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How innesential are women, anyway? Techs seem to say no room

 
 
Reply Tue 4 Oct, 2016 07:37 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/twitter-women-gender-elon-musk-tim-cook

I'm a woman and not a fearsome techie woman, so I don't know what is going on, just interested, in points of view. Also, I have occasions to misspell.

I'm not the bleeding heart for women here, at least so far, though I am one, but I do know of sharp women techs/scientists, just not me. Some of the smartest scientists I've known were women. I'm author on some papers, but never the lead, for good reason, as I wasn't the lead. In my case it's clear, I was not shut out, and that was in the seventies.

Is this a woman problem or a male shutout? I'm curious.

I was a bleeding heart re women earlier, when we definitely were shut out, back when I was pre-med. Not just me, look at old MCAT admission data. Disgusting, at least in '63 when I read it. Few women in all of US med schools.
The Civil Rights act helped.
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Type: Discussion • Score: 3 • Views: 713 • Replies: 7
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ossobucotemp
 
  0  
Reply Tue 4 Oct, 2016 09:52 pm
I'll try this again with better spelling in a title another day.
edgarblythe
 
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Reply Tue 4 Oct, 2016 09:58 pm
@ossobucotemp,
You did fine, osso. No need to redo it.
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Krumple
 
  -1  
Reply Tue 4 Oct, 2016 10:07 pm
@ossobucotemp,
I think there are several things that get overlooked on studies when it comes to professions of "male dominance" and the interactions of leading roles within those professions. Take a situation where two men are having a debate over a project or goal. If they dissagree their "sex" isn't brought up as a factor in the disagreement. I think in some situations it is a go to card to claim the disagreement is based on sex when the debate is between a man and woman. In some cases it may be true but not in all of them yet when it is brought up it always tends to take the sympathy for it being true. It's just too easy to cry foul to get your way. I think a woman who deserves her position in a profession will never use such an angle but instead rely on her ability and skill in her work to lead to merit of what should be decided. If it gets overlooked then it's a shame but when that merit is undeserving get wine by playing victim of mosagony it's even more shameful.
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rosborne979
 
  2  
Reply Wed 5 Oct, 2016 08:53 am
@ossobucotemp,
I've been in the high tech industry for years. I can't say what motivates other people when populating their twitter feeds, but I can say for certain that when I reach out to hire new people I routinely get far more resumes from men than from women (It's at least a 90% male to 10% female split, maybe more). So it doesn't surprise me that there are more men in high tech than women. And on a pure probability basis, all skills being equal I would expect to see the same dispersal in industry presence, which is pretty much what we see.

So I think this imbalance occurs much earlier than at the corporate level. I think it's occurring at the early school levels and then propagating upward through graduation, but I don't know what's causing it at the earliest stages. I don't know if it's a societal bias which affects what youngsters are interested in, or if it has a gender/biological basis of some sort.

I have a young daughter, and she is very good at technology and very exposed to it (due to my own lifestyle and skills), but she is not focused on technology or on anything else in particular yet. I'm not going to push her one way or the other. I'm going to let her go her own way and see where she goes. I can't change the effects society has on her, but I can make sure she knows she can go any way she wants to go, and that she can compete effectively no matter what she chooses. In 15 years maybe I'll have a better idea of what guides kids in the direction they go.
ossobucotemp
 
  1  
Reply Wed 5 Oct, 2016 11:21 am
@rosborne979,
I'll easily agree the imbalance starts much earlier. I'm open to it being a natural imbalance of interests/inclinations (seems most likely to me) or maybe a mix of natural imbalance and possibly lack of parental or teaching smarts re childrens' capabilities.. There may be bias going on in the field too, but it's not the first thing I think of as a cause for the imbalance.
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Wed 5 Oct, 2016 12:20 pm
@ossobucotemp,
In general, I find techies and engineers to be just about the most pragmatic group you are likely to find. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, and who can say about these Black Swans like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg, they are pretty much the definition of unpredictable. But in general I don't see much intentional bias in technology companies (as a matter of fact, I can't remember ever witnessing or hearing any bias in any hiring decisions that I've been involved in, and I would have been shocked and perplexed if I did). The roles they are trying to fill in technology are very lucrative for them, and most businesses would usually "eat a bug" if it would make them money, so they tend to focus on results more than the face it comes with. At least that's my experience.

That being said, there is clearly a disparity in gender and in races in technology companies. I just don't know what the root cause of it is.
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tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Thu 5 Oct, 2023 12:45 pm
Men took over a job fair intended for women and nonbinary tech workers
https://imgur.com/JqtASSp.jpg
0 Replies
 
 

 
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