High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#51

Post by learnstats » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:36 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #20

My immediate thought when I saw this a few days ago was "sampling bias" -- not that the author had a biased sample of professional women, but rather that professional women are a biased sample of women. Given the social environment -- pushing both females and males away from what they might have preferred as a life trajectory -- I think it's very likely that the average professional woman is significantly more aggres…

Given that the frequency with which the key critical words are applied to men (essentially never) and women (essentially always), your explanation cannot tell the whole story.

Saying that this is inconclusive is a strange thing to claim - the evidence is plentiful. You are describing a serious but separate problem which adds to but does not explain this difference.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#52

Post by melindajb » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:36 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #48

melindajb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is not logical. These were professionals in the same sphere: tech. And one could make the argument that the sample of men was also biased--towards men who liked tech. No one claimed this was an iron clad peer reviewed scientific study--and I'd love to see some done on this in addition to those that already exist. Deborah Tannen is one of the more well known researchers in this area to uncover distinct g…

cperciva did not attack the methodology at all, which would be clear if you'd thoroughly read the first sentence. He didn't really say anything that disagreed with it at all, but rather put forward a hypothesis explaining the data therein. Said hypothesis implicitly acknowledges that it is harder for women to get into the workplace. But because his phrasing happened to include the phrase "sampling bias", you got angr…

I find it telling that you jump right into assigning me an emotional response for countering his logic with my own. Do you often accuse women of being too emotional? Or too aggressive? I can tell you that I have a male named account on hacker news and it never, ever gets called too angry, or aggressive, or emotional. Try it sometime, as a woman. It's most instructive.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#53

Post by hackinthebochs » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:36 PM UTC

bkirkbri wrote: post #32

rayiner wrote: post #6

I think this is an outgrowth of our general social tendency to judge men by what they do ("he works at a hedge fund!") and women by what they're like ("she's really sweet!"). I found this paragraph in particular interesting: > Words like bossy, abrasive, strident, and aggressive are used to describe women’s behaviors when they lead . . . . Among these words, only aggressive shows up in men’s reviews at all. It shows…

I have a pet theory that the reason that women (as well as non-traditionally-masculine men) are considered bossy, while other men are considered "go-getters" is due to a lack of the threat of violence. Not that a type-A guy is going to assault you if you don't capitulate to their authority. More that there is a perceived or possible threat. In contrast to women who would be considered bossy or abrasive because they d…

This is an interesting point. We often observe a backlash against those who claim authority but don't deserve it (whether from being new, smaller, weaker, less skilled--lower on whatever status criteria is established in the group). In the case with masculine men, there might be a subconscious acceptance of their claim to authority, whereas with a woman there is a subconscious resentment towards their claim.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#54

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:39 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #9

Is it possible that professional women are more abrasive than men in aggregate? I am not saying that is the case, only that it is another hypothesis from the data. If that was the case and I had to guess a reason, it would be that groups with more power insecurity tend to overcompensate in other areas. Another explanation could be industry. More women work in Fashion and marketing, which have generally more dramatic…

It's possible. It's equally possible that there's a lot of men who like to dish it out but can't take it.I used to do a lot of work with hedge funds and the amount of preening and effort invested in maintaining the pecking order (in an all-male environment) was just ridiculous.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#55

Post by NotAtWork » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:39 PM UTC

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #34

spindritf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hypothesis is whether professional women are rated differently than professional men The point is that you can't know whether they're rated differently (by different criteria) or actually different.

I think one of the premises you have to accept in this article is that the actual difference between women and men is less than (looking at the "has negative feedback" vs "only constructive criticism" chart) 72%. I don't find that a hard premise to accept

I don't actually want to be arguing against this study, but without knowing how those two fields are quantified, those numbers are completely meaningless and referring to fuzzy numbers like that is one of the hallmark ways to lie with statistics.

There are also lots of uncontrolled variables, such as the average woman submitting 1.4 reviews, while the average guy submitted only 1.3 reviews. This means the totals would obviously be off, even if everything were symmetric per capita, a fact not mentioned when the numbers are displayed.

Further, it's likely that the discrepancy in the number of reviews per capita submitted is a sign of some underlying sampling bias, which needs to be accounted for before we can really talk about the distribution of feedback.

I think this is a serious issue that needs addressing, but that's exactly why I feel it's important to object to bad math.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#56

Post by cperciva » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:40 PM UTC

melindajb wrote: post #47

cperciva wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point is there enough evidence to convince some people that there IS a problem I'm not disputing the fact that there is a problem. I'm sure there are lots of problems, in fact. What I'm saying is that it's facile to observe that women in tech are more often described as being aggressive and to assume that this is a problem with how people are described; it would be equally consistent with the evidence to conc…

Your logic is inconsistent. This author is applying real data to an assertion. That assertion is backed up not only by my own experiences, but to the dozens if not hundreds or thousands of women sharing this all over social media with something akin to "see, this happens to all of us." The author makes no such blanket statement as you suggest--rather she shows the results of her own study. What's facile is not her co…

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what the author wrote, but it seems clear to me that, having identified a statistical anomaly, she is assuming one explanation -- that there is a problem with the review process -- and ignoring other potential explanations (e.g., a bias in hiring which results in non-aggressive women never being hired and thus never being reviewed).

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#57

Post by ipince » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:42 PM UTC

melindajb wrote: post #33

cperciva wrote: post #20

My immediate thought when I saw this a few days ago was "sampling bias" -- not that the author had a biased sample of professional women, but rather that professional women are a biased sample of women. Given the social environment -- pushing both females and males away from what they might have preferred as a life trajectory -- I think it's very likely that the average professional woman is significantly more aggres…

Your argument is not logical. These were professionals in the same sphere: tech. And one could make the argument that the sample of men was also biased--towards men who liked tech. No one claimed this was an iron clad peer reviewed scientific study--and I'd love to see some done on this in addition to those that already exist. Deborah Tannen is one of the more well known researchers in this area to uncover distinct g…

>> And one could make the argument that the sample of men was also biased--towards men who liked tech.

Sure. I think the implicit assumption is that "men in tech" is a more representative sample of "men" than "women in tech" is for "women".

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#58

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:46 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #49

anigbrowl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As complete populations, girls aren't any smarter than boys on average, but in those programs the girls are always among the top students -- because it's only the most exceptional girls who overcome the social factors which keep most of their peers out of those subjects. Social factors like the assumption that women who consistently outrank their peers are 'significantly more aggressive'? I'm sure you mean well but y…

the total population of women entering such programs is not any smarter on average Sorry, I was unclear. I meant that the total worldwide population of women is no smarter on average than the worldwide population of men. The evidence points to the subset of women who enter CS and engineering being smarter on average than the subset of men who enter CS and engineering. It's equally possible that women of average or me…

The evidence points to the subset of women who enter CS and engineering being smarter on average than the subset of men who enter CS and engineering.

Isn't this rather at odds with your hypothesis that they do well because of being more aggressive? I mean, perhaps that is true but if the data suggests that women entering those programs are in fact smarter why would your hypothesis be any more likely than the existence of bias in HR departments?

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#59

Post by NotAtWork » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:49 PM UTC

melindajb wrote: post #36

chc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be so, but it unfortunately can't be determined from this study.

Let me understand: you think nothing of value can be determined from this study even though my entire newsfeed on facebook is full of my friends in all industries sharing it as exactly in line with their experiences?

Yes.

You have a sampling bias in the types of people you associate. Facebook applies a filter to posts which selects for things that are popular with a wide swath of your friends and which support your political/social views (as guessed by their profiling tools).

That something blows up with your friends on Facebook is usually a better indicator that it's polarizing drivel than that it's a well thought out, impactful study, since that's what the machines (essentially) optimize for.

Re: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews

#60

Post by belorn » Thu, Aug 28, 2014, 11:51 PM UTC

Men and women get different from of criticism. Our current culture is to judge men by what they do, women by their person. This article simply include an other example of a rather well established concept.

It would be kind of fun to see what happen if the reviewer intentionally reversed this and judged women solely from what they accomplish, and men on their personality with a token "The work ultimately went well". The resulting culture shock and mixed signals would be an interesting pattern to observe.

An other kind of interesting test would be a dating site that write the profiles for its clients. If they wrote female profile that only focused on job, earning, and skills, and a male profiles that only describe the person personality and looks, would the clients be happy when they got to read their own profiles?