Comment by iufwe87 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iufwe87 | Hacker News Reader

I am from India and on H1B visa in United States. I still don't understand why there is more hustling in recent years about women participation ? Be it playing games, developing games, women in tech or women in NFL or women in ______ ( fill in blank here).

I studied engineering in India from one of the premier university and 30 % of my class were girls. Toppers of the class for all 4 years were girls. I know at least 50-80 girls from India and China in my linkedin contacts who are actively engaged int tech.

Keeping aside social problems faced by women in India for a bit ( and excluding poor people) , still there is very high participation from girls / women in India. Throughout my education of 1st to 12th grade there were more girls than more boys in my class.

So my question is ----

1. Why is US only facing this problem of women in ..... ?

2. Is this some political gimmick being played for 2016 preparation ( and I ask with all seriousness without affiliation to any party )

I have always considered people in US are more vocal about their rights, responsibilities and more aware of problems in general. Lately though, I see lots of thought policing happening, view manipulation going on at large.

My last and most important question is ,

3. Since you folks are now actively advertising and creating social conditions for women's participation in tech are you not depriving them of their freedom to choose whichever path women in US prefer ? In an ideal scenario, women would have tech as one of choice for career and not necessarily manipulative information representing tech is only best choice career.

Countries with lower levels of economic development often have the highest ratios of female engineers and wealthier countries often have the lowest ratios.

One explanation is once you're free to do whatever you want and you don't have to worry about expectations or putting food on the table so much, the influence of subtle innate genetic preferences actually become much more apparent in some ways.

However, this explanation goes against the rules of the western view that predominates, that the gender ratio of fewer women in some area (but often not when there are fewer men in some area) mean is proof in point that women are being harmed and should be given assistance.

If discrimination causes the difference, why do countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia have around the highest ratios of female engineers and countries like the Netherlands or Norway around the lowest?

Are you denying that women are being heavily discriminated against in developed countries, like Norway or the Netherlands?

Technology and entrepreneurship are very attractive in terms of social prestige and salary, therefore if women weren't being harassed and discouraged by men from entering these fields, you would be seeing roughly 50% of female engineers and entrepreneurs.

Maybe even somewhat more, since women tend to be smarter than men on average (which is why girls tend to succeed better in school than boys).

Edit: here come the downvotes from males in denial. If you feel the need to downvote me because I am stating a simple fact, you are part of the problem.

> since women tend to be smarter than men on average

Ok, we need to stop with sexist insults right now, and it's valid for men too. Define "smarter".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...

According to the 1994 report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" by the American Psychological Association, "Most standard tests of intelligence have been constructed so that there are no overall score differences between females and males." Differences have been found, however, in specific areas such as mathematics and verbal measures.[9]

When standardized IQ tests were first developed in the early 20th century, girls typically scored higher than boys until age 14, at which time the curve for girls dropped below that for boys.[8][10] As testing methodology was revised, efforts were made to equalize gender performance.[10][11][12]

The mean IQ scores between men and women vary little.[9][13][14][15][16] The variability of male scores is greater than that of females, however, resulting in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution.[17]

It says differences in average IQ gender gap are either small or biased by the methodology, unless I'm mistaken.

> Are you denying that women are being heavily discriminated against in developed countries, like Norway or the Netherlands?

Are they? That hasn't been my experience, in Norway. I'm not a woman though.

> Technology and entrepreneurship are very attractive in terms of social prestige and salary,

I don't know if they really are. Maybe entrepreneurship, but IT/programming seems pretty meh as far as prestige goes. And since wages are relatively similar across the board, someone with a Masters in computer science might not earn terribly much more than someone with qualifications in some craft, like plumbing or being a mechanic.

> , therefore if women weren't being harassed and discouraged by men from entering these fields, you would be seeing roughly 50% of female engineers and entrepreneurs.

Fallacious reasoning; you ignore all the myriads of variables that go into human motivation.

> Maybe even somewhat more, since women tend to be smarter than men on average (which is why girls tend to succeed better in school than boys).

If it were the other way around, you'd say that that was proof of heavy discrimination towards women. Come on now - tell me that I'm wrong.

> Are they? That hasn't been my experience

Examples are abundant and easy to find. Here is an example of sexism and discrimination coming from Paul Graham. Highly relevant to this discussion about female founders at YC.

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/12/paul-graham-revive...

Women are getting harassed and discriminated against in Silicon Valley tech companies all the time. Take this example from Github: http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scan...

This needs to stop. And comments like yours are just one more example of how deeply rooted sexism is on this site.

It's funny you picked those two examples as the PG one isn't sexism at all, just quotes taken out of context. The second one, once the details came out showed was an unfortunate situation but also not really an example of sexism (IIRC). If those examples are the best you can come up with then that really undermines your premise.

I said that it hasn't been my experience IN NORWAY. And then you give as examples Paul Graham, Silicon Valley and the GitHub company. Are you even trying to be coherent?

Do you even have any experience with living in Norway or the Netherlands?

> And comments like yours are just one more example of how deeply rooted sexism is on this site.

Well of course. Not admitting/believing, or just being sceptical, of whether sexism really is a problem in some areas is of course evidence of sexism (presumably that I am sexist). So let me get this straight; if I admit/claim that there is a sexism problem, then that is evidence of sexism (since I admitted it). On the other hand, if I don't admit/claim it, that is also evidence of sexism.

I think you're making some reasonable points. I don't have experience living in Norway or the Netherlands, but I can say this: it hasn't been my experience, living in the UK, that women engineers are victims of any kind of discrimination, unconscious or otherwise.

However! I know that they are, because they have told me. I haven't seen it happen, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Unless there are women from the two countries you mentioned reading this thread, I'm not sure you will get valuable answers about the state of things in those countries. I can certainly believe that the situation is better there than in the US and the UK, as Norway in particular has a much better record with social issues like these.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I think HN discussions often don't generate a huge amount of light on this topic, especially when it comes to questions which aren't about the situation in the US.

It sounds like you think that that if nobody was talking about women in tech, then women would be able to freely choose between all available careers. Is that right? Because the basic premise of most discussion is that this is not the case, and that there are multiple factors that currently mean American women who may want to go into tech find it harder than men do (these factors ranging from cultural pressures starting at birth to intrinsic biases when hiring adults). So your question sounds like "wouldn't putting a ramp in place of some steps be depriving people in wheelchairs of their right to not be interested in going into the room?" Sure, there are people who disagree with that premise - but you should be clear that you are disagreeing with it, or your conversations in this area will likely be confusing.

As to 'why in America and not India': It is pretty well known that these factors vary widely by country - you might be interested in looking at relative achievement in math by school students in various countries as a starting point for the idea that culture of a country influences achievement by each gender. I understand that you may not have come across this topic before but no, it is absolutely nothing to do with American elections and has been an issue for many, many, many years.

I have some thoughts on 2 and 3.

2. I wholly support helping underrepresented minorities in tech because I believe in fairness. But anytime gender or race is involved, then the topic is political by definition. I follow the White House on twitter and a ton of their tweets are about equal pay. Both Romney and McCain addressed this issue during their campaigns and were criticized for their responses.

Yes, it is a political tool. But just because politicians are involved does not make it a gimmick.

3. I agree that the ideal scenario is for tech to be one of the career choices. The problem is people are pushed away from certain fields. Coming to the US to work on a H1B is made easier because many Indians and Chinese have done it before us. Having people who look like me achieve something is a great self confidence boost and motivator. Unfortunately, other minorities groups do not have this benefit.

Perhaps Neil deGrasse Tyson can explain it better than me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inz1sdhsMCU

I can't find the research study now but there was one done in Sweden which concluded that in countries with more economic freedom to choose careers women choose non-STEM careers unlike India and Pakistan where careers are still largely motivated by economic incentives.

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