Teaching Python to kids
Teaching Python to kids
Posted Jul 5, 2018 20:26 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)In reply to: Teaching Python to kids by pboddie
Parent article: Teaching Python to kids
This sort of thing can easily be found on Google (or Sci-Hub). Here's one example of many:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/47af/4a7e87267aba681fb69...
> Every country has structural social and economic challenges despite what its own made-for-export messaging might indicate. Endemic sexism and discrimination is as real a problem in Scandinavian societies as it is in other places, although I'm sure people can dispute the severity relative to other places on the planet.
You don't need eliminate discrimination to disprove the hypothesis that discrimination is responsible for differences in male and female job choices. Assuming that the hypothesis is true and that discrimination is lower (not zero!) in scandinavian countries, one would have to observe a smaller difference in job choices than elsewhere in the world. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case, in fact we observe the opposite: more discriminatory countries tend to have more women in STEM fields.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323197652_The_Ge...
> Personally, I found the remarks about poverty rather saddening. There are numerous benefits in bringing people out of poverty for both themselves and for wider society, but since political capital in various societies tends to be made by blaming poverty on the poor so as to legitimise ignoring them (yes, this callousness also infects Scandinavia), it is a topic that gets far less attention than it deserves.
In 1990, the UN set a goal to reduce the abject poverty rate by 50% over the next 25 years. That goal was reached 5 years early and poverty rates continue to fall to this day and are lower today than they've ever been over the course of human history. So what exactly are you expecting? Humanity is actually doing pretty well, you know.
Oh, except of course in places where they tried to make everybody the same. Try asking some Venezuelans how they feel about that idea.
Posted Jul 5, 2018 22:21 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (10 responses)
It quite definitively doesn't prove that there's a causal biological connection between gender and preferences in most of areas.
Posted Jul 5, 2018 23:00 UTC (Thu)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (9 responses)
There are reasons to think there are biological reasons though. Again, scandinavian countries did more than any other society to eliminate gender discrimination, and the result is that the male/female ratio for engineers _increased_. And if you assume the reasons are biological in nature, that makes perfect sense. The more free people are to make their own choices without society influencing them, the more likely it is that some biological predisposition they might have will be able to manifest itself.
Posted Jul 6, 2018 0:02 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jul 6, 2018 6:49 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (7 responses)
Oh, and how do you explain that > 70% of e. g. psychology graduates are female? Is that also discrimination?
Posted Jul 6, 2018 7:29 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (6 responses)
If you want more extreme example - look at the number of females in armies. Not long ago it was vanishingly small, yet now it's growing.
> – the differences in male/female job choices get _larger_ in countries with less discrimination
Posted Jul 6, 2018 10:03 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link]
> And it needs to be explained, it's meaningless in isolation without controls for other factors (like wealth).
Posted Jul 6, 2018 12:53 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (4 responses)
Also you haven't answered my question: why are a majority of psychology graduates female? Is that also the result of discrimination? And why are garbage collectors all male? Discrimination?
Posted Jul 6, 2018 16:02 UTC (Fri)
by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844)
[Link] (3 responses)
Enable JavaScript and have a little play at this simulation, plugging in some different parameters.
it should help to visualise how industries can become (and then remain) segregated, given even a slight predisposition to affiliate with members of your own group. This doesn't only apply to genders---could apply to any situation where you can partition humans into different groups, but the simulation only uses two groups.
To answer your question: let's suppose that industry I has historically been dominated by group G for reasons that were thought to be true in the past, but we "know better" than that nowadays and thus the various barriers for other group O to partake in the industry have recently been removed. Members of group O don't immediately flock to industry I precisely because most of them have a preference to having at least a few other Os in their environment. So a reason that you observe that Os do not enter industry I even when they have an equal opportunity to do so is because there are very few Os in I already. It's not because they have a predisposition against I.
And for an explanation of why it can be disproportionately (quadratically!) uncomfortable to be a member of a minority group, see the Petrie Multiplier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrie_multiplier
Posted Jul 6, 2018 21:50 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jul 6, 2018 22:42 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
Just about 25% of employed psychology professors are female. Even though majority (around 70%) of graduates are female.
Nope, no discrimination whatsoever.
Posted Jul 7, 2018 0:04 UTC (Sat)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link]
Anyway, I think you've made your position quite clear. You also made it quite clear that you're not prepared to show any real evidence for the discrimination theory, and I'm sorry to say that you didn't leave me with the impression of somebody who will follow the evidence wherever it leads. So I'm done here.
Posted Jul 6, 2018 11:19 UTC (Fri)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (3 responses)
Certainly, discrimination in other fields could be driving women into science/technology/engineering in those countries. However, I somehow doubt that they are being excluded from professions you assert are favoured by women, such as nursing, medicine, and so on. So maybe it is the lack of localised discrimination in the professions you assert are favoured by men that actually enables them to pursue those professions, despite wider societal discrimination. Meanwhile, technology in Scandinavia is still presented as a male-oriented, male-focused industry, despite the occasional high-profile female executive. Things like encouraging gender equality at the board level of companies - initiatives you presumably referred to earlier - do practically nothing to influence choices made by children that set up their career paths. It is worth noting that in my time in moderately-large-company consulting the gender balance was closer to normal, but I have also experienced more technology-focused environments that were 100% male. Could it be that women get the impression that technology, as opposed to the broader business-related nature of consulting even in the technological realm, is "not for them"? Probable answer: yes. I am not "expecting" anything other than people having the means to pursue an acceptable range of opportunities in life. UN metrics can be rather divorced from this "expectation" because they might stipulate some general income threshold (somewhat adjusted for local prices, maybe) that fails to respect actual living conditions whilst permitting governments and institutions to conveniently consider poverty issues as having been "solved". How "well" are the children mentioned in the article doing without access to technology that many now take for granted? The US is a wealthy country after all. Although there was apparently a squabble between the US administration and the UN about some wealth inequality report fairly recently. Maybe that has something to do with it. I won't dignify your appeal to consider Venezuela since it happens to be the "go to" strawman to demonise anyone advocating social mobility and a fairer society where they happen to live (which is typically not Venezuela).
Posted Jul 6, 2018 14:38 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (2 responses)
> Meanwhile, technology in Scandinavia is still presented as a male-oriented, male-focused industry, despite the occasional high-profile female executive.
> It is worth noting that in my time in moderately-large-company consulting the gender balance was closer to normal, but I have also experienced more technology-focused environments that were 100% male. Could it be that women get the impression that technology, as opposed to the broader business-related nature of consulting even in the technological realm, is "not for them"?
> I am not "expecting" anything other than people having the means to pursue an acceptable range of opportunities in life.
> UN metrics can be rather divorced from this "expectation" because they might stipulate some general income threshold (somewhat adjusted for local prices, maybe) that fails to respect actual living conditions whilst permitting governments and institutions to conveniently consider poverty issues as having been "solved".
Posted Jul 6, 2018 17:43 UTC (Fri)
by pboddie (guest, #50784)
[Link] (1 responses)
I'm sorry, but I don't need to pander to your every demand. It was you who started off berating others for not providing evidence whilst not providing any of your own. I was merely providing a plausible explanation for a phenomenon, one that is considerably less lazy than "women don't really want to work with technology" which is basically what you are claiming. Since I live in a Scandinavian country, read/watch the media coverage, go about my daily life talking to real people and experiencing real things, maybe I have something to say about your cherry-picking of employment statistics (with no source, though). Maybe the unavoidable coverage of discrimination and harassment has something to say about it, too. Do you have any personal familiarity with any of the Scandinavian societies? Or are they merely good for the mining of third-hand demographic data and vague impressions of equality and "socialism"? Your assertion is actually offensive, but I am assuming that this is the intended effect. LWN really doesn't get any better for this kind of thing. In 2018, in the world's largest economy (depending on how you measure it, of course), you have children not getting enough to eat, not getting adequate education, and not having access to essential facilities and services that would enable them to live decent lives. And the best you can say is "we're getting there"? It sounds like "wait your turn" to me, where "your turn" always seems to take a lower priority to tax cuts for the wealthy, colossal military spending, and a parade of other big-ticket items. And this does not even touch on places on this planet that are paralysed by seemingly perpetual war, famine, disease, and all manner of misfortune, some of it caused by neglect, some of it by human malevolence. "We've never had it so good" is too easy a thing to say if you actually do have it rather good. But I suppose you're now going to deny the presenter and those children their experiences because it doesn't fit some broad-brush world-view you're selling. Those UN reports will tell them what is real, for sure!
Posted Jul 6, 2018 18:53 UTC (Fri)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link]
> I was merely providing a plausible explanation for a phenomenon, one that is considerably less lazy than "women don't really want to work with technology" which is basically what you are claiming.
> Since I live in a Scandinavian country, read/watch the media coverage, go about my daily life talking to real people and experiencing real things, maybe I have something to say about your cherry-picking of employment statistics (with no source, though).
> In 2018, in the world's largest economy (depending on how you measure it, of course), you have children not getting enough to eat, not getting adequate education, and not having access to essential facilities and services that would enable them to live decent lives. And the best you can say is "we're getting there"?
>And this does not even touch on places on this planet that are paralysed by seemingly perpetual war,
> famine,
> disease,
> But I suppose you're now going to deny the presenter and those children their experiences because it doesn't fit some broad-brush world-view you're selling.
Teaching Python to kids
It's simply a collection of data stating the preferences in the current socioeconomic situation. Nothing more.
Teaching Python to kids
I said that the gender disbalance in programming is likely the result of women's interests (or lack thereof) rather than discrimination, and that is what I've provided evidence for. I didn't say anything about the reasons why women exhibit those preferences, biological or otherwise.
Also, women being more interested in people and men being more interested in things seems to be a cross-cultural phenomenon. If you want to blame something like that on society, you have some explaining to do.
Teaching Python to kids
And as we all know, interests are totally unaffected by discrimination (perceived or real).
Teaching Python to kids
This would be a much more interesting discussion if you would actually respond to my points, which are:
– this is a cross-cultural phenomenon and thus difficult to explain with only cultural factors
– the differences in male/female job choices get _larger_ in countries with less discrimination
Teaching Python to kids
Given that female discrimination used to be pretty much universal, there's no wonder.
And it needs to be explained, it's meaningless in isolation without controls for other factors (like wealth).
Teaching Python to kids
It's funny that you mention armies, because that's one of the few remaining places where there is _actual_ discrimination. I was drafted and have lost nine months of my life to that.
Anyway, it's kinda obvious why men would enroll in the army and women wouldn't: men are less agreeable than women. This is why the prison population is overwhelmingly male. But then, it might also be because patriarchy :-)
You can discredit _any_ social science result by saying “but it doesn't correct for $FOO”, that's a trivial consequence of the fact that there's an infinite number of variables that the author of a study hasn't corrected for. My answer to that is that if you claim that correcting for $FOO actually makes a difference, you'd better provide data to support that, because otherwise the right thing to do is to ignore that objection.
Teaching Python to kids
So how come women were able to overcome discrimination in fields like psychology, medicine etc., but not in engineering? To make that work with the “discrimination hypothesis”, you'd have to show that there is more sexism among engineers than e. g. psychologists. While that's not impossible, it's yet another deviation from the null hypothesis and therefore requires evidence to support it.
Teaching Python to kids
http://blog.ian.gent/2013/10/the-petrie-multiplier-why-at...
Teaching Python to kids
But the point is that it doesn't seem to be that way in practice. All fields in academia were heavily male-dominated at the beginning of the 20th century, and yet this has switched for a large number of fields, where psychology is just one example. In fact there are more women than men enrolling in universities these days.
Teaching Python to kids
Teaching Python to kids
This is, again, not evidence for discrimination by itself. I have no idea why these numbers are the way they are, I haven't seen compelling evidence either way and you have, once again, not provided any.
Teaching Python to kids
Yet that doesn't seem to be the case, in fact we observe the opposite: more discriminatory countries tend to have more women in STEM fields.
In 1990, the UN set a goal to reduce the abject poverty rate by 50% over the next 25 years. That goal was reached 5 years early and poverty rates continue to fall to this day and are lower today than they've ever been over the course of human history. So what exactly are you expecting? Humanity is actually doing pretty well, you know.
Teaching Python to kids
So where is your data to support that hypothesis? Because otherwise I'm going to go with the null hypothesis, which is the correct thing to do in science.
Yet another claim without evidence. And besides, it is so vague a claim that I wouldn't even know what would constitute evidence.
It's odd how people who claim to speak in favour of women somehow implicitly assume that women are some sort of robots who simply imitate what they see other women do rather than conscious agents capable of making their own choices.
Sure, that would be ideal, and we're not there yet, so how fast do you expect the world to get there? These things don't happen overnight, and the world is moving faster toward that goal than it ever did in human history. So again, how can you say this is not getting enough attention? Because clearly a lot of people are working to fix this, otherwise we wouldn't see the improvements that we are in fact observing.
Oh, so you're saying it's all fake news? Well, I disagree with that. UN reports about this sort of thing are largely trustworthy.
Teaching Python to kids
So where is your data to support that hypothesis?
Yet another claim without evidence.
It's odd how people who claim to speak in favour of women somehow implicitly assume that women are some sort of robots who simply imitate what they see other women do rather than conscious agents capable of making their own choices.
So again, how can you say this is not getting enough attention?
Teaching Python to kids
Except I _did_ provide evidence when you asked. You on the other hand didn't.
I don't care whether you think the explanation is lazy, I care about whether it's true, and the data seem to indicate that.
Oh, you live in Scandinavia, I guess that makes you an expert. I'm sure you've done a representative study among your fellow citizens about the topic at hand and published it in a respectable, peer-reviewed journal, right? Oh you didn't? In that case I'm afraid I don't care where you live.
This sort of moral outrage never fixed any real problem. So yes, we're getting there, faster than ever before in human history.
…which are getting fewer and fewer. The 20th century was actually the most peaceful century in human history, never before was the likelyhood of being killed in violent conflict so low. And things have gotten only more peaceful since the end of world war 2.
Which is at an all-time low.
Healthcare is getting better and better basically all over the world.
It's fascinating how so-called progressives absolutely hate it when you point out to them that progress is actually being made.