I understand that whatever I'm writing here can be used against me. But I still believe that people should be judged for who they are and not who they seem to be, and I hold myself to this standard. I just hope that whoever happens to chance upon this inactive blog in the future understands that I wrote this as a 23 year old and I may have changed by the time you're reading this. If I haven't, then judge me as appropriate.
I read this article recently: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4980350
Before reading this article, I hadn't realized how big of a problem sexism in tech is. Man, I really feel for all the crap the writer had to go through. I can't empathize, but I know it must have felt worse than anything I've been through. But at that same time, I know that I have perpetuated this myself - I remember that at the first day working at BloomReach (a tech company), when Helen introduced herself to me, the first thing that I noticed was that she's cute. And the first question that popped to my mind was, "Are you an engineer?", because I've heard that women are underrepresented in engineering roles in tech and I wanted to check my hypothesis. She smiled and defused the question really well, but it was only after I read some other article that I realized the undertone in that question.
And so I realize I'm part of the problem. I am biased. When I find out that a woman I haven't met before is in tech, it genuinely comes to me as a surprise (especially if she's attractive, but that's another stereotype). Unconsciously, my words reveal my beliefs, and they make them feel a little smaller.
Why is this a problem? After all, stereotypes can serve as mental shortcuts that allow us to arrive at better decisions with less information. It is not factually wrong to claim that since women are underrepresented in tech, if the only information I am given is that this person is a woman, then the conditional probability that she's not in tech is higher than otherwise. So if I were to go up to a random woman(not in the CS department building of course) and say, "you are probably not a CS major", I would be right most of the time. But that makes her feel bad and doesn't achieve anything. So I know not to say it.
Alright, so I shouldn't voice out my beliefs based on stereotypes that make people feel threatened. But if it's likely to be true, I am still justified in believing it, right? Why should I be blamed for attempting to arrive at a belief that's more likely to be correct than not?
I think the problem here lies with priming. I'm not surprised at all when a guy tells me he's in tech - why? The base rate of people in tech isn't really that high in the first place. The difference, I think, is the bunch of concepts that pop into my head (aka the schemata that get activated) when I see a person. Somehow(just guessing), the schema for "probably not a tech person" gets activated when I see a girl but not when I see a guy, even though the belief would be justified for both guys and girls.
I really can't think of a "thinking cure" or "reading cure" for my bias. But I know of one method that has worked for me in the past. I previously held the stereotype that girls aren't good at math. But Elaine blows me out of the water when it comes to math, and working with her on psets has shattered this stereotype for me. I suppose if I had done psets with Irene it would nuke the stereotype into oblivion(along with whatever ego I started with), but I'm not at the level where I'm even taking the classes she's taking.
That might work.
(Unrelated random trivia: Lisa Einstein is currently studying undergrad physics at Princeton.)
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