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Comment by danharaj | Hacker News Reader

There's a strong correlation between women entering a field and it having low prestige, and men entering a field and it having higher prestige.

Guess which field of ours was considered busywork for women to do until men realized it was going to transform society as we know it.

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When do you think programming began to have high prestige?

I didn't think programming in the 80s or 90s was a particularly prestigous or high status job, salaries back then kind of reflect that too

It was pretty prestigious in the 90's and seems to remain so today. At parties where I'm required to mix with other adults from varying backgrounds (i.e. a child's birthday party), they are almost universally impressed that I am in software development. As a child, people did seem impressed (in the 80's) that my father was a developer and we were one of the few families in town that had a proper computer (not an Atari 2600 or an Intellivison).

I don't think it is a prestigious job today. When was the last time you remember a movie starring a computer programmer? How often do you hear the phrase "We better consult the computer programmers before we make this important decision"? How many novels center on the daily procedures of computer programming?

That's because the women "programmers" were largely doing things like plugging wires into a certain configuration as dictated to them by the (usually male) engineers. What the article terms as programming as essentially operating a switch board - it had nothing to do with programming as we know it today.

You and your "facts". ;-)

Perhaps, but even if the article is correct, and male programmers in the 1960s did intentionally crowd out women, doesn't that demonstrate what Damore posited when he said women are less assertive and less aggressive, in general? It seems disingenuous for the author of the article to declare Damore "wrong," when studies back up what Damore said, and this article itself suggests those tendencies to be accurate, at least to some degree.

James Damore asserted that women are less aggressive than men because of mostly biological factors which is ridiculous if one has ever at all paid attention to the social signals given to women.

Also, why the fuck would we ever stand for our industry to be organized along hierarchies of dominance and aggression? What exactly is the argument here?

Had he said psychological differences instead, would you then agree with him? There are differences, which is obvious. So I am curious what you think the root cause of those differences is, and why you're willing to throw out the whole premise, based solely on Damore's understanding of the root cause? Isn't that a bit like denying the sunrise, simply because someone says the sun moves in the sky because it revolves around the Earth?

Please read the links I offered in another response in this thread for more information.

To answer your last question: Because if we didn't, our competitors would put us out of business. Try running a competitive business on kindness and feelings and see how long you last.

There are no studies that backup Damore. He cherry picked bits and pieces he liked to tell a story that isn't supported by the sources he quoted.

You may want to research your position before making such a bold statement. Please note the links I posted in another response in this thread. Just because something doesn't agree with your worldview does not make it untrue, or, at the very least, unworthy of intelligent consideration.

Also, please don't conflate my targeted point with Damore's multi-page, multi-themed memo.

The Damore argument as I read it said not only that women are less aggressive in general, but was premised on the idea that the reason for that difference was primarily biological, and that therefore efforts to promote diversity in CS were pushing things away from the natural gender ratio. Even if I were to grant that women are statistically less assertive (probably true, though anecdata suggest that women's ideas are likely to be misattributed in discussions), it seems unlikely to me that there's not a huge cultural component. For instance, "bossy", which has negative valences, is used almost exclusively of girls compared to boys. The objection I have to Damore is less the science, and more the conclusions from the evidence.

I wish you would read what I said, rather than conflating it with Damore's memo. What I said was that Damore posited that one reason women are under represented in the technology field (and managerial roles) is that they are less assertive and less aggressive than men. I said that studies back that up, which they do. I never said that it was biological, though it's possible that it may be. What I said was that it is disingenuous of the author to declare the entirety of Damore's memo "wrong," when, in fact, studies suggest he's right. He may be wrong in his use of the word "biological," and we can debate that, but to suggest that his entire memo is wrong is intellectually dishonest.

Here are some links to studies regarding women's interest in technology, and their tendency to be less aggressive and assertive than men:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/#!po=42...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...

Here is a lecture on the topic by Professor Jordan Peterson, which is interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewvqEqIXdhU

And here are links to a poll from Indeed.com and the gender distribution in Georgia Tech's online Masters of Computer Science program that demonstrate the lack of interest that women have in technology.

http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/prospective-students/numbers

http://blog.indeed.com/2016/07/18/do-millennial-men-women-wa...

The issue that Damore brought up is real, and to pretend it is strictly social, as this author does, is to ignore science and women themselves.

Edited to add the last two links and fix a couple of typos.

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