[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?

[dijit]

> Source.

Well, what I mean is that we're not even close to a gender parity, it would be fine at 35-40% female in my opinion but the industry is closer to 14-25% (depending on country) and to me that indicates a problem.

I think quota's and the extreme bias towards education programs that favour women is problematic though, in my opinion it infantilises Women which I dislike because I really believe women are just as capable as men in this field.

That's why I liked Damores memo, it spoke to the idea that instead of having quotas we should seek to bring in a more human centred approach to asking the question: what do women bring uniquely to the table and how can we ensure that women know that this is desirable and that they're welcome.

Killing the trope that Tech work is isolationist was one example from the memo that would likely cause some traction.

> 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 think drawing a parallel to construction is a fine one, but I would argue instead for Architecture.

Construction doesn't need a diverse set of views, neither does nursing or mining. But Architecture does because the consumers of architecture is everyone.

And I think that's the crucial difference here: things that are designed for everyone should have a diverse set of eyes on them.

[XorNot]

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