Re: [COFF] [TUHS] Women in computing

On Thu, 14 Feb 2019, Thomas Kellar wrote: Hi Thomas. FWIW, the mainstream on both sides of this argument agree that men and women overlap in characteristics. The question is what causes the differences. Many human characteristics are bimodal with most people clustering around one of two points, and those points correlating with biological gender. Opponents of inate gender differences argue that the observed differences are socialised. They point out that neuroplasticity means that even differences in brain structure between genders *could* be socialised. This is why I find studies on infants so interesting. There are plenty of examples but I've linked a study below that monitored the behaviour of infants that are around 24 hours old. Statistically significant differences in behaviour were observed between boys and girls. This is far too early for any socialisation to have occured. https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf When I was a young man I believed that gender differences (beyond obvious morphological differences) were socialised. But the evidence grew, and has continued to grow, that to a large degree this isn't so. A really fascinating area is "greater male variability" (GMV) which really explains a lot about the world. I wrote an article on that for a well known blog a few years ago. While researching the article I discovered that men vary more than women in personality. That is to say that on average women are more similar to each other in personality than men are. I admit that one really surprised me. Some people claim GMV has been discredited. It hasn't. People claiming GMV has been discredited usually cite a handful of counter examples as evidence of this. GMV was never claimed to be univerally true, only true for most characteristics.. I suspect there is at least one case where females, not males, exhibit greater variability but this still doesn't discredit GMV. Getting back to employment, there have been many studies on employment patterns and gender by researchers and governments. They consistently show that men and women make a myriad of different choices in employment. In particular they show that men will tend to prioritise earning potential over many other characteristics of employment while women tend to do the reverse. The largest study on this topic anywhere is probably the CONSAD Report, commissioned by the US Dept of Labor. The CONSAD Report is actually on the gender earnings gap but it's still relevant to a discussion on different choices men and women make in employment. Here's a tiny URL to the CONSAD Report: https://tinyurl.com/y6vvzm4v Cheers, Rob