I don't see the relevance of the tone of the book. Especially not if the author of the article suggest that his own arguments have more merit. Nor does the introduction of the book [0] actually seem to have many scare quotes. A scare quote is when you question something by quoting it, most often without elaborating. That isn't the usage of quotes in the introduction of the book as far as I can tell, it is the usage of quotes in the article though.
> I'm not sure the article has embellished much given the introduction.
Again I don't see why it is relevant what the book does nor that this is actually the case in the book. Things like "colourful mud-slinging on the basis of anecdotes" and "can be dismissed as lurid gossip" is certainly just that and present in the article. If it was true that Brotopia only contains anecdotes that can easily be dismissed then why do we even need the rest of the article?
> The article actually points out the book's main bias, "Chang does not consider any alternative theses that might cause gender disparities in occupational sectors."
Since we don't really get to know what the theory of the book is in the article I don't think that is that relevant either. When I read an "analysis and review" I want to know what the theory of the book is and its merits. That the author of the book didn't consider a specific theory might be an argument in the overall discourse, but isn't necessarily relevant for the merit of the book's argument. Unless it can be specifically tied to what the book is actually saying.
> That's where you'll find better data and better theories to explain the data.
If he wants to discuss the overall issue, and not just the book, there are plenty of other research studies one could and should refer to.
> I think the article is correct to point out that tech is getting an unusual amount of attention given the gender disparities in other fields.
Again I don't see the relevance since we are talking about a book on this exact issue. How do you correctly measure the amount of attention something should have? I would say it is pretty safe to skip that discussion all together and just argue the issues instead.
The majority of these points have now been about other things than the contents of the book in question.
> The article is also correct to point out that redistributing work means taking women out of other sectors and displacing men to other sectors (although obviously hyperbolic in suggesting we just swap with nurses), and this change won't necessarily lead to better outcomes overall.
Even from the scare quote summary earlier in the article I can guess that the book argues that this should happens because the state of the boys club isn't the natural state, but an injustice. You could certainly argue that that doesn't matter, but then you would also have to argue against being a meritocracy.
> why is it necessary to "break up" the boy's club in tech when we clearly didn't need any such call to break up the boy's clubs in medicine or law.
Didn't we? In these discussions people tend to argue that medicine and law is much more formalized and that it therefor is easier to effect change from the top. Since the book presumably is about the informal structures in technology that seem like a relevant argument.
> But note that while those fields overall are roughly gender equal, the genders have still segregated themselves into various specializations, eg. surgery is still male dominant, pediatrics is female dominant.
Which largely isn't the case in technology i.e. its an overall problem not in specializations.
> The sexism narrative can't explain this, but the works by the psychologists the article cites actually can.
If you, like the article, dismisses the book in favor of a particular study that might be the case, but that just isn't a very strong argument. To make that a strong argument you would have specifically address the points, and the overall thesis, of the book and then make a counter argument based on that. That is exactly what I would expected and didn't get from the article.
> Anyway, I could trot out plenty of citations on this, and I have here on HN in the past, but there's little point. It almost always devolves into pointless squabbling.
I am not asking to write as long as you did. I much prefer one or two points and we could argue. I just don't think there is much support for that in this article which is exactly what I argued in my previous comment.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/women-onc...