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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

#81

Post by makomk »

pcwalton wrote: post #42
Xylakant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And, to prove this point, the gender ratio is much better in STEM fields other than computing and engineering. Biology, for example, has more women graduating nowadays than men, despite the fact that a lot of biology work is actually CS (and more intellectually challenging than most software engineering jobs at tech companies, which to a large extent involve creating CRUD apps).

This is a great argument against the idea that women don't go into those fields because they're somehow incapable of this kind of technical work, but I don't think it's so useful against the claim that they don't because they're just not interested in those fields.

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

#82

Post by Cknight70 »

taoistextremist wrote: post #35
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 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…

I feel like you could simplify your point to just "different personalities tend to gravitate to different interests and careers."

No need to even mention gender.

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

#83

Post by stcredzero »

hk__2 wrote: post #74
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…

> Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Also, since 1990 the ratio of part-time workers lowered among women and went…

Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years?

Apparently graduation rates in medical fields favor women in some parts of the industrialized world.

"Women taking over as medical specialists"

http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialist...

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

#84

Post by drb91 »

09bjb wrote: post #16
drb91 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this equity vs equality, or are you making a deeper argument?

Equality. If the usual parlance were "Gender Inequity" then we'd be talking about that instead. But that's used so little that googling "Gender Inequity" actually redirects automatically to "Gender Inequality", so the former can't be very much in use.

I suggest using “verbatim” on google when google redirects you. Inequity and inequality are two different, precisely defined words.

More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.

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

#85

Post by tbirrell »

jlouis wrote: post #68
Xylakant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ten…

This is an excellent point. Some time in the past, society drew a line in the sand and said "everything a man does is better than anything a woman does". As a result, women are being pressured into fields that are male dominated _because_ they are are male dominated. Without pausing to think if that truly makes those jobs inherently better.

I think realizing this is a false paradigm will be the next phase in the evolution of this social issue, I just have no idea how it will happen or how it will play out.

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

#86

Post by alphonsegaston »

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…

People are angry at your tone, but you’re correct. The evidence shows that disproportionate gender representation in STEM is the product of social conditioning, not anything innate:

https://www.nature.com/articles/442133a

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

#87

Post by stcredzero »

jaaron wrote: post #47
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'm not convinced that there still is that full sense of "freedom to choose" that you suggest. In your argument that genders naturally tend towards certain careers, how certain are you that you've eliminated systemic bias that may still cause inequalities in occupation and opportunity? For example, I suspect a similar argument could have been made a few decades ago about why women tend to be nurses not doctors, or wh…

For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender."

But for the opposite position to make sense, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the fewer gender differences would show. Studies show that the opposite is the case.

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

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

#88

Post by JenBarb »

stcredzero wrote: post #79

HP had some interesting policies which were of great benefit to women. I've been told that HP lets people share a position. Two people can work half time with full benefits, then they are evaluated and promoted as one unit. Many women who were raising families opted to do this. Tactically, this seems great, but the question that comes to my mind is, if such a practice were widely adopted throughout the industrialized…

Where/what is HP?

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

#89

Post by stcredzero »

thomasahle wrote: post #58
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…

> 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. The issue is how you can really measure 'equality of opportunity'. There are so many ways hidden structures can make it seem like there is equality of opportunity without it being there in practice. With 'equality of outcome' it is at least easy to track h…

In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot.

Weirdly enough, a Google and YouTube exec have made basically the same proposal:

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

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

#90

Post by patall »

pcwalton wrote: post #42
Xylakant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And, to prove this point, the gender ratio is much better in STEM fields other than computing and engineering. Biology, for example, has more women graduating nowadays than men, despite the fact that a lot of biology work is actually CS (and more intellectually challenging than most software engineering jobs at tech companies, which to a large extent involve creating CRUD apps).

From working in that field, I can tell you this is not true. There are lots of women in biology but in computational biology its more like one in three (and often much less). In the algorithmic and tool developmental parts even more so. It may be more equal than in pure CS but still the imbalance is huge.
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