Google male engineeer saying female engineers shouldn't be engineers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/


Women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that gives them a more typically-male hormone balance, tend to show male preferences for things rather than people.

Consistent with hormone effects on interests, females with CAH are considerably more interested than are females without CAH in male-typed toys, leisure activities, and occupations, from childhood through adulthood (reviewed in Blakemore et al., 2009; Cohen-Bendahan et al., 2005); adult females with CAH also engage more in male-typed occupations than do females without CAH (Frisén et al., 2009). Male-typed interests of females with CAH are associated with degree of androgen exposure, which can be inferred from genotype or disease characteristics (Berenbaum et al., 2000; Meyer-Bahlburg et al., 2006; Nordenström et al., 2002). Interests of males with CAH are similar to those of males without CAH because both are exposed to high (sex-typical) prenatal androgens and are reared as boys.

Of course, this doesn't mean that one sex or another make better engineers but would appear to hint of a biological distinction that effects the initial pipeline.

But who shapes the pipeline? It's not crazy to think that sex hormones can influence the brain. But I just think we have very, very far to go with math education and gender, and workplace fairness, and fairness between spouses in household labor, before we can conclude that it's all to to "girl brain."

About half the math majors in undergrad are women.

https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/

I was totally confused by this for a while until a someone directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people. (https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/)

Then all those future math teachers leave for the schools after undergrad, and so math grad school ends up with pretty much the same male-tilted gender balance as CS, physics, and engineering grad school.

This seems to me like the clearest proof that women being underrepresented in CS/physics/etc is just about different interests. It’s not that they can’t do the work – all those future math teachers do just as well in their math majors as everyone else. It’s not that stereotypes of what girls can and can’t do are making them afraid to try – whatever stereotypes there are about women and math haven’t dulled future math teachers’ willingness to compete difficult math courses one bit. And it’s not even about colleges being discriminatory and hostile (or at least however discriminatory and hostile they are it doesn’t drive away those future math teachers). It’s just that women are more interested in some jobs, and men are more interested in others. Figure out a way to make math people-oriented, and women flock to it. If there were as many elementary school computer science teachers as there are math teachers, gender balance there would equalize without any other effort.


You actually see this in the medical field, where men and women graduate at similiar rates, but women cluster in people oriented specialties (OB/GYN, pediatrics, psychiatry, which skew 60-80% female) while men cluster in thing oriented specialities where they don't interact with patients (radiology, anesthesiology) and surgery where the patient isn't concious.

I’m not familiar with any gender breakdown of legal specialties, but I will bet you that family law, child-related law, and various prosocial helping-communities law are disproportionately female, and patent law, technology law, and law working with scary dangerous criminals are disproportionately male. And so on for most other fields.

RIGHT. It's all about a person's "interest." And their "interest" has nothing at all to do with the social and economic background and cultural expectations that surround them. The "interest" all just arises from their brain, pure and simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:14:29, your argument would hold more water if women weren't actively reporting hostile environments in the fields that you are saying they are simply less interested in pursuing further studies. I was told from first quarter of my freshman year onward by male classmates that they couldn't believe I could have gotten a higher grade on a physics problem set than them or that I didn't "look" or "dress" like a physicist. I chose to stay in the field, but many women who loved physics quite rationally opted to do other things.

I do think it's probably true that women have broader interests, but you are simply postulating that teaching math is more people-oriented than becoming a professional mathematician. You are not considering whether women are rationally pursuing teaching math to avoid the harassment they experienced experienced in math departments.

Now, my anecdotes aren't data, but there are plenty of data showing women face harassment in these male dominated fields. Like I said, get rid of that harassment, and then you can argue that the outcomes are based on innate differences.

It's also interesting your data on medical specialties, which I don't know the stats behind. All of the radiologists of my generation that I know are women who chose that specialty because it is family-friendly.

Those stats are from the American medical association.

https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-vary-gender

I actually mispoke, turns out OB/GYN is 85%.

Wow, never realized it 's so high. So is there an outreach effort to get more men into those women-dominated areas of medicine?

No there isn't, but there are efforts to get more women into surgery, which residents report isn't very female friendly in terms of culture work/life balance.

The link I posted noted that there was a rapid switch in the perception of OB/GYN since it used to be heavily male dominated not that long ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another scientist seems to agree with the memo writer on the science bits also:
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

I see she links to many studies, but are those accurate and authentic?

This is a writer for Playboy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:14:29, your argument would hold more water if women weren't actively reporting hostile environments in the fields that you are saying they are simply less interested in pursuing further studies. I was told from first quarter of my freshman year onward by male classmates that they couldn't believe I could have gotten a higher grade on a physics problem set than them or that I didn't "look" or "dress" like a physicist. I chose to stay in the field, but many women who loved physics quite rationally opted to do other things.

I do think it's probably true that women have broader interests, but you are simply postulating that teaching math is more people-oriented than becoming a professional mathematician. You are not considering whether women are rationally pursuing teaching math to avoid the harassment they experienced experienced in math departments.

Now, my anecdotes aren't data, but there are plenty of data showing women face harassment in these male dominated fields. Like I said, get rid of that harassment, and then you can argue that the outcomes are based on innate differences.

It's also interesting your data on medical specialties, which I don't know the stats behind. All of the radiologists of my generation that I know are women who chose that specialty because it is family-friendly.

Those stats are from the American medical association.

https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-vary-gender

I actually mispoke, turns out OB/GYN is 85%.

A huge factor in OB/GYN is patients selecting against male doctors. I don't think it's a good measure of what male v female doctors would chose for a specialty sans outside pressures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
RIGHT. It's all about a person's "interest." And their "interest" has nothing at all to do with the social and economic background and cultural expectations that surround them. The "interest" all just arises from their brain, pure and simple.

To deny that it doesn't play a role would be to deny the scientific evidence. I don't think anyone has said that it is only their brain, or only social conditioning.

I think it would be reasonable to say that genetics allow for certain potentials, and that environmental considerations can push one towards or away from fields. Asians in America tend to push their kids towards certain fields for example.

[Anonymous]

That guy probably wrote his piece on his home computer. Maybe he should find out who Grace Hopper is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:14:29, your argument would hold more water if women weren't actively reporting hostile environments in the fields that you are saying they are simply less interested in pursuing further studies. I was told from first quarter of my freshman year onward by male classmates that they couldn't believe I could have gotten a higher grade on a physics problem set than them or that I didn't "look" or "dress" like a physicist. I chose to stay in the field, but many women who loved physics quite rationally opted to do other things.

I do think it's probably true that women have broader interests, but you are simply postulating that teaching math is more people-oriented than becoming a professional mathematician. You are not considering whether women are rationally pursuing teaching math to avoid the harassment they experienced experienced in math departments.

Now, my anecdotes aren't data, but there are plenty of data showing women face harassment in these male dominated fields. Like I said, get rid of that harassment, and then you can argue that the outcomes are based on innate differences.

It's also interesting your data on medical specialties, which I don't know the stats behind. All of the radiologists of my generation that I know are women who chose that specialty because it is family-friendly.

Those stats are from the American medical association.

https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/how-medical-specialties-vary-gender

I actually mispoke, turns out OB/GYN is 85%.

Wow, never realized it 's so high. So is there an outreach effort to get more men into those women-dominated areas of medicine?

Most women don't want male OB/GYN's so it's doubtful there is an outreach effort in that field. And your response to every instance where women are in the majority is getting tired. It's a complete strawman to suggest that every person who believes in diversity and inclusion programs is looking for equal outcomes. They believe that currently, there are not equal opportunities due to systematic biases against women and URMs.

In medicine, there are concerted efforts to increase male nursing staff, because there is a belief that male nurses are subject to discrimination and also that increasing gender diversity in nursing staff's would be beneficial. Similar for male elementary school teachers. There is not, to my knowledge, any strong argument that increasing men in OB/GYN will improve women's reproductive healthcare...can't speak to whether potential male OB/GYNs are being discriminated against.

What I can speak to is that there is both overt and underlying bias against women in tech. It's so apparent, but all of the data backing this up is dismissed because it's coming from reports by "neurotic" women. Google seems to think it would benefit them to address this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
In medicine, there are concerted efforts to increase male nursing staff, because there is a belief that male nurses are subject to discrimination and also that increasing gender diversity in nursing staff's would be beneficial. Similar for male elementary school teachers. There is not, to my knowledge, any strong argument that increasing men in OB/GYN will improve women's reproductive healthcare...can't speak to whether potential male OB/GYNs are being discriminated against.

I thought one of the reasons there was a push for male nurses had to do with hospitals reducing the number of orderlies who used to move/transport patients. They needed more nursing staff which could move an increasingly overweight population. I remember NPR doing a story not that long back about injuries in nursing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/


Women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that gives them a more typically-male hormone balance, tend to show male preferences for things rather than people.

Consistent with hormone effects on interests, females with CAH are considerably more interested than are females without CAH in male-typed toys, leisure activities, and occupations, from childhood through adulthood (reviewed in Blakemore et al., 2009; Cohen-Bendahan et al., 2005); adult females with CAH also engage more in male-typed occupations than do females without CAH (Frisén et al., 2009). Male-typed interests of females with CAH are associated with degree of androgen exposure, which can be inferred from genotype or disease characteristics (Berenbaum et al., 2000; Meyer-Bahlburg et al., 2006; Nordenström et al., 2002). Interests of males with CAH are similar to those of males without CAH because both are exposed to high (sex-typical) prenatal androgens and are reared as boys.

Of course, this doesn't mean that one sex or another make better engineers but would appear to hint of a biological distinction that effects the initial pipeline.

But who shapes the pipeline? It's not crazy to think that sex hormones can influence the brain. But I just think we have very, very far to go with math education and gender, and workplace fairness, and fairness between spouses in household labor, before we can conclude that it's all to to "girl brain."

About half the math majors in undergrad are women.

https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/

I was totally confused by this for a while until a someone directed me to the data on what people actually do with math degrees. The answer is mostly: they become math teachers. They work in elementary schools and high schools, with people. (https://datausa.io/story/06-16-2016_math-teachers/)

Then all those future math teachers leave for the schools after undergrad, and so math grad school ends up with pretty much the same male-tilted gender balance as CS, physics, and engineering grad school.

This seems to me like the clearest proof that women being underrepresented in CS/physics/etc is just about different interests. It’s not that they can’t do the work – all those future math teachers do just as well in their math majors as everyone else. It’s not that stereotypes of what girls can and can’t do are making them afraid to try – whatever stereotypes there are about women and math haven’t dulled future math teachers’ willingness to compete difficult math courses one bit. And it’s not even about colleges being discriminatory and hostile (or at least however discriminatory and hostile they are it doesn’t drive away those future math teachers). It’s just that women are more interested in some jobs, and men are more interested in others. Figure out a way to make math people-oriented, and women flock to it. If there were as many elementary school computer science teachers as there are math teachers, gender balance there would equalize without any other effort.


You actually see this in the medical field, where men and women graduate at similiar rates, but women cluster in people oriented specialties (OB/GYN, pediatrics, psychiatry, which skew 60-80% female) while men cluster in thing oriented specialities where they don't interact with patients (radiology, anesthesiology) and surgery where the patient isn't concious.

I’m not familiar with any gender breakdown of legal specialties, but I will bet you that family law, child-related law, and various prosocial helping-communities law are disproportionately female, and patent law, technology law, and law working with scary dangerous criminals are disproportionately male. And so on for most other fields.

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

There are already outreach programs for women, extra resources given to women, support groups for women, professional groups for women for networking. Teaching styles, communication styles, and work processes have been changed to be more female friendly. More workplaces offer telework, flex time, and other child friendly policies. Corporations provide education to their workforce or what is considered inappropriate behavior and HR staff get involved in discplinary actions when staff don't meet these needs. Its not the 1950's anymore.

Even in scandinavia, arguably the most gender equitable region in the world has similar divisions between male dominated jobs and female oriented jobs, even when they actually have set asides for research grants and the like.

What do you suggest?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

There are already outreach programs for women, extra resources given to women, support groups for women, professional groups for women for networking. Teaching styles, communication styles, and work processes have been changed to be more female friendly. More workplaces offer telework, flex time, and other child friendly policies. Corporations provide education to their workforce or what is considered inappropriate behavior and HR staff get involved in discplinary actions when staff don't meet these needs. Its not the 1950's anymore.

Even in scandinavia, arguably the most gender equitable region in the world has similar divisions between male dominated jobs and female oriented jobs, even when they actually have set asides for research grants and the like.

What do you suggest?

Forgot to mention that most overt discrimination is gone.

[Anonymous]

White males seem to assume they are the best by default and that any attempt to hire blacks or women is as one poster on this thread said "bs".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

There are already outreach programs for women, extra resources given to women, support groups for women, professional groups for women for networking. Teaching styles, communication styles, and work processes have been changed to be more female friendly. More workplaces offer telework, flex time, and other child friendly policies. Corporations provide education to their workforce or what is considered inappropriate behavior and HR staff get involved in discplinary actions when staff don't meet these needs. Its not the 1950's anymore.

Even in scandinavia, arguably the most gender equitable region in the world has similar divisions between male dominated jobs and female oriented jobs, even when they actually have set asides for research grants and the like.

What do you suggest?

Punish the men who undermine all of the things you list above. Consistently, publicly, repeatedly, until they get the message.

Google just fired one guy. They should probably fire a thousand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

There are already outreach programs for women, extra resources given to women, support groups for women, professional groups for women for networking. Teaching styles, communication styles, and work processes have been changed to be more female friendly. More workplaces offer telework, flex time, and other child friendly policies. Corporations provide education to their workforce or what is considered inappropriate behavior and HR staff get involved in discplinary actions when staff don't meet these needs. Its not the 1950's anymore.

Even in scandinavia, arguably the most gender equitable region in the world has similar divisions between male dominated jobs and female oriented jobs, even when they actually have set asides for research grants and the like.

What do you suggest?

Forgot to mention that most overt discrimination is gone.

This thread is literally about a man who posted a 10-page memo on his company intranet that states as a scientific fact that women, on average, have more neuroticism which may contribute to lower numbers of them in "high stress jobs" (e.g., leadership roles), while men have a higher drive for status.

How much more overt does it have to be? "Women biologically can't do this job, while men are driven to excel at it."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Women say, over and over, they would like more access to these fields, but they are discouraged from pursuing them, they are harassed, and they are discriminated against, and at some point its easier to go into teaching or family law or pediatrics where you don't have to deal with asshole brogrammers or litigators or surgeons all day. And instead of leaders saying, hey, we're probably missing out on a lot of great talent (getting the top 10% of men and top 10% of women is better than getting the top 20% of men, after all)--maybe we should listen to what the women are saying and think about whether we should try and change the way we do things to maximize the talent pool, all we hear is "it's just about different interests" and everyone carries on with the status quo.

This thread, and the comments on every article about this manifesto, and the eight gazillion posts on Reddit, are all full of men trying to justify what this guy said. TRY AND JUST ACCEPT WHAT WOMEN KEEP TELLING YOU. Stop assuming they are wrong. Try and imagine what you would do if they were right.

There are already outreach programs for women, extra resources given to women, support groups for women, professional groups for women for networking. Teaching styles, communication styles, and work processes have been changed to be more female friendly. More workplaces offer telework, flex time, and other child friendly policies. Corporations provide education to their workforce or what is considered inappropriate behavior and HR staff get involved in discplinary actions when staff don't meet these needs. Its not the 1950's anymore.

Even in scandinavia, arguably the most gender equitable region in the world has similar divisions between male dominated jobs and female oriented jobs, even when they actually have set asides for research grants and the like.

What do you suggest?

Forgot to mention that most overt discrimination is gone.

No it's not, actually. And some of the comments on this very thread bear that out.

But to your other point, all of those things exist (though not universally), and they are making a difference. Women are making gains, albeit slowly. There is some social science research to suggest that it's really hard to get past the 12-15% representation threshold which might explain some of the reasons it's slow in some heavily male fields. But overall the situation is probably better than it used to be.

But this thread isn't about women asking for more. It's about women pushing back on a man who claims that all of the things you mentioned are unnecessary and actually harmful. So what more do we want? Don't listen to and defend that guy.