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As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

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Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#321

Post by Emma_Goldman »

jaxtellerSoA wrote: post #310
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Have you ever wondered whether there's other human values - perhaps kinder and more loving values - than venal self-interest and capital accumulation? 2. The word 'choice' is not really apposite here, given that one sex, by the mere lottery of birth, carries the burden of pregnancy (and, culturally - with a similar determinacy - women are expected to rear their children in their early years).

> 2. The word 'choice' is not really apposite here, given that one sex, by the mere lottery of birth, carries the burden of pregnancy Welcome to life, it isn't equal, and never will be. Maybe we should stop trying to make the playing field level and just appreciate and celebrate the differences.

'Welcome to life, it isn't equal, and never will be.'

Right, that is 'life' in the sense that it is, to some partial extent - and I say partial because women regularly successfully reintegrate back into the work force, and many employers don't have your dim view of things - the existing state of things. But humans, if you had not noticed from the ideological and political revolutions of the last three-hundred years, can change and improve society. It is simply factually and politically absurd to say that X is reality at the moment, so X should or must always be reality. You would not say that of the various inequalities - of sex, race and class - of the past, so why say it now?

'Maybe we should stop trying to make the playing field level and just appreciate and celebrate the differences.'

There is nothing intrinsically valuable in 'difference', e.g. a master is different from his slave, but that hardly justifies the difference. So no, I don't think we should bathe in the glory of our inequalities, and chastise people who think we could do better.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#322

Post by onemoresoop »

mindcrime wrote: post #232
Frondo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm coming from the same place, except I don't think it's privilege, I think it's wanting to build a world where anyone can take a year off for anything and not have that held against them if they later want to go work for someone. We're living in an era where, resource-wise, we could be post-scarcity, but politically, it's all locked up in a shitty, shitty system. I want to keep imagining a world in which people are…

Taking a year off probably isn't "being held against you" per-se. But after that year, you're competing against all the people who didn't take a year off. And in many contexts that year of honing skills, staying abreast of industry developments, etc., is valued enough to tip the scales.

I'm surprised nobody thinks that people who come form a leave may be more "thirsty" to catch up with their time off and filled with a good energy. Am I alone to think that? People also reflect a lot while on their leave and may end up knowing what fits them better upon returning to work.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#323

Post by SolaceQuantum »

0x445442 wrote: post #294
KirinDave wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with your skepticism, but it's important not to fall back on the other end : i.e., "I know there's no difference between men and women therefore the policies are wrong !" An awful lot of women have negative things to say about that situation, so maybe I should just quote them? I don't think I am falling back on the "other side" here. I'm pointing out that the effectiveness of these measures seems quite low…

> It's odd to assume that the entire effect is therefore determined uniquely by "women's choice." Is there evidence of that? I don't think anyone is claiming choice is the "entire effect" but I do think there is evidence that choice is the overwhelming effect. Let me ask this, do the women you know complain about an under-representation of women working at Discount Tire or in the field of Underwater Welding? In Ameri…

It wasn’t their choice. Most women wanted to keep their jobs after the war and were refused rehire.[1] I would argue that the history of female employment demographics is highly complex and has a multitude of factors, with each factor constituting of many sub-factors. The study in this thread provides an excellent evidence of one behavior, but the amount of heuristics that feed into this behavior is up for massive debate and question, many of which are politically unattractive on both sides, resulting in dissatisfaction of any academic research into any one influencing factor and also any research into a holistic heuristic evaluation... by focusing on this example, you may be over-simplifying the behavior the study is representing.

[1]http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7027/

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#324

Post by jimbokun »

toxik wrote: post #192
msh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that book, but it's wrong on childcare being less affordable. Atleast in Denmark and Sweden child care is heavily subsidized, to the point of being free for very low income parents (in dk). So there is no way it can make economic sense for mothers not to work. And stay at home moms (for more than 1-2 years) is rare compared to the USA.

You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time? Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of…

"At the end of the day, it's going to be a balancing act of imposing on individual freedom such that individual freedom is at all possible."

That's quite the rhetorical pretzel you are tying yourself into there.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#326

Post by Dylan16807 »

ramblerman wrote: post #150
js8 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, of course, that it makes the difference when you want to change things. But my main question is, why do you want to change things, even in case where everybody is free to choose? I am not really sure I buy into "treating boys and girls the same" either. I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone). It seems to me that schools al…

> I think what's more important is to give them options (perhaps against their will, to get them outside the comfort zone) How do you justify the against their will part with your earlier sentiment that you don't understand why people care if its biology or cultural. If its biological, forcing them outside of their biological comfort zone seems particularly cruel.

> If its biological, forcing them outside of their biological comfort zone seems particularly cruel.

Gender-based biological differences are subtle enough to not really matter in a summer camp scenario.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#327

Post by nothrabannosir »

jimbokun wrote: post #324
toxik wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time? Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of…

"At the end of the day, it's going to be a balancing act of imposing on individual freedom such that individual freedom is at all possible." That's quite the rhetorical pretzel you are tying yourself into there.

The idea of freedoms being mutually exclusive is quite well established. To the point of being trite; imposing on individuals' freedom to reduce other people's freedoms, improves individual freedom. Hence laws against murder, etc.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#328

Post by arandr0x »

PeterisP wrote: post #21

Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences, which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.

You don't need equality of outcomes -- you just need neither group, and in fact, no person (even if they do not fit the group norm) to have objectively bad outcomes. For example, in an hypothetical world where women have a massive preference for raising children, and men have a massive preference for looking at spreadsheets entering boring numbers into them, you would want women to look after children, and men to look after spreadsheets, and neither to be more likely than the other to live in poverty, not have enough to eat, commit suicide, be killed by an intimate partner, or die at 50 of alcohol abuse. (I intentionally chose a variety of gender-linked outcomes in our world -- they're not all cases where women have the bad outcome.)

Yes, in order to not get some people to be massively likelier to live in poverty or suffer from depression than some others, you need to treat people unequally. I don't think that's a bad thing.

If (and I reckon that's a big if) the main reason women are more likely to live in poverty is them making less money than men, and the main reason they make less money is they choose different careers, then it follows that the moral thing to do is to get them to choose masculine careers, by essentially any means possible. I think there's a lot of room for debate at all points of that argument, though. (On the reasons for the inequality -- but also on what the best way to address those reasons is)

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#329

Post by castlecrasher2 »

KirinDave wrote: post #223
classicsnoot wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport…

> If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. It's odd though how so often this "traditional" viewpoint is eager to suggest, "These are the preferences of women and their outcomes," when it's suggested women result in a net disadvantage, but is a crisis when men see these o…

>but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis

I don't know how a PragerU video convinced you that this is considered a crisis outside the right-leaning think tanks but I haven't heard a single soul talk about it outside that sphere. It's easy to prop up what a political opponent labels important as something a lot of people care about but I certainly don't see this issue come up in entertainment or the public sphere at all yet the wage gap shows up everywhere.

Re: As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

#330

Post by coredog64 »

zeroname wrote: post #313
Frondo wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses exist at our leisure -- not the other way around. As we build and refine our society, it's entirely up to us to determine how best we want to put businesses to work, to improve society. Anyone who wants the benefits of owning a business can be subject to those rules. Anyone who doesn't want to play by those rules can go solo or work for someone who does.

> Anyone who wants the benefits of owning a business can be subject to those rules. Oh, those benefits of running a business. You know, like working more hours than everyone else, putting your own money on the line, being the last to get paid. Here's some hard facts: 1. Most businesses are small businesses 2. Most people are employed in small to medium businesses 3. Most businesses fail because they lose money If you…

McDonalds is primarily a franchise operation, with the actual restaurants being owned by what could (if you squint) be considered "small businesses".

The financial resources required to buy and run an McD franchise are pretty hefty, so it's not exactly going to first timers, or people who don't already know how to run a franchise.

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