FACT: Men and women have significant, measurable neurological differences[1].
FACT: These differences are measurable before birth[2].
FACT: Men and women show large, reproducible differences on average in tests of visuospatial ability, differences that can be mapped back to the brain[3]
Men consistently outperform women on spatial tasks,
including mental rotation, which is the ability to
identify how a 3-D object would appear if rotated in
space. Now, a University of Iowa study shows a connection
between this sex-linked ability and the structure of the
parietal lobe, the brain region that controls this type of
skill.
The parietal lobe was already known to differ between men
and women, with women's parietal lobes having
proportionally thicker cortexes or "grey matter." But this
difference was never linked back to actual performance
differences on the mental rotation test.
...
"Differences in parietal lobe activation have been seen in
other studies. This study represents the first time we
have related specific structural differences in the
parietal lobe to sex-linked performances on a mental
rotation test," said Tim Koscik, the study's lead author
and a graduate student in the University of Iowa
Neuroscience Graduate Program. "It's important to note
that it isn't that women cannot do the mental rotation
tasks, but they appear to do them slower, and neither men
nor women perform the tasks perfectly."
There are literally thousands more studies of the deep rooted genetic, neurological, and endocrinological differences between the genders on pubmed.org. These differences manifest before birth. And this research is what your tax dollars pay for. It is just young earth creationism to postulate that evolution did not happen, or that biological gender differences do not exist or are somehow disconnected from their real world consequences.
One of the consequences is that in any niche which requires cognitive or physical activity, we should not expect an exactly 50/50 distribution of males and females. Interests differ. Abilities differ.
The religious outcry against stating these basic evolutionary facts got Larry Summers ousted as the President of Harvard in 2005. You simply cannot state these facts and retain your job. And the irony of all ironies is that those who drove the President of Harvard from power will insist that they are actually the oppressed, rather than the powerful.
That's the root of the matter here. The ostensible evil of the term "brogrammer" rests upon the tacit desirability of having a 50/50 distribution of women in programming, which in turn rests upon the presumption that it is even possible to achieve this equality given biological constraints, constraints that are obvious upon a cursory skim of the relevant literature. We are just not blank slates to be blasted clean and remade by ideology.
FACT: the number of women in CS has been dropping for decades. The prevalent reason for this appears to be "cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field" [1].
There have been several high-ranking HN discussions over the last few days on this topic, all of which revolved around women in the field feeling ostracized and even harassed by their male colleagues. There is absolutely no need to draw in a spurious evolutionary argument to explain this trend.
You are linking low number of CS freshwomen to being harassed by male colleagues. The problem of that argument is obviously that the earlierst most people would be exposed to such an environment is _after_ college.
So maybe its not culture in programming, but culture in society that is to blame here.
There's nothing wrong with stating facts. The problem comes when people state facts in a way that implies some political or ethical conclusion that isn't justified. Like Larry Summers did.
You correctly complain about the moralistic fallacy, which is where people assume that the world must be way X because it's how they'd like it to be.
But you do that while committing the naturalistic fallacy, which is the assumption that what's natural (or what currently exists) is what's right.
And of course, you also highlight a very small number of facts, ignoring the millennia of oppression of women, biased educational systems, and a lot of cultural pressure that keeps women away from STEM fields. So what you're engaged in isn't some rational analysis of a problem; you're just using a few small points of data in isolation to justify your predetermined conclusion.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on genetics; FWIW, I know that (1) the % of women programmers has gone down since the 50s and (2) in Israel, where I grew up, the % of women programmers is substantially higher. As an exercise, though, I'd like to accept your point and explore its repercussions.
Even if women are and will remain a minority for whatever reason, that doesn't mean we should be dicks to our colleagues. My intuition is that most damage being done is not malicious; I don't think programmers as a community are mean-spirited or misogynistic.
Tess has already made the relevant points about over-sensitization and the relative nature of offensiveness. Ultimately, it's up to you to figure out to what extent you are willing to be conscious of the effect you have on those around you.
I hate to be inflammatory but this is just stupidity masquerading as an evolutionary biology diatribe. No one is talking denying evolutionary theory; methinks thou doth protest too much.
I don't think a bunch of script-kiddies that learned a web framework and now think they are the second coming of Peter Norvig or Dennis but with the added benefit that they can "get naked chicks" are necessarily very high on the evolutionary ladder. Sorry to burst your bubble. I know a couple women PhD students that are brilliant Operating Systems researchers and work almost exclusively in the Linux kernel. They are not whipping RESTful CRUD apps with the Web framework du jour.
FACT: all this jibber jabber about evolutionary biology is completely irrelevant and just misses the point in a rather insidious way.
The root of the matter isn't some egalitarian desire to have a 50/50 gender distribution in tech. It's about acting professional and not making your female colleagues feel uncomfortable or alienated.
Comments
Let's start with some facts.
FACT: Men and women have significant, measurable neurological differences[1].
FACT: These differences are measurable before birth[2].
FACT: Men and women show large, reproducible differences on average in tests of visuospatial ability, differences that can be mapped back to the brain[3]
There are literally thousands more studies of the deep rooted genetic, neurological, and endocrinological differences between the genders on pubmed.org. These differences manifest before birth. And this research is what your tax dollars pay for. It is just young earth creationism to postulate that evolution did not happen, or that biological gender differences do not exist or are somehow disconnected from their real world consequences.One of the consequences is that in any niche which requires cognitive or physical activity, we should not expect an exactly 50/50 distribution of males and females. Interests differ. Abilities differ.
The religious outcry against stating these basic evolutionary facts got Larry Summers ousted as the President of Harvard in 2005. You simply cannot state these facts and retain your job. And the irony of all ironies is that those who drove the President of Harvard from power will insist that they are actually the oppressed, rather than the powerful.
That's the root of the matter here. The ostensible evil of the term "brogrammer" rests upon the tacit desirability of having a 50/50 distribution of women in programming, which in turn rests upon the presumption that it is even possible to achieve this equality given biological constraints, constraints that are obvious upon a cursory skim of the relevant literature. We are just not blank slates to be blasted clean and remade by ideology.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine-M-D/dp/...
[2] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/uu-spb102309....
[3] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/uoi-sdo121708...
FACT: the number of women in CS has been dropping for decades. The prevalent reason for this appears to be "cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field" [1].
There have been several high-ranking HN discussions over the last few days on this topic, all of which revolved around women in the field feeling ostracized and even harassed by their male colleagues. There is absolutely no need to draw in a spurious evolutionary argument to explain this trend.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html
You are linking low number of CS freshwomen to being harassed by male colleagues. The problem of that argument is obviously that the earlierst most people would be exposed to such an environment is _after_ college.
So maybe its not culture in programming, but culture in society that is to blame here.
There's nothing wrong with stating facts. The problem comes when people state facts in a way that implies some political or ethical conclusion that isn't justified. Like Larry Summers did.
You correctly complain about the moralistic fallacy, which is where people assume that the world must be way X because it's how they'd like it to be.
But you do that while committing the naturalistic fallacy, which is the assumption that what's natural (or what currently exists) is what's right.
And of course, you also highlight a very small number of facts, ignoring the millennia of oppression of women, biased educational systems, and a lot of cultural pressure that keeps women away from STEM fields. So what you're engaged in isn't some rational analysis of a problem; you're just using a few small points of data in isolation to justify your predetermined conclusion.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on genetics; FWIW, I know that (1) the % of women programmers has gone down since the 50s and (2) in Israel, where I grew up, the % of women programmers is substantially higher. As an exercise, though, I'd like to accept your point and explore its repercussions.
Even if women are and will remain a minority for whatever reason, that doesn't mean we should be dicks to our colleagues. My intuition is that most damage being done is not malicious; I don't think programmers as a community are mean-spirited or misogynistic.
Tess has already made the relevant points about over-sensitization and the relative nature of offensiveness. Ultimately, it's up to you to figure out to what extent you are willing to be conscious of the effect you have on those around you.
Well said. Thank you.
I hate to be inflammatory but this is just stupidity masquerading as an evolutionary biology diatribe. No one is talking denying evolutionary theory; methinks thou doth protest too much.
I don't think a bunch of script-kiddies that learned a web framework and now think they are the second coming of Peter Norvig or Dennis but with the added benefit that they can "get naked chicks" are necessarily very high on the evolutionary ladder. Sorry to burst your bubble. I know a couple women PhD students that are brilliant Operating Systems researchers and work almost exclusively in the Linux kernel. They are not whipping RESTful CRUD apps with the Web framework du jour.
FACT: all this jibber jabber about evolutionary biology is completely irrelevant and just misses the point in a rather insidious way.
The root of the matter isn't some egalitarian desire to have a 50/50 gender distribution in tech. It's about acting professional and not making your female colleagues feel uncomfortable or alienated.
Is there a relation between visuospatial ability and programming ability?
You should check out Top Secret Rosies documentary (its on netflix). They were the pioneers of computing.
As for the reason there are less woman in tech... This article might be interesting http://blog.jolieodell.com/2010/09/07/women-in-tech/
What? Who said anything about evolution or achieving a 50/50 female/male split in the industry?