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How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

psychologytoday.com

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Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#111
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One usual citation is Global Sex Differences in Test Score Variability (DOI: 10.1126/science.1162573). It uses standardized test scores. I quote findings below. Remarks inside parentheses are mine. "The third column in table S1, reports the estimated male/female variance ratios with standard errors in parentheses. In all but five countries (There are 41 countries) we can reject the hypothesis that the variance ratio…

> Another interpretation is that since variability difference is not universal (in 5 countries it is not statistically significant), variability difference is cultural. The later interpretation is argued in PNAS paper cited below. How do they reach this conclusion? 36 for, 5 against at 95% significance level would expected given random variation, no?

A significance level says very little, if anything, about the probability of getting an "insignificant" result given that the null hypothesis is false. That's all about statistical power. It's entirely possible that those "5 against" were just underpowered (sample size too small). Or that the sample sizes were systematically too small, and those 5 just happened to be the ones that failed to reach statistical significance. Or that the study was actually well-powered and the difference really is localized geographically.

Either way, a 95% significance level by itself tells us little about how we should interpret those 5 against.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the problem is the failure to distinguish between the aggregate and the individual. For the sake of argument let's say that the population of individuals who would make good engineers is 60% male and 40% female. From an aggregate level that's a huge difference. Once you gather enough of people that statistical inferences can be made, the difference becomes obvious. In a classroom, for instance. But at…

That really is the crux of the matter. Everyone should be given an equal chance with no prejudice, and then if population differences still emerge, that's OK. Unfortunately there isn't much room for this middle ground. People who want to acknowledge sex difference want to use sex as a filter, e.g. "no women in combat roles." People who want to give everybody a chance also want to even things out, e.g. "Allow women in…

I hesitate to bring up extreme cases, but the relationship between social darwinism and the rise of the nazi party make many people, including myself, very hesitant to speak about differences in sex etc. Not because we deny their existence, but because we've seen how far large groups of uninformed electorate can be persuaded into supporting some scary stuff because of it. It's just a very tricky subject when it comes to the masses.

EDIT: Clarified to social darwinism from darwinism.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#113
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If OP's explanation of this difference is correct then you would expect (at least some) other mental traits to also have a higher variance in men. It wouldn't be just IQ.

20% of Congresspeople and 5% of CEOs are women; to explain that, you would need 3 independent traits (ie, no correlation between traits) with a 40/60 split strongly tied to Congresspeople (ie, everyone who is a Congressperson shares this trait) and 7 for businesspeople. You could go the other way and assume that it is all explained by a single trait -- give Congresspeople an IQ of 150, CEOs 160, and just assume that…

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Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#114
post #92

Scientifically studying sex should be a top priority for our society. In both ends of the spectrum, but particularly in radical feminists, theories are influenced by ideologies and politics, hurting society at large. Recently, a feminist(president of a feminist university group) told me males were incomplete females(XY would be an incomplete version of XX) and, for that reason, they should have their instincts and be…

You know, comments like this would be a lot more credible if they had some sort of evidence to go along with them besides "I had this friend..." or "I got told one time by an x/y/z...".

FWIW, the particular perspective you're quoting is straight out of the SCUM manifesto: http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm

"The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#115

Whomever wants a critical look at this kind of "psychology result", I really recommend checking out Cordelia Fine (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL educated) and "Delusions of Gender". She is a fun listen/read and explains really well the flaws in the science/reporting/interpretation of "gender science", from the statistical to the neurological. http://blip.tv/slowtv/delusions-of-gender-p1-cordelia-fine-4... https://en.wikiped…

I don't see how these links are a relevant counterpoint; they all seem to focus on claims about averages, that the OP deliberately did not talk about.

Her work is critical of various pillars of gender science, and most definitely does not refrain from tackling the "Greater Male Variability" hypothesis that gets so much mileage these days. One such excerpt:

> In a Science study of over 7 million United States schoolchildren, Janet Hyde and her team found that across grade levels and states, boys were modestly more variable than girls. Yet when they looked at the data from Minnesota state assessments of eleventh graders to see how many boys and girls scored above the 95th and 99th percentile (that is, scored better than 95 percent, or 99 percent, of their peers) an interesting pattern emerged. Among white children there were, respectively, about one-and-a-half and two boys for every girl. But among Asian American kids, the pattern was different. At the 95th percentile boys’ advantage was less, and at the 99th percentile there were more girls than boys.[15] Start to look in other countries and you find further evidence that sex differences in variability are, well, variable. Luigi Guiso’s cross-cultural Science study also found that, like the gender gap in mean scores, the ratio of males to females at the high end of performance is something that changes from country to country. While in the majority of the forty countries studied there were indeed more boys than girls at the 95th and 99th percentiles, in “in some countries females are equally or more variable, or are as likely as boys to make it into the 95th percentile.“

> (Penner 2008; Machin & Pekkarinen 2008). These latter authors stress the strong pattern of greater male variability, but the boy/girl ratio (shown in parentheses) at the top 5 percent of maths ability was more-or-less equal in Indonesia (0.91), Thailand (0.92), Iceland (1.04) and the UK (1.08). Penner found greater female variability in the Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania. For useful discussion of these data, see (Hyde & Mertz, 2009)."

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#116
post #103
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An excellent read is Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about The Emerging Science of Sex Differences. http://amzn.to/1NKVQ6d

Another great read is Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-D...

See this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845263 for a criticism of Fine and "Delusions of Gender."

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even if we took the argument as fact, it doesn't mean that we have to accept every naive consequence. We don't need to say "Of course the vast majority of CEOs, world leaders, and very wealthy people are male, because the most intelligent people are almost all male". We can choose to have a better society than that. I don't think that intelligence is the most important factor for those positions, so let's talk…

Well, there is a reason why I chose those examples. I'm not arguing for diversity at all costs, which seems like what you're arguing against. I'd say in general having researchers and university teachers that are intelligent is good. Diversity is also good. There should be a balance - I think that diverse researchers and teachers can solve problems that a homogenous group of researchers would never solve. For example…

> For example, a lot of computer graphics algorithms like face recognition don't work well for black faces.

There's probably less contrast to be used in edge detection.

> Even more troublesome, many cameras (both digital and film) have a dynamic range that works well for white faces, but poorly for black faces.

The dynamic range is limited by objective factors and the automated exposure setting takes into consideration what gets more pixels in the frame - usually not a human face.

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#118
post #82

I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has…

> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.

> TERFs

Despite knowing a couple trans people, I'd never seen this term that I recall. Some very interesting reading out there; hard to wrap one's mind around... but worth the effort.

I also got to read about intersectionality for the first time. There are aspects of this I've acknowledged for a long time, just didn't know a word existed for it.

SJWs in general are getting a bad rap from many corners now, and I think some of that is what I'd call a 'natural correction'. When a critical mass of people gets involved with anything, a few inevitably fail to understand alternate perspectives enough to consider how those views might harmonize with their own (due to rabbit holes of dogmatism, subconscious bias, inexperience, stubbornness or whatever else).

To me, it so very often seems to come back to one simple thing-- have you tried putting yourself in your neighbor's shoes lately?

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#119
post #108

Whomever wants a critical look at this kind of "psychology result", I really recommend checking out Cordelia Fine (Oxford, Cambridge, UCL educated) and "Delusions of Gender". She is a fun listen/read and explains really well the flaws in the science/reporting/interpretation of "gender science", from the statistical to the neurological. http://blip.tv/slowtv/delusions-of-gender-p1-cordelia-fine-4... https://en.wikiped…

Cordelia Fine is known for ignoring all finding that contradict her worldview. You make it sound like her position represents the consensus... it does not. http://www.uvm.edu/~tribeta/Articles/Sex%20stereotypes%20Hal... "Cleverly written with engaging prose, Delusions of Gender and Brain Storm contain enough citations and end notes to signal that they are also serious academic books. Fine and Jordan-Young ferret out…

I'm not sure if you read the review you're linking but it's not a "bad review". It points out, as you quoted, where the books are "strongest" and "weakest", and is generally complimentary to the works reviewed. And as the author of the review points out to explain Fine's omissions:

"…whereas sex differences are reliably found in several areas of research, none of the differences support essentialist claims that girls and boys need separate educations based on their brain types, that one sex is better suited to become engineers, or that one sex is inherently more intelligent—to name just a few of the ideas being promoted under the guise of 'science'."

Re: How Can There Still Be a Sex Difference, Even When There Is No Sex Difference?

#120
post #104
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gender disparities across different occupations. I guess it would depend on the occupation. For example, I don't see much difference between nurses and doctors in terms of something that could be quantified as a gender-specific preference. It seems to me that the idea of "nurses are women, doctors are men" came about more from the idea that women were "too stupid" to be doctors and that it was a "man's job." Even t…

It has more to do with the pay disparity between nurses and doctors, rather than gender, these days. While only 30% of active physicians in the US are female, the gender split among residents (entering the profession) is close to 50%/50%.

Well, it's not just doctors/nurses. You also have dentists/dental assistants, which in my anecdotal experience is pretty heavily a male/female divide.

I will comment, that it seems easier for women to move "up" than for men to move "down." It seems like there is more friction against male nurses/dental assistants than there is against women doctors/dentists.

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