The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.
I'm not so sure, CS is essentially a new blue collar job. There need to be lots of computer programmers, but they don't actually need a university education in most cases, so in countries with working vocational education tons of people get programming jobs without a university degree.
If women do actually naturally prefer non-STEM fields on average then is the science on the subject being sexist? I am more interested in the truth than in making the numbers between men and women be exactly 50/50 in everything.
Women don't prefer non-STEM fields on average, this is an artifact of Western countries. There's no disparity in many developing countries including China. It's not about 50/50, it's about 100% of the population being literate with respect to complexities of modern economy.
Developing countries have different influences on job choice than wealthier/Western countries. Countries in Scandinavia typically have high gender disparity between the sexes in most occupations, because they are wealthy enough that men and women can choose what kind of jobs they take rather than doing whatever earns the most money. Developing countries are biased towards survival-jobs, as it were, rather than enjoyment-jobs. If this is correct then we can expect the developing countries to slowly increase in disparity as they become wealthier.
>Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist
While I agree with the entirety of your comment, I don't see how this is the case. If the physical differences between human groups cause one to prefer something over the other, how is it disparaging to attempt to validate this hypothesis?
Because it's false if you consider the entire human population. You can argue that women in US & Europe prefer non-STEM fields but generalizing to all of women is logically false because of numbers in China and other developing countries with large populations.
> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.
What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for the very important work they actually do, first?
Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software engineering?
Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me than a nurse or teacher? The pay can partially be explained by supply/demand (qualified nurses are in high demand but buyers don't seem to be able to pay, at least not here.)
Because that’s how capitalism works. Money follows value generated to society not individual perceived value. A teacher at maximum capacity can only deliver a tiny tiny fraction of the value that a software developer can.
100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well say.
You've answered your own question. Supply/demand is not something we can negotiate or tweak to our liking. Teaching/nursing jobs need to be automated as much as possible if we want to deal with global issues like aging populations and educational inequality.
About time the greedy corporation start paying their drivers a living wage. Good to see Europe fighting back as US is regressing further into plutocracy.
Uber drivers in Banglore makes around 50K rupees profit each month. This is higher than many government jobs and similar to the salary of many software developers in India.
I've only ever ridden Uber over a period of two weeks - the last two. In India, in Pune.
The drivers more or less all complained about Uber cutting the incentives and margins, stating that they are making a low amount of money. Ola seems to be a contender that many local drivers flock to?
Yes, these drivers might've lied to me. I'm just putting this anecdote against your statement of 50k INR of profit/income: That's certainly not the impression I got when I had discussions about just that on my rides.
Depends on whether the drivers owned their cars or were renting. Many drivers rent from the actual car owners, they won't make much. The few who own their cars do well out of Uber.
So I'm a white German IT guy in a suit in a car in India.
There's no reason to believe that I'm going to be competing with them anytime soon, nor is it likely that I have any locals that I'd praise Uber to if you pick me up from a hotel.
50K is the profit. An Uber driver in Banglore typically makes 120K+ rupees in a month. I got to know this while I was talking to an Uber driver during the ride.
Once again, you do not take the long term costs of car ownership into account. 50K might be the short term profit but certainly not the long term one.
And that's OK, Uber is built on people forgetting how much faster their car loses its value if driven so much and how much more large scale, expensive repairs will crop up. But not right now. It's a good trick but it's a trick and it's not in the driver's favor.
In my opinion, it’s hard to blame just a Uber. It would be different if they were making tons of money off the backs of their drivers, but they’re not. The real problem is that customers aren’t willing to pay what it “should” cost.
They are. Every other company is charging around what it "should" cost. It's just Uber who undercut them all, which was possible because a) they decided laws don't apply to them, so they can save on following regulations, b) they started to subsidize ride costs with VC money even more directly.
Some people paid what it "should" before Uber, but I'm also sure there are now a lot of people using Uber that wouldn't be taking a taxi at the "should" price.
Sure. And I would pay SpaceX to launch a banana into low Earth orbit, if it cost $10. Doesn't mean it should cost $10 - you need to also look at what's sustainable. Uber isn't; VC money is not infinite.
