Tech's Gender Gap Started At Stanford

Risk = Reward by Tokolosh · 2014-12-23 12:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

"A group of British researchers have analyzed data from the Darwin Awards and found that men are more likely to engage in life-threatening risky behaviour than women."

The term "idiotic" is used a lot in the quoted article, but it is a genetic fact that males are more willing to take a chance. The outcome is a gender gap. Women should stop their shrill haranguing, get their hands dirty and be more "idiotic".

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Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number

Re:Risk = Reward by BarbaraHudson · 2014-12-23 12:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

I had submitted that as a story two weeks ago. Newcastle University study: Men are bigger idiots I guess people didn't like the title :-)

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"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:Risk = Reward by digsbo · 2014-12-23 12:44 · Score: 4, Informative

WTF is this modded Troll? See my quote from TFA below that DIRECTLY SUPPORTS PARENT'S ASSERTION:

"Dozens of women stayed in safe jobs, in or out of technology, while they watched their spouses or former lab partners take on ambitious quests."
Re:Risk = Reward by Cockatrice_hunter · 2014-12-23 13:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

That is NOT what the study said. The study stated that men were more likely to receive the Darwin awards than females. They suggested possible reasons for this including selection and reporting bias (ex. it's more OK to laugh at the deaths of men then that of men).
Re:Risk = Reward by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-12-23 16:39 · Score: 4, Informative

WTF is this modded Troll? See my quote from TFA below that DIRECTLY SUPPORTS PARENT'S ASSERTION:

"Dozens of women stayed in safe jobs, in or out of technology, while they watched their spouses or former lab partners take on ambitious quests."
There are people her who pull out the sexist card, the downmods, unless you conform to their very narrow perception of reality. Someone called me sexist because I noted it isn't difficult to walk over to the "boys to section", after I said I'd let my daughters play with any toy they wanted, be it tradional male, or female type toy. Expect this post to be hit with either flamebait or troll about ten minutes after I post it.
And yes, that quote is in the story.
I thiink the answer to why a lot of women are not going into particular fields is twofold. First off, you have to really really want to be a STEM worker. There are better paying jobs, with better job prospects, better pay, and one each shitload more prestige than STEM work.
If my offspring was engaged to a programmer, I'd ask him or her if they had any plans for when their job was outsourced.
In my own case, I spent a lot of extra hours, including overnights at the job. Field trips with indeterminate length of stay. Lost a lot of vacation, (Got a couple months a year, took a week or less. Times that over 30 plus years.
I think that for all the bitching and moaning over this subject, the answer is much simpler than the variations on the "Men suck" meme.
In the earlier days of post liberation, women tried a lot of different careers. Eventually, they found out which ones they wanted to be in. And it doesn't have a whole lot to do with what we are hearning about.
I find it hard to believe that the often shy geeks in STEM fields are more sexist than the business people in industry where "escorts" are a standard practice. It does not compute.
And I have worked in efforts to engage young women in STEM fields. In the end, I've come to the conclusion that there two ways to get more women in STEM fields. Either force more women into them, or fire men until we reach equal gender representation.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Risk = Reward by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-12-23 16:50 · Score: 2

That is NOT what the study said. The study stated that men were more likely to receive the Darwin awards than females. They suggested possible reasons for this including selection and reporting bias (ex. it's more OK to laugh at the deaths of men then that of men).
Would it not be true that natural selection would select for women who were predisposed toward being risk averse? If you want your offspring to survive to reproduce, you can't be doing the prehistorical version of base jumping.
And for men, especially in prehistoric times, those who took risks might have been rewarded with more and better food, and therefore could provide more for their offspring.
Simplistic, it's true, but I have to say there is something to it. My better half is quite risk averse - but it happened after we had a child. Before that, she was into horseback riding and some sports. After the child was born, th ehorseback riding tailed off unti she just stopped. Now, she's pretty much stopped any risky behavior at all. As in a merry-go-round is beyond her comfort level.
On the other hand, I'm into Hockey (playing) motorcycling, and regularly climb towers and rooftops as part of my other hobby. As a concession, to her, I haven't bungee jumped - yet.
This is not to say that if a woman wants to do something, she shouldn't because it is a "guy thing". If she can, there's no reason why she shouldn't.

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The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Risk = Reward by lgw · 2014-12-23 17:07 · Score: 2

Wait, you mean there's a life-threatening behavior gap? This is unacceptable, we must encourage women to do stupid things that may risk their lives. To not do so is sexist!
Actually, this is mostly done. The lifespan of women and men is quickly converging, as is pay (if you take into account lifetime hours worked - for professional women who haven't had a kid, I believe women are slightly ahead under 35 now).
Does Slashdot have to have a "gender gap story" every 2 Bennett stories or something? I guess it's out with "news for nerds" and in with "Reddit envy".

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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled by Crashmarik · 2014-12-23 12:12 · Score: 2

Really how could anyone think a piece with that title is anything but a biased bit of garbage not fit to line a birdcage with ?

There is reporting and then there is agenda reporting. It's pretty damn clear that the NYT is agenda reporting to the point it would make Hearst blush.

Re:A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled by Austerity+Empowers · 2014-12-23 14:00 · Score: 4, Informative

I thought it was serious until I read that students showed up at Stanford in 1994 barely knowing what email was. Then I realized it's satire. I mean, you can't seriously propose that the tech revolution started in 1994, right? Even Intel, Apple and Microsoft are latecomers to teh tech revolution, which was already very gender biased in the late 70s. When did "high tech" begin? I'm not sure, maybe WWII, maybe the industrial revolution, or maybe as late as teh semiconductor. All of these were well before Stanford class of '94 graduates were BORN. Even I knew what email was long before 1994, I even had email of my own.
This isn't intended to be a geriatric post where I try to claim I'm an OG, most things high-tech were invented before I was born. C existed, Unix was a thing. The only thing the mid-90s meant to high-tech was the birth of the popular internet, which many of us remember being the death of the useful internet.
Re:A Brand New World In Which Men Ruled by Austerity+Empowers · 2014-12-23 16:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yet "high-tech" started long before that, and was already very gender biased. The article specifically said "email", which was quite common in the 80s on college campuses and high tech industries, I know because I had to maintain some legacy scripts, rules for which were set up in the 80s and nobody really understood anymore in 2000.
The article is correct on some facts, but is entirely lost in narrative.

What do you expect from STANford by Spy+Handler · 2014-12-23 12:14 · Score: 4, Funny

It was started by a MAN named STAN, obviously a male chauvinistic pig school.

Are you kidding me? by digsbo · 2014-12-23 12:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Number one, they're looking at the extreme high end of achievers, who - guess what - aren't representative.

And then the TFA has this gem:

"Dozens of women stayed in safe jobs, in or out of technology, while they watched their spouses or former lab partners take on ambitious quests."

Does anybody see what I see there?

Re:Are you kidding me? by Wycliffe · 2014-12-23 12:43 · Score: 2

"Dozens of women stayed in safe jobs, in or out of technology, while they watched their spouses or former lab partners take on ambitious quests."
Does anybody see what I see there?
Exactly. The gender gap in tech** didn't start at Stanford, it started about 10000+ years ago when women stayed home in relative safety while men went out on ambitious quests to hunt wild and dangerous beasts.
**or wall street or any other career that is all consuming.
Re:Are you kidding me? by sphealey · 2014-12-23 13:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, the women who were finally admitted to engineering school in 1943, 44, and 45, and who were then kicked out (in some cases bodily) in 1946 without being allowed to graduate (much less take the jobs for which they had sought education) were just playing out a male-centric fantasy of evolutionary biology "explaining" pre-historic history. Got it.
sPh
Re:Are you kidding me? by misexistentialist · 2014-12-23 14:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

I assume they were kicked out due to the men returning from war, those selfish bastards.

What gender gap? by crossmr · 2014-12-23 12:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

News flash:
Not everything in this world is going to mimic the real demographics of the planet. If they idea is that we're all special snowflakes, we're sometimes going to find some people better suited to certain things than others. Unless there is evidence that the best person isn't being hired for the job, there is no gender gap. A gender gap is an artificial construct made by people who can't get past gender in the first place.

Re:What gender gap? by msauve · 2014-12-23 12:21 · Score: 2

In this whole world, you're unique. Just like everyone else.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:What gender gap? by haggholm · 2014-12-23 13:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not everything in this world is going to mimic the real demographics of the planet.
No, but human abilities tend to fall along bell curves.
Observation: White males are overrepresented in tech fields when contrasted with non-white, non-male, or neither-white-nor-male workers.
Feminist/progressivist position: The reason behind this overrepresentation is a complex system of biases (consider all the studies that have shown that people whose names, listed, on resumes, sound white and male, are more likely to get called in for interviews), historical factors (such as unequal education opportunities), and cultural factors (for example, unequal participation can form a positive feedback loop because being the odd person out, especially in a very visible way, can be off-putting). Then, of course, there really is a lot of overt misogyny, as five minutes on Reddit can prove not merely beyond doubt, but also beyond hope. All of these things (or rather, the gender-related rather than race-related parts) are what feminists are referring to when they use the term "patriarchy". In my opinion that's a poorly chosen term, implying something less nebulous, more focused, intentional, and planned than is the case; but there you are -- the feminist movement isn't perfect either.
("Privilege" is another term that leads to endless misunderstanding, since it gets thrown around in a manner that can sound pretty accusatory, but that again misses the point. The observation that certain people benefit from certain injustices is not the same as blaming them for those injustices. Maybe you went to Harvard on the family fortune your great-grandfather made by exploiting slave labour, and are therefore better educated than the black guy across town whose great-grandfather was one of those slaves. You hold no moral responsibility for slavery, but your superior employment prospects are still the product not of disinterested meritocracy, but the outcome of slavery.)
Reactionary position: Nah, it just so coincidentally happens that (a) all the smartest people/people with most talent in these (high-paying) fields just happen to belong to the same demographic that's also most represented among business leaders, politicians, &c., and/or (b) the people who take an interest in these fields just happen to belong to that same moneyed and powerful demographic.
Sure.
Personally, I don't expect that the gender balance would be exactly 50% even if none of the above factors were present, as presumably some degree of inclination, and potentially (but not necessarily) some fractional degree of talent for many professions may be causally tied to biological sex, and presumably different jobs would go in and out of vogue with various demographics. (By analogy, from what I hear: Why are all the top-level swimmers in the US white? Because swimming just isn't very popular among African-Americans.) But, with a few exceptions where biological traits matter, as for jobs where men's statistical advantage in physical strength makes them, on average, more qualified, I don't expect the "natural" imbalance to be very large, and unless your company has keyboards with really fucking serious resistance and tactile feedback, such that the average woman could not type without the assistance of a hammer and nail sink, I don't think it's unreasonable to postulate that there's something more to it.
Another way to look at it: Suppose (this may or may not really be the case) that there was at some point horrible discrimination, since resolved, so that women for a long time avoided the field. Therefore, very few women work in the field, and since it ipso facto looks like a field with very few opportunities for women, very few women chose to get relevant educations and degrees. Employers can say, with some justification, that the reason they hire so few women is that there are few qualified c
Re:What gender gap? by x0ra · 2014-12-23 14:18 · Score: 2

of course, most of them tends to have it filled with fat...
Re:What gender gap? by crossmr · 2014-12-23 15:25 · Score: 4, Informative

Right. If there's anything that's clear in the months after all this #GamerGate bullshit reached its apparent peak, it's that sexism and the bullying/harrassment of women is a fiction whipped up by angry feminists with a persecution complex.
I can't possibly imagine what would ever give anyone cause to think that...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanha...
Re:What gender gap? by dbIII · 2014-12-23 18:12 · Score: 2

It's a widening gap.
When I was an undergraduate the engineering students did CS classes to meet girls, since around 1% of the engineering enrolement was female and CS slightly more then 50%. Now I see far more women around in professional engineering roles than in IT positions - only one in the room of 50+ at an IPv6 thing and she was a sales rep. It's a very dramatic change and not artificial. The "special snowflakes" are the whiney little boys who can't cope with the change being pointed out to them in my opinion. It's depressing that this place is turning into a whiney little boy site where all women are considered inferior instead of one that could respect Admiral Grace Hopper and Marie Curie for what they did.
Re:What gender gap? by bluegutang · 2014-12-23 20:31 · Score: 2

Observation: White males are overrepresented in tech fields when contrasted with non-white, non-male, or neither-white-nor-male workers.
That's not my observation. Where I work, white males are slightly underrepresented. (Asian males are drastically overrepresented...)
If your basic observation is wrong, what does that say about all the speculative analysis you've based on it?
Re:What gender gap? by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2014-12-24 02:04 · Score: 2

Feminist/progressivist position: The reason behind this overrepresentation is a complex system of biases (consider all the studies that have shown that people whose names, listed, on resumes, sound white and male, are more likely to get called in for interviews), historical factors (such as unequal education opportunities), and cultural factors (for example, unequal participation can form a positive feedback loop because being the odd person out, especially in a very visible way, can be off-putting). Then, of course, there really is a lot of overt misogyny, as five minutes on Reddit can prove not merely beyond doubt, but also beyond hope. All of these things (or rather, the gender-related rather than race-related parts) are what feminists are referring to when they use the term "patriarchy". In my opinion that's a poorly chosen term, implying something less nebulous, more focused, intentional, and planned than is the case; but there you are -- the feminist movement isn't perfect either.
("Privilege" is another term that leads to endless misunderstanding, since it gets thrown around in a manner that can sound pretty accusatory, but that again misses the point. The observation that certain people benefit from certain injustices is not the same as blaming them for those injustices. Maybe you went to Harvard on the family fortune your great-grandfather made by exploiting slave labour, and are therefore better educated than the black guy across town whose great-grandfather was one of those slaves. You hold no moral responsibility for slavery, but your superior employment prospects are still the product not of disinterested meritocracy, but the outcome of slavery.)
Of course what exposes feminists and quite often progressives as the naked bigots dressed up in flowery language they are, is that they've nothing to say about fields where women are overrepresented, or their underrepresentation in unpleasant jobs like garbage collection.
It's always a matter of great amusement to hear these often very privileged white women and men talking about how they're part of a civil rights movement when the actual civil rights movement was sparked off by a false rape allegation.

As always, looking at this wrong. by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2014-12-23 12:25 · Score: 5, Interesting

Step 1: Stigmatize the traits that lead people to excel in tech fields, men posessing those traits, and anyone in tech
Step 2: Watch as that stigmatization isolates and ostracizes people in tech as "nerds" "dweebs" "dorks" "losers" and so on
Step 3: "WHY AREN'T THERE MORE WOMEN IN TECH?!!!!"

Tech fields aren't some fortress designed to keep women out, they're a ghetto that unattractive or non-conforming men were shoved into. That's why the "neckbeard" stereotype is pushed so hard these days, nobody wants to give up bullying these people but they need to find some way to JUSTIFY it that also covers for the fact that bullying is exactly why the gender gap exists in the first place. So they invent this massive straw misogynist "neckbeard" caricature and start pushing it everywhere. Now it's not just that nerds are losers, it's that they're misogynist losers and that's why it's totally ok to bully them because it's all their fault anyway.

--
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."

Re:As always, looking at this wrong. by sphealey · 2014-12-23 13:05 · Score: 2

- - - - - Step 1: Stigmatize the traits that lead people to excel in tech fields, men posessing those traits, and anyone in tech - - - - -

Technology people were global heroes from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Whilst arising from groups and cultures that had been stigmatized in the 60s/70s their success at opening up the new world was lionized as the PC/technology revolution got rolling. Nerd became a cool thing to be.
Problem is that starting in the 1990s and really rolling after 2000 the tech world damaged itself in some fundamental way, and is now being looked on much more skeptically. Source of that damage isn't totally clear (well, then there's Uber) but it isn't accurate to blame society for stigmatizing technology people out of nowhere; there are reasons.
sPh
Re:As always, looking at this wrong. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-23 14:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Problem is that starting in the 1990s and really rolling after 2000 the tech world damaged itself in some fundamental way
Yeah, like constant demand for long hours, a severe disinclination to pay a decent salary, constant threat of being outsourced, no real promotion ladder, no real prospects after you turn 40, and most of the job is the tedious stuff that nobody likes doing.
Re:As always, looking at this wrong. by Shadow+of+Eternity · 2014-12-23 18:52 · Score: 2

Because you can't have an unfalsifiable theory. The way your claim works everything is patriarchy no matter what it is, even if it hurts men, therefore nothing will ever NOT be patriarchy.

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A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Re:As always, looking at this wrong. by horigath · 2014-12-23 20:18 · Score: 2

lol no i'm not. I knew it wasn't worth my time to type a definition of how I used the word because sure enough you didn't read it.
in the meantime, i'll be sure to tell everyone i know in the humanities about Karl Popper and how you can read about him on wikipedia I don't think any of them has ever thought to do so before nope not even once. ciao.
Re:As always, looking at this wrong. by TheRaven64 · 2014-12-23 22:07 · Score: 2

I'm responsible for computer science admissions at an all-women college in Cambridge. I don't yet gave the figures for this year, but in the most recent year that I do have statistics for male computer science applicants had around a 15% acceptance rate, female applicants had around a 20% acceptance rate over the entire university. In spite of this, only 14% of our total admissions for CompSci were women. You can see the whole figures here. The women that we admit are not clustered anywhere particularly on the bell curve, so we're not bumping up the ratio by letting in inferior female candidates - we're just not seeing many women apply.
These numbers are even worse if you discount international students. The vast majority of women who make it to the interview stage are from outside of the UK. If you only count international students, then the gender ratios are more equal. To me, this means that there's something cultural in the UK (and, from what I've seen, the US) that isn't happening elsewhere, which puts women off computer science before they even get to university applications.
In some countries, the pressure is in the opposite direction. If you work in any computing-related discipline, you've probably worked with some extremely competent Iranian women (unless you work at a company like Google that refuses to hire anyone from Iran). If Iranian women want to pursue further education, they have a choice of engineering or medicine, but medicine in a country with a strong patriarchal ethos doesn't lead to many career paths (no one trusts a woman doctor), so they go to engineering. Within engineering, they have the choice of computer science or something that involves working in a factory, so most of them go into computer science. And then they graduate and realise that the job market looks much better abroad and that they have marketable skills, so they leave.
It's not something that has a quick fix, but it really needs to start in primary schools. It's easy to put young children off a career path very early on and very hard to fix it later.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News

superficial read... by slew · 2014-12-23 12:30 · Score: 3, Informative

That summary is a total superficial read of the article.

It seems to me the point of the article was that 1994 (the web 1.0 boom of silicon valley) seemingly should have been more women friendly, but the valley was already being run by money from the previous booms in silicon valley and for a multitude of reasons which they list (e.g., male dominated venture capital firms), was unfriendly to women as chronicled by the biographies of the class of '94 from Stanford. One of the reason they cited was that women seem to gravitate towards "safe" jobs (e.g., law, finance, medicine) and a new "boys-club" mentality of the startup culture (specifically mentioning Paypal which was a Stanford dominated startup).

These same trends were most certainly true both before 1994 and after 1994 and not exclusive to Stanford... TFA didn't say techs' gender gap started at Stanford. TFA used Stanford as emblematic of the issue.

Re:superficial read... by sphealey · 2014-12-23 12:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

I remember reading "how to interview in Silicon Valley" articles during that time period that described firms doing things such as flying entire recruiting classes to Las Vegas and eliminating any candidates who didn't gamble and drink in large quantities. That's behavior that predictive for success in complex business-focused entities for sure.
sPH

Yup by s.petry · 2014-12-23 12:38 · Score: 2

But then again, I have not hear the arguments about the patriarchy and misogyny for a while so at least it's different agenda based reporting.

Society does not have enough turmoil, so we have to invent and spew more...

--

-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

there was certainly interest... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-23 12:54 · Score: 3, Informative

...up until 1984. Interesting story about the culture which helped shaped women out of the field, or at the very least, class them out.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

Re:Slashdot is exceeding itself lately... by sphealey · 2014-12-23 12:54 · Score: 3, Informative

- - - - - So before 1994, women were nearly equally represented in computing? HAHAHAHA. - - - - -

Um, much more nearly, yes.

1943 to 1945 - women were about 95% of the computing workforce.

1946 to mid/late 1950s - still a very large percentage of women, since they had the experience (from the war) and were pushed back out of other engineering fields. Computing, being a branch of applied mathematics, was considered "acceptable" for women to take up

1960-1980 - still a large percentage of women in "data processing" (as programmers and systems analysts, not just keypunch operators), esp in very large companies.

1980 - boom in university computer science begins and many women are interested. 1984 is the peak post-war year for women graduating from engineering programs (around 40% IIRC); a large percentage are CS with many of the rest EE. Many of these women (my classmates) go on to critical roles in companies and universities building out this " 'net " concept (later renamed the Internet).

post-1990 - something goes completely wacky in the industry and women are driven out of computing in large numbers; younger women don't even enter the field.

So, since you seem to be a younger dude perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that happened 1990-2000 that made the field so undesirable to women.

Re:Slashdot is exceeding itself lately... by adri · 2014-12-23 14:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

I was working in the first dot com boom during 1998-2001. Now, I was working in Amsterdam rather than the US, but I did get to feel exactly how screwed up this situation got. And looking back at it, this article does re-iterate a lot of those points quite clearly.

The people that succeeded were for the most part the ones that put in long hours, were ruthless about achieving their goals and cared not about things like "work/life balance", "emotional stability", "health concerns", etc. Whenever I came out to the US to talk shop with other internet infrastructure people, they were working long hours, ignoring what the industry said they could / couldn't do. There were women in tech, but they weren't the programmers - the ones I met tended to be algorithms people, data scientists, etc. They weren't in the meat grinder of bashing out C/perl code.

The article covered the long hours, it covered what happened when things went pear shaped, and it did a pretty good hatchet job on the kind of focus and ruthlessness you needed to get where you wanted to go. It was amazing to watch and now a little scary. Then the dot-com bust happened and people lost everything. Plenty of people I knew said "fuck it" and left the industry. Those that stayed either made their money, or they were just suckers for loving their jobs. They didn't have strong personal relationships with others. They just loved kicking ass and taking names in their work career. That sometimes worked out for them and sometimes didn't.

A lot of the people I knew in the tech field did just leave and look for something more stable. The people that stuck it out were homeless, couch-surfing, living with family/friends, existing wherever they could just to get over the sheer loss of everything. Not everyone is cut out for that level of destitution and dedication - eventually they'll snap and go off to something more stable.

This field is terrible. It chews you over and spits you out. If you're lucky then you make a bunch of money and save a bunch of money. Plenty of people working in tech and living in San Francisco aren't even doing that. We don't necessarily churn out people who are risk takers out of university - heck, churning out creative thinkers just became an "in vogue" thing again with this whole maker faire mentality that's happening nowdays. But when the thing crashes again, you'll see the same cycle - those who are willing to risk it all and live hand-to-mouth from wherever they can will do it. Others will go find whatever is safe and stable and start life again from there.

Now, is that gender biased? Maybe. Someone has to go do a little more research to figure that out. But from what I saw, there were a handful of women that stuck through that and came out ahead. Most that I knew just gave it in and went back to school, moved in with parents, or decided to stop work and have babies. The guys seemed more happy to take the risk again and again and live hand-to-mouth.

There's lots to fix. We have to stop being insensitive asshats. part of that is institutional - the brogrammer culture is strong here. Part of that comes out of all of the stupid stress and anxiety that litters this community. It's hard to pay attention to how you live, how you interact, how you make others feel, how to communicate well and well, how not to be an asshole if you're always stressed out, anxious and sleep deprived. add in a bit of being shouted at and some threats about your job security and .. well, you just stop giving any fucks. Part of it is no constant exposure to dealing with other people and a focus on your ability to churn out code - your job doesn't tend to want you spending time each day to improve yourself in all ways - it needs to be work relevant, and hey you have that deadline that just appeared? Eww. It's good to see people standing up and calling out bad behvaiour. it's good to see that some communities are sprouting up and eschewing shitty behaviour. But I'd really like to see the stress, anxiety and hours drop as well as a focus on people interaction. My 20 year old self gave no interest to any of these things. My 35 year old self .. suddenly realises that it's pretty fucking important.

Almost Shirley by rmdingler · 2014-12-23 14:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you're a regular contributor to content, at a probability near one you will have encountered the undeserved down mod.

In the eye of the beholder, one's genius is often the waste-of-oxygen of another.

--
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway

No, No it doesnt. by thesupraman · 2014-12-23 14:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am sorry, what data does it have?
Oh, you mean it has unsupported assertions that match your desired worldview?

Let me make my own suggestion:
Pre mid 90s, CS was a rather unpopular course, generally filled with people who had a true interest in it, and in quite low numbers.
Therefore it tended to have a moderately (more) balanced gender participation, although that does vary quite strongly depending on location.

During the later 90s, the 'tech boom' made it a much more popular course for a lot of people who through it could be a path to 'success', the
content was watered down, the attendance went through the roof, and more of a male bias was seem.

HOWEVER, what to know where the opposite happened? business courses, MBAs, Laywers, Doctors.
Thats right, women CHOSE to avoid tech because they saw a larger payout in other areas - and women in general are better at long term planning.
Women went for the established, known risk long term payout of those kinds of course (at least as viewed at the time), whereas Men tended to bias more
towards the 'excitement and risk' of tech, with a lower probable payout.

But history meant a few of the tech people ended up making it big - so not its 'unfair' that more women didnt choose that path, and its the mens fault.

Get real, CS, and other tech courses, were most certainly NOT sexy in the early-mid 90s, and women were not excluded - most people who took them
were looked down on by much of the rest of the faculty.

Or, should we perhaps look at the current gener in bio-research, and advanced medical? a HUGE bias to women - who is screaming out about fixing that
equality? yes? please? no one? thought not.

Its just more of the usual - if something does well, women want 'equality' inforced there, but if it doesnt, they are happy to ignore it.
Or should be be trying to fix the gender gap in trades and manual labour areas? more women working in mines and fabrication?

Thought not..

Re:Clickbaiting Bullshit Works by ShieldW0lf · 2014-12-23 15:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Doesn't anyone else see that it's immoral to press, entice or implore a woman to sacrifice her child bearing years so she can fix your computer, or to let other people do so?

Didn't the article about how Facebook is funding freezing womens eggs wake anyone's eyes up to just how fucked up we've become?

Is that what you want for your daughter? Sure as hell isn't what I want for mine.

If that's what you're going to use your power for, you shouldn't have it.

--
-1 Uncomfortable Truth

Seems to me that the high tech women CEOs by MouseTheLuckyDog · 2014-12-23 16:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

have all been massive failures.Well Virginia Rometty hasn't been a massive failure, but she hasn't been a success either.

Smart kids are usually socially awkward by Tony+Isaac · 2014-12-23 17:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Face it, smart kids were mercilessly teased in school since a long time before 1994. But being socially awkward, these kids stick to what they ARE good at, like tinkering with computers. This provides an escape for them, since they don't have a clue how to be accepted by others.

Girls tend to mature socially earlier than boys. They DO understand how to relate to others socially, and they don't want any part of the kind of treatment they see their smart male friends enduring. So...they do the smart thing...they stay away.

Is this all a terrible injustice? Probably. But we shouldn't be blaming the men. They are the ones who stuck with their quest despite the pressure. If there is anyone to blame, blame Hollywood, which (at the time) produced movie after movie reinforcing the "nerd" stereotype.

Keyword = 'Diversity' by Taco+Cowboy · 2014-12-23 19:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Whenever I scan a document or an article and the word 'Diversity' pops up ... sigh!, yet another useless Political Correctness piece of crap!

The theme is always the same --- no matter if it's tech, or business, or wealth, or whatever-you-can-think-of, their basic argument is that someone has been _WRONGED_ and we must do everything to right the wrong, to make sure that the disenfrenchised party is disenfrenchised no more !

The 'common theme' is 'GAP', and the adjective can be 'racial', or 'gender', or 'wealth', or whathaveyou

They never care to address the WHY, they only want to talk about the "injustice"

The society is not going forward if every time they come up with something new the rest of us have to stop everything in order to 'help the disenfrenchised'

--
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

Re:Clickbaiting Bullshit Works by Intrepid+imaginaut · 2014-12-24 01:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

The point is that it shouldn't be a choice between kids or career.

Yeah the choice is kids or career without much water between the two. If you don't like that resign yourself to having your children raised by strangers and hired help, which for most isn't acceptable. Raising children takes time and effort, something that the convenience of white goods and reduced physical requirements in the workforce hasn't changed.

What we're seeing now is a lot of women who went into the workforce and discovered that they were going to be neither wealthy nor successful, just like 99% of men in the workforce. Instead they're going to have a middle class lifestyle that they'd probably have been able to enjoy anyway plus a family had they chosen to raise kids instead. Is it any wonder womens' happiness has been decreasing.

That's not to say that men shouldn't be househusbands except it seems women aren't very attracted by that. Patriarchy, right?

I think first of all that the religion of feminism needs to die loudly and publicly along with every other social engineering cult, and secondly that people need to learn to differentiate between "a career" and "financial independence". These aren't the same thing.

And do not mistake me for a conservative or a traditionalist, I am neither.

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Tech's Gender Gap Started At Stanford

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