[X3N0-Life-Form]

And as a side-note, I hate male-dominated environments and the mindsets that they tend to produce with a passion. I don't think I've actually ever heard someone say "women are bad programmers", but I constantly hear "women programmers are ugly" or variations thereof.

[Dragon]

The number of women in the work age population is 50%. If the number of women doing a certain job is not 50% that indicates a deviation from the norm. Which means that there is a reason for it. You said "But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"" I've answered that by stating the far more important question, "Why shouldn't it be 50%? - i.e What factors are stopping it from being 50%" I didn't simply reverse your question, I put it in the terms it should originally have been stated. Because a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."

The thing is, they don't! That's what he is trying to say. That is the point. How many women actually want to be coders? Likewise, how many of them actually want to be infantry marines? When the restrictions on women in infantry were lifted, the initial response was abysmal. It seems that some jobs simply attract more men than women. Why should we change that?

The thing about culture is that, generally, both sides are OK with it. In the Western World, cultural norms aren't enforced very strongly. If you want to go against them, it's your choice. There is not oppression that we see in more primitive countries, following cultural norms is a choice. The "woman secretly wanting to do a male profession" kind of plot is thoroughly outdated now, with exception of some militaries. If she wants to do something, she can to do that thing. And here's the thing: most women don't. Even when legal restrictions on "male jobs" are lifted, they do not generally see a vast change in gender dynamics.

I don't think this needs changing, assuming this is even possible, this effort would be better spent elsewhere. You are trying to change what is, for a certain group of people, natural. Culture is very hard to modify, especially the oldest tenets such as gender roles. Either this will change naturally, over many years, or it won't. There is no reason to want a higher percentage of either women or men in most professions.

When I go to the hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse. I don't want to risk getting a female nurse who is below average because males who would have been better than her didn't apply.

How about being treated by a male nurse who hates his job because this wasn't what he really wanted to do? Really, "could have been better" is a ridiculous concept. People aren't predestined to be good or bad at anything. If a man wants to be a nurse, he can become one. Most men don't. And I can tell you that you can only become good at something you like to do. Its forcing people into specific jobs against their interests that results in substandard performance.

It might be that some people are stopped from picking the occupation they really want by their relatives, but in the end, it's their own choice as well. If an adult person can't make his/her own choice (even in spite of what their relatives want), then they can't be helped, no matter how you'd like to.

[The E]

The thing is, they don't! That's what he is trying to say. That is the point. How many women actually want to be coders? Likewise, how many of them actually want to be infantry marines? When the restrictions on women in infantry were lifted, the initial response was abysmal. It seems that some jobs simply attract more men than women. Why should we change that?

Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?
The issues here go very deep (just like, for example, male nurses have a harder time finding acceptance among their peers and customers than female ones), they start in early education and deeply ingrained mindsets among parents, teachers and bosses. If your conclusion here is that women "just don't want these jobs", then you aren't looking deep enough.

I mean, isn't it kinda interesting, that the early practitioners of the art of coding, back when it was seen as a more glorified version of typing, were women? And that, once it became clear that coding is important, that there's money to be made here, men took over the profession?

Basically, what I'm saying is, if you think that gender is the dominant factor here, and that workplace culture, professional culture, upbringing and gender stereotypes play second fiddle (if you believe in their existence at all), please educate yourself before you fire up your keyboard again.

The thing about culture is that, generally, both sides are OK with it. In the Western World, cultural norms aren't enforced very strongly. If you want to go against them, it's your choice. There is not oppression that we see in more primitive countries, following cultural norms is a choice.

Have you recently tried to go into work naked? Guess not.

(The point is, you're not seeing the forest for the trees: Just because you think your cultural norms are "normal" doesn't mean they are.)

The "woman secretly wanting to do a male profession" kind of plot is thoroughly outdated now, with exception of some militaries. If she wants to do something, she can to do that thing. And here's the thing: most women don't. Even when legal restrictions on "male jobs" are lifted, they do not generally see a vast change in gender dynamics.

I don't think this needs changing, assuming this is even possible, this effort would be better spent elsewhere. You are trying to change what is, for a certain group of people, natural. Culture is very hard to modify, especially the oldest tenets such as gender roles. Either this will change naturally, over many years, or it won't. There is no reason to want a higher percentage of either women or men in most professions.

See above. Programming in particular, as a profession, was thought to be an archetypical women's job. That cultural norm got changed in a hurry.

[karajorma]

How about being treated by a male nurse who hates his job because this wasn't what he really wanted to do?

Where in the name of **** did you pull this idea from?

Encouraging more men to be nurses isn't going to suddenly end up with a large number of male nurses who hate their job. It's not like I'm talking about rounding up a bunch of guys and forcing them to be nurses at gun point. It's about making sure that the women who want to be coders can be coders, rather than getting put off by the idea of having to work in an environment completely composed of sweaty neckbeards who don't know how to act around a woman. It's about allowing the guys who would like to be a nurse do so, rather than get put off by the idea that everyone is going to make jokes about them being women or gay.

The idea that anyone who wants a profession will go out and do it is completely ignorant of how the world works. A lot of people look at the massive amount of **** they'll have to put up with and decide it simply isn't worth it.

[Grizzly]

because I was having a conversation about Kara about something else. I actually spent an hour or two looking into that, but I couldn't find any raw numbers, my suspicion is that the number of women in computer science never dropped but as CS went from being a theoretical pursuit to a major industry it attracted people who were very much interested in making money rather than satisfying academic pursuits and so it wasn't that women left but that men came..

Why aren't you seeing similar trends in medical or law school then, which are also professions where there is a lot of money to be made? Why are you operating on the assumption that making money is mainly a men's pursuit?

[Macielos]

In case you haven't noticed I've already pointed out in this thread that quotas are illegal in the UK and US and I've given no reason why that's a bad thing. I definitely think that it's not something the government should be interfering with. Unlike you though I do see a point.

I noticed that. I was just explaining my point of view - when and how an intervention is justified and what intervention could that be.

Even if quotas are not present in Anglo-saxon countries - good to hear that - they are quite popular in continental Europe. Germany, France and most neighbour countries have some sort of them, even Poland passed the law that obligates political parties to have min. 35% of each sex on their lists. EU is also a great supporter of gender quotas both in politics and boards of companies.

Ok, as we both agree government intervention or any kind privilege for one sex are not an option, I'll repeat my question then as you omitted it in your post: How exactly would you change the sex distribution in certain professions? I'm asking only about the means you would use.

The number of women in the work age population is 50%. If the number of women doing a certain job is not 50% that indicates a deviation from the norm. Which means that there is a reason for it. You said "But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"" I've answered that by stating the far more important question, "Why shouldn't it be 50%? - i.e What factors are stopping it from being 50%" I didn't simply reverse your question, I put it in the terms it should originally have been stated. Because a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."

I am getting a little tired with this. You are making a FALSE assumption that distribution or men and women in certain professions should be moreless equal. It is false because distribution of certain genes and attributes among men and women is not equal. STATISTICALLY (doesn't mean always) men are better in analitical thinking, strategy and being leaders, while women are more often good at multi-tasking, social skills and taking care of others. STATISTICALLY women care more about security and are more often okay with worse-paid but stable job. Women are also the ones spending most time with children - 9 months of pregnancy, then probably another few months, often more, that may also affect that less women take on dangerous or time-consuming jobs. So STATISTICALLy you will find more men with talents for some jobs and more women with taletns for other jobs.

There are also cultural factors, some of them could be harmful, some I'd defend, but let's put them aside for now. You said you are okay with biological differences and they alone are enough for you to never achieve moreless equal distribution of sexes in some professions.

You say "freedom to choose this job in not limited in other way" and that is the real crux of the matter. Because there are limits that are cultural. Do you think that the reason why male nurses are such a small percentage of the profession is really because men don't have what it takes to be a nurse? Or do you think that the cultural view of male nurses is a limiting factor? When I go to the hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse. I don't want to risk getting a female nurse who is below average because males who would have been better than her didn't apply.

When I go to hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of his/her sex. That means we must have some job requirements/exams/studies/whatever other method to verify a candidate's skills. If this verification does not include discrimination and we filtered the best candidates, it does not matter how many men and women there are among them.

Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?
The issues here go very deep (just like, for example, male nurses have a harder time finding acceptance among their peers and customers than female ones), they start in early education and deeply ingrained mindsets among parents, teachers and bosses. If your conclusion here is that women "just don't want these jobs", then you aren't looking deep enough.

Please read my earlier post. IT work environment is not women-unfriendly, it's quite the opposite. Job requirements in IT I came in touch with are mostly gender-neutral (tests and practical job interviews) and attitude to women working in IT companies is usually warm and friendly. Same refers to girls studying technical courses at my university.

[666maslo666]

Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?

Indeed. The underrepresentation of women in IT (or technical fields and interests in general) starts much earlier than at workplaces, so I dont think its fair to blame workplace culture or employers for it. As you said, it starts in early education and ingrained mindsets among parents and teachers - how many girls vs. boys in your high school regularly played computer games?
This is where the efforts to change it should be concentrated. After high school it is already too late to change anything, most people have already decided their career path by then, at least in broad terms (to STEM or not to STEM). If you then start to discriminate employees because you want to reach some target % of women in IT, despite the fact that IT schools dont produce such % of IT graduates, it will lead to lower quality, because the fundamental lack of deep interest in the subject wont be changed by a few late positive discrimination perks, but it could very well bring in women with other motivations.

[The E]

Please read my earlier post. IT work environment is not women-unfriendly, it's quite the opposite. Job requirements in IT I came in touch with are mostly gender-neutral (tests and practical job interviews) and attitude to women working in IT companies is usually warm and friendly. Same refers to girls studying technical courses at my university.

Okay, a few things.

One, I know from my experience that customers would rather deal with a male apprentice than a female consultant. This actually happened on a project the company I work at did; A bunch of their IT staff were complaining about the work our (only) female consultant did, but those complaints more or less stopped once the apprentice took over (or rather, emails were sent from the apprentice's account, our consultant still did all the work).

Two, in companies that actually structure their hiring process so that gender is eliminated as a factor in selecting applications, women have much better chances of getting jobs. Even something as simple as having HR remove the names of the applicants from their applications led to a much fairer assessment of their skills; This same mechanism also applies in cases where people with obviously foreign names apply to a job.

Three, it is remarkably easy for a predominantly male company to think of itself as welcoming to women. Hint: The absence of complaints does not indicate an absence of issues.

[Phantom Hoover]

fix casing in topic title plx

[Scotty]

fix casing in your posts plx

[Phantom Hoover]

casing in my posts is informal but idiomatic, casing in title looks strange and german

[Phantom Hoover]

wait that's a tautology

[karajorma]

Ok, as we both agree government intervention or any kind privilege for one sex are not an option, I'll repeat my question then as you omitted it in your post: How exactly would you change the sex distribution in certain professions? I'm asking only about the means you would use.

You touched on some of it yourself. NGO campaigns. For male nurses it would be simple, a series of adverts showing nursing as being just as demanding and manly as any other job would go a long way towards reversing the cultural issues. More importantly though (and the reason I brought it up in the first place) I'd want to see feminists spending just as many column inches on male nurses and junior school teachers as they do complaining about the lack of women in traditionally male jobs.

a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."

I am getting a little tired with this. You are making a FALSE assumption that distribution or men and women in certain professions should be moreless equal. It is false because distribution of certain genes and attributes among men and women is not equal. STATISTICALLY (doesn't mean always) men are better in analitical thinking, strategy and being leaders, while women are more often good at multi-tasking, social skills and taking care of others. STATISTICALLY women care more about security and are more often okay with worse-paid but stable job. Women are also the ones spending most time with children - 9 months of pregnancy, then probably another few months, often more, that may also affect that less women take on dangerous or time-consuming jobs. So STATISTICALLy you will find more men with talents for some jobs and more women with taletns for other jobs.

This is hilarious. You literally just did exactly what I complained about. You decided that the way things are now must be natural based on the fact that it is the way things are today. This is despite evidence already posted on this thread that the number of female programmers was actually higher than the number of males at one point. You forget (or are completely ignorant of) the fact that the first computer programmer (or debugger) ever, Ada Lovelace, was a woman and that first ever computer development team was entirely female. You ignore that programming actually was seen as a woman's job for quite a while and only became more of a men's job after cultural shifts as has already been pointed out!

Not only are you wrong, your analysis is hugely unscientific. You've taken the state of things today and made a laughable hypothesis about why it is that way completely ignoring any historical evidence to the contrary. Had someone done what you did in the 50's they would have concluded that programming was a woman's job and that men were fundamentally unsuited to doing it. They could easily make a case for why women are statistically better at coding.

You said you are okay with biological differences and they alone are enough for you to never achieve moreless equal distribution of sexes in some professions.

I am. What I'm not okay with is people inventing biological differences like you just did.

When I go to hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of his/her sex. That means we must have some job requirements/exams/studies/whatever other method to verify a candidate's skills. If this verification does not include discrimination and we filtered the best candidates, it does not matter how many men and women there are among them.

Hell, even Maslo seems to understand that cultural issues that prevent someone entering a certain profession don't begin and end at the job. You're not going to get a fair distribution of male and female nurses if men don't train to become nurses because they don't want to be called gay. If only women are training to be nurses then it doesn't matter how fair and undiscriminatory your hiring practices are, there aren't going to be any male candidates to discriminate against. Once again you've failed to actually identify the problem before telling us that it isn't a problem / there is a simple solution.

I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of their sex too. But unlike you I understand that there are reasons that isn't happening at the moment.

Indeed. The underrepresentation of women in IT (or technical fields and interests in general) starts much earlier than at workplaces, so I dont think its fair to blame workplace culture or employers for it. As you said, it starts in early education and ingrained mindsets among parents and teachers - how many girls vs. boys in your high school regularly played computer games?

I think it's actually a mixture of the two. I don't think you're at all wrong here but you've got to remember that people exiting a profession can also have a large effect on the demographics. If women who do actually become programmers get sick of the sexist bull**** they have to put up with and leave for other careers then that is also going to result in less women working as programmers.

If you then start to discriminate employees because you want to reach some target % of women in IT, despite the fact that IT schools dont produce such % of IT graduates, it will lead to lower quality, because the fundamental lack of deep interest in the subject wont be changed by a few late positive discrimination perks, but it could very well bring in women with other motivations.

I've already explained why quotas are illegal in the UK (and you're right that they can cause lower quality) but that's why you need to instead do the things I mentioned earlier. Hiring what is missing in your organisation when skill sets are identical, improving the workplace conditions so that people who were sick of the bull**** come back, etc. The former doesn't decrease quality and the latter would actually increase it.

[Bobboau]

Why aren't you seeing similar trends in medical or law school then, which are also professions where there is a lot of money to be made? Why are you operating on the assumption that making money is mainly a men's pursuit?

You mean jobs that have been aristocracy staples for hundreds of years and didn't suddenly become a major industry in the span of half a decade correlating with the observed change of demographics? I'm not assuming that making money is a mans sport, I'm trying to think what happened in that time frame that might have had an effect on which people were getting degrees.

but in hindsight if I wanted to justify "making money (as) mainly a men's pursuit" it would be because it has historically been the trend. In the 80s it was more pronounced than it is today.
Women are permitted to not work, it's not socially required like it is for men. It is a lifestyle choice available to one gender and not the other. The traditional option is still available and some people still choose it. The thing is in a completely egalitarian/feminist society men and women both work, in the traditional order men worked, in both of these men work. I mean, I suppose if you looked hard enough you might be able to find examples of career women with trophy husbands but it is far less common. There isn't really a huge "women do all the work earn all the money and men just clean up at home, cook, and look pretty" option, even feminists shame men like that.

Oh snap! Just found some of the raw numbers I was looking for earlier. this doesn't prove anything either way but it's interesting.
The proportion of women peaked in 1983, but the population (for both males and females) peaked in 1985. Interestingly it looks like the demographic shift started in the late 70s but 83-85 was the big shift. This was a 3 year period and the demographic shift remained the stable until the mid 90s. 83 was about when the internet started in its earliest iterations. let's see here, these are degrees conferred, so these are 21 year olds, if we focus on the middle of this (84) these are kids born in 1963, they were 6 during Apollo 11, woodstock, and when feminism originally started to explode, and they spent their formative years in the 70s. There was an even more dramatic demographic shift from 98 to 04, but while this is when women make up an ever decreasing proportion it also marks when there are the most women in CS. then I run out of data :/.
It looks like the two huge demographic shifts happened during the PC boom of the 80s and the internet boom of the 2000s. The mid 80s to mid 90s is interesting, why did it stay stable? why didn't it return to the previous proposition or get worse?
I do notice that when the demographics shift, men change more dramatically than women, but this is more pronounced during the upswings than downswings.


Kara you dropped your end of this, I'm actually interested in understanding what the **** we were actually in disagreement about that started this offshoot thread. I thought I understood what our disagreement was until you said that was exactly what you were saying. you seem to have a very specific definition in mind here, can you link me to some resource that provides your definition?
Could you please say back what you think I think is meant by 'quota' in the context of this discussion, so that I know if I have communicated my position to you (please kindly note I'm not accusing you of strawmanning me).
What you think is meant by 'quota', because I have apparently not gotten it yet. Maybe you overemphasized something tangential in your previous attempts?
Could you please point out the difference between what you think is my understanding and your understanding, because maybe you combined these last two steps previously resulting in further misunderstanding.
or did you just like calling me ignorant?

[Grizzly]

A quota is very simply "A minimum X of Y must be reached". Such a quota is always pre-recorded, and are banned in both the US (as per a Supreme Court case) and the UK.

In short, saying "we need more women in this company!" is not a quota. Saying "I want atleast 20 women recruited by the end of the week!" IS a quota.

[Bobboau]

ok, so is the big argument about it being a specific, predefined, written down, number? this is sounding like it's some sort of legal dodge, missing the point that your identity should not affect your employment eligibility. that there is no 'correct amount' of asians.

[Grizzly]

ok, so is the big argument about it being a specific, predefined, written down, number? this is sounding like it's some sort of legal dodge, missing the point that your identity should not affect your employment eligibility. that there is no 'correct amount' of asians.

Which is why nobody is using quotas! It's not a legal dodge, it's literally what the word means. Whenever you say that people are using quotas you are accusing them of having set a specific number or percentage for people with a certain identity. When you want to talk about the issue of identity affecting employment eligibility, then you should talk about the issues of identity affecting employment eligibility. Talking about quota's is simply a de-rail.

[karajorma]

Yeah, Joshua has gotten it.


The problem Bob, is that you want to use a system where you are completely blind to race, colour, sexual orientation when hiring. That's great. In an ideal world, that's exactly how people should be hired. But we don't live in an ideal world, we live in a world where a single person not doing that in the HR department can **** things up quite severely when it comes to being non-discriminatory.

In short you are saying "We should all ignore race / sex / sexuality and hope that things will turn out okay" but they won't turn out okay while there are a lot of people who don't ignore those things.

[Bobboau]

so you have to introduce a balancing bias in the opposite direction?

that just seems like you had one problem and now you have two. you will never ever reach a non-descriminatory envirnment this way.

[karajorma]

And you're going to reach one by burying your head in the sand and hoping the racists stop being racist?