[QUOTE=Azza;44949384]snip
This is pretty stupid though. It's not like there's an easy fix like "hire more women", then you'd see people getting hired on the basis of gender, which is also discrimination.[/QUOTE]
Nobody is suggesting that there is an easy fix.
But how do we fix it?
Do we instate hiring quotas for minorities, potentially passing over a more capable candidate in favor of someone less capable, and treat minorities as a form of commodity? It's just as racist to hire a person solely because of their skin color as it is to deny them employment because of it, after all.
Or do we give under-represented groups an incentive to enter the field, and if so, how big? Too small, and it won't be considered worth it. Too large, and it may become discriminatory in itself; person A is worse at their job than person B, but gets paid more simply because of arbitrary reasons (i know that this already happens with the glass ceiling).
Of course, these are both just from the bureaucratic angle. It'd be more difficult, but give more satisfactory results, to instill change in society and remove these differences that way.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;44946515]If its women outnumbering men its liberation.[/QUOTE]
is this a parody account holy shit
[QUOTE=Gray Altoid;44949421]But how do we fix it?
Do we instate hiring quotas for minorities, potentially passing over a more capable candidate in favor of someone less capable, and treat minorities as a form of commodity? It's just as racist to hire a person solely because of their skin color as it is to deny them employment because of it, after all.
Or do we give under-represented groups an incentive to enter the field, and if so, how big? Too small, and it won't be considered worth it. Too large, and it may become discriminatory in itself; person A is worse at their job than person B, but gets paid more simply because of arbitrary reasons (i know that this already happens with the glass ceiling).
Of course, these are both just from the bureaucratic angle. It'd be more difficult, but give more satisfactory results, to instill change in society and remove these differences that way.[/QUOTE]
I'm not an expert but I'm inclined to believe that the best fixes would be long-term programs that target children from an early age trying to undo the stereotyping, where currently little girls might be discouraged from saying "when I grow up I want to be an astronaut or a police officer or a scientist," because those are seen as things that little boys should want to do, and not little girls. I believe that quotas are band-aid fixes.
[editline]30th May 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=MoonlessNight;44949377]I consider evolutionary traits a lot more simple than complex, invisible societal norms if Occam's razor is to be applied.
No one would dispute that men and women differ physiologically, because it's so easy to observe and meassure. But the brain isn't seperate from the body and has been shaped by evolution just as much.[/QUOTE]
But you have no proof yet and until such a time that you do I will operate on the assumption that women and men are on average capable of the same intellectual feats as each other. Saying that men are evolved to be more capable at engineering than women raises way more questions than it answers.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;44949454]But you have no proof yet and until such a time that you do I will operate on the assumption that women and men are on average capable of the same intellectual feats as each other. Saying that men are evolved to be more capable at engineering than women raises way more questions than it answers.[/QUOTE]
I don't think we should try to scew demographics based on assumptions at all.
[QUOTE=MoonlessNight;44949491]I don't think we should try to scew demographics based on assumptions at all.[/QUOTE]
All of the Presidents on the United States were men. Are we to assume that men have a leadership gene? Most of the famous military commanders in history are men. Are we to assume that men have a tactician gene? Most of the people working in STEM fields are men. Are we to assume that men have STEM genes? Men have a tendency to make more money than women in a given career. Are we to assume wealth genes exist?
Conversely, secretaries and nurses have a higher ratio of female to males. Are we to assume that females have secretary genes? That they were evolved by nature to be more likely to be nurses and secretaries?
What about tribes and societies where women are seen as the leaders and workers and not the men. Are we to assume that these societies evolved with a different set of genes? That they are mutants, not even human?
Note: White men are more likely to be in STEM, military, political fields, than men of other races. If we are to assume that men are naturally evolved the enter these fields and women weren't, we must also assume that white men were more adequately evolved to enter these fields than black men, etc; that white males have the "superiority" gene.
This topic again... why is this even an issue for Gods sake, why is it placed as a problem ? Let men, women, black, yellow, green, purple people do what they want. Why does everybody have to do everything ? Companies should hire people based on qualifications and not based on some socially "forced" quotas, also people should look for jobs based on their interests and qualifications and not be a statistical object filling quotas somewhere.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;44949335]Yeah, but biotruths are practically always dismissed when actual evidence turns up. I'm highly skeptical to there being a "computer-savvines" gene that is more likely to appear in men. The idea that women are just not encouraged to be in these fields seems to be the more realistic reason when applying Occum's Razor.[/QUOTE]
That is not true. It is the other way around.
[video=youtube;p5LRdW8xw70]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70[/video]
How come that women go into more traditional roles in Norway, a country with the highest degree of gender equality, than any other country?
I am an engineer, and there was no one who encouraged me to go this way. I was just interested in that stuff. I had no role model, my father has a blue collar job building houses, and was more involved in drinking beer than teaching me stuff. And I still have gone that way.
But how can you say that girls are not encouraged to go into the tech industry? Ever heard of Girls day? A whole day where girls get to look inside whats happening in the men dominated jobs. You got loads of programs and scholarships for girls who want to go into male dominated fields. Job applications openly state that women will be prefered for a position if there are applying men and women for said position. Where is this discouragement of the girls coming from? Give me some examples.
Why does all this "the industry is sexist" come from people who are not even in the industry itself?
If you are interested to go into a male dominated field, no one is stopping you.
You say that biotruths are always dismissed? Look at human dimorphism.
[QUOTE]In his book titled Gender, Nature, and Nurture, psychologist Richard Lippa found that there were large differences in women's and men's preferences for realistic occupations (for example, mechanic or carpenters) and moderate differences in their preferences for social and artistic occupations. His results also found that women tend to be more people-oriented and men more thing oriented.
(Lippa, Richard A. (2005). Gender, nature, and nurture (2. ed. ed.). Mahwah, NJ [u.a.]: Erlbaum. pp. 12–44. ISBN 0-8058-5344-8.)[/QUOTE]
But why is that?
[QUOTE]It was once thought that sex differences in cognitive task and problem solving did not occur until puberty. However, new evidence now suggests that cognitive and skill differences are present earlier in development. For example, researchers have found that three- and four-year-old boys were better at targeting and at mentally rotating figures within a clock face than girls of the same age were. Prepubescent girls, however, excelled at recalling lists of words. These sex differences in cognition correspond to patterns of ability rather than overall intelligence (although some researchers, such as Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, have argued that there exists a small IQ difference favoring human males). Laboratory settings are used to systematically study the sexual dimorphism in problem solving task performed by adults.
(Kimura, Doreen (July 31, 2000). Sex and Cognition. A Bradford Book. p. 28. ISBN 0262611643.)[/QUOTE]
So it kinda makes sense that boys tend to go into more technical fields, while girls tend to go into more social fields.
You say that biotruths are always dismissed. Who dismisses these so called "biotruths"? It always seems to be feminists. And why do they do that? Because they feel that these facts would be discriminating against women. And that is the problem. And that is also why feminists only want quotas in prefered jobs like in the tech industry or leaders of companies. No feminist cries out loud that there are more than 98% men in dirty jobs like garbage collecting or mining. Even when there is an obvious lack of women.
Hire the best employees for the job.
If it becomes unbalanced, so be it.
If you're hiring the best employees for the job, what does it matter?
[QUOTE=Impact1986;44949655]That is not true. It is the other way around.
[video=youtube;p5LRdW8xw70]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70[/video]
How come that women go into more traditional roles in Norway, a country with the highest degree of gender equality, than any other country?
I am an engineer, and there was no one who encouraged me to go this way. I was just interested in that stuff. I had no role model, my father has a blue collar job building houses, and was more involved in drinking beer than teaching me stuff. And I still have gone that way.
But how can you say that girls are not encouraged to go into the tech industry? Ever heard of Girls day? A whole day where girls get to look inside whats happening in the men dominated jobs. You got loads of programs and scholarships for girls who want to go into male dominated fields. Job applications openly state that women will be prefered for a position if there are applying men and women for said position. Where is this discouragement of the girls coming from? Give me some examples.
Why does all this "the industry is sexist" come from people who are not even in the industry itself?
If you are interested to go into a male dominated field, no one is stopping you.
You say that biotruths are always dismissed? Look at human dimorphism.
But why is that?
So it kinda makes sense that boys tend to go into more technical fields, while girls tend to go into more social fields.
You say that biotruths are always dismissed. Who dismisses these so called "biotruths"? It always seems to be feminists. And why do they do that? Because they feel that these facts would be discriminating against women. And that is the problem. And that is also why feminists only want quotas in prefered jobs like in the tech industry or leaders of companies. No feminist cries out loud that there are more than 98% men in dirty jobs like garbage collecting or mining. Even when there is an obvious lack of women.[/QUOTE]
This is a pretty good argument, you did your homework and cited your sources. I'll have to think about this some more.
[QUOTE=Impact1986;44949655]But how can you say that girls are not encouraged to go into the tech industry? Ever heard of Girls day? A whole day where girls get to look inside whats happening in the men dominated jobs. You got loads of programs and scholarships for girls who want to go into male dominated fields. Job applications openly state that women will be prefered for a position if there are applying men and women for said position. Where is this discouragement of the girls coming from? Give me some examples. [/QUOTE]
When I was at college there was this professor promoting a German university. He was basically only interested in convincing girls to take a masters course there. They had scolarship programs just for female students, support clubs and everything. If you are a guy and wanted to study there... you are on your own bro.
My heart goes out to the people and organizations that try to give "handouts" to women - because I agree with the sentiment. However, anybody with critical thinking agrees it isn't the solution. The real solution would be to absolutely tear up some major societal foundations, which... isn't possible to do all at once. The idea of giving women or minorities things for free is not the permanent solution, but a temporary band-aid which is supposed to help hold things over until the bad parts of society are reworked.
When people get mad about women or minorities getting handouts, they don't even look at [i]why[/i] those handouts are given to them. People should always look at the connections and the reasons before judging the actions.
I was reading another article about Google's findings, what is surprising is that discrimination by age is never once mentioned in the report. While Google has never faced a lawsuit for gender or racial discrimination it has for agism.
Brian Reid, a computer programmer with accomplishments that include inventing the idea of a firewall and founding a group that later went on to build one of the first internet search engines, AltaVista. Urs Hölzle, the Senior Vice President of Google called his ideas "too old to matter".
I'm disappointed that Google didn't release a bit more info about the age demographics of itself.
[QUOTE=OogalaBoogal;44950175]I was reading another article about Google's findings, what is surprising is that discrimination by age is never once mentioned in the report. While Google has never faced a lawsuit for gender or racial discrimination it has for agism.
Brian Reid, a computer programmer with accomplishments that include inventing the idea of a firewall and founding a group that later went on to build one of the first internet search engines, AltaVista. Urs Hölzle, the Senior Vice President of Google called his ideas "too old to matter".
I'm disappointed that Google didn't release a bit more info about the age demographics of itself.[/QUOTE]
They called those particular ideas (Altavista) too old to matter, which they most likely are.
It's good that some of the big guys are actually starting to do something about this. Theres a lot of work that needs to be done to find out what is preventing underrepresented minorities from having the opportunities that white men have.
I personally believe the problem is rooted as early as childhood. Children are still encouraged, be it by parents / teachers / media / whatever, to fit into roles which societal prejudice suggests they should.
It's something that the world is still a long way off solving. If you say you don't care then frankly I don't understand you.
[QUOTE=niel12_5D;44947659]
I'm very aware of how it turned out.
The point of this is Google is like "OK we want our company to reflect the demographics of our society because that's how you foster positive community relations and blah blah HR speak". Now the question is how do we accomplish this and that's a whole 'nother step.
Genders should be split 50/50 because that's about where our society is and if there's something stopping it from being 50/50 then we should try to rectify that, even if you personally think that's impossible.[/QUOTE]
I think this is a load of shite
focus on giving everyone equal opportunities rather than attempting to shoehorn people down career paths. If everyone has equal opportunities, and we assume that there are no relevant biological differences, then we should see 50/50 occur naturally
you're putting the cart before the horse when you do it the other way round. Great, you achieve 50/50 gender split, but you haven't done it by raising people up or improving gender perceptions, you've just changed a number
meanwhile you'll still have the problems of women feeling alienated by male stereotypes in tech roles, with the added bonus of people alienating them further when they believe they only got the position because of their gender rather than their technical ability.
[B]here's what annoys me more[/B]
people are bringing up the gender split here more than anything else, despite the fact you have [B]1 FUCKING PERCENT BLACK PEOPLE
[/B]that's the truly terrifying statistic here. Talking about women getting a bad representation in google with 30% when black people can't even manage more than 1 in 100.
like, just imagine that for a moment. You're a woman in google. Out of a sample of 100, you've got 29 other people like you
now imagine you're black. Congrats, you're the [B]only black person in that sample.[/B]​
the 30% is bad, but we're seeing the burning house over the blazing goddamned city here.
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;44950619][B]here's what annoys me more[/B]
people are bringing up the gender split here more than anything else, despite the fact you have [B]1 FUCKING PERCENT BLACK PEOPLE
[/B]that's the truly terrifying statistic here. Talking about women getting a bad representation in google with 30% when black people can't even manage more than 1 in 100.
like, just imagine that for a moment. You're a woman in google. Out of a sample of 100, you've got 29 other people like you
now imagine you're black. Congrats, you're the [B]only black person in that sample.[/B]​
the 30% is bad, but we're seeing the burning house over the blazing goddamned city here.[/QUOTE]
It is pretty poor, yes, but half of our population are women, compared to like 13% of the US population being African American. I guess it's also easier to focus on just one issue rather than the whole thread debating over several of them.
[QUOTE=Antdawg;44950791]It is pretty poor, yes, but half of our population are women, compared to like 13% of the US population being African American. I guess it's also easier to focus on just one issue rather than the whole thread debating over several of them.[/QUOTE]
Cool, so are we going to ignore the fact that latinos, blacks and hispanics were all fucking TERRIBLY represented in google because 'there's less of them than women' and that in this thread we can only talk about one injustice?
That's such a poor reason, and it's also not an excuse that this story is getting reported on the women side, but barely at all on the racism side.
It's not the gender but the skill set of the individual. Those who want to make a gender equal company will fail for they will miss out on either genders skill set individuals.
This is buisness 101.
I don't think it's been explicitly stated yet but it should be noted that these numbers are less about getting angry at Google specifically for their hiring practices (as someone said earlier, Google invests heavily in diversity already) and more about the tech field in general.
It says a lot about career paths and education when one of the biggest tech companies in the world has 17% of it's tech workers as women and 1% black.
[QUOTE=Impact1986;44949655]But how can you say that girls are not encouraged to go into the tech industry? Ever heard of Girls day? A whole day where girls get to look inside whats happening in the men dominated jobs. You got loads of programs and scholarships for girls who want to go into male dominated fields. Job applications openly state that women will be prefered for a position if there are applying men and women for said position. Where is this discouragement of the girls coming from? Give me some examples.
Why does all this "the industry is sexist" come from people who are not even in the industry itself?
If you are interested to go into a male dominated field, no one is stopping you.
[/quote]
Your post shows a cruel lack of understanding of the situation if you can even utter the words "no one is stopping you" with a straight face.
Here's some insightful reading:
[url]http://www.quora.com/Women-in-Technology-1/Why-dont-more-women-go-to-hackathons/answers/3920335[/url]
[url]http://smarterware.org/7550/designers-women-and-hostility-in-open-source[/url]
[url]http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567[/url]
[url]http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-risk-in-speaking-up[/url]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/technology/technologys-man-problem.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=3[/url]
[QUOTE=Impact1986;44949655]You say that biotruths are always dismissed? Look at human dimorphism.
But why is that?
So it kinda makes sense that boys tend to go into more technical fields, while girls tend to go into more social fields.
You say that biotruths are always dismissed. Who dismisses these so called "biotruths"? It always seems to be feminists. And why do they do that? Because they feel that these facts would be discriminating against women. And that is the problem. And that is also why feminists only want quotas in prefered jobs like in the tech industry or leaders of companies. No feminist cries out loud that there are more than 98% men in dirty jobs like garbage collecting or mining. Even when there is an obvious lack of women.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.tedxparis.com/talks/catherine-vidal-le-cerveau-a-t-il-un-sexe/[/url] (sorry for this source being in French)
This is from a reputed neurobiologist and research leader at the Pasteur institute in Paris.
Her research shows that the brain does not differ among sexes, and that whatever insignificant differences are largely outmatched by deviation within the group.
In other words, the difference within all women and within all men will always be much, much, much more than the difference between men and women. You're making the mistake of interpreting these differences as categorical rather than rather as overlapping distributions.
Never underestimate this thing called "neuroplasticity".
And last, [URL="http://www.wired.com/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-men-and-womens-brain-wiring/"]Regarding so-called differences in "brain wiring"...[/URL]
[QUOTE=niel12_5D;44947659]I have no idea what you're saying.
[editline]29th May 2014[/editline]
I'm very aware of how it turned out.
The point of this is Google is like "OK we want our company to reflect the demographics of our society because that's how you foster positive community relations and blah blah HR speak". Now the question is how do we accomplish this and that's a whole 'nother step.
Genders should be split 50/50 because that's about where our society is and if there's something stopping it from being 50/50 then we should try to rectify that, even if you personally think that's impossible.[/QUOTE]
there's somethign in this world called being a mother and some women dont work because they are stay at home moms who take care of their kids instead of sending them to daycare.
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;44950619]I think this is a load of shite
focus on giving everyone equal opportunities rather than attempting to shoehorn people down career paths. If everyone has equal opportunities, and we assume that there are no relevant biological differences, then we should see 50/50 occur naturally
you're putting the cart before the horse when you do it the other way round. Great, you achieve 50/50 gender split, but you haven't done it by raising people up or improving gender perceptions, you've just changed a number
meanwhile you'll still have the problems of women feeling alienated by male stereotypes in tech roles, with the added bonus of people alienating them further when they believe they only got the position because of their gender rather than their technical ability.
[B]here's what annoys me more[/B]
people are bringing up the gender split here more than anything else, despite the fact you have [B]1 FUCKING PERCENT BLACK PEOPLE
[/B]that's the truly terrifying statistic here. Talking about women getting a bad representation in google with 30% when black people can't even manage more than 1 in 100.
like, just imagine that for a moment. You're a woman in google. Out of a sample of 100, you've got 29 other people like you
now imagine you're black. Congrats, you're the [B]only black person in that sample.[/B]​
the 30% is bad, but we're seeing the burning house over the blazing goddamned city here.[/QUOTE]
I agree. This may sound kind of cruel but honestly 30% of women isn't "that bad" considering this is the largest tech corporation in the planet. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe 30% is one of the best percentages around. So, compared to the racial diversity problem...
Ultimately you can't force people down specific career paths, you have to solve the problem at the root, and that begins with social mobility for people who aren't white. (or men)
but 60% of america is white
actually i think it's more, i cant seem to find data, but 30% of america isn't asian
[QUOTE=seano12;44946221]Does it matter? Answer: NO.[/QUOTE]
Of course it matters. Why do you think there are so few male nurses? Because there aren't already many male nurses.
But of course it's only worthy of backlash and mocking when you suggest that disproportionately [i]male[/i] fields hire more women, not the other way around.
[QUOTE=Hardsurface;44949667]Hire the best employees for the job.
If it becomes unbalanced, so be it.
If you're hiring the best employees for the job, what does it matter?[/QUOTE]
Because if we do that, then we run into the situation Google is in where the super majority of the workforce are white males. And I don't think it's because a liberal company such as Google would discriminate towards sex or race. It's just that white males get the best education for the least hassle, and consequentially become the best candidate over minorities.
If a minority does break through the mold, they're left alienated as one of the few in the company. Such as a women, which then guys try to hit on her and get in her pants because she's the only pussy in the office. Or blacks who would be the butt of racist jokes because he's that one black guy. It can very easily become a hostile environment for minorities, which only in the end give whites even more of an advantage.
Affirmative action is very debatable, but I think in the end it helps more than it hurts. The people it hurts are whites, who already have a lot of things easy for being white.
[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;44951491]Cool, so are we going to ignore the fact that latinos, blacks and hispanics were all fucking TERRIBLY represented in google because 'there's less of them than women' and that in this thread we can only talk about one injustice?[/QUOTE]
I imagine its because of the fact that African Americans are generally poorer and have less access to technology or less opportunities to take courses on it. We should fix that by working on the poor people problem.
If Google isn't actively discriminating I seriously don't see any problem. Forcing diversity is just stupid.
[QUOTE][url]http://www.tedxparis.com/talks/catherine-vidal-le-cerveau-a-t-il-un-sexe/[/url] (sorry for this source being in French)
This is from a reputed neurobiologist and research leader at the Pasteur institute in Paris.
Her research shows that the brain does not differ among sexes, and that whatever insignificant differences are largely outmatched by deviation within the group.
In other words, the difference within all women and within all men will always be much, much, much more than the difference between men and women. You're making the mistake of interpreting these differences as categorical rather than rather as overlapping distributions.
Never underestimate this thing called "neuroplasticity".
And last, [URL="http://www.wired.com/2013/12/getting-in-a-tangle-over-men-and-womens-brain-wiring/"]Regarding so-called differences in "brain wiring"...[/URL][/QUOTE]
Good way at looking for what you want to see, you ignored most of the peer reviewed studies in famous journals (e.g. PubMed) that say that there are differences in brain among sexes.. that study you posted has been quite criticized a lot and no one take it seriously. (if you want an example, this is considered a good study: [url]http://www.ucd.ie/artspgs/langimp/genderbrain.pdf[/url])
And if you want to motivate people to go into the tech industry you can't just look at the bad cases, it simply doesn't paint the real picture. There are assholes everywhere, and if you talk to most female developers they will have good things to say.
I can even use anecdotal evidence like you do, and using your sources "“I’ve been doing this 10 years, and myself and everyone I’ve spoken to who’s a female developer has had an amazing experience in the developer community,” said Sara Chipps,"
[QUOTE=l337k1ll4;44946795]I don't see how a company hiring the most qualified individuals they can find is a problem.[/QUOTE]
This [I]specifically[/I] is not a problem, but the fact that the only "qualified individuals" happen to be white > asian males is an alarming statistic
Not googles fault, but nonetheless it should be a concerning statistic in general pertaining to availability and interest in schooling, especially that racial component. Many facepunchers seem to deny that both racism and sexism are issues, and yet at the same time you don't think a 3% ethnic minority and 30+% gender skew is an indication that racism and sexism might be creating those results [I]somewhere[/I] along the line?
[QUOTE=bunguer;44954445]Good way at looking for what you want to see, you ignored most of the peer reviewed studies in famous journals (e.g. PubMed) that say that there is differences in brain among sexes.. that study you posted has been quite criticized a lot and no one take it seriously. (e.g. this is considered a good study: [url]http://www.ucd.ie/artspgs/langimp/genderbrain.pdf[/url])
And if you want to motivate people to go into the tech industry you can't just look at the bad cases, that doesn't paint the real picture. There are assholes everywhere, and if you talk to most female developers they will have good things to say.
I can even use anecdotal evidence like you do, but I even use your sources "“I’ve been doing this 10 years, and myself and everyone I’ve spoken to who’s a female developer has had an amazing experience in the developer community,” said Sara Chipps,"[/QUOTE]
Obviously there are differences in brain structure between sexes - that's mostly in areas governing hormones and stuff. Any differences in behavioural wiring can't be major enough that men have a natural affinity for computers and women are innately drawn to other things. Like if we had a blank-slate society and no gender roles or dividing influences imposed by that society, men and women would split up between professions pretty evenly ON AVERAGE, not all the time.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
