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Tech's Gender and Race Gap Starts In High School
An anonymous reader writes "Diversifying the tech industry is a prominent topic these days, with much analysis being done on colleges and companies that employ software engineers. But exam data shows the gap is created much earlier — it's almost overwhelming even before kids get out of high school. From the article: 'Ericson's analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the exam were women. Eight percent were Hispanic, and four percent were African-American. In contrast, Latinos make up 22 percent of the school-age population in the U.S.; African-Americans make up 14 percent. (I don't need to tell you that women make up about half.) There are some states where not a single member of one of these groups took the test last year. No women in Mississippi or Montana took it. Seven states had no Hispanic students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota. And 10 states had no Black students take the exam: Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Utah. In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"
(I don't need to tell you that women make up about half.)
Actually girls graduate at a higher rate than boys both in college and in high school. So they make up more than half the graduates.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Gender and culture start early in life, and continue through life. More on this when we talk about how women dominate professions which require high empathy and social skills.
I think you'll find it starts even earlier than that in the what do you want to be when you grow up department.
Kids who are not interested in XXX dont do XXX when they get out of high school! Also, water is wet
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
My question, very much in general, and not to troll, is: at what point people just get to do what they fancy?
If you treat education like a cup of coffee, you might be more pleased with the results.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... and have different interests and capacities, this results in differences which people with political agendas perceive as 'gaps' and not as simply people naturally having different interests and being different from each other.
Its 2014, not 1992.. Why must we try so hard to get women to work in tech? I don't believe that there are any negative influences early on dissuading women from working tech. Maybe they just don't want to. Just putting that out there. I'd love to see more women in tech, but don't brainwash someone into it.
Forget the computer science - go for the biology and other hard sciences.
I have yet to hear of a hospital that offshored their medical staff or lobbied for H1-Bs.
I have never heard of any medical establishment saying, "There are no qualified Americans."
Funny. I guess all the smart Americans are going into medical.
Oh yeah, and in medical I have never heard any one say that "if you're over 30, you just don't get it."
This is a sticky issue but there are differences between men and women.
Anthropologists and neurologists have been proving this for some time.
Now I am not saying women are not capable of doing the work. Rather, they don't want to do it or don't find it interesting. And yes, there are exceptions but statistically most women simply don't want to do technical work. Its not what makes them happy.
What is more, why are we so hyper obessessed about the gender gap in these fields? What about the lack of female lumber jacks or female coal miners or female crab fishers?
I'm sorry, but why is it that they only care about jobs considered high status? And really, is tech even high status at this point? Oh sure, there are some extremely well paid positions in that industry but there are also a lot that pay nothing. Its a range.
And while we're at it, lets point out that the start ups were by and large set up by collections of interested young men that started out with NOTHING.
Nothing is stopping women from doing the same thing but generally speaking they don't do it. They're not the sort to drop out of college, start some crazy company with some friends, and risk everything to make a go of it in one thing or another. They just aren't wired that way. And to be honest, most men aren't wired that way either.
Statistically some men are... and while some women are... its a tiny percentage.
In any case, this gender gap argument is bullshit and needs to get filed as legacy women's lib bullcrap.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There is a rather LARGE shortage...
Of my last five medical transactions, three were foreign nationals.
And there are a shortage of doctors and nurses in various states.
Now, the REASON there are shortages involve the expense of a medical degree, AND the high yearly insurance fees.
The median debt of a doctor getting out of school is $160,000. Yearly fees and insurance alone is around $32,197 just to attend.
Not very many can afford that.
Can't force someone into something they don't have calling. Let each individual make own choices instead following some numbers on the spreadsheet.
If you drill down to some of her Excel spreadsheets you'll find that the overall number of female CS exam takers was 18.5%. One might explain that by arguing that women just don't like math/science/etc. But you'll also find that 48% of Calculus AB exam takers were women. Possible explanation: you need calculus if you're planning to do pre-Med as an undergraduate and lots of women wants to be doctors. Apparently very few women want to be software devs and/or engineers. But it's not because they're unwilling to take a math class, as we can see from the rate of females taking the Calculus exam.
>"But exam data shows the gap is created much earlier"
"is created" implies that some one or some group is guiding/causing/forcing it to be so. A better wording would be "appears" or "unfolds" or "starts" something.
Wording is important.
Mississippi gets thrown under the bus in the summary. Yet when you look in the excel file 2 schools were involved. Only 1 student took the exam. And they don't have results for him. I love when statistics are used incorrectly to discriminate. Especially when the statistics are supposedly being used to point out such discrimination. A skewed summary built on bad data (how does one student attend two schools) to get attention and free advertising for their college. At least they had the common sense to leave out the states that had no students take the exam. They should have calculated a minimum sample size to represent the group and thrown out all the states with less exam takers than the required sample size. Considering that not all states have the same minority ratios, They could have compared the minority ratios of those actually of test taking age and living in the remaining states proportionately on a state by state basis. To summarize the data as-is is in poor taste and will lead to poor judgments.
This just in: different genders and ethnic groups are naturally attracted to different things.
Next we'll be hearing about how there are an inordinately high number of females in the hairstyling and beautician industry or how basketball has too many black men.
Oh, wait, no we won't, because discriminating against white males is the racism du jour.
"I'm sorry, but why is it that they only care about jobs considered high status? "
Stop with the "I'm sorry but"s, mmkay?
It's so womanish. It really is.
Why are we fixated on trying to artificially diversify professions?
The PC BS has to stop at some point. There are some professions and things that men prefer more than women and others that women prefer more than men.
I will give you one example of this insanity:
In the mid-nighties a friend of my parents came over all upset. She was a manager for a publisher and all except one of her editors were female. She explained that men did not have a strong desire to edit textbooks. The only male she could find that was both good and interested cost her over double the rate of any other female editor. The reason was that she had to hire him away from another employer so that she could meet a diversity requirement from some of the states who purchased her textbooks.
Well, this male editor ended up getting an even higher offer from a different publisher. As she sat at my parents table saying "Men just do not enjoy or wish to be editors as much as women do. How am I ever going to find enough men who are both good and interested in doing this job?"
It was at this point that my dad who worked in IT at the time walked in and heard this statement. He said "I have the same diversity issue at work, they would like to have more women in IT, but most women don't want to be in IT."
At this point my mom suggested the simple solution, she explained how my dad was paying good women more money than men to work in IT when he could find them and sometimes not as good women when he had nothing else. So my parents friend ended up hiring three not so good male editors and just had whatever they edited initially sent back through to other editors.
Was that fair? Was it right? No, it was what the government wanted.
People walk around saying "Diversity is our goal" or "Diversity unites us". Yeah, that last one goes up at a state office building each April, I go to their lobby just to laugh at their mini-ministry of truth.
The truth is so much simpler. Hire people who are interested in learning/growing in the areas related to their work. Don't worry about how the numbers turn out. The only reason companies worry about diversity is because of some BS forms some bureaucrats asks them to fill out. Don't let your world be shaped by this nonsense. If asked be honest, explain you do not discriminate, you only hire the best qualified.
(I agree, I do need an editor)
Respect the Constitution
Men have personalities. Women have personalities. They quite often very different. They lead people into different directions in life.
Why aren't we asking why there aren't more "jocks" in science and why there aren't more "nerds" in sports? It's the SAME CAUSES.
And every time the topic comes up, it invariably results in recommendations of making an environment more comfortable for the other party. And this push ALWAYS goes one direction without fail. So here it is.
WHITE MEN: You must change everything about yourself. You are to blame for everyone else not being like you. Women don't want to work with you in your job and it's always YOUR FAULT. Black people never feel welcome or equal in your work place either and guess whose fault that is? That's right. It's your fault.
Has no one ever wondered or asked why we're only pushing to have more diversity in a white man's environment? Why it's considered wrong for there to even be a white man's environment? Why is there no push for diversity in churches? Why is there a Korean Christian church around the corner? Why aren't there more Christians and Jews in mosques? There is a long, long list of things women do which men have no interest and yet no one is pushing for more diversity in those areas.
Diversity is code for anti-white-male. Show me I'm wrong by pointing to an instance calling for diversity that isn't targetting while males?
Why do we all need to score the same or have the same fill rates in the various skilled jobs? Can't we all just agree that boys and girls are different and will excel at different things? Why does everything always have to be equal? So long as girls have opportunity to take science, math, etc. with no stigma then we've done our part.
In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"
Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?
You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.
Unlike boys that continue to be attracted by shiny toys until much later in their education cycle, girls are already understanding somewhere in high school that what they really want in life is a nice place called home where they can have a family and raise kids and have some sort of social life too. Working hectic hours on 6 months contracts all round the country while competing with hordes of temporary foreign workers obviously won't get them there. So they make different career choices. By 28-30 they already have a family while immature boys are still jerking over java syntax.
etc., etc. if you're wondering what the hell test is being talked about, you'll need to check the actual article to find it's the Advanced Placement computer science exam.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
The biggest barrier to minorities becoming programmers is that modern languages have been designed to be efficient and understandable for white males.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, only noting that as languages have evolved, they've become less intuitive for non-core users. Women, for example, typically have no problem learning procedural programming. Pascal was a very popular training language in the 80s and 90s well understood by female students.
So while I can agree with other commenters that modern languages require a certain aptitude, this is more by design than some inherent nature. The solution is to stop a one-sized-fits-all approach and consider different programming styles for different demographics.
Segregation? Sure. But modern apps can already have various chunks written in different languages. There's scope there to use procedural (for example) where feasible.
Why, you ask? Diverse voices make a better product.
Genders, races, and social classes have different genetic makeups and hence different abilities.
It's taboo to say this. You should ask yourself why.
Futurist Traditionalism
It starts at birth, when they parents put pink clothes on the girl, and blue clothes on the boy.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There are many ways to make money to reasons don't exist to pursue tech unless you are there purely for the tech and don't give a shit about routing around some of the social defectives in it. Men are conditioned for that sort of thing and most women are not.
It's not nice to point that out but it's a standing joke for good reason.
Medical fields will have strong growth for a lifetime and most cannot be outsourced. A better question then why there are fewer women in tech is why anyone is in it. Some folks can make very good money but most are expendable drones.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
When I went to the Lynrd Skynrd reunion concert last year the crowd was nothing but aging white blue collar dudes and their fat wives. Clearly, there is a conspiracy to keep down women and People of Color.
with less than 4% of its population being black and 15% of them being native, its no wonder no black people took the exam
We've noticed a statistically phenomenal lack of men in the crocheting business. There are some states where not a single man has signed up for a professional crocheting course, leaving an overwhelming ratio of women to men among the industry as a whole. What can be done to improve working conditions and better enforce equality between the genders?
I suspect that at least some of the cultural bias is about being the bread winner for a family. Want to major in music? Counselors tell boys to study Music Ed so they have a chance (albeit small) of getting a job; girls go into performance because it touches their soul. Same with other areas - engineering used to be the safe choice for boys; good jobs were available after graduation. If you were willing to take a higher risk you want for philosophy or biology and tried to get into Law or Med school.
Notice I started with "culture" bias, not race or gender. Think about census statistics
I spent my first year and a half in pink clothes, as my parents -refusing to be told- were 'certain' they were getting a little girl.
Still didn't make me want to be a pretty princess, and I still ended up building PLCs
Stupid summary fails to mention it.
I've had a daughter and two sons, and in my experience the tech gender is a built in thing. My daughter was the first born, and wanting to not push her into the dolls and such, I gave her a remote control car for Christmas when she was quite young. (1 1/2). She also had a doll. Guess which one got ignored.
Couple of years later, boy was born. From birth, anything with wheels was fascinating to him. Same for my second son.
Now all children have different personalities right from the beginning so my experience may not line up with yours, but I suspect that there is something natural about more boys liking tech then girls.
Friendly reminder that the widespread assumption that the differences are inherent rather than coming from outside factors, is an outside factor in itself.
This was an AP CS exam. At least in CA, CS is not required. Ergo, those students who took the test chose to take this class. Apparently, the aforementioned low represented groups, don't like CS. Shouldn't people be free to choose?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's another "evil white males holding down the rest of the planet" story. Yawn.
Who invented computers in the first place? Or is it somehow "racist" to point that out?
Also, money gives you and your family an advantage in life. This is news? Why else would anyone bother to do better for themselves, or bother to try and earn more than the minimum amount necessary to sustain life?
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Woman in med school here (with an obvious interest in tech stuff, since I'm on this site in the first place). Personally, my reasons for not pursuing a tech career boil down to the fact that it simply doesn't pay off as well as being a doctor does, and not being from the US, I don't have to worry about college fees either, so there was simply no reason not to go to med school. Thus, programming remains as a hobby for me, perhaps forever.
How many other parents do that? Why are frilly pink things what see for sale? Boys get guns girls get dolls, Think about it, you know, without the defensive attitude.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why don't we ask the women? Survey young women at different stages oh high school and university. Ask them what they would like to have a career in. Maybe ask the smart ones why they chose not to go into CS.
Any women reading slashdot right now who didn't go into CS care to tell us why?
>I don't believe that there are any negative influences early on dissuading women from working tech.
There are, documented in the stories of hundreds of women in computer science at CMU. It starts in childhood and continues all through school, only to be followed by people at a job fair saying "we're not looking for anyone in marketing" as a software developer hands over her resume.
See the book "Unlocking the Clubhouse".
The CMU students were really bright and highly motivated. Anything pushing out people like that needs to be fixed!
I'll take social pressure due to unconscious bias over willful counter pressure advocated by "well-meaning" ideologues. The first will always be milder and can be overcome, the second will only create more problems than it solves. Besides your theory doesn't seem falsifiable. Any evidence of the contrary is seen as proof that social pressure is so prevalent people have become blind to it.
Why? It doesn't matter what race or sex an engineer is.It just matters that they're good at it.
Be more the same. How dare any of you serfs think or act differently!?
More female cab drivers. It's a field that is currently being dominated by men and it could really use an injection of diversity.
You could have kept it simple, the fact has always been there that schools are for training people to be workers not thinkers. And thus this study really does not matter.
There jamming or trying to, programming down kids throats, in hopes of either getting them to seek it out as they get older, or the schhols will implement more rigorous classes forcing kids to take it on as part of there grades.
May be extreme, but I had to take metal shop, or they would fail me out of school, but I didn't mind because my grandfather and dad both worked on hot rods, so it was something I wanted to pursue..
Big fukn surprise that the girls who belittled us in high school and college might have a hard time dealing with the social outcasts they themselves created later on in life. Remember, ladies, cosplay says you're slutty, not necessarily nerdy. There's a difference.
you mean "born woman" stead of "Transgender Woman"
For somebody on a high horse about misusing statistics you're abusing them yourself. The government counts many Hispanics as white, so if you're reading an article on Hispanics the white population is useless What you want is non-hispanic white. And in both states that's under 90% Utah is actually under 80% at 79.9%, Idaho is 3.6 points higher (83.5%). The states combined should have had 15 Hispanic test-takers. They had 6. Which means that if your "personality" test is applied to Hispanics you just argued that Hispanics only have the proper "personality" for programming at 40% the rate of whites.
It's also interesting to note that you assume they're arguing racism when they didn't say anything about racism. In fact given that anybody can take the class, and take the test, the test-administrators have no control over the racial makeup of test-takers. You can blame things like the design of local school districts, which has been referred to as "structural racism". AP classes ain't cheap, so a school district with an upper-class (and thus disproportionately white) tax base is gonna have more AP tests. OTOH you could also blame black and hispanic parents for not forcing their districts to have AP classes.
It's also pretty telling to me that your source is an unrelated debate from the Reagan years. In my experience conservatives have been running off the fumes of Reagan's ideas for decades. "Sowell won a debate that had nothing to do with AP Tests back when he had an Afro" just is not a convincing counter-argument to anything in 2014.
I assume this is your argument, as it is.
Exceptions-disprove-the-rule fallacies are very popular on the left, which you're obviously a member of. Let me caution you first: liberalism is a mental health disorder that leads to narcissism. You have been warned. Turn toward a reality-based narrative instead!
There are many people out there without five fingers on each hand.
And yet, humans have five fingers on each hand.
Can you see why your argument was fallacious?
Futurist Traditionalism
How many other parents do that? Why are frilly pink things what see for sale? Boys get guns girls get dolls, Think about it, you know, without the defensive attitude.
Because that really is what most little girls choose.
I have boys (now ages 11 to 20). Then got a little girl (now age 4.25). The little girl is and always has been very different from the boys. She started picking out clothes she liked before she could walk. None of my boys cared until much later. The girl chose pink clothes even tho she had almost none since she outgrew the "new baby" gifts (most of which were neutral yellow and white). My wife is not a "pink, frilly" type, but my little girl is. We had to buy more pink and frilly stuff.
Christmas 2012 at age 3, my little girl "adopted" a particular wrapping paper (pastel, blue field with white angels and some other minor colors) and came to tears when a package with that paper was not for her, and refused to have anything to do with packages wrapped in a color she particularly disliked that year. My boys never cared about the paper and certainly never turned down the chance to open any present.
My wife is not a "let's go shopping" type. My little girl is. She wants to go shopping for shoes, or for dresses, something my mother-in-law still has to drag my wife out to do. At age 3 she didn't much care for dolls. She did like stuffed toy cats but her favorite toy was a green john deere tractor (sit on and kick it around it size). Last summer my little girl noticed an older cousin had painted fingernails and wanted it on her own fingers. My wife never wears nail polish (and seldom makeup). My little girl has started taking care of a "baby doll," but last november when a friend just wanted to play with barbie dolls, after less than 10 minutes of that came the response, "I'm not a barbie kind of girl" (as reported in shock by the mother of the other girl).
My little boys played with blocks. They made roads that cars would drive on. They made buildings and towers to knock them down. My little girl plays with blocks. She makes houses where people (and animals) live. She makes roads so the people can visit each other. She makes towers so the people can be on top and see each other. The little girl makes forts with blankets and boxes. They are places where people live and she brings all her stuffed animals in with her and they eat and play together. The boys made forts with blankets and boxes. They were hideouts, and the associated play had monsters and missiles, traps and battles.
And little boys will make a gun or a car or a plane or a bomb out of anything.
A lot of the posts here seem to be some version of "This just shows that women aren't cut out for CS." My experience makes me think this may be an American issue.
I have been working in electrical engineering for 16 years. (I know, not CS but chip design is a tech field with commonalities.) It is a majority male field with approximately 15%-20% women. However, NONE of them that I see were raised in America. Most of the women I work with completed undergraduate degrees in China or India and got a graduate degree in the US. There must be some reason why American women are repelled from engineering. Or is it that Chinese and Indian women are just fundamentally better at tech than American women? (Before anyone brings up the H1 visa issue, that's not what is going on here. We have a hard time finding qualified candidates regardless of where they are from.)
It would seem that the fact that we (in the US) socialize girls from a very early age to stay away from thins like tech is relevant here. If you are curious, go into any major toy store (e.g. Toys R US, the independent stores are actually a lot better about this.) There are vanishingly few toys that are just toys anymore. There are only "girls" and "boys" toys. The girls toys are all pink and predominately princess themed. Now, you may say that this just confirms that boys and girls are different but you would be using circular logic to justify a pre-concieved notion.
Children are very sensitive to societal norms, both boys and girls. When high school girls feel that being too smart will make them less feminine and threaten boys, they will have a tendency to conform to these expectations. Sure, there will be some who don't but they will be fighting the system to some degree.
Saying that the low percentage of women in CS is proof that women don't like or aren't good at CS is simply pointing to the current state of affairs as a justification that it is the only possible way things can be. The reality is more nuanced.
should not be translated into women and minorities being less capable. This unfortunately seems to be the prevailing opinion.
So just how many blacks or hispanics are there up in Alaska anyway? Perhaps it's just me but I have the feeling it's not that many of them. It seems kinda silly to just look at these number without crossreferencing them with say population density demographics or something like that or how many schools in a given area even gives AP CS classes, or is that something that they all give? More schools should lead to more takers shouldn't it?
What do you advocate? Punishing little girls that act like little girls till they conform to your expectations of gender equality? Even if you're right about social pressure, that won't solve anything.
I'll take social pressure due to unconscious bias
But it isn't "unconscious" is it? People can clearly see that a boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl, so they consciously act in a manner according to gender.
willful counter pressure advocated by "well-meaning" ideologues
Am I advocating something? Please point out where I am advocating anything, I am pointing out the obvious.
Besides your theory doesn't seem falsifiable
It isn't "my" theory, you actually believe I alone came up with gender bias starting at birth ? (actually before now that you can know the sex) I'm flattered, but you're wrong.
Why don't you Google it a bit, it seems to me new ideas may be more palatable to you if you discover them yourself.
Besides your theory doesn't seem falsifiable Any evidence of the contrary is seen as proof that social pressure is so prevalent people have become blind to it.
So it doesn't seem "falisifiable", but if it was. it would be wrong any way.
Why don't you point out
social pressure is so prevalent people have become blind to it
to a gay person, point it out to anyone that doesn't "fit in".
And most certainly I am not blind to it.
You didn't write this post to me, it isn't a reply to me, it's an internal dialogue you're having with yourself.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Again AC, I advocate nothing do I?
If you haven't got the balls to post with your name, don't bother me with your lack of reading comprehension again,.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
peer pressure, conformity, and appealing to the opposite sex is more important than anything else. But the trouble with science and math is that formal education makes it a shitty thing to study.
The most likely explanation is that most of those societies are poorer and tend to place far higher levels of prestige in degrees that tend to hold lasting value in the marketplace. Engineering is one of the very best examples of that. Can you even imagine a woman who isn't literally intending to turn her degree into nothing more than a chance to find a husband in India or China saying to her parents that she'd turn down a prestigious engineering school to study Political Science, Art History, Women's Studies, "Business" (of which she could learn more by running a food truck than going to most Business Schools)? Of course not.
Let's be a little logical about this. Western women have far more social freedom than Eastern Women. If there is any region less likely to suppress women from following their natural desires it'd be us. Eastern Women are not different creatures from ours. The difference is that engineering is more prestigious there and there is a much higher need for Eastern Women to major in something worth a damn because the consequences of getting a shitty degree that confers no middle to upper class prospects is much higher.
I know people are going to hate me for this, but why do we assume that all races are equally capable of a job?
While it might be a stereotype, certain races are already known for certain personality traits, such as the irish being fighters and drinkers, the asians being good at math, etc. etc. Yet when it comes to intelligence it's considered taboo to say that one race might be more or less intelligent than another.
In other words, maybe there is a racial gap in tech because there is a racial gap in intelligence. It's no different than the racial gap in sports, based on differences in physical ability. Basketball started out as a completely white sport, yet it became predominately black because black men make better basketball players. Maybe white men just make better programmers?
Anyone ever think that people just pick what they want to do? I have yet to see some secret group working to keep woman and minorities out of science and engineering. Are teachers using telepathy or jedi mind tricks to keep them out? There is no difference between this and finding women and minorities in comic books. Marvel rewrote history making some traditional characters black, which was stupid. This was for the guilt someone must have had for turning away women and minorities from being artists and writers way back when. Finally, this is just like the gap between rich and poor. It's a created boogieman to further social justice to raise a few by lowing many. Socialists and communists belong in the infernal region...
Implying women don't have courage because they lack balls. How sexist!
i don't see why liking frilly pink outfits has anything to do with programming ability? seems like all these feminist dads are worried that if their kid wears a pink outfit they'll end up having to go into corporate law instead of programming or something...if they like pink shit build them a pink computer with a pink theme desktop environment.
(I don't need to tell you that women make up about half.)
Actually, on Slashdot, you probably do.
I remember from when I was a kid that it generally was boys who were into computers and video games. Isn't that were it starts? Those nerdy kids got computers as teenagers and then went on to do comp sci or engineering degrees. It starts with the cool toy factor and goes from there.
My original sentence
Your last quote of me
Kind of dishonest to cut the sentence in this way.
What would be unconscious would be the parents treating girls and boys differently even though they insist they treated them the same. Your second sentence is a false implication.
"Your theory" was a shorthand for "the theory you subscribes to" not for "the theory you came up with".
Contrary refers to the theory itself not to its falsifiability. English is not my native language so I may have wrote it incorrectly. Still, it's completely disinginuous to understand "contrary" as refering to "falsifiability" as the sentence makes no sense that way. Besides, I've never say I believe the theory is wrong.
Please point out where I included you among the "well-meaning" ideologues that advocate something.
Yeah, she's totally not influenced by the myriad of other social cues around the place. Or, you know, one sample might just not be enough of a sample size to support/refute the OP's assertion in capital letters.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
The AP Computer Science exam is based on Java -- therefore, I believe that all these women are simply intelligent enough to realize what a waste of time and money taking the test would be.
People in tech are treated like shit because, lo and behold, the tech field is inundated with a bunch of misanthropic , autistic nerds. And that is how it should be.
Who is going to pay $89 to take a test which doesn't help you get into college. Colleges don't look at how well you did on these exams period. It's like applying for college and listing that you were in Who's Who of ... It's all just a marketing sham. And to all the posters that think their statistics are significant, well you've just been taken in, by all means go spend your $89 dollars for another phony certificate. I'm sure you will be promptly accepted into the most highly prestigious online university.
The stock market reflects the prevalent views of entitled stockholders. Even when it reflects their sexism, it never fails. Circular reasoning?
Minority populations ( however defined, could be white homosexual males for instance ) often find that they have needs that are not shared with the larger population. For instance Korean Christians may find that they don't speak English well enough to attend regular service. So they form a church that takes care of those special needs.
That in general what an affinity group is suppose to do. If there are needs that the white male population requires that are not fulfilled by the general population, then that population definitely should have an affinity group.
Don't be hateful. There are many groups out there we don't belong to that require support. I have no idea what a Homosexual Caucasian Male goes through, but I'm sure the experience can be bad enough that he may require the support of his peers.
And by the way, that's your example right there. Sexual tolerance campaigns aren't "anti-white-male" as you put it because they help large numbers of homosexual white males.
Unless you also believe minorities have little interest in Computer Science.
A lot of kids are told from very early they can not do these jobs. That they futures are set and what's in store for them require very little schooling.
These kids fancy more for themselves. But are taught that they can not achieve what they fancy.
That is why many observers believe this is more than just about students doing what they want.
Still running as AC eh?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
But the only way you would know that is if they told you or showed you a picture, you sure they aren't messing with you? (a joke)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A lot of kids are told from very early they can not do these jobs.
By whom? In what way?
But are taught that they can not achieve what they fancy.
Would an alternative solution be to load-shed this generally useless education system, and opt for more home schooling, then? Discuss.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
People don't know what "correlation" and "causation" mean in the first place.
From the TFA:
What is the definition of "Minorities" ?
What is the percentage of the Asians (particularly the yellow-skinned East Asians and the Asians from the Indian Subcontinent) vis-a-vis the percentage of the Latinos-Americans / African-Americans, of the entire population of the United States of America ?
I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that the Asian-Americans will be the fewest of the three groups.
Would that entitle them with the term of " MINORITIES " ?
Apparently TFA doesn't think so.
Look at the enrollment of the Asians (men and women) in the tech courses and you will see how ridiculous TFA is.
In some EE classes, there are MORE female Asian students than male African-Americans attending.
Care to explain to me why Slashdot carries such crappy "news" in the first place ??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
... doesn't make everybody shares your mind.
Try this, if you are a guy in tech who doesn't get it: When you encounter a reasonably good-looking (by your standards) woman with a similar professional background, is your thought process about her professional work (e.g. language or OS choices, server configurations, algorithm ideas), or is your thought process about how you might be able to get her into bed? If it's about her work, congratulations, you aren't part of the problem
I have been in the tech field since the 1970's, and my children (both male and female) are also in the tech field.
Since you're talking about how women have been treated and seems to place the blame solely on the male group - why don't you ask the female why they dropped out so easily in the first place ?
Sure, my girls (more than one), when they were studying, did face some of those awkward situations, but they toughed it out.
For them, their gender doesn't give them any reason to play the role of the "victim" every time a male geek tried to make some nerdy advance on them.
And my children are not the exception either. Many of the Asian kids, both male and female, toughed out all kinds of harassment (not only sexual, but also racial) because for them what is important is not the hindrance, but how to achieve the goal.
Just because your culture brought up females who will run out crying at a drop of a hat does not make the male species guilty of whatever you allude them of doing !
Enough of the blaming loop !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I have actually tried to steer her away from pink, frilly crap, and since she inherited her father's strong will, she refuses to budge.
Good for her.
I mean that.
But anyway, firstly pink for girls is a 100% social construct (pink used to be for boys 100 or so years ago). But, your daughter is subjected to immense peer pressure.
Second, girs do like bright shiny colourful things, but so do boys. In fact so do adults but they're generally better at suppressing it. Nonetheless, there's a reason sports cars are generally not matte grey.
Third it doesn't matter: they can still grow up to be scientists if that's what they want. Playing with dresses and dolls as a kid doesn't alter that.
Fourth, while you're there to guide your kid and influence where you can, if you try to force her in to being something she's not in order to please you, then you will be disappointed, and she will be upset.
Finally, your kids probably won't grow up to be tech geeks. Most of the population (male or female) is not.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I used to buy the lie about women having more empathy. But this article hits the nail on the head.
After being sexually harassed by several *female* doctors, I must agree. Women have better ability to
read people and a better ability to communicat, but they don't always use those abilities well. Men seem apathetic because _many_ are. BUT, the men who are able to empathize keep their distance exactly because it can be draining.
Yeah, why aren't there more fat men in porn, we need to equalize that.
Let's put a quota on everything so I can get me some porn roles.
I realise that there is no connection to your whiteness and eating apple pie, but then again, there was nothing between the parent post and miscogyny.
It all depends on how you measure similarity. Difference however is easily seen since it's genetically reproducible.
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/09/24/south-asians-as-a-hybrid-popul/
There's a good basic primer on the topic.
Futurist Traditionalism
It's Wealth.
Then Race.
Then gender.
A white woman from a wealthy family will have more influential and lucerative jobs in the western world than a middle class male.
A white lower class woman will do better than a black man.
That there are opportunities in so many academic fields, that minorities and women are pushed towards those...and the only way for intelligent white guys to go is towards technology.
36% of our schools are made up of latino and black kids.. Think about it guys this is New York, LA, Chicago, and the deep south. who gives a shit.
You can make coding interesting to women if you ran a bunch of hacking stories by women in the news without overemphasizing the gender piece (meaning no Fox News anchors).
Also, slashdot is mostly BS stories now thanks to new characters like samzenpus
yea dude, you've got balls. Because we all know who you are now, koan.
you realize one example is irrelevant right? If you are talking about societal pressures, the best way to compare is to compare across different societies. And it holds pretty damn well at that scale. I had a cousin we tried to treat like a guy but he only wanted to be treated like a little girl. He would cry, run around with the girls, want to put on make up, and his favorite colored material was frilly pink.
This DOES NOT MEAN all guys act like this or that there aren't real defined roles/colors/activities for men and women. It happens to be your daughter at this stage doesn't care about gadgets. Que sera. The question being asked is why is this lack of women in the fields that correlate with these interests pretty unique to the US and a few other countries that also have gender biases that are in the same direction.
You don't see a dearth of female programmers or hardware designers in countries where it isn't seen as a male/female divided profession. Why? that is the question that is generally being asked. Unfortunately, we generally try to correct a large scale issue with programs that don't really address the problem. If the problem is (I'm not sure this is the case, but let's assume it is) women are discouraged from an extremely young age from engaging in any technical fields, it's highly unlikely a couple of programs to get kids to program in high school will have any noticeable impact on the overall rate of women in programming (and let's be really specific, we are talking about native born women in programming, foreign women will still come over via H1-B visas or family connections).
His parents learned photoshop/gimp then doctored all the photos they had of him as a baby. Elementary.
With all due respect, consider that I am not trying to berate the O.P. It's more of constructive analysis to identify major corporate-governmental far overreach. It seems like misleading contradiction of many levels, ex: "In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities."
Again, I am commenting to call attention to the massive big picture that's being hidden by a secretive society, further concealed by this manufactured 'dust-cloud' on so many levels of society solely to divide us so we fall.
I understand it may not make sense as I'm in a hurry, but really, the problem is that so many things are so overglorified and overhyped in a way so over complicated purposely to dissuade the masses.
It is really a well planned attack on the minds and health of Americans and basically every other country that is overridden of corruption.
Big central banks such as the Federal Reserve: all of the policies, procedures, codified wording with no real meaning, many hidden factors, and all of the other mysterious complication that comes along with what is rapidly becoming globally known as the biggest, most clever heist ever known.
More citizens must take part and speak up, peacefully, just get involved with our law makers and our public servants we pay to help us!
Not help themselves to screw us over. Unity!
I can tell you why Montana's on the list: there are simply no blacks or hispanics here. As for why women made the list, it's likely because they DGAF, as this is Montana and most of them wanna just work on a ranch, drive a diesel 4x4, and make babies.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
The fact that a comment about diversity being anti-white got modded up to 5 is exactly why there is little minority representation in IT.
Why not argue that we need more male biology majors?
It actually starts in Middle School, it is just more prevalent in High School. Elementary School is equal all the way through as there is no choice, every student learns the same thing and is required to do the same amount of work on a computer. Middle School is when computers become an elective, you'll find girls in the ceramics and cooking classes and boys in the computer and woodworking classes (majority speaking). High School will actually see a slight increase of girls in computer electives but that is mainly due to them taking typing courses to prepare for careers as administrative assistants and business management fields.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Either that or I'll be pleasantly surprised to learn I'm wrong and have merely had bad experience after bad experience after bad experience after bad experience.
It's not that you've had "bad experience after bad experience after bad experience after bad experience", it's that you've so warped your perception of the world you're unable to see through your self-concocted misogynistic persecution complex. Women aren't your enemy -- you are your own enemy. Whatever pain you have suffered as an innocent child you've allowed to control your life, to distort your views of women and people in general, and that's unbelievably sad. It's absolutely clear to everyone who reads your posts that you're suffering from some sort of delusion. That's not an exaggeration, you can't see it yourself because it's your own delusion, but it's plain as day for every . single . person who has read your posts.
I hope for your own sake you can find someone you can trust enough to listen to when they suggest you seek professional help.