Can you share why these statements are controversial?
They might be misguided or misinformed, but the underlying fact is that women are not as well represented in stem. Just because the reason it's more likely to be misogyny rather than any biological inclination, doesn't make it an outrageous statement in my opinion.
The difference in participation within STEM between men and women is not well explained by biological differences. Blow has repeatedly claimed that it is actually the primary factor and seems actively disinterested in other explanations.
This is "controversial" in that it's a position that is not well supported by evidence and he has repeatedly used his platform in the past to make unsupported claims to the contrary.
Is the opposite explained? I haven't read literature on the topic, and I'm by the way also somewhat of a sceptic of science on such topics, as a layman. But it seems super obvious that girls/women on average are not wanting to spend their teenage years in the basement programming geek stuff, like many boys/men do. In my experience, here in Germany, and you can probably extrapolate to the West in general, it's not like girls aren't encouraged to pursue programming or science. Men are, on average, just more willing to put in the hours of social neglect in order to become good at such things as programming, or also gaming, or whatever other fringe unsocial hobby. A big part of that is probably competitiveness, but also I believe there are more loners among men. Again, this is not scientific, just personal observations, also ideas I've picked up that I can agree with. I'm not even saying that it must be mostly for biological reasons (though I assume it is), just that there is a deeper reason for fewer girls to exist in tech than just "there is patriarchy and power structures and misogynist gatekeeping and shit".
Never forget that the social neglect is not exactly healthy, and programming isn't actually that prestigious and externally rewarding, except for maybe the compensation that you can currently earn in some places.
Adding that for example in math or other sciences, we are much closer to gender parity.
Given the success of women in sports such as ultra marathoning, medicine etc I don't think it is that conclusive that women are not willing to put the hours into difficult and isolating activities.
There are a great number of studies of the social aspects of gender differences in work but I don't have a single authoritative source for you.
> Men are, on average, just more willing to put in the hours of social neglect in order to become good at such things as programming, or also gaming, or whatever other fringe unsocial hobby.
It is much easier to put in the hours of gaming when you're not repeatedly called for your rape or have someone trying to stalk you or similar aggressive behaviors towards people perceived as female in these spaces. I pretended to be a woman in gaming spaces for some time just to see if these women had a point and the level of harassment I experienced is way more than even my most unmoderated cod xbox days. It's a simple voice modulator in chat.
Point taken. I do think that it can be challenging to be a rare female amongst males (it would probably be similar the other way around). But the biggest contributing factor for such behaviours is certainly the anonymity of online gaming.
For all I know, being a male programmer myself, with a significant proportion of females in all my programmer circles so far, I can attest the exact opposite. Every one of those circles has been welcoming and inclusive.
I don't think he's said exactly that in his own words but I think on balance it's fair to say he doesn't seem welcoming about it.
He clearly has right leaning and libertarian views, and seems to be not very articulate or sensitive in how he discusses them so I can see why people might read into that more than they should maybe.
Thekla currently has 10 core permanent employees. 5 of them are women, including their studio manager, creative and art Director, a programmer, and 2 additional artists.
You can say whatever the hell you want. Or you could spend 3 minutes actually looking at public information to see if you're wrong.
Half his employees are women—including leadership, programming, and creative roles. If that doesn’t count as “thinking women have a role,” what would? 51%? 90%?
You’re relying on blatant social media mischaracterizations over real actions.
He actually employs women at parity. You feel like this is unwelcoming.
One of those statements is data. The other is fanfic.
You said, "I don't think he's said exactly that in his own words but..." That's implicitly saying, "well, he hasn't admitted it outright, but yeah, he basically believes it."
Now faced with evidence contrary to your beliefs, you're claiming you didn't say that. When presented with proof, It's ok to just admit that you were wrong.
Am I supposed to be embarrassed for defending someone against a baseless smear?
Anyway, call it "defensive" all you want. It doesn't change the historical thread: You argued, at best, his views made the workplace unwelcoming; the data shows he hires women at parity. You're just backpedaling because the reality didn't match your narrative vibes.
Happily accusing without evidence? Not shocking behavior. What's shocking is to just say it out loud. LMAO. Funny how "believe women" stops applying when their choices contradict your priors.
When you say, "not well support by evidence," you're either wrong, anti-science, or lying. Numerous studies absolutely show very large average differences in interests based on sex. And those carry over into occupation preferences. Just one more recent study:
Plus: Jon never said it's the "primary" factor, as you claim. He said it's a large factor, that doesn't apply at the individual level, but on average. Which is entirely factual and supported by copious amounts of research.
Just because people like you want to be offended by science, doesn't make it wrong, or controversial.
This study confirms that there is a gender difference but it doesn't explain why. I didn't claim that there were not differences, but that they were not well explained by biology.
Sex is the strongest single predictor of vocational interest orientation we’ve found. Nothing else comes close. If that’s not ‘explained by biology,’ you need to tell me what would be. Otherwise you’re operating on faith.
It's hard to control for social conditioning. I don't need to be able to tell you what the alternative is to be able to tell you that there are many confounding factors.
Knowing what does not explain something, doesn't tell you what does explain it.
They did try to account for social conditioning: parents' education and jobs, local labor markets, school performance, the whole bit. The gap still didn't move much. If socialization were the main driver, you'd expect the most egalitarian countries to have the smallest gaps. They don't. In a lot of cases it's the opposite. Sweden, for example, shows bigger differences in occupational preferences than places like Pakistan.
So at that point you're not pointing to a specific confounder, you're basically saying "maybe there's something else." Sure, logically you can always say that. But if the evidence keeps stacking up in one direction and the only reply is "could be something," that's just refusing to update your view.
Congrats! You've made your position unfalsifiable.
When the data consistently shows gaps widening as social strictures loosen, and your response is to blame an invisible, unmeasurable "conditioning," you aren't doing science at all. But you are insulating your belief from any possible counter-evidence.
No I'm just clear that the current state of science makes it impossible to draw the conclusion that you are.
Note that this outcome goes both ways. We can neither confirm that biology is the main driver nor confirm that it isn't. Life is not as certain as you want it to be.
They're not contradictory in a vacuum. But in this sequence, they show you're backpedaling. You opened with a firm claim, and when confronted with actual data, you retreated to 'we can't know.' Pretending that perfect certainty is required here is just a dodge.
Well, no, you're the one that is "wrong, anti-science, or lying".
The very first sentence of the article you linked to says, "Occupational choices remain strongly segregated by gender, for reasons not yet fully understood."
So claiming that its for biological reasons is bullshit. You have no idea whether it is or not. And neither does Blow.
AFAIK there are differences established on many psychological axes that are more basic than "occupational choice", such as competitiveness, neuroticism, interest in things vs human relations, and others. I don't understand these deeply but you can research for yourself, so there is certainly no shortage of possible explanations based on those.
Well, you "haven't read literature on the topic"[1] so maybe leave the speculation at the door or go out and read some literature to cite rather than presenting "ideas [you]'ve picked up that [you] can agree with" as "established"?
I've been very clear that I'm a layman, such as certainly most of the commenters here. I qualified using "AFAIK" and I've heard this on different occasions by people who have actual experience in the field. You can find similar claims on this page, partly backed by links. For example, I too have heard about studies evidencing that gender differences are more stark in developed countries with well functioning social systems, where people are freeer to choose their profession based on personal interest rather than for example economic aspects.
LOL. You're going to dismiss the study because of the justification for doing the study. Here, let me help you understand:
"not fully understood" -> "so we studied it" -> "here's what we found"
Besides that obvious point, the sentence you quoted says "not yet fully understood," not "we have no idea." Those aren't the same thing. We actually have substantial evidence pointing in a clear direction.
- The most egalitarian countries show the largest gaps, not the smallest.
- Women exposed to elevated androgens in utero become more things-oriented despite being raised normally as girls.
- Male and female monkeys show the same toy preferences we do. Nobody's socializing rhesus monkeys into gender roles.
- A 1.28 standard deviation gap in every culture that emerges in infancy and grows as societies get freer is not what socialization looks like.
You're treating "not fully understood" as "both hypotheses are equally supported."
They aren't.
The evidence overwhelmingly favors a substantial biological component. Just because you don't like the implications of that, doesn't make it false.
That study found that when you test 14 monkeys alone in cages where they can’t actually move the toys, you don’t see the same sex differences as when 135 monkeys are tested in social groups with freely movable toys.
The authors themselves say the social context may be necessary for expression. That’s not evidence against biological contribution, but evidence that behavior requires context to manifest.
You don’t disprove hunger by noting that people don’t eat when there’s no food available.
2) An explanation of this needs to account for a great and rapid shift in favor of women, as far as proportion-of-practitioners, that was happening at exactly the same time as the opposite shift in programming, in both law and medicine.
I don’t know what the actual reason is but “it got prestigious so women got pushed out” makes no sense to me, based on the timeline of events in full context. It was very much not prestigious in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, certainly far less so than law and medicine at that time (still isn’t as prestigious as those, outside tech circles—you can see it in people’s faces. It’s high-paid but lower-“class” than those, to this day)
The traditional way I heard it wasn’t that it was about prestige, but rather that programming became engineering-coded rather than humanities-coded. And misogyny did play a role there, one of the Turing movies had a great story line about it, although I can’t remember the name off hand.
Related, I think math went through a similar transition.
It completely neglects the actual history of the field of computing, even just the 20th century, where the field was filled with women.
Something interesting that I think a lot of younger people don't appreciate: back in the day, unless your name was Hemingway, it was considered unmanly to touch a keyboard. Anything that involved a typewriter or anything else with a keyboard was distaff by definition, just so much secretarial work. Maybe a journalist's job, if you were feeling generous.
Sounds stupid as hell, and it was, but that's a big reason why women played an outsized part in the growth of computing. First as the 'calculators' in WWII, then as Baudot terminals started to take over, as keyboard operators.
Don't make the mistake of assuming they were all Grace Hoppers or Margaret Hamiltons or Adele Goldbergs, because that simply wasn't the case. Many of them might have been, though, in a less stereotype-driven world.
They might be misguided or misinformed, but the underlying fact is that women are not as well represented in stem. Just because the reason it's more likely to be misogyny rather than any biological inclination, doesn't make it an outrageous statement in my opinion.