Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other.
...No it doesn't. That's just something you're adding to preserve the distinction.
>Like, male and female high jumpers that make it over a certain height of bar are approximately as good at jumping. There's more men in that category. This all might be playing semantics, but I think there's a real thing here to disentangle, and it'd be nice to say one without implying the other.
Yes yes but the problem comes with Damore's reasoning for why there are more men in that category - biological determination of better programming ability.
He also suggested that if the goal is for Google to become more inclusive toward women, that perhaps the roles should be adjusted to appeal more to women than to stick our heads in the sand and pretend the problem is Google's patriarchy.
If you run a burger place and want more women to eat there, you start serving salads. That doesn't mean you're a sexist for thinking women can't eat burgers. Some do. But generally speaking, women eat salads at higher rates than men. You will not be as successful by trying to market the same burgers to women.
You're sneaking in your "prefer" with your "generally". Damore didn't speak just to preference, he also spoke to ability.
>If you run a burger place and want more women to eat there, you start serving salads. That doesn't mean you're a sexist for thinking women can't eat burgers. Some do. But generally speaking, women eat salads at higher rates than men. You will not be as successful by trying to market the same burgers to women.
Great analogy. So in terms of burgers/salads & men/women Damore is saying that there are biological reasons to believe that women prefer salads to burgers and that there are biological reasons to believe that men are better at eating burgers.
So now let me ask you, do you think women prefer salads because of biology, or do you think that women prefer salads because of culture? You can say both but if so maybe you could say which one you think is the larger influence and by how much.
Also, do you think that men are biologically better at eating burgers? Is this the reason they are more likely to order a burger?
I think the analogy exposes exactly the problem with Damore's memo.
https://herosports.com/nfl/women-fastest-growing-market-foot...
wow, a decade of marketing overpowered millenia of biology ad cultural history.
(a) There is no consistent world view for tens of millions of people distributed across the globe, (b) there is no research, none, that specifically states that women are genetically predisposed to be less suited to engineering and (c) there is no clear rules about what aspects of our biology are required to be a great engineer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4129348/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157091/
Maybe these studies are wrong, maybe the conclusions Damore drew were wrong (I certainly think they are). However, I think witch-hunting people for asking questions about sensitive topics is a much more clear and present danger.
Some state that this a culture problem and that there is a hidden bias.
Some also state that women might go to other fields because they have a greater capacity at empathy. which is a proven fact. women that go and study those fields won't apply to cs positions they will apply to positions in their fields.
and by the way there was a study that indicated that women get short-listed less in sex-blind hiring
"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview."
"Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
this is getting downvoted with no replies if someone has a porblem with what I said, I'm happy to debate.
No, it doesn't. It suggests fewer women are good. It doesn't suggest that the women in the field are any worse than the men in the field, it just explains why there may be fewer women than men.
this argument uses "Distribution of...abilities" without indicating in any part that women are worse at anything.
the phrase “Distribution of...abilities” does not suggest that “women are worse.”
"fewer women wind up having the skills for X in part due to biological causes" and "women are worse at X".
source:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19476221
from the abstract: "This study contributes information on women's greater empathic disposition in comparison with men by means of a longitudinal design in an adolescent population"
