Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit
by danbolt on Saturday May 09, 2020 @03:10PM
(#23127505)
> Women are not "discriminated against" when it comes to signing up for computer science classes in high school or choosing to major in computer science in university, yet significantly less of them sign up for these classes then men. There is no discrimination going on here since any women can sign up for any class of their choosing in high school. Clearly something is causing this gender imbalance, what might that be?
Gee, that must be some sort of biological factor! Certainly not related to social aspects outside of signing up for a high school computer science class.
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit
by wpietri on Saturday May 09, 2020 @01:49PM
(#23126814)
That is not in fact what I'm trying to say. Sorry you wasted so much time replying to a point I wasn't making.
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit
by JSavageOne on Saturday May 09, 2020 @01:58PM
(#23126896)
Practically every comment I've made in this thread I'd consider a waste of time since no one calling the memo "sexist" has made any serious argument, thus proving my point.
I always thought Reddit was a better platform for people more interested in a echo chamber safe space where they can post low-effort 1-2 sentence comments and be patted on the back with other similar comments all saying the same thing.
Re:James Damore and three others end Google suit
by wpietri on Saturday May 09, 2020 @02:06PM
(#23126983)
One, I didn't say that, so I'm not sure why you think it's my job to argue the point. Two, you are not coming across as a guy who's seriously looking to understand why people might reasonably see something as sexist. You can't really be surprised that nobody's willing to take the time to educate somebody who doesn't want to learn.
There's an enormous difference between the references you made because they are all trying to rationalize treating a race/gender as inferior. On top of that, there is no real scientific evidence backing anything up and it all basically amounts to inferring causation from correlation (ie. they are inferior because they are poor).
James' memo does not in any form attempt to rationalize why women should not become engineers (the analogue to your comparisons), rather it tries to explain why women do not pursue careers in tech at the frequency with which men do.
Women are not "discriminated against" when it comes to signing up for computer science classes in high school or choosing to major in computer science in university, yet significantly less of them sign up for these classes then men. There is no discrimination going on here since any women can sign up for any class of their choosing in high school. Clearly something is causing this gender imbalance, what might that be? That is what the memo tries to investigate. There is nothing "sexist" about asking or attempting to answer this real life phenomenon.
In terms of gender differences, the author lists points such as "women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things" , "women on average are more cooperative", and "Women on average look for more work-life balance while men have a higher drive for status on average", hardly statements that anyone can consider as insinuating female inferiority.
I'm guessing that the most contentious part of the memo is where the author states that women tend to have higher degrees of neuroticism, but he did cite Wikipedia which states "Research in large samples has shown that levels of neuroticism are higher in women than men." and references a research paper [1]. I'm no biology/psychology/gender expert and have no opinion on the authority of the source, but the legitimacy of the paper is certainly not a question of "politics", but of science.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...