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

#471

Post by abandonliberty » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

gammateam wrote: post #423

Which is a good thing right? What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result of the domesticated housewife. I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to g…

It's the expected outcome. Male dominated/inequitable societies will cater to male preferences.

It's insane to think that increasing gender equity would turn women into men. Instead it allows women to be women, which is a good outcome.

Unfortunately SJWs/affirmative action would have you believe that equality is sameness. Forcing women to be men is not equitable.

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

#472

Post by Frondo » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #468

Frondo wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all building a future together here, and "life isn't equal and never will be" is a dire, shitty attitude to take. You said I have fluffy unicorn ideology in another thread here, and I think that's bullshit, especially in the resource-rich 21st century. As resource-rich as we are now, the future's gonna be even brighter. If you just want to recreate the "life is unequal" structures in the 22nd century, why fucki…

You can get outraged and mad, and kick and scream all you want. But it is completely and utterly stupid to "fight for equality". If you want to waste your time and energy, feel free. But people are born differently, some have better bone density, some have a high metabolism, some can build muscle faster. Some people are stronger, faster, smarter, etc. than others. This makes the world INTERESTING. I am glad there is…

Not outraged, not mad, not kicking and screaming, I think your attitude is damaged.

"Completely and utterly stupid to fight for equality."

"I'm glad people need to fight for a better job."

Retrograde and sad, and a recipe for a continually miserable world.

Give everyone enough, give everyone what they need, and let's see what humanity is actually capable of. Any other attitudes, any other goals belong, rightly so, in the dustbin of history.

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

#473

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

classicsnoot wrote: post #444

KirinDave wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was on Fox news not even a week ago, and I've seen UK news segments on this as well. I am fairly sure some of the audience here is acutely aware of this line of thinking. Note, for example, how many people are assuming I'm talking about the more common complaint of college statistics. I never once mentioned college or university. They think they know the argument I'm presenting even though I used language that in…

It is a general courtesy to indicate when you have retroactively edited your post. More to the point, you were responding to a comment that had already introduced the caveat "outside of right wing circles," thereby rendering your observation a bit redundant.

1. I didn't substantially change the content of my post, only expanded on it in an obvious way.

2. "Outside of the political block with control of 2/3 of your government and an unpredictable split on the remaining third" is an absurd restriction to place on me for this conversation. Of course I ignored it. It was a disingenuous attempt to exclude politics from a subthread I had started specifically about government policies.

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

#474

Post by ThrustVectoring » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #424

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop believing feminists when they say they want equality of outcome. They don't - they completely ignore how men die at work at ten times the rate of women, put in more hours, take more competitive roles, and generally tend to make more sacrifices in pursuit of well-paying jobs and careers. Feminists don't want equality of outcome. They want to point at the fact that women make less money as a group than men in orde…

I'm a feminist. I've never once asked for or expected equality of outcome. But equality of opportunity? I absolutely want equality of opportunity. And you should, too. Equal opportunity benefits everyone because it allows the market to allocate talent more efficiently. Professor Iris Bohnet of Harvard wrote a great book called "What Works" that offers some creative solutions to the issue. Here's an interesting articl…

If you had followed your own advice and left out the snark and implication that I spoke up when I shouldn't have, I'd be far more likely to take that as object-level advice. As it stands, your advice comes across more as trying to police what people are allowed to feel and say. I'm rather sensitive to that sort of behavior, so I'd like to apologize in advance if I'm misreading you here.

As far as the actual object level goes, we're likely far more in agreement than you think. I absolutely want a fair system for everyone, and I'm well aware of the efficiency involved in market processes and price discovery. "Equality of Opportunity" is a lofty goal with relatively few pitfalls (we certainly don't want to punish parents for fair attempts at providing their children with opportunities), but I think we're basically on the same page here. And outright sexism is obviously unacceptable.

I think a big point of divergence between my opinions and mainstream feminist thought here is what we believe is behind differences in group outcomes. In my view, prices as a signal of supply and demand has much more explanatory power. Higher paying jobs are higher paying for a reason - they are more competitive, require longer hours, are more dangerous, more risky, require more intensive training, are less fulfilling, or otherwise less desirable in some way. The wage market is certainly not perfectly efficient, and discrimination does happen, but supply and demand plays a huge role in my opinion.

As far as I can tell, feminism tends more to see differences in group outcomes more as evidence of discrimination and other systematic problems in the system. While these problems aren't 100% solved, in my view they're getting a grossly disproportionate amount of attention.

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

#475

Post by SolaceQuantum » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #434

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence of this phenomenon from beginning to end as you describe it? It sounds fascinating.

Not motivated enough to research it right now, but last time I read about this I recall different choices made by men and women account for much of the pay gap, but there is still a residual gap even when you account for men and women performing the same job after everything else is taken into account.

Yes, I’m aware of this evidence. What I’d like is for the parent I was responding to to back up their very strong claims about the goal of feminists and the sorts of long form feminist employment change they’re claiming. I’ve never personally witnessed any study corroborating this phenomenon, but I also am not heavily researched in this area and am therefore welcome to innovative new data.

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

#476

Post by gspetr » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #366

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.

You could argue that women are less like to die young from risky activities and should be preferred. I know a director level guy who had to agree to give up his sports bike as a condition of promotion to director level. Even having less time off from sports activities - broken legs from five a side foot ball cost a surprising number of days off.

The risk of dying in your 30s in an accident is minuscule, while IIRC 87% of women have kids.

Also, companies can get insurance on an employee death (although limited to X% of highest paid employees): https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/an-employee-dies-and...

I might be wrong, but I don't think a company can get insurance on an employee getting pregnant.

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

#477

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #384

KirinDave wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's odd though how so often this "traditional" viewpoint is eager to suggest, "These are the preferences of women and their outcomes," when it's suggested women result in a net disadvantage, but is a crisis when men see these o…

> An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability." That's just so wrong... (1) it's not that 10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome,…

(1) Young, talented people do this all the time. If your idea of how to dismiss this criticism is to suggest wage gaps themselves are fake and that somehow men are inherently more valuable to the workforce at an intrinsic level, you're going to have to do more than compare it to seniority-based compensation schemes.

(2) Tom, to be crystal clear: I think both dismissals are equally bad things to do. My point is that people, you included by the look of it, will suggest it is natural to see differences when said differences disadvantage women. But if a similarly important disadvantage befalls men, it is "a problem" which implies it must be corrected.

Why can't both things be bad?

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

#478

Post by Emma_Goldman » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #466

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Welcome to life, it isn't equal, and never will be.' Right, that is 'life' in the sense that it is, to some partial extent - and I say partial because women regularly successfully reintegrate back into the work force, and many employers don't have your dim view of things - the existing state of things. But humans, if you had not noticed from the ideological and political revolutions of the last three-hundred years,…

>There is nothing intrinsically valuable in 'difference' There is nothing intrinsically valuable in equality. FTFY

I said what I meant - obviously - so you didn't 'fix' anything.

I was arguing against your suggestion that inequality - and the ways in which society is gendered to the disadvantage of women in particular - is a natural part of 'life' that we should just fatalistically reconcile ourselves to. Maybe I was wrong, and you don't object to equality on empirical grounds (although perhaps they were never serious, anyway), but because you're an anti-egalitarian reactionary.

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

#479

Post by ThrustVectoring » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #401

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop believing feminists when they say they want equality of outcome. They don't - they completely ignore how men die at work at ten times the rate of women, put in more hours, take more competitive roles, and generally tend to make more sacrifices in pursuit of well-paying jobs and careers. Feminists don't want equality of outcome. They want to point at the fact that women make less money as a group than men in orde…

Do you have any evidence of this phenomenon from beginning to end as you describe it? It sounds fascinating.

If you take studies that compare the gross earnings of men and women and control for some of the obvious differences in decision-making, the gender gap tends to disappear. For example, I remember hearing of a study that looked at something like "single, childless people aged 25-34 with a college degree and living in an urban environment." In this narrow demographic slice, women made something like 2% more money than men.

And then if you look at the US census data on occupations by gender, you can easily notice a trend in which jobs have what gender ratios. Roughly speaking it's something like "if the pay and requirements are equivalent, which is a more preferable job" often lands on female dominated fields.

Education, training, and library occupations: 73.1% female Healthcare support occupations: 86.5% Law enforcement workers including supervisors: 19.7% Office and administrative support occupations: 70.8% Natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations: 5.1% Production, transportation, and material moving occupations: 22.8%

The one big outlier to this pattern that I noticed was "Computer, engineering, and science occupations" at 25.7%. This also is a considerable category outlier in terms of skill requirements and competitiveness. "Management occupations" seems like it should also have some of this effect but to a lesser degree, and sits at 40.3%.

Source: American Community Survey, table S2401

Another interesting tidbit is comparing S2401 with S2402 - comparing all workers with only full-time year-round ones. I haven't done a full look, but one thing that jumped out at me is that excluding part-time or part-year workers drops the overall workforce percentage from 47.5% to 43.1%. It might be confounded somewhat by school teachers being considered "part year" and mostly women, though.

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

#480

Post by antt » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

grenoire wrote: post #214

antt wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like some evidence that under normal [0] circumstances brains which look different act different. So far it sounds like phrenology at best and racist demagoguery at worst when you compare black brains to white brains instead of female to male [1]. I don't understand how someone who would (probably) call themselves progressive can use reheated talking points from 18th century eugenicists without noticing a pro…

I don't know man, I didn't even do a racial comparison. We just know that hormones do have an effect on how your brain works and that males and females do secrete hormones at different levels. You're strawmanning a li'l bit now...

You didn't but I've heard plenty of people do.

If you take for granted that brain physiology in healthy brains impacts brain capacity then you're a couple of stray neurons away from justifying Jim Crow V 2.0, now with more science.

Hormones aren't any better, back in the 60s and 70s 'negroes' were said to be in heat constantly which is why they needed to be paternalistically protected by the nice Alabama state troopers.