Yup. It's pretty simple... [LWN.net]

Yup. It's pretty simple...

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:48 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: It's different basic expectations by flewellyn
Parent article: My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

It's biology. Species where females did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) are extinct, species where males did a lot of noise (and thus were killed) survived (males are not essential for childraising).

And yes, this basic fact of life is true even today: man can pull all-nighter debugging something, woman must go home on time for the children's sake. So yes, males in general are more aggressive and rude. And they can "afford" risky situations. Thus while free software fights for survival - we'll see many more males there then females, when it'll become mainstream - we'll see more and more women there. You'll find significantly more males in startups, then in big companies, too.

Actually the number of women among free software enthusiasts shows how far we are from "world domination": we can only then claim that we achieved this status when we'll have the same proportion of women among developers as in proprietary world. I'm just very unsure that the best way there is to change community to make it more "women-friendly"...

(Log in to post comments)

Yup. It's pretty simple...

Posted Sep 26, 2007 13:58 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

I'm not going to get into an evolutionary pyschology debate here on LWN, but given that human
behavior is so mouldable by what they learn as young children, and given that we know that
different cultures can and do create wildly different levels of "noisiness", as you described it,
Occam's Razor suggests that reaching for biological explanations of the disparity is unnecessary,
when purely cultural explanations are both simpler and more easily tested.

Different cultures ?

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:11 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

1. You asked about "natural tendency". To me "natural tendency" == "tendency determined by biology". What is your definition ?

2. Name one survived culture where women are more aggressive then man. There are myths related to amazons and may be some small tribes, but all major players of such type are either extinct or never existed at all. This can hardly be explained by "what they learn as young children".

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 14:21 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Small children are usually taught by women and so taught politeness first. Only later in life guys are starting to become "arrogant jerks". Take the situation in Japan: while Japanese look (from viewpoint of westerner) always uber-polite yet actually they are using different speech patterns and women are not supposed to talk in public at all!

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:16 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Y'know, it IS even worse; I realized that I forgot to question how you got the idea that women are less assertive or aggressive, in the first place.

Actually it's even worse.

Posted Sep 26, 2007 18:30 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

"Only later in life" do guys suddenly get tons of testosterone coursing through their system. Given how much it affects them physically, one would imagine it would have an effect on their psyche as well.