[SGVLUG] OT: Why aren't there more women in tech?

[juanslayton @dslextreme.com]

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its
theories will hold water.
-Gardner

In a Hegelian universe, anything can be connected to anything else if you
try hard enough.  In this case you don't have to try too hard.  Monthly
attendance is a continuing concern.  I'd would go after any identifiable
group who might have an interest.  Even lapsed Amish....  I don't need to
collect data to observe the gender imbalance in our attendance.  The causes
of that imbalance may not be relevant to Linux programming, but they are
relevant to the health of our (dis)organization.  So the topic is, IMHO,
perfectly relevant.  And yeah, I'd go after the ladies.  I'd even take a
stack of fliers down to the local Curves, if that would do any good.

John of uncertain ancestry.  Possibly canine....

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Dustin Laurence
<dllaurence at dslextreme.com>wrote:

> On 03/24/2012 02:35 PM, Rae Yip wrote:
>
>  I personally welcome supporting data when it is provided, but no
>> rigorous statistical statements have been presented (at best a claim
>> of "correlation").
>>
>
> Nitpicking Lad here again.
>
> IIRC the conversation started with a claim about data in the general vein
> of "fewer women than men in Linux."  Nobody offered to quantify that, but
> then nobody questioned it either.  The tendentious issue tends to be what
> theories explain the data, or the assignment of value to various outcomes
> (which leads to a need for some action), a game that implicitly rests on a
> theory about the data (and an underlying world-view, since values don't
> come from data) in order to assign value.
>
> For example, I claim that women are terribly underrepresented as customers
> in LA area strip clubs, and most drastically so in the nastiest, seediest
> dives.  I suspect no one will disagree and insist on statistics, even
> though that claim must be bald ipse dixit on my part because I've never
> read a study on the subject and have never been in a strip club.  Is this a
> cause for concern, a call to action (perhaps male stripper tables at job
> fairs, or tax credits for women visiting peeler joints)?  I'm going to
> guess everyone will answer no, but of course one must have a theory about
> the effect that produces the data in order to come to that conclusion.
>  That theory probably is defensible by a chain of argument beginning with
> the observation that female mammals have a much greater investment in
> reproduction, female humans most of all, and that female choice controls
> mate selection in humans.  If explained properly (i.e. without my
> quasi-academic language) I doubt anyone would functionally disagree with
> those premises either.  The matter of interest is the chain of logic
> leading from the premises to the data and whether it is valid, persuasive,
> illogical, unlikely, etc.
>
> Here's another example: I don't believe I've ever met a female plumber,
> and I imagine the percentage is pretty low, yet there doesn't seem to be
> any movement to encourage little girls to consider a plumbing career. Why?
>  Not because of the data, but because of a low assignment of value to
> plumbing as a profession.  I'd be quite comfortable in making the same
> claim about slaughterhouse employees as well, without even anecdotal data.
>
> The point is that the actual issue, though I agree it is better avoided,
> is really not about data--it's about explanations of data and the
> assignment of value to various statistical distributions.  It isn't to say
> that Linux clubs are as seedy as strip bars--well, not usually anyway.
>  Um...darn.  Well, anyway, at least our drinks are cheaper. :-)
>
> Dustin
>
> PS: Rae for prez
>
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