Re:The power of role models
by geofft on Saturday February 25, 2017 @02:25PM
(#13733273)
Absent a reason to believe that there should be more well-known men in computing than women, we have quite a distance to go to achieve a meritocracy.
I haven't heard any plausible theories for this. The best I've heard is plausible theories for why, given existing biases in society, more men are entering and succeeding in the field than women. That's usually used to argue that some individual company or process isn't at fault for having an imbalanced output. But that's hardly a meritocracy when you know you're leaving qualified people behind, neither for the company, nor at all for the field as a whole!
I haven't heard any plausible theories for this. The best I've heard is plausible theories for why, given existing biases in society, more men are entering and succeeding in the field than women. That's usually used to argue that some individual company or process isn't at fault for having an imbalanced output. But that's hardly a meritocracy when you know you're leaving qualified people behind, neither for the company, nor at all for the field as a whole!
(Incidentally, the term "meritocracy" is from a dystopian essay trying to satirize the concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy )