http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/ ... en-science

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389

All of these resources...

http://www.aauw.org/resources/by-type/reports/

Digested, referenced to the primary literature and laid out in excruciating detail including evidence based solutions that are known to work

http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/Why-S ... matics.pdf

Popular media reporting

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... en/517788/

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-so-m ... men-2017-7

Here you can see the leaky pipeline in action on a field-by-field basis. Guess what? Some fields are shitty to women and minorities and others are not. Guess which one Google (et al.) fall into.

https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17310/

Simple solutions and a well-referenced report, and *why* diversity matters (as if the above didn't already address this)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5008897/

And more

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK83370/

From experts at UC Davis

http://ucd-advance.ucdavis.edu/national-stem-statistics

 

[hawkbox]

Yes, the huge gender imbalance.

That evidence is rather thin. What distinguishes this gender imbalance from others or are all indicative of sexism?

Gender imbalances are indicative of sexism until proven otherwise.

So veterinary medicine is way more sexist than tech then?

So to be clear, which gender imbalance are you using? The historical male domination of the job or the female domination of the education pipeline?

Whichever suits his argument at the moment.

 

[fil]

blah, blah, blah, blah.. Mansplaining why it isn't sexism.

It's Womansplaining, to put it in your silly terms. I was talking about Veterinary medicine, which is 80% female amongst recent grads. And referring to research primarily by women about why the field is so female dominated and what the implications of that have been.

If you think women are stupid for wanting to be veterinarians, just come out and say so. Better yet, tell them to their faces how you know so much better than they do what's good for them. Hint: you're the mansplainer, you're the one who belittles women's choices and thinks you know better than they do what's good for them. And if you really think it's sexism that's leading to such low male representation amongst DVMs, go ahead and explain why you think so.

[Hint #2: the existence of highly problematic sexism in the tech industry isn't under dispute, of course it's a problem. Try reading before barfing out your canned response.]

 

[Matisaro]

[Hint #2: the existence of highly problematic sexism in the tech industry isn't under dispute, of course it's a problem. Try reading before barfing out your canned response.]

Maybe you should read the well thought out and highly cited "canned response" before coming back for more.

 

[fil]

[Hint #2: the existence of highly problematic sexism in the tech industry isn't under dispute, of course it's a problem. Try reading before barfing out your canned response.]

Maybe you should read the well thought out and highly cited "canned response" before coming back for more.

I've read much of that and quite a bit more on the topic, and volunteered a good bit of time working to address the issues under discussion in them. You might want to check your knee-jerk assumptions and read what was actually written. The desire of this thread (and most popular discussions on such topics) to have everything be black and white, either 100% due to a particular effect or 0%, is a trap people have to find a way out of if they want to be able to engage in a scientific discussion.

 

[Matisaro]

I've read much of that and quite a bit more on the topic, and volunteered a good bit of time working to address the issues under discussion in them. You might want to check your knee-jerk assumptions and read what was actually written. The desire of this thread (and most popular discussions on such topics) to have everything be black and white, either 100% due to a particular effect or 0%, is a trap people have to find a way out of if they want to be able to engage in a scientific discussion.

Not at all. The main thrust of those who are arguing against you is that while we have dozens of real systemic things preventing equality it is a waste of time and indeed in many cases diversionary to talk about the comparative tiny effects of these biological causes.

It is as if the wright brothers are discussing how to get their plane flying and one of them wants to focus on the dark paint on their wheels causing 1% more friction instead of the wings...counterproductive.

 

[HPJ]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

The increase in women in the field of veterinary medicine is a picture perfect example of how gender stereotypes and cultural bias can so quickly and readily skew diversity in career choice. Very recently veterinary medicine has become a "women's job" like nursing or primary school education and so now men are simply not entering the field anymore. The same types of cultural and societal pressures that limit women in tech are steering men out of veterinary medicine. AFAIK, there are no compelling reasons why veterinary medicine ought to be dominated by women. Are women claiming men aren't pursuing veterinary medicine because of innate gender differences (which would be difficult given the recent demographics in the field)? Pernicious ideas about what is masculine and feminine are the cause of the problems in both the programming and veterinary medicine fields. The big difference is that there are some men (like Damore) are making well publicized post hoc rationalizations about why women don't want to enter into tech or programming careers.

 

[shakenmartini]

blah, blah, blah, blah.. Mansplaining why it isn't sexism.

It's Womansplaining, to put it in your silly terms. I was talking about Veterinary medicine, which is 80% female amongst recent grads. And referring to research primarily by women about why the field is so female dominated and what the implications of that have been.

If you think women are stupid for wanting to be veterinarians, just come out and say so. Better yet, tell them to their faces how you know so much better than they do what's good for them. Hint: you're the mansplainer, you're the one who belittles women's choices and thinks you know better than they do what's good for them. And if you really think it's sexism that's leading to such low male representation amongst DVMs, go ahead and explain why you think so.

[Hint #2: the existence of highly problematic sexism in the tech industry isn't under dispute, of course it's a problem. Try reading before barfing out your canned response.]

So what is your point then? Who cares if vet med is 80% female?

All of your arguments are a red herring. The links above address why your arguments are a red herring. The goal is not "50%", or "80%" or whatever number. The goal is for people in certain STEM professions to stop being fucking sexist and racist.

"But I was just questioning *why* vet med might be 80% female due to [reasons]".

Bullshit. As I posted above, we know what the problem is. Silicon Valley is the *worst* of the *worst* in terms of sexism and racism. Academia in certain STEM fields is pretty bad too.

If anything, vet med tells us that when we stop being sexists that there are a lot of women out there that are interested in STEM. Same is true in biology where female participation is probably well above 50%. I don't want to hear some bullshit about how vet med is a soft science and being a code jockey is "hard". Getting into vet school is harder than medical school. You have to be the top of your game to get in. Including understand a lot more science (including math) than you need to program in python all day. Getting into vet school is hard, the fact that women are competing and succeeding in an elite STEM field that has broken down most of its sexism barriers says a lot about other fields, engineering in particular (but not limited to).

 

[shakenmartini]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

The increase in women in the field of veterinary medicine is a picture perfect example of how gender stereotypes and cultural bias can so quickly and readily skew diversity in career choice. Very recently veterinary medicine has become a "women's job" like nursing or primary school education and so now men are simply not entering the field anymore. The same types of cultural and societal pressures that limit women in tech are steering men out of veterinary medicine. AFAIK, there are no compelling reasons why veterinary medicine ought to be dominated by women. Are women claiming men aren't pursuing veterinary medicine because of innate gender differences (which would be difficult given the recent demographics in the field)? Pernicious ideas about what is masculine and feminine are the cause of the problems in both the programming and veterinary medicine fields. The big difference is that there are some men (like Damore) are making well publicized post hoc rationalizations about why women don't want to enter into tech or programming careers.

I don't have time to look up studies. However. Getting into vet school is much harder than medical school. Careers in vet med are also much more friendly to women that medical school by a long shot.

I have a funny suspicion that the reason men are less represented is that vet med is seen by students as an elite STEM field that does not have all the issues with sexism that other fields do. So our best and brightest women are instead competing for vet school that will result in a career where they will experience much less sexism than working at Google or in engineering. It also pays pretty well too.

So the effect of reducing/eliminating sexism in vet med is that all of our brightest women in STEM flock to that career thereby out competing men.

If all STEM fields were to eliminate sexism, it would not surprise me to see STEM fields even out across the board. The problem is that only a few STEM fields have reduced/eliminated sexism, and those fields are seeing massive increases in the participation of women. Those that have not, still have issues attracting women. I don't blame them either. This is a 20+ page explaining to men that it isn't ok to be sexist. Women in fields with lots of sexism have to do this every day so it is no wonder they find rewarding careers where they don't have to do this.

 

[HPJ]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

The increase in women in the field of veterinary medicine is a picture perfect example of how gender stereotypes and cultural bias can so quickly and readily skew diversity in career choice. Very recently veterinary medicine has become a "women's job" like nursing or primary school education and so now men are simply not entering the field anymore. The same types of cultural and societal pressures that limit women in tech are steering men out of veterinary medicine. AFAIK, there are no compelling reasons why veterinary medicine ought to be dominated by women. Are women claiming men aren't pursuing veterinary medicine because of innate gender differences (which would be difficult given the recent demographics in the field)? Pernicious ideas about what is masculine and feminine are the cause of the problems in both the programming and veterinary medicine fields. The big difference is that there are some men (like Damore) are making well publicized post hoc rationalizations about why women don't want to enter into tech or programming careers.

I don't have time to look up studies. However. Getting into vet school is much harder than medical school. Careers in vet med are also much more friendly to women that medical school by a long shot.

I have a funny suspicion that the reason men are less represented is that vet med is seen by students as an elite STEM field that does not have all the issues with sexism that other fields do. So our best and brightest women are instead competing for vet school that will result in a career where they will experience much less sexism than working at Google or in engineering. It also pays pretty well too.

So the effect of reducing/eliminating sexism in vet med is that all of our brightest women in STEM flock to that career thereby out competing men.

If all STEM fields were to eliminate sexism, it would not surprise me to see STEM fields even out across the board. The problem is that only a few STEM fields have reduced/eliminated sexism, and those fields are seeing massive increases in the participation of women. Those that have not, still have issues attracting women. I don't blame them either. This is a 20+ page explaining to men that it isn't ok to be sexist. Women in fields with lots of sexism have to do this every day so it is no wonder they find rewarding careers where they don't have to do this.

I don't have time to look up your study either :-(

The main skew in veterinary medicine is that fewer men are applying to veterinary school. your reasons may relate to why additional women may apply to vet school, but doesn't seem to be able to address why have men stopped applying? Women are not out-competing men for vet school acceptance letters, men are choosing not to compete for those spots.



edit to add interesting link:
"Feminization of the veterinary profession has been fueled more by lower rates of college graduation among men and their aversion to female students than women being attracted to the field, Lincoln says."

and this one, though we can only see the abstract:
"feminization is driven by the decline in men's college graduation and their avoidance of fields dominated by women."

 

[Me I'm Counting]

The earlier study concluded veterinary is being viewed as a woman's job, similar to nursing. Men are less likely to pursue the career as they view it as gendered.

 

[YourHero]

The earlier study concluded veterinary is being viewed as a woman's job, similar to nursing. Men are less likely to pursue the career as they view it as gendered.

I read one that was similar, but added reasons of men having less Bachelors degrees (so less qualified men available to go to vet.), men dropping due to not that many men, and kind of an aside of that men tended to prefer large animal (cows/livestock) medicine which is somewhat in decline.

All of your arguments are a red herring. The links above address why your arguments are a red herring. The goal is not "50%", or "80%" or whatever number. The goal is for people in certain STEM professions to stop being fucking sexist and racist.

That particular argument was in direct response to the notion that non parity proves sexism. It may be a red herring for the issue at large, but not to that particular thought.

 

[Jehos]

Seems clear you don't have much interest in the issues being discussed then. Why should only your personal field be relevant?

The topic is tech and I have plenty of interest (and experience) there, I could not care less about veterinarians and whatever else you've been going on about. If it is an area of interest for you, by all means, keep posting about it and I'll keep giving it the attention it deserves. Or to put it the "right" way

Well, to try to put it in techie terms for you:
You've expressed a lot of interest in the fraction of women over men (let's call that f) in the tech industry (call that f_tech).

But f_tech doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's subject to a number of constraints. An obvious one is that the weighted average of f across all US jobs, <f>, must equal the fraction of women in the US workforce, which is about 0.47 (https://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/qf-laborforce-10.htm).

So, <f>= (N_tech*f_tech + N_science*f_science + N_dvm*f_dvm + ....)/N_tot = 0.47

There exist a number of professions, like veterinary medicine, psychology etc, where f >> 0.5. Looking at these cases is (arguably at least) less politically charged, and the general consensus seems to be that these fields are dominantly female largely due to preferences (with re-inforcement from collective effects etc).

Since there are a bunch of areas where f>> 0.5 (apparently due to preference), simple math tells us that the rest of the areas, where there isn't such a preference, must have on average f significantly less than 0.47. One might speculate that preferences in the other direction would lead to some areas where f is quite small indeed (just as there are others where f is very large).

LOL, that same logic explains that black people don't like living in suburbs with good school districts. It's not white flight, black people just like living in the inner city and sending their kids to poor schools!



Try again, ideally without claiming effects are causes.

 

[shakenmartini]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

The increase in women in the field of veterinary medicine is a picture perfect example of how gender stereotypes and cultural bias can so quickly and readily skew diversity in career choice. Very recently veterinary medicine has become a "women's job" like nursing or primary school education and so now men are simply not entering the field anymore. The same types of cultural and societal pressures that limit women in tech are steering men out of veterinary medicine. AFAIK, there are no compelling reasons why veterinary medicine ought to be dominated by women. Are women claiming men aren't pursuing veterinary medicine because of innate gender differences (which would be difficult given the recent demographics in the field)? Pernicious ideas about what is masculine and feminine are the cause of the problems in both the programming and veterinary medicine fields. The big difference is that there are some men (like Damore) are making well publicized post hoc rationalizations about why women don't want to enter into tech or programming careers.

I don't have time to look up studies. However. Getting into vet school is much harder than medical school. Careers in vet med are also much more friendly to women that medical school by a long shot.

I have a funny suspicion that the reason men are less represented is that vet med is seen by students as an elite STEM field that does not have all the issues with sexism that other fields do. So our best and brightest women are instead competing for vet school that will result in a career where they will experience much less sexism than working at Google or in engineering. It also pays pretty well too.

So the effect of reducing/eliminating sexism in vet med is that all of our brightest women in STEM flock to that career thereby out competing men.

If all STEM fields were to eliminate sexism, it would not surprise me to see STEM fields even out across the board. The problem is that only a few STEM fields have reduced/eliminated sexism, and those fields are seeing massive increases in the participation of women. Those that have not, still have issues attracting women. I don't blame them either. This is a 20+ page explaining to men that it isn't ok to be sexist. Women in fields with lots of sexism have to do this every day so it is no wonder they find rewarding careers where they don't have to do this.

I don't have time to look up your study either :-(

The main skew in veterinary medicine is that fewer men are applying to veterinary school. your reasons may relate to why additional women may apply to vet school, but doesn't seem to be able to address why have men stopped applying? Women are not out-competing men for vet school acceptance letters, men are choosing not to compete for those spots.



edit to add interesting link:
"Feminization of the veterinary profession has been fueled more by lower rates of college graduation among men and their aversion to female students than women being attracted to the field, Lincoln says."

and this one, though we can only see the abstract:
"feminization is driven by the decline in men's college graduation and their avoidance of fields dominated by women."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/206562.php summarizes the primary paper.

"But this study found that men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries, and that what's really driving feminization of the field is what I call 'preemptive flight' - men not applying because of women's increasing enrollment. Also, fewer men than women are graduating with a Bachelor's degree, so they aren't applying because they don't have the prerequisites."

and from your link

Feminization of the veterinary profession has been fueled more by lower rates of college graduation among men and their aversion to female students than women being attracted to the field, Lincoln says.

As a biology faculty that advises women going on to vet school I can anecdotally confirm that men are not qualified for vet school.

UC Davis seems to agree - their data is very similar to ours.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/gender-gap ... versities/

At our program.

The top 10% of our ~2000 students in biology by GPA, is nearly all female. We only have about 30 male students that have a GPA above 3.5. In order to even consider applying to vet school you would need a GPA >3.8. Vet school competition is intense that even that GPA is likely not good enough. If I look at our list of students sorted by GPA, we only have 5 male students out of 2500 with a >3.8 GPA in our biology program.


This is one of the core issues quoted from UC Davis.

However, she found that fields that are dominated by one sex saw the least cross over — men who earned teaching credentials were more likely to do something besides teach, while women were less likely to use degrees in engineering, computer science, math and economics in their work.

[/quote]

 

[fil]

I've read much of that and quite a bit more on the topic, and volunteered a good bit of time working to address the issues under discussion in them. You might want to check your knee-jerk assumptions and read what was actually written. The desire of this thread (and most popular discussions on such topics) to have everything be black and white, either 100% due to a particular effect or 0%, is a trap people have to find a way out of if they want to be able to engage in a scientific discussion.

Not at all. The main thrust of those who are arguing against you

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me. I've seen some strawmaning and repetition of "sexism is bad in tech and that's an important problem we need to solve", not seeming to notice I already said the same thing multiple times, and we all seem to agree about that.

is that while we have dozens of real systemic things preventing equality it is a waste of time and indeed in many cases diversionary to talk about the comparative tiny effects of these biological causes.

It is as if the wright brothers are discussing how to get their plane flying and one of them wants to focus on the dark paint on their wheels causing 1% more friction instead of the wings...counterproductive.

It's a discussion thread. We all (AFAICT) agree that sexism is an important issue, and that it's particularly bad in tech, and we should work against that (and many of us have actually volunteered our time in real life to work against that).

That doesn't mean there aren't other potentially interesting aspects of gender differences in careers that can be discussed. What's annoying about this thread is that anyone who tries to discuss anything that isn't already universally agreed upon, immediately gets piled on with a bunch of responses that essentially say "how dare you discuss anything other than the bit we all already agreed upon. Please repeat it ad nauseam and do not mention anything else." That doesn't make for much of a discussion, and again, it tries to box everything into either 100% effects or 0% effects, which just isn't how science works (particularly not social science).

 

[Jehos]

I've read much of that and quite a bit more on the topic, and volunteered a good bit of time working to address the issues under discussion in them. You might want to check your knee-jerk assumptions and read what was actually written. The desire of this thread (and most popular discussions on such topics) to have everything be black and white, either 100% due to a particular effect or 0%, is a trap people have to find a way out of if they want to be able to engage in a scientific discussion.

Not at all. The main thrust of those who are arguing against you

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me.

Yeah, that's called confirmation bias.

 

[YourHero]

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me. I've seen some strawmaning and repetition of "sexism is bad in tech and that's an important problem we need to solve", not seeming to notice I already said the same thing multiple times, and we all seem to agree about that.

Being called a mansplainer is the argument against you. Your genitals/identity are the first thing to check, because that lends credence to what you are saying or is ammo to not actually have to talk.

That doesn't mean there aren't other potentially interesting aspects of gender differences in careers that can be discussed. What's annoying about this thread is that anyone who tries to discuss anything that isn't already universally agreed upon, immediately gets piled on with a bunch of responses that essentially say "how dare you discuss anything other than the bit we all already agreed upon. Please repeat it ad nauseam and do not mention anything else." That doesn't make for much of a discussion, and again, it tries to box everything into either 100% effects or 0% effects, which just isn't how science works (particularly not social science).

Modern discourse seems to be more like maneuvering to a spot where you can call your opponent a bad person and dismiss them outright.

 

[HPJ]

It's not all carrot and stick for doing the job. Programming jobs pay a lot because software is leverage for companies--they can make more money with it than without it.

Obviously it has value, but if there weren't a shortage of qualified workers, say if the US eliminated visa limits on programmers, salaries would go way down.

There are lots of shit jobs that aren't all that personally fulfilling. Programming pays better than most of them. Is it any surprise that men are trying to keep women out?

Veterinary medicine pays pretty well, many find it very fulfilling, and it used to be utterly male dominated. Why didn't "men try to keep women out" of that (it would've been a lot easier given the relatively small number of vet schools nationwide)?

I do think sexism in tech is a particular problem. But it's not because of some general "men want to keep women out of good jobs". There are plenty of desirable fields that are majority female. Hard to say exactly why tech seems to be more sexist but I'd suggest considering two possibilities, 1) concentration of people with lower than average social skills, 2) concentration of recent immigrants from countries with different views of gender roles.

The increase in women in the field of veterinary medicine is a picture perfect example of how gender stereotypes and cultural bias can so quickly and readily skew diversity in career choice. Very recently veterinary medicine has become a "women's job" like nursing or primary school education and so now men are simply not entering the field anymore. The same types of cultural and societal pressures that limit women in tech are steering men out of veterinary medicine. AFAIK, there are no compelling reasons why veterinary medicine ought to be dominated by women. Are women claiming men aren't pursuing veterinary medicine because of innate gender differences (which would be difficult given the recent demographics in the field)? Pernicious ideas about what is masculine and feminine are the cause of the problems in both the programming and veterinary medicine fields. The big difference is that there are some men (like Damore) are making well publicized post hoc rationalizations about why women don't want to enter into tech or programming careers.

I don't have time to look up studies. However. Getting into vet school is much harder than medical school. Careers in vet med are also much more friendly to women that medical school by a long shot.

I have a funny suspicion that the reason men are less represented is that vet med is seen by students as an elite STEM field that does not have all the issues with sexism that other fields do. So our best and brightest women are instead competing for vet school that will result in a career where they will experience much less sexism than working at Google or in engineering. It also pays pretty well too.

So the effect of reducing/eliminating sexism in vet med is that all of our brightest women in STEM flock to that career thereby out competing men.

If all STEM fields were to eliminate sexism, it would not surprise me to see STEM fields even out across the board. The problem is that only a few STEM fields have reduced/eliminated sexism, and those fields are seeing massive increases in the participation of women. Those that have not, still have issues attracting women. I don't blame them either. This is a 20+ page explaining to men that it isn't ok to be sexist. Women in fields with lots of sexism have to do this every day so it is no wonder they find rewarding careers where they don't have to do this.

I don't have time to look up your study either :-(

The main skew in veterinary medicine is that fewer men are applying to veterinary school. your reasons may relate to why additional women may apply to vet school, but doesn't seem to be able to address why have men stopped applying? Women are not out-competing men for vet school acceptance letters, men are choosing not to compete for those spots.



edit to add interesting link:
"Feminization of the veterinary profession has been fueled more by lower rates of college graduation among men and their aversion to female students than women being attracted to the field, Lincoln says."

and this one, though we can only see the abstract:
"feminization is driven by the decline in men's college graduation and their avoidance of fields dominated by women."

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/206562.php summarizes the primary paper.

"But this study found that men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries, and that what's really driving feminization of the field is what I call 'preemptive flight' - men not applying because of women's increasing enrollment. Also, fewer men than women are graduating with a Bachelor's degree, so they aren't applying because they don't have the prerequisites."

and from your link

Feminization of the veterinary profession has been fueled more by lower rates of college graduation among men and their aversion to female students than women being attracted to the field, Lincoln says.

As a biology faculty that advises women going on to vet school I can anecdotally confirm that men are not qualified for vet school.

UC Davis seems to agree - their data is very similar to ours.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/gender-gap ... versities/

At our program.

The top 10% of our ~2000 students in biology by GPA, is nearly all female. We only have about 30 male students that have a GPA above 3.5. In order to even consider applying to vet school you would need a GPA >3.8. Vet school competition is intense that even that GPA is likely not good enough. If I look at our list of students sorted by GPA, we only have 5 male students out of 2500 with a >3.8 GPA in our biology program.


This is one of the core issues quoted from UC Davis.

However, she found that fields that are dominated by one sex saw the least cross over — men who earned teaching credentials were more likely to do something besides teach, while women were less likely to use degrees in engineering, computer science, math and economics in their work.

I would be very interested if you could point to studies that show the relative enrollment and performance of men and women in biology majors. Especially as regards who is going to medical or veterinary school. I found this interesting piece...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 185937.htm

In some instances it seems men in biology classes think they are doing better than they really are!?

Then there is this from a few years ago where it seems in intro biology classes men were outperforming women

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 171429.htm
https://phys.org/news/2014-09-biology-m ... -gaps.html

Whatever might have been happening at into level classes is reversing by graduation?! Weird. Are men with higher GPAs leaving biology to study other disciplines like engineering?

 

[fil]

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me. I've seen some strawmaning and repetition of "sexism is bad in tech and that's an important problem we need to solve", not seeming to notice I already said the same thing multiple times, and we all seem to agree about that.

Being called a mansplainer is the argument against you.

No, it's both an ad hominem fallacy (the correctness of an argument has nothing to do with the gender of the speaker or listener), and apparently a misunderstanding, since the research being discussed was primarily done by women analyzing a female-dominated field.

That doesn't mean there aren't other potentially interesting aspects of gender differences in careers that can be discussed. What's annoying about this thread is that anyone who tries to discuss anything that isn't already universally agreed upon, immediately gets piled on with a bunch of responses that essentially say "how dare you discuss anything other than the bit we all already agreed upon. Please repeat it ad nauseam and do not mention anything else." That doesn't make for much of a discussion, and again, it tries to box everything into either 100% effects or 0% effects, which just isn't how science works (particularly not social science).

Modern discourse seems to be more like maneuvering to a spot where you can call your opponent a bad person and dismiss them outright.

Yes. It's disappointing to see so much of that here on Ars though. Seems like we used to do better. There are a lot of scientists here, who definitely know better, but even they seem to occasionally fall into this trap.

 

[Megalodon]

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me. I've seen some strawmaning and repetition of "sexism is bad in tech and that's an important problem we need to solve", not seeming to notice I already said the same thing multiple times, and we all seem to agree about that.

Seems more like, there's no convincing evidence biological differences are the major contributor and a lot of convincing evidence addressing very basic, clearly identifiable problems reduces the disparity significantly, so if you're trying to argue biological differences you are necessarily doing so anecdotally. And we know via other research that even performance measurements have bias so the anecdotes are suspect.

That doesn't mean there's no biological difference, but successes in making other fields more balanced, even fields that don't fit the stereotypes like chemistry, suggest the biological differences aren't THAT big.

 

[fil]

LOL, that same logic explains that black people don't like living in suburbs with good school districts. It's not white flight, black people just like living in the inner city and sending their kids to poor schools!

Ah, so your argument is that all male career choices are "correct" choices (like living in the suburbs with good schools), while female choices, to the extent they differ from male choices, must be "incorrect, forced by circumstance" choices like living in a bad neighborhood with bad schools.

I'd encourage you to think that through, and try to see how silly (and sexist) it is. To start, you might note that, to make female demographics line up with male, you'd have to have far more girls drop out of high school, far fewer women go to college, fewer women graduate from college, more women in prison, more women who are murdered, more women who commit suicide, more women who die in accidents, far more women working in the most dangerous careers, and fewer going into careers like biology, psychology, and medicine.

Again, sexism is a huge problem, particularly in tech, and we need to work hard to fix that. But to assume that all male choices are "right" and women's choices should be just like them is just a different form of sexism.

 

[YourHero]

I haven't seen anyone actually argue against me. I've seen some strawmaning and repetition of "sexism is bad in tech and that's an important problem we need to solve", not seeming to notice I already said the same thing multiple times, and we all seem to agree about that.

Being called a mansplainer is the argument against you.

No, it's both an ad hominem fallacy (the correctness of an argument has nothing to do with the gender of the speaker or listener), and apparently a misunderstanding, since the research being discussed was primarily done by women analyzing a female-dominated field.

Agreed. I was being a little snippy with that remark, but it is less to determine the correctness and more to determine the validity of your view. Which is why in the example from before when you switched the genders some people discombobulated.

 

[Jehos]

LOL, that same logic explains that black people don't like living in suburbs with good school districts. It's not white flight, black people just like living in the inner city and sending their kids to poor schools!

Ah, so your argument is that all male career choices are "correct" choices (like living in the suburbs with good schools), while female choices, to the extent they differ from male choices, must be "incorrect, forced by circumstance" choices like living in a bad neighborhood with bad schools.

I'd encourage you to think that through, and try to see how silly (and sexist) it is. To start, you might note that, to make female demographics line up with male, you'd have to have far more girls drop out of high school, far fewer women go to college, fewer women graduate from college, more women in prison, more women who are murdered, more women who commit suicide, more women who die in accidents, far more women working in the most dangerous careers, and fewer going into careers like biology, psychology, and medicine.

Again, sexism is a huge problem, particularly in tech, and we need to work hard to fix that. But to assume that all male choices are "right" and women's choices should be just like them is just a different form of sexism.

LOL, I'm digging the irony of you quoting me out of context when I responded to your bullshit faulty logic and calling my logic faulty.

10/10 for style, although next time I encourage you to retain the context.

Edit: And just to have some more fun with your bullshit logic--you're now effectively trying to claim that there's some other class of decision criteria that women use in their careers that is simultaneously different from the criteria men use and apparently inexplicable by you. This inexplicable decision criteria is somehow making women choose the fields they choose, and is completely unrelated to sexism (although sexism is bad and we should do something, rabble rabble!). You can prove this mathematically using the evidence of "women don't go into the same fields as men". But again, it's not sexism or sexist policies that are keeping them out (although sexism is bad and we should do something, rabble rabble!).

I encourage you to look up Occam's Razor. We have hoof prints (low percentage of women in tech). We think it's horses (rampant sexism). You have gone beyond claiming it's zebras (women are biologically incompatible with tech) and are asking us to believe it's unicorns (women don't choose tech because...they don't want to...for...reasons...and math...).

 

[fil]

LOL, that same logic explains that black people don't like living in suburbs with good school districts. It's not white flight, black people just like living in the inner city and sending their kids to poor schools!

Ah, so your argument is that all male career choices are "correct" choices (like living in the suburbs with good schools), while female choices, to the extent they differ from male choices, must be "incorrect, forced by circumstance" choices like living in a bad neighborhood with bad schools.

I'd encourage you to think that through, and try to see how silly (and sexist) it is. To start, you might note that, to make female demographics line up with male, you'd have to have far more girls drop out of high school, far fewer women go to college, fewer women graduate from college, more women in prison, more women who are murdered, more women who commit suicide, more women who die in accidents, far more women working in the most dangerous careers, and fewer going into careers like biology, psychology, and medicine.

Again, sexism is a huge problem, particularly in tech, and we need to work hard to fix that. But to assume that all male choices are "right" and women's choices should be just like them is just a different form of sexism.

LOL, I'm digging the irony of you quoting me out of context when I responded to your bullshit faulty logic and calling my logic faulty.

I'm digging the cute way you react when someone points out you haven't even vaguely thought through your argument.

Edit: And just to have some more fun with your bullshit logic--you're now effectively trying to claim that there's some other class of decision criteria that women use in their careers that is simultaneously different from the criteria men use and apparently inexplicable by you. This inexplicable decision criteria is somehow making women choose the fields they choose, and is completely unrelated to sexism (although sexism is bad and we should do something, rabble rabble!).

You do understand that it's impossible to have a coherent discussion if you insist on ignoring much of what I say (that sexism is a primary problem in tech), in order to battle some sort of raging strawman. I suppose that's your intent, but if so, it's nothing more than trolling.

You can prove this mathematically using the evidence of "women don't go into the same fields as men". But again, it's not sexism or sexist policies that are keeping them out (although sexism is bad and we should do something, rabble rabble!).
I encourage you to look up Occam's Razor. We have hoof prints (low percentage of women in tech). We think it's horses (rampant sexism).

Of course you understand I agree with this, as you've quoted me saying it. Is there some key number of times it must be repeated before you can read it without being confused by echoes of "rabble, rabble!" inside your head?

You have gone beyond claiming it's zebras (women are biologically incompatible with tech)

I certainly have never even vaguely claimed any such thing and disagree with it vehemently. If anything, it's men who have the larger share of demographic issues (more likely to drop out, not graduate from college, die etc) that would prevent them from being compatible with a career in tech.

and are asking us to believe it's unicorns (women don't choose tech because...they don't want to...for...reasons...and math...).

One more time. Sexism is a big problem, particularly in tech. We need to do something about it. I've actually volunteered a good bit of time to doing something about this, have you?

That said, in the limit that sexism goes to zero, there's no particular reason to expect that women's choices will (or should) exactly follow men's. Men, frankly, make some poor choices (and some of these choices lead to their higher rates of incarceration, flunking out, early death etc). What really bends minds around here is to point out that, for some men in tech, going into tech was a bad choice.

 

[Jehos]

What really bends minds around here is to point out that, for some men in tech, going into tech was a bad choice.

Sorry, my bad. It's really about ethics in gaming journalism.