= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
taryneast comments on Of Gender and Rationality - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (342)
We should also look for specific, teachable “gateway” skills that might allow more women to participate in LW.
I remember reading some story about how women did persistently worse in a particular organic chemistry course than men did, until they added a training session explicitly teaching mental rotation (there’s a gender gap in visual/spatial abilities), after which point test scores equalized because mentally rotating the molecules was no longer a barrier, and other skills could come into play. I can’t find the webpage, though (though there’s a bit of corroboration here), so take the story with a grain of salt.
Given the comments elsewhere in the thread about gender differences in expected agreeableness, and about women being discouraged by downvotes, it sounds like one plausible barrier concerns how to have heart in the face of criticism. Maybe someone should write a post or two on process/growth vs. trait models of ability, and how to have the former. Or on how to keep in mind that people are responding to your words, not your inner soul, and that there’s some system of rules that determines their responses that you can learn to hack. Or something along these lines. There are skills here, and they can be broken into small, learnable chunks. And probably many LW-ers could use a boost here; I know I’d like one.
Such posts could be linked to a welcome page for newcomers, with mention that some find LW difficult at first and later like it and that these posts might help the transition period, but without mention of gender.
Actually, I had a number of "aha" moments along these lines when I read a book called "Hardball for women". It's a book about how to explain the cultural difference of business to women - another notoriously all-male province. It really changed the way I thought about a lot of things - pointed out the alternative point-of-view etc.
There are some really great anecdotes about differences between male and female culture - which are somewhat US-centric, and very generalised, but worth thinking about.
The one I can most easily bring to mind is that in general, boys, while growing up, rough-house a lot when they play. So they learn that a bit of ribbing is just in fun... whereas a lot of girls never do - the only exposure girls have to either physical or verbal roughness is when they get told off for doing something wrong... so they learn that when it gets rough, they're in for trouble.
I recognised in myself that when my boss told me I'd done something wrong, I had a really strong negative reaction compared with most of my male colleagues. They had realised that the boss was just letting them know what not to do, so it didn't happen again. I'd automatically gone into "fear and shame" mode, when really I should have just recognised my mistake and moved on.
What the book pointed out was that this difference in thinking can actually be systemic... cultural, if you will. There is nothing wrong with the way I reacted - I was just reacting out of context to what was actually going on. Once my context was realigned... well, I can't say it was easy, but at least I realised that it was "me, not you".
Addendum: Note that this insight was in the context of a huge behemoth of a culture that isn't likely to change (ie business culture).
LW has the near-unique trait of being a bunch of people who are actively trying to change... therefore it's entirely possible that we can avoid the at-first-blush-alienating-to-the-majority-of-women approach that is common in other masculine-only cultures.
There's nothing wrong with the masculine culture. But it isn't the only way we could be.
There should be room for all of us. :)