[wsy]

I'm working in tech as a man, and spend more than half of my work time in talking to people. Actually, the higher you go up in your career, the more you will spend time interacting with people, and the less with things. So should we aim to keep male coders, and foster female tech managers, because that fits the biological tendencies?

I definitely would like to see more male kindergarten teachers, because the fact that there are no role models for boys in kindergarten and primary school also has detrimental effects on boys and girls.

Finally, let's first agree that society still has a big impact. Then, we can discuss if it's worthwhile to do something about it or not.

[Grustaf]

I don’t think we should “aim” to do anythinf, that’s the whole point. We should just trust grown up educated people to make their own choices. Even women!

[wsy]

Ok, then let me ask differently: if upper management in all companies were mostly women, and they would justify this fact with the argument that they are naturally better with people, would it be ok for you if these women would prefer other women for open manager positions?

Nobody argues against letting people make their own choices. This whole discussion is about equal opportunities. And it starts in kindergarten, not with grown-ups

[Grustaf]

I’m not saying hiring managers should favour men for developer jobs. I’m saying many more men are into computers, so it’s natural that people hire more male developers.

You are aware that men are much more likely to be autistic, right? Don’t you feel that it’s at least conceivable that men are also more likely to be interested in spending their day writing instructions to computers?

[wsy]

Yes, I think it is conceivable. But at the same time, I have a hard time explaining a 10%/90% distribution just with biological differences. It seems to me that the biological differences are too small to explain such a huge skew. In particular, because the gender distribution for programmers was very different in the 1940s/1950s. At the same time, the cultural biases seem so obvious to me, that I think acknowledging them too would be a better basis for further discussion.

[Grustaf]

Why do you find such a skew unbelievable? For example, close to 95% of colorblind people are men. 80%+ of people with autism and like 99.9% of bald people.

But it’s not all bad, men have 20 times more testosterone, which makes them stronger and faster. So clearly there are lots of biological differences with a 90/10 distribution.

[wsy]

We are talking about software developers. In the 1950s, most programmers were female. It doesn't seem to be a profession where male biological characteristics are essential to be successful. All the examples you mentioned are non-essential for being a good software developer.

[znfi]

Not the person you were talking to, but to me this just feels like a MASSIVE straw man. If you can show that some company prefers men and actually discriminates against women, I think most people would agree with taking action against this. Unfortunately, you are very far from being able to show such a thing AFAICS. Instead it seems you are working backwards and inferring that there must be some discrimination because the outcomes are so skewed.

For large parts of my life I've seen massive and explicit discrimination against men. In junior high/high school various programs intended to increase interest in tech enforced a quota on 50% girls. Of course, this quota was never written down in public anywhere, I just accidentally overheard the organizers talking about this. Then at university I had male friends who wanted to help out on a similar program, and apparently their applications were "lost". Then the next year the organizers added text in small print somewhere that they were going to enforce a quota on the genders. Similarly, I've heard professors comment on hiring decisions with saying that if they don't hire a woman, then they've basically failed.

Again, at work I very often hear similar things when people talk about hiring in both private and even more in public sector, "Wouldn't it be very nice if we hired a woman", "You know it will look very good if had a few more women on the team", bla bla bla.

I can't say I've ever heard anything remotely similar to this which is negative to women. Maybe I'm wrong or biased here, idk. Maybe this discrimination occurs in different places/positions in the organizations to where I am at. I'm trying to keep an open mind about this, but nothing really comes to mind.

I think there are two things which concerns me. Firstly, there is the difference between how explicit and clear the discrimination against men are when you are "backstage". From this side it is completely clear and there is no real attempt to hide it. But from the side of the person applying for the job/position/program, it really isn't very visible at all in most cases. If you are lucky there is some fine print somewhere. From my experience, like I write above, the discrimination against men/whatever is extremely frequent and pervasive in today's society, but of course, I just have my own observations and maybe it's different in other companies, etc.

Secondly, I feel the proponents of discrimination against men never point to anything remotely specific. It's always just "oh, there isn't enough women in tech", there is some "glass ceiling" stopping women, there are "hidden structures acting against women", etc. And at some point this starts to get ridiculous, like I've pointed out above, for more or less my whole life I've seen massive and completely open discrimination against men, and now I'm supposed to believe in some "invisible structure" which is acting against women all over the place?

Let me just finish by saying that I don't really claim to know why the world works the way it does, or why things are the way they are. And I don't think one should pay too much attention to all of these biology based explanations for why there are fewer women than men in tech. To me they are more just like "this could be one possible explanation for the phenomena as well". The main take away from them should, in my opinion at least, be that we don't understand this area very well. Unfortunately, I think people who propose biology based explanations often pushes these theories like we know they are true and that this is the explanation. I have not looked at the studies they refer to in any detail, but I have a hard time believing this is the case.

[wsy]

It seems that we mainly disagree about what constitutes discrimination. In my opinion, it is about opportunities. When 90% of the developer jobs are performed by men, it is really hard for me to see how men as a group can be disadvantaged.

It might be that the 91st man will not get a job because it is given to the 10th woman. But as 90 out of 100 jobs are given to men, it seems obvious to me that the group of men has all the opportunities they can wish for.

Note that every explicit action taken to even out a disadvantage will hit individuals in the group which is not disadvantaged. For example, if a prestigious university hands out scholarships to poor students, fewer students from rich families will be accepted as a result. This is not disadvantaging the rich applicants, it is reducing their advantage a little.

[znfi]

So, OK, taking a step back and thinking about this. So my impression from the public debate and so on in the western world is that discrimination is seen as unacceptable and really not at all OK. From the impression I get it is probably something like a less severe human rights violation or something like that. Of course, not comparable to truly horrible things, but still it has no real place in any civilized society. So this the background I'm coming from, I'm not sure if I've misunderstood something, I'm not sure.

So based on this, society then wants to discriminate men as an extraordinary measure, because women has been discriminated in the past and there is a feeling this needs to be done in order to give women a fair chance etc etc etc. And so far I'm following the story and it seems at least understandable.

But now I'm starting to see a situation where it is very unclear to me what "advantage" men have over women. In particular, one thing I tried to raise with my previous post, even if I did not spell this out explicitly, was the question of proportionality. And again, maybe I'm missing something, but to me the discrimination against men seem very much out of proportion to any problems a modern day girl/woman have. (To be clear, say someone in their early/mid 20s.) In particular, given the amount of discrimination we are talking about I would expect something a lot more solid and rigorous than the explanations I'm seeing (e.g. men as a group being more advantaged, whatever this means).

In particular, given the background I give in the first paragraph, I'm honestly a bit shocked to see discrimination being proposed more as some kind of policy tool used to get society to where some people want it to go. Like let's raise the taxes on the rich and discriminate men a bit more. Again, I guess I have misunderstood something, because this conclusion certainly seems absurd, at best.

tl;dr either discrimination is really not OK, but then there needs to be a very good reason why we can discriminate men. Or, discrimination is not a big deal, but then why is this even a question up for discussion?

[Grustaf]

WSY:

“It seems that we mainly disagree about what constitutes discrimination. In my opinion, it is about opportunities. When 90% of the developer jobs are performed by men, it is really hard for me to see how men as a group can be disadvantaged.”

If e.g. 95% of the qualified people are men, but only 90% of the accepted applicants (just making up numbers here) then clearly there is discrimination against men. Outcome by itself says nothing about discrimination.

[wsy]

I agree that your hypothetical is possible. However, in a field where men occupy 90% of all positions, I still find it hard to imagine that they discriminate against their own group, i.e. treat their fellow males "in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discrimi...)

[Grustaf]

I wasn’t the one claiming discrimination against men, and I don’t think it comes much from other employees. I will say that at every place I’ve worked men have been much more welcoming and helpful towards women than men, but as an okd-fashioned conservative I think that’s as it should be.

It’s undeniable that formal discrimination against men is common though, with lots of “women can code” programs and similar. Only last week PGs wife launched some initiative to pay women to go to some code camp, that jind of thing is very common. If you don’t think that is discrimination imagine it was exclusively for men or white people.