Sunday, September 26, 2004

Hanna wonders Are women shying away from theoretical machine learning and hiding behind large data sets in areas such as computational linguistics, bioinformatics, computer vision? Or is it that women, as hypothesized by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher in Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, prefer to engage in “computing with a purpose"—to focus on an application for those abstract and theoretical techniques? (Via join-the-dots.) This is dangerous territory, especially for a man. I don't think we know enough about all the factors that go into making scientific temperaments to answer it. There are persuasive arguments that gender discrimination within the family, in society, and in schools has played a big role here. But there may be something gender-independent going on that eventually interacts badly with gender factors. Let me give a non-math example. I was recently in a guided ski trip to Chile for advanced skiers. All but one of the clients were men, and who went on the more strenuous backcountry tours were men. There were two excellent guides, Aaron and Sarah. Sarah was as good a skier and guide as I have ever traveled with, and I have traveled quite a few. She worked snow safety at Fernie in British Columbia for ten years. She handled avalanche-control explosives, ski tested avalanche-prone slopes, performed rescue, emergency medical care and evacuation, and many other risky traditionally "guy" activities. She was originally the only woman doing this work at Fernie. If there is work with a purpose, ensuring that we can enjoy the beauty of the mountains safely, this certainly is it. So why there are so few women doing it? In the mountains, as in mathematically-oriented research, the risks are many and the material rewards uncertain. Anyone who weighs long-term risk-reward trade-offs will choose something else. Long apprenticeships, uncertain employment, low pay, many occasions for failure. For whatever reasons (and we can conjecture several plausible ones at the interface between nature and nurture), these real risks may be clearer, or loom larger, for women. To be a bit flip, the risk-taking young man is a stereotype. Or it could be that parents are more obsessive about risk with their daughters than with their sons, again for complicated reasons. At least that's what my daughter claims. Ouch. 4:53:20 PM