[marquis]

San Francisco in particular has really visible "bro" culture it feels to me. It's probably just a reflection of the kinds of perks the industry provides, and of the "gold rush" itself. Smaller cities have a far more inclusive experience, for sure. Watch a Bay area bus drop all its people on an evening, it's a bunch of young men pouring back into the city. Friends of mine who commute say no-one speaks to anyone, ever. I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little.

[imanaccount247]

What? Busses around here are pretty 50/50 and nobody talks to each other ever. That's not a male thing.

[alukima]

I think they are talking about tech buses, not public transit.

[jeorgun]

I don't think OP's "here" meant SF, necessarily; their point was that having more women on buses doesn't automatically translate to rich social interactions.

[alukima]

The PDX Ruby meetup had so many women, the feeling was amazing! People were far more social before and after the meetup than anything I every witness in SF, and I try to go to 2-3 meetups a week.

[aragot]

You see, this is saying "women are more social". You didn't say it, but the next step is "Women are equally good to men about programming, plus they have the advantage of being social". Which makes me wonder:

- As a man, am I just less clever?

- Where will my job go, if women are apt to take over all our management jobs since they're smarter in relationships and equally good at technical stuff?

- We all agree it's extremely bad when we hear: "Ah no, women aren't clever enough for programming", so what about the opposite?

- Personnaly I have a terrible lack of confidence when it comes to certain tasks. When women experience it, we help them overcome it. Can someone help me also, even though I'm a man?

Stereotyping women on being more social is just unfair, because while we think this way, we fail to see something positive in men.

Edit: You're allowed to downvote, yes, but it would work on excluding me. If you want to do something good to society and something inclusive, you could rather add a comment attaching positive stigma to men, because we rarely hear positive things about men, and that's probably a key cornerstone of the resistence to helping women more.

[rayiner]

Women are more social, men are more represented among both geniuses and criminals. I think even among progressives the resistance to accepting the veracity of both points is halfhearted.

[geofft]

> men are more represented among both geniuses and criminals.

Is there a reason for this that's more interesting than "Men have, historically and to some extent in the present, been more likely to have the freedom and the resources to accomplish what they set their minds on"? For instance, is there a study that investigates people's dispositions to genius-like behavior and criminal-like behavior, doing everything they can to control for social factors?

There are plenty of truths that aren't very meaningful. I'm totally willing to believe that this one is, I'd just like to see some research on it.

(In particular, if either of these are contingent on structural inequality, then we'd expect both of these to get less true if the arc of history keeps bending the same way, and long-term social designs should not expect these to be reliable.)

[harryh]

One theory is that intelligence is largely inherited by way of the X chromosome oh which men have one while women have two. So with women things are more likely to average out a bit more.

I know almost nothing about this subject and this theory could very will be bullshit. Just something I've read.

[pron]

> I think even among progressives the resistance to accepting the veracity of both points is halfhearted.

That's because when it comes to society, data can sometimes be dangerous. Data tells us how the world looks, but whereas in nature the laws are fixed (or so we hope), society is very fluid. This can confuse people. Any data about society is a snapshot of current conditions: it doesn't mean that things have never been different or won't be different, and it most certainly does not tell us that this is how things should be (the latter is the biggest difference between the natural and the social sciences -- in nature there's only "is" while in society there's "is" and "ought" and the two are rarely the same; also, we have at least some power over the structure of our society, while changing nature can be tricky).

This is why data means very different things in physics and sociology, and why -- at least by default, or until proven otherwise -- any sociological data should be understood as: this is how things currently are; should we try to change them?

[meric]

What society "ought" to be, as you say, are rarely the same, and varies over time.

At any point of time we're trying to force society to be something other than it is.

In 1700 we're assimilating natives. In 1800 we're converting slaves to Christianity. In 1900 we're banishing jews from countries. In 2000 we're enacting laws that favour some over others.

None of these attempts at societal change were ever complete.

Today we're sure changes society tried to make in 1700, 1800, 1900 were misguided and harmful.

I wouldn't be surprised if society in a hundred years will have a different again perspective to what we're doing now.

[pron]

> I wouldn't be surprised if society will have a different again perspective to what we're doing now.

I would, because the things are completely opposite. One is about subjugating the weak, and the other is about freeing them. I'm surprised you can compare the two! We're not "enacting laws that favor some over others", but laws intended to help communities or groups that have, for centuries or millennia been put down. If you think for one second that women or minorities are somehow "favored" in modern Western society, then you're either blind or delusional. They are still very much disfavored, and some laws are trying to ever-so-lightly tilt the scales a little bit in their favor, and a lot less than they deserve.

[alukima]

Men and women are socialized in different ways. You're using an awful lot of conjecture to make points I wasn't touching and never intended to. When either gender does something out of their 'roles' it's harder.

Men are socialized to 'be smart', competitive, ect. Being a social, caregiver is what women are socialized to do. I never said that either gender, men included, can't do things outside of their roles.

[ripb]

>Stereotyping women on being more social is just unfair, because while we think this way, we fail to see something positive in men.

Worse yet. We claim women are social in a positive manner, and then claim men being social are promoting a negative "bro" culture, something that isn't inclusive of women or has an explicit agenda if it is.

[tptacek]

Wrongs are wrong regardless of whether we cajole or entice the wrongdoers into stopping.

[anologwintermut]

People being more social doesn't necessarily mean it was because the women were more social. It could simply be people were more social because it was a more diverse environment ( I at least can get bored of talking to the same people all the time or even the same type of people).

[e12e]

This is exactly how I read the comment: a) there were more women (but not only women), b) the group as a whole was more social, possibly due to being more diverse -- and/or simply more inclusive.

[geofft]

You're conflating two different comparisons: comparing the aggregate experience of two groups, which we use as an efficiency mechanism to see if we can make things better for lots of people, and comparing the personal experience of one person against a group.

With various spherical-cow-in-a-vaccum-ish assumptions, if women and men are equally qualified, then, by logical implication fully half of all women are below-average, and there are millions of women who are more qualified than every single software engineer at several companies. Neither of these facts are really the point of comparing women and men as an aggregate group.

As a man, as a person on Hacker News, as a person with whatever hair color you have, how clever you are is just how clever you are. That's it. (And this is exactly why we wish to reduce subconscious discrimination: unless there's an actual statistical difference, nobody should be thinking you're more or less clever knowing just your gender, any more than knowing just your hair color.)

Your job is yours, and up to your ambition and capability. The existence of millions of qualified people who don't have your hair color -- and, frankly, millions of qualified, more social people who don't have your hair color -- isn't keeping you out of your job today.

It's bad to hear "Women aren't clever enough for programming" because years of research have failed to find rational basis for this belief. If there is rational basis for a belief (and if the belief is stated in a way that doesn't cause most people to react to it irrationally), then sure, let's say it.

I'd be thrilled to help you with lack of confidence in anything I'm qualified to help with. I'm not particularly likely to do so in a subgroup situation, since this is something you yourself say is "personally" yours, but yes. I'm also happy to support organizations that do help groups where the group is relevant, and definitely happy to support all people with confidence in group situations where there isn't any definition of the group.

[geofft]

I missed your edit in my first reply, but I just want to point out that if you are supportive of resisting equality unless you're being flattered, you are showing selfishness and rudeness of the highest order, and if you somehow think this is representative of your gender, it's certainly not inclining me to a positive stigma. I hope I am greatly misunderstanding you, or you're speaking out of anger instead of thought.

[Dewie]

> I find that really sad and can certainly say if there were at least 30% women on those buses nearly everyone would know each other a little.

Why?

[alukima]

Women are socialized to be more social.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

[Dewie]

If you say so. In my experience women aren't any more social than men in a setting full of mutual strangers, which I guess these busses full of strangers are.

[untog]

I mean, the OP isn't saying so, they're point to a ton of evidence (admittedly, a Google link isn't the best, but). Countering with "in my experience" is just an anecdote.

[Dewie]

Bullshit. When I replied to Akumi, there was no google-link; that was edited in later.

Not that I would consider a google-link evidence of anything; the only thing that it is evidence of is what is "common wisdom". Secondly, a google search is different for everyone: mine showed a lot of links about how women are bigger users of social media, which hardly helps answer any questions in this context. Thirdly, the question is not whether they are more social in general, but whether they are more social in a context of mostly mutual strangers. Even though women might be more social in general, that doesn't necessarily imply that they are more social with strangers.

I don't view the google-link as evidence; more like a way of saying let-me-google-that-for-you-(that wasn't so hard, was it?). You know... kind of like so many other "women are different from men" are "obvious".

[marquis]

I was speaking in regards to the tech buses, where you have the same people on board every day. It's a natural inclination for myself, and many other women I suppose, to build relationships with people I see regularly.

[Dewie]

So you would, for example, go up to someone that you see regularly but who you don't know and try to get to know them, either through some generic opener/remark/question or more bluntly ('Hi! I've seen you around here a lot lately and...). That doesn't really happen in my culture. People need an actual "excuse" to engage someone, like being at the same event or working together or practising the same sport. You can't just, you know, talk to someone because you want to be social for the hell of it - there needs to be some context. And happening to be in transit at about the same hours of the day doesn't qualify. This is how people in general are (here); both men and women.

I guess you wouldn't like it here.

[greglindahl]

Half the people in this sub-thread think it's about public transit, and the other half are talking about the company bus systems that take tech workers from homes in San Francisco to jobs in the Silicon Valley. These company buses generally have a single drop-off point, and if you look at the top of the sub-thread, the bus is dropping "all its people". This is a long-winded way of saying that the excuse is that you work at the same company as the people you frequently see on the particular bus you ride most days.

[couchand]

People are very friendly if you're friendly to them. That's at least been my experience everywhere I go.

Break down those barriers! Just walk up to random people and try to find out what makes them tick. It will expand your horizons and make your life more interesting.

Stop making excuses about some perceived need to have an "excuse" and just be friendly to your neighbors. We'll all benefit.

[UrMomReadsHN]

Just...wow...This is an extremely culture specific suggestion.

Sure maybe in YOUR culture and place of residence that could be good advice but it could be horrible advice for other cultures/places.

People are also different. Situations are different. In some situations being approached by a stranger can be friendly and some situations it can be very very hostile. Depending on a lot of factors. There is a very serious need to understand when your approach might be hostile to the other party.

I find it interesting that I've been reading a lot of "in my culture/city/experience X therefore X is a universal truth" comments lately.

[couchand]

I'm basing this on my own personal experiences traveling on four continents. I just try to be consistently nice to people and not too forward, particularly if they seem uncomfortable. I don't think I said anything about a universal truth, but I do think people tend to be just as friendly to you as you are to them. YMMV.

[Dewie]

There are so many assumptions in this response, and so much projection. I think you are mistaking me describing a culture for tacit approval of that culture and/or feeling under its boot. I was describing how we as a culture live, not necessarily how I live. And this is not to imply that I think that this particular culture is bad (or good): there are downsides and upsides. I am undecided as to whether it is overall healthy/freeing/oppressive, etc.

In any case, I'll make sure to inform others of what they're doing wrong, and that they don't need to be be "oppressed" by these "barriers". And to think, what we all wanted the same thing all along; we just needed you to remind us.

[couchand]

I was describing how we as a culture live, not necessarily how I live.

Nor how I live, so where is this mythical "culture" we're all so beholden to? Culture is just the actions and beliefs of a group of people. Historically humans have tended to be pleasant with people in their own group and remarkably unpleasant to "others". Usually this is because they don't understand anyone outside their own group, because they've never explicitly tried to understand them.

So yes, reaching out to others, learning from them, preventing the next world war, preventing the next oppression of a group because they are seen as somehow different from those in power, yes, that is a Good Thing.

[yarou]

So you've never made small talk with a co-worker that you didn't know yet but see on a daily basis?

[selimthegrim]

Where is "here"?

[Dewie]

The land of non-America (Norway to be more specific).