Teaching Python to kids
Teaching Python to kids
Posted Jul 6, 2018 7:29 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Teaching Python to kids by HelloWorld
Parent article: Teaching Python to kids
Given that female discrimination used to be pretty much universal, there's no wonder.
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
And it needs to be explained, it's meaningless in isolation without controls for other factors (like wealth).
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.
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.