The (un)importance of gender in programming

Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by gorgoroth666 on Friday February 17, 2012 @07:45AM (#3603077)

"Why do men dominate the fields of science, engineering and mathematics?"

"Are intrinsic differences between the sexes responsible for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical and scientific disciplines ?"

I think so.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by lorettahe on Friday February 17, 2012 @07:49AM (#3603090)

There are many good female scientists/engineers/mathematicians. Back in Cambridge University, to start off with, there are many female mathematics students. Considering achievement by people such as Grace Hopper, I don't think we can blame the domination of men down to sex differences. I would rather girls stand up and bravely join the science community regardless whether these communities are male dominated or not.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by lmm on Friday February 17, 2012 @09:15AM (#3603329)

I studied mathematics at Cambridge University. While there were some very good female students on the course, it's worth recording that the better colleges had smaller proportions of women; New Hall (all-female) had possibly the worst academic reputation, while Trinity (probably best academically) had two girls among my year of 42.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by gorgoroth666 on Friday February 17, 2012 @07:53AM (#3603101)

Let's count the heads and the achievements and see how Grace Hopper is irrelevant.

But you should have thinked about that by yourself; another example of woman logic I guess.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by hythloday on Friday February 17, 2012 @08:55AM (#3603260)

FWIW, lorettahe, this is exactly the kind of ad-hominem idiocy/misogyny that women encounter[0] and men never do[1]. There's no one big issue keeping women out of programming, it's just the drip-drip-drip of "you're different from us and we don't want you here" that 50% (then 65%, then 80%, then 95%...) of the candidate pool simply never hear or see unless they make an effort to.

[0] This moron got downvoted because downvoting is not socially awkward; how many times do you see a social smack-on-the-wrist in a face-to-face conversation?

[1] I'll donate £5 to a charity of your choice for every time someone comes up with an attributed accusation of using "man logic" in a discussion related to programming.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by nnythm on Friday February 17, 2012 @09:24AM (#3603372)

it's man logic to promote denigrating terms against men in an effort to better the plight of women.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by hythloday on Friday February 17, 2012 @09:35AM (#3603418)

I'm afraid I'm not sure what your point is (is it objecting to the word "misogyny"?)--could you elaborate?

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by nnythm on Friday February 17, 2012 @10:22AM (#3603596)

The idea of encouraging the term of "man logic" is man logic. Misogyny is clearly a problem, but saying, "oh but men are dumb too" is not the right way to go about fixing it.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by hythloday on Friday February 17, 2012 @02:49PM (#3604712)

I definitely wasn't encouraging the invention of the term "man logic"--I was pointing out that no-one even thinks about calling things "man logic". That's the dichotomy at play here.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by icebraining on Friday February 17, 2012 @11:07AM (#3603778)

Where was the encouragement?

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by Symmetry on Friday February 17, 2012 @08:31AM (#3603184)

The scientific consensus is that while men and women might have different distributions of personality traits, their mental abilities are more or less identical. Seriously, the difference in math test scores between male and female students in different countries tracks sexual discrimination so well you could almost use it as a diagnostic.

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Re:The (un)importance of gender in programming by yummyfajitas on Friday February 17, 2012 @11:13AM (#3603809)

...their mental abilities are more or less identical.

No. The evidence suggests that Larry Summers was right, namely that men have a higher variance than women, though means are close to equal.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/321/5888/494.summary

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2889145

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21038941

Seriously, the difference in math test scores between male and female students in different countries tracks sexual discrimination...

Yes - the more gender equity you have, the better boys do relative to girls. (The scores of both genders improve with gender equity, but boy's scores improve more.)

http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf

This document also shows that the greater male variance is mostly invariant across cultures.

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