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0 pointsPyxl1017y ago0 comments

> The research community does not have a better explanation for the disparity than social bias

That's not really true. There is a lot of research showing that men and women have different interests and make different life choices, and that these choices impact career demographics. One of the most well-researched differences is that men tend to be more interested in "things", especially mechanical things, and women tend to be more interested in "people".

Here is a journal article from Frontiers in Psychology that investigates how these differences-in-interest impact STEM field participation: "All STEM fields are not created equal: People and things interests explain gender disparities across STEM fields" (1):

> In the current study, we investigated the gender differences in interests as an explanation for the differential distribution of women across sub-disciplines of STEM as well as the overall underrepresentation of women in STEM fields. (...) We found gender differences in interests to vary largely by STEM field, with the largest gender differences in interests favoring men observed in engineering disciplines (d = 0.83–1.21), and in contrast, gender differences in interests favoring women in social sciences and medical services (d = −0.33 and −0.40, respectively).

> Importantly, the gender composition (percentages of women) in STEM fields reflects these gender differences in interests. The patterns of gender differences in interests and the actual gender composition in STEM fields were explained by the people-orientation and things-orientation of work environments, and were not associated with the level of quantitative ability required. (...)

Some studies show that these things-vs-people differences begin to manifest extremely early in life, before humans could be influenced by social factors. One famous study of this phenomenon is "Sex differences in human neonatal social perception" (2):

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or sociocultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.

It is also known that testosterone levels affect decision-making and career choices, and that women tend to be more financially risk-averse than men. Since men's testosterone levels tend to be much higher than women's, and since men are less risk-averse, that results in demographic differences. For an investigation of this, see the article "Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone" (3). For another study on sex and brain differences see (4). There is a lot of research out there exploring the differences between men and women, and how those differences play out in our lives.

Every person should be supported in choosing whatever career interests them, and should not be judged based on demographics. I'm not advocating for any kind of discrimination. I am just observing that even with total equality of opportunity, if there are biological trends in interest differences, then we will see differences in overall job demographics.

(1) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018... (2) https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf (3) https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15268.full (4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/

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fzeroracer7y ago

How does this explain for example, the following two points I will assert:

1. Software Engineering has become more social over time. The idea of the loner software developer has sort of vanished as open offices become the norm and the collaborative nature of software engineering grows.

2. Women majors in computer science has dropped like a rock over the past few decades [1]

These two points seem to refute your explanations, considering software development at one time had a signiciant amount of developers that were women. If women were somehow biologically uninclined to be software engineers, the statistics don't seem to follow this train of thought.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

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eq_sd_7y ago

"inherent interests"?? Anecdotally...my two biggest passions are photography (artistic/visual creativity in general) and software development. Neither of these were innate. My grandma and my dad were the ones that exposed me to creativity and computers throughout my entire childhood, and then a boyfriend who sparked my interested in code.

If money and the like were of no concern I might consider pursuing photography over coding. However, just because I love that a little more, doesn't necessarily mean I'm not interested in code.

There are absolutely people who will pursue things they have little to no interest in, but there are also people who will pick one over another because one is just a little bit better for whatever reason. How about we don't discount that people can have multiple passions?

Pyxl101OP7y ago

I edited my comment to replace "inherent interests" with "biological trends in interest differences".

I'm not trying to make a comment about individuals, only about trends that we might see in the population at large.

The topic further up was whether differences in job participation can be explained by reasons other than discrimination - the answer is that, yes, they can be explained by other factors such as biological trends in interest differences. One needs to control for these factors before drawing conclusions about discrimination.

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