[Udo]

Traditionally, dominant groups have often invoked (fake) claims of a naturally fixed order to protect, justify and market the status quo. For example, this line of reasoning has historically been used to assert that black people are a subhuman race incapable of higher intellectual thought and that women shouldn't be allowed to vote on the grounds that they are immature and hysterical by nature.

Another reason why I believe most of the omnipresent assumptions about a natural order are essentially bullshit is that I know quite a few men and women who violate these supposedly biological gender roles. They are not sick, they are not mutants, they are not troubled individuals with identity problems and they're not trying to be rebels. It's just that they don't care about their socially prescribed attributes.

Lastly, there have been quite a lot of experiments in psychology to successfully illustrate that expectations actually shape your capabilities. Not just the conscious idea of identity itself but indeed capabilities that were always thought to be innate are now found to be subject to variations stemming from motivation and expectation.

Recently I read about a study where participants were asked to do cognitive tasks that traditionally have a strong gender bias, for example spatial orientation. The results were as expected. However, the researchers then did a second run with a second group, explaining beforehand which tasks usually favor women and which tasks were better performed by men. The catch was: the experimenters lied, they actually switched the descriptions around. When this second group then took the tests, they performed according to the (now inverted) "expectations".

So I do have a few pointers that helped me arrive at this "dogmatic" position. So what's your position? What's the actual background of your suggested possibility?

[philwelch]

For one, there are observed gender disparities in certain things (you mentioned spacial reasoning) which there is no apparent or plausible political agenda in artificially creating. In fact, the predominant political agenda is largely the idea that there are no differences between men and women. For another, disparities are often observed in infants. What mechanism do you propose communicates subtle social norms to infants? You also have proposed no plausible explanation as to where these expectations came from in the first place.

Further, you are misunderstanding the idea I'm proposing. I'm sure there are individual men who have, for instance, very poor spacial reasoning and individual women who have very good spacial reasoning. One does not reason about individuals the same way they reason about populations. As a population, men, on average, might be better at spacial reasoning. As an individual man or woman, a test of spacial reasoning will yield orders of magnitude more data about their spacial reasoning abilities than simply observing their sex. I have many personality traits that are more common in the opposite sex--I'm sure most people do. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of averages that leads one to take this as evidence for your viewpoint, however.

Ultimately, measures of a population only explain populations. They may explain why, as a population, most programmers are men. They do not explain why your sister is or isn't a programmer.

[Udo]

I understand your belief, I just don't share it. But coming back to the issue that started this discussion: is it your contention that there are very few female developers because of biological reasons? If so (all pop evolutionary psychology and sociopolitical agendas aside) that's a depressing thought, because that would mean there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it. Without even trying, we already give up. It actually makes me uncomfortable that women are so extremely underrepresented in a field that I care about.

[philwelch]

But coming back to the issue that started this discussion: is it your contention that there are very few female developers because of biological reasons?

Again, I'm not making a contention, just suggesting a possibility.

Furthermore, I admit that some factors are social--for instance, if software development weren't a low-status profession in the US, there would probably be more women developers. I'm just not convinced that it all comes down to social factors.

If so (all pop evolutionary psychology and sociopolitical agendas aside) that's a depressing thought, because that would mean there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

It's not a depressing thought unless you have a sociopolitical agenda of having every single profession evenly split between men and women.

[Udo]

> It's not a depressing thought unless you have a sociopolitical agenda of having every single profession evenly split between men and women.

I like to think that I don't. I am however uncomfortable with the makeup of this specific field because I believe it is missing out on a huge potential source of creative and intellectual influence. In other sciences, this is not even a problem: there is no shortage of women hacking DNA, for example. So this makes me vaguely optimistic that CS could in theory be enriched by better recruitment.

Decades ago, there were no women surgeons because it was perceived as not being "in their nature". Look at hospital staff today, the situation is changing profoundly. I hope some day we can do the same for software development.

[rakden]

I agree on the point that on average there may be some differences between genders when it comes to mental capabilities. That said the range that it varies from may be quite large for both genders and there is plenty of overlap to it might be quite small and their is little overlap. Even when phrasing this as a question when it comes to populations there is lots of wiggle-room depending on how the data plays out.

[philwelch]

Oh, yeah. Even differences in standard deviation, for instance, might be more important than differences in average. And it's not just a matter of mental capabilities, but also in interests and desires.

[orangecat]

I know quite a few men and women who violate these supposedly biological gender roles.

So do I, and that's irrelevant. There are lots of women who can bench press more than I can; that doesn't change the fact that men are on average physically stronger.

What's the actual background of your suggested possibility?

Biology. Specifically:

1. Hormones like estrogen and testosterone have known effects on psychology. In your gender neutral utopia, do you really expect women to commit 50% of assaults and murders?

2. Genes for red-green color reception are on the X chromosome. Women have two chances for a good copy and men only have one, which is why men are much more likely to be color blind. Is there any reason to expect that no genes that affect personality or mental capabilities work in a similar way?

3. Different selection pressures due to the mechanics of reproduction. Males can potentially have many more offspring than women, and each child costs them much less in time and resources. In terms of propagating their genes, males get a bigger payoff for taking gambles than women, so it would make sense that evolution would select for risk-taking males and risk-averse females. (And also explains why women are more selective when choosing mates). More detail in "Is There Anything Good About Men", http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm.

Of course, none of this is to say that society doesn't have large effects, or that anyone should be discouraged from any field because of their gender. It just means that if less than half of preschool teachers are men and less than half of Linux kernel developers are women, it might not be because we're a bunch of sexist Neanderthals.