You know how women solve the problem of number women in IT courses back in my country solve this problem?

Wasn't like throwing acid on the face of a woman who rejects your advances a national sport over there or something? And you're putting that country as an example? Interesting.

Can't debate so ad-hominem? Last I check, no. BTW, we don't serve lead in our water either.

Unfortunately women equally contribute to the problem against women Twitter abuse - '50% of misogynistic tweets from women'

Abuse on social networks is not new and neither is the revelation that women contribute to the problem.

A 2014 study from cosmetics firm Dove found that over five million negative tweets were posted about beauty and body image. Four out of five were sent by women

I'm not shocked.

Have anyone here seen Milo De Paul uni video?

I wish this thread stay serious, but I'm bailing out. Gotta do STEM stuff in my real life.

What "biology" do you think causes women not to be interested in programming?

Breasts. They keep hitting the keyboard. :P

That would also apply to many of the male programmers I've met. Please guys, cut back on the Cheetos and colas a bit, will ya?

I have to say one thing about the whole "it's just women's choices" issue when it comes to representation in STEM/wage gap: I've seen it being claimed by atheists who, in other discussions, will tell you that there isn't even such thing as "free will" or "choice" at all, and everything we think and choose is based on complex chemical reactions in the brain. I mean, given such views, it seems pretty logical that you'd assume our choices are heavily influenced by our environment, without that fact making us "brainwashed". It's just the way things work. If there's only the physical brain, and its interactions with the environment, including other physical brains, there isn't even such a thing as a "deep", "core" self that makes the choices without being influenced by anything other than itself. These people seem to contradict themselves a bit. And if you're going to claim "biology"(aka hormones) is the basis for the difference in choices...that's a pretty bold claim. It might account for *some* difference, but does it account for everything, or even the majority?

Though I have to ask: Given that most college students seem now to be women, but ones that follow humanities, are we stating as a goal that we want *less* women to choose humanities as a subject? I mean, it does seem a bit..."bizarre" to have such a goal, doesn't it? Or am I missing something on how the numbers here work?

I have to say one thing about the whole "it's just women's choices" issue when it comes to representation in STEM/wage gap: I've seen it being claimed by atheists [...]

It was mentioned by someone who's nick is literally "Servant of the Lord". Which lord do you think it is?

I have to say one thing about the whole "it's just women's choices" issue when it comes to representation in STEM/wage gap: I've seen it being claimed by atheists [...]

It was mentioned by someone who's nick is literally "Servant of the Lord". Which lord do you think it is?

Zeus! Wait, no I have it! Gozer! :P

This just arrived in my facebook timeline:

I think this kinda of stuff is the right way to do it.

BUT, I think parents should show those stuff on the internet to theyr sons..I dont like the idea of schools/govern "educating" children, thats too dangerous. Children are too susceptible and there are lots of coconuts out there (In 3rd world countries govern is number one problem and education systems basically ruined). In this case I agree with the content, but what when they do stuff id consider an absurd?

School function is to "teach" (knowledge everyone agrees with, even history shouldnt be taught as absolutely unquestionable true, cause not everyone agrees with it either), not "educate" (kinda ambiguous, but do you get what I mean right? Principles and morals should come from family WHILE we live in a society where the individual is highly dependent of it (its the family you turn to when youre fucked by society, theyre the ones backing you up)).

I have to say one thing about the whole "it's just women's choices" issue when it comes to representation in STEM/wage gap

Just to be clear, I didn't say it was just biology. I mispoke when I said "mostly", I meant "more" as in "More X than Y", not "Only X", and not "More X than everything else combined". Bad grammar and word usage my part.
Essentially, I was trying to convey that I think the lack of females in programming is more due to tastes and preferences reacting to how we portray those careers, as well as social stigmas, as opposed to mostly male anti-women bias, without excluding that anti-women bias exists, and without excluding other possible variables.

Basically, my predominate suggestion, while acknowledging ignorance and asking questions, was that by researching further what male/female tastes are, on average, and then focusing on how programming is marketed, we might make more progress encouraging women to become programmers.
I in no way claimed women can't program, are worse programmers, are less intelligent, or anything else. In fact, I explicitly said otherwise.

I said that some studies seem to indicate an innate preference towards different objects, and current statistics seem to indicate a preference (innate or acquired) for different careers, and that if we examine what leads people to one career over another, we could possibly have better luck encouraging different groups of people (and different genders' theorized statistically average preferences) into careers. And I gave two reasonable examples to further explain what I meant.

I also asked if we have any evidence that indicates more explicit bias blocking them from entering rather than implicit cultural pressure and rather than personal tastes reacting to public perceptions of the career.

And I asked questions about why we think a concrete harm is occurring by their absence, whether that harm is done to that group or the economy/government/whatever by their absence from that career.
For example, lack of females writing characters for books, movies, anime, and games, or making decisions about how those characters dress and act, can directly affect and shape the cultural perception of women, harming young girls' self-esteem or perceived career options, how they treat each other and how boys treat them, and, art-wise, just overall brings less diversity to characters for our entertainment. In such a situation, even if (hypothetically) only 5% of women want to work in media writing characters, it'd still be beneficial for our culture to encourage more to work in those careers as a self-sacrifice (all other things being equal) for the good of everyone else.

But I don't currently directly see harm if it happens to turn out women in programming only ever hover at 20%-30% instead of 50%, just as I don't directly see harm if only 20% of men are nurses, and so asked if we see anything that indicates real harm? I'm not saying such harm doesn't exist, I'm saying I can't think of any particular concrete harm in this career, whereas I can see concrete harms by gender gaps in other careers, but since others do seem to see a harm, I'm asking what it is that they see?

I do see harm if women are being actively discouraged from entering into careers they want - so if it turns out that this is responsible for a significant portion of the gender gap in programming, then it absolutely needs to be addressed.
I also see harm if women get forced into careers they don't enjoy, so when we try to get more women into programming, we need to be careful that the individuals are entering it because they enjoy programming, and not just because people tell them that they are needed there.

Hopefully by thinking through other viewpoints, we can get a more varied perspective of an issue that many people think is a problem... or we can continue to make breast jokes. :rolleyes:

School function is to "teach" (knowledge everyone agrees with, even history shouldnt be taught as absolutely unquestionable true, cause not everyone agrees with it either), not "educate" (kinda ambiguous, but do you get what I mean right?

I think what you are saying is that schools need to teach how to think, not memorization, and need to show data, not interpretations of that data, or it feels too much like propaganda, at least in some situations. That may be subjective though; probably based on whether we subjectively agree with what is being taught or not.

This just arrived in my facebook timeline:

I think this kinda of stuff is the right way to do it.

Absolutely. My only nitpick there, is by having the kids draw the careers before meeting the people, they first reinforce their stereotypes in their brain before learning the diversity.

I'm not a psychologist anymore than I'm a biologist, but I think it'd be better to keep the facts in their brain if they met the women first, and then drew the careers. i.e. Learn then repeat to reinforce.

I mean, you don't want to teach math by saying, "Guess how to do this problem first, reinforcing falsehoods in your mind, and then I'll teach you the correct way.". You learn, then repeat to memorize.

Before the actual firefighter, surgeon, fighter pilot walked in, I was waiting for the teacher to say, "And the first job we're going to draw is a fire fighter, her name is Susan.".
But to have them reinforce in their brain the stereotypes before helping them, it feels like it's just to make a video to pat ourselves on the back so we can feel good and feel "enlightened" rather than to broaden the kids' views.

Just to be clear, when I was talking about atheists that bring up the "choice" argument, I was talking more about several "prominent" youtubers that I'm aware of, not people on this thread :)

Essentially, I was trying to convey that I think the lack of females in programming is more due to tastes and preferences reacting to how we portray those careers, as well as social stigmas, as opposed to mostly male anti-women bias, without excluding that anti-women bias exists, and without excluding other possible variables.

It's a little strange to me that you admit the presence of male bias against women, and then suggest that we try and fix women's education to solve the problem. Gendered approaches to solving gender imbalances are ultimately doomed to failure - you are only fixing at most half the problem.

As a parallel example, if I were to suggest that the solution to racism in America was to educate Black kids how to act around White kids, I'd be crucified (and rightfully so). Similarly, educating White kids how to act around Black kids might show more short-term gain than the inverse, but it's still not actually solving the problem. You need to teach all kids to be tolerant of each other's differences, if you really want to eliminate discrimination.

Essentially, I was trying to convey that I think the lack of females in programming is more due to tastes and preferences reacting to how we portray those careers, as well as social stigmas, as opposed to mostly male anti-women bias, without excluding that anti-women bias exists, and without excluding other possible variables.

It's a little strange to me that you admit the presence of male bias against women...

It's obvious to me that there is male-against-female bias, female-against-male bias, and all kinds of other biases. But I think male-to-female bias is used too much as a scapegoat by feminists, where almost anything that looks like it could be male-bias is automatically declared male-bias without further investigation, and then tried to be 'solved' without understanding the real roots. So I said investigation is needed before serious action should be taken.

Same with racism and so on. If black people in a certain school district are getting very low grades, before we scream 'racism' it's prudent to investigating further - perhaps that one town has an incompetent teacher, or is underfunded, or the funds are being stolen by the superintendent. It seems that people want to see the most dramatic and offensive causes, because it gives them self-righteous pleasure. The media greatly contributes by click-baiting, but click-baiting only works because that's what people click on.

We either want to see the worse, and push out hints that it might not be racist, or we want to pardon people that seem likable, and not investigate hints that things might be very much worse than they appear on the surface. Humans, myself included, seem to have an absurdly hard time actually being balanced. We always love to think we are balanced, but we're almost always operating with biases for and against people - not just racial, gender, or stranger bias, but biases towards and against ideas, biases in favor of extremes, and so on, flipping one way and then the other in incoherent ways based off our preferences and moods and who we're pre-judging.

So what's needed, in almost every circumstance, is investigation before action, and then thoughtful discussion.

Ofcourse, you get reasonable people in every group and wackos in every group, so it's entirely possible I've seen too many wacko feminists and not enough reasonable feminists. Same with Black Lives Matter - while I know there are very reasonable BLM people, and have read articles from some who address real issues, it's far too easy for your average maniac to declare themselves part of BLM, and then give BLM a terrible reputation. Because irrational people seem to outnumber rational people on this planet by a fair margin, it's more likely to encounter the irrationals than the rationals. Ditto for opportunists and angry violent people - who seem to have especially harmed BLM's public perception (how many times have you heard, "They're destroying their own community! That's just stupid!" during the Ferguson riots, which prevented some people from actually hearing about the injustices. The vandalism, destruction, and looting drowned out the peaceful activists' valid complaints).

...and then suggest that we try and fix women's education to solve the problem. Gendered approaches to solving gender imbalances are ultimately doomed to failure - you are only fixing at most half the problem.

I don't remember saying anything about women's education - maybe I did? :wacko:

I basically said:

A) There is likely many variables involved. I don't think auto-blaming one variable (male-bias) for a lack of females in programming is intelligent. That doesn't mean male-bias isn't the cause, or isn't contributing, but that we need to investigate it closer - maybe that investigation has already happened, if so, good!

B) I also said, if we see significant harmful presence of male-bias in this area (women in programming), then we should work to address it. So I'm not seeing what "half the problem" I'm leaving behind?

C) If it turns out that we can never naturally get more than 30% women into programming, I don't see the harm. That doesn't mean there isn't harm - I was just asking what that harm is. I mentioned I see harm in other careers (like character creation and art), and that if women would've otherwise wanted to be in programming, but were blocked, dissuaded, or convinced otherwise (in significant enough numbers) that would also be a 'harm' in my book. What significant harm exists from men only being 20% of nurses?

D) If we really want to artificially encourage women (in-general) to enter programming to fill a harmful gender gap, we should understand their existing preferences (in-general), and use that to influence our public portrayal of that career. I wasn't saying women should be educated differently then men. I was saying I think - without evidence - that our portrayal of the career is the biggest cause of the gender gap, and if we want to fix the gender gap, we should investigate that in addition to male bias and other areas, and then address that portrayal if it's found to be a significant cause.

I just see a tendency in our culture to take the barest amount of research, information, hunches, and theories, wave them around as facts, and then rush to get government funding (or government action) to force change, before anything has really been peer-reviewed. Even the government does this: the federal government likes rolling out politically-controversial nation-wide changes instantly (and states do the same thing). Nation-wide changes shouldn't even be state-wide, but first a single school/town, then a district/county, then state, then nation. Google and Facebook and so on, have the common sense to not update every single user simultaneously, but roll out changes to increasingly large groups of their users after making sure it works well.

I also see a tendency to get offended as a form of pleasure, and to get offended on other people's behalf when there's nothing one can get offended at oneself, and add unnecessary drama, anger, and accusations to problems that could otherwise be solved by doing actual peer-reviewed research (into both causes and harms), thinking through the best approach, applying it to a small test area, then gradually widening it nation-wide. Race, culture, politics, and gender issues is fore-front on the proxy-offense drama train.

That could all happen and be finished within 3 years. 1 year for research, 1 year for discussion and trial-runs, then over the next year gradually expand the scope.

If an issue is worth doing, it's certainly worth doing it even if badly, but if we can do it well, we should do it well. But first we need to know if it is worth addressing at all (IS it harmful?), and how to do it well (which requires knowing what is really causing the problem).

As a parallel example, if I were to suggest that the solution to racism in America was to educate Black kids how to act around White kids, I'd be crucified (and rightfully so). Similarly, educating White kids how to act around Black kids might show more short-term gain than the inverse, but it's still not actually solving the problem. You need to teach all kids to be tolerant of each other's differences, if you really want to eliminate discrimination.

I'm not grasping how your example parallels what I was suggesting - could you explain? :wacko:

I wasn't saying teach women anything, I was saying tweak the public portrayal of programming if it turns out programming's portrayal on average appeals to men more than women.

The only time I remember mentioning anything about teaching women was when I responded to that video, which is a co-ed classroom having a "career day" type event. In-which case, I approve of having the genders equally represented in the careers, even if the careers themselves show disparity.