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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

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it isn't "discriminating based on parental leave". It's "discriminating" based on experience. The reason why someone takes a year (or whatever) off isn't the issue. Does this feel unfair in some sense? Yeah. But would it be less unfair to artificially punish the person who didn't take time off? Questionable...

> Does this feel unfair in some sense? Yeah. But would it be less unfair to artificially punish the person who didn't take time off? Questionable... It's not even about punishment. Calling it discrimination is like saying that hiring based on years of experience discriminates against younger people. It's the wrong point at which to solve the problem. We know that taking a year off impacts employment prospects. If we…

You make very valid points about determining the actual outcome we prefer and channeling solutions to achieve them.

There is some nuance. For example, a $5k tax credit might help me level the playing field today, but that $5k difference still exists for social security calculation.

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

#432

Which is a good thing right? What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result of the domesticated housewife. I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to g…

This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a good thing? I'd say no.

I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the gender gap in tech: universities can just mandate that a certain percentage of women major in computing related fields. Just select 30% of women by lottery and forbid them to choose a major other than computing related ones. Of course, most reasonable people are against such a measure.

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

#433
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there may be some situations where one year of experience more or less makes a big difference, but it doesn't seem like that big a deal? It would be like hiring someone one year younger.

If you're getting X% merit increases every year and miss one, it will look forever as if you're underpaid relative to your peers. So people who take a long parental leave will have a permanent "pay gap" unless either the company pro-actively bumps them up (pay for the absent time as if they were present) or the employee overachieves to catch up (in which case they still have a pay gap relative to their overachieving…

Since I started out working for startups, I guess I'm used to people changing jobs so often that you can't really generalize about salary like that. Like, I can't imagine judging someone by their previous or current salary versus age. (Or even knowing either data point with much precision.)

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop believing feminists when they say they want equality of outcome. They don't - they completely ignore how men die at work at ten times the rate of women, put in more hours, take more competitive roles, and generally tend to make more sacrifices in pursuit of well-paying jobs and careers. Feminists don't want equality of outcome. They want to point at the fact that women make less money as a group than men in orde…

Do you have any evidence of this phenomenon from beginning to end as you describe it? It sounds fascinating.

Not motivated enough to research it right now, but last time I read about this I recall different choices made by men and women account for much of the pay gap, but there is still a residual gap even when you account for men and women performing the same job after everything else is taken into account.

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

#435

Which is a good thing right? What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result of the domesticated housewife. I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to g…

This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a good thing? I'd say no. I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the gender…

I'm all for facetious humor but this is a bad joke for this thread

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

#436

This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked than ever. The book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox submits two pieces of explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a significant duration, but which made the…

If anyone is looking for the book, evidently it is sold out, but you can download the ebook for free from the author:

http://nordicparadox.se/

Download is near the bottom of the page. PDF here: http://nordicparadox.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/The-Nordi...

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

#437
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I upvoted your grand-parent comment but downvoted this. People are trying to have an open discussion here, and I agree that we should keep as open a mind as possible. Part of that precludes the notion of falling back into another ideology, which the parent to this comment is warning about. They are not blaming you of doing it, just warning. There exists many theories as to why this is happening, we should ident…

I'm confused. Can you identify where I didn't do that in the comment that you decided to disagree-by-downvoting? I'm quite tired of being warned of drawing conclusions I did not draw, while taking 10-15 karma point penalties. From my perspective, I'm receiving overwhelming feedback that even questioning these programs at the level of efficacy is unwanted and I should be silenced. I can't really work out how these vot…

At first you asserted: that it's possible that these outcomes could have been a byproduct of a failure to remove barriers to men and women going into workforce's which are majority dominated by their opposite sex.

In fact you asserted that point quite strongly, and the reply was to the effect: "It's possible, but lets not just assume, since many people are already doing that"

At which point you double-down on defending your original position with no data, instead pressuring the commenter to provide you evidence.

You are not being downvoted for having an opinion, you are being downvoted for how you go about having your opinion.

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you totally should be able to take off for a year. The same way you can elect not to go to university. Or look in the laser. You just have to live with the consequences. And in many, many professions, a year or so out of practice means that you are measurably worse. Maybe (but likely) worse than before you left, but almost certainly worse than you could be if you would have used that year to get better at what ev…

In software, a year off might mean you get better. If you have more time to work on your own ideas and explore new paradigms instead of cranking out fizzbuzz all day in between commutes, you can become better.

Totally. Same goes for sabbaticals in science, for example. It really depends on what you are doing in that year though, and how fast your particular field is moving.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a good thing? I'd say no. I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the gender…

I'm all for facetious humor but this is a bad joke for this thread

Perhaps "joke" is the wrong term, it's more of a thought exercise. The point is to illustrate the fact that equal representation at the expense of agency is not a good thing - which absolutely is relevant to the discussions going on in this thread.

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

#440
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first off, i don't actually agree with your implicit assumption that an arbitrary parent is doing some charitable service that i ought to be grateful for. i may benefit marginally from an additional birth by the time I reach old age, but the actual parents seem to benefit more, unless my peers are just bullshitting me about what a rewarding experience it is. if you're in a position where you can afford to shoulder th…

It’s nonsensical and of no benefit to society for the child-free to absolve themselves of any and all stake in how families are supported.

that is a strongly worded, yet totally unsupported claim. is there an argument that goes with it?
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