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Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

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Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#61

Post by stcredzero »

leilacc wrote: post #44
09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? I am immensely grateful to my parents, who told me that I could do anything I wanted and put me in math and science camps as a kid. I am no…

I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck.

A woman should be considered equal to a man. All sentients should be considered equal, in a political and moral framework. However, this should not be conflated with women and men being exactly equal in every conceivable way. If there was ever false equivalence then it is exactly this kind of sloppy thinking.

Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field?

Actually, the extent to which biological factors vs. societal factors are at play is something we're still working out.

"Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls"

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

"The Gender Equality Paradox"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8

Google & YouTube execs claim that Google's hiring rate for women is the same as the Computer Science graduation rate for women, then go on to espouse James Damore's suggestions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#62

Post by mempko »

ars wrote: post #13

Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children? They are not. The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive. Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

Let's also consider that most jobs are bullshit jobs anyway. The children are literally the future of humanity and taking care of them is more important than anything else.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#63

Post by Leader2light »

09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

I hope you don't work at Google!

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#64

Post by lumberjack »

09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

I think you will find that the people behind these things are not for equality of choice but for equality of outcome.

In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#65

Post by rvo »

Xylakant wrote: post #56
aantix wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he is referring to the research work of Simon Baron-Cohen? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spic... The general conclusion being that men tend to focus on ideas and woman gravitate towards people.

And that still confounds the issue of biological gender and what society constructs to be gender. I doubt that reliable research into this can currently be made since obviously any person that has been brought up in today’s society has been brought up with this societies notion of gender roles. And boy, have we been wrong about what we considered what women could or could not do in the past.

Can you point me to research into how XX is different from social gender? I think I'm not understanding this point. How can society construct the idea of a gender, if not from biology? How else was the social concept of gender created ?

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#66

Post by thomasahle »

jtr1 wrote: post #53

Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field. Western cultures are still much more understanding of men being absent from their children's early lives than mothers. These sorts of cultural expectations and allowances are often taken for granted by the people who argue that "inequality of outcome != inequality of opportunity." If women are to take a career hit for raising their…

> Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field.

I actually thought Sweden already had this, but apparently not. At least not perfectly so, the parents have 480 days in total, with 90 earmarked to each: https://sweden.se/quickfact/parental-leave/

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#67

Post by stcredzero »

09bjb wrote: post #51
taoistextremist wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't disagree with you, except maybe to point out I don't think it's necessarily just biological, but psychological/physiological gender as well that causes the difference. There is some evidence, though last I checked inconclusive, that gender identity has a fairly strong relation with certain brain structures. I don't think it would be surprising that these differences also cause people to gravitate towards cert…

Societal expectations do play a big role, and it's an open questioned as to whether that's a Natural Rule or whether we just haven't tried other cultural configurations enough yet. And you're right, psychological gender probably does play a large role in the effects. It's helpful to note here that biological gender, psychological gender, and gender expression do not vary independently though.

Lianna K does the best job, insofar as I saw, of making the societal expectations argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#68

Post by jlouis »

Xylakant wrote: post #32
09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

There’s to the best of my knowledge no study that shows that the biological gender matters for the choice of profession. The issue that often muddies things is that girls have been (and still are) brought up with the notion that some professions are not suited to them. This is especially pronounced in IT, where for a long time at the start of the profession, women had the majority of employed people and things starte…

It almost requires no study:

When there's equality of opportunity, then women tend to outscore men on average in Danish high schools (and this trend is true all over the world, given any equal-opportunity situation).

Since women are scoring higher, they have more choice in what fields they want to study since the grade average tend to determine this. In contrast, men have to pick the subjects they can "get" which tend to be the STEM fields. All the typical "female subjects" are the ones which usually requires unethically high grades in Denmark.

Now, to convince a young woman to study STEM not only requires you to convince her that it is an awesome field (which it is, and we should definitely encourage that!). It also requires you to argue why she shouldn't put all her high-grade-work into effect by gravitating to a subject which is women-dominated and the competition is fierce. And that she can live out her dream: she has worked hard and can be anything she wants!

Whereas the young boy who were lazy in school (because he had a hobby of playing a lot of computer games) has to pick one of the "boring fields" where they accept anyone because there are always space for more people.

It is a two-sided situation and as much as you want to focus on the women not picking a given area, you have to focus on why men are so friggin' outright obsessed with the same thing.

There is one type of study which determines part of this: namely that men are interested in things and women in people (on average: The split is something like 33/66 and there is a considerable overlap - but it is one of the strongest gender effects!).

Of course, reality is a mix between biology and environment. And thus also location: the strong welfare state of Denmark could easily play a role.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#69

Post by Erik816 »

jhomedall wrote: post #60
09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. Careful with your wording here. I'm assuming you meant 'is not the same as'; however 'does not equal' could easily be interpreted as 'not the equal of', which has an entirely different meaning than you intended.

Careful with your reading here. As written it is perfectly clear.

Re: Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms

#70

Post by mc32 »

09bjb wrote: post #9

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity . What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is th…

Assuming freedom to choose, I would say policies should still try to steer choice to address social needs. For example, let's say there is an imbalance in F:M physician ratio such that one class of people are being underserved. Or the market isn't producing enough physicists, for example, then step in and add artificial incentives to attract a different population.

Note, I'm not insisting on equality of outcomes, because to me that's really not the general objective, given a population can have individuals predisposed for different things. For example, in farming communities we don't expect to see the same interest in urban planning as in cities.

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