I find it unfortunate that this document triggers such a polarized response. The guy raises many reasonable points in an attempt to understand the underlying issue and has his effort labeled an “anti-diversity screed” (a label I don’t think could stand up to any objective analysis). Thinking maybe I’m just not “getting it” because I’m a white guy, I read it to my liberal, brown skinned, engineering wife. Her comment “sounds reasonable”.
None of this is to say he is right. But I think he makes quite reasonable points. I have two daughters and I’ve been both a competitive science and robotics coach with gender balanced teams. My anecdotal experience shows a significant difference between the genders. As a coach, I took this very seriously and tried several different ways to address this without much success. I’ve talked with other science educators and they all share my experiences.
Is this a result of social forces or genetic differences? I’m not entirely convinced either way. But there are differences. Furthermore, there are clearly genetic differences between the genders that manifest themselves in other ways that might be relevant. Consider autism, for example. I’m completely convinced that social forces are significant, but they don’t explain everything. Consider chess grandmasters. I don’t see any plausible explanation for differences there to be social forces.
Diversity in tech is important to me. It is actually one of my big issues that I frequently rant about. I don’t have any “right wing” or “sexist” agenda here. I’m on the side of diversity. But I think we need to be able to discuss things in a civil and honest way. I think we should embrace this document and what it has to say and challenge ourselves to answer the issues raised rather than falling back to strawman-ing, virtue signaling and labeling.
