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India’s caste system limits diversity in science

nature.com

61–68 of 68 posts

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#61
post #55
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the facts about women in India: Technology firms in India have a better female to male staff ratio than the tech giants of Silicon Valley [1]. India has a much better male-to-female ratio compared with the U.S. Engineering male-female ratio in India is 1.96 as compared with 4.61 in the U.S. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-professional/2015/jun/2... [2] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog…

Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.5% of population. Real concerning facts about women in India is they have some of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world, excluding Arab countries. And DECLINING from 25-30% in early 2000s to ~17% today. Which is absurd since everywhere else, female partcipation increases in workforce as country developes. That said, my understandin…

>Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.005% of population

You're off by two orders of magnitude in your percentage calculation, which makes the rest of your comment suspect.

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.5% of population. Real concerning facts about women in India is they have some of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world, excluding Arab countries. And DECLINING from 25-30% in early 2000s to ~17% today. Which is absurd since everywhere else, female partcipation increases in workforce as country developes. That said, my understandin…

>Those are facts about women in Indian IT that employs 5M / 0.005% of population You're off by two orders of magnitude in your percentage calculation, which makes the rest of your comment suspect.

I forgot to multiple by 100 in haste. And even rounded up what was suppose to be 0.3% to 0.5% to be charitable. Therefore all other easily verifiable facts are suspect.

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to point out that the unnatural vigor with which HN and other forums reject the idea of Caste Discrimination is telling. If this were White on Minority racism for instance people defending it in this way would be ostracized and most would say that it this type of discrimination is beyond the pale and call for vigorous investigation into the claims. Instead all we see about Caste discrimination is "it doesn'…

That's because people on HN are vastly more familiar with things in their own country, and see and hear abject racism among their own folks. For example, the classic uncle at the Thanksgiving table, or a grandparent. They have no context of Indian caste system, and only go by some online articles that have their own agenda to make a bigger deal of the caste system in modern day, than it is.

Thank you for reinforcing my point like nothing I say could.

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because people on HN are vastly more familiar with things in their own country, and see and hear abject racism among their own folks. For example, the classic uncle at the Thanksgiving table, or a grandparent. They have no context of Indian caste system, and only go by some online articles that have their own agenda to make a bigger deal of the caste system in modern day, than it is.

Thank you for reinforcing my point like nothing I say could.

It's funny how folks like you have zero clue or context about the caste system in India yet read a couple of agenda based biased articles and come to nonsense conclusions.

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for reinforcing my point like nothing I say could.

It's funny how folks like you have zero clue or context about the caste system in India yet read a couple of agenda based biased articles and come to nonsense conclusions.

Instead of standing up and saying "I believe all caste discrimination is wrong and any alleged instance of it should be quickly investigated," you instead decided to go into multiple comment chains and simply deny it's existence int he face of numerous firsthand experiences from posters. Good job.

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how folks like you have zero clue or context about the caste system in India yet read a couple of agenda based biased articles and come to nonsense conclusions.

Instead of standing up and saying "I believe all caste discrimination is wrong and any alleged instance of it should be quickly investigated," you instead decided to go into multiple comment chains and simply deny it's existence int he face of numerous firsthand experiences from posters. Good job.

>int he face of numerous firsthand experiences from posters

Like which ones?

Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#67

What I found surprising is that the genetic distance between Indian castes is rather large, comparable to the distance of a northern European to eg a greek person: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC311057/

It seems to me that, if you have a society that divides people by caste and comes down hard on intermarriage, after some generations this is what you'd expect. Not one big "Indian" gene pool, but several smaller ones who remain distinct while still living close together.

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Re: India’s caste system limits diversity in science

#68
post #37

Forget about diversity. When a society excludes whole classes of people from fields of study or professions, that society also limits the pool of talent available. Excluding women, castes, races, ethnicities seems like a poor choice for any society that wants to advance as a whole.

I think the point here is caste is something different than the other categories. Caste doesn't discriminate gender, religon etc. In the indian caste system you can be a woman, a Christian, etc and still not escape it. It is a layer on top of all the other forms of discrimination and traditionally passed through generations. Most of the people I know that came from India to America, when I have asked, have told me th…

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