I believe that, at age 18, women have more sophisticated social lives and care more than boys do about relationships with people. But I think the perception that CS is less beneficial towards people or that technologist don’t work with people as often as other professionals is false. My job as a PM at Google was incredibly social, and I felt had a huge impact on “living things”, much more so than my female friend’s role as a psychology researcher or operations associate at an insurance company. There’s a belief in society that all CS grads do is sit in caves alone and make video games, whereas the truth is that they have beautiful offices, close-knit teams, a lifestyle with time for friends, a lot of influence, and a huge impact on real people’s lives through the software they create.
Now, a related problem is that CS actually is less social for woman than in it is for men. I had very few friends in my advanced classes, whereas the dudes took those classes together in packs. I benefited a huge amount from women in CS community at my university because I felt like I knew more people in my classes, could sit, chat, and work with them. IMO, all of the dollars going towards women in STEM that this author criticized are and should continue to target these two problems: that CS is perceived as less to do with “living things” and that it actually is less social for girls because there isn’t a strong community.
I think you are on to something. This is really the critical age when the decision happens. Everything else is the just the result of this.
My own theory, is that CS (programming) is perceived as having low social status. Women are socially smarter, so they are aware of that. Men are clueless, so they are more likely to choose programming and later they move into other CS fields.
What does this mean? Do women talk more? Yes. Is it substantive? Women are more willing to talk about their feelings but they also can be quite indirect compared to a man.
Women also have a reputation of being more adversarial and catty: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/why-women-...
It simply means that they are more socially aware. If you allow the metaphor, I would say that they are more likely to "play the game" and "play it well" at that.
Social skills have very little relationship to "emotional intelligence", so I have no clue why you would bring up the point that women are more willing to talk about their feelings.
You are comparing extraversion and agreeableness. While both are statistically higher in women, you are comparing apples and oranges.
Here, have some science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/
>Replicating previous findings, women reported higher Big Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism scores than men.
Isn't this basically what got James Damore fired? Heh.
If he ranked higher in Agreeableness, he would likely have found a way to communicate the information without getting fired.
I don't think so:
"Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs."
Maybe if women were more agreeable they wouldn't have been so offended.