Comment by settsu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by settsu | Hacker News Reader

> "Note that, even if men in STEM fields are no more sexist on average than men in other fields—or are less sexist, as one might expect from their generally socially liberal views and attitudes..."

Sadly, that has not been my experience—not within specific technical departments nor in wider tech-related events, and certainly not in the broader workplace context. While this may a reasonable assertion on the coasts of the USA, it has not been my own in the spaces between them nor in my interactions with various people from outside the US. No question that these are my own limited anecdotes, but I like to believe I am reasonably well-read and aware of global mindsets and I would hesitate to make that statement so flatly.

> "Trust me, my four-year-old daughter Lily wishes I didn’t believe so fervently in working with her every day on her math skills"

And there you go. Even by a seemingly forgettable tongue-in-cheek quip, the author reveals a fundamental misjudgement repeated countless times around the world for centuries that speaks to the very heart of the issue: correcting something may require enacting an alternative that has other inherent negatives that don't have an immediately apparent benefit to the end goal and might even seem contrary in the short term. In other words, addressing historical inequalities may necessitate solutions that them self enact brand new inequalities. It's an unavoidable likelihood in course correction: going off-course to get back on-course. And teaching math to four-year-old Lily may require changing the approach to learning it entirely to something unconventional, or even uncomfortable: the author may be terrible at teaching math for her.

Maybe the best person for a responsibility is technically less proficient but ultimately more effective.

Or, as pointed out in an article cited, a person is sufficiently, if not exceptionally, proficient but is simply ill-suited:

"I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me." - https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/as-a-woma...

This is often how I've personally felt.

That's pretty messed-up. I'm a male who has never felt any impulse to build a fiber-channel network in my basement. Hell, I don't even have a basement.

> And there you go

I had to downvote you, you should definitely leave that out of the discussion.

I don't understand. It's a valid example of how people are prejudged for interest and proclivity at a young age.

It was neither an indictment of the author's parenting nor an inherent indication to an underlying bias.

OK. But just don't go there, please, for whatever reason.

I honestly hope these issues won't evolve into a society that takes children from their parents under assumption that they are bad parents because their children are showing some "wrong" bias. And sadly, I don't see it as a complete impossibility.

I see.

As someone living in the U.S. with children, I neither feel nor observe indications of this as an imminent danger. If anything I'd posit we've faulted much the opposite direction. A history of stubborn individualism, regardless of the harm it may inflict on others or society at-large, and fear-mongering against anything that resembles socialism—however irrational and countered by existing programs which are rooted in its very concepts—all but insures against it any time soon.

I can't disagree with the possibility since history supports that—and the general tendency for humanity to demonstrate such a low regard for itself would unfortunately be also—the probability seems low.

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