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scientific?scientific?Posted Aug 9, 2005 16:26 UTC (Tue) by Alan_Hicks (subscriber, #20469)In reply to: scientific? by stevenj Parent article: Getting in touch with the feminine side of open source (NewsForge)
my understanding is that no scientific study has ever established that this demographic trend is innately genetic (by which people usually seem to mean "unchangeable," although the expression of genes is dependent on environment) or if it is an artificial result of social pressures. There have been some studies done and evidence points both ways. Yes, there are gender roles in society. No those are not necessarily bad things. Yes there are genetic differences between men and women that predispose them differently. No that's not necessarily a bad thing. Studies have been conducted on young children (who it is presumed are less influenced by gender roles than older children and adults) and those studies have concluded that the brains of boys and girls develop different. IIRC, girls tend to develop speach easier, while boys tend to develop skills like counting and stacking blocks or LEGOS(TM) to make shapes more quickly. You cannot ever fully remove gender roles from our consciousness, but that does not mean that there aren't also biological traits present that influence men and women to take different paths in life. Indeed, it is entirely possible that our gender roles are greatly affected by biological forces. In short, I agree with the grand-parent in that ignoring biological differences is absurd, and that we should learn that such things are not necessarily bad. On the other hand, we shouldn't use that as an excuse to exclude women either, but I've not noticed any gender exclusion in the OSS community beyond the "You're a grrrrrrrrrrl?! That's awesome!" posts.
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scientific? Posted Aug 9, 2005 23:13 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Studies have been conducted on young children (who it is presumed are less influenced by gender roles than older children and adults) and those studies have concluded that the brains of boys and girls develop different. IIRC, girls tend to develop speach easier, while boys tend to develop skills like counting and stacking blocks or LEGOS(TM) to make shapes more quickly.That presumption assumes that young children have no peer group and no parents, which is self-evidently absurd. As for `the brains of boys and girls develop different', well, there are neurological differences --- but nobody has a clue what effect those differences have, and presuming that they change the propensity of women for technical fields is arguing far in advance of the data. That could be purely social (inasmuch as `purely social' means anything with an organ as adaptable as the brain), or it could not, but so far I haven't found a single experiment which purports to determine that which didn't have enormous methodological flaws or (more often) simply wasn't testing what the experimenters thought it was testing. Further, note that all known differences between the mental abilities of men and women are differences between averages across populations, and that the range of normal variation in the population far exceeds those differences. I mean, I'm a male whose first words, at about the age most people are saying `mum', were `pneumatic lift'... yet who could not stack blocks at the age of eight. Does that mean I'm mentally female? I don't think so.
scientific? Posted Aug 9, 2005 23:49 UTC (Tue) by Alan_Hicks (subscriber, #20469) [Link]
No, it presumes that young children will be less influenced by peer groups and parental figures because they've had less time to develop ideas of gender roles. Whether that is true or not can certainly be argued.
What am I arguing is that we know there are differences, so ignoring the possibility that these differences could be greatly influential is foolish. Naturally I do not know for a fact that this is the case; no one does. However, evidence has been gathered to support the theory that biology at least has a significant role here.
Of course! No one has argued this point. It's self-evident that some people are far different from the mean. This is of course immaterial to the points being made. When we talk about women in computer programming, we are talking about a statistical minority. We can ask the question, "What makes these women choose this field?" or we can ask, "What women so much less likely than men to choose this profession?" I think the latter question is the more interesting, and the one more likely to yield statisticaly reliable information. After all, if there is something different about geek girls, looking at them won't tell us anything statistically worthwhile about all other women.
scientific? Posted Aug 11, 2005 12:34 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] Studies have been conducted on young children (who it is presumed are less influenced by gender roles than older children and adults)Have you been around small children and their parents much lately ? I have, being the father of a son aged 11 months, and being the one at home taking care of him. Yesterday, for example I was at the doctors with my son and we where waiting in the waiting room. Along with us was a mother and a son aged around 1.5 years. There's toys for the kids so they'll stay entertained. The son in question selected to play with a doll. This was *promptly* attacked by the mother: "Do you really want to play with that? Are you a girl?" It think it's very easy to underestimate how early some kids learn what "should" interest them and what is "unsuitable". The 1.5 year old couldn't even understand his mother (at that age he migth understand like a dozen words or so), but he understood very well that the mother was unhappy about his choise. So he played with a car instead, to hearty smiles from the mother.
scientific? Posted Aug 12, 2005 23:29 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Studies have been conducted on young children (who it is presumed are less influenced by gender roles than older children and adults)That's so preposterous, and irrelevant to the context, that I think it's just a misstatement. I think the presumption is probably just that a young brain has less gender role information in it than one that has been absorbing gender role information for 20 years, and therefore its organic development would be less influenced by said cultural influence and more by born-in factors. If you just want to talk about influence on the person, young children are probably more influenced by gender roles because they don't have the advanced reasoning and full body of information on which to make their own conclusions. At that age, you work strictly on simple association. I distinctly remember being shocked when I met my second school principal (Age 5), because he was a man. Why did I think it was unnatural for a school principal to be a man? Because the only other one I had ever known was a woman. Now getting back to the study, if you wanted to see how my brain processed school administration concepts without the variable of gender role influence, you would have to get to me before I met the first principal.
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