Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

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I agree completely, and am publicly willing to do so because I'm not willing to live in a future where I can't publicly disagree with someone. Why is it technology, specifically, that needs to be equalized? Because it's currently trendy? Because there's a lot of money in it? Is money all that matters? Why aren't we as interested in getting, say, more men into nursing, considering there a lot of underemployed, undereducated men in the US who have to work blue collar or service industry jobs to scrape by while women dominate that very lucrative and stable field? It makes absolutely no sense to me and I agree with the parent commenter that CS is intriguing to me precisely because it's such a great equalizer. Your code speaks for you, not your gender, race, or creed. I also don't see a lot of "Women in Pro Football" groups, either, even though that's an incredibly lucrative and prestigious profession. The whole thing is bonkers, and this is coming from someone who has two daughters (who are free to pursue whatever profession they like).

> Why aren't we as interested in getting, say, more men into nursing

I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing or know anyone who does. There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

> I take it from this comment that you don't work in nursing

Correct

> or know anyone who does

Incorrect

> There is an active movement to get more men into nursing, though I don't follow nursing statistics closely enough to characterize its success.

Enlighten me.

Well, I'm not in the profession, but my partner has and she has seen a focus on male students at her school, as well as a preference for male nurses in hiring. These are completely anecdotal, of course, so what do we get if we google "men in nursing"?

American Assembly for Men in Nursing: http://aamn.org/

Census report on men in nursing fields: https://www.census.gov/people/io/files/Men_in_Nursing_Occupa...

An article from Men In Nursing magazine: http://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=65843... (admittedly on the second page)

The Male Nurses Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/MaleNurses/

I just thought male nurses was a particularly poor example, as people are interested in increasing the number of male nurses, and looking at the census report they have been having steady success.

I guess I don't see nearly as much in the mainstream media about the gender disparity in nursing as I do for tech, and certainly not on Hacker News. I can come up with other examples though. There aren't big pushes to get more women into construction, the military, emergency services, and other less topical fields just like there aren't pushes to get more men into interior design, event planning, human resources, and other female dominated fields. Could it be that people are just choosing what they would like to do for a living rather than being told what they should like to do?

They're probably talking about "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" which briefly grabbed attention over a decade ago.

Want more men in nursing? Discourage them from being competitive and choosing to become doctors. Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1. Men become physicians and surgeons. Women become obstetrics and pediatrics. As a general rule of thumb, most fields that show a gender difference lean heavily towards social bias and differences between gender preferences than discrimination against anyone. I don't know when it became so socially unacceptable to have different preferences than someone else.

Disclaimer:

I don't work in nursing. My grandmother was a nurse for 35 years. I'd hardly call it an "active movement". I don't closely follow the statistics (frankly, I don't care) but it is easy to see that it has not been successful by any significant margin.

> Male doctors outnumber female doctors nearly 2 to 1.

Matriculation in US med schools was ~47% female this year.

>Why aren't we as interested in getting, say, more men into nursing... I also don't see a lot of "Women in Pro Football" groups

This is seriously your argument? That's so fatalistic: this is the way things are, so this is the way things will be. You're also arguing a very "us" vs "them" mentality, which is what makes professions gendered to begin with.

>CS is intriguing to me precisely because it's such a great equalizer

You're ignoring the social aspect. Women are often discouraged from tech early on, which makes the profession more male-dominated, which makes women feel less comfortable, etc.

> This is seriously your argument? That's so fatalistic: this is the way things are, so this is the way things will be. You're also arguing a very "us" vs "them" mentality, which is what makes professions gendered to begin with.

Yeah, seriously. It's my argument. Did I not sound serious enough? Are you addressing the content within my argument or the tone of my argument?

I'm not being fatalistic, I'm genuinely asking those questions. I have a lot of male friends who didn't go into tech or nursing who are really struggling. One might go as far as to say they were "actively discouraged from nursing early on" while my female acquaintances happily slid into comfy and lucrative nursing positions. Yet, not once have I heard of or seen advertisements for Men in Nursing conferences or groups. I'm not making this "us" vs "them" as much as you want to frame my argument that way, and even if I did you'd have to explain why you think that leads to gendered professions.

> You're ignoring the social aspect. Women are often discouraged from tech early on, which makes the profession more male-dominated, which makes women feel less comfortable, etc.

Again, I could make the same (bad) argument by replacing "women" with "men" and "tech" with "nursing". Unless you're also willing to admit the problem exists there and needs to be dealt with, then I'm not sure we have much more to discuss.

If however, you do think the gender imbalance in the field of nursing is a problem, then I need to be educated as to why it's a problem. I've heard arguments about why we need to get more women in tech, but they've never made a whole lot of sense to me.

You know what we need more of in tech? People. Period. Far too few people chose CS as their field of study and as such there's a huge mismatch between supply and demand. If your mission is to increase the volume of people in tech, regardless of their race, gender, age, or creed, then count me in and how can I help?

edit: accidentally a word

Discussing nursing isn't relevant, and even if it is two wrongs don't make a right, which is the logical fallacy you keep making here. But if you want to hear me say it: there's a shortage of nurses and the fact that men aren't going into it due to social pressures is an issue.

>You know what we need more of in tech? People

Lowest hanging fruit: actively do something about the fact that half the population isn't going into tech. And this is what you're arguing against, even though you may not realize it. Those conferences and reach-out efforts are explicitly active attempts at solving the problem in a positive way. They aren't meant to exclude men (I was a member of the women in tech club in college), they're usually meant to undo harmful biases in society.

> Discussing nursing isn't relevant, and even if it is two wrongs don't make a right, which is the logical fallacy you keep making here. But if you want to hear me say it: there's a shortage of nurses and the fact that men aren't going into it due to social pressures is an issue.

As long as we're pointing out fallacies, you're attacking a straw man here. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right; I'm saying neither wrong is actually a wrong. They are simply outcomes, neither negative nor positive. The overarching point I'm trying to make is that if we both agree we need more nurses, and we both agree we need more techies, and we both agree that men tend toward tech and women tend toward nursing, and operating under the assumption that it's a zero sum game (hint: it's not), then there's nothing wrong with women staying in nursing to keep the overall number of nurses high and men staying in tech to keep the overall number of techies high.

I simply do not see the need for the fields of nursing and tech to swap genders until they both hit some gender equilibrium. The goal should be to increase the overall volume of both nurses and techies (and decrease, perhaps, the number of lawyers ;-).

And by the way, the other day my 3 year old daughter told me she wants to be a nurse when she grows up. It would feel wrong to discourage her by pushing her toward a career in programming, but maybe that's just me.

edit: grammar and added the bit about increasing overall volume of nurses and techies

You are wrong that there is a shortage of nurses and possibly programmers, but maybe the shortage of nurses is because men who would be good nurses don't want to become nurses for whatever reason.

Convincing more people who have good nurse-aptitudes that becoming a nurse is worthwhile is a legitimate strategy for increasing the number of nurses. Same for people who have good programmer-aptitudes and have been discouraged from playing with computers and stuff because of their gender.

The point, though, is that's not what these tech equality conferences are about - they are about equalizing the gap, i.e. it is the gap that is important, not the value of the work being done (or otherwise).

There's so many fields out there, so why should ALL women goes into tech?

You may say, "But why doesn't more women goes into tech?"

Well, let me ask this then, "So 80% of women goes into nursing. Why don't MORE women goes into nursing? Why not 90%? Why not 97.2% Or heck, why NOT less women? Why not some other arbitrary number?"

There are many fields out there. Each fields has it's own arbitrary number of men and women working in it. Why must a specific field have a specific quota of women?

You would say, "Because there's not enough women in tech."

And I would say, "Why is that not enough? What would be consider enough for women in tech? For women in other fields? For women in each and every fields? Why must there be 50% women and 50% men in tech? Why must there be 50% women and 50% men in any field? In every fields? How can there even possible be 50% men and 50% women in all fields?"

So you see, when you really start thinking about it, all these quotas just become nonsensical. In fact, I remember in history, a form of government where the government enforced quotas. And it's call Communism.

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