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A comment on Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far.

Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by grondilu on Saturday September 23, 2017 @05:23PM (#15321808)
Today on HN I've learnt about KaTeX, a math typesetting system for the web[1]. As I looked into it, I was intrigued by the names of the two authors, which suggested they are females. That looked odd to me, as I thought typically this kind of project is made by men.

The last time I had this kind of surprise was with Audrey Tang, the developer of Pugs, an early Perl 6 implementation. Turned out she was not born female.

So, just by curiosity, I looked into the authors of this KaTeX thing. To my amusement, I guessed well : at least one of them is a trans[2].

There are certain kinds of IT projects in which women are formidably rare. I can't quite put my finger on what kind of projects I'm talking about, but let's just say it's a case of "I know it when I see it".

At some point we should consider admitting that there is something, I don't know what, that draws men towards this kind of projects much more than for women. And that this thing, whatever it is, may be a reason for the observed gender disparities in the tech industry.

1. https://github.com/Khan/KaTeX

2. https://sophiebits.com/2017/08/26/hi-im-trans.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by Klockan on Saturday September 23, 2017 @05:49PM (#15321947)
I have noticed this as well, in competitive gaming among female prize money earners 2 of the top 3 are trans (Scarlett and Ricki Ortiz).

https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/female_players

I would expect that trans women are actually more targeted and discriminated against than normal women so this result is strange.

Here is the list including both genders as a comparison for the interested, only Scarlett is on that list and she is on position 316 which seems more reasonable given how rare trans persons are:

https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-overall

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by UnpossibleJim on Saturday September 23, 2017 @05:36PM (#15321882)
It might help if it were not frowned upon to admit that women and men are different, and that isn't a bad thing. Male nurses are still a rarity, and that's ok (though, all nurses, regardless of sex, should get paid more). Different doesn't mean better or worse, just different. Is a frog better than a toad? Well, what situation are you asking about? Are women better than men? Well, what situation are we talking about? (And, yes, I just compared men and women to frogs and toads, because no hidden reason whatsoever...)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by geebee on Sunday September 24, 2017 @11:12PM (#15327819)
Registered nurses, at the median in SF, earn about $133k a year (check US News "Best Jobs" for a roundup of regional BLS data).

I'm absolutely OK with nurses earning good salaries but I do think people are often surprised to hear how much nurses actually do earn.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by UnpossibleJim on Monday September 25, 2017 @09:42AM (#15330370)
That is significantly better than I thought =) I'll dial back my disappointment, a bit.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by sleepingpanda on Monday September 25, 2017 @05:55PM (#15334515)
Male nurses still make more on average than female nurses:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/03/124266/male-registered-nur...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by tnzn on Saturday September 23, 2017 @06:40PM (#15322169)
It would help to stop with the strawmen. Feminists don't say men and women are not different at all, they say that the gender roles are based on cultural factors more than biological ones.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by UnpossibleJim on Sunday September 24, 2017 @12:48AM (#15323356)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hope-relationships/2014...

https://www.simplypsychology.org/gender-biology.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by BenoitP on Saturday September 23, 2017 @06:50PM (#15322211)
Sophie Wilson[1], designer of the ARM instruction set -among other things- comes to mind too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by deepnotderp on Saturday September 23, 2017 @10:38PM (#15322973)
I'm not a fan of this argument, but I think his point is that there are fewer overall. For example, individuals with CAH exhibit far greater affinity for male-type toys (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166361/).
[ Parent | on HN ]
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Re:Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone ... by sctb on Sunday September 24, 2017 @10:33AM (#15324842)
Personal attacks like this are never OK on Hacker News no matter what you're replying to. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ Parent | on HN ]