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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

#311

Post by Mikeb85 »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #288
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.

1. Have you ever wondered whether there's other human values - perhaps kinder and more loving values - than venal self-interest and capital accumulation? 2. The word 'choice' is not really apposite here, given that one sex, by the mere lottery of birth, carries the burden of pregnancy (and, culturally - with a similar determinacy - women are expected to rear their children in their early years).

Most businesses are small businesses. Think restaurants, cafés, small retailers, etc...

Most are owned by individuals who have families, employ individuals with families and cumulatively small businesses such as these employ a rather large percentage of the labour force.

For many individuals and their families, the fact they can put up a small amount of capital and start a business is the only way they can ensure a future for themselves and their children.

Not all business owners are already rich SV venture capitalists or multi-millionaires. And his point is valid - how much risk do you force upon blue-collar small business owners who are already operating on small margins?

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

#312

Post by jaxtellerSoA »

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…

>Even in prehistoric times, it was generally understood that there was societal benefit to letting women take care of children

In prehistoric times a village raised a child, not an individual.

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

#313

Post by zeroname »

Frondo wrote: post #240
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.

Businesses exist at our leisure -- not the other way around. As we build and refine our society, it's entirely up to us to determine how best we want to put businesses to work, to improve society. Anyone who wants the benefits of owning a business can be subject to those rules. Anyone who doesn't want to play by those rules can go solo or work for someone who does.

> Anyone who wants the benefits of owning a business can be subject to those rules.

Oh, those benefits of running a business. You know, like working more hours than everyone else, putting your own money on the line, being the last to get paid. Here's some hard facts:

1. Most businesses are small businesses

2. Most people are employed in small to medium businesses

3. Most businesses fail because they lose money

If you push for more and more requirements of businesses to fulfill, only the biggest corporations will be able to survive, because those are the companies that can deal with all the regulation, all the legal risk, who figure out all the tax loopholes, who have the best standing with banks, etc.

You'll eventually kill all the competition from the bottom. There won't be any more artisan bakeries or coffee shops, there will be McDonalds and Starbucks. Everywhere. No more innovative software startups, only Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM and Apple.

> Anyone who doesn't want to play by those rules can go solo or work for someone who does.

Good jobs don't fall from the sky. Big corporations also happen to be really good at making people redundant.

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

#314

Post by jki275 »

illumin8 wrote: post #265
illumin8 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"toxic alt right"?

I express anything not patently left and i'm instantly vote brigaded into oblivion. You're living in a fantasy world if you think anything here is "alt right".

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

#315

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

Right, and you can even see how some standards are more arbitrary than others. For example, our son loved pink until around when he was 3 or 4, he started hearing from the daycare he went to that pink was for girls.

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

#316

Post by turc1656 »

dekken_ wrote: post #156
grenoire wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, you are disregarding what he has to say as branding him as an ideologue. You don't have to agree with everything someone says, and doing so would be philosophical suicide by the very definition of it. Just be a little more open on what you can take out his ideas, and if you're not interested in a specific subset of his subjects such as religion or identity politics or his diet (as one of the students i…

> you are disregarding what he has to say as branding him as an ideologue I did no such thing how dare you

You didn't literally say those words but that's the only reasonable conclusion based on your statement. You said it was a battle of ideologies. Which means he is there as a representative of an ideology. That would make him an ideologue, based purely on logical flow from your statement. If that's not what you believe, then you shouldn't label the discussions he partakes in as ideological battles and instead brand them simply as honest political discourse with guests of varying viewpoints.

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

#317

Post by TulliusCicero »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #268
vidarh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They've shown some strong gender preferences even for babies, though. I find it hard to believe the "well maybe those babies have already had the patriarchy shoved down their throats" crowd.

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

#318

Post by jaxtellerSoA »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #305
davrosthedalek wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you totally should be able to take off for a year. The same way you can elect not to go to university. Or look in the laser. You just have to live with the consequences. And in many, many professions, a year or so out of practice means that you are measurably worse. Maybe (but likely) worse than before you left, but almost certainly worse than you could be if you would have used that year to get better at what ev…

Are you still going to be worse after a month of work? Are companies that short-term-oriented?

>Are companies that short-term-oriented?

Publicly traded ones. There are only 3 months between Earnings Reports.

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

#319

Post by onemoresoop »

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #220
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…

> 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. Do YOU want to have surgery from a surgeon that hasn't performed in year? Your idea is fine utopian, fluffy unicorn, ideology. But practically it just won't work. This doesn't have anyth…

But we don't want surgery from an overworked surgeon either.

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

#320

Post by Dylan16807 »

js8 wrote: post #273
jonathanstrange wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you cannot just ask. It's more complicated than that, as Amartya Sen laid out in many publications on his capability theory . People have "adaptive preferences".[1] For example, if you ask a women in a very poor rural region of India whether she wants to become an engineer, she might value the possibility far less than she would if that career choice was a realistic, valuable option for her in her current situati…

Maybe people don't always prefer what's best for them, but I believe that even when they don't, they are the best arbiter of that. In other words, maybe they don't know what's best for them but then neither does anybody else. I mean, when I talk about asking, you can make education part of the asking the question. I am certainly not against more education, like showing what is it like to be engineer. I might disagree…

Go ahead and respect it! But the question was whether we can look at those expressed preferences and declare that our job is done and employment opportunities are fair. And the answer is absolutely not.
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