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Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

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Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#221

Post by bdamm »

Jensson wrote: post #148
bdamm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the Supreme Court of the United States rule that it had been effective, with their primary evidence being the election of Barak Obama? That's not a study but in terms of legal doctrine it seems to be a settled issue.

Most of the discrimination seems to be against slave descendants. Barack Obama is the son of an educated African immigrant, African immigrants are doing very well in USA, about as well as Asian immigrants, so he is a part of the model minority and not the discriminated minority.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm only saying that the supreme court has ruled on it. Frankly I think such a basis is completely absurd. We'd need to have at least four more black presidents to really show it's effectiveness. RBG once said that only once the Supreme Court happened to be entirely women would we know that we have achieved parity. And she's right!

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#222

Post by 66fm472tjy7 »

This is done completely overtly here in Austria. Many job offers contain language like "bei gleicher Qualifikation werden Frauen bevorzugt", which roughly translates to "when applicants are equally qualified, women are given preference". Examples: [0][1][2]

[0] https://archive.md/YERoT

[1] https://archive.ph/R6agn

[2] https://archive.ph/3zrn0

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#223

Post by finite_jest »

dktoao wrote: post #190
finite_jest wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm gonna let the personal attack part pass. Here's what I think about your points: [1] So we agree that the practice exists, though we may disagree on whether it's moral or not. [2] You are right in that it is in part cultural, but the effect of affirmative action also exists. (I think you would agree, otherwise, why not dismantle it and avoid the resentment that it brings about?) Also, culture is not autogeno…

Sorry if my post came across as a personal attack, it was just an observation by me that your sources did not seem to back up your claim and seemed to be more included to give your post immediate impact than to actually support it. If you actually read and picked these article in good faith I apologize (except for citing and anecdote, unless you did that for comedic effect). Yes, I believe that affirmative action is…

Apology totally accepted. I do genuinely think that my sources support my claim, but we all have our biases. [1]

TBH, I do not have a clear understanding of how things were in the 50's, but I do not think things would go back to the 50's if affirmative action programs were discontinued.

We probably can agree that there are a lot of anecdotes about this as you have one yourself. Contrary to popular belief, anecdotes and personal experiences are not worthless.

I agree that our anger should be placed directed the system which enables corruption, cheating and discrimination. Blaming the ordinary individuals would be counterproductive and sanctimonious.

[1]: For example, the Atlantic article does not mention affirmative action at all. You'd probably argue that's because it is not a major factor, but I think it is the elephant in the room. If I could edit my comment now, I would change "data" to "outcome data", and cite this graph https://archive.md/VwSmO. I do not see anything wrong with putting an anecdote in a footnote, however.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#224

Post by Wohlf »

stewx wrote: post #186
cinntaile wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one I get. People distrust the combination of men and children. For whatever reason. The second one I don't get?

Others have commented there is a perception that male cleaners will steal valuables. And it may very well be statistically true, given men's much greater criminal behaviour in general compared to women.

You could make this exact same argument to justify racism in hiring cleaners as well, so probably not one you want to make.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#225

Post by torstenvl »

wreath wrote: post #214
aaronax wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A woman is interested in computers and gains skills in that area, then tries to get a job in the field. People making hiring decisions like their boys-club culture (maybe even subconsciously) so the woman doesn't get hired even though equivalently qualified, and somehow thinks or figures out that this is somewhat due to herself being a woman. Then the woman makes actions to fix this for herself and future women.

> boys-club culture Do you have examples of these practices?

I do. High-stress high-stakes careers dealing in the macabre tend to result in dark/inappropriate senses of humor as a coping/bonding mechanism.

Although not predictive on an individual level, the (perceived?) general trend is that men are more accepting of that kind of environment than women are.

I've seen people make the argument that a woman shouldn't lead an infantry platoon because it would prevent grunts from coping with the death and destruction they face every day. Similar for defense attorneys. Nobody wants to risk being reported for sexual harassment because they laugh at something that happens in a rape trial; they also don't want to be forced to be 100% serious at all times behind closed doors.

I'm not convinced these ideas have merit, particularly due to self-selection. Most women don't volunteer to be infantry officers unless they want to be part of the infantry culture. But that does seem to be the operating perception.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#226

Post by lodi »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #189
tuesdayrain wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can someone explain this in logical, non-political, terms. Probably not, because it's ultimately a political phenomenon. In left-leaning circles it's popular to deny that there can be significant statistical differences between demographics for any reason other than discrimination. Based on that logic they view all unequal gender ratios as problems that need to be solved.

This is does not quite fit the general "left-leaning" belief that I have heard. I would rephrase it as "it's popular to deny that there's an underlying preference at play when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative." Bringing it back to the subject of the article, this entire discussion is really about tribalism. Humans tend to look favorabl…

> ... when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative.

Programming was never female dominated. What we call "programmer" now (writing algorithms to compute artillery trajectories or whatever) would have just been "scientist" back then. "Coder" (and before that, human "computer") were indeed female-dominated positions but there's no analog to that in the modern world; we've completely replaced those jobs with assemblers/compilers and electronic calculators respectively.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#227

Post by Manuel_D »

obelos wrote: post #194
MadeThisToReply wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all starts with the dubious (to say the least) premise that men and women are exactly the same. Both sexes on average want the same things, like the same things, are interested in the same things, and have the same priorities and proclivities. Therefore, in a just world, we'd see an exact 50/50 ratio of men and women in every possible occupation, because there are no differences between men and women, therefore th…

There are some extreme but isolated examples of people who are disposed to this opinion, but more commonly the objection to fields being dominated by one gender or the other is because those workplaces, as this study points out, can't seem to stop themselves from discriminating and gatekeeping against those of the other gender. While it should in theory be no problem that a workplace is 90% men and 10% women because…

> While it should in theory be no problem that a workplace is 90% men and 10% women because they live in a platonic ideal where they've been free to attain to their true ambition that is influenced by biological traits related to sex, in reality, once one gender gains enough dominance in a field or workplace, sexual discrimination, harassment, and gatekeeping end up deepening the imbalance.

The assumption that an industry that has a large gender imbalance will inevitably end up discriminating against the minority gender is incorrect. Plenty of studies have shown tech companies to actually favor women in hiring:

Tech companies were more likely to give callbacks to female applicants: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484

Modulating people to sound like the opposite gender in coding interviews actually hurts women and helps men: https://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-ma...

There are policies that can eliminate bias: Strip names and identifying information out of resumes before recruiters see them. Modulate voices in interviews to eliminate ability to infer gender or foreign accents, and use no video so as to prevent people from identifying races. The problem is that this often doesn't produce the results people are expecting.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#228

Post by lodi »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #152
guerrilla wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about stealing but is it not the case that most sex offenders are men? That seems like an actual risk wherase the accusations at play in racism are just made up.

Men are also far more often convicted of murder, arson, vandalism, assault, and so on. You would think those would be problems in any workplace, no?

The problem with this kind of argument from identity politics is that job applicants aren't ergodic. The arsonists probably aren't the ones applying to be day care attendants.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#229

Post by bliker »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #156
adolph wrote: post #149

I have a developing conjecture that in order to address the perceived problem of higher male per capita in certain occupations, attracting males into occupations with higher female ratios is as important as incentivizing female participation in high-male occupations. I'm no mathematician but I see it in terms of system numbers: Given a set of occupations with different sex ratios, to change the ratio of any specific…

I've not been able to wrap my head around this issue. What is the thinking behind the desire to even sex ratios in various profession? Why are some professions receiving more attention than others when it comes to evening sex ratios. Is a perfect world when every construction site, hospital, and dreary programming job (lets be honest most of them aren't fun) has an even mix of the sexes? What is the benefit? Can some…

My reading is that diverse teams are seen as more productive and innovative. Another angle could be that given how impactful technology is, women need the seat at the table to take part in shaping it.

Re: Swedish study finds discrimination against men in female-dominated occupations

#230

Post by Manuel_D »

aaronax wrote: post #165
ryanmarsh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not been able to wrap my head around this issue. What is the thinking behind the desire to even sex ratios in various profession? Why are some professions receiving more attention than others when it comes to evening sex ratios. Is a perfect world when every construction site, hospital, and dreary programming job (lets be honest most of them aren't fun) has an even mix of the sexes? What is the benefit? Can some…

A woman is interested in computers and gains skills in that area, then tries to get a job in the field. People making hiring decisions like their boys-club culture (maybe even subconsciously) so the woman doesn't get hired even though equivalently qualified, and somehow thinks or figures out that this is somewhat due to herself being a woman. Then the woman makes actions to fix this for herself and future women.

If you're going to assert that tech companies, by and large, discriminate against women you should try and back up such a claim with evidence. If anything, the evidence indicates the opposite: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484

Nearly 900k applications analyzed, with the conclusion of preference in favor of women.

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