Woah there, you can't say that! That's what Damore got fired for!
As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
111–120 of 536 posts
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more complicated than that even. If women in a 'perfectly equal opportunity' environment, very rarely 'choose' to participate in some fields ... then those fields will probably develop social and institutional dynamics that make it more difficult. The Canadian Navy did a study in the 1990's that showed if there were only a small number of women on a deployed ship, that they had a hard time, but once there was a…
If a startup has mostly women, is that a problem too?
Could be as I have read reports from men in predominantly female fields (as child care services, nursing, etc.) having a feeling of being outsiders and not really included in the workspace. I don't think we have enough data to imply that though.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#113I am highly sceptical to this study. Does anyone have a list of what they measured as differences and how they did it? The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are. I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian rather than say Italian. I do there is something t…
> The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are. I think it depends on what you're looking at. It is indeed true what you say. But if you look at % of women in tech, less gender equal societies will have relative more female programmers. This is from my own experience as a Belgian married to a…
I don’t necessarily reject that possibility. But I feel it does not capture the full extent of differences or similarities between genders. Can you really say genders are more similar because they have more similar jobs?
Also I would caution agains making conclusions from Eastern European countries. Communism was very much into gender equality in some regards. Very high percentage of communist women worked.
You see this in communist guriellia which often have a lot of women. The Kurdish women’s fighters were a result of various socialist ideologies which is quite feminist.
I just don’t think this issue can be represented on one axis alone. There are more similarities son some axis and less on others it seems in more gender equal places.
Gender equality itself isn’t a number on a single axis either.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. (Well, I understand it if we assume they are being dishonest, so assuming that something is not biological allows them to claim that it can be changed to whatever they think is morally superior. The debate whether being gay is cultural is a good example.) If I am given a true freedom to choose, to decide according to my prefere…
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Basically because if it is cultural, it may be a form of brainwashing and the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject. Whether or not you think this matters for purposes of making policy, it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good…
"the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject"
But we can ask them, right? We can ask e.g. nurses and computer programmers whether or not they loathe the choice of their profession. If there is e.g. relatively more computer programmers loathing it than nurses then you have an evidence of culturally pushed preference (towards computer programming, in this case), regardless what the gender ratio in those fields is.
"it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good life for themselves"
I already responded to that, basically I don't think it matters for an individual: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381148
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#115This follows a series of validation studies (incl. e.g. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719 ) from this year especially. The results seem to consistently show the same 'paradoxical' outcome. J. Peterson came to my campus last week and I think he mentioned this one specific study, and also noted several other ones, which brought the one I linked to my attention. It really isn't the only one, a…
Is Jordan Peterson any better in person than he seems in his book? I read it after a friend recommended it and he seemed completely insufferable and possibly mildly autistic based on what seemed like a real lack of understanding of the internal lives of others.
Lots of people seem to like him, but I can't bring myself to watch him speak in person since everything I see just traversing the internet is framed as him "destroying liberals" in some fashion, which just affirms the insufferable idea.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Basically because if it is cultural, it may be a form of brainwashing and the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject. Whether or not you think this matters for purposes of making policy, it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good…
"the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject" But we can ask them, right? We can ask e.g. nurses and computer programmers whether or not they loathe the choice of their profession. If there is e.g. relatively more computer programmers loathing it than nurses then you have an evidence of culturally pushed preference (towards computer programming, in this case), re…
"Learned helplessness" is a thing. If people have been told their entire lives from birth that X is strictly Verboten and they can only answer Y to that question, they may literally be unable to tell you that. They may not really understand it themselves. It may be literally unspeakable and even unthinkable.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with you at all. There are a huge amount of people who do disagree with you, though. You just commented that you didn't know anyone pushing such a narrative. And that surprised me because it's everywhere. So I thought I'd just flesh out that dominant point of view so that you could identify it in the society around you. What I think this study shows (and its not the first) is that it debunks the noti…
> it debunks the notion that discrimination is the only reason for any differences in gender representation. Which is also a notion that nobody has ever argued but suits polarized demagoguery.
I think the above notion is the biggest component of the gender pay gap.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why people care so much whether preferences are biological or cultural. Basically because if it is cultural, it may be a form of brainwashing and the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject. Whether or not you think this matters for purposes of making policy, it matters a whole lot for purposes of an individual figuring out how to create a good…
"the expressed preference may actually be something they loathe, but don't feel empowered to reject" But we can ask them, right? We can ask e.g. nurses and computer programmers whether or not they loathe the choice of their profession. If there is e.g. relatively more computer programmers loathing it than nurses then you have an evidence of culturally pushed preference (towards computer programming, in this case), re…
I'm not sure why you think that women saying they don't enjoy their careers in programming means they are being forced into programming. If you want to measure that, ask them that question directly. Most of the women I know who are dissatisfied with their programming careers have that opinion because (for example) they are constantly harassed and HR does nothing about it, or because people working with them regularly assume that they don't have the intellectual capacity for their jobs and treat them like children, not because they don't like the act of programming; with the way you are proposing to measure preferences, there would be no observable difference between those two things.
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#119I am highly sceptical to this study. Does anyone have a list of what they measured as differences and how they did it? The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are. I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian rather than say Italian. I do there is something t…
> I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian rather than say Italian.
You mean the Colombia born Cecilia Brækhus?
Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men
#120Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences, which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.
But it's assuming equality of outcome is what's best. Personnaly, i'm glad i can wear big shorts and not small suits. What makes it harder is that some people don't know what they need and just look at the neighbour's plate and require to have the same.
Equality of outcome is not about individuals but about statistics over groups (usually groups that have been treated as such by society).