As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

sundvor wrote: post #245

mindcrime wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it isn't "discriminating based on parental leave". It's "discriminating" based on experience. The reason why someone takes a year (or whatever) off isn't the issue. Does this feel unfair in some sense? Yeah. But would it be less unfair to artificially punish the person who didn't take time off? Questionable...

It occurs to me that you're kind of equating a year of holidays with that of having a baby, which ensures the continuation of our species. In our (HN) case, that is putting a few more technologist offsprings into the mix for what that's worth. I can assure you looking after a baby the first year is not leisure time.

>But it isn't "discriminating based on parental leave". It's "discriminating" based on experience. The reason why someone takes a year (or whatever) off isn't the issue.

The commenter clearly stated their point. Businesses don't care why you have a one year gap. They only care that you have a one year gap.

In no way did they call having a baby a vacation.

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

#262

Post by moorhosj » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

trashtester wrote: post #215

Frondo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm coming from the same place, except I don't think it's privilege, I think it's wanting to build a world where anyone can take a year off for anything and not have that held against them if they later want to go work for someone. We're living in an era where, resource-wise, we could be post-scarcity, but politically, it's all locked up in a shitty, shitty system. I want to keep imagining a world in which people are…

Scandinavian countries do not go that far. This privilege is only granted to parents. The goal is NOT to give people the right to go on un-paid leave for any reason, but rather to promote gender equality as well as encourage people to have children. (The latter to prevent birth rates to fall too far below the replacement rate.) The Scandinavian economic model relies heavily on high work life participation for funding…

Also, maybe it’s good for the newborn to have a parent around during their most formative time.

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

#263

Post by belorn » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

Kaveren wrote: post #43

dandare wrote: post #32

Can someone with an access to the article provide more information on the direction in which the "willingness to take risks, patience, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity, and trust" is associated with gender?

> "Women tended to be more prosocial and less negatively reciprocal than men, with differences in standard deviations of 0.106 for altruism (P The context of this quote and the tables are provided by the other commenter. [0] "(26)" in the quote refers to a footnote. Edit: Fixed hyphen space in quote.

There difference is then in the realm of 5-17%, right?

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

#264

Post by UncleMeat » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #257

toxik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is the opportunity cost of the mother going right back to work and spending no time with their newborn? Does society absorb that cost?

The father could do that task.

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

#265

Post by illumin8 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

illumin8 wrote: post #246

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm coming from a place of privilege but that point of view makes me incredibly sad. Why? It makes me sad that anyone would want to force business to take on risk that it wouldn't otherwise in the name of "equality". Choices have consequences, if you choose to stay out of work for a year to raise your child then you will be less employable.

I find this response, and the downvotes on the parent comment, incredibly sad. If you want to live in a libertarian fantasy world with no safety net, you are free to create one, and try to attract citizens to your country. Even in prehistoric times, it was generally understood that there was societal benefit to letting women take care of children when they were extremely young and that perhaps letting a new mother sk…

HN moderators, you should check the biases of the mod brigade.

I'm out of this conversation. Immediate downvotes because I don't agree with the toxic alt-right views that seem to dominate conversations like these.

I'm done with this discussion; seems we can't have a meaningful one.

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

#266

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #253

DoreenMichele wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother had a great social life. It involved inviting people over, serving dinner, having the ability to allow people to stay overnight as guests. Replicating the nice dining table and means to allow for overnight guests failed to magically cause guests to appear. I never figured out what piece of the puzzle I was missing. My mother put a lot of emphasis on being able to serve her guests and make them comfortable a…

Maybe you spent so much time trying to create an environment, you forgot to make friends? That said, modern generations are more about going out and doing things in short social engagements. People 'feel' very busy, and the idea of an overnight stay may be too much commitment for someone that doesn't feel they have a strong friendship with you.

There were many differences between my life and my mother's life. I don't actually want to hash this out further. It would be nice if the entire internet would not make wild speculation about why I failed to replicate the extraordinarily wonderful social life my mother managed to have.

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

#267

Post by clord » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #238

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…

It is worth noting that Nima Sanandaji, the author of that and many similar books, is a proponent of small state, free markets, low tax, self determination and responsibility. In other words, he is a libertarian type, that doesn't support the welfare state, and by extension doesn't support requiring employers to offer maternity and paternity leave. He has also argued that Scandinavia is doing well due to the free mar…

I downvote you because the research withstands your attempted ad hominem attack. If the result is good we should not cast dispersion just because the researcher has a particular bias.

In fact those times when your ideology does not line up with scientific results are precisely when you should sit up and take notice that perhaps your ideology is failing you.

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

#268

Post by amanaplanacanal » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #182

TulliusCicero wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty obvious to me that gender differences are due to a mix of cultural pressures and biology. Here's a study that indicates some biological origin, for example: https://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-diffe... It weirds me out to find people who believe that these preferences are solely due to cultural pressure. It reeks of ideological blindness to me.

People who believe this is solely cultural pressure should try having children. While, sure, you can raise children to be much more willing to challenge gender norms, and you can raise them to not hide or be ashamed of where their personal preferences violate cultural gender norms, every parent I've known that have strongly believed it was all cultural have ended up changing their mind after they've tried their harde…

I have no doubt that this is exactly what happens, but I don't think it shows what you intend it to show. Kids pick up the culture around them, and if they are exposed to television or other children, they are going to pick up what they see.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but I don't think it proves anything innate in gender either.

Another part of the problem is our language, and the way we think about it. We have a tendency to say "girls prefer this, and boys prefer that" as a short hand for "on average, girls prefer this and boys prefer that". Those two statements are not the same thing at all. Averages don't say anything about how any individual person thinks. This shortcut of language seems to be a big blind spot in people.

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

#269

Post by pixl97 » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #185

vidarh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want there to be anybody who got a bad deal in society, first you need to understand whether or not where they are now is where they want to be or somewhere they ended because other options were closed to them. If you don't know if they got a bad deal, you don't even know if there's anything to fix, much less how. But you can't just ask people that, because people make a whole lot of choices based on wha…

I believe people are grown up enough to tell me if they think something is wrong. So I don't see why simply asking is not enough. (I understand that some people don't want to complain directly in oppressive regime, so assuming that's not the case.) And in my opinion, society doesn't ask people enough what they want. I am a big fan of direct democracy, which is pretty much that - asking people what their preferences (…

> believe people are grown up enough to tell me if they think something is wrong

Unfortunately this belief is not very scientific. The very manner in which you frame the question, even if it is asking the same thing, can get a differing response from the same person.

Also, people are terrible at self assessment. Unsupervised vs supervised dieters are one of the best examples. Even worse are what people think they want. Most people have a very small pool they can think of at any given time on what they want. Most of the time it is being manipulated by outside benefactors, such as advertisers.

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

#270

Post by LyndsySimon » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #194

toxik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

A similar but slightly different anecdote - I'm a 34-year-old man, and my wife stays home with our two children. We're very aware that this has hurt her earning potential, which means that if I were to die suddenly she'd be in a real financial crisis. To offset that disparity in earning potential, we've had to purchase significant life and disability policies on me.