I would like to see some more research done with this study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943412 basically a writing exercise that seems to remove most of the effects of stereotype threat.
First, I've yet to see any women engineers who have demonstrated they are good at their jobs make this argument. It's mostly bloggers and journalists writing these things. Women engineers who are good don't describe having problems any different from the rest of us.
As far as the actual incidents of harassment from asshole managers and socially inept coworkers, I've got the same stories too. Management is clueless in general and the profession, although respected by the public, is not generally respected by managers, executives or journalists.
Most developers employed these days are not competent, regardless of gender, man and woman alike. The few that are competent cluster in competent firms where harassment and disrespect of employees, man and woman alike, is not tolerated.
I'm a bit hyper-aware of this right now. I resigned my job last month after 6 months of abuse and harassment of engineers by non-engineering sales staff, which they viewed as hilarious pranks on worthless geeks who think they are so smart. Complaints to management were handled with suggestions to "man up", "learn to deal" and "stop being a pussy". I received over 100% salary increase in return for my willingness to quit and leave for a more sane firm.
If you are good and you are being harassed, there is high demand for people who are good. The companies that permit harassment deserve to fail. Leave and don't look back. I offer this advise because I would hate for someone to think they can't find a place where there work is appreciated and they are valued because of their gender or race. There are places out there that are sane and professional, and they are generally more profitable so you make more as well. The only thing is that you need to be competent, that is the most important thing in this field because that's your ticket to success.
The article has nothing to do with harassment.
As a female in the software industry, I have experienced harassment perhaps once, and it wasn't from my colleagues.
Stereotype threat can occur even at 'sane firms'. It has to do with a person's perception of herself and what people might be thinking, not the way others are acting.
The article appeared to be arguing: women underperform because they spend mental effort worrying about stereotype threat. So let's educate them about stereotype threat so they'll be more conscious of it.
That sounds obviously counterproductive. Did I misunderstand?
It's not counterproductive at all. Knowing how to deal with such biases (whether they're internal or external) makes them easier to overcome.
For example, I'm self-taught, and while I have many years experience now and have done some significant projects, I still second guess myself quite a bit. (This is often called "Imposter Syndrome", see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposter_syndrome.) I found it tremendously helpful to discover that people I've looked up to for years have felt the same way, and had helpful suggestions for getting over the internalized anxiety.
Everybody has nagging fears like this. Learning how to see them for what they are and to avoid making things worse for other people benefits everybody.
Being able to label that thing that's been interfering with my ability to get my work done is definitely a productive thing.
But I also think there's another, far more useful purpose for educating people suffering from stereotype threat about stereotype threat: they can then put a label to what is keeping them from getting their work done when asking their peers, mentors, or managers for help. And then their peers, mentors, and managers can pay attention to situations that might provoke stereotype threat, try to lessen them, and otherwise show a bit of compassion for the person suffering from it.
I say this personally: learning about stereotype threat cleared a huge communication roadblock I'd been having for years with managers and peers, and as soon as we were on the same page we were actually able to address some of the issues contributing to it.
While you make a point that it doesn't always have to do with harassment, your second argument is very weak. There's nothing anyone but yourself can do about "[...] a person's perception of herself and what people might be thinking, not the way others are acting."
If your issue lies with what other people MIGHT be thinking, then the issue is within your own self-confidence.
I agree that stereotypes are destructive, but only when they actually are present. One should be careful not to feel threatened by hypothetical thoughts from hypothetical co-workers before the fact.
There's nothing anyone but yourself can do about "[...] a person's perception of herself and what people might be thinking, not the way others are acting."
Agreed.
On the other hand, for a person thinking negatively about himself or herself, the absence of feedback will often be interpreted as negative feedback.
Being nice to our colleagues (male or female or other minority group) and giving positive feedback when it's appropriate tends to increase a team's overall morale and productivity.
Absolutely. On a related note, we seem to be a lot better and consistent at giving negative feedback. Encouraging positive feedback and giving more of it to young people as they grow up would probably go a long way.
Yes, both men and women encounter stereotype threat. However, in programming, stereotype threat works mainly against women. So in context, yes, it's gender-specific.
You should do a better job reading the comments you reply to. His "language" mirrored the words he said he was harassed with, just as your response mirrored the dismissive attitude behind that harassment.
Wow, that's not what danilocampos said at all. Your old workplace was f'ed up! Totally agreed! However, the bad experience you had is off-topic relative to the article we're discussing.
You had a rough time, and stereotype threat is a real thing and a real problem that we should fix. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive! The fact that your old job was f'ed up doesn't say anything about the problem being discussed in the linked article.
In talking to my female colleagues and female friends in the engineering profession, I would say that there are a lot more forces at work that make it difficult for females and some minorities to realize their potential. Most that are successful have found ways to get through them, but it doesn't mean that it's an ideal situation.
As the author points out, it's largely due to the perception of the events at school or in a workplace than the true motivations behind them, which you might argue that a successful women engineer needs more mental strength to get through these barriers.
As you mention, there is a lack of quality talent and it would be in our best interest to bring out the potential in as many people as possible. It may be that society happened to turn off countless competent engineers due to these perceptions and social forces.
I believe the question is less on how do you balance the workplace, but rather how do you bring out the best out of people so that the pool of strong engineers becomes bigger.
The biggest complaint that I've heard from female engineers who have been around for more than a couple years is that there are so few of them, and that it is such a male-dominated industry. I can't speak for them, but I have my own complaints on this front, as a guy. Overlooking the specific gender biases that women face, there are real differences between how men and women work and interact, and I find it rather tedious to just work with men all the time. I have come to despise many aspects of programmer culture, and I feel that a lot of what I dislike is due to a heavily male influence. "Rock star", "ninja", "brogrammer" and the like all sound like words generated by immature men in roles of power. I think that the more egoistic, individualistic trends in work behavior are outgrowths of a distinctly male influence. This behavior contributes to the poor perception of the profession.
Your personal experience does not form reality. Well, your own reality perhaps, but the rest of us live in a world where the sum of others' experiences prove what is made up or not.
I'm not saying there is a crisis, but you're saying that there isn't just because you haven't heard about it personally. Which is kind of like saying there is no such thing as three-toed sloths because you've never had someone talk to you about seeing one in person.
I am a damn good programmer. I have these problems.
I am sorry you encountered gender-policing behavior at your last job: that is exactly what I, as a feminist, am trying to fight against for both men and women. Saying that because patriarchy hurts everyone it isn't a problem to be solved, though, is unhelpful. It is a matter of "yes, and": it hurts men and it hurts women measurably more (https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/258/1/Sc...) and in neither case is it acceptable.
It's not just at work: conferences, meet ups and most of all online I encounter attitudes every day that either demand I act like a man, just as you did. The difference between us is that they aren't asking you to do something that is biologically impossible, and reminding you in the process that you will never, ever be able to simply fit in to your chosen profession.
I am a damn good programmer. I have these problems.
Do you really start thinking about how bad woman are believed to be at science and math every time you speak to a male colleague or walk into a room full of men? I don't know, I'm asking...
The difference between us is that they aren't asking you to do something that is biologically impossible
Are you suggesting that male programmer behavior has a biological basis?
It's not that conscious, but every time I walk into a room full of men... hm, the closest analogy I can think of is arriving at what you thought was a fancy dress party only to discover everyone else is in jeans and a t-shirt. Every time I take a deep breath and step into a crowd where people assume I'm from HR or I'm with whatever man I'm chatting with that second.
It's not even that I think about it all the time; it's that I am subtly reminded of it over and over again. It is impossible to forget, because the environment and people around me reproduce them, mostly entirely unintentionally. Even just the lack of women is a subtle, ever-present reminder that I am doing something weird and kind of awkward.
It's not something that is easy to describe. I'd compare and contrast this with, say, science fiction conventions, which are usually 40% women and where I encounter none of the same awkward out-of-place-ness. Still uber-nerdy, still has lots of socially-awkward men, way fewer reminders of how many stereotypes I violated getting there.
As for the biology quip, I apologize for being unclear. I meant that telling me to "man up" would be like telling you to "be a woman": illogical. The only thing I was attributing to biology was gender itself (and even that can be mental, physical, both or neither.)
It is impossible to forget, because the environment and people around me reproduce them, mostly entirely unintentionally. Even just the lack of women is a subtle, ever-present reminder that I am doing something weird and kind of awkward.
It's interesting that you're conscious of all this and yet it still effects you. In your case it seems to not be a case of stereotype threat but more a lack of self-confidence (re: "doing something weird and kind of awkward") or a need to fit in. If they started hiring more women developers would that make you feel more confident in your own abilities or have a positive effect on your job performance? If so why?
Well, it depends what you mean by "effect". I certainly think I cope with it better because I am aware of what is going on. I'm experienced and successful enough to be confident in my code, and I got there in part by learning about sexism and how it functioned so I could sift what of my personal judgement was about me and my performance from what was about the people around me.
The whole experience is very lizard-brain; I can rationalize it after the fact and compensate for the dynamic when making decisions, but that doesn't completely get rid of the emotions in the first place. Like how just because you know a film is a horror film doesn't mean you don't startle when something jumps out at the screen.
I don't know for sure if it affects my performance, since I haven't performed tests on myself, but I believe the evidence I have read that suggests it probably does. I can't really explain the mental toll that that being a constant visible outsider takes, especially when people around you say things about the group you belong to without remembering that you are one. It's not crippling, but it isn't pleasant either; sort of like wearing ten pound weights all the time.
I don't think having more women around would make me more confident in my job performance, but it would make me more confident in my employment and leave more energy to devote to the job. Jobs, especially programming, include teamwork, camaraderie and talking with coworkers. It's a lot harder to relax and fit in when you don't entirely no matter what you do.
I don't want to give the impression that this is all in women's heads either. Groups of people bond over whatever they have in common, whether it is shoes, pets, culture or gender. Right now, if some guy in the work place says something sexist or talks about how weird and incomprehensible their wives are or talks about typically-masculine things like cars or football or scotch or how they hate GUIs or how people need to stop being such pussies or how the best coders are all men, they are signaling group membership by defining themselves against another group, which I can't help but belong to. Even if I don't say anything at all, just existing is enough to disrupt the maleness-centered bonding that would otherwise be going on (at best. At worst I get "complements" like, "oh, you're not like other women!" and they keep on defining group membership in a way that would exclude me if they hadn't made some careful and possibly-temporary exception in their mind.)
Once there are enough women in a space, dudes stop trying to bond over how male we all are and we can start bonding over the work we do or the books we like or whatever the reason is we are actually there.
I think when there get to be enough women in a group it improves some men's performance too. There are some men who backlash when it happens because they have defined themselves by the masculinity of their groups. They are the ones who talk about how we don't need to worry about there being no women in CS and how the whole thing is biology; those opinions don't magically change when women do enter a field, even though they become pretty silly. On the other hand, other men can stop worrying about whether they are acting manly enough and stop spending effort to hide parts of themselves to better fit in to unrealistic masculine norms and focus instead on the work at hand.
Ah I see... From your vocabulary, writing style and misandrist digs I can tell you're a "trained feminist" and I know once that belief system takes hold there's no going back and as such, there's no point in arguing. I'm sorry to have wasted your time. Good luck to you and especially to your colleagues.
Wow. I took the time to engage in good faith, to try to explain what it is like to be me and how that varies from what you seemed to expect.
Now I feel like a shmuck for having assumed the same of you. Glad you found a way to dismiss everything I said so you can keep believing whatever it is you want to believe.
Why is it so important that we close the gender gap? Why is it so important that we believe that there is no difference in intelligence between men and women?
Statistically, men have a wider variance in IQ score than women do. This means that there are likely to be more highly intelligent men than highly intelligent women in a room, and that the most intelligent man in the room is probably more intelligent than the most intelligent woman.
With that said, if you were to select the top 10 intelligent people in a room of 1000, a statistically significant amount of the time a majority will be men.
If you are hiring for a job that requires the top 1% of intelligence, it is no surprise that you are going to have more men than women.
Disclaimer: I hope some day that my daughter chooses a position in STEM, I realize that there are limitations and gaps in the IQ test, and that I might sound like a complete troll but I'm asking this question legitimately.
Statistically, men have a wider variance in IQ score than women do. This means that there are likely to be more highly intelligent men than highly intelligent women in a room, and that the most intelligent man in the room is probably more intelligent than the most intelligent woman.
No. This means that there are likely to be more men who scored highly on an IQ test than women who scored highly on an IQ test in a room.
I think women are just as intelligent as men.
I also think that men's and women's intelligence manifests itself in different ways.
It is explicitly because of this difference, that I believe having more women in STEM fields can only be a good thing.
Advances come when a problem is approached from many different angles, by many different bright minds.
Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype. I feel sad for your daughter.
I never said having more women in STEM would be a bad thing - having more people in STEM will always be a good thing, all things considered.
However your opinion that women are just as intelligent as men is not backed up by any statistics, and one of the best statistics we have for assessing intelligence, IQ, does not jive with your assertion.
Please do show us statistics though. I'm not saying you're wrong (I genuinely don't know) but you can't say other people don't have data to back their claims when you don't put any data forward yourself. Especially since you brought up the (controversial) argument, the burden of proof is on you.
That wasn't so hard to avoid the guaranteed s*storm that would obviously emerge from claiming one sex was smarter than the other.
Also, taking discussions seriously is exactly the reason why I come to HN. I'm sure I'm not alone.
That being said, those two links where interesting although they left me with even more questions than when I began. On one hand it's claimed that
"The mean IQ scores between men and women vary little."
then
"gender differences tended to disappear on tests for which there was a male advantage and to magnify on tests for which there was a female advantage"
then
"These tests have been complied over the years so there is no sex difference."
but then oops,
"some researchers have concluded that men have slightly higher IQ scores than women"
I'll blame that on Wikipedia I guess.
To be fair, the research of the second link seemed a lot more serious. I'm no IQ scientist so I won't try to guess things I don't fully understand but it was a good read.
>It finds that females have a 101.41 mean IQ with a 13.55 standard deviation versus males that have a 103.08 mean IQ with a 14.54 standard deviation
A difference of 2 IQ-points is marginal anyway, but both populations (in this study) have different standard deviations (so the measurements spread out differently), which makes them harder to compare. In the end I'd say, the difference (in this study) is minimal and can be neglected.
Edit: I also think that just by repeating the same study with exactly the same participants, the difference will be smaller, non-existant, or women will have a higher IQ. I once did (caution: anecdotal evidence) five IQ-tests on five following days and the results were off by +/- 5 points, just because I was more tired/more awake on the different days.
All in all I'm disappointed by the level of discussion in this whole thread, way to show the world that software-people have no clue of gender-differences.
The article doesn't mention intelligence, and I can't see how it's especially relevant. Yes, the best programmers are going to be very smart, but it seems to me that slightly above average intelligence is perfectly adequate for a successful career in software. Obviously that phrase will describe just under half the population of women.
The article is mainly about why so few women become interested in software, pursue it, and stick with it as a career, and not about why they don't get the best jobs or make the same money. While it seems plausible that men and women are probabilistically hardwired to find certain fields more interesting than others, this isn't "intelligence".
It's not even a question of intelligence, but of interest.
Software development is a low-status profession. Lately it has become more highly paid, largely due to a bubble, which raises the social status and gets feminists upset about the fact that there aren't enough women in the profession. If the bubble bursts and developer pay drops to saner levels, expect the controversy to suddenly go away. Feminists aren't nearly as upset that there aren't very many women in the garbage handling industry, after all.
Likely the solution starts from parenting as author points out at the beginning of the post. Programs that start at age 13-14 have those early years to fight with in order to create an interest in software and instill self-confidence. It reminds me of an old article on gender imbalances from 1970, where it argues that while we say people have free will when they choose their careers, they combat 20 years of social molding that's difficult to break. [1]
It'd be interesting to see the differences in upbringing that allowed for the Soviet Union back in the 60s to have a stat where "one-third of the engineers and 75 percent of the physicians are women." [1]
Having been in the role of a guy in a computer science class at a large public university with roughly similar ratios, I wouldn't say that the motivation that people don't work with women is mostly due to the stereotype. It's likely due to the social ineptitude of engineering students. I definitely could relate to Max Levchin talk about how PayPal had difficulty in hiring women because they were nerds that didn't know how to relate to women. [2] Granted, as the author points out, the stereotype threat exists due to the outcome being perceived as social bias.
Perhaps a solution as well is to help nerdy guys interact with girls in high school while the gender balance is fairly balanced. Perhaps projects with "random" (assigned) partners. Looking back at some of the things I did, I can't believe I was that socially awkward.
While I agree with your point, I believe "projects with 'random' (assigned) partners" to be a bad idea as far as encouraging social interactions. From my experience, no one enjoys being randomly assigned a partner (at least in high school) and starting your social contact with an unpleasant experience might ruin the chances of proper interaction.
I think you make an excellent point that a lot is at play during high school though. It seems like most kids are fine and don't notice gender differences before their teens and that the social issues manifest and strengthen from the start to the end of puberty. Teenagers are mean and that period of life is when people judge the most based on looks and social aptitude. Solving this situation (which probably can't be solved readily) would most likely raise everyone's social interaction skills, smooth the social differences across the board and solve a lot of gender stereotypes (and even other problems).
I've said this before, but whenever I see these conversations on my Twitter and HN streams, huge segments of people are left out of the conversation.
In the U.S. at least, tech dialogue is about 'men' and 'women', despite the fact that a significant number of certain men are rarely represented in the tech industry. Asian/Asian America men might overrepresent their demographic in the tech industry relative to their % in the country, but they are rarely on leadership boards (especially compared to women). But more importantly, having worked in Silicon Valley and New York, I rarely saw African-American and Hispanic devs/engineers.
I just take exception to the idea that as a tech collective, we are supposed to 'fight' for one segment yet ignore other under-represented demographics.
Your attitude is derailing: this isn't a zero-sum game. I do talk about other under-represented segments, including the intersections. We aren't talking about them right now, and we don't need to stop talking about this in order to talk about that. In fact, much of the research done here has proven useful when considering racial stereotype threat, so talking about this furthers the research in the area of your concern.
I recommend finding or writing some articles about the problem and posting them. I look forward to discussing them.
What bugs me is the fact that no one is complaining about low presence of men in female-dominated industries. But god forbid if there are 10 male programmers and 9 female ones, DISASTER!
While there's still a lot of stigma about men in some women related fields (ask male nurses), the issue in software is of larger scale than you imply.
Try 1 female for 40 male programmers (That's about the ratio in both my internships, as well as my Software Engineering bachelor's degree group) and add to that the wannabe cool guys making sexist jokes in their public announcements and you might be closer to the current situation.
They do complain about it, they just don't do it on Hacker News! My wife teaches preschool at Stanford's Laboratory School and they often talk about the teacher gender gap and what they can do about it, especially at young-children education conferences and the like.
I think it's because men working in female dominated industries don't think of it as an injustice that requires an organised social movement to set right. They do what they want to do and just don't give a monkey's. Much like all the female programmers I know.
It's just the blog-people I ever hear raising this issue.
First let me say that yet again, another blog post that contains little to no science to back up claims; instead, personal feelings and an individual's experience become the standard by which apparently all people experience working in STEM. We should not immediately concede that one person's experience defines an industry, or several. (The "stereotype threat" article is not a compelling enough argument to me that there is some gender stereotype conspiracy only found in STEM)
Second: all these things the author experienced can be said about any minority group, and women is just one of them in STEM. Therefore, can we really say that there is a particular bias against women, when the bias actually exists among many minorities? Therefore, can't we assume that really it's the monopoly of the majority that we should combat, and not specifically the gender gap?
Third, holy shit. If your self confidence is so low that any critique by a peer could shatter your world and cause you to abandon your career, you need therapy, or at least some kind of daily affirmation exercise. And being too afraid to ask to join a group is no excuse, for any person. You have to be able to work with other people.
Often times they will not be the same gender or ethnicity as you. Simply saying it's difficult or scary is not some big revelation: many people find it intimidating to work with groups of people they know nothing about. Luckily, that's what college is good for: overcoming those fears and becoming comfortable with what will eventually be a requirement of your job.
I agree with all her Eliminating the Threat points (even though that's kind of a harsh way of saying "Overcoming Obstacles")
First let me say that yet again, another blog post that
contains little to no science to back up claims; instead,
personal feelings and an individual's experience become
the standard by which apparently all people experience
working in STEM.
"Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance" by Spencer, Steele and Quinn [1] contains an interesting series of experiments.
In the first experiment, test subjects are given two math exams, an easier one (from the GRE general exam) and a harder one (from the advanced GRE mathematics exam). All test subjects had 1 semester to 1 year of calculus with at least a B grade. They observed something that has been seen in the literature before - that both genders perform equally on the easier exam, but women underperform on the harder exam.
In the second experiment, a different set of test subjects were given the harder exam. Half the subjects were told the test had been shown to produce gender differences, half that it had been shown not to produce gender differences.
Characterizing the test as insensitive to gender differences was enough to totally eliminate women's underperformance. When the same test was characterized as sensitive to gender differences, women significantly underperformed in relation to equally qualified men. (results are fig. 2 on page 13 of the PDF)
The third experiment repeats the second experiment under different conditions and gets a similar result.
The "stereotype threat" article is not a compelling
enough argument to me that there is some gender
stereotype conspiracy only found in STEM
No stereotype conspiracy is required - the threat is from the stereotype /held by the test subject/ that they will/are expected to underperform.
Yeah, I read the article, as I specified in my comment.
Not every study or set of experiments is foolproof, and the 'results' of ones that are done specifically on a bias, and never replicated, should not be considered some kind of universal truism.
Did you have some point, or argument, or opinion, you were trying to make?
Never replicated? How about "Knowing Is Half the Battle Teaching Stereotype Threat as a Means of Improving Women's Math Performance" by Johns, Schmader and Martens [1] ?
Participants were divided into three groups; the first group were told they were getting a problem solving test; the second group were told they were getting a math test for a study of gender differences; the third group were told the same as the second group and that anxiety could be the result of negative stereotypes that are widely known in society and have nothing to do with their actual ability to do well on the test.
As figure 1 on page 4 of the PDF shows, the first group had roughly equal gender performance, in the second group women underperformed, and in the third group performance was roughly equal.
Or why not "Solo status, stereotype threat, and performance expectancies: Their effects on women's performance" by Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [2] - once again, women performed worse in the stereotype threat condition that in the no threat condition.
Did you have some point, or argument, or opinion,
you were trying to make?
Only that your statement that there is little to no science to back up the blog's claims ignores multiple peer-reviewed studies.
When I wrote a post that contained nothing but science it got flagged off HN with one up vote and no comments.
I feel like there is a huge double-bind, where anything science-y is boring and dry and long and qualified with caveats and error bounds, so no one reads it. On the other hand, anything short, rhetorical and designed to communicate the human cost of the problem gets dismissed for being nothing but the writer's opinion.
I don't really know what the answer is; I would love to hear any suggestions people have.
The entire article is about personal experiences that have prevented people from doing the things that they're interested in. It doesn't say anything about what society wants, or ideal demographic ratios, or whatever.
This isn't about philosophy or ideology, and it's interesting that so many people here are framing it that way.
They frame it that way because the article does hint at it, especially in intro bullet 3
>>>
The Gender Gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields and in Silicon Valley is a hot topic right now. We hear the same questions over and over, from many different directions:
* What are the causes of this phenomenon?
* What are the solutions?
* Is it even something we ought to be concerned about?(I won’t dignify that last one with an answer.)
By the way, I am a bit dubious about the "personal experience" involved here, because - the way I understand it - it's about a dearth of societal role models.
I was never even aware of that as a factor. If I had been, I should have thought "Of course I can't engineer software because according to our society's stereotypes of middle eastern people, I should become a terrorist instead".
I don't get why anyone should even care about stereotypes in the first place (let alone have to de-program themselves) because they should decide for themselves as individuals.
Once upon a time, computer programming was a job for women, and not for men. So, based on that period of history, we can equivalently suggest: Maybe we don't need more men in software?
(I do not believe either suggestion, not for a second. And I am disturbed that people are so ignorant of history. Both the women subject to stereotype threat and the men suggesting it's a non-issue are making this same kind of mistake. So, instead, I'd like to point out that women are awesomely smart. So deal with it. Please.)
"Is it even something we ought to be concerned about?(I won’t dignify that last one with an answer.)"
I'm guessing that the reason the author won't dignify the last one with an answer is that she feels the question is rooted in deep sexism, or dismissal of a serious problem. And I'd agree, discrimination and/or stereotyping that leads to women giving up on CS is a serious problem.
However, a slightly less extreme version of this question is important: "is it possible women are finding better professions than software development". As an exercise, consider the case of a young woman who has entered your office to talk about whether she should pursue a career as a programmer or apply to medical school with the ultimate goal of becoming a cardiologist. Make sure you address longevity of careers, pay, stability, social standing, attrition rates from graduate programs, and so forth.
I do think it's very important to ask why women aren't going into CS. To the extent that stereotyping is responsible, yes, we should fight it. It clearly is a factor.
But young women are starting to outperform young men academically. A recent RAND study concluded that young Americans are rationally avoiding PhDs in STEM fields because they are not competitive with the professions (where women are closing the gap rapidly, and in some cases creating a gap that favors women). In this case, avoidance of these fields may simply be one more way that women are making better decisions than men. Programming careers can be very rewarding, but they're hardly the only game in town, so it makes no sense to analyze it in isolation.
If women aren't going into CS, what are they doing instead? Should we be telling young women who choose nursing, law, accounting, and medicine that they would be better off studying CS and becoming programmers? If anything, we might want to encourage young men to look at what young women are doing and learn something from them!
When women look at tech companies and math departments, they see few women. This activates the stereotype that women aren’t good at math. The stereotype…
Is there any evidence that this is what actually happens? Are all women carrying around these stereotypes with them? It just seems like a "just so" explanation.
Most of the examples in this article aren't of stereotype threat, they're examples of the authors' insecurity and social anxiety about being in tech. I can understand how a women would feel uncomfortable working in large groups
of, what are generally socially inept, geeks but that seems like a different
problem. This was the money-quote for me:
I remember one instance in particular when I was feeling particularly isolated at our company. “I feel like an outsider! Like the guys don’t want me here because I’m a woman!” I whined to one of my male colleagues. He looked at me and replied, “Well that’s dumb. Of course they want you here. You’re great to work with.”
So essentially this woman has a self-confidence issue. I see little evidence from this article (and the NPR one) that these problems, to the extent that they exist, are just run-of-the-mill social anxiety and nothing more.
The article links the wikipedia page on stereotype threat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat , which has plenty of references to studies demonstrating how this differs from other types of anxiety.
That it does, but my argument is that that what the author experienced isn't stereotype threat. The effects of stereotype threat are (supposedly) manifested in a decrease in performance. Feeling excluded or thinking (in this case unjustifiably) that you're not wanted isn't due to stereotype threat. If the author was failing her courses or was under performing at work that would (potentially) be a result of stereotype threat. I see no evidence either occurred, she was getting As in her classes and from what I gather was able to get and keep jobs in the software industry. She's just seems unable to cope with being the only woman in the room .
In my experience the decrease in performance can be felt both short-term (the classic example of students taking a standardized test) and long-term. It also doesn't necessarily mean that someone is doing poorly - they may just be aware that they're not performing at their potential.
If someone is consciously aware they are not performing at their potential and continue to do so, I find it hard to lay the blame at the feet of stereotype threat. No? It sounds like they're either misjudging their potential or just being lazy.
The lack of compassion here demonstrated by people who clearly have not even tried to empathize with the experiences of those with stereotype threat is disheartening. It's a phenomenon backed by increasing amounts of research and as someone who has dealt with it for years I am excited to see that it is finally getting so much attention.
For those of you who are actually able to empathize a bit here, I found the APA paper "Stereotype Threat at Work" http://www.apa.org/education/ce/stereotype-threat.pdf to be especially useful in communicating with managers, mentors and peers about what I was experiencing in the workplace. I don't think there are easy solutions to this issue, but bringing a little awareness and kindness to situations where a member of your team might have their stereotype threat activated can really go a long way.
As hackers we typically care about efficiency, and stereotype threat is making some of our peers less efficient. If you think it's just a matter of "getting over it," your empathy skills could use a little work. A lot of this stuff is unconscious and impossible to unwire after a lifetime of being fed cultural stereotypes.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadFirst, I've yet to see any women engineers who have demonstrated they are good at their jobs make this argument. It's mostly bloggers and journalists writing these things. Women engineers who are good don't describe having problems any different from the rest of us.
As far as the actual incidents of harassment from asshole managers and socially inept coworkers, I've got the same stories too. Management is clueless in general and the profession, although respected by the public, is not generally respected by managers, executives or journalists.
Most developers employed these days are not competent, regardless of gender, man and woman alike. The few that are competent cluster in competent firms where harassment and disrespect of employees, man and woman alike, is not tolerated.
I'm a bit hyper-aware of this right now. I resigned my job last month after 6 months of abuse and harassment of engineers by non-engineering sales staff, which they viewed as hilarious pranks on worthless geeks who think they are so smart. Complaints to management were handled with suggestions to "man up", "learn to deal" and "stop being a pussy". I received over 100% salary increase in return for my willingness to quit and leave for a more sane firm.
If you are good and you are being harassed, there is high demand for people who are good. The companies that permit harassment deserve to fail. Leave and don't look back. I offer this advise because I would hate for someone to think they can't find a place where there work is appreciated and they are valued because of their gender or race. There are places out there that are sane and professional, and they are generally more profitable so you make more as well. The only thing is that you need to be competent, that is the most important thing in this field because that's your ticket to success.
Stereotype threat can occur even at 'sane firms'. It has to do with a person's perception of herself and what people might be thinking, not the way others are acting.
That sounds obviously counterproductive. Did I misunderstand?
For example, I'm self-taught, and while I have many years experience now and have done some significant projects, I still second guess myself quite a bit. (This is often called "Imposter Syndrome", see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposter_syndrome.) I found it tremendously helpful to discover that people I've looked up to for years have felt the same way, and had helpful suggestions for getting over the internalized anxiety.
Everybody has nagging fears like this. Learning how to see them for what they are and to avoid making things worse for other people benefits everybody.
People underperform because they're worrying about problem X (confirming stereotypes). Let's refer to this as problem Y (stereotype threat).
Education about problem X would be counterproductive; the article is suggesting education about problem Y.
But I also think there's another, far more useful purpose for educating people suffering from stereotype threat about stereotype threat: they can then put a label to what is keeping them from getting their work done when asking their peers, mentors, or managers for help. And then their peers, mentors, and managers can pay attention to situations that might provoke stereotype threat, try to lessen them, and otherwise show a bit of compassion for the person suffering from it.
I say this personally: learning about stereotype threat cleared a huge communication roadblock I'd been having for years with managers and peers, and as soon as we were on the same page we were actually able to address some of the issues contributing to it.
If your issue lies with what other people MIGHT be thinking, then the issue is within your own self-confidence.
I agree that stereotypes are destructive, but only when they actually are present. One should be careful not to feel threatened by hypothetical thoughts from hypothetical co-workers before the fact.
Agreed. On the other hand, for a person thinking negatively about himself or herself, the absence of feedback will often be interpreted as negative feedback.
Being nice to our colleagues (male or female or other minority group) and giving positive feedback when it's appropriate tends to increase a team's overall morale and productivity.
Women don't have unique, unnecessary, gender-specific challenges because once the suits were mean to you?
Puzzling reasoning.
You had a rough time, and stereotype threat is a real thing and a real problem that we should fix. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive! The fact that your old job was f'ed up doesn't say anything about the problem being discussed in the linked article.
As the author points out, it's largely due to the perception of the events at school or in a workplace than the true motivations behind them, which you might argue that a successful women engineer needs more mental strength to get through these barriers.
As you mention, there is a lack of quality talent and it would be in our best interest to bring out the potential in as many people as possible. It may be that society happened to turn off countless competent engineers due to these perceptions and social forces.
I believe the question is less on how do you balance the workplace, but rather how do you bring out the best out of people so that the pool of strong engineers becomes bigger.
What is different about the women you have met, and I have met, I'm not sure. But I can tell you many such women exist.
... because ...
I've yet to see
Your personal experience does not form reality. Well, your own reality perhaps, but the rest of us live in a world where the sum of others' experiences prove what is made up or not.
I'm not saying there is a crisis, but you're saying that there isn't just because you haven't heard about it personally. Which is kind of like saying there is no such thing as three-toed sloths because you've never had someone talk to you about seeing one in person.
I am sorry you encountered gender-policing behavior at your last job: that is exactly what I, as a feminist, am trying to fight against for both men and women. Saying that because patriarchy hurts everyone it isn't a problem to be solved, though, is unhelpful. It is a matter of "yes, and": it hurts men and it hurts women measurably more (https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/258/1/Sc...) and in neither case is it acceptable.
It's not just at work: conferences, meet ups and most of all online I encounter attitudes every day that either demand I act like a man, just as you did. The difference between us is that they aren't asking you to do something that is biologically impossible, and reminding you in the process that you will never, ever be able to simply fit in to your chosen profession.
Do you really start thinking about how bad woman are believed to be at science and math every time you speak to a male colleague or walk into a room full of men? I don't know, I'm asking...
The difference between us is that they aren't asking you to do something that is biologically impossible
Are you suggesting that male programmer behavior has a biological basis?
It's not even that I think about it all the time; it's that I am subtly reminded of it over and over again. It is impossible to forget, because the environment and people around me reproduce them, mostly entirely unintentionally. Even just the lack of women is a subtle, ever-present reminder that I am doing something weird and kind of awkward.
It's not something that is easy to describe. I'd compare and contrast this with, say, science fiction conventions, which are usually 40% women and where I encounter none of the same awkward out-of-place-ness. Still uber-nerdy, still has lots of socially-awkward men, way fewer reminders of how many stereotypes I violated getting there.
As for the biology quip, I apologize for being unclear. I meant that telling me to "man up" would be like telling you to "be a woman": illogical. The only thing I was attributing to biology was gender itself (and even that can be mental, physical, both or neither.)
It's interesting that you're conscious of all this and yet it still effects you. In your case it seems to not be a case of stereotype threat but more a lack of self-confidence (re: "doing something weird and kind of awkward") or a need to fit in. If they started hiring more women developers would that make you feel more confident in your own abilities or have a positive effect on your job performance? If so why?
The whole experience is very lizard-brain; I can rationalize it after the fact and compensate for the dynamic when making decisions, but that doesn't completely get rid of the emotions in the first place. Like how just because you know a film is a horror film doesn't mean you don't startle when something jumps out at the screen.
I don't know for sure if it affects my performance, since I haven't performed tests on myself, but I believe the evidence I have read that suggests it probably does. I can't really explain the mental toll that that being a constant visible outsider takes, especially when people around you say things about the group you belong to without remembering that you are one. It's not crippling, but it isn't pleasant either; sort of like wearing ten pound weights all the time.
I don't think having more women around would make me more confident in my job performance, but it would make me more confident in my employment and leave more energy to devote to the job. Jobs, especially programming, include teamwork, camaraderie and talking with coworkers. It's a lot harder to relax and fit in when you don't entirely no matter what you do.
I don't want to give the impression that this is all in women's heads either. Groups of people bond over whatever they have in common, whether it is shoes, pets, culture or gender. Right now, if some guy in the work place says something sexist or talks about how weird and incomprehensible their wives are or talks about typically-masculine things like cars or football or scotch or how they hate GUIs or how people need to stop being such pussies or how the best coders are all men, they are signaling group membership by defining themselves against another group, which I can't help but belong to. Even if I don't say anything at all, just existing is enough to disrupt the maleness-centered bonding that would otherwise be going on (at best. At worst I get "complements" like, "oh, you're not like other women!" and they keep on defining group membership in a way that would exclude me if they hadn't made some careful and possibly-temporary exception in their mind.) Once there are enough women in a space, dudes stop trying to bond over how male we all are and we can start bonding over the work we do or the books we like or whatever the reason is we are actually there.
I think when there get to be enough women in a group it improves some men's performance too. There are some men who backlash when it happens because they have defined themselves by the masculinity of their groups. They are the ones who talk about how we don't need to worry about there being no women in CS and how the whole thing is biology; those opinions don't magically change when women do enter a field, even though they become pretty silly. On the other hand, other men can stop worrying about whether they are acting manly enough and stop spending effort to hide parts of themselves to better fit in to unrealistic masculine norms and focus instead on the work at hand.
Now I feel like a shmuck for having assumed the same of you. Glad you found a way to dismiss everything I said so you can keep believing whatever it is you want to believe.
Statistically, men have a wider variance in IQ score than women do. This means that there are likely to be more highly intelligent men than highly intelligent women in a room, and that the most intelligent man in the room is probably more intelligent than the most intelligent woman.
With that said, if you were to select the top 10 intelligent people in a room of 1000, a statistically significant amount of the time a majority will be men.
If you are hiring for a job that requires the top 1% of intelligence, it is no surprise that you are going to have more men than women.
Disclaimer: I hope some day that my daughter chooses a position in STEM, I realize that there are limitations and gaps in the IQ test, and that I might sound like a complete troll but I'm asking this question legitimately.
No. This means that there are likely to be more men who scored highly on an IQ test than women who scored highly on an IQ test in a room.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Job_perfo...
Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype. I feel sad for your daughter.
However your opinion that women are just as intelligent as men is not backed up by any statistics, and one of the best statistics we have for assessing intelligence, IQ, does not jive with your assertion.
But if you can't be arsed to Google it, here you are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_psychology
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/SexDifferences.aspx
Also, taking discussions seriously is exactly the reason why I come to HN. I'm sure I'm not alone.
That being said, those two links where interesting although they left me with even more questions than when I began. On one hand it's claimed that
"The mean IQ scores between men and women vary little." then "gender differences tended to disappear on tests for which there was a male advantage and to magnify on tests for which there was a female advantage" then "These tests have been complied over the years so there is no sex difference." but then oops, "some researchers have concluded that men have slightly higher IQ scores than women"
I'll blame that on Wikipedia I guess.
To be fair, the research of the second link seemed a lot more serious. I'm no IQ scientist so I won't try to guess things I don't fully understand but it was a good read.
>It finds that females have a 101.41 mean IQ with a 13.55 standard deviation versus males that have a 103.08 mean IQ with a 14.54 standard deviation
A difference of 2 IQ-points is marginal anyway, but both populations (in this study) have different standard deviations (so the measurements spread out differently), which makes them harder to compare. In the end I'd say, the difference (in this study) is minimal and can be neglected. Edit: I also think that just by repeating the same study with exactly the same participants, the difference will be smaller, non-existant, or women will have a higher IQ. I once did (caution: anecdotal evidence) five IQ-tests on five following days and the results were off by +/- 5 points, just because I was more tired/more awake on the different days.
All in all I'm disappointed by the level of discussion in this whole thread, way to show the world that software-people have no clue of gender-differences.
The article is mainly about why so few women become interested in software, pursue it, and stick with it as a career, and not about why they don't get the best jobs or make the same money. While it seems plausible that men and women are probabilistically hardwired to find certain fields more interesting than others, this isn't "intelligence".
And of course, everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
Software development is a low-status profession. Lately it has become more highly paid, largely due to a bubble, which raises the social status and gets feminists upset about the fact that there aren't enough women in the profession. If the bubble bursts and developer pay drops to saner levels, expect the controversy to suddenly go away. Feminists aren't nearly as upset that there aren't very many women in the garbage handling industry, after all.
It'd be interesting to see the differences in upbringing that allowed for the Soviet Union back in the 60s to have a stat where "one-third of the engineers and 75 percent of the physicians are women." [1]
Having been in the role of a guy in a computer science class at a large public university with roughly similar ratios, I wouldn't say that the motivation that people don't work with women is mostly due to the stereotype. It's likely due to the social ineptitude of engineering students. I definitely could relate to Max Levchin talk about how PayPal had difficulty in hiring women because they were nerds that didn't know how to relate to women. [2] Granted, as the author points out, the stereotype threat exists due to the outcome being perceived as social bias.
Perhaps a solution as well is to help nerdy guys interact with girls in high school while the gender balance is fairly balanced. Perhaps projects with "random" (assigned) partners. Looking back at some of the things I did, I can't believe I was that socially awkward.
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=dwTvE44DOgQC&lpg=PA145&... pg 188
[2] http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels...
I think you make an excellent point that a lot is at play during high school though. It seems like most kids are fine and don't notice gender differences before their teens and that the social issues manifest and strengthen from the start to the end of puberty. Teenagers are mean and that period of life is when people judge the most based on looks and social aptitude. Solving this situation (which probably can't be solved readily) would most likely raise everyone's social interaction skills, smooth the social differences across the board and solve a lot of gender stereotypes (and even other problems).
In the U.S. at least, tech dialogue is about 'men' and 'women', despite the fact that a significant number of certain men are rarely represented in the tech industry. Asian/Asian America men might overrepresent their demographic in the tech industry relative to their % in the country, but they are rarely on leadership boards (especially compared to women). But more importantly, having worked in Silicon Valley and New York, I rarely saw African-American and Hispanic devs/engineers.
I just take exception to the idea that as a tech collective, we are supposed to 'fight' for one segment yet ignore other under-represented demographics.
I think the article speaks specifically about women because it was written by a woman, drawing from her personal experience.
The principles stated in the article can probably be appreciated by and applied by any group that's feeling marginalized in the tech industry.
I recommend finding or writing some articles about the problem and posting them. I look forward to discussing them.
Try 1 female for 40 male programmers (That's about the ratio in both my internships, as well as my Software Engineering bachelor's degree group) and add to that the wannabe cool guys making sexist jokes in their public announcements and you might be closer to the current situation.
Do you actually know that?
It's just the blog-people I ever hear raising this issue.
Second: all these things the author experienced can be said about any minority group, and women is just one of them in STEM. Therefore, can we really say that there is a particular bias against women, when the bias actually exists among many minorities? Therefore, can't we assume that really it's the monopoly of the majority that we should combat, and not specifically the gender gap?
Third, holy shit. If your self confidence is so low that any critique by a peer could shatter your world and cause you to abandon your career, you need therapy, or at least some kind of daily affirmation exercise. And being too afraid to ask to join a group is no excuse, for any person. You have to be able to work with other people.
Often times they will not be the same gender or ethnicity as you. Simply saying it's difficult or scary is not some big revelation: many people find it intimidating to work with groups of people they know nothing about. Luckily, that's what college is good for: overcoming those fears and becoming comfortable with what will eventually be a requirement of your job.
I agree with all her Eliminating the Threat points (even though that's kind of a harsh way of saying "Overcoming Obstacles")
In the first experiment, test subjects are given two math exams, an easier one (from the GRE general exam) and a harder one (from the advanced GRE mathematics exam). All test subjects had 1 semester to 1 year of calculus with at least a B grade. They observed something that has been seen in the literature before - that both genders perform equally on the easier exam, but women underperform on the harder exam.
In the second experiment, a different set of test subjects were given the harder exam. Half the subjects were told the test had been shown to produce gender differences, half that it had been shown not to produce gender differences.
Characterizing the test as insensitive to gender differences was enough to totally eliminate women's underperformance. When the same test was characterized as sensitive to gender differences, women significantly underperformed in relation to equally qualified men. (results are fig. 2 on page 13 of the PDF)
The third experiment repeats the second experiment under different conditions and gets a similar result.
No stereotype conspiracy is required - the threat is from the stereotype /held by the test subject/ that they will/are expected to underperform.[1] http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/carnegie/learning_resources/LAW_PG...
Not every study or set of experiments is foolproof, and the 'results' of ones that are done specifically on a bias, and never replicated, should not be considered some kind of universal truism.
Did you have some point, or argument, or opinion, you were trying to make?
Participants were divided into three groups; the first group were told they were getting a problem solving test; the second group were told they were getting a math test for a study of gender differences; the third group were told the same as the second group and that anxiety could be the result of negative stereotypes that are widely known in society and have nothing to do with their actual ability to do well on the test.
As figure 1 on page 4 of the PDF shows, the first group had roughly equal gender performance, in the second group women underperformed, and in the third group performance was roughly equal.
Or why not "Solo status, stereotype threat, and performance expectancies: Their effects on women's performance" by Sekaquaptewa and Thompson [2] - once again, women performed worse in the stereotype threat condition that in the no threat condition.
Only that your statement that there is little to no science to back up the blog's claims ignores multiple peer-reviewed studies.[1] http://www.mdecgateway.org/olms/data/resource/9098/Knowing%2... [2] http://j.b.legal.free.fr/Blog/share/Expos%E9s%20M1/Stereotyp...
I feel like there is a huge double-bind, where anything science-y is boring and dry and long and qualified with caveats and error bounds, so no one reads it. On the other hand, anything short, rhetorical and designed to communicate the human cost of the problem gets dismissed for being nothing but the writer's opinion.
I don't really know what the answer is; I would love to hear any suggestions people have.
Maybe people shouldn't be persuaded to pick careers based on what "society wants" or what demographic ratios "should" be.
Maybe we need more women, no, more people to pick the most advantageous careers for them personally.
This isn't about philosophy or ideology, and it's interesting that so many people here are framing it that way.
>>>
The Gender Gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields and in Silicon Valley is a hot topic right now. We hear the same questions over and over, from many different directions:
* What are the causes of this phenomenon?
* What are the solutions?
* Is it even something we ought to be concerned about?(I won’t dignify that last one with an answer.)
I was never even aware of that as a factor. If I had been, I should have thought "Of course I can't engineer software because according to our society's stereotypes of middle eastern people, I should become a terrorist instead".
I don't get why anyone should even care about stereotypes in the first place (let alone have to de-program themselves) because they should decide for themselves as individuals.
Grumble grumble, Identity Politics, grumble grumble.
(I do not believe either suggestion, not for a second. And I am disturbed that people are so ignorant of history. Both the women subject to stereotype threat and the men suggesting it's a non-issue are making this same kind of mistake. So, instead, I'd like to point out that women are awesomely smart. So deal with it. Please.)
"Is it even something we ought to be concerned about?(I won’t dignify that last one with an answer.)"
I'm guessing that the reason the author won't dignify the last one with an answer is that she feels the question is rooted in deep sexism, or dismissal of a serious problem. And I'd agree, discrimination and/or stereotyping that leads to women giving up on CS is a serious problem.
However, a slightly less extreme version of this question is important: "is it possible women are finding better professions than software development". As an exercise, consider the case of a young woman who has entered your office to talk about whether she should pursue a career as a programmer or apply to medical school with the ultimate goal of becoming a cardiologist. Make sure you address longevity of careers, pay, stability, social standing, attrition rates from graduate programs, and so forth.
I do think it's very important to ask why women aren't going into CS. To the extent that stereotyping is responsible, yes, we should fight it. It clearly is a factor.
But young women are starting to outperform young men academically. A recent RAND study concluded that young Americans are rationally avoiding PhDs in STEM fields because they are not competitive with the professions (where women are closing the gap rapidly, and in some cases creating a gap that favors women). In this case, avoidance of these fields may simply be one more way that women are making better decisions than men. Programming careers can be very rewarding, but they're hardly the only game in town, so it makes no sense to analyze it in isolation.
If women aren't going into CS, what are they doing instead? Should we be telling young women who choose nursing, law, accounting, and medicine that they would be better off studying CS and becoming programmers? If anything, we might want to encourage young men to look at what young women are doing and learn something from them!
Is there any evidence that this is what actually happens? Are all women carrying around these stereotypes with them? It just seems like a "just so" explanation.
Most of the examples in this article aren't of stereotype threat, they're examples of the authors' insecurity and social anxiety about being in tech. I can understand how a women would feel uncomfortable working in large groups of, what are generally socially inept, geeks but that seems like a different problem. This was the money-quote for me:
I remember one instance in particular when I was feeling particularly isolated at our company. “I feel like an outsider! Like the guys don’t want me here because I’m a woman!” I whined to one of my male colleagues. He looked at me and replied, “Well that’s dumb. Of course they want you here. You’re great to work with.”
So essentially this woman has a self-confidence issue. I see little evidence from this article (and the NPR one) that these problems, to the extent that they exist, are just run-of-the-mill social anxiety and nothing more.
For those of you who are actually able to empathize a bit here, I found the APA paper "Stereotype Threat at Work" http://www.apa.org/education/ce/stereotype-threat.pdf to be especially useful in communicating with managers, mentors and peers about what I was experiencing in the workplace. I don't think there are easy solutions to this issue, but bringing a little awareness and kindness to situations where a member of your team might have their stereotype threat activated can really go a long way.
As hackers we typically care about efficiency, and stereotype threat is making some of our peers less efficient. If you think it's just a matter of "getting over it," your empathy skills could use a little work. A lot of this stuff is unconscious and impossible to unwire after a lifetime of being fed cultural stereotypes.