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It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

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Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#61

Post by thelabyrinth »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #20
yummyfajitas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel that our educational system achieved "great heights", and why do you believe these heights made the US a "20th century powerhouse"?

The United States is about 5% of the World's population, and produces about 25% of the World's economic output. This has been true for about the last 60 years. The USA and Western Europe have had the most expensive labor, focusing on high-quality products and services that require more education, but justify the higher labor cost.

I'd say that the educational system is uneven: elementary and high schools are just "good enough" to not completely screw the country. The university system, though, is really good: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp .

Think "good enough."

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#62

Post by kscaldef »

jmtame wrote: post #34
mahmud wrote: post #11

This is well understood in the middle-east. Within a company or a government office, the bureaucratic wild goose-chase stops the moment you're sent to a woman's desk. They just get it done. It's even a signal nowadays. Companies with women in mid to upper management positions are signaling they're not corrupt, and they're all about efficiency and quality of work. At least in the Gulf, if you want it done, put an Arab…

I'm not sure what the article is suggesting as the reason for the increase in revenue. It seems from comments on here that people are implying that women are simply more productive when given an opportunity where they usually would be denied one. This has been documented in the U.S. and is pretty core to advertising agencies today who have a goal of generating revenue from minority groups: you need to hire the minori…

> I'm not sure what the article is suggesting as the reason for the increase in revenue.

The typical economic argument is a variation on the general principle that when other people are making irrational decisions (e.g. not hiring the best candidate because of their gender), you can do better / take advantage of them.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#63

Post by araneae »

kscaldef wrote: post #60
araneae wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal evidence. You are simply on the low end of the bell curve for men. Endurance is simply how long you can use your muscles before they give out; it's not independent of how much muscle you have. If you are very weak, you will have terrible endurance. Yes, there are things called fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers; the greater proportion of the latter, the better endurance you have. The greater proporti…

> Men win the marathons Among those who run marathons, the top men put in better times than the top women. However, I know _far_ more female marathon runners than men. (OTOH, I know far more male distance cyclists, so I wouldn't jump to any particular conclusions from either data point.)

Really? Are we arguing about this? The males in all mammal species are better at physical tasks. It's called testosterone. It allows you to build more muscle mass. If women take it, they also build more muscle mass. So do female bunny rabbits.

There are other things that go into it, obviously, like body shape. Women are 8 times more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament because their wider hips cause them to impact the ground at problematic angles. And boobs are a dead weight.

But yeah, this is something where the biology is very well understood.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#64

Post by kscaldef »

araneae wrote: post #63
kscaldef wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men win the marathons Among those who run marathons, the top men put in better times than the top women. However, I know _far_ more female marathon runners than men. (OTOH, I know far more male distance cyclists, so I wouldn't jump to any particular conclusions from either data point.)

Really? Are we arguing about this? The males in all mammal species are better at physical tasks. It's called testosterone. It allows you to build more muscle mass. If women take it, they also build more muscle mass. So do female bunny rabbits. There are other things that go into it, obviously, like body shape. Women are 8 times more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament because their wider hips cause them t…

Muscle mass seems fairly clearly distinct from endurance, given that most distance athletes aren't particularly bulky. And I'm highly skeptical that "The males in all mammal species are better at physical tasks". Among humans, I think it's generally accepted that women have better fine-motor control (for example, women were hired to assemble early core memories for this reason). Another well-known counterexample is lions: "Lionesses do the majority of the hunting for their pride, being smaller, swifter and more agile than the males" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion)

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#65

Post by code_duck »

thelabyrinth wrote: post #59
jtbigwoo wrote: post #6

It may be OT, but it made me think of something: Inequality of opportunity is part of what made the U.S. a 20th century powerhouse. Bright, educated women had two career choices pre-1965: nursing or teaching. (Even in 1960, the state school my mom went to did not accept women into engineering or architecture and she could only take higher science classes if she planned to teach.) All those bright women with no option…

If you haven't read SuperFreakonomics and you're interested in this comment, get a copy of the book: the first chapter is about how the "decline" of the education system is linked to rising professional opportunities for women. It used to be that highly competent women often became teachers because that was the only thing available to them. Now women can be professors, work in business, etc. Note: this is not an argu…

What this really indicates is that teachers need to be paid more, and the working environment improved. Then the profession will become more attractive to talented who are currently choosing other careers.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#66

Post by pjscott »

ScottBurson wrote: post #35
xentronium wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. All the best chefs are men, best professors I know are men too. And military requires more endurance that women normally have.

Okay: you're sexist. Looking back on my MIT undergraduate education (class of 1980), I'd say one of my best professors was a woman: Jeanne Bamberger.

You can't disprove a statistical assertion with a single counterexample. Kudos to Jeanne Bamberger, but she's not, by herself, statistically significant.

I'm not saying that your conclusions are wrong, but "one of my best professors was a woman" is a very weak argument.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#67

Post by pjscott »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #37
jtbigwoo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. Lawrence Summers? Is that you?

Clearly not - Larry Summers never made any gender-based value judgements, nor did he even draw conclusions. He got into trouble for asking questions people didn't want the answer to.

And yet, to this day, people remember what they thought he said, rather than what he actually said. Weird, isn't it?

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#68

Post by pjscott »

xentronium wrote: post #54
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're sexist.

And I can live with it. Believe it or not, I deliberately didn't mention that I know there are areas where women are much better than men just for the sake of experimenting with HN public opinion. Why? Because I feel the smallest glimpse of non-tolerable way of thinking is going to get downvoted. Unless it is coming from Zed or DHH. If I am right, I am going to be told I am wrong with a wording like: "It's not becaus…

One of the reasons I got tired of Reddit was people claiming to be persecuted by the Hivemind. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you had said that you firmly believe that women will be dramatically underrepresented in cooking, teaching, and the military, if selection for those things is based on merit.

This is different from what you said; it implies that women are, on average, not as good at those things as men. For whatever reason. You seemed to be saying that there's such a huge difference between men and women in those fields that women might as well not even try, except for really exceptional cases -- a much less defensible statement.

A question for everybody: how would you have reacted to the statement above? Personally, I would have attacked it for rashly generalizing from a small sample without proper controls, but not for thinking Damned Thoughts.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#69

Post by shawndrost »

patio11 wrote: post #38
yummyfajitas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on this? If this is indeed the case, I'd be very interested in tapping into it.

I've talked about this extensively on my blog -- go to the Greatest Hits section and look up Content Creation. ( http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits ) The thumbnail sketch: Queries on the long tail of the keyword distribution frequently have no effective competition. A single page laser-targeted at the query with basic on-page optimization will likely rank for it (and, most probably, a basket of related keywords).…

Would you please make a product of your method? I would like to be your customer.

Re: It Pays to Hire Women in Countries That Won't

#70

Post by lsc »

araneae wrote: post #55
lsc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>military requires more endurance that women normally have. my understanding (and experience) is that women tend to have better endurance than men. I remember a few years back I was running with a friend of mine, a girl who was probably 10" shorter than I am, who had a notably worse BMI than I did (at least, she did when we started running together. she improved significantly more than I did during the course of our…

Anecdotal evidence. You are simply on the low end of the bell curve for men. Endurance is simply how long you can use your muscles before they give out; it's not independent of how much muscle you have. If you are very weak, you will have terrible endurance. Yes, there are things called fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers; the greater proportion of the latter, the better endurance you have. The greater proporti…

First, I bet in my case neither one of us was really being pushed to the limit. two suburban white kids trying to become slightly less fat? not exactly running for our lives, you know? So it probably has more to do with will and pain tolerance than anything else.

weird, so I thought that the statistics backed up my anecdotes, but at least for pain tolerance, apparently the studies seem to show that men can tolerate more pain... which seems really weird to me. (Have you ever seen a woman give birth? I watched all five of my siblings being born, without any sort of anesthesia. I'm pretty sure that would kill me, or, at least, deter me from having more children.)

So yeah, the first couple pages of google results seem to show that you're right and I'm wrong, though, so eh, whatever. I guess I'm just a wuss.

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