The Diversity Pipeline

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

23 minutes ago, Seli said:

Again missing the actual point, the point Dalmore so carefully ignored. Why the hell should a tech job be stressful? Which is at the core of his issues, he can't see past his interpretation of what the work should be. And seems to be one of the big issues of most people that don't see the problem underlying that piece, assuming some job requirements just have to be the way they currently are.

Didn't he address this by making a number of suggestions as to how to improve the google workplace to make it less stressful?

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Didn't he address this by making a number of suggestions as to how to improve the google workplace to make it less stressful?

Not particularly. Point of fact, he emphasized how that stress was a good thing and that they should attempt to keep it that way, and instead steer women towards other roles in Google if they were going to go into the industry in the first place.

Back to C4JS' point about how Damore didn't think women should go into tech and how I misread that - let's go over what he exactly said.

How google shouldn't attempt to change things:

Quote

We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming
and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how
people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive
ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get
female students into coding might be doing this).

How google should also continue not to change anything, because women aren't as competitive:

Quote

This doesn't mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google.
Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn't
necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what's been done in
education.

Endorsing women to not work full time is an option he does suggest:

Quote

Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for
status on average
○ Unfortunately, as long as tech and leadership remain high status, lucrative
careers, men may disproportionately want to be in them. Allowing and truly
endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work though can keep more women in
tech.

On google not changing anything:

Quote

Philosophically, I don't think we should do arbitrary social engineering of tech just to make it
appealing to equal portions of both men and women. For each of these changes, we need
principled reasons for why it helps Google; that is, we should be optimizing for Google—with
Google's diversity being a component of that. For example, currently those willing to work extra
hours or take extra stress will inevitably get ahead and if we try to change that too much, it may
have disastrous consequences. Also, when considering the costs and benefits, we should keep
in mind that Google's funding is finite so its allocation is more zero-sum than is generally
acknowledged.

On women and men evolving to protect women (with no citation given at all)

Quote

In addition to the Left’s affinity for those it sees as weak, humans are generally biased towards
protecting females. As mentioned before, this likely evolved because males are biologically
disposable and because women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men.

On not wanting empathy (which was earlier stated to be a woman thing:

Quote

De-emphasize empathy.
○ I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I
strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do,
relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on
anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and
dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about
the facts.

And finally, on calling women neurotic (also without any citation)

Quote

Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
○ This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist
and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

How you can claim with a straight face that introducing a work environment that should reduce empathy, reduce cooperation, increase stress levels, increase bad work-life balance - AND also say that these are precisely the traits women look for, and think this means that he doesn't want more women in tech - that's insane. Both can't be true. I don't care how many times in the memo he states that he is in favor of diversity; what his primary thesis is around is specifically saying how women aren't suited for tech, and he gives multiple examples of how that's the case - often without even a cursory examination of data about it. 

[Sheep the Evicted]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

How you can claim with a straight face that introducing a work environment that should reduce empathy, reduce cooperation, increase stress levels, increase bad work-life balance - AND also say that these are precisely the traits women look for, and think this means that he doesn't want more women in tech - that's insane. Both can't be true. I don't care how many times in the memo he states that he is in favor of diversity; what his primary thesis is around is specifically saying how women aren't suited for tech, and he gives multiple examples of how that's the case - often without even a cursory examination of data about it. 

 

Reduce co-operation ? Increase stress ?

 

Quote

Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do.

 

Quote

Make tech and leadership less stressful. Google already partly does this with its many stress reduction courses and benefits.

 

That sounds like he's trying to reduce cooperation and increase stress to you ? You don't think maybe he's weighing up the pro's and con's of current policy decisions and how to improve them ?

You know what I'm done arguing with you over the text. I see a perfectly innocent and reasonable string of sentences and you seem to see Damore ordering people into the gas chambers. Its an incredible ability. Also a case in point on why we rely on facts and figures in the modern world and why Damore is recommending we continue to apply it to these black-box diversity programs.

 

edit - Also at the bottom of this article there is a list of several studies that show women are often biased FOR (just like Damore said), especially in STEM and especially by other women. Obviously no one makes a fuss about this and just like HE said earlier in the thread admissions boards will "bend over backwards" to get their gender diversity numbers up.

[Kalbear]

23 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

That sounds like he's trying to reduce cooperation and increase stress to you ? You don't think maybe he's weighing up the pro's and con's of current policy decisions and how to improve them ?

He also says in the same article how cooperation isn't that great and would reduce potentially value, and that high-stress environments are good for high performers. So...yes, it does sound like that to me. 

23 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

You know what I'm done arguing with you over the text. I see a perfectly innocent and reasonable string of sentences and you seem to see Damore ordering people into the gas chambers. Its an incredible ability. Also a case in point on why we rely on facts and figures in the modern world and why Damore is recommending we continue to apply it to these black-box diversity programs.

Yes, because pointing out problems with a text is precisely the same as comparing someone to a Nazi. Especially when they later double down on it and compare having problems with his work - which has been shown repeatedly to have major, major academic faults - as 'revealing that Santa Claus is fake'. 

Again, if you want to point out how diversity programs haven't worked that well, or (more importantly) how white men have been left out of a lot of this, cool beans. I don't have a problem with Damore's arguments for the most part there. It's when he takes his evopsych pseudoscience and makes it the core argument about why women aren't being found in tech that I (and many others) had a problem with. 

23 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

edit - Also at the bottom of this article there is a list of several studies that show women are often biased FOR (just like Damore said), especially in STEM and especially by other women. Obviously no one makes a fuss about this and just like HE said earlier in the thread admissions boards will "bend over backwards" to get their gender diversity numbers up.

I'm really not sure what point you're thinking you're making here, but this wasn't cited in Damore's memo, he doesn't bring it up, and it isn't particularly surprising. 

[Seli]

8 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

Well then I'd say your standards are unrealistically high. What's the point of measuring height or hair colour or number of teeth then ? Because if you grew up in a society with very poor nutrition/lived underground/was exposed to radiation.. then it would all be very different and so it can't be inherent.

 

We know IQ is very good for explaining success in our societies, we know its about 80% heritable between adults and that there isn't really anything you can do to change that. In the real world anything that explains 80% of something wouldn't be considered a factor, or even the main component, people would just say its the entire cause.  What more do you want ?

My standards might be informed by a background in science.

We understand IQ so badly that we have to keep re-calibrating the scores every few years, otherwise IQ scores would have been rising for the past decades at least. And we don't actually seem to understand why IQ scores would be rising. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

At the same time there is a very good indication that school results and tests scores (admittedly not necessarily IQ) are influenced by simple things as food access ( http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-events-and-publications/impact-case-studies/the-breakfast-effect-on-school-performance/) or glasses (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/17/how-free-eyeglasses-are-boosting-test-scores-in-baltimore-215501 ).

So what I'd want is an understanding of what IQ is. And in absence of that a healthy scepticism of its validity as an inherent predictive of what people can achieve, rather than a descriptive that accidentally captures the biases in our society.

[Sheep the Evicted]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

He also says in the same article how cooperation isn't that great and would reduce potentially value, and that high-stress environments are good for high performers. So...yes, it does sound like that to me.

 

No, he doesn't say anything like that at all. I just checked. Are you going to supply quotes that actually say the things your accusing him of saying or have you gone full post-truth ?

 

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

...which has been shown repeatedly to have major, major academic faults...

 

Really, where ? Because if there was a slam-dunk scientific argument against the Damore memo i'm sure we would have all heard it by now. The wiki page has an extensive list of all the scientific responses, most of them agree that he got it right including Haidts' powerful meta-analyses. Rosalind Barrets' response was a shitty journalistic fluff piece where all she really said was that she didn't agree. Adam Grant engaged with the actual science pretty well but after the Slate Star Codex response it's become pretty clear that he's a business professor talking about psychology to actual psychologist. Finally Saeddin's piece is pretty decent but even then she agrees that alot of his science is broadly right but that he is drawing conclusions too strongly from science that is still in play. Also she sidestepped alot of his arguments.

So I ask again where is the smoking gun ? Where exactly, specifically are Damore's "major, major academic faults" ? See what I did there, I quoted the things you said exactly as you said them. Like an intellectually honest person would do.

 

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'm really not sure what point you're thinking you're making here, but this wasn't cited in Damore's memo, he doesn't bring it up, and it isn't particularly surprising. 

You asked for citations about Damore claim that we evolved to protect women. I have no idea where he got this from  so instead I supplied evidence for the weaker form of his claim that we are often bias in FAVOUR of women even in the supposedly sexist silicon valley. But your probably right that it was unnecessary.

 

7 hours ago, Seli said:

So what I'd want is an understanding of what IQ is.

 

Well we don't even know what gravity really is or how the fundamental forces of nature actually, really work. Doesn't stop us from being able to manipulate our world at awe-inspiring levels of precision. Same with IQ; there is clearly something there and it is clearly useful. If its good enough for gravity why can't it be good enough for IQ.

Also if you read the bottom of that wiki link you'll see that the Flyn Effect has basically stopped in many first world countries and is perhaps even reversing in some places. Just one of the many depressing IQ facts.

[Jo498]

For me the main point of Scott's text on Slate Star Codex was that the statistical differences between men and women in personality traits seem well established and that it is not important what possible (evolutionary) explanations for these differences might be.* And these differences in personality fit like a glove with lots of subfield preference differences among the genders that established themselves across a variety of fields (medicine, law) where 100 or only 50 years ago the prejudices against women were as strong as in e.g. engineering. So the personality differences apparently can explain what neither hypothetic (or at least only weakly established) differences in ability (women slightly better in language, men slightly better in spatial cognition) nor presumed prejudice (because these prejudices against women were only 100 years ago as strong or stronger in some fields now dominated by women as in those fields still dominated by men) can explain.

Scott also shows that, at least among "normal jobs" (i.e. not top 1% hyper competitive (aka pychopath) stuff like Wall Street and Big Law) there is no clear correlation between average/typical compensation and those preferences. (According to Scott's examples the typical (mostly female) veterinarian makes slightly more than the typical (mostly male) programmer and it was similar when comparing preferences in medicine, psychology etc.

* I think for virtually all modern work environments we should keep in mind that they are historically highly untypical. Disregarding the hunter/gatherer stage, between settling down for farming  and the 19th century almost everybody, regardless of gender, worked at home, at their own family farm or small business/trade. So we have 7000-10000 years of small scale household/village economies where men don't really do high risk mammoth hunting or compete for promotion or bonuses or whatever but go to the fields or to their cobbler's workshop downstairs whereas the wife not only cares for the children but does in fact a similar amount of "productive" work as the husband, such as harvesting, cooking, baking, brewing, gardening, conserving, producing of textiles, mending etc. And of course women were not always restricted to a house but would work in the fields, go to the market, buy stuff, sell stuff etc. So if one wants to go evopsych and if it is plausible that not only the earliest (hunter/gatherer) stage but also the last 10000 years were evolutionary important (and stuff like lactose tolerance seems to show that they clearly were) one should not jump from mammoth hunting to corporate law but think about how most people's work lives looked like in between.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 8/25/2017 at 9:27 PM, Sheep the Evicted said:

I'm not sure what you mean by the first paragraph so I'll only focus on the bit i understand. Damore was trying to discuss the reasons behind population differences with regard to biology (not just culture), because yeah that's how intelligent policy decisions are made you weigh up all the information in front of you; turns out this topic is not open for discussion.

 

Well sure, that's what he was trying to discuss. But he was overstating and / or oversimplifying the role of biology. Suggesting biology was the major reason in an 80:20 gender difference in the techhie jobs is a huge and erroneous leap, which was made by taking a few facts removed from context and filtering them through ideology.

Re: not talking about science. I don't mean within the scientific discipline where these things are studied, it's vital that these things continue to be examined and explored within the discipline. I'm talking about in the pop-science sphere where incomplete hypotheses that do not yet have coherent theories can end up doing more harm than good to the understanding of the lay population. Especially where public policy is being decided on the basis of a poor understanding of the science.

Keeping things in-house happens all the time. Part of good science communication is knowing when to go public with something. Imagine if NASA detected 1 signal that fits what NASA would expect from an extra solar planet with life. Now it would be a fact that NASA picked up a signal consistent with life on a planet outside the solar system. But it is not a fact that NASA has confirmed the detection of life on another planet. However, if you go out with that fact too early all of a sudden you have the popular media confirming that life has been detected on another plant. So that's science you don't talk about outside of those studying it.

What public good is served by finding that there is an IQ difference between population X and population Y without being able to fully explain the reasons why? It's better to sit on that finding until all the possible causes have been fully investigated and a complete theory has been formulated. Going out to the public before understanding is complete, especially on an issue like this, is inflammatory and not helpful or useful. And possibly once all the reasons are known, it may end up being a fact that never needs to be out in the public because it is easier to address the reasons behind the fact without creating any public or political white noise with people talking about  and focusing on an element that is not useful for public policy or social discourse.

An analogy relating to disease could be helpful. You have a headache, what is taking up all your attention is this fact that you have a headache. But the headache is only a symptom (i.e. IQ difference is only a symptom) and is therefore not the important information or the information that is necessary to make a good decision about what to do. When you have a headache a doctor is not simply going to go OK, you have a headache, here's a painkiller. He or she is going to try to find out the reason why you have a headache. The Doctor does some preliminary examinations. The initial examinations indicate either brain cancer or a migraine. The doctor doesn't tell you right at that point that you might have cancer because it's too early to say. He or she might say, you may have a migraine but I need to do some more checks to make sure that's what it is, because prescribing migraine drugs if you don't have a migraine won't help. They don't say it's not cancer, because it might be, but to say it might be cancer at this early stage could cause unnecessary anxiety. And with cancer there's always enough time to do the necessary tests to become more sure of the situation before revealing the devastating news. The time to reveal cancer is not when the doctor has a few facts that are consistent with cancer. The time to reveal cancer is when the doctor has sufficient facts to be more sure that it is cancer than anything else.

[Seli]

On the pipeline, there is this interesting piece in Wired pointing out some of the issues and barriers women face.

https://www.wired.com/story/why-men-dont-believe-the-data-on-gender-bias-in-science/

Quote

Last month three senior researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla filed lawsuits complaining of long-term gender discrimination; the complaints allege that women don’t have equal access to internal funding and promotions. These lawsuits highlight the real reason for the lack of women in science: Leaders in the field—men and sometimes women—simply don’t believe that women are as good at doing science.

A vast literature of sociology research shows time after time, women in science are deemed to be inferior to men and are evaluated as less capable when performing similar or even identical work. This systemic devaluation of women results in an array of real consequences: shorter, less praise-worthy letters of recommendation; fewer research grants, awards, and invitations to speak at conferences; and lower citation rates for their research. Such wide-ranging devaluation of women's work makes it harder for them to progress in the field.

Which is something probably not limited to the scientific community.

[Happy Ent]

Let me plug some recent meta-summaries from Heterodox Academy.

1. Heterodox Academy, Part I: The Google Memo: What Does the Research Say About Gender Differences? This is a solid summary of the reactions to Damore (which I didn’t find interesting), and a readable introduction to a handful of meta-studies about gender differences (which I did find interesting and learned a bit more). https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does-the-research-say-about-gender-differences/

2. Heterodox Academy, Part II: The Most Authoritative Review Paper on Gender Differences. This blog post lauds the (well-known) Halpern et al. (2007) paper, which was written in response to the controversy surrounding Larry Summer’s remarks some 10 years ago. I know this paper quite well, maybe it is indeed the best place to start reading up on these issues, though it is a decade old by now. https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/25/the-most-authoritative-review-paper-on-gender-differences/

[Kalbear]

On 8/26/2017 at 7:47 AM, Sheep the Evicted said:

 

No, he doesn't say anything like that at all. I just checked. Are you going to supply quotes that actually say the things your accusing him of saying or have you gone full post-truth ?

Sure. Here's the quote I'm referring to:

 

Quote

Women on average are more cooperative ○ Allow those exhibiting cooperative behavior to thrive. Recent updates to Perf may be doing this to an extent, but maybe there's more we can do. ○ This doesn't mean that we should remove all competitiveness from Google. Competitiveness and self reliance can be valuable traits and we shouldn't necessarily disadvantage those that have them, like what's been done in education.

 

On 8/26/2017 at 7:47 AM, Sheep the Evicted said:

Really, where ? Because if there was a slam-dunk scientific argument against the Damore memo i'm sure we would have all heard it by now. The wiki page has an extensive list of all the scientific responses, most of them agree that he got it right including Haidts' powerful meta-analyses. Rosalind Barrets' response was a shitty journalistic fluff piece where all she really said was that she didn't agree. Adam Grant engaged with the actual science pretty well but after the Slate Star Codex response it's become pretty clear that he's a business professor talking about psychology to actual psychologist. Finally Saeddin's piece is pretty decent but even then she agrees that alot of his science is broadly right but that he is drawing conclusions too strongly from science that is still in play. Also she sidestepped alot of his arguments.

So I ask again where is the smoking gun ? Where exactly, specifically are Damore's "major, major academic faults" ? See what I did there, I quoted the things you said exactly as you said them. Like an intellectually honest person would do.

The wiki page doesn't have an extensive list of ALL the responses, but I'll respond to this despite your vitriol about it. For starters, the Saedin article is quite good - and I am very interested in what you think she sidestepped. Then there's this Quilette article from four scientists who go through other claims, there's Schmitt's response after Damore actually cited him, telling him 'no, that's not how it works', there's women in comp sci saying why Damore got it wrong, and there's even a stat analyst showing why his approach was a failure.

You're right in that there aren't a whole lot of people claiming that women and men aren't different or that even some of those differences may manifest themselves in career decisions. There is almost no one claiming that Damore is correct in his weighing of these differences being the primary or sole reason for those discrepancies.

On 8/26/2017 at 7:47 AM, Sheep the Evicted said:

You asked for citations about Damore claim that we evolved to protect women. I have no idea where he got this from  so instead I supplied evidence for the weaker form of his claim that we are often bias in FAVOUR of women even in the supposedly sexist silicon valley. But your probably right that it was unnecessary.

Those two things really aren't conflated, but I'm glad you're admitting that. 

On 8/26/2017 at 7:47 AM, Sheep the Evicted said:

Well we don't even know what gravity really is or how the fundamental forces of nature actually, really work. Doesn't stop us from being able to manipulate our world at awe-inspiring levels of precision. Same with IQ; there is clearly something there and it is clearly useful. If its good enough for gravity why can't it be good enough for IQ.

Here's a good example: hypothyroidism and T4. For a long time the standard practice to help people with hypothyroidism - diagnosed by measuring levels of TSH in your blood - was to give synthetic T4 and then remeasure. That makes sense, right? Well, the problem turned out that for a whole lot of people, giving them T4 didn't help their symptoms - it only helped the levels of TSH in their blood.

Why is this a big deal? Because measuring IQ without understanding what it actually says is going on and then treating the symptom (low IQ) incorrectly may fail. If the major cause of lower IQ is due to inherent genetics, that's one thing (and implies one treatment); if it is instead due to nutritional defects, that's another, and if it's due to environment, that's another. And (for example) if you broadcast that IQ is mostly genetic and give people ammunition to be oppressive to minorities, when it turns out that environmental stress and oppression is a major cause in lower IQ, you'll be doing something that directly causes a bigger issue than if you had done nothing.

 

[Sheep the Evicted]

So I had a really busy week and was happy to let this thread lie but Heterodox just published Part 3 of their Google Memo analysis. They have come to the conclusion that Male Variability IS a thing that happens in humans as well as other species which is a pretty bold statement as not even Jordan Peterson or Steven Pinker [in his debate on gender here] wanted to make that argument.

 

On 27/08/2017 at 11:30 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

Well sure, that's what he was trying to discuss. But he was overstating and / or oversimplifying the role of biology. Suggesting biology was the major reason in an 80:20 gender difference in the techhie jobs is a huge and erroneous leap, which was made by taking a few facts removed from context and filtering them through ideology.

 

On 28/08/2017 at 6:57 PM, Kalbear said:

You're right in that there aren't a whole lot of people claiming that women and men aren't different or that even some of those differences may manifest themselves in career decisions. There is almost no one claiming that Damore is correct in his weighing of these differences being the primary or sole reason for those discrepancies.

 

Good thing Damore isn't making those claims either, which is why I called his memo reasonable and why I'm so puzzled by this outcry. I quote:

 

Quote

I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

 

Bolded Mine.

He is asking people to stop ignoring biology because it DOES matter. It seems to matter alot. How else can you explain the Nordic paradox ? Ie. The more equal society becomes, the more different men and women seem to get. As shown by the Scandinavian countries, the freer a women is the less likely she is to choose to be an engineer.

 

And no I don't know why he included the word ability when he was arguing preferences for 9 pages. I know the memo went through several drafts; maybe in one of the earlier ones he mentioned Male Variability like Larry Sommers did and forgot to edit the conclusion.

 

Anyway, thats me pretty much done with the thread.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Sheep the Evicted said:

He is asking people to stop ignoring biology because it DOES matter.

Okay, we can probably get behind that. Not that it's clear that biology was being ignored, mind you, but I'm sure most everyone is fairly cool with the notion that biology does change things.

Just now, Sheep the Evicted said:

It seems to matter alot.

There's the problem. Citation very much needed. Also, I'm sure you care about this alot.

Just now, Sheep the Evicted said:

How else can you explain the Nordic paradox ? Ie. The more equal society becomes, the more different men and women seem to get. As shown by the Scandinavian countries, the freer a women is the less likely she is to choose to be an engineer.

There are a whole lot of explanations, the easiest one being that the Scandinavian countries have cultural, environmental (being above the 45th parallel and in cold climes is different) and biological differences from other humans that makes them different. Without further study, saying that it's exclusively or even heavily biological in nature is irresponsible and unimaginative. 

Heck, the paper itself that you cited mentions this:

Quote

Ultimately, these competing approaches—social roles, evolutionary psychology, and measurement artifacts—are not mutually exclusive, and each may explain part of the observed variability in personality sex differences across cultures.

Just now, Sheep the Evicted said:

And no I don't know why he included the word ability when he was arguing preferences for 9 pages. I know the memo went through several drafts; maybe in one of the earlier ones he mentioned Male Variability like Larry Sommers did and forgot to edit the conclusion.

Or maybe, like his tweets and replies later indicate, he believes ability is the problem and not preference. 

It's also interesting that he focuses on neuroticism while ignoring the other (positive) psychological traits mentioned - agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness. I would think in particular having conscientiousness would be a positive thing, but apparently not.

 

[Kalbear]

29 minutes ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

So I had a really busy week and was happy to let this thread lie but Heterodox just published Part 3 of their Google Memo analysis. They have come to the conclusion that Male Variability IS a thing that happens in humans as well as other species which is a pretty bold statement as not even Jordan Peterson or Steven Pinker [in his debate on gender here] wanted to make that argument.

Which is odd, given that they highlight a number of studies that indicate that male variability isn't (only) a biological thing, and appears to be quite variable across cultures, as their second point highlights:

Quote

The gender difference in variability has reduced substantially over time within the United States and is variable across cultures. It is clearly responsive to social and cultural factors (see Hyde & Mertz, 2009; Wai et al., 2010); Educational programs can be effective.  It is also clear that there are cultural/societal influences, as the male:female variability ratios can vary considerably across cultures (e.g., Machin & Pekkarinen, 2008).

They also conclude:

Quote

Gender differences in math/science ability, achievement, and performance are small or nil. (See especially the studies by Hyde; see also this review paper by Spelke, 2005). There are two exceptions to this statement

and

Quote

This conclusion does not deny that various forms of bias, harassment, and discouragement exist and may contribute to outcome disparities, nor does it imply that the differences in interest are biologically fixed and cannot be changed in future generations.

They are charitable about  what Damore was attempting to do, and in fact if he had framed it as the heterodox academy did there probably would not be nearly the outcry that there was. But...he didn't. 

[Clueless Northman]

On ‎23‎.‎06‎.‎2017 at 2:11 PM, zelticgar said:

 

Year	Bachelor's degrees
	Total		Males	Females	Females as a %
	Number	Annual % Change
1996-97	25,422	3.70%	18,527	6,895	27.10%
1997-98	27,829	9.50%	20,372	7,457	26.80%
1998-99	30,552	9.80%	22,289	8,263	27.00%
1995-96	24,506	-0.09%	17,757	6,749	27.50%
1999-2000	37,788	23.70%	27,185	10,603	28.10%
2000-01	44,142	16.80%	31,923	12,219	27.70%
2001-02	50,365	14.10%	36,462	13,903	27.60%
2002-03	57,433	14.00%	41,950	15,483	27.00%
2003-04	59,488	3.60%	44,585	14,903	25.10%
2004-05	54,111	-9.00%	42,125	11,986	22.20%
2005-06	47,480	-12.30%	37,705	9,775	20.60%
2006-07	42,170	-11.20%	34,342	7,828	18.60%
2007-08	38,476	-8.80%	31,694	6,782	17.60%
2008-09	37,992	-1.30%	31,213	6,779	17.80%
2009-10	39,593	4.20%	32,414	7,179	18.10%
2010-11	43,066	8.80%	35,477	7,589	17.60%
2011-12	47,406	10.10%	38,796	8,610	18.20%
2012-13	50,961	7.50%	41,874	9,087	17.80%
2013-14	55,271	8.50%	45,320	9,951	18.00%
2014-15	59,581	7.80%	48,840	10,741	18.00%

 

Ok, I come here way too late after the original discussion, but still. Did anyone explain what happened here? Sorry, just read the first 2 pages and last 2, am a bit tired to read the whole thread, and it seems the discussion immeditately went about the general low ratios of women in STEM, when here we have some hard data that might be interesting to look at and analyse if we actually want to improve the situation or come to some partial conclusions about the causes of that situation...

In the tables, it's quite obvious that the Undergrad ratios were steady before 2002 and after the 2002-2007 drop. The Masters table shows women ratio were growing before 2002 and are growing again after 2007. So there's something that fucking happened during that time, and considering when it happened, it wasn't social media bullying or bloody Gamergate that made things really bad for a time. I could link this to some decisions taken during Bush administration, but that sounds highly dubious - the drop happened during his tenure and stopped before Obama came in, not after Obama changed things.

I'm actually wondering if it isn't linked to the tech burst of 1999, if this relates to the year when people got their degrees - more women might have considered it a hopeless job market, meanwhile there was a higher share of boy geeks than girl geeks, and they went along with STEM and CS, no matter the job prospects. Things looked a bit brighter after 2003 and the drop ceased. Still weird that the women ratio didn't go up again for undergraduates... But that would be merely gut feeling as for why this would happen, so very possibly wrong.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

Good thing Damore isn't making those claims either, which is why I called his memo reasonable and why I'm so puzzled by this outcry. I quote:

 

Quote

I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

Actually he is making those claims. Just because he uses the phrase "in part" does not mean he sees it as a minor element. The fact that his thesis seems to suggest we should simply accept that there is a big difference and there always will be a big difference and we should not be putting policies in place to reduce the big difference, pretty much means he believes the cause of the difference is immutable, which means the cause it principally biology. I'm more than willing to accept that there may be immutable biological differences that mean there is always going to be more males in CS and engineering than females. But I have not seen any objective evidence to suggest that immutable biological difference should account for an 80:20 split. And then of course there is the fact that evolution is a thing, and evolution changes biology, so even biological differences are not immutable in the long term.

It is important to take biology into account, but it has to be taken into proper account and given the correct weighting, and it is important to dismiss it as a significant factor when it is found to be an insignificant factor. And from what I've read Damore, and you by reason of saying Damore's memo is reasonable on it's scientific merits, are overstating the biological element.

 

[Jo498]

7 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

Ok, I come here way too late after the original discussion, but still. Did anyone explain what happened here? Sorry, just read the first 2 pages and last 2, am a bit tired to read the whole thread, and it seems the discussion immeditately went about the general low ratios of women in STEM, when here we have some hard data that might be interesting to look at and analyse if we actually want to improve the situation or come to some partial conclusions about the causes of that situation...

I'm actually wondering if it isn't linked to the tech burst of 1999, if this relates to the year when people got their degrees - more women might have considered it a hopeless job market, meanwhile there was a higher share of boy geeks than girl geeks, and they went along with STEM and CS, no matter the job prospects. Things looked a bit brighter after 2003 and the drop ceased. Still weird that the women ratio didn't go up again for undergraduates... But that would be merely gut feeling as for why this would happen, so very possibly wrong.

I think I speculated further above along similar lines, that there might have been a "boom" in the 90s (general digital optimism, year 2k, dot com bubble etc) that led to a higher percentage followed by the bust.

Of course this does not really explain the gender percentages. But I think it is plausible that such a boom-bust background could explain that people indecisive between several subjects decided pro/con CS and that more females were among such students. The latter is somewhat plausible because the very fact of a comparably low percentage of peers might be a factor against majoring in a certain subject. (The point that CS is not a terribly attractive subject per se has been made by Happy Ent, so it makes sense that student's decision about a major are more strongly influenced by such external (economy) or seemingly trivial factors, compared to e.g. veterinary medicine where I am fairly confident that most people chose it because of genuine interest and love for animals and/or respective backgrounds in farming, riding horses etc.)

I'd also speculate that even in the 1990s CS was comparably less entrenched as a "masculine" field than older engineering fields, like chemical or mechanical engineering that seem much closer to the factory floor.

[Jo498]

I think it was in a rather different field but a few years ago Scott of Slate Star Codex had a great text about biology being far easier to manipulate than some other things, like social factors. (At least since ca. mid 20th century. Best example is probably the birth control pill.) It is very context dependent which factors should count as "hard" and which ones as "soft".

[Seli]

And in the real world we have an example of a women led company that found they needed to invent a male cofounder to be taken seriously by collaborators. Anecdotal of course, but a nice showcase of how there are still plenty of barriers for women that want to operate in the world of technology that seem to have little to do with aptitude. It seems we still have problems with men taking women seriously, even when they are working for them.

Quote

But along the way, Gazin and Dwyer had to come up with clever ways to overcome some of the more unexpected obstacles they faced. Some hurdles were overt: Early on a web developer they brought on to help build the site tried to stealthily delete everything after Gazin declined to go on a date with him. But most of the obstacles were much more subtle.

After setting out to build Witchsy, it didn’t take long for them to notice a pattern: In many cases, the outside developers and graphic designers they enlisted to help often took a condescending tone over email. These collaborators, who were almost always male, were often short, slow to respond, and vaguely disrespectful in correspondence. In response to one request, a developer started an email with the words “Okay, girls…”

That’s when Gazin and Dwyer introduced a third cofounder: Keith Mann, an aptly named fictional character who could communicate with outsiders over email.

“It was like night and day,” says Dwyer. “It would take me days to get a response, but Keith could not only get a response and a status update, but also be asked if he wanted anything else or if there was anything else that Keith needed help with.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneurs-created-a-fake-male-cofounder-to-dodge-startup-sexism

 

--------------------------------

15 hours ago, Sheep the Evicted said:

Good thing Damore isn't making those claims either, which is why I called his memo reasonable and why I'm so puzzled by this outcry. I quote:

 

 

Bolded Mine.

He is asking people to stop ignoring biology because it DOES matter. It seems to matter alot. How else can you explain the Nordic paradox ? Ie. The more equal society becomes, the more different men and women seem to get. As shown by the Scandinavian countries, the freer a women is the less likely she is to choose to be an engineer.

 

He is artificially constraining his argument there. It only works if leadership or tech are inherently better suited for some characteristics. And that those ideal characteristics are somehow completely natural and not shaped by the societies we live in.
Without examining that even when there is some truth in the biological determinism the whole argument he makes is circular. We as a society have historically defined some roles to match characteristics we think we see in men, that definition is correct and the best possible solution, so men fit best.

[zelticgar]

13 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

 

Ok, I come here way too late after the original discussion, but still. Did anyone explain what happened here? Sorry, just read the first 2 pages and last 2, am a bit tired to read the whole thread, and it seems the discussion immeditately went about the general low ratios of women in STEM, when here we have some hard data that might be interesting to look at and analyse if we actually want to improve the situation or come to some partial conclusions about the causes of that situation...

In the tables, it's quite obvious that the Undergrad ratios were steady before 2002 and after the 2002-2007 drop. The Masters table shows women ratio were growing before 2002 and are growing again after 2007. So there's something that fucking happened during that time, and considering when it happened, it wasn't social media bullying or bloody Gamergate that made things really bad for a time. I could link this to some decisions taken during Bush administration, but that sounds highly dubious - the drop happened during his tenure and stopped before Obama came in, not after Obama changed things.

I'm actually wondering if it isn't linked to the tech burst of 1999, if this relates to the year when people got their degrees - more women might have considered it a hopeless job market, meanwhile there was a higher share of boy geeks than girl geeks, and they went along with STEM and CS, no matter the job prospects. Things looked a bit brighter after 2003 and the drop ceased. Still weird that the women ratio didn't go up again for undergraduates... But that would be merely gut feeling as for why this would happen, so very possibly wrong.

I think looking at the enrollment numbers for Masters program enrollment in CS is interesting as well. Those numbers show that the total enrollment has grown but the gender balance is restored to 70/30 as it was prior to 2002. This basically means that enrollment for females at the masters level bounced back but the undergrad did not. Masters enrollment is almost 60% foreign nationals while Bachelors is around 6%. For some reason foreign born women are returning to CS but US women have not.  My theory is that many schools focused their efforts on female recruitment of foreign masters students who pay full board and are less maintenance versus trying to recruit and retain US female students in CS in undergrad programs. It would be hard work and require some programmatic approaches to support students in undergrad programs to make sure they stayed with the major. Not sure if many schools are putting programs in place to offer additional support for students.