I'm not maled so I google 'male advocacy' and picked what came up first. Want some equivalent sources on women? I can pick a few hundred off the top of my head. As a feminist I completely support such groups for men also in careers where women are over-representing.
I don't want to speak for the paulwithap, but it seems we're talking about the disproportionate amount of effort to get men into in careers where women are over-representing compared to the other way around. And also the disproportionate amount of criticism we give to members in that field when they don't. I'm all for anyone doing what ever job they feel like doing as long as they have the skills to do it. I don't even care if they only do it for the money as long as they do it well and don't mess it up for the rest of us.
My uncle lost his job recently as a factory worker and is retraining at the age of 50 to be an nurse aide. He wishes he'd trained as nurse but 30 years ago it was near impossible. Not every man wants to be a brain surgeon.
And teachers? That has to be the MOST important group where we should absolutely have equal representation.
> And teachers? That has to be the MOST important group where we should absolutely have equal representation.
I would mostly agree with that. A lot of people probably would. But we don't see a huge number of "guys who teach" or "black guys teach" type programs popping up all over. We don't see article after article full of disdain for the "girls club" that is teaching. It is not just a gender thing. We don't see many "girls who drive trucks" programs either. I think it is some what of a phenomenon having such a large push to specifically get women into coding specifically. It just seems quite disproportionate. I'd like to see more push from other "one gender dominated" fields. [EDIT] Maybe there is and I just don't see it since I'm not in one of those other fields.
Sounds like your uncle is finally realizing a desire he's had for many years. Best of luck to him.
And teachers? That has to be the MOST important group where we should absolutely have equal representation.
As a "traditionally female" occupation, K-12 teaching is woefully underpaid relative to, say, police or firemen. In the SF Bay Area, teaching is just not a middle-class profession at all.
Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution, which results in a proportionate representation within reasonable error margins. Not having this suggests that there's another factor besides individual agency factoring into decisions. It could be something acceptable, like men can't biologically give birth (yet), or it could be something unacceptable, like blacks being targeted by police solely on suspicion of race.
This is one of the ways in which you recognize that something weird is going on with American politics. While it's a good thing to have lawyers in Congress, it's kinda weird that they're overwhelmingly lawyers.
I do not agree with the first statement - it supposes that men and women will, given an option and without external pressures, always choose the same thing in equal amounts. I don't think that is a settled question. But it is worth looking into, as are any external pressures that may be keeping women out of 'Tech'. Does a representative field such as you suggest exist? Genuine question. I'm thinking retail/service?
In regards to Congress, it kind of makes sense to me they would be overwhelmingly from a law background - after all, the ones who know law best and are interested in law are most likely to want to have the ability to change it.
>Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution //
Would you like a) a beer, b) a hot chocolate ...
Hmm, I'm sure it'll be a random distribution with equal weighting of men and women.
Is it really that weird that lawyers predominant in a legislative field? It seems like it would be the least weird tendency - like if street cleaners, dental hygenists or pop-stars were predominant that would be weird.
>Individual agency en masse should be a random distribution
What are you basing that assumption on? You are 100% certain that there is no possible way that men and women could have different preferences, priorities or interests?
You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.
His post directly contradicts that statement, period. The supposed reputability of those sites are irrelevant, especially considering the basis for your own statement is the HN tech bubble.
Much of it is in response to publicized examples of sexist behavior in technical circles and personal anecdotes. That sort of behavior is not acceptable, and people are right to rally in favor of a workplace (and career field) that isn't biased in favor of one gender or another.
I can get behind that cause.
The remainder of it though, in my opinion, is a bouillabaisse of "it's never enough-ism" from a small group of hardcore feminists, hand-wringing from me-tooers, approval-seekers and undecideds, and some genuinely decent people who have nevertheless been hurt by specific cases of sexism and disproportionately react.
It is cyclical. It is a well-intentioned cause, but many times it is myopic.
Anecdotal evidence: I started off in nursing school with an intent to get a master's before ultimately finishing with CS. The nursing school I went to was well respected and made great efforts to make male students feel 'normal' in the female dominated area. They didn't aggressively recruit males at that point, but we were seen as valuable and worth including.
I'd like to think that females could have a similar experience in CS degrees at some point.
I absolutely agree with you. Obviously, no one should ever feel like they aren't welcome in a field because of their gender. I just don't see the point of making giant, obsessive efforts to push a group of people into a field and then patting ourselves on the back when our plan works, and we don't feel so guilty anymore.
The problem is that when nursing does things to make males feel welcome, female constituents pretty much all go "okay, cool". When software engineering does things to make females feel welcome, half the male constituents bleat endlessly about how unfair it is. Much of the noise made is this declaration of victimhood, and it's generally this noise that makes molehill efforts into 'giant obsessive' mountain issues.
I don't see it as specifically about "getting women coding", rather "addressing the gender bias".
Given that approximately 50% of the population (and ~60% of the "educated" population) are women, it's abnormal for a sector to be so heavily male. This indicates that women are being discouraged, in some way, from entering the sector. Women who might otherwise have contributed a great deal to our industry.
Think of it more about (nearly) doubling the potential number of excellent software engineers than about "encouraging women to code".
So, you're saying that aside from genitalia, men and women are exactly the same and, in a vacuum, the distribution of genders in any given profession should be perfectly equal? You really believe that?
"So, you're saying that aside from skin colour, black and white people are exactly the same and, in a vacuum, the distribution of race in any given profession should be perfectly equal? You really believe that?"
^ It wasn't long ago that that type of claim was used often. Sexist views always have some sort of justification like "men and women ARE different!" or "men have a natural ability to think logically and are therefore more suited to programming". You forget that women basically made up most of the early programmers (see Ada Lovelace etc). I would recommend reading the book "Delusions of Gender" to get an overview over the "science" behind claiming that men and women are inherently different and to learn how all of those studies have proven flawed/heavily biased towards a premeditated conclusion.
So, you're saying that aside from the numerical value, a set of people with an average testosterone level of ~500ng/dL are exactly the same as a set of people with an average testosterone level of ~20?
To deny that hormones exert a tremendous influence over our behaviors and motivations is absurd.
The contention in this particular discussion is that women are somehow not natural programmers. There is no evidence that testosterone levels will affect someone to the extent that they have a natural tendency to logic or programming. Hormones DO have an effect, but it's socialisation that is pressuring men and women to adopt their roles.
>There is no evidence that testosterone levels will affect someone to the extent that they have a natural tendency to logic or programming.
Possibly so, but there's plenty of evidence that testosterone levels affect someone's willingness to work long, tedious hours in isolation in exchange for a higher salary, and give up their personal time for career advancement.
You're right. Apples and oranges are basically the same thing. That book holds about the same scientific weight as 50 Shades of Grey. If you don't think there are inherent psychological differences between men and women, then you're just delusional.
Where's your evidence for inherent psychological differences? There are differences in adult men and women due to their SOCIALISATION which is not an inherent property. Raise a generation of women to believe that they're useless at male-dominated jobs then they'll start to think they are!
> I would recommend reading the book "Delusions of Gender"
> to learn how all of those studies have proven flawed/heavily biased
Notice the extreme impression you've gotten from this book. She does not "prove" flaws in all research on this topic, though often her criticisms are valid she chooses areas to criticize and hints that it's representative of all research that show gender differences.
She could have also chosen to criticize studies which attempt to disprove gender differences, which are often just as flawed.
Sure but that isn't her argument. The number of studies that attempt to demonstrate some fundamental difference between the sexes vastly outnumber claims of similarity, and those disproportionate claims need to be addressed. The book goes through the studies that are touted as the most demonstrable difference in the sexes (tests on empathy) and shows how they're flawed and once you control for that flaw there is no demonstrable difference between the sexes.
> The book goes through the studies that are touted as the most demonstrable difference in the sexes (tests on empathy)
Touted as such by whom? It sounds like just Baron-Cohen et al. Your comment gave the impression that "all" studies of gender differences have been refuted.
The most well-known, replicated, large effect study that I'm aware of I searched for and didn't find any reference to in her book. http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf
You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.
You absolutely do. K-8 teaching and psychotherapy come to mind. Anecdotally, the ratios are the inverse of what we see in tech. Men are in huge demand.
Because your stereotypical computer geek doesn't have the social skills to meet women who aren't also computer geeks?
Because computer geeks don't push back hard enough against overtime requests (a social skills issue again), and so have a hard time meeting anyone they don't work with?
Because unlike many jobs, much of computer programming also makes for good hobbies, so we spend a greater fraction of our time associating with like-minded people (and would like for said group to include women)?
You don't see anything like this in female-dominated professions.
But only because we're too insular to notice (again, a social skills issue).
Did you research this, or are you relying on casual observation? There's going to be heavy selection bias here if you're in the software industry but not involved in traditionally female-dominated professions.
Anyway, if the shoe were on the other foot, as a male feminist I would be in favor of getting more men coding.
Nursing: http://www.minoritynurse.com/tags/men-nursing
Teaching: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/23/advocates-say...
".. who bring a different perspective to the job, may connect better with some children and can provide positive male figures in their lives."
Same goes for women in technology or any other misrepresented field.