Lies, Damn Lies, and Tech Diversity Statistics

theodp writes Some of the world's leading Data Scientists are on the payrolls of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Apple. So, it'd be interesting to get their take on the infographics the tech giants have passed off as diversity data disclosures. Microsoft, for example, reported its workforce is 29% female, which isn't great, but if one takes the trouble to run the numbers on a linked EEO-1 filing snippet (PDF), some things look even worse. For example, only 23.35% of its reported white U.S. employee workforce is female (Microsoft, like Google, footnotes that "Gender data are global, ethnicity data are US only"). And while Google and Facebook blame their companies' lack of diversity on the demographics of U.S. computer science grads, CS grad and nationality breakouts were not provided as part of their diversity disclosures. Also, the EEOC notes that EEO-1 numbers reflect "any individual on the payroll of an employer who is an employee for purposes of the employers withholding of Social Security taxes," further muddying the disclosures of companies relying on imported talent, like H-1B visa dependent Facebook. So, were the diversity disclosure mea culpas less about providing meaningful data for analysis, and more about deflecting criticism and convincing lawmakers there's a need for education and immigration legislation (aka Microsoft's National Talent Strategy) that's in tech's interest?

Comments

objective reassessment ...

[fche]

... becomes subjective bias-reinforcement when using the phrase "even worse" in comparing numbers

Re:objective reassessment ...

[russotto]

It's not "fudging", it's just releasing the numbers the companies have available. They're not compiling ethnicity statistics based on "employees who were US nationals when they went to US-based universities", because no one's asking for that. And they certainly aren't doing the same for all foreign nationals and foreign university systems.

What do you expect to find?

[russotto]

The disclosures showed what everyone knew already - there's a lot of white males around, a disproportionately high number of Asian males, not so many Hispanics and blacks and relatively few women. Do you really think picking at the details is going to make things look significantly different?

And why bring up H-1Bs when talking about only counting employees who have Social Security taxes withheld? H-1Bs ARE subject to withholding for Social Security.

Re:What do you expect to find?

[theodp]

Right, so if H-1B workers are included in the EEO-1 reports, comparing U.S. college populations to Facebook's 15%+ H-1B workforce, as FB's Sheryl Sandberg did, is kind of apples-to-oranges, no?

Re:What do you expect to find?

[shutdown -p now]

I haven't looked at the report, but from my personal experience, there are some interesting observations that seem to support the notion that gender imbalance in IT is entirely, or at least mostly cultural, and all that talk about "natural differences" is just BS.

Here's why. While there are few enough female coders around, I do notice a definitive trend that the majority of them tend to be immigrants. Generally speaking, China is best represented, there's a good share of Indians and Eastern Europeans, and even some Middle Easterners. But Americans are conspicuously absent. For a while I thought that one girl that I know was born in US, but even she turned out to be from a family of recent immigrants.

OTOH, you can find them quite easily if you stop looking at the engineers - and then you discover them in admin and HR. There, it's the other way around - very few immigrant women, mostly Americans.

Now I'm not claiming that China or India (ha ha!) are less sexist, far from it. But skilled immigrants are a self-selecting category, they're usually people who have already achieved something in their own country and have enough experience to get attention to be hired overseas, and enough money to move. So once you get past that filter, turns out that women actually do very well in IT, engineering, math, and all those other supposedly "not for girls" fields. OTOH, when the workers come from a local pool, that doesn't have such a filter in place, then you see the force of cultural stereotypes firmly implanted in their hands - and they don't even try to go for "male" jobs.

Re:What do you expect to find?

[Grishnakh]

That "filter" doesn't explain it. There's a LOT more natural-born Americans in America than people born outside America (duh!). Therefore, there should be more American-born (not from a recently-immigrated family etc.) women in these fields. But there's not.

That points a clear picture that there's simply something broken about our American society, which pushes women to stay out of these fields.

However, is it that the women are missing out on a great opportunity, or are they avoiding a bad career path which offers excessively-long hours for no extra pay than they'd get with a cushy HR job?

Re:What do you expect to find?

[shutdown -p now]

It doesn't explain admin roles (where there are a lot), and I don't think that low-level HR jobs are all that cushy, either, or pay well compared to developers, especially a few years in when you get a couple of raises and associated cash bonuses.

FWIW, the (immigrant) women who are devs or dev managers do pretty well for themselves - I'm talking about senior positions here, the ones where combined base pay and bonuses would typically go $200k and above.

SjwDot.org

[r.freeman]

SJW posts on Slashdot.org are getting ridiculous, why it is some tragedy that both genders choose other things to do in their life?

Re:SjwDot.org

[russotto]

The SJW posts will continue until the commenters acquiesce. Not holding my breath. It's not like we don't recognize the SJWs as being the same damn male-nerd-bashers we've dealt with our entire life, only now claiming the moral high ground of "diversity" too.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

That, and timmah got his plums emptied by Anita Sarkeesian.

You go timmah, winning!

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

More seriously though this nonsense is getting crazy. Story after story about gender diversity, why women are being driven out of tech by rapey neckbeards, a resolute refusal to take a long hard journalistically honest look at gamergate (when gamergate should have been the FOCUS of a site like slashdot), it reeks of complicity with the insidious agenda of the demented hate movement known as feminism.

I'll tell you this "editors", the time for such manipulations is almost at an end.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, they're not the same. SJWs are for the most part "white knights" - they're self-hating straight white men who have bought into the feminazi bullshit and think that their only chance at ever touching a female is to pull this SJW bullshit.

Don't forget, the SJWs pulling this bullshit would never do anything about it. They'll write mean articles, they'll write mean tweets, they'll dox you, they'll even SWAT you, but they'll never talk to you in person and they'd certainly never march in the street. So they do this crap from the safety of their parent's basement in the hopes that some woman out of nowhere will see their valiant white knighting and decide to fuck them.

They're wrong, of course, no woman would ever want a man as pathetic as an SJW. And ultimately they end up hurting the women and minorities they claim to be "helping". But what do they care? After all, SJWs are straight white men.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The problem is universities are churning out thousands of graduates with degrees in "gender studies" and "feminist theory" who have nothing better to do than criticise companies built and run by people who made the insane choice to study maths, physics, engineering or computer science. SJW have mortgages to pay you know.

It's actually quite ironic.

Re:SjwDot.org

[PopeRatzo]

You gotta admit, it's pretty funny when an unknown feminist can just freak the fuck out of these self-described alpha males. I mean, if not for GamerGate setting its own hair on fire, nobody would know who Anita Sarkeesian even was.

Instead, she's turned into a rock star, gets a book deal, and Intel gives half a billion dollars to encourage diversity.

And people wonder why the tech sector is so keen to replace white men.

Re:SjwDot.org

[MoonlessNights]

... or that people are actually individuals and their genders are not their direct identities.

Sure, I am male but that only matters in one situation (due to my handicap of being straight) and we aren't doing that right now so I have no interest in your gender.

If you can help me work through the design of this idea without resorting to arguments relating to "where the braces will go", then I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful colleagueship.

Re:SjwDot.org

[PopeRatzo]

Not my fault ageing thirsty SJWs open their wallets at the sight of her.

But it is your fault she became famous.

Soooo, poperatzo, are you a beardo with a baby pathologically terrified for your daughter's virtue or a dehydrated old goat who hasn't yet given up the dream of the hareem.

Gamergator responds to charges by proving them. Way to go, cuck.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

But it is your fault she became famous.

I don't run any publications chucklehead.

At least not yet.

Gamergator responds to charges by proving them. Way to go, cuck.

Yeah, those damn patriarchal facts. So you're pressing on towards seniority then? Maybe you'd be better served looking for women in a tropical clime rather than aping a misandrist, I believe they don't really care what you look like as long as you sign over the pension.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Locando]

What if you're actually wrong, though? If that were the case, then wouldn't it be worth it if one day you actually changed your mind?

Never mind that, in any case — why are you bitching instead of trying to persuade people you're right? Where's the forthright, manly debate? You don't sound like you're ready to back your side up. Why not?

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Oh gosh, tinpot shaming tactics wedded to bullshit, where do I sign up?

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

And for the record I'd advise local law enforcement to put up signs telling kids they should not feel welcome on your lawn. Ugh, Lena Dunham anyone? 500 yards or more champ.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Locando]

I don't even know what that means! WTF are you talking about, seriously?

Re:SjwDot.org

[PopeRatzo]

And for the record I'd advise local law enforcement to put up signs telling kids they should not feel welcome on your lawn. Ugh, Lena Dunham anyone? 500 yards or more champ.

And yet, it's your clubhouse that has put out the welcome mat for pedos.

http://www.dailydot.com/politi...

Re:SjwDot.org

[Solandri]

Ran across this interesting tidbit while looking up some stats for myself last time one of these articles got posted here.

Of the 7.6 million STEM workers, only 24% are women.
Of the 3.7 million public schoolteachers, only 24% are men.

I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Shadow of Eternity]

A lie which, like all others before it, was completely disproven. Disproven by the fact the GameJournoPros supporter who distributed alleged "child porn" wasn't arrested and the investigations determined there was no child porn.

Kinda funny it took this long to go back to the age old "think of teh children!!!111eleventyone" argument though.

Re:SjwDot.org

[tlhIngan]

I'll start taking all this gender equality stuff being reported seriously when I see at least half as many articles complaining about the latter as I see about the former. If one is a "problem", so is the other. Otherwise I'll take it there's an implicit assumption that women like to teach (or are better teachers) than men. And likewise men like STEM (or are better at STEM) than women.

Funny enough, there is a concern. MenTeach is about children's success. We want a diverse workforce, both men and women teachers, educating and caring for our children.

Of course, a problem is males are driven away from pre-school, elementary and middle school - it's not for lack of will, but there's an inherent distrust that a male teacher will rape all the female students that basically scare off the male teachers.

It's not for lack of interest or lack of skills, it's from an environment that basically does not allow men to teach.

And that's potentially the problem in IT - it's not the women are less skilled or less interested, it's that the men are somehow driving them away.

It's not a problem if it's simply "women don't want to be in IT" and the reason is "they're just not interested". That's something we can't change - you can't force girls to be interested in computers if they're not interested.

But if they ARE interested, and something else drives them away that we CAN control, then why don't we? Do we create a hostile atmosphere that makes women uncomfortable? Is there something that we don't do that they want us to do (e.g., shower daily)?

And that's what we really need to research. Perhaps 25% of women in STEM is fine, if 25% of them are interested in STEM fields and the 75% are in other areas, then that's perfect representation. It's a problem if say, 50% of women want to go into STEM and half of hose are somehow driven away from STEM, which means there's a problem we should fix.

Of course, this research is hard, and the answers will upset people - it may upset STEM workers because it can say stuff that they don't want to hear (e.g., "STEM workers are awfully misogynistic and should undergo gender sensitivity training as part of a regular ongoing training program"). Or it may upset women when it turns out they just aren't interested to begin with.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

> No one, practically, no one knows SJW

That is a blatant lie.

SJWs try to insert themselve in all kinds of media: board games, metal music, comic books, atheism, etc. Each of these had their own invasion of "diversity" freaks trying to force everybody to adopt their world views. They're a cross-media plague. Video gamers just had already gotten enough shit from conservatives and nerd bashers and pushed back publicly en masse.

Your post makes it painfully obvious where you stand, and how these people operate: shame, lie and marginalize to further an agenda.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

This is why it keeps coming up - people here are unwilling to face the simple truths that the rest of the world did long ago

What, truths like "women have always, always worked outside the home even after marriage despite the hysterical narrative being pushed by people such as yourself that they were chained barefoot to the kitchen sink until the psychotics of second wave feminism saved them"? Truths like the fact that white goods did far far more to change the roles of women in society than feminism ever did as they freed up huge amounts of time? Those simple truths? Or maybe you'll take Einstein's word for it:

"Above all things there are the women who, as a literal fact, dominate the entire life in America. The men take an interest in absolutely nothing at all. They work and work, the like of which I have never seen anywhere yet. For the rest they are the toy dogs of the women, who spend the money in a most unmeasurable, illimitable way and wrap themselves in a fog of extravagance."

Dat narrative tho.

It was never about "rapey neckbeards", that's just some nonsense the anti-feminist crowd came up with.

This technique is known as DARVO and I see it a lot among the anti GG crowd. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim Order - "No, all lies, scummy anti feminists, feminsts are the Victims here". People are learning about your shabby rhetorical tapdancing, they're learning how you work, how you co-ordinate, how you hustle.

And they don't like you very much.

It's about the things we have known for a long time put women off, and which are well documented. Things like bad working hours, lack of female role models, and hiring practices that while not actively discriminatory do never the less result in fewer women applying. Tech companies recognize these things as problems because they want the best candidates on the market, not the best candidates from a subset.

Spin like this never, ever stands up to scrutiny. In reality it's the mutants in the gender studies departments who learned their craft at the hoary knees of Dworkin and company looking for excuses to chip away another meritocratic system who want this. Tech companies are going along with it for the same reason they want more H1-B visas and they same reason they're being let into schools for pity's sake, more workers = cheaper workers, supply and demand.

In your own mind, your own narrative,you're an agent of progressive change, change which has been slowly improving society since the 70s, making life more equal, tearing down patriarchal constructs, you and your fellow travellers are the lights that lead humanity out of the dark ages.

But that's not the reality. The truth that almost everyone is starting to see is that your narrative is leaking brake fluid out of a thousand cracks. The changes that have been wrought are almost entirely due to technological advancements like cheaper cars and the free sharing of information via the internet, and the biggie, unleaded petrol. You are in fact representative of a regressive and reactionary hate movement whose conversations must centre around despising someone, whether it's the bourgeouise, the jews, or latterly white men.

The astounding hypocrisy of these sentiments is further compounded by a myriad of minor but still quite horrific hypocrisies, such as the identification with the (genuine) civil rights movement which was sparked off by a false rape allegation resulting in murder. Feminists would have supported the murderers with their blanket insistence that all rape accusations must be believed, and they'd probably have said that men could learn a lesson from it, those big rapey heads.

The only place your kind are leading is into a miserable gulag where merit becomes a curse word and men have to close their legs on subways, keeping their heads bowed when women walk by, a place where achievement becomes failure and failure becomes achievement, a place where the natural love be

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

but there's an inherent distrust that a male teacher will rape all the female students that basically scare off the male teachers.

Nothing inherent about it, it's a deliberately fostered and carefully cultivated narrative, which like all of these schemes ends up with people unfit for the job being given the job, leading to an epidemic of female teachers raping male and female students. And that list is by no means comprehensive, Fark used to run a daily piece on the latest female teacher/male student paedophile case. At this point it would be a considerable endeavour to gather and organise the ever increasing mountain of cases.

Re: SjwDot.org

[Mashiki]

euphemism

No it's a euphemism for a group of people who whine, bitch and moan because they think they're special snowflakes and would rather the world work on their idea of justice, or promotion. Instead of merit, and law. Note that the UVA scandal is an example of SJW's in action, so was the whining and moaning over Mozilla's president being fired for making donations on his own time to a group.

You can try and label it as the "scary conservative bogyman" but you're only proving one thing. That you actually have no substantial argument that people are right in calling them the bottom feeders of society.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Mashiki]

So I guess that means there's no child porn on infinite chan right. In other words, he made it all up in order to slander gamergate and infinite chan. Well that sure make it easy doesn't it? It's always nice when people come right out into the clear like that, and simply prove what everyone already knows. That when someone doesn't have something substantive, their only recourse is slander and libel.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Shadow of Eternity]

Pretty much exactly that, in fact what he claimed to be childporn was in part just gay pornography... a common libel made against gay men. If there were child porn on fullchan then the anti-gamergate person who downloaded and public distributed it would have been arrested for distributing child pornography. He was cleared by the police, therefore there was no child pornography.

This was right up there with the GNAA paying people $20 to tweet misogynist slurs and threats... and Zoe Quinn retweeting their offers to astroturf.

Re:SjwDot.org

[CrimsonAvenger]

Perhaps 25% of women in STEM is fine, if 25% of them are interested in STEM fields and the 75% are in other areas, then that's perfect representation.

Umm, no.

If 25% of the PEOPLE who are interested in STEM are women, than 25% women in STEM is perfect representation.

Your analysis reduces to "there are 150 million women in the country. If 37 million of them are interested in STEM, then there is perfect representation. Never mind that there aren't 150 million STEM jobs for those 37 million women to take 25% of. Never mind that there aren't 113 million MEN interested in STEM...."

Re:SjwDot.org

[Mashiki]

Yep. Here's one if you haven't seen it yet, the sql database for "lizard stresser" is in the wild now, and there's apparently some very interesting email addresses in there. Including information on the person who paid $500 to DDoS 2ch and 8ch.

Re:SjwDot.org

[serviscope_minor]

Ah the old "everything has to be fixed at once or there's no point fixing anything at all argument".

Total crap.

Re:SjwDot.org

[serviscope_minor]

Ugh, people like you make me sick.

People who refuse to believe the lies, mysoginy and general shit spouted by gaters make you sick? Well, count me in. If that makes you sick, I want to make you sick too.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Shadow of Eternity]

I wouldn't be surprised if Literally Who, Wu, Blue, and Chu and some other big names were on there. Hell I'd be surprised if at least one WASN'T.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Mashiki]

Really, I'm leaning the same way but if they did...my question is how stupid do you have to be do to it. As well hotwheels has something up as well, telling mootles to talk to him about something a mod or couple of mods sent him. A lot of stuff flying around the biggest theory is that the ddos against infinite chan was done by a group of mods with his consent. Whether or not that holds true, we'll find out in the next day and a half.

Re:SjwDot.org

[AmiMoJo]

Your narrative is shattered you pathetic delusional monster.

This is why GamerGate has a bad rep - you disagree, they turn the hate on you.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Shadow of Eternity]

Well we are talking about a group of people stupid enough to count in their midst domestic abusers, neonazis, ACTUAL pedophiles, and get caught openly committing bribery, blacklisting, and screaming racial slurs at people.

Re:SjwDot.org

[PopeRatzo]

Lol, the Daily Dot as a source.

Don't like that one? Here, take your pick of over 100 references:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I realize you don't think Wikipedia is as authoritative a source as Encyclopedia Dramatica, but...Oh, just fuck off, aut.

Re:SjwDot.org

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Perhaps you should have thought about that before you turned the hate on them.

"Gamers are dead", really?

No.

Your brand of bullshit is dead.

Re:SjwDot.org

[AmiMoJo]

The lack of men in education is a big issue, but possibly not one that will get a lot of coverage on a tech news web site...

Re:SjwDot.org

[PopeRatzo]

I thought we were talking specifically about the disproven child porn charges and not your little SJW anti-gamer spin-job?

Sorry, I had my autists mixed up. Here you go:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:SjwDot.org

[Windwraith]

Well, I am done with Slashdot. I want science and tech news, not social justice news.
So let's go out with a bang, shall we?

For starters, you are so gullible if you believe that. Start finding truth by yourself instead of letting someone else tell you what is truth. Specially when the people delivering the news is precisely the people with skeletons in their closets.

How about the IGF and Indiecade corruption? You forget that one. Plenty of devs like me are trying to get somewhere in there, but we kept being called rapists and terrorists for trying to see why a jury consisting of Phil Fish's friends would vote Fez as best indie game (despite being a lazy clone of Super Paper Mario, just with less features including combat or bosses) and other things like that.
They are closing access to the indie scene and you are have problems if you believe otherwise. They are making it an exclusive club, not something based on the game's merit or anything like that. In fact, they seem to be, adamantly, against the concept of merit. No wonder why.
Go read about Gone Home. Compare the "press" opinion to every player opinion of it. Oh, well, nevermind, you'll just apply confirmation bias to say gamers can't get "art". So better don't because you'll be making a fool out of yourself in public. And, no, a plot twist about two characters being lesbians is only trivia, as it's not really used well in-universe. Also, Gone Home is not a single-woman product, there's this guy with the wacky rasta hair and a few others too.

The favorable coverage from Kotaku is documented, archived and screencapped. Lauding Depression Quest as the second coming of Christ and stuff. Perhaps if you had bothered to look for it you might have seen it instead of blindly believing it never happened. And, no, don't tell me you went to Kotaku and didn't find it, because, you know, they delete and edit stuff to save face, as site admins can alter site content, who'd have thought!
Her current boyfriend was the guy that was breaking GTAV discs (fine analogy to book burning) and singing the merits of Depression Quest in public conferences (recorded and publicly available on youtube. Again, if you had searched for it yourself...). What a coincidence, right?

Also, the "threats", have you seen them? I haven't seen them either. We got absolutely no proof of it happening. And, no, Wu never ran away from her house, because she posted photos of herself in the same room, live, when she said she was on the run. Look for it and do some work for once.
And, after all, the anti-GG side hates Wu too, it's them who will make her fall from grace, not gamergate. No one can take anyone seriously when talking about oppression when getting 15k bucks a month via Patreon. That's privilege that's been going unchecked.

How about when Harper made a twitter block list to block every person who follows anyone related to gamergate, including a lot of their own side and innocent people that was completely unrelated?
And she intends to make it a global industry blacklist. What will you think if you happen to be in that list because of the broken algorithm to determine if you are a gamergater or not (merely following or having spoken to someone related, even if before GG was a thing?) Can you consider yourself safe knowing you never interacted with anyone related? If you follow a false positive you are blocked and labeled a misogynist terrorist too, keep that in mind. But you don't see the problem I bet.

How about the ACTUAL harassment anti-GG people gave TotalBiscuit, a freaking cancer patient, during his chemo treatment? Remember TB wasn't pro-GG until that happened. How about the ACTUAL harassment against JonTron for referring to an [i]inanimate object[/i] as "retarded"? How about all the #notyourshield people, actual women and minorities, that got harassed, doxed and even fired for showing their face in order to prove that, perhaps, we aren't all white cis male nerds (and no, I am neither white nor American, bite me).

How a

Re:SjwDot.org

[serviscope_minor]

Farewell Slashdot, you were okay at some point

Lol ragequitting the internet.

Despite your long rant about anti gaters, which is completely irrelevant, you didn't actually address the rampant mysoginy in the gaters. You remember how it started? And then how it continued?

Also you posted not one single link. One thing I've noticed, is that after being called gullible repeatedly for dismissing gaters, I'm then expetcted to believe their long screeds on the internet full of completely unsourced accusations. So really it would seem to be that if I did believe you then I'd be as gullible as you accuse me of being.

Double standards?

White wimmin?

[Anonymous Coward]

White women have the most opportunities. I don't know any white men who just chose not to work and live an upper middle class or rich lifestyle, but I know plenty of white women who made that choice. It's no surprise that the many choose a life path without putting as much weight on things like "how much will Microsoft pay me". This isn't dumb chicks either- intelligence doesn't seem to discourage women from living as a housewife or kept woman, at all. Ambition I'm sure does, but those two do NOT go hand in hand.

When I was in school, there was a job fair for engineering / CS companies. But it wasn't just CS positions. Even then, there was an absolute dearth of girls apping to perfectly reasonable large corporations.

So those numbers mean nothing until men can choose a life of leisure in exactly the same way as (many) women can.

Re:White wimmin?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, man, check your phrasing. You make a fair point, but the connotation of phrases like "white wimmin" and "smart chicks" isn't going to help you sway anyone you want to sway.

I'm paraphrasing but there was a line I read a short while back in a book called Pinched, I believe by Don Peck that said something like "society has learned to deal with women in the workforce far better than it has learned to deal with men being out of it." Ultimately I think that's true. If we're going to have more gender parity, we need to acknowledge the fact that the self-selection of women into other fields, and removing themselves from the workforce entirely, has an awful lot to do with these numbers.

It's true that being a woman interviewing for a job in a field that is 70% male is going to have some problematic difficulties. It's also true that today in the US unemployment is a great predictor of divorces -- but only the male's unemployment. I don't conflate the two things to say that like, hey, it's all net fair, men are oppressed too. I just think it's unbelievably naive to not think they are part of the same issue.

it all works out

[bugs2squash]

29% of the workforce by weight is female.

Re:it all works out

[cascadingstylesheet]

29% of the workforce by weight is female.

But how many football fields?

I don't think it'll ever really happen

[TWX]

I find it unlikely that the tech sector will ever even get close to parity. Too many boys get interested in tech as a reaction to be ostracized from other groups. They develop a culture all their own, and that culture is usually not particularly friendly to people that are different from them, that have not gotten along with them terribly well, or that they don't think measure-up. Girls, and later women, squarely hit all three for the the vast majority of them, and when that's the base to which others entering technical fields through career planning rather than through personal interest have to deal with, that will turn-off people that don't like what they find.

When one looks at scandals like "gamergate" and other situations where women are finding themselves subject to personal attack when they disagree with other members of the community, you can begin to see the underbelly of the problem. Boys that don't get along with girls, objectify girls because of their own needs, and never are taught to behave otherwise will automatically reinforce an environment that's struggled with gender parity from the beginning.

The solution is to fix this when boys are in their tween and teen years, but that takes effort and a willingness to deal with the social issues that led to the problem in the first place. Screeching about the problem after it's become established won't fix it.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[Iamthecheese]

I like how you smoothly slide in the presumption that GamerGate is about attacking women, or about women at all. Very low-key.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[PopeRatzo]

It's the SJWs, not the gamers, who maintain a reign of terror via personal attack and outright censorship when someone disagrees.

And just to prove the point, GamerGate swatted three of those SJWs in the past 2 weeks. Because it was the ethical thing to do.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[DNS-and-BIND]

I love how the left-wing narrative on the subject completely leaves out the fact that nerds are regarded as freaks by mainstream society and that the left has long hated them specifically, going back way before they manufactured gamergate. As a prominent leftist said, maybe it's time to go back to bullying them, and the post above is just a confirmation of that attitude.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[PopeRatzo]

[citation needed]

I'm glad you asked:

http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[goose-incarnated]

[citation needed]

I'm glad you asked:

http://www.theguardian.com/tec...

I've read that article and it does not support this statement that you made:

And just to prove the point, GamerGate swatted three of those SJWs in the past 2 weeks.

You want to try again?

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[goose-incarnated]

Gamergate was a result of rich entitled women, who had nothing better to do but complain about bullshit.

And it made you so sad that you and your anon buds felt you just had to put a stop to it, right?

So much for ethics in journalism, you entitled overgrown child.

I'm not anon, and I did no such thing. I do, however, tend to ignore the distress calls of the most privileged and well-off demographic in the world - trust-fund crybabies.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[Shadow of Eternity]

What's that about gamergate and women you say? Sorry I couldn't hear you over the sound of the actual women that people like you are busy calling racial slurs while trying to pin the blame on nerdy men.

Also women actually IN the tech industry call bullshit on you too.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[Shadow of Eternity]

Except there's hard proof it wasn't gamergate that did that, and if you want to play that game you're still playing catchup to the fact GameJournoPros supporters have swatted more people AND gotten more women and non-whites fired or blacklisted AND doxed a full order of magnitude more people...

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[Shadow of Eternity]

Your own citation disproves your claim by pointing out the board behind this has absolutely no connection to gamergate.

Re:I don't think it'll ever really happen

[lgw]

Gawker lost 7 figures in ad revenue in a couple months after the "bring back bullying" comment. You'd think /. could take the hint about which side of these issues has the money. This site has been in "controlled flight into terrain" since Taco left. Now we know why - I never had such respect for him as I do now, seeing what he chose to avoid.

Re:Whatever

[BarbaraHudson]

Companies that don't hire the best employees fail.

False. Just look at the board of directors of many companies - the companies survive based on inertia and cronyism, not merit.

This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

What is the diversity of the active slashdot user base? Maybe we could have a poll limited to logged-in people only to keep people from tilting the stats?

Re:This brings up another question ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except how would we prevent people from flat-out lying in their answers? For example, you'd probably claim to be a woman.

Re:This brings up another question ...

[Tasha26]

I'm a tranny but people won't know that. So Tasha's last post was moderated as Flamebait (-1). I do not even understand why or maybe that there are government or real trolls on this website: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:This brings up another question ...

[serviscope_minor]

I've not seen +5 Troll in years since they changed how the rating is computed.

Re:This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

True, but the way they're always breaking^Wimproving stuff, there's hope :-)

Re:This brings up another question ...

[Mr. Shotgun]

What is the diversity of the active slashdot user base? Maybe we could have a poll limited to logged-in people only to keep people from tilting the stats?

Perhaps, but what would be the cowboy neal option?

Re:This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

What is the diversity of the active slashdot user base? Maybe we could have a poll limited to logged-in people only to keep people from tilting the stats?

Perhaps, but what would be the cowboy neal option?

[_] As long as it's NOT "CowboyNeal" I'm good.

Re:This brings up another question ...

[Tasha26]

It's fun to see negative moderation when your post is nothing of the sort. To me it's clear that /. is a boys club... probably worse now thanks to the Sarkeesian & phony cohort effect.

Re:This brings up another question ...

[serviscope_minor]

True, but the way they're always breaking^Wimproving stuff, there's hope :-)

Indeed yes! Though, I've still managed to get /. to feed me the classic non-Javascript user interface (I never accepted /. 2.0, never mind beta). It's still there buried deep under and I must say it's one of the most pleasant forum interfaces I've used. I never get any mod points any more howoever. Small price to pay I think.

Re:This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

I get mod-bombed once in a while, where I'll see a slew of posts that were at +4, +5 suddenly go down to -1. It's no big deal - boys will be boys. Browse at -1 and look at what APK does to me all the time - again no big deal. He keeps on throwing around stupid accusations about my moderating his anonymous comments down via sockpuppets even though one account is pre-being-outed, the other post-being outed, and I lost the passwords (well, I maybe have them written down somewhere) when my vision failed for a good stretch and it was doubtful if I'd ever be able to use a computer again.

Most of the guys on slashdot are good eggs. They were mostly VERY supportive after I was outed in 2005. And someone is moderating APKs' comments down :-) It's not me - I make too many posts to get mod points (and besides, it's more fun / productive to get stories on the front page - 13 so far in January). And some of the comments the guys make defending me against APK are really great AND funny.

Definitely the Sarkeesians of the world don't help - the problem there is that men can't speak up without being labeled misogynists, and women who do speak up are pilloried as "not getting it." Looked at objectively, the bullying is pretty bad.

I'd say the haters (on both sides) are a vocal minority. And moderation is just moderation. It doesn't change the value of what you write, and since many users browse at -1 (where both the trash and the gems can be found) your voice is still heard. And that's what counts :-)

Re:This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

As long as they keep giving us a choice ...

Re:This brings up another question ...

[Tasha26]

I totally understand. I do not understand these pathetic people (men and women) who create sockpuppet accounts to prop their own comments up. I have a life and a job to take care of, maybe they don't and that's why they feel the need to make themselves matter in this way. It's very sad. Too bad /. has no means to fight back so I rarely post here. Replying to you a 2nd time is the most I've done in half a year. Goodluck!

Re:This brings up another question ...

[BarbaraHudson]

Actually, there is a way to "fight back" to help fix the moderation system. Meta-moderation (aka M2). You'll see the offer to meta-mod pretty much daily (at least) if you post enough, and you'll get a chance to fix bad moderations on other people's accounts, and hopefully they will on some of yours.

My advice - post a lot, if you can be both informative and funny you'll get up-modded to +5 pretty quickly (if you can't do both, take one or the other), and as long as your karma is excellent, who cares? I would encourage you to participate more, because by showing we don't care about people who manipulate their posts' karma, we give them that much less of an incentive to do so. After all, browsing at -1, all posts are visible so up- and down-mods don't matter :-)

Oh, and thanks for replying, and hope to see more of you :-)

It's not about equality

[MikeRT]

If it were, feminists would be beside themselves that by every metric, boys and men are losing out and the system favors girls and women. It doesn't matter what someone says they believe, just watch their actions. By the fruit they bear you will know their true character and priorities. Once you realize it's never been about equality, the only thing that matters is the question of whether some women have been truly unjustly denied opportunities. As a class issue, it's dead on arrival once you realize that equality was never the goal.

Re:It's not about equality

[AmiMoJo]

It's about equality of opportunity. The feminist stance has always been the same: if a group (male, female, white, black, asian, oriental, straight, gay, transgender, basically anything the person has no control over) is disadvantaged it's an issue that needs addressing.

Never had anything to do with a 50/50 mix or any nonsense like that, it's simply about opportunity and people being able to do the things they want to do without undue barriers.

Re:It's not about equality

[Mr. Shotgun]

Ya know, I am starting to think that is true. For all these articles and tumblr postings and tweets decrying the low population of women and minorities in STEM and especially comp sci I have not seen much from those leading the charge for more enrollment in computer science. If these leaders encouraged their followers ( a good portion of which are college age or soon to be) to switch majors to CS this diversity problem would be solved within 2-6 years. And there is more than enough scholarships to finance it even. But alas I think this is less about making a change and more about making noise.

Gender studies and diversity is complete bullshit.

[Coolhand2120]

Gender studies, diversity etc, are made up pseudoscience that do far more harm than good.

Brainwash 1:7 - The Gender Equality Paradox

Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

... or they'll choose to do something else. There is no institutional sexism. No one has been able to find it.

All you have is a stat that shows women don't statistically pursue this career. There is no evidence that universities are discriminating and there is no evidence that companies are discriminating.

So what you are really upset about is women CHOOSING to not go into tech.

You apparently don't like people having choices. You want everyone to statistically fall into perfect little patterns and do things according to your numbers.

Only one way to do that. Force women to and men and any other arbitrary group your stupid statistics think are relevant... and force them into tech... or else... scorpions? I'll leave that up to you.

Absent that, people are not going to fall into these statistical patterns. More men are going to get into some careers. More women are going to get into others. How many male kindergarten teachers are there? How many men work at maternity wards in hospitals? Women like small children and babies. They just do. And so that is ONE example of a career women tend to be happier in then men. I am not saying they should be pushed into it or that they should do it. They personally choose to do it because they like it. It is a choice.

And men often like solitary complex tasks working long hours often for no more reason then because it is hard and if they don't do it no one will.

Men like jobs that no one else will do. We gravitate to that stuff. We like being the guy that signs up for a couple years in the Merchant Marines seeing land no more then a couple days out of a month for years. Our contacts with civilization basically being a bar crawl climaxing with a trip to a brothel. Deal with it.

Men and women are not the same. They're not. We like different things. Pretending it is all socialization and otherwise women would love action movies and guys would be crying on the couch eating ice cream while watching romantic comedies is the opinion MORONS have.

I am not a moron. However, there are clearly a lot of morons running around and quite a few people don't seem to be able to tell the difference between morons and normal people. Because the morons are being treated like they're smart.

I think part of it might be that what the morons are saying doesn't make any sense. And we tend to associate things that do not make sense these days with something so smart that it is just beyond us. Except, sometimes things that don't make sense actually don't make sense... because they're stupid.

This whole feminist kick that the media is going on these days is dumb. You are embarrassing yourselves and you're not helping women.

If you actually won, the best you'd have accomplished is cause the competency of women for a generation to be questioned because no one would know if they earned their job or if they were some sort of diversity hire.

Stop being stupid. No really. Stop eating the lead paint chips which I am assuming is a popular ingredient at jamba juice.. and just stop. It is your job to write articles and talk. I don't want you to starve.

Just try harder to not literally have the opinions of literal idiots. Not saying you are idiots... just that you happen to be thinking in much the same way and it is not acceptable.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[ljw1004]

There is no institutional sexism. No one has been able to find it.

The thing is -- I read your post, and I think "that's institutional sexism right here".

I agree with most of what you wrote. But other bits are a sort of weird distorted view of the tech industry, or a picture of an undesirable workplace that should be changed. For instance, "men often like solitary complex tasks working long hours" -- (1) as a married man with a child, I'm delighted that I don't have to work long hours; (2) the successful senior folks are those whose work is accomplished through meetings like in any business, not solitary. And your insults (like those of Linus) are ones I'm glad I don't face at my work, where everyone really genuinely is polite and "nice".

I agree there's no evidence that universities or companies are discriminating. However, I think YOU PERSONALLY are discriminating, and if you're in tech, I bet you contribute to a discriminatory workplace.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Shadow of Eternity]

You literally just claimed the lack of evidence of something existing is ipso facto proof of it existing. That's a textbook example of a complete failure of logical validity.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Your.Master]

No he didn't. He claimed that his statements were examples of existing institutional sexism.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Shadow of Eternity]

while specifically quoting the statement that there is a lack of evidence of it existing.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

First, there is no evidence you can point to in my post of sexual discrimination. Simply claiming you FEEL that there is can at best be put down to you not liking my conclusion but lacking any rational objection. I can neither respect nor credit your position as valid on this issue absent evidence.

Second, as to your personal feelings about working long hours you must realize we're talking about statistics that average literally millions of people together. Your personal opinions are not even a drop in the bucket. The reality is that on average, men are either more comfortable, more accepting, or outright approving of work conditions that women generally find intolerable. That is not sexual discrimination. That is a statistical observation that some arbitrary group is willing to cope with a certain environment and another arbitrary group is not.

Third, I don't see why we are dividing the population on the basis of gender, age, race, or religion. I don't see the utility of the concept. I would like to be gender, age, race, and religion blind. I'd like to divide people by more meaningful and useful attributes such as education, IQ, criminal record, and "ambition" however you might measure that. Those are attributes that are useful to a business. Why as a business do I give a flying fuck whether you have to sit down to pee or not? That is so completely fucking stupid I don't even know where to start with it. What mattes to me as a business is if you can do the work, how well you'll do the work, what you'll want to be paid to do the work, and how hard you'll try to do the work once assigned to do it. Beyond that why the fuck would I care about anything else? And of all the moronic things to fixate on... Gender? For the love all that is rational in this unvierse why would anyone care in a job where the gender of the person isn't relevant to the work itself what gender you are? Look, if I am selling women's clothing then I'm going to need a female model and if I'm selling male clothing then I'm going to need a male model. But outside of any situation where a specific gender is actually relevant... why do I care if you have a penis or a vagina? For all I care the entire company could be all men or all women or all christian or all muslim or all really young or old or tall or fat or whatever the fuck. It doesn't matter so long as the work gets done with an acceptable degree of quality and efficiency. Your gender is meaningless to me. The only thing that bothers me is when someone presume to get special treatment because of their gender. Try that and you're blacklisted. I want nothing to do with you if you try to get special treatment for your gender, your race, your religion, your age, your fatness, your thinness, your tallness, your shortness. I don't give a fuck. Do your job. Get paid. This is the contract.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[AmiMoJo]

There is no institutional sexism. No one has been able to find it.

Yes they have. You must not have been listening, it's been well documented.

Example 1. Manager has a post to fill. Puts out a message on networks like LinkedIn and other watering holes for people in the industry. Problem is that because most of his contacts are male most of the applicants will be male too. He could make an active effort to expand his contacts, or ask people with more female contacts to pass details of the job along. In the end he still picks the best candidate, but this way he has a bigger pool to choose from and will end up with a more diverse team, helping to avoid monoculture.

Example 2. Girl is the only female in a class of males, taught by a male. I know someone who was like that. She had actual discrimination from the lecturer, but even without it she found it hard to work with many of the other students because they were socially awkward around her. I had to admit it, but I was kinda awkward around the one girl in my college computing class...

Example 3. A woman finds that her career advancement is limited because although she does excellent quality work her boss expects a lot of overtime. The company is too cheap to hire enough engineers, so just pressures its staff to do more work for free after hours. With her family life that is undesirable, and in fact quite a few of the guys feel the same way but are more willing to put up with it. Unlike them she will need a fair bit of time off if she has children, it's biologically unavoidable and certainly not desirable, so she moves to another industry and valuable skills are lost.

Stop being stupid. No really. Stop denying the problem even exists when the people affected by it are describing it in great detail to you. Understand that it isn't an attack on your, or an attempt to drive your wages down or any of the other "gender war"/"feminazi" bullshit you hear. Stop being part of the problem.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

I know... I just don't proofread my internet posts... sorry grammar nazis.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Your example is not sexism. There being a lot more men and tending to thus hire men does not mean anyone is against women.

You have fundamentally misunderstood what sexism means. One would need to be intentionally biased towards women to be sexist. Without direct intent you've got nothing.

As to example 2, that is no more sexism against women then it was sexism against men when I joined a design course and I was the only male in the course. All women but me. It was also taught by a woman. Were they discriminating against men? Obviously not. More women showed interest in the course then men. So I was alone. Boo hoo. As an adult, I don't whine about this stuff. I expect the same thing from women or don't expect to be treated as an adult. Equality comes with a price... and the price is being expected to be an adult and not a child. Presume to claim the flexibility of children and you're not going to be afforded the respect given to adults. Choose. Adult or child?

As to example three, that isn't sexism. If men are willing to work more hours then women then they're worth more. Objectively that is a fact. Claiming that that is discrimination makes about as much sense as claiming that it is discrimination that when a man races a woman in a marathon that his legs and hips are designed differently so he can run faster and longer. That isn't discrimination. He was actually better.

You want equality? Equality means competing with people head to head. What you are asking for is a handicap. You want men to be forbidden from using their advantages over women while of course women are not forbidden from using their advantages over men.

This implies that you think women are inferior to men because you think they need a handicap.

Are men and women equal? Or do women need a handicap to compete?

Equality or special treatment? Choose.

You can't have both.

If you want special treatment, that can of course be offered. Any deal so long as it is reciprocal and equitable will be accepted. But come asking for free handouts while claiming we're all equals... that is irrational. Try again.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

There is no institutional sexism. No one has been able to find it.

Yes they have. There's a nice article in PNAS about a technical job in biosciences. They randomly assigned a gendered name to CVs. CVs with female names got fewer job offers and a lower salary offer than male ones.

http://www.pnas.org/content/10...

TL;DR: people were biased against applicants they believed to be female. That is pretty much the dictionary definition of sexism. And that paper is pretty much out right proof of sexism at an institutional level.

I look forwards to you rationalising it because I find your twitching and squirming quite hilarious. So is it because women are more nurturing or perhaps nerds get bad rep in the press? Maybe it's some cod-evoloution explanation about hunting wooly mammoths versus looking after babies.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Rationalizations are not required.The study applied to a single organization and a university apparently at that. With such a tiny sample size it is impossible to conclude anything.

What is more, I'll note just for giggles your study showed that female managers were as likely to rate female applicants as being less competent given equal information.

I will conclude with the observation that increasing affirmative action policies will further damage the impression that women are not credible because you will create an impression that women are given preferential treatment and allowed to advance given less capability. This will lead to women being trusted less indifferent to their qualifications because no one will trust the system that vets people.

I am baffled both why you think that was hard to deal with and why you think I am squirming when all you're doing is throwing me this soft ball shit.

Try harder.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

You have fundamentally misunderstood what sexism means. One would need to be intentionally biased towards women to be sexist. Without direct intent you've got nothing.

Now you'rejust making shit up. Unconsious bias which causes people to discriminate against women is also sexism. Just because you don't want to admit sexism exists doesn't mean you get to alter the definiton in order to maintain your world view.

Well, you can pull a Humpty Dumpty and go around using your own private meaning but if you try to converse with people on the subject, they will rightly think you about as sensible as said egg.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Rationalizations are not required.The study applied to a single organization and a university apparently at that. With such a tiny sample size it is impossible to conclude anything.

You claimed outright that institutional sexism does not exist. I gave you an[*] example where it's as good as proved to exist. You claim that "doesn't count" because it's one example. You made a general claim: all that's required to prove a general claim untrue is a single counter example.

The most you can now reasonably claim is that institutional sexism is rare rather than nonexistent. Somehow however you derive self worth from the idea that sexism doesn't exist, so no amount of evidence will ever convince you.

[*] However you misread the abstract. The applications were in fact to a number of jobs at a number of universities. Note how "universities" in the abstract is pluralised. So in fact it's not a single example but an example of bias spanning a number of different universities.

I yet again look forward as to how you rationalise this into "not counting" and that no institutiuonal sexism exists anywhere.

But really, I am at a loss to understand your attitude. Why is your self-worth so dependent on the actions of others? It does not reflect badly on *you* if other people are sexist. It's not an indictment of men in general and therefore you. In fact the study indicates that sexism in fact pretty equal opportunity.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Zxern]

So, the statement that no one has been able to find evidence of institutionalized sexism, proves that there is institutionalized sexism. That sounds a lot like "There is no evidence God exists, therefore that proves God exists."

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[ljw1004]

You literally just claimed the lack of evidence of something existing is ipso facto proof of it existing. That's a textbook example of a complete failure of logical validity.

I think you've confused my quote. I used it to quote the item I was *responding* to, like you do in conversation, like I'm doing it right now. You've bizarrely taken it to be a quote of evidence I'm using.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you were there you'd know what happened isn't just that that people are "useful idiots", it's that there are also others manipulating them who are just plain evil.

The media mouthpieces are ALL corrupt, we have known this for a while, but the anti-white male stance seems all has something to do with Critical Theory, Political Correctness, and Cultural Marxism.

Here's a neat one: Last time a SJW bitched about how many white people were in "positions of power" in the government, with only 27% of senators being minoritios, I mentioned that this was just about perfect equality because the USA is 77% white, so you'd only expect 23% minorites if all things were equal -- So their stats demonstrated discrimination against whites if anything. Of course, rational discourse is not their strong suit, because Identity Politics says minorities should have a disproportionatle larger voice -- Why? Because these people are are racists and sexists by definition: They see people by their race and sex first and foremost.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Shadow of Eternity]

There is no institutional sexism. No one has been able to find it.

The thing is -- I read your post, and I think "that's institutional sexism right here".

Looks pretty straightforwards to me.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

There does seem to be a rash of political idiots lately. They're failing quite a lot it should be noted.

The more they do this the less credibility they have. I'm not worried in the long run. The people that tend to be backing this sort of thing are either people profiting from it or people that are caught up in a fad.

Fads die.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

As to the paper, I addressed that previously. That was on ONE university. That is not a large enough sample to base a systemic conclusion on.

As to your anecdotal examples, I can answer yours with mine. That accomplishes nothing.

As to purging the evil males, there is no just way to do that so you're likely to do it arbitrarily which by definition will punish innocent people while also failing to get bad people. So it is pointless.

As to your kindergarten point, all you're doing is admitting to systemic anti male legal practices. So if anything you're arguing men are discriminated against instead of women. Is that your intention?

As to happiness, it is a question of choice. Men are happier in fields where they're alone then women in the same jobs. How many women sign up to do solo isolated jobs where they don't interact with anyone? You're going to claim discrimination in a fiend where no one talks to you? Kindly get real.

As to assuming liking... it is quite obvious they like it. Women go into the care of children and maternity wards because they like it. They like the children and the babies. Men find such things cute as well of course but they don't get the same sort of satisfaction out of it.

What you seem to want is a society where people don't have choices. Where everyone is forced to take given careers based on arbitrary statistical targets based on arbitrary divisions of the population into groups that should not be treated as groups. In regards to the labor force, the number of women, men, people of given races, or religious groups is not relevant. What is relevant is competence, diligence, and initiative. Your fascination with sexual ratios is odd and serves no utility.

Merchant marines are not the military. They're the people that run cargo ships. So my citation is valid.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

I never said that there was never an organization or individual that was sexist or racist. I said that the institutions at large are not systemically sexist. You would have to show a broad pattern throughout academia just to show bias amongst universities. Your study shows a single example.

I frankly suspect there is some monkey business there as well because this whole thing smells of the corrupting influence of politics. However, even if I concede your example of ONE department in ONE university, that does not give you a pattern of ALL academia in general which is the claim you're making.

As to your presumption to psychoanalyze someone that you have never met nor had extensive contact with... that is about as reliable as reading tea leaves. Any person educated in psychology knows that which means you either have no background in psychology what so ever or you're aware your nonsense if without worth and you're attempting to just get away with a very stupid and obvious lie.

Which is it? Are you a poorly educated pretender or are you an incompetent liar?

It is one of the two. Pick one... I care not which. You're a joke. And your stupid attempt to browbeat your obvious intellectual superior has been nothing short of pathetic. Kindly speak when spoken to henceforth, twit.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Some additional information for you... from wikipedia:

United States Merchant Marine
Seal of the US Merchant Marine
Main article: United States Merchant Marine

The United States Merchant Marine is made up of the nation's civilian-owner merchant ships and the men and [b]women[/b] that crew them. The merchant marine transports cargo and passengers during peacetime. In time of war, the merchant marine[7] is an auxiliary to the Navy and can be called upon to deliver troops and supplies for the military.

The people of the merchant marine are called merchant mariners, and are civilians except in times of war, when, in accordance with the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 they are considered military personnel. As of 2009, the United States merchant fleet numbered 422 ships[8] and approximately 69,000 people. Seven hundred ships owned by American interests but registered, or flagged, in other countries are not included in this number.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Unconscious bias is almost impossible to prove. So, good luck hunting down those unicorns.

As to what I want to admit, you are talking to a rational mind. I don't think you really appreciate what that means. If you want me to concede a point then you're going to have to make a rational argument to back your position up.

I am unmoved by emotion. I am unmoved by appeals to some group opinion. I don't really care if the things I say hurt your feelings. I am not threatened by you. And your attempts to wound my ego as utterly futile.

I think the best way I can explain myself to someone like you... is this... think of me as an AI. A machine intelligence. I am quite human. But my harsh logical nature is likely something alien to your mentality.

I know neither shame nor pity. You will either make your case successfully or your argument fails.

Your move.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[russotto]

There does seem to be a rash of political idiots lately. They're failing quite a lot it should be noted.

They shot their wad on Gamergate. They've long been moving into positions where they could control the narrative, both in old media and new media. But they hadn't achieved complete control yet, and when they tried to clamp down on Gamergate it both slipped away AND in the process revealed the extent of their machinations.

Add to that the collapse of the "rape culture" narrative with the phony "Jackie" story, and they've suffered from serious setbacks lately. Can't count them out yet, alas, but they're going to find it much harder going in the future.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Unconscious bias is almost impossible to prove. So, good luck hunting down those unicorns.

So? Bias is bias. The study proves it exists.

Now interestingly the rest of your post was a complete rambling mess. You refused to counter my point.

You claimed there was no institutional sexism.

I claim that study showed sexism across multiple universities for a tech job.

You claimed... nothing. You had no answer.

I take it that you admit I won then.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

I never said that there was never an organization or individual that was sexist or racist. I said that the institutions at large are not systemically sexist.

Well, the study spanned multiple institutions, you'd know this is you read it or even the abstract. Note the pluralised word: "universities".

I frankly suspect there is some monkey business there as well because this whole thing smells of the corrupting influence of politics.

lol paranoia!

If in doubt, blame a conspiracy. Also, time is a cube.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

You're right one suspect study damns an entire society.

GUILTY!!!

I sentence our society years of being lectured by morons like you about everything we're apparently doing wrong.

Court dismissed. /s

Fucktard.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

I'd like to see a follow up where they were asked why they offered one thing or another.

Statistical studies are severally subject to correlation/causation issues.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

They're in the open which is probably why they're fighting so hard. They were pretty subtle before this but... everyone has their number now. The trick will be just keeping your eyes out for it and not letting these people slip through with nonsense.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

As to your presumption to psychoanalyze someone that you have never met nor

Oh, I realise I never replies to this which was rude of me.

I see you are very emotionally invested in your position: after I provided clear evidence that refuted your point you lurched between conspiracy theories and demanding that I prove that it must exist everywhere.

The thing is I understand. You see you have always believed that you've got where you have by hard work, dilligence and no small dose of basic intelligence. You believe that everything you have you have earned and you therefore deserve. But if there is institutional sexism then it plants a little seed of doubt in your mind. Perhaps you didn't deserve it. Perhaps some woman who was better than you was passed over merely for being female and so perhaps your success is not all due to you as you want, but is in part due to bias in the system. Perhaps you're not as good as you belive...?

My advice: learn to have a deeper appreciation of yourself. Either way your successes were earned. Even if some woman was passed over, you were still ood enough to be hired (remember it's better to not hire than to hire someone bad), and you succeeded at what you were hired to do. Once you learn to have better faith in yourself, you will realise that the existence of sexism doesn't reflect badly on you. It doesn't make you a worse person or your successes less well earned.

So learn to be happy in who YOU are. Then you can lose your emotional attachment to the position you hold. It is an attachment you clearly hold deeply. But there's no need to. You have succeeded on your merits and you should be happy with that. You have no need for doubt. When you learn that and learn to truly accept yourself you will then be able to look outside.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Well, I mostly replied as a second reply to your post above this one.

You're right one suspect study damns an entire society.

I think you are misunderstanding. You claimed there is no instutional sexism. I posted evidence that there in fact is, evidence that you're unwilling or unable to accept (for reasons as to why---and I think I've really hit the nail on the head this time---see the second reply I mentioned above). Now apparently you deduce for this that I as assuming the entirety of society is damned.

That's quite a deduction!

No, it's simpler than that. It's simply a refutation of your point. So far all you have done is resort todenialism, consipracy theories and hyperbole. But that's OK. I really understand why you insist on holding this position.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

You presume to psychoanalyze me, get called on your bullshit, and you claim that I'm just being emotional?

Your position is a laughable.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

I don't think one study is definitive. I think you have something that might need to be looked at but simply saying case closed after one study is presumptuous.

We don't know why those people did what they did. You're saying "sexism" but you don't know that.

And even if it were sexism, you don't know why they did it.

One thing that could be in there is a realistic appreciation that women often leave their careers to go raise children. Assuming this job we're talking about is a big deal and requires a big time investment by the people training you... is it unreasonable they are worried about a hired women leaving the job after a couple years?

Here you're going to call that sexism but that actually isn't sexism. Sexism must be an irrational bias. If it is a bias based on fact then it isn't bigotry.

I'm sorry, you're pushing a very offensive narrative on very thin grounds.

Any study like this has to be examined before I'm going to take it seriously. I've been unable to find any criticism or even analysis of it. Nothing. And that leaves me at a loss. I can't validate the thing if all I have is an abstract and a conclusion with no comment from their peers.

And again, even if the study were entirely sound that doesn't mean your conclusions are on target. And even if those conclusions are on target... they can be justified under certain circumstances.

And in any case, what you're showing here is a bias in academic research. I'll grant that but it isn't bias to keep people out of courses for CS. CS after all doesn't have positions like that in academia in the first place.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

So far you have failed to call me on any bullshit. The conversation goes something like this:

You: There is no institutional sexism
Me: Here's a study showing instutional sexism in one area
You: that's only one institution
Me: No, read it harder, it's pluralised
You: It's a conspiracy!
Me: lol you're a conspiracy nutcase! Timecube!
You: *HYPERBOLE*
Me: wow conspiracy theories AND hyperbole you're getting desparate
You: it doesn't count! Because I redefine sexism! And even if you're right you're wrong! And anyway proving instutional sexism doesn't apply to CS because reasons! And your arguments are offensive.

You see? You are clearly thrashing around. But it is interesting. I have at least realised the underlying reasons why you hold this position so dearly. Clearly I will never be able to convince you: no mount of evidence however high and arguments however sound will shift you because you are arguing not from the head but from the heart.

Your arguments startes sound. However, as I corrected you, you have started getting more and more desperate. Can you not see that going for conspiracy theroies is desperation? Can you not see that trying to redefine sexism to your pet definition so that somehow this doesn't count is outright fear?

And the last point: after claiming earlier how you don't argue from emotion, you then throw an appeal to emotion right in there.

I feel bad for you. I have attacked something successfully on which the core of your beliefs rests. That must be deeply unsettling, which is why you're upset and angry. It's just a shame I can't persuade you that this is not actually the core of your belief and that you can attribute your own successes to you. Look at some famous men from history---from when women were unarguably oppressed. Do people denigrate their achievements because had there been no sexism? No, of course not. They still achieved what they achieved and are rightly celebrated. Should we remove institutionally sexist hiring practices, it won't make them any less great. And likewise it won't dull your achievements. You need to shift the core of your belief so that it rests more firmly on you. You'll be happier when you do, and importantly it will be more fair on yourself.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

We don't know why those people did what they did.

Yep.

You're saying "sexism" but you don't know that.

lol. So somehoe a provable bias against people believed to be women isn't sexsim. Riiiiiiiiight. Remember there were no real people and certainly no real women involved as applicants. The ONLY thing differing was fake gender. At that point it's a stretch to call it something other than sexism.

But go on, instead of weakly claiming sexism doesn't exist, I invite you to propose another hypothesis.

I'm sorry, you're pushing a very offensive narrative on very thin grounds.

As my psychoanalysis of you concluded accurately: you're emotonally invested in a weak position because you believe to change would lessen your achievements. It's sad (you need to learn to love yourself) but it will of course lead you to become easily offended by people presenting rational, evidence backed arguments on the internet that undermine your position.

Any study like this has to be examined before I'm going to take it seriously. I've been unable to find any criticism or even analysis of it. Nothing. And that leaves me at a loss. I can't validate the thing if all I have is an abstract and a conclusion with no comment from their peers.

Well, I don't expect you to do this, because you risk esposing yourself to percieved failure further, but you can ask the authors for a copy of the article. As for analysis by peers, you can see the binary result of that: PNAS is a peer reviewed journal with pretty strict standards as journals go.

And again, even if the study were entirely sound that doesn't mean your conclusions are on target. And even if those conclusions are on target... they can be justified under certain circumstances.

Ah and now we get to the deep reason: even if the study is right and the conclusions are sound, they're wrong because reasons. Science unfortunately will not bend to your emotional state.

And in any case, what you're showing here is a bias in academic research. I'll grant that but it isn't bias to keep people out of courses for CS. CS after all doesn't have positions like that in academia in the first place.

So I am showing it then?

But no more moving the goalposts, please.

You claimed: There is no institutional sexism.

Here we have an instance of institutional sexism. And if you even read the abstract properly, you's see that the position wasn't for a researcher (which incedentally do exist in industry), but for a lab tech type position. Those are more or less the science equivalent of system administrators and so equivalent positions do exist in CS.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

I'd like to see a follow up where they were asked why they offered one thing or another.

Well, unless someone does that, the best way is to apply for a grant to study it.

Statistical studies are severally subject to correlation/causation issues.

That's the nice thing about a randomised double blind study like this one. Because the applicants were fake and they controlled them completely, they could ensure there wasn't any difference except gender. IOW, there is no other underlying variable for the two things to be correlated against.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[russotto]

Yes they have. There's a nice article in PNAS about a technical job in biosciences. They randomly assigned a gendered name to CVs. CVs with female names got fewer job offers and a lower salary offer than male ones.

Interesting, though I'm not sure it demonstrates the same in non-academic hiring in a different field (computer science). In particular, the biosciences show a strong discrepancy between gender of graduates and in academic positions; there is no such discrepancy between CS graduates and professional positions requiring CS degrees. It certainly fails to support the "horrible men" hypothesis, given that gender bias was independent of the gender of the evaluator.

It also fails to show institutional sexism, though that's a matter of terminology. There's no policy or procedure resulting in the difference. This is (apparently pervasive) individual sexism.

The next question is what you do about it. Beating up on men obviously won't help. You can remove gender distinguishers from resumes prior to evaluation. But in most positions it isn't practical to make a final decision without an in-person interview.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Your continued delusion to be able to psychoanalyze someone through a few internet posts when someone that was actually trained would require multiple face to face sessions is frankly idiotic. You don't know how it works and apparently think you have super powers or something.

Regardless, this has grown tedious. You think one study that hasn't been repeated or deeply examined by anyone means you can morally judge millions of people.

I can think of various psychological and emotional conditions that would lead someone to such a position but I won't presume to read your mind any more then you could not possibly read mine. Regardless, it is absurd and intellectually indefensible without corroboration and analysis.

We have nothing more to say since you are under the impression that nothing more need be offered when obviously that is at best justification for further study.

If you wish to continue spouting off silly insults in the mistaken belief that it accomplishes something... go on... I may respond or not at a whim. However, the discussion is effectively over unless you acknowledge that you do not have definitive proof.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Out of curiosity, why do you think the women in your study agreed with the men?

That is an interesting point of your little study... that if there is sexism it is shared equally by men and women against women?

Why would the women being women discriminate against women?

Just an odd little thing that I think you don't really process between your childish taunting fits.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

I'd still like to ask the sorts of people making these choices why'd they'd do such a thing. I find such statistics to be unsatisfying when the conclusions are left to the numbers.

I can think of three or four non-sexist reasons to actually not hire a woman for various positions. That is if we define sexism as an irrational bias.

For example, assuming the job were physical in nature that might not be unreasonable. The research jobs don't apply to this case, I'm just being broad so you can see that there are non-sexist reasons to bias hiring.

Another example is babies... there are really a lot of consequences here of babies that both make an employee less valuable and possibly even a financial burden.

There are others that have nothing to do with what you think a person is capable of IF they apply themselves. The question is will they? Whether you think that is justified or not is another matter. But why they did anything is not known since no one asked. I'd like to know that.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Why would the women being women discriminate against women?

I don't know, and it has no bearing on whether women are being desciminated against.

Are you one of those misguided people who believes against all the evidence that women can't be sexist? And can't be sexist against women? If so, you really, REALLY need to open your eyes and try observing the world rather than tying yourself in logical knots while ignoring reality.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Well your claims of psychoanalysis might be valid if you weren't as transparent as glass?

ou think one study that hasn't been repeated or deeply examined by anyone means you can morally judge millions of people.

Erm, where did I do that?

A clue: I didn't.

Again, you are so very dsesperate for me to be wrong there are no lengths you won't go to to dismiss the evidence. You've tried misreading it, conspiracy theories, hyperbole, claiming I've offended you and even redefining sexism! You're now resorting to making stuff up about what I said in order to accuse me of being judgy (now *that* is an appeal to emotion if ever there was one) so you can yet again dismiss facts you find uncomfortable.

The fact that your desperation to disbelieve in sexism is so deep deated and so persistent in the face of strong evidence to the contrary that it indicates strongly that it has a psychological basis.

As a result, the thing to argue with you is about your psychology since that is what is now dominating the argument.

However, the discussion is effectively over unless you acknowledge that you do not have definitive proof.

I have strong evidence, and you have presented none. You very well know that definitive proof in science is a logical impossibility. Therefore by requiring difinitive proof you are claiming that sexism is beyond the realm of science's ability to demonstrate the existence of.

I must admit that "philosophically unknowable" is a new argument for there being no sexism to me! I take it that you will now conceed that you also cannot prove it doesn't exist either?

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

I'd still like to ask the sorts of people making these choices why'd they'd do such a thing.

Go ahead and ask then. Apply for funding to do your own study. The results would be interesting.

I can think of three or four non-sexist reasons to actually not hire a woman for various positions. That is if we define sexism as an irrational bias.

Sexism is already well defined, and there is no need to try to redefine it.

From Wikipedia, which is as good a definition as any and is very similar to heaps of other ones:

"Sexism or gender discrimination is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender."

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

You're acting like absent that your case is closed. To the contrary, you need these answers as much as I do because your conclusions are supposition without them.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Sure it does... the implication is that it is men being sexist that is the problem. If everyone is being sexist against women including women then that begs the question of why? There might be an actual conscious impression of inferiority and that might be something worth looking into as again they might have reasons.

Take for example healthcare costs... maybe these academic people are in charge of budgets and possibly the women draw on the budget harder. If they do that then it isn't discrimination for example because the two are not actually equal.

If you offer to sell me two one pound bags of sugar and one of those bags costs 2 dollars and the other costs 4 dollars then I'm not showing prejudice when I buy the 2 pound bag. I am making a logical economic choice.

And this is why you need to know why they're making these choices.

Because if they have a rational reason then it isn't discrimination. You have to show that the reason is irrational and PRE-JUDGED. Which is what prejudice means. It means judging a book by its cover. You look at someone, assume character traits or capability base on limited information that couldn't possibly tell you if that were true and then go ahead on the presumption that you were right.

If on the other hand they DO know simply from that information then it isn't prejudice. The example of the healthcare reason is just an example of something that could be valid given that small amount of information that would be entirely reasonable.

Now how would you address such a thing? Given our current culture, I don't think it is solvable. We generally have come to the common belief that employers should provide healthcare and that that must include all the expensive reproductive things women do. The problem is that on a dollars and cents assessment it makes women LESS valuable or if you prefer MORE expensive.

Women do consume dramatically more healthcare then men. And not just from reproduction but from all sorts of things. They go to the doctor more often for example. Where as men tend to stay away from doctors unless they are feeling badly. And feeling badly for men often means they tried pounding pain killers for two weeks and it isn't going away.

This is just ONE possibility and entirely speculation on my point as to whether it is relevant. However, it could be and were it relevant it would be a non-prejudicial reason to not hire women. If they are more expensive then what you have to do is pay them less and the difference in pay balances out once they get their healthcare.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

You're acting like it isn't closed.

The CVs were fake and manufactured so that the candidates were all equally well qualified for the jobs yet the women did worse. That is the dictionary definition of sexism.

You don't need to know why something is sexist to demonstrate that they are. Why might be interesting but it has no bearing on the outcome.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Sure it does... the implication is that it is men being sexist that is the problem.

Now ou're fishing for red herrings. How do they taste?

You claimed, back where this whole thread started that there is no institutional sexism.

Basically I proved you wrong by showing a case where it existed. After resorting to denial, conspiracy theories, hyperbole, appeal to emotion (twice), claimg offence and outright insults you're now claiming that I'm making claims about the whole of men or somesuch nonsense.

I am not, and I did not and what's more I never have.

If everyone is being sexist against women including women then that begs the question of why? There might be an actual conscious impression of inferiority and that might be something worth looking into as again they might have reasons.

Well, gee, 10,000 years of inequality I'll be has *nothing* to do with it.

And you're basically saying that perhaps people have good reasons to believe women are inferior. This is 100% textbook definition of sexism. You're saying perhaps people have good reason to believe someone is inferior purely based on gender, and specifically in this case AFTER they have evidence that they are well qualified.

Take for example healthcare costs... maybe these academic people are in charge of budgets and possibly the women draw on the budget harder. If they do that then it isn't discrimination for example because the two are not actually equal.

So what you are saying is there are legetimate resasons for people to allow sexism to dominate hiring decisions?

Anyway either way, you can look up these figures (I did), and the averare per-yesr cost difference, discounting costs incurred after retirement is substantially smaller than the difference in salary offered.

It CERTAINLY does not account for the offers for women including things like fewer mentoring opportunities.

Since I knew you'd not read the article, I figured I'd keep that in reserve. So once the institution had decided to offer the job (at a lower salary I might note), how come the offer was worse?

Women do consume dramatically more healthcare then men. And not just from reproduction but from all sorts of things.

The single biggest factor dominating women's average lifetime healthcare costs is that they live longer. That's not an issue for employers since they'll be retired by then.

If they are more expensive then what you have to do is pay them less and the difference in pay balances out once they get their healthcare.

That would potentially explain only one aspect. It doesn't explain the rest.

Anyway, what you're basically saying is it's OK to discriminate based on gender.

I think I finally understand where you're coming from in this. It's that you are sexist, and have partly internalised that thats a bad thing. So, your solution is to try to desperately redefine what "sexist" is, so you don't count and don't feel you're bad. Rather than doing the much harder and more uncomfortable thing of forcing yourself to change one set of opinions to be consistent with the other. Basically you either need to dropthe sexist attitude or drop the attitude that sexism is bad. Your middle point: pretending that it doesn't exist and doesn't fit your attitudes is a non starter.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

In regards to institutional sexism, ONE study that has not been analyzed or criticized is not enough to convict millions of people.

END OF STORY. You need more. Period.

Next issue.

As to your reasons for why female scientists are skeptical of the qualifications of female scientists... you've provided no proof as to why they're doing anything.

Again, you have your study and you don't seem to understand that knowing the WHY of it is very important to make a moral judgment. Which is ultimately what all this groping for civil rights issues is about. You want a moral justification to go on a crusade.

Well, you need to know why to judge morally. That's just text book philosophy.

NEXT ISSUE.

As to women's healthcare just being that they live longer and nothing else...

Are you sure you want to stand on that point? Because I don't want to call you a fucking moron. But that is precisely the sort of opinion a fucking moron would hold. Don't be a fucking moron... it isn't a nice place.

Obviously children play a huge part. Women not only have all sorts of healthcare expenses around that but they also leave work and put their careers on hold or give them up because of children.

That's just a fact. And that might be a factor. You don't know why they're doing any of these things.

Next issue.

As to the healthcare expenses bringing the wages down and your acceptance of that as a legitimate reason for paying less... consider that some employers might not have the same flexibility in what they pay. This whole "some people are paid less" thing has resulted in jobs increasingly having fixed salaries. Which means you can't pay people less or more in many cases. And that means if someone actually is worth less and you can't pay them less then you can't hire them unless you want to take a loss.

And that could account for the remaining difference all by itself.

Now is that what is happening? I have no idea. What I have proved however is that you do not have check mate. And without checkmate, you can't say "this is the way things are because SCIENCE". Science only happens when you have checkmate.

You need to know the why of it.

What is more, I would like people like you to stop conflating science and morality. The two have about as much to do with each other as polar bears and black holes.

They're both draw on branches of philosophy but they're not the same branch and each branch has different rules. What I have seen people do is jump between the branches whenever one of them would require something be done to cross a certain threshold. They'll jump to science when morality needs them to do something to justify something and then jump back into morality when science requires something.

It is a rhetorical clouding technique used to confuse issues by making them complicated. But if anyone is anal enough to follow all the threads then it is rather obvious where the fallacies lie.

I am that anal and tenacious. I will follow the threads. Complexity and clouding techniques are ineffective against me. Just fyi.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

In regards to institutional sexism, ONE study that has not been analyzed or criticized is not enough to convict millions of people.

I never tried to convict millions of people. Seriously you should try actually reading what I wrote, not what your troubled psyche wishes I said.

As to your reasons for why female scientists are skeptical of the qualifications of female scientists... you've provided no proof as to why they're doing anything.

And why should I offer proof? The reasons WHY have no bearing on the results that show they are. Sure it would be interesting, but the study still shows that being female lowers the chance of a job offer, lowers the salary and makes the offer poorer in other ways.

That's called "sexism" by the way.

As to women's healthcare just being that they live longer and nothing else... Are you sure you want to stand on that point?

Why would I? I didn't say that. You appear to have misread what I wrote because you are so desperate to believe your own rhetoric that your final resort is to simply misrepresent what I've said.

And without checkmate, you can't say "this is the way things are because SCIENCE

Yes I can. The "checkmate" you're demanding is that I must say why things are the way they are in order to demonstrate merely that they are the way they are. I can certainly show that this is the way things are using science without answering why they are the way they are. Kepler, for example showed the equal area rule before Newton showed why and Einstein showed why in further detail. Those were all valid science. Kepler not showing why does not mean he was not doing science, and it didn't make his ibservations incorrect either.

What is more, I would like people like you to stop conflating science and morality.

OK, this is getting hard to resist. What is it about your beliefs that make you say things like that? I'm genuinely curious! Because I didn't say that which means you made it up. I would love to know why you're making these things up.

Complexity and clouding techniques are ineffective against me.

Indeed: using them on you would be like trying to use them on Gene Ray. You're already wrapped up so far in your own beliefs that the issues are so opaque that it would be impossible for me to cloud them any further.

Still, let me try once more to illuminate you. The conversation so far had proceeded like this:

You: Instutional sexism doesn't exist.
Me: Yes it does, here's a paper.
You: That's only one instution.
Me: No it isn't.
You: It's a conspiracy!
Me: lol timecube
You: *hyperbole*
Me: that's just hyperbole.
You: You offended me
Me: That's just appeal to emotion.
[repeat previous steps a few times]
You: you're using this as an excuse to judge people therefore the conclusions are wrong.
Me: I'm making no judgement. The conclusions are right.
You: It's not sexism if you redefine sexism!
Me: It's sexism according to every definition of the word.
You: It's not sexism if it's women
Me: yes it is.
You: It's not sexism if people are sexist for rational reasons
Me: It's still sexism according to every accepted definition of the word.
You: You have to prove why something happens in order to prove that it does.
Me: No, that's simply not true.
You: you're convicting millions of people
Me: no I'm not.

would you like to add another line?

Anyway I've got another little spanner to throw right into your agruments. You see, I spotted that you had not even read the freely available 1 paragraph abstract of the paper. So, I could let you tie yourself in all sorts of little knots trying to show that sexism is a rational position because of economics.

So, allow me to strip away the economic factors and anything in fact a judgement on the skills of the person. From the article quoted:

"Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent."

I very much look forward to you rationalising that one.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

As to not convicting millions of people, then you retract your statement about institutional sexism.

  Noted. And further noted, if you retract your retraction you will be confirming your belief that that study convicts the entire academic apparatus as being sexist.

As to why being irrelevant to a moral judgment, you cannot prove bigotry without why.

As to women's healthcare, that is what you said. You said it was almost entirely because they lived longer. Do you want me to quote you or have your remembered your own words?

You apparently don't know what prejudice means: ""Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. "" Without the why you can't prove prejudice.

And without a prejudice judgment your whole argument becomes irrelevant.

As to gene ray, I am unfamiliar with that individual. Provide a link at your convenience.

As to your quotation at the bottom, that appears to be a speculation and not something derived by actually asking anyone. Thus their statement at that portion of the study is no more credible then any of your own speculations.

Again, has anyone checked this thing? I could find no evidence of anyone going over its claims, methodology, data... anything.

How many studies have we seen come out that have later been found to be crap? Lots. It happens. And the only way it can get found out is if someone goes over the study. I see no evidence of that. And it is again ONE FUCKING STUDY.

You are trying to damn pretty much all of academia on the grounds of ONE FUCKING STUDY.

No.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

As to why being irrelevant to a moral judgment, you cannot prove bigotry without why.

Yes you can. The study showed that people consider women with equal qualifications as on average less competent. I don't have to know why they do that in order to know that's what they do. That is basically the textbook definition of bigotry.

You said it was almost entirely because they lived longer.

Go ahead. You will see I said "the single biggest factor", which is quite different from "almost entirely". Which is the single biggest number in this list: 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. What is the sum?

Anyway red herrings abound. If people were making the "rational economic choice" based on healthcare costs, then the pay difference would be the difference in monthly costs, which will of course exclude any post-retirement costs. The difference as you see for yourself is substantially larger than that.

You apparently don't know what prejudice means: ""Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. "" Without the why you can't prove prejudice.

But we know the relevant facts: the CVs were constructed to be identical. The only difference was the gender. Therefore the only cause of different offers, salaries, mentoring and perception of competence was down to a gender differences.

"Sexism or gender discrimination is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender."

As to gene ray, I am unfamiliar with that individual. Provide a link at your convenience.

http://timecube.com/

As to your quotation at the bottom, that appears to be a speculation and not something derived by actually asking anyone. Thus their statement at that portion of the study is no more credible then any of your own speculations.

Firstly, asking people only works if the biases are conscious. Secondly, I like how you blandly state without having actually looked into any of it that it absoloutely must be a bogus result. Included in your dismissal is a dismissal of a well established and prefectly well respected statistical technique.

I shall add "maths is wrong" to your entertaining list of claims!

Again, has anyone checked this thing? I could find no evidence of anyone going over its claims, methodology, data... anything.

Apart from being in a peer reviewed journal, you mean?

How many studies have we seen come out that have later been found to be crap?

Oh this is precious! So since you're unable to actually discount the article on its merits, your latest claim is "other studies have been crap so this one must be too!" I like how the possibility of it being correct is not an option :)

You are trying to damn pretty much all of academia on the grounds of ONE FUCKING STUDY.

I'm really not sure where on earth you got that from.

All I've done is disprove your claim that institutional sexism does not exist.

You are the one inferring that I'm trying to damn pretty much all of academia, not I. It is interesting that you keep on using emotional terms to dismiss a study, when the logical arguments have been exhausted. Tell me, why are you so emotionally invested in whether or not sexism exists?

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Absolutely not. You do not have anything that says why they did it. You are pulling their speculation from the bottom of the abstract and calling it a fact derived from the study which is literally impossible without "WHY".

As to your retraction that longer life is the dominant reason female healthcare is higher, then that means your statement above did not refute my point about the healthcare being relevant. My argument on that point is therefore sustained. Noted.

As to relevant facts, you don't know which facts are and are not relevant. You are assuming things. Yes, the resumes were identical except for the sex. Granted. Why the stats break down the way they did? You don't know. You NEED to know to judge people. You don't know why and you MUST know why to make a moral judgment.

MORALITY REQUIRES WHY.

If I shoot someone in the face, is the reason I did that relevant? If I hit someone with my car, is the reason for that relevant? If I steal from someone, is the reason relevant?

Context is relevant. Here you'll say all these people were previously unknown and so can't have any personal context with the hiring party. Sure. But that ignores that the hiring party exists within a culture, legal system, and financial system that might make simply knowing the gender enough to bias what the SHOULD pay a given applicant and of course whether or not they should even hire a given applicant.

You don't know any of this without why. Absent why you have nothing but speculation. You can sputter and sputter and sputter. But the why is critical for a moral judgment. You cannot show prejudice without it. And without prejudice you cannot justify a moral crusade. The why is vital.

As to asking only working if it is conscious, then you're in even more trouble because if you can't ask then you have to psychoanalyze the answer out of each person until you can get a pattern out of them. And that might prove difficult. What is more, you don't know how psychoanalyzing works... so I'm guessing you're just going to assume that you can look at someone for five seconds and mind read them which has been your previous impression of how that practice works. You'd better hope it isn't subconscious. If it is subconscious then getting a definitive answer is going to be almost impossible.

As to disproving that institutional sexism does not exist, you would need to prove that it does to disprove what I said. What you showed was a study that suggests it might exist.

That's it.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

You are pulling their speculation from the bottom of the abstract

What evidence do you have that it is unsound speculation as opposed to something backed by data and statistics?

As to your retraction that longer life is the dominant reason female healthcare is higher

I like how you misreading my statement is my retraction. Nice! I'll have to use that one in future :) :)

did not refute my point about the healthcare being relevant

You choose to ignore the bit where I pointed out that the salary difference is greater than the monthly healthcare cost difference.

You NEED to know to judge people. You don't know why and you MUST know why to make a moral judgment

MORALITY REQUIRES WHY.

I've stated this multiple times. I'm unsure as to why you seem incapable of grasping it. I think your mind is clouded by emotion. I'm not making a moral judgement about people. All I am doing is arguing that there is bias against women in the case of job offers.

As to asking only working if it is conscious, then you're in even more trouble because if you can't ask then you have to psychoanalyze the answer out of each person until you can get a pattern out of them. And that might prove difficult. What is more, you don't know how psychoanalyzing works... so I'm guessing you're just going to assume that you can look at someone for five seconds and mind read them which has been your previous impression of how that practice works. You'd better hope it isn't subconscious. If it is subconscious then getting a definitive answer is going to be almost impossible.

Interesting that you dismiss yet another field of study that you know nothing about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

There's even tests online to see whether you have certain kinds of unconscious bias.

As to disproving that institutional sexism does not exist, you would need to prove that it does to disprove what I said.

Most of what you said was blithering about morality, which has nothing to do with it. You can prove or disprove bias without making a moral judgement. The only other thing is that you asserted that the claim was a speculation without providing any reasoning as to why you believe they cannot make the claim they do without speculation.

There's nothing to disprove because you said nothing of substance.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Tell me how they obtained the "why"?

I'm going to focus on that issue exclusively since until that gets addressed there isn't any point going forward.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Tell me how they obtained the "why"?

Define why in this case. Why they thought women were less competent or why people rated them as less competent? The former is covered in the paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/10...

Basically, hireability was coupled to competence. And gender was coupled to competence. Which makes gender coupled to hireability. The methodology is explained quite well in the paper, and I'm sure they can better explain their own method than I can.

The latter has no bearing on the results.

I'm going to focus on that issue exclusively since... ...since it's a red herring and otherwise you'll have to admit you were mistaken that institutional sexism does not exist.

You have failed to provide any reasoning beyond red herrings and appeal to emotion as to why you need to know the underlying reasons in order to demonstrate the bias exists.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

You don't have why, sport. And you need it for your moral crusade. Absent why, you have some interesting statistics that are justification for further inquiry.

Not a crusade. You want your moral hobby horse to ride against the evil doers? Get why locked down.

Till then... nope.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

you have some interesting statistics that are justification for further inquiry

So it looks like you do concede that the paper does in fact show the existence of bias. Looks like I've won the argument!

You said: Instutional sexism does not exist.

I gave evidence that it does and you haven't managed to counter it.

Morality has nothing to do with it. All the inventions of moral crusades are entirely in your head.

With out reference to morals, do you now conceed that the cited paper presents credible evidence that there exists gender bias in hiring in the study?

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

No. I said the stats justified inquiry.

No where did I ever say the subject shouldn't be studied or investigated.

I'm bored with you now... you're another of those sad figures that just wants to win rather then caring if he's actually right or not.

By all means... disagree. I'm bored.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

No. I said the stats justified inquiry.

Well, given that you initially denied categorically the existence of institutional sexism, that's a big improvement.

I'm bored with you now.

Ah ennui.

you're another of those sad figures that just wants to win rather then caring if he's actually right or not.

Well, I care because I am right in this case. Or at least you've failed to persuade me otherwise, even if you did use every rhetorical trick in the book, save actually refuting my points.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

Saying something deserves inquiry is no more an admission of your correctness then an accused man refusing to speak is evidence that he is guilty.

What you have is evidence of something interesting. I didn't say that it wasn't worth looking into because really even if it isn't sexism clearly something is going on. And whatever it is will be interesting.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

Saying something deserves inquiry is no more an admission of your correctness then an accused man refusing to speak is evidence that he is guilty.

It would seem to me that "deserves inquiry" is equivalent to saying the answer is currently unknown.

So do recant your original claim that there is no institutional sexism?

Or are you going to stick to it despite admitting admitting the answer is unknown?

I didn't say that it wasn't worth looking into because really even if it isn't sexism clearly something is going on.

Well, I'd be interested to hear what other hypotheses you have to explain the data. The data seems to indicate that people rate equally well qualified women as less competent than equivalently qualified men. Assuming that the study is sound and the results are not a satatistical fluke, what alternative hypothese would you test to explain the data?

Imagine you're appying for a grant, what would your experiment be?

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

That is like saying that a man that doesn't speak must be guilty.

I'm sorry. You are trying to create your moral justification without the why again.

Absent the why the moral justification does not exist.

Next issue.

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[serviscope_minor]

That is like saying that a man that doesn't speak must be guilty.

You what?

Do you recant your original claim that institutional sexism does not exist?

That was the original claim of yours which sparked the whole thread, so it is fair for me to ask if you still make that claim.

You are trying to create your moral justification

Where? You have started claiming this in almost every post. Yet, you persistently ignore my request for you to actually back that up. I ask again. Where in the previous post is any attempt at creating a moral justification. And come to think of it, a moral justification of what? I am genuinely mystified as to what you think I'm trying to justify morally.

And now, because you blatantly ignored another quite reasonable question, I shall quote it again for your benefit:

I didn't say that it wasn't worth looking into because really even if it isn't sexism clearly something is going on.

Well, I'd be interested to hear what other hypotheses you have to explain the data. The data seems to indicate that people rate equally well qualified women as less competent than equivalently qualified men. Assuming that the study is sound and the results are not a satatistical fluke, what alternative hypothese would you test to explain the data?
Imagine you're appying for a grant, what would your experiment be?

Re:Force women at gun point to join tech

[Karmashock]

That is a supposition. You don't know why they are doing it at all.

It could be a conscious rational decision based on known and empirical patterns.

Suggesting that of course men and women must be identical is actually a given assumption on your part and is neither proven nor especially examined in your thought process or argument.

I grant that women should have equal opportunity. However, what that means can change from one context to another. For example, in the Olympics as an extreme example, it means getting a sex segregated women's league where women compete against women.

There are professions where men are discriminated against for various reasons and very few men would call it sexual discrimination even if with reversed genders the feminists would certainly make that argument.

I am an egalitarian. I believe in equality and that that equally should be rationally founded in practical and reasonable grounds.

Feminists typically are often sexual supremacists that expect special treatment for women with less responsibility for women but equal power and rights to men. That is problematic because obviously rights and responsibilities must be balanced.

In regards to this study and statistical female employment, we have been offered studies since the 1960s that have shown various things. However, these studies are typically issued by biased advocates that are more interested in a given conclusion then they are genuinely interested in what is actually going on.

If you actually care... then you'll find it relevant as to "why" certain things happen a certain way and not simply fill in such conclusions with ideologically convenient assumptions.

To make a moral judgment which a requirement for citing someone as sexist... one must know why they make such a decision. It is literally impossible for someone to be deemed sexist without a known "why".

The why might appear obvious to you but that is merely because you have a strong opinion on the matter. The why, strictly speaking, is not something examined by this study and absent that they have an interesting statistic that lacks and conclusive meaning in regards to sexism.

If you desire such a conclusion... find the "why" of it.

Why is diversity an objective?

[jackspenn]

How does being diverse help a company or team?

Why stop at Microsoft?

Let's look at the NBA Portland Trail Blazers. No women, not enough south-Americans, Asians, native-Americans or even whites!

Doesn't the NBA realize they would be so much better off if they focused on diversity instead of their narrow minded goal of getting the best basketball players?

That Paul Allen guy is a performance and results bigot. Just look at what he is doing with the Seattle Seahawks.

I see anti-diversity examples all over Allen's successful investments, with a clear focus on talent, skill, work ethic, etc. instead of a person's race or sex.

What kind of world will this result in, if people are rewarded for what they contribute instead of what they look like and whether or not they have any balls?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

"Women just don't want to be a part of tech"

You didn't read the summary, did you? It is just white women. If they aren't white, they don't count. Microsoft was cheating because they counted non-white women and tried to pass them off as "real" women, that actually matter. But thanks to our ever vigilant Timothy, they didn't get away with it.

stop already

[Lawrence_Bird]

you know what? most stylists are women or gay men. Oh no, I'm being discriminated against! And women plumbers are totally under represented (though the ones who are doing it are freakin rich).

Perhaps its time to consider whether anyone has asked the question: do women really really want to work in IT? Or do they prefer other professions? Accounting? Sales? Something else?

Re:stop already

[PopeRatzo]

you know what? most stylists are women or gay men. Oh no, I'm being discriminated against! And women plumbers are totally under represented (though the ones who are doing it are freakin rich).

Perhaps its time to consider whether anyone has asked the question: do women really really want to work in IT? Or do they prefer other professions? Accounting? Sales? Something else?

Five digit slashdot UID.

And one wonders why there is so much interest in making tech less of a white boys club. It's because this is the kind of person who's been populating the tech industry, and the sector leaders are wondering if maybe it's not time to try to do better because they can't do much worse.

I mean, his argument is, "Women plumbers are all freakin rich!" This is obviously someone who couldn't find his ass without a README file and a youtube video.

Re:stop already

[PopeRatzo]

yet on the other hand keep the Internet running so you can make fun of them.

The people who "keep the internet running" have nothing to do with the sad little manbaby dinosaurs that are being pushed out of tech.

Re:stop already

[serviscope_minor]

most stylists are women or gay men.

My current and previous ones are/were both straight men. No, it's not a gentlemen's hairdersser, they're mostly frequented by women. The sort of stupid proper men (i.e. not gay) don't do X is part of the thing which exaggerates any natural biases.

Perhaps its time to consider whether anyone has asked the question: do women really really want to work in IT? Or do they prefer other professions? Accounting? Sales? Something else?

Wow, some insight. No one on slashdot has ever asked that. There's no point in asking what, there's only point in asking WHY. It's clear many women don't want to. WHY is the question. Is there something stopping them? If so, that's bad.

Re:stop already

[Lawrence_Bird]

Why thank you for putting me in the tech industry after twenty in finance. But it is true, before I was in finance I was in "IT" for three years. And now I dabble in app development.

As to women plumbers - virtually any plumber is freakin rich. Have you hired one to do work (most often on the 'omfg get here an hour ago!' basis)? The point was that there are many career tracks available to women which can pay extremely well.

Unfortunately, people seem hell bent on seeing discrimination and other boogie men around every corner. Just as an FYI, when I was in IT, in that Arpanet only age, every boss I had was ... gasp... a woman! And I know this might really throw you for a loop. The next level up (VP that is) were also women.

Re:This is tragic!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, let's first come up with some real data. The feminazis all want to know how many people work in nice white collar jobs, but I have yet to see a single feminazi complain about:

- The number of women working in trash collection;
- The number of women working in sewer treatment plants;
- The number of women working car manufacturing;
- The number of men working as a psychologist;
- The number of men working as a nurse;
- The number of men that do not get custody of their children after a divorce;

Fact of the matter is that feminazis are looking for selective equality. Real feminists look for real equality.

Why do silicon valley companies hire so few women? Very simple: most female candidates are simply not skilled enough to do coding, network administration etc. I'd love to get more girls working on the team.

The running gag in our Santa Clara based company is this:

There are only two types of female engineers: good engineers and pretty engineers. If she's a good engineer, she usually looks like a brick. If she's pretty, she usually doesn't know the difference between an int and a struct.

Please please please girls, we need you to brighten up our workplace. But we need good engineers, not pretty ones!

Re: This is tragic!

[Anonymous Coward]

But in C#, an int technically is a struct (or value type).

How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stats!

[theodp]

Why we need $400 million to teach K-12 CS: 1. "Only 10 percent of schools teach it [CS]." 2. "No Girls, Blacks, or Hispanics Take AP Computer Science Exam in Some States." 3. "Currently, only 25 states allow computer science to count as a mathematics or science credit towards graduation."

Meh, gender diversity sucks in tech

[Richard_at_work]

The company I work for (roughly 300 employs, fairly major UK national insurance broker) had to hire a new web dev last year. We put the feelers out in June, ended up interviewing throughout July and August, eventually hiring someone in September.

The job went out to all the usual boards, the HR dept (two women) hunted for candidates on LinkedIn, and we were also passed résumés by several agencies.

We saw well over 100 résumés in that time, with Indian and Chinese candidates massively over represented. How many résumés did we see from women for the position? Not one. Not a single, solitary one.

So yes, gender diversity sucks in tech, but when women aren't applying for the jobs, how can we diversify?

Re:Meh, gender diversity sucks in tech

[mrchaotica]

So yes, gender diversity sucks in tech, but when women aren't applying for the jobs, how can we diversify?

This is the real issue: women just aren't as likely to want to be programmers as men.

I work at a company where almost all the programmers are male, while QA is probably close to a 50/50 mix or even majority-female. Seeing the (female) QA person on my team write some SQL during the course of her testing and being obviously competent at it, I asked her if she'd ever want to be a programmer instead of QA.

She laughed in my face and said something to the effect of "oh HELL no!"

I have no idea why. Keep in mind that she could be working at the exact same company with the exact same coworkers and the exact same supervisors and be in the exact same environment, and the only difference is that she'd be doing programming instead of testing. And her reaction is that, while she likes testing, she apparently would hate programming. I'm mystified by that -- I'd be saying "oh HELL no" to doing QA! -- but that's why there are few women programmers, not discrimination.

Re:Meh, gender diversity sucks in tech

[Zxern]

Because only men are dumb enough to put up with the working conditions expected of most programing jobs. Perhaps if the hours and working condition(management expectations) were better they might be more interested.

Re:Meh, gender diversity sucks in tech

[AmiMoJo]

Where I work (in the UK too) the ratio of male to female programmers is exactly 50/50. When we filled the last position we had two women and three men in for interview. Maybe your company was just unlucky or has a bad reputation or something.

Re:Meh, gender diversity sucks in tech

[mrchaotica]

No, that's not it: at my company, the hours are actually pretty close to the normal 40, and QA works just as many hours as programmers (if not longer, since they have to be around for deployments).

Re:In before

[theodp]

Actually, if my math and data entry is correct, based on the EEO-1 numbers, women's share of Microsoft's U.S. force (including all ethnicities) is still only about 24%.

Teachers and Nurses?

[Teckla]

How come there are never any reports on the fact that elementary and middle school teachers are overwhelmingly female? How come there are never any reports on the fact that nurses such as LPNs and RNs are overwhelmingly female?

What's being done to close these gender gaps? Why is it never reported? Why is it not important? Wouldn't it be good for kids, who spend a lot of their life in school, to also have male teachers as role models?

What about college admissions? Female admissions have been much higher than male admissions for quite a while now. Why isn't this being reported? Shouldn't we be discussing what to do about that?

Forgive me, but I've seen this "gender gap in technology" thing reported over, and over, and over and over and over and over and over and over ad nauseum, the last few years. It's a discussion that's worth having, to be sure, but it astonishes me how gender gaps in other, probably much more important areas, are completely ignored.

Why is that?

Re:Teachers and Nurses?

[Livius]

Why is that?

Because technology jobs are better paying.

The "equality" is asymmetric.

Re:Teachers and Nurses?

[thesupraman]

The thing you need to remember is that when feminists talk about the 'gender gap' these days what they MEAN to say is the gap is not large enough.

Women have more choices, more opportunities, better health, longer lives, more social stature, and more support than men.
And THATS NOT ENOUGH!

Once you understand that, things become clearer.
Sad, isnt it.

Re:Teachers and Nurses?

[Shadow of Eternity]

Simply put it's because all of this is a dog whistle for attacking nerdy men. Before they were bullied openly for being nerds, now they're bullied under the justification that they're "misogynerds".

Re:Teachers and Nurses?

[serviscope_minor]

How come there are never any reports on the fact that elementary and middle school teachers are overwhelmingly female? How come there are never any reports on the fact that nurses such as LPNs and RNs are overwhelmingly female?

Um, there are? Seriously 1 minute on google and you would have found some.

Since you're a rational person, I guess since your premise is flawed you'll accept that your conclusions are unsupported.

So

[ShieldW0lf]

Is there a way to reclaim Slashdot from this constant barrage of psychological assault on IT professionals by outsiders?

I'm a bit of a nerd and I'm an IT professional. This place used to be a place to find news of interest to nerds and IT professionals. Now it's a place where there's going to be a daily article about how shitty a person I am and how shitty my industry is.

Is this what the rest of you guys come here for? To get shit on daily? It's kinda feeling like Slashdot has just become a bad habit I do when I'm bored because I've done it so many times before.

Is your target audience people who are nerds, or is it people who are envious of nerds? It's kinds feeling like this place has become the latter.

Re:So

[Shadow of Eternity]

To quote Dr. Hoff-Sommers: "In early 90s, my side won all the arguments. But the other side quietly assumed all the assistant professorships." Despite an overwhelming majority of even women rejecting the SJW's toxic branding they have disproportionate clout due to actively seeking out media influence.

Re:So

[mvdwege]

Is there a way to reclaim Slashdot from this constant barrage of psychological assault on IT professionals by outsiders?

Yes, it is called "stop being misogynistic whiny manbabies if you're called on some of your misbehaviour".

The other way is of course time. There is a movement for more diversity, and it will win eventually when said manbabies die out. Given their obnoxious whinging, they are not recruiting faster than they are dying out, and every flare-up into uglyness like GamerGhazi throws off more moderates.

Re:So

[dwpro]

calling us "misogynistic whiny manbabies" throws cold water on the argument that a "toxic" environment exists in tech. If you're at all interested in convincing thinking people that you have a point, try some logic and evidence, not name calling.

Re:So

[mvdwege]

I keep trying to parse your post and trying to find a coherent thought in it, but I can't find nothing beyond "waaah, you're calling me bad names!".

Re:So

[Hashead]

Is there a way to reclaim Slashdot from this constant barrage of psychological assault on IT professionals by outsiders?

Yes, it is called "stop being misogynistic whiny manbabies if you're called on some of your misbehaviour".

The other way is of course time. There is a movement for more diversity, and it will win eventually when said manbabies die out. Given their obnoxious whinging, they are not recruiting faster than they are dying out, and every flare-up into uglyness like GamerGhazi throws off more moderates.

That was nothing more than a text book example of a cowardly ad hominem argument.
No facts, no evidence, not even a counterargument.

Re:So

[mvdwege]

Oh look, another Dunning-Kruger sufferer who knows big words but not their meaning.

Re:So

[ShieldW0lf]

Yeah, no shit.

My post wasn't directed at the lusers, though, it was directed at the editor.

But yeah, I think it's true... our community was bought and paid for by outsiders, and it's going to be used as a vehicle to attack us until it's finally been rendered irrelevant.

Shame. I've been coming here for a long time, and I'm still on the cutting edge of my field with lots of knowledge and wisdom to share.

Done now though... the well is poisoned, time to move on.

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

Men in tech are just pitiful. Reading these mewling, whining comments, one does not need to wonder why big tech companies are trying to encourage diversity.

The funniest part is that male Slashdot readers actually think their opinions matter on the topic of diversity. So, just for the record, nobody cares what you think. The industry is trying to recruit women because you are so awful to be around, and you are not half as irreplaceable as you think.

Ah, thank you. Remember when I said SJWs were the same male-nerd-bashers we've dealt with our entire life? Case in point right here.

Yeah, we know; we're nerds. Non-nerds hate us and when they're not using us for punching bags or as the butt of their jokes, they wish we'd just go away. Too bad the world has provided two ironies

1) You need us. We are, indeed, as irreplaceable as we think. You can't do tech without nerds. And you need us more than ever; the days where you could simply steal the spear-inventor's idea then drive him out with his own invention are over.

2) SJWs manage to be even more awful to be around than nerds. Once they run out of external targets they turn on each other, and with the same viciousness.

Our opinions on diversity don't matter? Perhaps not. But yours don't either; we can see that from the fact that you've been beating the drum for a very long time, and you haven't gotten what you want; not even a significant move towards it.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, we know; we're nerds.

Bad narrative. It's not the nerdiness that makes you obnoxious. And everybody's a nerd now, so it just doesn't matter. Nerds are over. Nerds are dead. You've got ex-jocks using Tor.

1) You need us. We are, indeed, as irreplaceable as we think. You can't do tech without nerds.

See above. Nerds aren't the only game in town for tech any more. And the truth is, you're not as nerdy as you think. Compared to some twenty-something girl with blue hair and piercings who writes perl code for fun, you're not the king of the nerd hill any more.

2) SJWs manage to be even more awful to be around than nerds. Once they run out of external targets they turn on each other, and with the same viciousness.

And yet...http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-pledges-300m-to-build-a-more-diverse-work-force/

Gamer tears, man. They're what's for dinner.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

If things were really that dire then the tech sector would have corrected for it long ago, because it's beholden to the laws and societal pressures that require them to try to attain appare

Sure. Huge multinational corporations definitely cater to "societal pressures". They're not all about profit. They're all about catering to the SJWs.

Top kek, right there.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

The industry is trying to cut their payroll by any means necessary

And the reason they're doing that is staring at you in the mirror.

Re:This is tragic!

[dell623]

I read these meaningless PR releases utterly devoid of any context (proportion of female applicants, proportion of female applicants meeting the skill requirements etc.) and find myself getting rather annoyed as they seem to suggest that employees in these companies, the whole industry, and by inference, I, did not get a job through merit but because of some kind of gender bias.

But then I read posts straight out of Mad Men like this one, purportedly written by someone who would have a say in hiring, and I think that maybe somewhere behind this whole misguided campaign, there is a very real problem.

- The reference to women as 'girls'. Do it in a bar, not in a professional context, not to a colleague, not in written professional communication.
- 'Brightening up the workplace'? Really?
- That running gag in your company - do the female employees share in it? Or there literally aren't any?

You can claim it's all bar chatter and you're all professional at work, but your office really does not sound like one where women would feel comfortable working.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

Except for the part where such a twenty-something girl doesn't actually exist. Sure, there are twenty-something girls with blue hair and piercings (you see plenty of neat people in the city) but they don't write code.

Actually, they do, and one of them has become one of GamerGate's prime targets. Her name is Randi Harper, and she goes by "FreeBSDgirl". She wrote the GamerGate autoblocker for twitter. All by herself without a big strapping gamerboy to help her. She's got blue hair, piercings, and writes better code than you.

I'm glad you're flat-out admitting that you're anti-gamer

I've been playing video games since before you were born.

d that this isn't really about "rights" or whatever social justice bullshit the SJWs like to pretend it is.

And you just admitted that it's not about "ethics in game journalism".

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

Bad narrative. It's not the nerdiness that makes you obnoxious. And everybody's a nerd now, so it just doesn't matter. Nerds are over. Nerds are dead.

Nerds are over like gamers are over. How'd that work out for you? Oh, right. When the mainstream media made a Nightline segment for your side, it got less than 900 likes and over 22,500 dislikes.

See above. Nerds aren't the only game in town for tech any more.

Ex jocks may be able to use Tor. They sure as hell aren't going to build it. Like I said, it's not enough to steal the nerds' ideas any more.

And the truth is, you're not as nerdy as you think. Compared to some twenty-something girl with blue hair and piercings who writes perl code for fun, you're not the king of the nerd hill any more.

Didn't she just get laid off?

And yet...http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-pledges-300m-to-build-a-more-diverse-work-force/

You're not getting it. I'm not talking about gestures, I'm talking about results. Intel can throw $300M to minority scholarships and the most likely result is nothing. How do I know this? Because it's been done before. It's a gesture of appeasement, nothing more.

Re:8chan in the House!

[Locando]

Yeah, we know; we're nerds. Non-nerds hate us and when they're not using us for punching bags or as the butt of their jokes, they wish we'd just go away.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I have no sympathy whatsoever with the whiners that get all defensive when the topic of women in tech comes up, and it's not because I give one shit about whether someone self-identifies as a nerd or not. (Why does anyone?) It's because I've never seen a good argument for your side. I see article after article with statistics, hypotheses, anecdotes — some valid, some spurious — and all I see as a counterargument is mindless invective clearly preaching to the choir.

One other thing I definitely don't have any sympathy for (and again, only speaking for myself) is crappy debate. So where are the arguments that are actually intended to persuade those with an open ear? If I sound critical, it's only because I've yet to see a single post on here complaining about alleged bias on gender-related stuff in tech that sounds like it's from someone open to debate. I've heard plenty of talk from your side about men being men, so why don't you man up already and prove yourself right?

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

You're not getting it. I'm not talking about gestures

$300million is a pretty broad gesture. With other companies following suit.

You ever hear of a company investing money in hiring more gamers? Hell, even game dev companies don't hire gamers any more ever since Early Access replaced beta testers.

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I have no sympathy whatsoever with the whiners that get all defensive when the topic of women in tech comes up, and it's not because I give one shit about whether someone self-identifies as a nerd or not. (Why does anyone?)

Well, I'm personally through being defensive and have decided that going on the offensive is better. Because as Ratzo has so clearly demonstrated, getting women in tech isn't really the object. The object is to bully the male nerds out.

One other thing I definitely don't have any sympathy for (and again, only speaking for myself) is crappy debate. So where are the arguments that are actually intended to persuade those with an open ear?

Is there anyone left with an open ear?

If I sound critical, it's only because I've yet to see a single post on here complaining about alleged bias on gender-related stuff in tech that sounds like it's from someone open to debate.

Probably because no one left is. The topic's been beat into the ground.

The number one argument their side -- the side that claims some sort of pervasive institutional discrimination -- has is the gender ratio. There's no denying it's lopsided. After that, all they've really got is anecdotes about harassment. Many of these are spurious (such as Julie Ann Horvath's problems with the wife of GitHub's founder being spun as sexism), but they hold that even questioning these anecdotes is itself sexism and proof of their proposition. At point there's no point in arguing further; they're arguing in bad faith.

I've heard plenty of talk from your side about men being men, so why don't you man up already and prove yourself right?

I don't know that the "men being men" theory is right either; the strongest evidence of that is the "gender equality" paradox, that as sociologist Susan Pinker notes "in countries where women have the most freedom to choose their careers, the gender divide is the most pronounced". But separating nature from nurture is fiendishly difficult.

What I do know is the "misogynerd" theory, that holds that the reason for the disparity is that men in tech are uniquely awful to women, in ways that men in other, more balanced professions like sales and medical doctors and advertising professionals are not, is utterly ridiculous.

Re:8chan in the House!

[Locando]

Hm, interesting. I guess I missed out on the earlier arguments, and a lot of the rhetoric is confusing to someone who hasn't been involved in the debate. I can't say that either team looks from the sidelines like they're arguing in good faith.

I'll have to look into the sociologist quote you mentioned. It's nice to see some actual research on this sort of stuff instead of assumptions about people's motives. That said, I don't understand how you can dismiss out of hand the idea that the culture of, say, software developers or gamers in the US (there is a culture, isn't there?) might include more sexists or contain an ideology that allows for sexism more so than other fields. I mean, couldn't that be possible of any field, any culture? I don't see how anyone could say there exists a culture that doesn't have something that sucks significantly about it, and that includes those that we love and couldn't feel in our place without.

Re:How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stat

[arth1]

The very best engineers, programmers and wizards are not school taught - they are autodidact.
To the point that many have a CS education, that is only pro-forma so they fulfill employment requirements.

Anyone who takes CS to learn CS is already behind. If you actually learned something you didn't already know, you probably didn't have much of an interest or a knack in the first place.

To get more [insert favorite minority] into STEM/CS, the members of [insert favorite minority] have to take an interest in it. Schools can't teach you the drive and curiosity that makes you worth keeping as an employee. They can only teach you what you can pick up in a fraction of the time by reading and playing around.

To expect to be a successful engineer because your parents sent you to UCB is as silly as expecting to be a successful musician because you took music classes. Without an inner drive and interest, it won't do much good.
And the problem is that women in general don't take a personal interest in maths, science, engineering or similar. That has to come first.

Re:8chan in the House!

[goose-incarnated]

Men in tech are just pitiful. Reading these mewling, whining comments, one does not need to wonder why big tech companies are trying to encourage diversity.

Leave us level-headed folk out of your self-loathing.

The funniest part is that male Slashdot readers actually think their opinions matter on the topic of diversity. So, just for the record, nobody cares what you think.

Reality says something different. For all the money and effort being poured into changing the diversity numbers, for all the media coverage and sexist -exclusionary BS, they haven't changed a single damn thing. You are free to say that the layman/laywomans opinion on this doesn't matter, but reality would say that you are wrong. The common person isn't being fooled yet.

The industry is trying to recruit women because you are so awful to be around, and you are not half as irreplaceable as you think.

It's no wonder shit's so messed up. Look who's been in charge. Big white manbabies.

Like I said, your self-loathing - your problem. You appear to be annoyed that other men don't share your self-loathing. I'm sorry - not everyone buys into faith-based reasoning. Maybe if the diversity people have some sort of, you know, evidence of something other than non-diversity? Evidence of skewness is not evidence of discrimination.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not white you ignorant rascist fuck.

Re:8chan in the House!

[goose-incarnated]

You're not getting it. I'm not talking about gestures

$300million is a pretty broad gesture. With other companies following suit.

And yet, even with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of persuasion, not to mention all the coddling and discriminatory policies in favour of females, nothing has changed. You want to be in tech in a majority, then be a nerd, because that's who's in tech in large numbers. If girls don't want to be nerds it's because of people like you who think it is okay to pick on nerds. Somewhat ironically, the treatment that nerds get from society as a whole is probably contributing to females not wanting to be a nerd.

You're part of the problem, not the solution. Girls look at the way you, and the other current SJW's treat nerds and say "Oh no, I don't want to be treated like that!"

Re:Yet another bullshit "article" -

[Shadow of Eternity]

Techraptr, gamesnosh, most of the ones that have sprung up as a result of the jezebel plague taking over the previous websites.

Re:8chan in the House!

[Shadow of Eternity]

>Claims to fight against gender based shaming and slurs
>Uses tons of insults based entirely around the very things poster is claiming to fight

Re:8chan in the House!

[Shadow of Eternity]

Randi Harper is an awful "coder", a child abuser, drug addict, and has constantly doxed and harassed people. You're making everyone else's point for them.

Re:8chan in the House!

[Shadow of Eternity]

Read these two, one by a major female linux hacker and one by a mental health professional: http://www.linuxjournal.com/co... http://slatestarcodex.com/2015...

What percentage is enough?

[grimfate]

Whenever I see a diversity figure of something like 30%, it's usually described along the lines of "not great". So what percentage would be "great"? At what point can we say the diversity is good enough? Or that it is a realistic reflection of the numbers of those actually interested in the industry for each group? Or are we trying to engineer some even split for some purpose? Because an exact 50/50 split sounds unrealistic to me.

Re:This is tragic!

[gtall]

My theory for why we lack women in science (not sure about engineering) is that science is structured to reward individual prowess. You get a PhD by doing your own work.

I was an assistant director of a lab. The men in the lab all pretty much stayed in their swimming lane. The women were busy socializing with one another. Since we had a lab, they had a place to socialize and myself and the director had no problems with them socializing over their research or anything else. The research produced by the men and women were more or less comparable.

Most science is not so welcoming to socialized problem solving, women need to socialize and hence feel that science is either not for them or is structured by males for males. I expect a similar dynamic happens in engineering.

The subject material of science is also not encouraging of social interaction. It has an abstract, unidirectional air that men find appealing and women do not, generally speaking. I don't find it odd there are so few women in science. Unless the process of how science is pursued is changed, and more cross-disciplinary science is encouraged, I don't see most efforts at encouraging women in science being successful.

Re:In before

[Hognoxious]

I tried reading it, but when it started going on about non-white left-handed females born under an earth sign who prefer pepsi it made my head spin.

I might have to draw a Venn Diagram.

Elect Republicans in '16

[HBI]

I'm serious. This is happening because of Democrats being in control of the regulatory apparatus of the federal government. No shocker there. If you want to stop being harassed about identity politics issues, elect Republicans. You get a different basket of annoyances there, but you'll stop hearing about this, at least.

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

That said, I don't understand how you can dismiss out of hand the idea that the culture of, say, software developers or gamers in the US (there is a culture, isn't there?) might include more sexists or contain an ideology that allows for sexism more so than other fields.

It's that there are certain other fields -- e.g. sales, advertising, finance -- which are notorious for being filled with macho men who don't take women seriously and will "hit on anything with a skirt". Based on knowing people from some of those fields, this notoriety is not un-earned. I've known very few software developers fitting that description, and all went into management early on. And yet all those fields have a more balanced gender ratio than software development.

Re:In before

[serviscope_minor]

Well, that's pretty interesting. If it's true, that non-white women are much keener on working in IT than white wome, that pretty much proves that there must be cultural factors at play and it's not simply a case of "women just don't want to".

Very interesting!

Re:8chan in the House!

[serviscope_minor]

The thing is about gaters, is they seem to spew unsupported nasty accuastions over the internet and seem to believe that the onus is on sane people to prove them wrong. Put up or shut up.

Re:8chan in the House!

[Zxern]

No the reason they are doing that, is the same reason they are doing that in every industry. Lowering costs is good for profits, its a simple as that.

obviously these are the wrong articles

[Goldsmith]

I'm a physicist, my field has a long history of domination by men, and very particular types of men. Our argument has long been that we are a hard meritocracy. If you can do physics, you can succeed, period.

It is only recently that I have understood that monoculture in physics has greatly damaged my field. Having people with actual different points of view intellectually and personally prevents blind spots, encourages more creative approaches, and creates much needed internal critical dialogue. This is the core of the argument for diversity, but having someone who looks different parroting the common assumptions isn't diversity. Without diverse points of view, we really are just replaceable cogs in a technology producing business engine. Our different approaches to life and problem solving make us valuable, not just technical skills. The lack of gender diversity in physics is a symptom of repression of diverse thought, not the cause. Fix the fundamental issue, and we will see more women interested in participating in the field.

Rather than hand wringing over demographics, we should be passing around articles talking about what diversity actually means. What does a "diverse technical team" actually mean? Why is that a good thing? This is where the discussion needs to start.

Re:obviously these are the wrong articles

[russotto]

It is only recently that I have understood that monoculture in physics has greatly damaged my field.

Did that kool-aid taste good, or did it burn going down?

Re:obviously these are the wrong articles

[Goldsmith]

Which Kool-Aid are you referring to? The idea that all we need to do in science is write great grant applications and publish papers, then magically some engineer will license our work and turn it into a product? Or maybe you agree that a monolithic culture which has spent 30 years and over $30 billion on nanotech research without delivering any of the promised results could use a little shake up.

That example is sexism

[SuperKendall]

His example was a female student who couldn't work in group which was otherwise all males.

That is sexism, she is sexist. I had a female CS major in my class, she was pretty much the only female is most of the classes. She didn't care if some of the men were "awkward", she had no trouble in the class or the major for that matter.

I myself have been in groups at work (and at school) where I was the only male. I was able to work just fine, because I don't have any trouble with women and treat them professional as they do me.

Beware anyone who claims to have trouble if they are the only one of some self-identified group and uses that as an excuse for not being able to work.

Re:That example is sexism

[Karmashock]

Exactly. Men work in all female environments on occasion and we don't cry to HR, the media, or some group of misguided social justice nitwits. We deal with it.

Because we're adults.

And the women that are also adults deal with it the same way. Because they're adults.

The people that have a hard time with stuff like this are behaving like children and deserve to be treated like children.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

No the reason they are doing that, is the same reason they are doing that in every industry. Lowering costs is good for profits, its a simple as that.

And nothing is more expensive than a workforce that nobody wants to be around.

Seriously, anyone here who works in tech: What do you think of the quality of your co-workers? Do you think maybe there's room for some improvement? When you've got senior tech guys talking in a mixed room who are making frat-boy jokes about their dicks, I guarantee you're not going to get the best people for the job.

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

And nothing is more expensive than a workforce that nobody wants to be around.

A workforce that you pay but doesn't get the work done is far more expensive.

Re:How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stat

[arth1]

women can be very dedicated in what they are planning. Like becoming carrier model - this too takes time and hard work.

Ah. You mean my sister-in-law. Yeah, she could have modeled for a carrier.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

And yet, even with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of persuasion, not to mention all the coddling and discriminatory policies in favour of females, nothing has changed.

Actually a great deal has changed. It drew GamerGate out of the sewer and exposed the ugly side to men in tech.

Now it's on the front page. The neckbeards got the last thing they wanted, attention. And sunlight is a great disinfectant.

Re:8chan in the House!

[russotto]

Ah, "neckbeards". And further back, "autists" used as an insult. Yes, there's someone's ugly side exposed indeed.

Re:Whatever

[Mr. Shotgun]

Companies that don't hire the best employees fail.

False. Just look at the board of directors of many companies - the companies survive based on inertia and cronyism, not merit.

Sorry, but I think the OP was referring to down in the trenches where the real work is done and production matters. Though you are probably right about the so called leadership positions. After hearing about some of Balmers escapades I am sure we could replace most of them with gorillas and no one would notice.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

I'm just using the vocabulary of GamerGate to talk to a Gamergator.

Don't believe me?

http://www.8ch.net/gamergate/ (Scroll past the stickies)

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

I'm just using the vocabulary of GamerGate to talk to a Gamergator.

Don't believe me?

http://www.8ch.net/gamergate/ (Scroll past the stickies)

I just did a cursory count on that 8chan GamerGate page. It's their clubhouse.

The word "autist" or "aut" appears 17 times.

The word "nigger" appears 8 times

The word "faggot" appears 26 times

These are the words they use when addressing each other. But when it comes to referring to women, they lose all creativity.

"Cunt" appears 12 times. "Slut" appears 5 times. "Pig" appears 3 times (in reference to a woman). "Whale" appears 5 times (again, in reference to a woman's appearance). I can go on, but I've got to get up early tomorrow.

Just in case you think I was being hyperbolic when I said I was speaking to the Gamergator in his own language.

If you wonder how GamerGate got it's reputation a for misogyny..

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

Re:How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stat

[arth1]

Thank you for correcting spelling mistake. English is not my first language.

You're welcome. Nether is it mine. Nor is it my second language.
Buorre Beaivi!

s/carrier/career/g
Anything else that I can do for you?

Save cycles and don't use the g option when not needed. With sed not being my first scripting language, I propose: /^w/s/carri/a caree/1 ;)

Re:8chan in the House!

[goose-incarnated]

The word "autist" or "aut" appears 17 times.

The word "nigger" appears 8 times

The word "faggot" appears 26 times

These are the words they use when addressing each other. But when it comes to referring to women, they lose all creativity.

"Cunt" appears 12 times. "Slut" appears 5 times. "Pig" appears 3 times (in reference to a woman). "Whale" appears 5 times (again, in reference to a woman's appearance).

Did you just point out that those people insulted men twice as much as they insulted women? Clever - you deserve an award for that.

I feel I should save a link to this post so that anyone who goes on about gamergate being against women can have a read. Well done for the research.

Re:8chan in the House!

[PopeRatzo]

Did you just point out that those people insulted men twice as much as they insulted women?

Women who weren't there. The men were there.

When women are present in the discussion, the numbers skyrocket.

Re:8chan in the House!

[goose-incarnated]

Did you just point out that those people insulted men twice as much as they insulted women?

Women who weren't there. The men were there.

When women are present in the discussion, the numbers skyrocket.

This is not getting better for you - you have just stated that no women were on the forum to be harmed, but plenty of men were. You've just stated that more men are the recipients of abuse on that forum than women! And to think that you were insulting the intelligence of others :-)

Nevertheless, I'm reposting this the next time /. is assaulted with a non-story by the "you-hurt-my-feels" brigade - PopeRatzo's preliminary research shows that men are twice as likely to be abused by gamergators as women are. All your own research, mind - I've never been on a chan forum :-)

Re:How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stat

[uniquegeek]

When we were young, my parents managed to always have a computer around for my brother and myself. When it came to doing "boy" stuff, I was encouraged to do that, but when it came down to actually doing it, it was my brother who got the time to do it. With some interests, I also occasionally heard "you might hurt yourself", whereas for my brother, it was ok.

My interest in computers and skill was evident (including to the point of fixing the computers at school while I was still a student). But when it came time for me to go to university, all of a sudden "you can do anything" became "you have to go to university here because the awesome tech university you want to go to is across the country and is a scary place for young women".

I persisted in tech regardless (despite programming not being available in my small school), and by and large, most people I've met in tech are ok. But I've also met quite a few people who
- ignore my expertise and only ask the guys in the room about tech stuff
- tell me I shouldn't go after certain jobs, training, or promotions because my biological clock is ticking (acquaintances and complete strangers)
- mansplaining (oh god, the mansplaining), and being talked over

God help a woman who decides to "have it all", too - they're a bad mother. But when that's the case, no one asks why the husband isn't stepping up to the plate to help with family chores more (or when they do, they are often mocked or treated badly by men and women - which is a whole other discussion).

I know that's personal anectodes, but it would probably help if people didn't pidgeonhole females so much, and tell them what they can't do and tell them what they want. It ought to get better with more generations, but I doubt the way parents shelter and baby their children, especially girls, is helping much. Women can be just as bad for reinforcing female stereotypes as the men are. Women's value is still in doing girly things and looking pretty. The few role models in industry or business still get judged on those aspects. Being told all those things, repeatedly, for your entire life can really take a toll. It is just so much easier to conform.

It's not drive that's a problem. It's that the drive is constantly beaten out of them.

Pidgeonholing men and telling them how they're supposed to be is a problem too - but again, that's a whole other discussion. Same problems, but the rules are just different.

Can we just all agree to stop being shitty to each other and including others who want to be included?

Re:How to influence the innumerate with CS Ed stat

[russotto]

Can we just all agree to stop being shitty to each other and including others who want to be included?

I don't know, can you? Seems unlikely, as you used that term "mansplaining". And you know that thing about being talked over? You know who it happens to? EVERYBODY. People talk over each other all the time. Some people are worse than others about doing it. Some people are better than others at countering it. But when you demand that women, specifically, shouldn't be talked over, you're demanding special treatment. But of course if you actually got special treatment, you'd deride it as patronizing. So no, we can't agree to stop being shitty to each other, because there's nothing you can't define as shitty.

Your coworkers aren't your parents; they aren't responsible for them. And if you asked them, you'd probably find a few (male) who got similar overprotective shit from their parents -- maybe they were their only child or their only son, for instance. But of course if they mentioned it to you, you'd yell about "mansplaining". Because a man pointing out that life's tough all over is "mansplaining". But, life remains tough all over, just the same.