Re:Women, Tech Conferences and the Bullshit Surrounding It
by jlees on Wednesday April 17, 2013 @12:40AM
(#5562713)
Sorry, I missed that specific point in amongst your others; the main argument you made seemed to specifically ignore this, so I guess I just edited it out when I read it. :)
Women do plenty of obsessive hobbies. I know women who can spend an entire day (12+ hours) baking, for example. Sure, our brains are wired differently, but I think the idea that you have to be obsessive to present at a conference (and that females might not be as obsessive for whatever reason) doesn't quite hold up. There are plenty of conference-worthy subjects which might not be deeply meticulous coding topics, for example.
No, I'm not taking this for granted.
I even stated: "And that's assuming (and it's not guaranteed by any law of physics) that men and women Python programmers, in aggregate, are equally good and passionate with Python and doing conference worthy stuff with it."
>(Or, the inflammatory counter, what if women just aren't good at math and should be shopping instead - shifting it the other way?)
Could be entirely plausible too. Don't have any numbers though (could also be the inverse, women better at math).
But more plausible to me is an alternative explanation. What if not enough women (due to either nature or nurture) don't have the obsessive nature that being a coder and doing conference worthy stuff requires? I know men working meticulously on some stuff (from hacking to wood-working) for ages. Far less women doing so. I'm not judging, if anything it could be far smarter, personal-development-wise, than programming 10 hours straight at work and then again at home, in your "cave", as a hobby. So, perhaps women favor work-life balance more. Or men coders compensate with coding for other stuff (for example a lot that I know have subpar sex lives and are not exactly "party animals").