I'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend their ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on pronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there?
Do you have any pointers to data showing this close? Most of what I've seen shows the gap being shockingly persistent in the face of intervention across a wide variety of systems, but I'm always looking for more.
I reccomend Malcolm Gladwell's podcast on the subject. He makes a strong argument that the failure to integrate teachers to any degree caused a large part of the failure. Some of his sources are on the page, but I haven't reviewed them well personally.
What does "bear at least a passing resemblance to some wholly discredited arguments" mean? Is this the same sort of thinking that has people rabidly ferreting out "dogwhistles" in normal speech?
No one who is serious about this doubts that there are women who are interested in tech and able to acquire the skills. The key question is how many women have this interest, absent any worries about matching the number to men perfectly. Even asking that question apparently causes a very interesting reaction.
It seems pretty clear that you either didn't read the memo, or you had a preconceived reaction that prevented you from absorbing what it actually said. It's a shame, I normally enjoy your posts because you are conscientious and even-handed about technical matters.
It's very important to remember that statistics reify to probabilities, so that statistical statements about groups can be true while individuals don't match the statements perfectly. That's how the math works. IOW, saying that in general women have less interest in tech can be perfectly true, and it simultaneously offers zero denigration toward any individual woman's ability or interest.
I'm taken aback by how many obviously smart people miss this, particularly in computing, since it seems fair to assume lots of you took statistics classes at some point.
I also take heavy issue with your idea that saying women have less interest in developing technical abilities is equivalent to calling them sub-human. There is an entire world outside of tech, and in many facets, women have greater interest and ability than men. Why is it so completely impossible for people to accept this clear empirical imbalance in this one particular field?
