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CronoDAS comments on Of Gender and Rationality - Less Wrong
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Do women, on average, have more connected social lives than men do? It's very easy for a few people with no life to effectively dominate a community like this simply by spending more time than any "normal" person would want to. If women are more likely to have "a life" and less likely to become fixated on a specific hobby, that could explain why we see fewer women commenters. (One reason I'm here is that I have very few people in Real Life that I talk to regularly.)
A possibly relevant data point is that males are roughly four times more likely to have autism or Asperger's syndrome than females.
I don't believe that any significant portion of this community has these conditions, so it's not a relevant data point.
This is, to me, a non-obvious claim. (For example...)
That depends on whether you consider autism or Asperger's to be discrete states, or to be extremes of traits which may be found to a lesser extent in individuals labeled neurotypical. If the latter, then gender distribution of autism/Asperger's could be relevant to discussion of the milder versions of those traits
I was considering the consequences to the gender ratio if it is true that LW draws from people who are nerdy and social. It seems that "nerdy" qualities tend to be associated with men (perhaps due to correlation with autism traits), and social skills tend to be associated with women. While plenty of men have great social skills, even nerdy men, what fraction of nerdy women have good social skills? From my experience, women in math and science have a good chance of not feeling socially comfortable. While men have a higher chance of autism traits, I wonder if within the sub-population of math and science, women have a higher incidence.
However you interpret my message, these factors can't significantly account for male/female participation ratio, as I'm pretty sure they don't concern at all, in any form at least 70% of the community.
I think MBlume's point was that there is a fairly mainstream theory of autism spectrum disorders (which includes Asperger's) that claims they can be explained as extreme cases of the 'male brain'. If there is a correlation between the male brain traits that in extreme form are diagnosed as autism/Asperger's and the patterns of thinking that would lead to an interest in this community and if it is true that autism/Asperger's fall on a continuum rather than being discretely identifiable conditions then the gender bias observed here could be explained by the same factors that explain the gender bias in these conditions.
The implicit hypothesis here is that the average community member on this site would score higher on tests designed to diagnose autism spectrum disorders than the general population, without necessarily scoring high enough to be diagnosed with the condition. That seems at least plausible to me.
May or may not be connected, but I do have Asperger's.
My dad has Asperger's. I have some of his traits... serious introvert (need a lot of time alone), can't deal with too much stimuli (light, music, social situations)
...but I'm actually pretty good at the "recognising emotions from faces" tests, so I tend to test negative.
This suggestion accounts for women being underrepresented, but not for their distinct absence (unless if several popular posters are, in fact, female).
Um, Anna Salamon... Alicorn... I don't count as "popular" but those two are top 10 karma-wise, (Alicorn is third). I'm sure there are others.
There is a severe under-representation, but we're not entirely absent :)
2 year old comment. They may not have been as prominent back then (in fact, I think that was the post that made gender an issue here). :)
I'm trying to get Girlfriend into this site, because that will make her sexier.
They were prominent then too (I was there then too) :)
BTW, 8.4% of respondents to the 2011 survey were female, compared to 3% in 2009.