Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 600 posts

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#91

Post by renewiltord »

aklemm wrote: post #48
spaniard89277 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having Babies. Really, being a mother is what skews most stats about women on money issues. There has been policymaking about this in a bunch of european countries, and if they are released from financial constrains (handouts, public housing, whatever) they seem to double down on it. Let's face it, working, for most people, is something you do out of necessity. Why do we really expect women to have a similar behaviou…

Having babies and raising them fully--especially doing it well--is not avoiding work.

Having babies and raising them partly isn't avoiding work either. Babies get partly raised for all sorts of reasons.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#92

Post by endisneigh »

noir_lord wrote: post #8
endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

It's also possible that the distribution is different. i.e there are more men who are total geniuses at one end and total dumbasses at the other but the average would be the same. https://qz.com/441905/men-are-both-dumber-and-smarter-than-w... No idea if it's true though - not my field and not an expert.

Even if this were true it still wouldn't explain the difference. This could only be the explanation of two conditions are met:

1. Your cited article is correct.

2. The jobs that are "top tier" indeed require this "top tier" level intelligence. This second point would require some pretty extraordinary evidence to prove. Women have representation (only filtering among women under 40) in jobs that require "high intelligence" yet the discrepancy persists.

doctors: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-big-number-women-n....

lawyers: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/05/women-lawyers...

(just to use two popular examples. if you extend this out to a lot more professions the pattern persists)

You could be right, but I personally doubt it.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#93

Post by ImprovedSilence »

kache_ wrote: post #30
endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

Most of my money is attributable to my negotiation skills and assertiveness, rather than my programming skill that I bent over backwards to develop.

I would agree with this. However Ive seen very assertive women take advantage of that as much as men or even more, and where I work its probably <10% of my co workers of either sex take active roles in “managing” their career as opposed to just showing up and hoping their work gets noticed, or just coasting and enjoying the paycheck they have (while still grumbling about fading benefits, of course)

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#94

Post by micdr0p »

LeegleechN wrote: post #10
endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

Girls get higher grades (perhaps due to higher conscientiousness), but do not do better in standardized tests.

That's interesting. Got a source?

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#95

Post by f430 »

tester756 wrote: post #73
f430 wrote: post #20

lower testosterone is beneficial - less sexual ruminations - emotional intelligence and organization - cooperation over leadership - retains better short and long term memories - female adult role model is more likely to be available and present Unfortunately HN is dominated by testosterone driven gender so its impossible to have any sort of civilized discussions about this.

>- cooperation over leadership In full women environments too? I always felt or heard that e.g team made fully/majority of women tends to be anything but cooperative. I felt like a lot of dishonesty was in those teams

nash equilibrium

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#96

Post by esja »

MattGaiser wrote: post #55
dekhn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many subfields of biology, women have achieved numerical parity at all levels (IE, there are roughly 50% women in entry and leadership positions). It seems like some highly quantitative fields which have traditionally been male-dominated (CS, physics) may very well be practicing some sort of entry discrimination. It's unclear what the full set of contributing factors are.

You also can’t have mathematical equality with some fields dominated by women, like nursing. If every field is 50% or better in women, you need a heck of a lot more women.

This is often forgotten. In aggregate, for every woman persuaded to become a bricklayer instead of a kindergarten teacher, a man must be persuaded to do the reverse. This is just never going to happen across all industries.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#97

Post by throwaway894345 »

krisdol wrote: post #12
0xy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because women naturally list towards jobs that pay less, and under conditions that pay less (part time, contract work, etc). How many deep sea welders are women? Less than 0.1%. How many oil rig workers are women? Less than 1%. Good deep sea welders earn over $300k.

Hard to live up to the expectation of being a good mother and spending months on an oil rig at the same time.

I doubt it's "expectations of being a good mother". Countries with the most liberal attitudes toward gender have some of the most extreme occupational gender disparities and vice versa.

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#98

Post by cullinap »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

I don't if we can conclude that top academic performance directly results in high performers in top tier jobs

Re: Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

#99

Post by tomjen3 »

endisneigh wrote: post #2

How is it possible that girls perform better academically (in 2015) yet are under represented in the top tier of jobs? Either women have no interest in money, academic skills have no bearing in getting high paying jobs, or discrimination is more prevalent then you’d think. I suppose all three could be true.

I think Jordan Peterson is correct on that one: the real question isn't why women don't go after those kinds of jobs, but why anybody is willing to work so hard and to give up so much for incomes that allow a marginally better life (e.g going from 40k a year to 100k a year is a huge improvement, going from 200k to 300k?).

Also, for women anyway, the kind of work it takes to get to the top effectively means they aren't going to be having babies. A man aged 45 can marry a women aged 30 and become a dad - women who marry younger men aren't more likely to have kids because of it and at 45 it is unlikely for a woman to have kids at all.

Post reply on HN