[ergothus]

Focusing on the idea that women are biologically "less interested" (but don't worry, we aren't talking about the good ones you may know, they are just statistical outliers) and trying to twist up scientific "proof" for that does not lead me to trust him or his motives.

Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confidence. Choosing to ignore the quantities of good science on the topic in favor of what he did does not inspire confidence.

Then he chooses to widely declare this and demean large swathes of his coworkers. I'm all for open communication, but that doesnt absolve you of social consequences. When you make a big chunk of your company uncomfortable with you and how you view them....yeah, consequences, yeah, fired.

The only reason this is a surprise is because it happened to some like him and not the groups he was pretending to defend. I assure you most of them would be outraged and frustrated but nearly as surprised had the interaction gone the other way. All you have to do is watch and listen to know that.

[manigandham]

Men and women (biologically and socially) have different interests. This is different than capabilities. Countries with the most free choices see the most division between sexes in different professions.

Nobody seems to have a problem when it comes to auto mechanics, medical sciences, teachers, social services, lawyers, etc. Why are different interests such a controversial thing to accept?

[ergothus]

1) I'd argue that you arent paying much attention to those other industries. I certainly see issue commonly raised in a few you mention that are in my circles. Things that still make me double-take.

2) tech is just the latest in a series. Comp sci degree enrollment for women DROPPED for recent decades - that's not a biological lack of interest. This has occurred in many professions - when the profession becomes high profile, the women are driven out.

3) you are proving the problem in the original memo. Instead of looking into any of the research on the topic, you are repeating what feels true. You speak with such confidence on the different interests of different genders, without considering how you know what the actual interests might be. (You're assuming what you see must be the result of interests, and use that to prove a difference of interests is the cause. That's a tautology) You assert that "no one seems to have a problem" with imbalances in other professions, when it is trivial to find people definitely have problems.

[manigandham]

What other professions? What series? Computer science degrees and jobs are seeing a rise in women, but they're already the majority in biological sciences and other disciplines. Would you claim men are conditioned to not going into those fields?

The research on the topic covers what I state about different countries and societies showing how different interests affect professions. Here are some links:

https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-mens-and-womens-...

https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

https://www.nber.org/papers/w22173

[orwin]

Nah, in the late 50s and until the 90s, there was around 25% on women in computer science in the US, and close to 50% in some countries like France an UK (i think a book was written on why in 2017).

I've talked to Pr. Emeritus Mallard a lot three year ago, who was a biology researcher studying genotype and phenotype in animal/vegetal populations (for context, he got his degree around the time we discovered ADN). From what he remember, there was a lot more than 50% women when he started, at least as "programmers", although they were barely viewed as clever seamstress at the time.

Each time he wanted to do a computer-assisted statistical study in the early days, the programmer was a woman (again, from what he remembers) and he always thought the field was dominated by them, at least for grunts work.

[erik_seaberg]

There was a time when it was "systems analysts" who gathered requirements and made decisions and wrote flowcharts, and "programmer" was a glorified data entry position translating a flowchart into assembly/FORTRAN/COBOL on punch cards that the system could run. As computers became more powerful, "programmer/analysts" began writing their own source code in "higher-level" compiled languages (this meant reentrant functions and loops and "if" blocks rather than globals and computed "goto") as the full-time "programmer" job became obsolete with automation.

[Taniwha]

That's a red herring, and also the 60s - I started my career in the late 70s, 1/3 of my CS class was female, my first job in the US (as a kernel hack) was almost 50% female, still some of the best engineers I've ever worked with, all doing the same job I was.

I don't know what happened, by the time my daughter was doing CS the number of woman was < 10% and she and her compatriots were literally hounded out of the course by the bro-culture - personally I blame gamer culture, there's something terribly dysfunctional with kids these days

[icebraining]

So women have a biological interest in the technical part of transforming flowcharts into code, but not in the social parts of software development, like gathering requirements?

[jhedwards]

> Countries with the most free choices see the most division between sexes in different professions

I've seen this idea around and I think it's quite problematic. Some countries may have relatively "free choices", but that is just one cultural dimension. A culture is an inconceivably complex phenomenon. A culture also has education strategies, gender roles, specific kinds of toys and games, specific languages and sub-languages, a myriad of sub-cultures that youth will cluster around, cultural specific concepts and ideas and so on.

I'm not ruling out that biological factors play a role, but I see biological factors as just one part of a complex, and, additionally, if you look at history, it's very clear that cultural factors can and will override just about any biological imperative, from the will to live to the will to procreate. This should make it clear that cultural factors need to be systematically ruled out before we can begin to consider that biology is to blame.

[fastball]

Have cultural factors not been ruled out?

Affirmative action policies literally make it easier for one group to get a spot in [insert institution here] than another group. And yet we still see discrepancies. We publicly shame and fire anyone who says "maybe biological differences play a role". And yet we still see discrepancies.

If we haven't ruled out cultural factors in the West at this point, I'm not sure how we can.

By effectively every metric, it is easier for a woman to become an engineer in 2020 than a man. There are many, many programs and initiatives which encourage women to get into STEM from an early age – the same do not really exist for men. Women get into (and graduate from) university at a higher rate. There is more funding available specifically to women that are pursuing STEM And yet still you have more men choosing to be engineers than women.

[jhedwards]

> Have cultural factors not been ruled out?

How could they be? That is an intractable problem. Cultural factors permeate our existence from birth. You'd literally have to catalogue every single thing influencing an individual's life from birth to the time they enter the workforce.

I have two daughters and I've seen just how powerful subconscious messages from media influence the way they think. My oldest daughter is only four and she is absolutely adamant that girls can _only_ marry boys. That's clearly because the Netflix shows and Disney movies she watches all have a "girl marries boy" narrative. Think about that: my daughter is only four, I've never talked to her about marriage, and she is already firm in her belief that same sex marriage is not OK.

You are talking about funding and affirmative action, but have you considered gendered advertising towards toddlers? Have you considered gendered concepts in TV shows and movies? How about in toys? Do you know how elementary school teachers, not to mention parents, are subtly encouraging and discouraging boys and girls by their words and actions? Children absorb these things and they are solidified into semi-permanent activation pathways in their developing brains.

There are a million factors here that we will never grasp. Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.

[fastball]

Your four-year-old daughter assuming that the norm is the only way to do something is her jumping to conclusions, not a mark against society. It is ok for children to jump to conclusions. Girls do generally marry boys, as >90% of sexuality is heterosexuality. Children are wrong all the time. This is only a problem if you don't correct her misconceptions. Your child growing up the way you think is right and proper is 100% your responsibility – not Netflix and Disney's. Likewise, if she grows up thinking that girls shouldn't be programmers, that is on you.

> Affirmative action is useless if people's minds are already fully constructed by the time those programs take effect.

This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point. Affirmative action / quotas are a bandaid that does not solve the problem and can actually make it worse by encouraging resentment (from non-affirmed groups) and increasing self-doubt (among affirmed groups). The solution is to treat individuals as individuals and not look at their race, sex, religion, etc. The only way to move forward as a society in the long-term is to truly look past any groups a person belongs to and see them as an individual. Continuing to lump people into groups and make decisions based of those groups has the opposite effect and will only hurt us in the long run.

[jhedwards]

I just want to point out that I don't think we disagree on these points, but you're misinterpreting my argument.

> Your four-year-old daughter assuming that the norm is the only way to do something is her jumping to conclusions, not a mark against society

I didn't say it was a mark against society, you read that into my argument. If I thought this was wrong or bad, I wouldn't show her that kind of media. I am simply pointing out how _everything_ in a child's environment will influence their thinking, I made no moral judgement on the situation.

> Likewise, if she grows up thinking that girls shouldn't be programmers, that is on you.

I agree, but I think most adults aren't thinking "I'd better make sure my daughter knows she can be a programmer." If they aren't, then their children will be subject to myriad influences. That flows into my last point.

> This is exactly my (and, funnily enough, Damore's) point.

I read Damore's paper and that is not the part I take issue with. He claims the scientific evidence has established that women are _biologically_ less interested in engineering. I don't believe that has been established.

The parent comment referenced a study by Jordan Peterson that shows that in countries with more freedom of choice, women continue to choose people oriented occupations. My point is that freedom of choice _doesn't matter_ unless the entire society is focused on treating children equally. Again, I'm not making a moral judgement either way, just pointing out that the study doesn't take this into account. IIRC Jordan Peterson himself remarked that the results could be the effect of gender roles or culture.

[ralfd]

> Being blind to the widespread dismissive, discriminatory, and derogatory behavior that routinely drives women from the industry does not inspire confidence.

I'm sceptic to this claim because discriminatory and derogatory behavior in medicine or law are much more widespread. And female students flock to these professions.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

If true, this is extraordinarily significant.

It could mean that woman who are driven away from software engineering by discriminatory and derogatory behaviour are somehow exhibiting differences to their law / medicine counterparts.

Is there any research in to this question?

[ralfd]

I don't know about any comparative studies, but sexism in medicine (even patients are calling female doctors honey or sweetie) is an ancient problem.

https://www.girlsglobe.org/2019/03/12/time-confront-sexism-m...

I can't imagine sexism or work environment (looong hours and exhausting shifts) are substantially worse in engineering.

What is different is, in my opinion, that medicine/law is perceived as higher status than nerd stuff. There are popular tv series idolizing the glamorous life of New York lawyers and the heroism of doctors/nurses. When are techies depicted favorably and not as social autists? The goth chic in Navy:CIS maybe, but not much else.

[humanrebar]

I'm not sure shopping exclusively at Hot Topic in your forties is idolizing tech in any way. If they wanted the character to be cool and edgy, they should have updated her look at least occasionally.

[dijit]

> Focusing on the idea that women are biologically "less interested"

This is the absolute crux of the entire paper, and it's very easy to view it with whatever politicising lens you want.

So lets try to flippantly and dispassionately break down how he constructed the statement

1) Women in absolute aggregate seem to not like CompSci.

2) We want more women in CompSci.

3) We should make CompSci more attractive to women.

4) What do Women in aggregate seem to like?

5) Is there room in CompSci fields for things that women like?

6) Yes, lots, it would be absolutely amazing if we could promote the things women in aggregate prefer to do in the field compsci. Those tropes of introverted men sitting in the basement should be subverted.

7) The current method of attracting women is harmful, we should instead change our desired behaviour of engineering to incorporate feminine ideals which could easily be incorporated.

[ergothus]

> 1) Women in absolute aggregate seem to not like CompSci.

Based on what? They don't end up there, but we have evidence (based on decreasing enrollment in degrees) that they USED to be "more interested" (If you use that as criteria). Do you think they generationally are just more aware of what it really is now?

How would that happen without ALSO becoming more aware of the absolute vile GamerGate-type shit women have to face, from the smallest "let me assume you don't know anything" to the "let's make rape jokes" to the "Can a woman have confidence she probably won't be groped"?

If you start with the premise that women "seem to not like CompSci", you've already assumed the problem and normalized a lot of factors that don't have to be normalized.

[dijit]

I believe you already have a stance here and you're rather embroiled in the beliefs you already have. So I'm not going to comment to you- but to anyone who reads your comment.

Sorry for that.

> Based on what? They don't end up there, [...]

Well, yes, you can argue the factors here but there is a trend that something is off-putting. Either Gamer-gate (something which is absolutely mired in controversy of its own right) or 'rape jokes' but more likely the tropes of: long working hours with a dead end at the end of it, competitiveness, isolation and the notion that if you're in technology your job is your life.

Frankly to assume you and I know the true reason is rather arrogant, I'm not a sociologist I can only read the corpus of their work and believe that they came to the correct conclusions.

Your comment indicates that there is an aggressive amount of sexism in tech, rape jokes and groping not withstanding, and I'm not going to ask for evidence of that despite my conviction that this is not nearly as endemic as you indicate; instead I'd ask the question: If marketing is also inherently sexist (and definitely more "boys club groping the ladies" than tech) why is there a much stronger representation of Women there?

I think you have internalised a mistruth about the tech industry at large.

[searchableguy]

> We want more [singleton] in [x].

> We should make [x] more attractive to [singleton].

Why?

Unless the field is more toxic to [singleton] or there is more productivity due to "diversity" at which point you are admitting that people are different on biological (or social) level and have different interests, views etc.

[dijit]

Diversity is a desirable trait, especially in things that produce products that are designed to be used by the entire planet.

My mother explained diversity to me this way:

"We are each of us, unique but equal. Meaning that while you will grow up and be stronger than me, I will be able to produce children. This doesn't make either of us better, both should be respected as equal. There is value but difference in both." (not verbatim)

If we assume that on average women are more prone to overthinking, then it likely follows that having a women the team designing a product with a man (who, on average are more likely to be dismissive and flippant) then there's a necessary conflict, and the product will be better for everyone if it happens.

We should not be judging a fish by it's ability to climb a tree, we should instead be asking, how do we define the value of swimming and how do we ensure we have great swimmers working with us.

[DreamScatter]

Toilets are needed by all people on the entire planet, so by your logic we should have more diverse emoloyees in toilet manufacturing, since toilets are used by so many people. Wouldn't we also be better off if more women were working in the garbage industry? We need women's diversity in the garbage collecting industry because their diversity will help improve garbage collection for the entire planet.

Does it really make a difference if the same feature is implemented by a man versus a woman?

[searchableguy]

> This doesn't make either of us better, both should be respected as equal.

I think we are agreeing.

That's why I highlighted more attractive to [singleton] when you could be more inclusive by avoiding singletons.

Why shouldn't a field be attractive to everyone - blind, deaf, disabled etc equally?

Imo, focusing on singletons is detrimental because by doing so, you will end up discriminating automatically because there will always be other groups that you won't or don't see.

[dijit]

I think we’re weaker for not including someone because of those traits either.

Why focus on women now?

Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.

I don’t really have a good answer, I thought Damores memo was pretty good and I thought it might provoke the powers that be to approach the distribution of underrepresented factions a little better.

For instance, if you want to hire blind people (and you should want to hire a few blind people) then offering accessibly tools to them is a no-brainer.

And if you’re not getting any applicants, maybe you should look at why. Maybe your job board can’t be read by blind people. (To keep the analogy going).

[searchableguy]

> Because there’s a lot of women in the world and they seem to not like this field.

Source. I have seen few and they do show women working in the field not liking it. The problem with that is it could be those women are outliers given the gender ratio in some CS fields (I will ignore non biological genders), the field could be attractive but don't have good working conditions for women, women don't have much interest etc.

All of those can be true and change your steps to make the field more attractive.

As an example, you can look into construction field which is heavily dominated by men and women in the field feels the same but outside, it's a different story in terms of interest.

How do you make construction work more attractive for women?

I am curious to hear your opinion about below too. What are the problems do you see with this approach? -

You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality.

If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?

[XorNot]

Whataboutism is a time-honored tradition to dismiss the concerns of a marginalized group while intending to do absolutely nothing about any other.

[darkerside]

Is it sexist to say men are on average stronger than women?

[searchableguy]

I would like to see source for your statements. I don't know much about Damore. I did glance through the manifesto and found it alright back then but I still don't understand why anyone needed to bring politics into question or write a manifesto.

You vote with your job. If you don't like things, quit. Either the people working at the company are discriminatory and don't care or you are the problematic one. If you think you are right that a big company discriminates openly, then wouldn't you have to admit that most people at your company don't care about discrimination as much as their paycheck or they are discriminatory themselves. If a company can easily replace employees, then the society doesn't value equality. We should fix that foremost.

If we had UBI, wouldn't discrimination of any kind be detrimental given that workers wouldn't be forced to work for low wages and companies which discriminate based on pseudoscience be at a disadvantage because they won't get talent that other companies can. Is there any reason why this wouldn't work? Why are people not pursuing UBI for gender equality?

As for an opposing view point, check this - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more... which says fewer women take stem in developed countries than under developed countries. There will always be more differences. We shouldn't do a shut down case for either. It's not yet clear what percentage are affected by it. If it is, mention the source.

[coldtea]

>Focusing on the idea that women are biologically "less interested" (but don't worry, we aren't talking about the good ones you may know, they are just statistical outliers) and trying to twist up scientific "proof" for that does not lead me to trust him or his motives.

"Biological sex plays no role in life choices / job preferences" (which is different than: "we should not prevent people from going into X choice/profession because of their biological sex". A priori considering the former as "truth" / "obvious" etc is also a political idea.

[reroute1]

Great don't trust him don't like him don't feel comfortable... That doesn't change the fact he posted biological truths did NOT say women can't be good engineers which is what you exactly try to project on him over and over and makes you look silly and wrong. It was in response to him not getting traction via internal channels and only after he talks about his legit concerns in this memo does it finally blow up... Not surprising Google has very loud outspoken minority groups

What about all the people that were made uncomfortable by his firing? Can we fire those responsible for that? This got so silly so fast