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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

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Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#31

Post by psyc »

gambiting wrote: post #16
jankotek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). Big cities are unaffordable even at the same salary.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying…

"Pink tax": the idea that goods marketed to women are priced higher than equivalents marketed to men.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pink+tax

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#32

Post by mbruce »

natch wrote: post #9

it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, te…

Is there any data on your ‘possible partial cause”?Otherwise, it supposition. As the article indicates it is easy to fear causes.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#33

Post by gambiting »

jankotek wrote: post #21
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying…

> What's ping tax? Google that... > How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. > In a normal case Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends.

>>Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192...

"The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports"

Maybe I should have said "usual" not "normal" - being a single mother is a normal thing. But so is being a single dad. Claiming that women are somehow worse off because they spend more on childcare is completely bizarre.

>>Google that...

Or you could just tell me - I googled it and there's absolutely nothing that relates to women, several pages of results on google are just taking about filing my taxes with HMRC when I search for ping tax.

>>Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more.

And? What's the argument here? You were saying that women are paid less for the same work(something which you completely ignored in my reply) and that they have more expenses than men(I would say a subset of people who are raising children on their own have more expenses than people who don't. They don't have more expenses because they are women, they have more expenses because of the choices they made).

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#34

Post by Scea91 »

jabot wrote: post #10
cousin_it wrote: post #3

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be politi…

As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you…

Just note that believing something because it has nice consequences is just logically wrong.

Formally:

1) A => B

2) I would really like B to be true, because it has some benefits.

3) Therefore A must be true.

If we are in search of truth and want to build a consistent model of the world then we just can't accept this kind of reasoning.

Also, even if A really turns out to be false, it doesn't mean that B can't be true and our world will forever be sad i.e. Even if it turns out that all people are not created equal, we can still live in just and enlightened society which treats everyone fairly.

And of course the implication between A => B may not even exist. Is it really true that if all people were created equal the society would benefit?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#35

Post by gambiting »

psyc wrote: post #31
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying…

"Pink tax": the idea that goods marketed to women are priced higher than equivalents marketed to men. https://www.google.com/search?q=pink+tax

Same thing works the other way around but I don't know if it has a name. I frequently see things like yoghurt/juice or shampoo/antiperspirant/shaving accessories to be priced higher if they are branded "for men". You can literally buy the same thing in pink colour and it's cheaper.

The only case where I agree is that stupidly, UK government applies extra tax to sanitary items for women, while cosmetics for men do not have such tax. That is stupid, but that's a literal tax chosen by the government.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#36

Post by psyc »

scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. women, black vs. white. To paraphrase Yudkowsky, "Arguments are soldiers, this is war, and it's life or death."

This account began as a throwaway. I used to comment with my real name, in the days before the war broke out. In the days when pg used to comment here regularly. The days when, if someone disagreed with you, they'd tell you so, or why you're wrong, or maybe that you're a dumb-dumb. Now, if you don't follow approved talking points in your social media communiqués, you're in real danger of being pilloried, and - as these things go - you're more likely to be attacked by fellow members of the party. I've identified as left-leaning my entire life, but I've never for a moment feared this sort of personal sabotage from a right-leaning person. This is a pursuit of ideological purity at any cost.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#37

Post by yoz-y »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #7
jankotek wrote: post #2

From my experience location dependence is the greatest obstacle for women to join high earning STEM jobs. With paygap women find it more difficult to live in expensive cities. Also remote work allows more life balance for care givers (who are mostly women). It should be seen as sexism, if company does not offer remote jobs.

Your first two sentences seem like a circular argument. Women can't get the high paying jobs because they don't live in the right places, they can't live in the right places because they can't get the high paying jobs.

This can indeed be a problem but it is more of a class one. To find a job in some location it may be necessary to live there or have means to go there on a regular basis (for job interviews and so on). For somebody without means this can be difficult.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#38

Post by michaelt »

shard972 wrote: post #20
imartin2k wrote: post #17

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about…

> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that…

I think imartin2k is reading this:

  surprisingly there is no concern about the under-
  representation of women in lower-level technical
  jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing
And then reading this, two paragraphs below in the same article:

  These differences are socially important because these
  tend to be prestigious occupations, and practically
  important because the different numbers of men and women
  in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex
  difference in earnings.
When I read the article, this incongruity made me feel the surprise was feigned for rhetorical effect. And I was shocked - shocked! - to find crass rhetorical tricks in an article about gender bias in STEM :)

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#39

Post by yoz-y »

psyc wrote: post #31
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). What's ping tax? How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre). >> If woman gets high paying…

"Pink tax": the idea that goods marketed to women are priced higher than equivalents marketed to men. https://www.google.com/search?q=pink+tax

I do not like the typical example of this which is razors. If pink razors are 50% more expensive then you can just buy the blue ones no? They are literally same except for the color.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#40

Post by jankotek »

gambiting wrote: post #33
jankotek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's ping tax? Google that... > How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount Most primary care givers are women. Women are hurt by that more. > In a normal case Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends.

>>Single mother is normal case. Look at stats and trends. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192... "The Majority of Children Live With Two Parents, Census Bureau Reports" Maybe I should have said "usual" not "normal" - being a single mother is a normal thing. But so is being a single dad. Claiming that women are somehow worse off because they spend more on childcare is completely bizarre. >>Goo…

I thing we can agree that raising kids in SF is very expensive, and that there are more single moms than single fathers.

> women are paid less for the same work

Gender pay gap is generally accepted fact.

> more expenses because they are women, they have more expenses because of the choices they made)

Not sure I understand. Family is not really a choice. And choice/not choice is irrelevant in argument. Goal is to get more women into STEM, one can not forbid people to have a children.

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