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Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by haberman on Sunday August 06, 2017 @10:28PM (#14944894)
Your labeling of my argument as a "trope" is unnecessary and dismissive. If we are talking tropes, pretty much nothing is more trope-y right now than the cycle of outrage and virtue signaling that is sure to follow any push-back against the current orthodoxy of social justice. It's so predictable you can set your watch to it (witness: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/08/06...). So please, spare me the attitude.

I can believe that a switch to NP's as the go-to for routine care might be a good idea. But even if that is the case, you're making a very different argument here. I wonder if you notice the difference. You're arguing that more men in nursing might be beneficial for customers, not that men are being kept out of nursing by sexism.

I believe the same is probably true of tech (that more women in tech is better for customers), if for no other reason than something like half of customers are women.

But these two arguments are very different in their moral implications. When you argue that sexism is keeping women out of tech, this is fuel for the outrage machine of moral indignation, like the Washington Post article above. It is evidence that he industry is wronging its female employees and potential female employees. It is cause to criticize the industry as sick and oppressive (which it certainly is in some cases, most notably Uber).

So I think that this criticism is well warranted in many cases. The question is: where are the goalposts? Is the industry sick and oppressive towards women until it hits 50% representation? I don't think that's a fair expectation.

Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by tptacek on Sunday August 06, 2017 @11:58PM (#14945223)
You asked a question. I answered it directly and civilly. You responded with a bunch of slurs. If you're wondering why the discussion stopped here, now you know.
Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by haberman on Monday August 07, 2017 @12:15AM (#14945272)
That's not accurate at all. You took a dismissive tone with me right off the bat, and labeled my good-faith argument as a "trope", twice. Also, my "slurs" were directed at a Washington Post article, not at you. Exit the discussion if you like, but I don't think you get to plead the moral high ground on this.
Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by nowo on Monday August 07, 2017 @01:15AM (#14945461)
> The question is: where are the goalposts? Is the industry sick and oppressive towards women until it hits 50% representation? I don't think that's a fair expectation.

It's hard to find a benign reason why the percentage of women CS majors would halve in the last 30 years while the profession as such has become more attractive.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by dionidium on Monday August 07, 2017 @01:27PM (#14949271)
One possible benign reason: as society has gotten more free and open to women's choices, their preferences have been revealed. (Note that this also may explain why there are more female computer programmers in Iran than in, say, Finland. Women are more free to do what they want to do in Finland.)

Now, look, this explanation may be wrong, but, no, it's not hard to imagine alternate explanations. Nice and neat conclusions in the social sciences are hard to come by. Anybody in this thread claiming that they know exactly which explanations are the right ones is full of shit.

Re:The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Intern... by nowo on Monday August 07, 2017 @06:29PM (#14951804)
I don't agree that this is a benign reason in itself. Regardless if you say that women don't want to be programmers now or that women never wanted to be programmers, you have to find a good reason why they don't want to. Because women have no problem sitting in front of computers in economics, so why do they in software?

I don't think it is hard to find a good reason why someone wouldn't go into nursing (even if this wouldn't disprove sexism in nursing). It has barriers to entry by requiring formal education, which can be competitive. The working conditions are somewhat difficult having to work irregular hours and be exposed to emotional stress as in seeing people dying. At the same time it still relatively low status, not necessarily well paid and has limited career prospects.

Of course you can argue that this shouldn't be the case. That the profession should help people dealing with stress and have good working conditions etc. Still it much harder to imagine these sort of "hard" reasons, negative things that are inherent to the profession, when it comes to programming.