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As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

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Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#191

Post by classicsnoot »

0x445442 wrote: post #162
tarkin2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much of a paradox surely. Those countries introduced equality systems because the imbalance. Now of course those same countries with the imbalance have those introduced systems.

Ah but why would those differences become greater after the introduction of the equality systems? That's the paradox.

It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. Why you end up where you do is either confusing or predictable based on how you start, particularly in the world of unverified assertion.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#192

Post by toxik »

msh wrote: post #187
Mon29Oct wrote: post #176

This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked than ever. The book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox submits two pieces of explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a significant duration, but which made the…

I don't know that book, but it's wrong on childcare being less affordable. Atleast in Denmark and Sweden child care is heavily subsidized, to the point of being free for very low income parents (in dk). So there is no way it can make economic sense for mothers not to work. And stay at home moms (for more than 1-2 years) is rare compared to the USA.

You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time?

Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of modern feminism, but really, what's the alternative?

Going against our primal instincts is essential for a productive society. "Man strong - hunt food, woman caring - raise child" or some religious justification of similar dubiousness is _not_ enough.

At the end of the day, it's going to be a balancing act of imposing on individual freedom such that individual freedom is at all possible. I personally am more inclined towards letting people be who they are, but that's what created gender inequality and racism in the first place.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#193

Post by cortexio »

jernfrost wrote: post #113
koonsolo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

[dead]

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#194

Post by avar »

toxik wrote: post #192
msh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that book, but it's wrong on childcare being less affordable. Atleast in Denmark and Sweden child care is heavily subsidized, to the point of being free for very low income parents (in dk). So there is no way it can make economic sense for mothers not to work. And stay at home moms (for more than 1-2 years) is rare compared to the USA.

You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time? Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of…

The alternative is equality of opportunity. If some people in society want to do some activity knowing they won't build job experience while doing so, let them, even if other people don't want to and become more employable as a result. That's freedom.

Whether e.g. women on average tend to take more parental leave is only a small subset of those sorts of situations in society.

I (a man) took a months-long parental leave fairly recently which surely hurt my job prospects, how could it not? But I chose to do it anyway. Should other men that didn't make that choice be forced to do the same to even things out?

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#195

Post by travisoneill1 »

nisuni wrote: post #41
starbeast wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anyone pushing the notion that genders are or should be identical.

The blank slate theory is one of the standard assumptions in sociology. From there, it follows that all differences are societal. So, to reply to your renark: many people in the social sciences think genders are equal at birth, and many other people think that this alleged equality should be somehow preserved by society. Luckily, data from life sciences seems to contradict this construction.

Makes me wonder why we even have a field of sociology. If it refuses to reject scientifically falsified theories then I see no value whatsoever.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#196

Post by [deleted] »

jernfrost wrote: post #106
daenz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're making an argument against a study that ranged over 80,000 individuals and 76 countries by using your own personal anecdotes of people you've met. Can we agree that the study takes into account far more pe…

I did not say it was wrong, merely that I was sceptical which is a good attitude in science. I am trying to understand how they did the study. Does not matter how many people took the study if the study is flawed: are the metrics they use sensible to measure gender differences e.g. I don’t think it is wrong to use anecdotes as a rough estimate to decide whether you accept the study at face value or not. If I told you…

[deleted]

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#197

Post by belorn »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #118
js8 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

With the wast majority of the population (using Swedish data) working in industries that is gender segregated, there is plenty of studies asking why student switch program, people switch job, and people switching profession. In that there is an interesting pattern found a rather long time ago, which is that those in minority position has a significant higher ratio of leaving a profession compared to the majority. Equally for both male and female dominated professions.

So I usually look for common explanation for gender segregation that work both for women and men. 87.4% gender segregation for men and 87.6% for women is rather extreme, but it is also quite obvious that either there is a common cause or a massive coincident that both men and women end up working in mostly single gender work places.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#198

Post by ekianjo »

YinglingLight wrote: post #171
ekianjo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual Freedom. As long as opportunities are as equal as they can be, the rest is just the reflection of what individuals want to focus on and achieve. Equality of outcomes will force some people to do what they dont want to, which is undesirable on many levels.

>Why would you want equality of outcomes anyway? It goes against individual Freedom. "An interesting article in The Atlantic talks about studies showing that liberals think in terms of fairness while conservatives think in terms of morality. So if you want to persuade someone on the other team, you need to speak in their language. We almost never do that. That’s why you rarely see people change their opinions. ....If…

Yes, but words have no meaning at this stage, because "fairness" means completely different things depending on who you talk to. It's very ambiguous, because the value systems are completely different. For example, you could make a case that "redistributing wealth is fair", yes also claim that "owning the reward of your hard work is fair" and they kind of go against each others.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#199

Post by naasking »

adwn wrote: post #178
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s, but much more likely to be biologists? If not, there is probably some other factor at work leading to these changing "preferences," even though as far as I know women have had no legal barriers to working in either field throughout that period.…

> Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s [...] Wait – I thought back then (1950s/60s/maybe 70s), "programming" refered to something more akin to data input, i.e., someone designed a program, and the "programmer" entered that program into the computer's memory, using punch cards or wh…

> Wait – I thought back then (1950s/60s/maybe 70s), "programming" refered to something more akin to data input, i.e., someone designed a program, and the "programmer" entered that program into the computer's memory, using punch cards or whatever

That's exactly right, "programming" was considered secretarial work, and guess what, pretty much all secretaries were women.

Male engagement in programming exploded with the advent of personal computers in the 80s, and female engagement chugged along at the same growth rate as before.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#200

Post by JoeAltmaier »

naasking wrote: post #199
adwn wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think there is something innate that changed genetically about women that led to them being much less likely to be computer programmers now than they were in the 1970s [...] Wait – I thought back then (1950s/60s/maybe 70s), "programming" refered to something more akin to data input, i.e., someone designed a program, and the "programmer" entered that program into the computer's memory, using punch cards or wh…

> Wait – I thought back then (1950s/60s/maybe 70s), "programming" refered to something more akin to data input, i.e., someone designed a program, and the "programmer" entered that program into the computer's memory, using punch cards or whatever That's exactly right, "programming" was considered secretarial work, and guess what, pretty much all secretaries were women. Male engagement in programming exploded with the…

Not my experience. I was in college when PCs exploded, and programming was already a mostly-male field
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