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Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a wasteful luxury that only countries with abundant resources can afford. Is there an important sense in which Sweden has more abundant resources than, say, the US? The US outranks Sweden in both of these tables: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

"Free" education comes to mind, along with greater wealth distribution generally. Averages don't say much.

US handily outranks Sweden on median wage as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when that hypermasculine Russian military recruiting commercial went viral? They only give Russia 36 on the masculinity index. (US gets 62) Here's the construct description: >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference…

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

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Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free" education comes to mind, along with greater wealth distribution generally. Averages don't say much.

US handily outranks Sweden on median wage as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

These are not apples to apples comparisons though, for the very reasons mentioned upthread.

A median wage of $32K in Sweden might come with near zero expenses for health, education, additional security, daily transport, etc.

A median US wage of $47K might incure additional expenses for health, education, etc.

These are post tax "median disposable income per person" figures - and other countries get a great deal more direct benefit per citizen post tax than the US provides.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#174
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wanted evidence, not anecdotes. But if you want anecdotes then yes, I've even worked with a bunch of women in tech. You can't make generalizations based off your own experiences though, obviously I'll bump into women in tech while working in tech. But similarly, if the people you bump into aren't already in tech, then it shouldn't be too surprising that they're not as excited as you are about it. You believe they…

> You can be right that it's common to see and still wrong that it's an innate part of being a woman. It's not "an innate part of being a woman". It's an innate part of being human . Last I checked, around 2% of people go into tech. That means that 98% of all people prefer something else. Is there something wrong with them that needs explaining? Don't think so. Is there something wrong with society because these 98%…

> It's an innate part of being human.

That's the point I am making. My point is not that everyone should be in tech, my point is that there is a disparity and if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be.

> Now the genders skew slightly differently, for men it's more like 97% prefer to do something else, and with women it's 99% who prefer to do something else. So what? Let people do what they want to do.

That is exactly what I want, for people do to what they want, but one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to. I am frankly disappointed that this has to be spelled out, that is surprising for this forum.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free" education comes to mind, along with greater wealth distribution generally. Averages don't say much.

US handily outranks Sweden on median wage as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

I'm not sure it's related to your question of "Is there an important sense in which Sweden has more abundant resources than, say, the US?".

The answer is yes, in some cases. Because wealth is distributed so that everyone can afford things like education, healthcare, daycare. If 1 out of a 100 has a superyacht and 99 live on foodstamps that's different in an important sense from if 0 people have a superyacht and everyone gets access to education and food.

You asked for an example about, I handed you one, it seems like you accidentally missed the example in a pursuit to prove the American superiority.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting part here is that there are plenty of exceptions - and those exceptions tend be clustered in different societies and cultures. I'm not advocating you change wherever you're at, I'm just delighted that where I am women drive road trains & haul paks, design ships, wire buildings, advance astrophyysics, etc (and, for that matter, so do the men). It certainly makes your bemoaning "have you tried talking t…

This is just more egalitarian cope. Of course there are local differences which is why these need to be normalized with a population-wide sample. In that case, sex differences present themselves clearly. As the article states, surprise surprise, on average compared to men, women are more interested in people than things.

> Of course there are local differences

Differences by country and culture - the reason why are the interesting questions.

> these need to be normalized with a population-wide sample.

Need to be?

The US (for example) has a large population ( ~360 mill ) with a poor system of government and an excess of hold over odd little religious groups (and home grown product like Mormons, etc).

Other countries have smaller populations (eg 25 million here), better more responsive system of government with better oversight, better education, better health, etc.

I see no benefit in being blended in with a bloated mass of objectively worse and dragged down to US levels.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when that hypermasculine Russian military recruiting commercial went viral? They only give Russia 36 on the masculinity index. (US gets 62) Here's the construct description: >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, Femininity, stands for a preference…

Austria ranks 79 on masculinity. Japan ranks 95, probably one of the highest. >The Masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. This definitely does not sound like the Japan I live in, almost the opposite in fact. Japanese people are absolutely not known for assertiveness in particular; it's very much the opposite, the…

I'm starting to wonder if this is just a frontend issue... Maybe this UI is serving us the inverse numbers.

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#178
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can be right that it's common to see and still wrong that it's an innate part of being a woman. It's not "an innate part of being a woman". It's an innate part of being human . Last I checked, around 2% of people go into tech. That means that 98% of all people prefer something else. Is there something wrong with them that needs explaining? Don't think so. Is there something wrong with society because these 98%…

> It's an innate part of being human. That's the point I am making. My point is not that everyone should be in tech, my point is that there is a disparity and if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be. > Now the genders skew slightly differently, for men it's more like 97% prefer to do something else, and with women it's 99% who prefer to do something else. So what? Let people do what they want to do. Th…

> if we assume everyone is equal then there shouldn't be

Incorrect assumption. Everyone is obviously not equal.

For example: 2% of people like tech enough to work there, 98% do not. These two groups are obviously not equal.

> but one group is systemically discouraged from taking on tech even if they want to

What evidence do you have for this "systematic discouragement"? Of the 98% of people who do not go into tech? How so?

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had never been made to feel like a freak for being a programmer until I moved to Sweden. Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society? Do you mind me asking where have you been before?

> Are you saying that Sweden is a sexist society? Sweden is such an interesting paradox: womens’ rights to work in different fields and (mostly) on an equal footing are protected in law, and (in my experience) in practice. And yet in many ways I find it generally the most gender-divided country I’ve experienced, and I’ve even lived in countries that most people would consider very sexist, like the UK and Spain. There…

> it always gladdens my heart to see a female roadworker

Sure, but a female coalminer?

Re: Women like working with people, men like working with things, all over the world

#180

Please keep in mind that if really true, it is not a binary thing. It’s a distribution. There are going to be plenty of women who are more interested in things than the median man, and there are plenty of men who are more interested in people than the median woman.

Yes, yes, standard "not all".

However I think the last sentence isn't as true as you make it out to be. I remember seeing statistic couple years back about this very subject and in that data woman had to be in the top 10% of "women who prefer working with things to people" to be as likely to work with things than "men who prefer to work with things to people" and it was pretty much same vice-versa.

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