If I may after a few decades in business and being surrounded by a super open family - I've always been open to anyone competent and interested in my stem field.

Based on thousands of resumes I've received - 80/90% of them are men which approximately represents school levels found in most developed countries. It also roughly represents the level of employee we've taken on.

Based on this - Thinking a 50/50 ratio is possible in stem subjects may not be the best approach or simply not possible for many.

The most significant notion that may be forgotten - who is not only the most competent but the most interested person for the job you're posting.

What ever your gender - focus on being competent and eventually you'll find a good place to grow. And if they don't help you attain more - leave and find something else.

When I started in SoftDev, way before forced diversion initiatives. I had pleasure to work with a good number of women engineers.

They were all above average developers. This was a norm to the point that I'd assume any new female dev is competent from get-go.

Sadly flooding corporation with people who have no idea how to code and are quota hires quickly destroyed that notion. The whole DEI actually is validating and reinforcing stupid stereotypes. And hurting the cause of bringing more women to programming in the long term.

"In 2016, Crikey ran a series on women in the tech industry and the factors that had led to women making up just 23% of the industry workforce: a lack of girls studying STEM subjects, long hours and an emphasis on hours worked rather than outcomes achieved, [...] drink-spiking and rape at industry events, and boozy bro cultures where strip clubs were seen as good places for work functions."

None of these have anything to do with sexism. Turns out that girls are less interested than boys in STEM subjects - surprise surprise. As for 'long hours and emphasis on hours worked' - what sort of nonsensical word salad is this? Men also work long hours and get paid for the hours worked, unless they are on a salary (no different to women that work on a salary). Is Crikey suggesting that women want to work less hours than men? If yes, then no wonder women aren't hired as often relative to men who are (by this logic) willing to work longer and more hours.

As for drinks being spiked at a bar or club, that has literally nothing to do with work - that is a criminal matter, and an issue for venues that serve alcohol. This article is the first I've ever heard of there being some kind of 'STEM industry-wide' epidemic of drink spiking, and based on the piece overall I can only assume it's hyperbole in line with the rest of the article. I'm happy to see evidence, though, of there being so much drink spiking specifically at 'industry events' that women quite literally make a conscious career-path decision based on it. I'll wait.

Obviously a workplace should never be sponsoring a trip to a brothel or a strip club, but if work colleagues want to go to a strip club after work, that's just friends hanging out and quite literally has nothing to do with work. Is Crikey suggesting that an employer should attempt to control what his employees do in their personal lives outside of and away from work? Good luck with that. Inserting a clause into your PhD skilled worker's employment contract that says he can't go to a strip club or a bar on his own time seems like a pretty straightforward way to get your PhD skilled worker to quit and go somewhere that doesn't have such draconian, paternalistic rules. And, given that he's a PhD skilled worker, he's likely to have that option.

Obligatory 'sex differences are innate and have nothing to do with socialisation' study:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2755553/

None of this is to excuse or minimise ACTUAL sexual harassment or workplace bullying, but - much like how 'genocide' and 'fascism' get bandied about constantly where they don't actually apply - a boy who cries wolf situation is created when attempts to manufacture outrage aren't justified by the facts of a particular case.

EDIT: "34.6 per cent of respondents said they were seen as less professional because they could not work long hours."

In other words, women aren't hired as much, aren't promoted as much, and don't get paid as much because they don't work as much as men. Seems like the system is working as intended.

Or are you guys wanting to pay women MORE than men for working the same amount of time? Of course another way of saying this is: do you want to pay men less than women for every hour worked? Unlike what's happening now, THAT would actually be sexist.

https://members.professionalsaustralia.org.au/documents/Gend...

you self-loathing nice guys are such a funny bunch

Talking about harmful stereotypes, eh?

> Incorrect. Most states have at-will employment laws (or as I like to call them, right-to-be-fired laws), which mean that either party may terminate the employment at any time for any reason (or no reason) except for those specifically delineated in civil-rights legislation (race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age in some cases, etc.). People have been fired for smoking outside of company hours. Their termination has been held up in court. If your boss caught you going into a strip club and determined that this was counter to the moral values espoused by the company, they would have the legal right to fire you on the spot. What's more difficult for companies is to police your behavior off company time and off company premises.

Yeah, you're right. I'll amend my post.

"Previous studies have reported differences between males and females in toy choice; that is, girls generally favor toys such as soft dolls, whereas boys generally favor construction and transportation toys (e.g., Connor and Serbin, 1977; Liss, 1981; Pasterski et al., 2005; Roopnarine, 1986)." The dolls vs construction toys preference holds for both human children and monkeys (the latter of which obviously have no socialising reason to prefer one over the other for reasons of sex).

The implication is that girls are innately more caring and social, while boys are more adventurous, independent, and prone to risk taking. These differences are pretty obvious to most people, and to - for example - the insurance industry, which charges a much higher premium for a 16 year old boy's car insurance than for a 16 year old girl's car insurance. By your logic, sex differences in motor vehicle accidents among teenagers must be explicable by reason of something other than sex, which would make you a very rich person if you could prove it.

Selective quoting, ignoring other studies, commentary about toy presentation and the actual big picture comment:

    Therefore, one key difference between males and females in these studies is that males actually show a toy preference while females do not!

But sure, you read the bit that backs your bias.

> By your logic,

Not my logic, I didn't author the study that you linked.

> sex differences in motor vehicle accidents among teenagers must be explicable by reason of something other than sex,

That doesn't follow from the quote.

Sex differences in motor vehicle accidents among teenagers skew heavily male along with other not fully thought through risk taking look at me behaviours.

"Sex differences in motor vehicle accidents among teenagers skew heavily male along with other not fully thought through risk taking look at me behaviours."

I'm glad you agree with me that certain male behaviours and thought processes are unique to males, implying there are cognitive and behavioural differences between males and females which exist as a function of sex.

"Therefore, one key difference between males and females in these studies is that males actually show a toy preference while females do not!"

This is further evidence - which you've adduced multiple times now - that innate differences between males and females exist (in this case, we have a difference in the existence of toy preferences as a function solely of sex).

Now that we agree about this, you can see why one might reasonably conclude that boys, as a function of being boys, prefer certain activities and topics over others (and, mutatis mutandis, girls).

I have nothing further to add.

Wait of all things why do you take “look at me behavior” as something that must be based on innate differences? Being a social phenomenon in itself, wouldn’t it be completely reasonable to blame this on different socialization?

I also want to nitpick your language because I think it implies something about your worldview. You said that “certain male behaviors and thought processes are unique to males,” key word there being unique. Given the broad crossover between the sexes in physiology (albeit when examining rare cases), we should, imo, expect absolutely nothing to be a uniquely male/female thought process, just one more likely to be found in one sex than the other. The article provides no argument for uniqueness. To me this seems a very important distinction because the existence of uniquely sexed psychological behavior could be used to justify all manner of political ideas that a higher probability of finding said behavior could not.

Just to be clear, I make no claims about the argument that large populations will exhibit sex-based skews in behavior, just that this is entirely probabilistic and many, many outliers will exist.

Males being more agressive, risk-taking etc is a result of being biologically disposable. Tribes would have much lower survivability if female hunter were off dying to wild beasts. That is just evolutionary trait reinforced over thousand of years.

Sexual dimorphism is a fact, you can argue how much impact it has on the final behaviours. But dismissing nature from 'nature vs nurture' is outright silly at this point (I think you are trying to argue for that, correct me if I am wrong)

I apologize if I didn’t make it clear, I’m not trying to dismiss nature. There are certainly at least some sex-based psychological differences. My point was that sex, being bimodal, would only affect psychology in a probabilistic sense, and that any psychological trait you isolated would be found in some individuals from either sex. I would argue that it’s possible small sex differences often reinforce themselves socially in a feedback loop, so even a small difference in, for example, risk taking behavior could be amplified through nurture to the extent we see. We also clearly raise boys to believe that risk-taking behavior will increase their chances with women (see action movies). You’d need to show me studies on infants to convince me that’s meaningfully based on nature, because unsubstantiated evopsych arguments are notoriously easy to make.

its actually not that hard to make this case.

We have an excellent proxy to prove a psychological tendencies are bread in and are an reinforced through the environment. Selective breeding of dogs.

We speed up natural selection via selective breeding and created dogs of various utility to us. Not only physical characteristics but also psychological too.

Border Collies have ingrained instinct to heard and work the fields. People buying them as couch dogs end up with agitated dogs who go crazy due to lack of mental stimulation.

We bread dogs for agression self evident with number of dog attack amongst the 'agressive' breeds.

You can guy a border collie puppy and never show it a farm, sheep and it will still be predisposed to herding and waiting for commands.

Blaming action movies as a cause for risk taking behavior is akin to blame video games for school shootings .

> I would argue that it’s possible small sex differences often reinforce themselves socially in a feedback loop, so even a small difference in, for example, risk taking behavior could be amplified through nurture to the extent we see.

I dont know a single tribe that has broken the 'hunter - men, camp tasks - women' division.

>You’d need to show me studies on infants to convince me that’s meaningfully based on nature, because unsubstantiated evopsych arguments are notoriously easy to make.

We both know that sooner the hell will freeze over, than a study like that on infants will ever get approved

The entire argument you're making regarding dogs can be reduced down to the statement that animals possess innate instincts, which nobody in their right mind could disagree with. I'll explain why that's all you're saying.

Wolves have the instinct to herd animals then kill them. Border collies were selectively bred to reduce the instinct to kill while retaining the one to herd. They then, as puppies, go through months of scaffolded training to make them productive livestock herders. They don't pop out of the doggie womb as herding dogs, we build on top of their refined herding instinct through tons of conditioning.

> Blaming action movies as a cause for risk taking behavior is akin to blame video games for school shootings.

There are so many things that make this parallel ridiculous. Firstly, a school shooter has to plan their actions out. As far as I'm aware, most display warning signs well before the shooting because they usually plan to do so long in advance. They thus need to be more or less aware of the fact that they are likely committing suicide, as well as murdering children. Thus, a shooter needs to mull over the very extreme negative consequences of their actions for days, if not weeks, before they take action. Risk-taking, in contrast, is usually impulsive. The action one intends to take is, furthermore, usually not whatever negative consequence they may unfortunately bring about. I hope you can see that it is dramatically, incomparably more difficult to condition a person to commit a school shooting than to condition them to be more willing to take risks. I also only brought up action movies as an example because I thought this would be very obvious. We tell boys, explicitly at times, that bravery, i.e. lack of fear, is part of being a man. One would intuitively expect that this could sometimes cause the dimmer males among us to engage in risky behavior to demonstrate their masculinity (hence why they so often do so in front of women they find attractive).

> I dont know a single tribe that has broken the 'hunter - men, camp tasks - women' division.

No offense, but your not knowing of it doesn't constitute an argument. I found this an informative read:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m...

It leads by illustrating that women are perfectly capable hunters physically and mentally. It then points out that we have plenty of evidence to indicate that they did hunt. The reality is simply that ancient man couldn't afford to divide itself like that, and that doing so would be a massive waste of manpower.

"For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner."

Skeletons of Neanderthals don't exhibit sex-differentiated wear and tear.

"Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather."

Tribes with shared responsibility exist.

"Observations of recent and contemporary foraging societies provide direct evidence of women participating in hunting. The most cited examples come from the Agta people of the Philippines. Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men."

Sex-based division of labor largely emerged with the advent of agriculture; it isn't ingrained in our genes the way you represent.

"It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality."

I'm sorry bombard you with a big article here, but I think this is a genuine misunderstanding and I hope you'll be open to the information, because I also used to assume men did the hunting and it was really informative when I learned about this.

> We both know that sooner the hell will freeze over, than a study like that on infants will ever get approved

A study on whether infants (or toddlers, since infants probably can't anticipate consequences) demonstrate differences in risk-taking behavior based on their sex? That seems pretty inoffensive to me; I wouldn't be surprised if one existed already.

> boys, as a function of being boys, prefer certain activities and topics over others.

As per the aticle this includes leering, drink spiking, date rape, etc.

And, fails to address why women avoid male heavy domains despite no evidence that should they dive in they'd be any worse than boys.

> I have nothing further to add.

You've studiously avoided the innate bad behaviour aspects over several comments now.

My apologies. I'm more than happy to admit that men exhibit 'innate bad behaviour' more often than women do. The fact that they do so is a function of them being men, and men and women are very different, as we've seen.

I suppose you think that by admitting this, I must then admit that women are scared off by such 'innate bad behaviour' and so don't go into STEM fields.

But once again the evidence is that the sex differences are significant from at least the time infants begin playing with toys and that they are not functions of human culture or learned social behaviour. Or are you suggesting that 1 year old infants are capable of making sex-based inferences? Maybe that monkey infants have divined the intricacies of human gender norms?

Those differences in behaviours based on sex are conserved across a range of primate species, as we've seen.

If the cognitive and behavioural differences arise before girls (or infant female monkeys) have ever been exposed to those big bad mean boys and their bad behaviours, then naturally you can't blame women being underrepresented in STEM fields on the boys, and you'll have to look for other (antecedent) causes. As we've seen, those cognitive and behavioural differences DO arise far earlier than you can explain based on some learned response to male behaviour. The differences can only be explained by the genetic distinctions between the two sexes.

I wasn't 'studiously' avoiding anything, it's just that bad male behaviours are completely irrelevant.

Not that I agree with the parent comment, in particular i disagree that innate differences overshadow socialization in their effect upon gender proportions in stem, but I do want to point out that there isn’t a contradiction here. If males, in effect, have less options they find appealing, then we’d expect a higher likelihood of males selecting stem subjects and thus a gender imbalance.

Not as extreme as has been seen.

Taking first year (actual) Engineering as an example, in the early 1980s in my state, at the university I attended, many males applied, only those with sufficient test scores were accepted subject to places available (300 intake).

299 males Vs 1 female.

In pure math, chem, physics, law, medicine, the gender breaks were approx 35-55% female (somewhat higher than 50:50 female intakes in medicine|law) but Engineering was (at that time) avoided by women in the application process.

There are things males gravitate to, there are things that women choose to avoid, and there's a selection committee that chooses from applications. Engineering was a sausage fest .. and not a pleasent faculty to be a female student in.

Oh absolutely, 299 to 1 sounds like an absolute joke and clearly is social. I just mean that once we have done the important work to eradicate social barriers keeping women out of engineering, we may still find a disparity. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but I at least hope things have improved since the 80s.