Begging the question. As you point out, there are no laws or physical barriers preventing women in the US from doing just about anything, so their heavy relative underrepresentation means by definition they're choosing not to. The question is: why not? Choices aren't made in a vacuum. What is it about our culture and society that has led to the percentage of women in tech/computing to drop pretty much consistently since the field was invented while their numbers increase in many other formerly all-male professions?

You posit that women are observed to be more risk-averse, and that this explains why they avoid founding startups. Leaving aside whether this is true, I repeat my question: why?

(Tangentially, as I think someone else pointed out, the "women are biologically risk-averse" trope can only explain why women "choose" to not found startups, not why they "choose" to not work as a dev at a big tech company, for example, where the risk level is close to nil. Have you looked at the health benefits/maternity leave/termination policies at places like IBM or Microsoft?)

Everyone loves to triangulate complex evolutionary explanations to this kind of question, but a cultural argument is even simpler to make: women get paid less, are taken less seriously, are subject to glass ceilings, harassment, discrimination, have a higher probability of being raped, etc etc, every single day. Moreover, women are explicitly told from an early age not to dress too provocatively, never leave a drink unattended, never ever ever walk home alone at night. . .and that's leaving aside the more subtle cultural pressures that discourage them from the sciences. Women are at higher "risk" than men just by virtue of their gender, and they're reminded of this, with an implicit or explicit injunction to be careful, all the damned time. That might serve as a reasonable explanation for why they'd be more risk-averse, but is unfortunate in that it can't be shrugged aside with a trite evolutionary explanation.

Just because there are no laws preventing women from doing something does not mean that the playing field is equal.

Conversely, men are less likely to attend college, are more likely to be unemployed, are more likely be injured in the course of employment, are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, are more likely to be incarcerated, etc etc, every single day.

Just because there are no laws preventing women from doing something does not mean that the playing field is equal.

Just because there are inequities in one direction does not mean that there aren't also inequities in the opposite direction.

Yes. I never claimed otherwise. I was making an argument as to the cultural conditioning that might lead women to be, on average, more risk averse than men. This doesn't mean that bad things don't happen to men. The two statements, in fact, have nothing to do with one another.

"Just because there are inequities in one direction does not mean that there aren't also inequities in the opposite direction."

Yes. Again, I never claimed otherwise. Inequities are bad. That's my point. Inequities that disadvantage men are also bad and, had that been the subject of the conversation, I would have made that point too. However, we're not talking about inequities that apply to men, we're talking about a field in which there are demonstrably fewer women participating than men and we're asking why. I was arguing that first, we need to go beyond a conclusion that states "women are choosing not to do X, so it's not a problem", second, that women may be risk averse for cultural reasons that may be worth addressing, and finally, by extension, that it's insufficient to claim that so long as women are legally treated the same way as men the playing field is equal so we shouldn't worry about it.

In other words, I'm not sure what your point is.

I'd like to ask why you imagine that in any field there would be equal numbers of men and women? Or indeed why there should be any reason beyond simple preference. More women like milk chocolate; more men like dark (pulled that one out my arse incidentally). Does it matter?

If you take a gender blind view then you only have to look at individuals and say - "were you discriminated against due to prejudice?" if not then no foul.

There's a natural skew I think: if both men and women equally wanted to start families then more women would normally be able to than men (artificial insemination, one-night stand, stop using birth control, decide contrary to the male to not have an abortion, whatever). This leaves more men doing startups whether they prefer that to starting a family or not.

No, I'm not saying this accounts for any discrepancy I'm just saying this seems to be a reasonable explanation as to why there might be an imbalance and that these sorts of possibilities lead me to think that should it be clear there is no discrimination then it is highly unlikely that equal numbers of any two sub-populations (male-female, blue eyes-brown eyes, ...) occupy a particular field.

Listen: "Women are choosing not to as a matter of preference so there's nothing wrong" is a cop-out. I'll grant you that the reason for the lack of equality is "simple preference." Clearly, because if women "wanted" to do startups/tech, they would. There are no laws preventing them.

"More women like milk chocolate; more men like dark (pulled that one out my arse incidentally). Does it matter?"

Intrinsically? No, of course not. But if we start from the assumption that gender shouldn't matter, we would expect a distribution that cleaves pretty closely to the gender distribution in the population. The fact that that it's doesn't isn't necessarily bad per se, but it suggests that maybe something is going on that may be worth investigating a little further. To do otherwise is intellectually lazy.

It's totally possible that the discrepancy is completely innocent, or that there's some reasonable gender-based explanation that involves no negative cultural messages, discrimination, whatever, to explain the massive differences in the number of women and men who choose to go into tech. <snark>I suppose there's a first time for everything.</snark> I just haven't been convinced by any of the pat explanations so far. None of them have explained, for example, the relatively low number of women working for large, stable tech companies (some of the best employers in the world if you're looking for benefits and stability), nor why the relative percentage of women in tech has been dropping pretty consistently over the last 30 years (actually since the early days of computing, but whatever). The point of my original post was mostly that we should go farther than saying something simple like "Women are risk averse!" and ask, well, why? Because it's not totally out of the question that cultural forces are at work, and it might behoove us to at least think about them a little bit.

"There's a natural skew I think: if both men and women equally wanted to start families then more women would normally be able to than men (artificial insemination, one-night stand, stop using birth control, decide contrary to the male to not have an abortion, whatever). This leaves more men doing startups whether they prefer that to starting a family or not."

If it were that simple then tech/CS/startups should have a gender imbalance roughly equivalent to that of the rest of the working world.

In the past, simple, personality/preference/constitution-based explanations for gender discrepancies have proven false many times - women didn't have the constitutions to be doctors, women didn't have the temperament to be lawyers, etc etc - so I'm inclined to distrust this sort of explanation, at least initially. I'm not saying "Oh because it wasn't true that women just didn't want to do law and medicine it can't be true here.", or that we need 50-50 male/female representation or I'm burning my bra, or even that we should change anything or that anyone is suffering any overt injustice at the hands of anyone else. I'm just advocating for a little critical thought about our society/culture instead of just shrugging our shoulders and assuming that there's no problem.

There's your problem. By using the word "shouldn't" you seem to be conflating "our best guess at objective reality" with "what we think would be morally correct". It is unfortunate that thinking like this is still allowed to infest some higher educational institutions but it doesn't cut the mustard when nobody's funding is on the line.

In terms of objective reality this assumption is unwarranted. There are significant documented differences between the distributions of intellectual capabilities of genders including the higher variance in IQ for men and men's aptitude skew towards maths and away from language.

> In the past, simple, personality/preference/constitution-based explanations for gender discrepancies have proven false many times - women didn't have the constitutions to be doctors, women didn't have the temperament to be lawyers, etc etc - so I'm inclined to distrust this sort of explanation, at least initially.

In the 70s, 80s and even 90s this would have made more sense. But as the years of higher university attendance of women stretch out, as women continue to succeed in previously male dominated areas such as medicine and law you have to ask 'why not in tech/CS/startups'. It isn't as if it is a area that has ever been reputed as having a history of institution chauvinism. To me, the weight of evidence points more and more towards the differences in distributions of capabilities and preferences between genders playing a significant part in participation rates in tech. However much of an 'Inconvenient Likelihood' this may be for both the tech industry and many women, it shouldn't blind us to evaluating the evidence as objectively as possible.

Are there? Cite some for me. And then explain why they mean there are fewer women in tech but not in other fields. Higher IQ variance means that there are more super geniuses and more mentally retarded men. You don't actually need to be a super genius to go into tech. Maybe to found a startup, though that's also a reach, but certainly not to go be a dev somewhere. And moreover, why do you assume that those differences are innate? Maybe they are, but there is also plenty of [uncited] evidence that suggests that many of those differences are learned.

I'm not assuming a priori that women are being screwed, but it mystifies me as to why this community tends to assume A) that the tech community is totally immune to societally constructed gender forces that have at some point affected pretty much everything else in the world and B) discrimination is the only bad thing in society that could be keeping women out of tech.

"It isn't as if it is a area that has ever been reputed as having a history of institution chauvinism."

…say what now? Maybe not like law/medicine did, but there's been plenty of chauvinism in tech.

"To me, the weight of evidence points more and more towards the differences in distributions of capabilities and preferences between genders playing a significant part in participation rates in tech. However much of an 'Inconvenient Likelihood' this may be for both the tech industry and many women, it shouldn't blind us to evaluating the evidence as objectively as possible."

What evidence? I'm very happy to evaluate the evidence objectively. But it seems so far that there's been very little evidence presented either way, and a common response then becomes "well, I don't see a problem, there must not be one!", despite the fact that A) this hasn't worked out as an explanation in the past B) there exist several societal factors we could point to that might explain the problem, if we bothered to think about it for two minutes instead of constructing some complicated and totally unfounded explanation based on evolution.

Instead of assuming that I'm a crazy and irrational feminist who cannot be convinced by facts, which is not the case, why not respond to the original argument I made, which was that our society conditions women to be afraid, which may explain why they're more risk averse?

I'm sure you are aware of them and if you had any actual contradictory position on this you would have mentioned it.

> You don't actually need to be a super genius to go into tech.

I'd say you need to be well above average in 'math IQ' to be useful programmer. When you combine a lower mean in math-like capability with a smaller standard deviation this significantly cuts down the percentage of women who'd be expected to cross that 'threshold'.

> Maybe to found a startup, though that's also a reach, but certainly not to go be a dev somewhere

Can you actually program competently? Cause I'm getting the vibe that you don't have much respect for the art.

> why this community tends to assume A) that the tech community is totally immune to societally constructed gender forces that have at some point affected pretty much everything else in the world

Because at it's heart, the nuts and bolts of tech work is not about social interaction, it is about you and the computer/system. At some level it doesn't matter whether you are an bipolar lesbian midget with major personal hygiene issues or a privileged WASP, the computer doesn't care - your program will either work or not. True geeks don't need to ask for anyone's permission, approval or assistance to get into the area - they just start learning and coding. Sure, this is 'back room' stuff but at the heart of most successful tech startups you will find a healthy 'inner geek' that respects results above contemporary social mores.

> What evidence? I'm very happy to evaluate the evidence objectively. But it seems so far that there's been very little evidence presented either way

I agree in that none of he individual arguments presented are knockout blows. But when you accumulate the maths vs language gap, the variance difference, a reasonable explanation for different attitudes to risk, the successes in previous male bastions (law/medicine) versus the individualistic/mathy tech - it starts to look a lot like mutually supporting evidence.

When it comes to the 'complicated and totally unfounded explanation based on evolution' I see it as stronger than the 'secret societal forces that nobody can seem to put there finger on that stops women from entering tech'. Your argument about fear makes some sense but it is just as easy to argue that founding an ambitious startup is actually irrational in terms life result pay-offs - even for men.

In general I think it is quite too fall into the trap of thinking of people as fundamentally more similar to ones self than they really are, and to explain away the differences as societal influence. Modelling the rest of the world as 'slightly different versions of me' certainly has power but also great inaccuracies. This particular article called 'Generalizing From One Example' was a real eye opener for me.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

Put another way: as far as natural selection goes, women undergo a selection process that, depending on their fitness (and chance, of course), replaces them with maybe 0-6 copies of their genes; men, on the other hand, can be replaced with many more (even if, on average, they are not, the distribution is much wider), and those that hit the "jackpot" will tend to very quickly spread their genes throughout the pool.

The extent to which this actually happened is unclear; I don't know off the top of my head if there are good ways to investigate the landscape of possible fitness outcomes based on only the genome, but if this did happen to any significant degree we'd likely find that wild genetic variations stabilize more quickly on the Y chromosome than on the X (we'd also find that wild variations elsewhere, good and bad, tend to spawn more often from males rather than females, but I'm reasonably sure there's no way to see that without a full DNA history because any genetic material not on the Y chromosome ends up in females as well as males).

I'm currently very interested in this because I think it might be a useful approach in genetic algorithms to cut a balance between the two common strategies for selection - the male replacement strategy (weighted by fitness) is very useful for spreading good characteristics quickly through a population, but the female one (flat selection via a fitness cutoff) is good at preventing one particular trait from forcing fixation of all the genetic cruft that happens to sit beside it.

For instance, imagine that we're evolving zubbins, and each one has two traits, color and size. It turns out that the optimal zubbin for this environment is red and tiny, where "red" is extremely important, and "tiny" less so. If we started out with a population mixed between tiny green zubbins and large red zubbins, a fitness-weighted reproduction strategy would cause the large red zubbins to very quickly overtake the entire population, and we'd lose the "tiny" trait altogether, and the only way it could be recreated would be by mutation (which is a relatively weak evolutionary force, typically). On the other hand, if half the population was selected by a cutoff, there are more "spots" available for less fit zubbins, some of which will be tiny, so eventually we'll see some tiny red zubbins, which is what we're after, and these will still reach fixation quickly enough because of the massive benefit that the male offspring will have.

If only the male reproductive strategy was in play, the crappy "large" trait hitchhikes along with the useful "red" one, destroying the "tiny" trait altogether; conversely, if only the female strategy was happening, fixation would take much longer.

What I'm not sure about, though, is whether there's any real benefit to separating the two strategies (i.e. creating both male and female classes) rather than coming up with one method that cuts a good balance between them (offering a slight extra benefit to highly fit creatures, but just setting a cutoff at some point). There are a lot of other reasons that sexual reproduction is evolutionarily useful in the real world, and many of those don't carry over to code.

As a rule, I definitely think that playing with the rules of evolution, and more specifically, letting those rules (perhaps implicitly) evolve themselves, will be a key idea if we want to exploit evolution for all it's worth; finding a way to let the process significantly improve itself is, IMO, the Holy Grail of evolutionary computing. Evolution is, in some sense, a process of emergence that's been optimized by emergence, and I suspect that our best shot at creating intelligence may be to follow that pattern and attempt to achieve an evolutionary process that's optimized by evolution.

What results when you have intelligence optimized by intelligence is another matter, and (IMO) a far more dangerous one, but that's another story for another day...

Re: writing something up, I'll add it to my todo list, hopefully it will happen eventually, though I'm fairly slow at more formal writing... I am planning to do a series of posts on evolutionary methods in programming, where I want to cover (and hopefully prove useful) a lot of biologically inspired things usually left out of vanilla genetic algorithms/programming (speciation, gender, chromosome/gene separations, automatic evolution of coding schemes, embeddings of meta-evolutionary abilities within the normal evolution process, and hopefully more), but I'm lagging on actually trying out all the things I'd like to, and I also want to find some more compelling practical uses for this stuff...can't make any promises, this is currently a total side-project for me, but I'm plugging away at it, so I'll do my best to write it up eventually. I'll start thinking more about what might be possible to infer from real DNA; my brother is working on his bio-informatics PhD and I've had a lot of conversations with him about this type of thing, so I know that some of the stuff they're able to pull out of the data is truly incredible, they very well may have the data necessary to answer questions about fixation speeds in each chromosome, which would be extremely interesting whatever the results were.

Sent you an e-mail, and added info to my profile (didn't realize that it wasn't already available from the e-mail field, that should be more clear IMO) - if you really think any of this is worth pursuing, by all means let me know.

in actuality women have been starting up companies at twice the rate of men for the last several years http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870468860457512...

It seems that men build startups, but women build lifestyle businesses.

The difference as in other professions is the unfair and unjust burden women face in having a family as Men of the world are not yet up to the task of full sharing of child rearing duties.

Has very little to do with the want..cost of the want however different story

As to the Modern World, men rarely take maternity leave. That's a long time to be away from a job, a large risk for the company, at a possibly highly inopportune moment. Risk.