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Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

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Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#71

Post by PeterisP »

return0 wrote: post #41
lutusp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before No, this is false. All that differed in historical accounts of gender struggles were the methods and the scale, not the goals. Do the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony ring any bells (19th century)? Or Margaret Cavendish from the 17th century? Suggested reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism > M…

I would not consider a few exceptional single individuals (there were others, beyond the recent anglo-saxon part of history) to constitute a "movement". The social equilibrium at the time did not leave a place for gender equality until the 20th century (industrialization/the need for women to work away from home/the washing machine etc). WRT homosexuality - you are confusing cause and effect. The Bible was what broug…

Regardless of how Bible affected homosexuality in Rome and later Europe, it does document that homophobia (i.e., automatic death penalty) existed in semitic cultures ~500 BC.

And we have evidence of exact contrary opinions at the same time on the other side of Mediterranean - so this attitude clearly was not something forced by the objective reality of that time, but simply a cultural/traditional choice.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#72

Post by andreasvc »

smsm42 wrote: post #28
almost wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely shallow criticism of the article. It uses the Myth/Fact device which is quite common in articles, read then as Point/Counterpoint or something if you must. But let's talk about the content, not the style.

Common != right. Spam is common too :) If you write an opinion piece, there's nothing shameful in that, but it's not a fact. Word "fact" used to have meaning...

If you'd take a look you'd find that most any word is used extremely loosely. That's why dictionaries contain vague circumscriptions of words, often listing as many as 20 overlapping and/or separate word senses. Which is not to deny that people operate with the idea that words have a definite, literal meaning (perhaps even neatly delineated with necessary and sufficient conditions), it's just not the reality.

So yes, when a particular use of a word is common, it's very hard to argue it's not right, because there are no facts to point at, only an idea in someone's head (but who's to say who is right?), or some historical data (but languages change, and prima facie that's neither good nor bad).

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#73

Post by andreasvc »

_Dude_ wrote: post #63
Claudus wrote: post #38

I've worked with a lot of programmers. Some of them have character flaws that make them unpleasant to work with. These character flaws do not affect their ability to "get the job done", but I'd rather not work with them and take steps to avoid doing so when possible. From a link in the article: Renowned conductors have asserted that female musicians have "smaller techniques," are more temperamental and are simply uns…

"The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist." The problem is that if you really do proper scientific examination of mental capabilities between genders and races you might not like the results. Results might turn out to be ugly and incompatible with the modern democracy. What will we do then?

Science can tell you the way things are, but not how they should be. There might be biological sex differences related to intellectual capacities, sure. But what we are certain of is that humans in general operate with irrational biases and prejudices, such that even in the absence of such differences, people will be treated unfairly.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#74

Post by glomph »

_Dude_ wrote: post #63
Claudus wrote: post #38

I've worked with a lot of programmers. Some of them have character flaws that make them unpleasant to work with. These character flaws do not affect their ability to "get the job done", but I'd rather not work with them and take steps to avoid doing so when possible. From a link in the article: Renowned conductors have asserted that female musicians have "smaller techniques," are more temperamental and are simply uns…

"The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist." The problem is that if you really do proper scientific examination of mental capabilities between genders and races you might not like the results. Results might turn out to be ugly and incompatible with the modern democracy. What will we do then?

The commitment to equality should not be based on any assumption about 'mental capabilities'. Supposing (against the general scientific consensus) for the sake of argument, that you could show that women had on average less 'mental capabilities' why should that lessen our commitment to fair evaluations in employment or an equal consideration of interests?

We think people should be treated equally not because they are the same, but because they deserve equal consideration. Women are people and they deserve to be treated as such. Frankly the way I see it the cost of dehumanising half the population is far higher than potentially employing people who belong to a group that has on average less 'mental capabilities' than another.

Further unless your study shows that all men have stronger 'mental capabilities' than all women* it still makes sense to evaluate on a case by case bases and not generalisations, even if we only think about hiring the 'best' person for the job. To pass over someone who is talented because they happen to be the same gender as people who had a lower average score in some intelligence test doesn't make sense even thinking only about getting the best person for the job.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#75

Post by andreasvc »

speeder wrote: post #55
nagrom wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before As another poster already commented, and you already acknowledged, the fight for gender equality has been continuing for at least three centuries. It certainly isn't exclusively a 20th century thing. - Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential It's certainly not…

Note to self: don't try to upvote on mobile phone, it might result in me downvoting a awesome post by accident and no way to fix it.

It would help if the upvote button stayed on the left, but with the downvote button moved to the right (after "link").

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#76

Post by andreasvc »

speeder wrote: post #8
speeder wrote: post #5

Gender bias will never cease to exist, and for good reasons, the fight for equality happened many times before in history, and never ended well. Male and female are very dismorphic, we cannot change that easily, male and female have very specialized roles and purposes. Yes, I am happy that people now in general have more equal opportunity than ever, and that we can have awesome workers on some areas from any backgrou…

I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted

Your points suffer from the is-ought problem. Your last sentence about "might makes right" even reveals you are aware of this, without any attempt to address it. This takes away the foundation of your whole post.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#77

Post by andreasvc »

return0 wrote: post #13
crntaylor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe one could do an experiment in online job marketplaces: change the gender of a large number of work providers and observe how payouts change. Do you really think that the problem is that enough studies haven't been done? The linked article mentions a study on the gender pay gap in academia[0], the results section of which includes "After accounting for [ underrepresentation of women at the full Professor level a…

I know there is a gender pay gap. The question is: how do we know it's not justified? Presumably the pay reflects the work done

That's nonsense. The work of a financial executive might be quantified by how much money the company is making, but judging the output of a professor is completely subjective. Sure you can do some bean counting by looking at the number of publications and citations, but 10 years of work condensed in one paper may just be more of a contribution than 10 derivative papers, or not, it's difficult to tell without hindsight, and even then presumably lots of work is under-appreciated.

My conclusion is that we cannot with a straight face claim that we can justify such a pay gap in this case, so whether it is justified is the wrong question.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#78

Post by andreasvc »

return0 wrote: post #49
andreasvc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Male and female are very dismorphic You mean sexually dimorphic. This is actually the subject of significant controversy (esp. with regards to intelligence), so you cannot state this so carelessly. An uncontroversial case of sexual dimorphism is a male spider which is three times smaller than its female counterpart.

It's only controversial with regards to sensitive issues like intelligence. Of course humans are indisputably sexually dimorphic (and culturally polymorphic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

> It's only controversial with regards to sensitive issues like intelligence.

Granted.

> Of course humans are indisputably sexually dimorphic

Only in a trivial/technical sense, i.e., there have to be differences for there to be distinguishable sexes. But for a biologist, humans as a species are not known for and do not stand out for their sexual dimorphism, compared to other species. Which leads me to conjecture that the differences and problems with sexism are more related to the social construct of gender.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#79

Post by wazoox »

And really, in this thread people apparently come with the intention of confirming everything in this article. The sexism proudly displayed by some here is appalling: most shocking is the "sexism is based upon biology" argument, because you know, so were segregation and apartheid.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#80

Post by emgreen »

sprash wrote: post #6

The average man is pumped full of a hormone called testosterone. This leads them to take more risks and have a generally more aggressive way of doing things. This fact has been scientifically proven over and over again. In a fast moving market with high competition you need these qualities hence it is no secret why in average males are more employable in tech than women. This is a healthy market response and has noth…

I think you're right that it's a generally accepted fact that the average man has more testosterone than the average women.

Also I think you're right that it's a generally accepted fact that high levels of testosterone in animals is associated with more risky and aggressive behaviour.

But I'm very sceptical of the way you've linked levels of testosterone in average males to risky and aggressive behaviour, and additionally linked risky and aggressive behaviour to being more employable in tech.

However if you really believe this, I had a look on wikipedia and it links to a paper that says that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to drink five or more alcoholic drinks a day, and to smoke. Also that men with low levels of testosterone are more likely to be obese.

Wikipedia also links to another study that says that mens' levels of testosterone generally lower when they fall in love, and recover about 1-3 years into their relationships.

Maybe you should consider this when you're next hiring, and go for a skinny, smoking, drinking male, who is not in the early stages of a relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#cite_note-pmid1019... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#cite_note-pmid1517...

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