[COFF] [TUHS] Women in computing

[Robert Brockway]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2019, Thomas Kellar wrote:

> I am learning from the discussion.  I disagree with the binary
> argument.  Women and men both have personalities and brains that range
> over a huge spectrum of differences. It is society that tries to force
> them into particular molds.

Hi Thomas.

FWIW, the mainstream on both sides of this argument agree that men and 
women overlap in characteristics.  The question is what causes the 
differences.

Many human characteristics are bimodal with most people clustering around 
one of two points, and those points correlating with biological gender.

Opponents of inate gender differences argue that the observed differences 
are socialised.  They point out that neuroplasticity means that even 
differences in brain structure between genders *could* be socialised.

This is why I find studies on infants so interesting.  There are plenty of 
examples but I've linked a study below that monitored the behaviour of 
infants that are around 24 hours old.  Statistically significant 
differences in behaviour were observed between boys and girls.  This is 
far too early for any socialisation to have occured.

https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf

When I was a young man I believed that gender differences (beyond obvious 
morphological differences) were socialised.  But the evidence grew, and 
has continued to grow, that to a large degree this isn't so.

A really fascinating area is "greater male variability" (GMV) which really 
explains a lot about the world.  I wrote an article on that for a well 
known blog a few years ago.  While researching the article I discovered 
that men vary more than women in personality.  That is to say that on 
average women are more similar to each other in personality than men are.
  I admit that one really surprised me.

Some people claim GMV has been discredited.  It hasn't.  People claiming 
GMV has been discredited usually cite a handful of counter examples as 
evidence of this.  GMV was never claimed to be univerally true, only true 
for most characteristics..  I suspect there is at least one case where 
females, not males, exhibit greater variability but this still doesn't 
discredit GMV.

Getting back to employment, there have been many studies on employment 
patterns and gender by researchers and governments.  They consistently 
show that men and women make a myriad of different choices in employment. 
In particular they show that men will tend to prioritise earning potential 
over many other characteristics of employment while women tend to do the 
reverse.  The largest study on this topic anywhere is probably the 
CONSAD Report, commissioned by the US Dept of Labor.  The CONSAD Report is 
actually on the gender earnings gap but it's still relevant to a 
discussion on different choices men and women make in employment.

Here's a tiny URL to the CONSAD Report:

https://tinyurl.com/y6vvzm4v

Cheers,

Rob