is it so hard to believe that women don't enjoy stem fields as much as men?
that men and women are actually different and that it implies different behaviour?
that actually you know what... the more freedom women get the /less likely/ they are to work in a stem field?
maybe we should pay them more in our naive quest to make the unequal equal - because it is 'politcally correct' - which ever kind of correct that is because it certainly isn't 'true'
As a female developer, yes, those things are hard to believe.
This is a great example of why I was hesitant of entering the field. You feel totally comfortable saying this when your profile links to your blog with your real name and place of employment. If you're that comfortable in this belief you can't expect me to believe that you don't treat women in your work place differently and with less respect.
i'm not ashamed to speak my opinion, nor associate it with my name. i don't think i'm making especially ridiculous or unbackable claims...
it shouldn't be offensive to women imo. i am not offended by the many opportunities that women have and i don't - that they are /generally/ more socially adept, need to make significantly less investment to find a mate /in general/, and are constantly treated with special care an attention in particular areas (e.g. violence against women is constantly considered especially distasteful even though 90%+ of violent crimes are between men exclusively, there are more illnesses and disabilities specific to men - but most research focuses on those specific to women etc...)
i don't think my opinion that women and men are measurably different should imply that i will treat women with less respect... why should it? i'm not saying women are somehow distatsteful or undesirable in some moral or value sense - just that they are different, measurably so and that claiming we are all equal in the sense of political correctness, and shoehorning every possible behaviour into that ideal is ignorant - it does disservice to humanity - not just men or women as a sex.
i've had a look at that article, but it is authored with a tremendous bias imo... the fact that its hosted on an openly feminist website does of course skew me but the wording itself is highly presumptuous (perhaps iam too?). i will not deny that their data does show a large variation... but i will gladly deny your conclusion because reorganising that graph shows a reasonable correlation between those countries we consider 'most free' and those we do not... with outliers and natural variation as you would expect.
I can believe that there are biological differences that make women, on average, less likely to enter STEM fields, and also treat those that do enter as equals.
A question is where these differences come from. One explanation is that the gender differences occur due to different upbringing as a child. Under this hypothesis, by the time they enter the workforce, men and women are significantly different. A different explanation is that entering the workforce, men and women are the same, but then they are treated differently within the workforce. Under this hypothesis, I would expect free market economics to have already resolved issues such as the wage gap.
On a different note, given the large population, it is likely that there is a non-zero, biologically driven, difference that is statistically significant, even if it is of such a small magnitude as to be irrelevent. In this case, any such difference is being overshadows by the non-negligible cultural influence, but it is always worth keeping in mind what statistics actually say.
> Same with Female HR workers. Women make up a massive percentage of HR departments from 72% to 90% and have an interesting habit of discriminating against "unattractive men" and "attractive women" in their hiring practices.(I'm not saying men are perfect just showing that everyone's human)
I think people tend to overrate how much influence HR departments have in the hiring process, at least for tech jobs.
After the screening process, where "attractiveness" does not really come into play, technical interviewers usually have much more weight in the final decision (in my limited experience, at least).
ok. so get ready to hate me but i think that none of these things are real 'problems' and that there are reasons:
> African Americans are 12% of the population but today make up over 65% of the NFL.
During slavery African Amercians were bred to be better stronger slaves. Before that the African environment of their ancestors better favoured physical strength - it is no coincidence imo that the best long distance runners are from Africa and the best sprinters are African Americans. In general black people dominate physical sports - track, field, team sports.
In short what keeps caucasians out is that they aren't as good at sports on average - they just aren't as strong or physically fit.
> Same with Female HR workers. Women make up a massive percentage of HR departments from 72% to 90% and have an interesting habit of discriminating against "unattractive men" and "attractive women" in their hiring practices.(I'm not saying men are perfect just showing that everyone's human)
I'm not sure if this such a strong trend. I can believe it though... women in general do seem to discriminate against unattractive men and attractive women - at least in my experience. A rationale here is obvious - they want to out compete the women and they do not desire unattractive men.
In their defense men do the same in reverse... esp treating attractive women with disproportionate respect and care to the point where with men and women in the same role - the more attractive women may end up doing significantly less work for the same pay, if they are doing anything truly productive - much to the annoyance of others. Its not their fault... I've seen this in every factory and warehouse type environment i've worked in. Nobody gets more annoyed about it than the 'average' looking girls who already work there and actually carry their weight and have to watch that guy they fancy covering for some dumb and unappreciative pretty girl with his efforts to sleep with her.
> Lastly, every major Hollywood studio was founded by Jewish people. Jews are massively over represented in films as directors, producers, writers, and actors.
Yes Jews are disproportionately successful, not just in Hollywood, and I believe their history has much to do with it as a much persecuted people and the long connection with banking as a religious loophole until relatively recently. IIRC Jews of european descent average higher IQ scores than any other ethnic group. Jews are smart.
I am an arab... so... eep! I shouldn't really say anything nice about Jews (j/k - i hope) :P
> The one thing that I dislike is when we use blame as a motivator to increase a gender's presence in an industry.
Thank you. :)
> A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes
As an aside I somehow imagine the number of men thinking 'pfft women would screw that up' is massively outweighed by the number of women thinking 'pfft men would screw that up'. for women to have a stab at men in a sexist way is just the norm manflu! men are pigs! men are stupid! - and its part of the male ethos to take it and not complain. The other way round is considered a social faux pas...
During slavery African Amercians were bred to be better stronger slaves.
Do you have a citation for this? I've been on the internet for 20 years and this is the first time I've seen anyone claim that slaves in the US were bred for characteristics like work dogs.
actually my source is very flimsy - its a chris rock sketch i saw a few years ago.
this is perfectly believable though considering the often inhuman treatment of slaves.
googling this matter reveals that its popular enough to appear in the auto complete, gets mention on the wiki page about african american slavery and even some counter arguments:
so its not clear cut i guess... although its interesting that there is a furore or knee jerk reaction against things like this. i don't really get it...
i especially enjoyed this bit from his article though: And while some slave masters did engage in eugenics their efforts were ineffectively crude, being incredibly limited in scale and inexactly uncontrolled. Further, even with a more controlled and widespread eugenics program, 250 years would not have been enough time for major genetic differences to emerge.
he seems to have some basis for this assertion so it is probably fiction - but its judging from the internet presence its a relatively common myth.
Women as a whole aren't born being more inclined to go into non-CS fields. This preference is acquired at some point in childhood. I am comfortable making this claim because we know that in the mid 80s 37% of CS graduates were women vs. 12% today. Something happened in the meantime.
I don't think it is a result of supposed wage gaps (which supposedly exist in all fields) or supposed widespread sexism (as if other fields are any better). But I do think it is a problem. We have a shortage of good developers in this country and not being able to draw talent very well from roughly half the population is not helping.
> Women as a whole aren't born being more inclined to go into non-CS fields. This preference is acquired at some point in childhood. I am comfortable making this claim because we know that in the mid 80s 37% of CS graduates were women vs. 12% today. Something happened in the meantime.
The impressive and oft-reported increase of female representation in the biological sciences, to the point where they've reached a majority at all levels, degree programs happened in the meantime.
see the stuff i linked and research the subject. there is plenty of research showing that tech/social biases are measurable from the earliest possible ages.
there are certainly lots of opinions that this is not true from sociologists and other 'almost doctor' types. and treating this matter seriously will make you unpopular with women and men alike...
i won't deny wage gaps or sexism. i just think its sexist in a sort of nasty and ignorant way, to try and incentive women to do things they may not want...
Yes, what happened was that people are now more free to choose their occupation, which is shown to increase the stereotypical occupation choices of both men and women in practically every country in the world:
Unless you can identify the biological mechanism that supposedly makes women less likely to work in STEM fields (nevermind that in some countries and fields this doesn't hold), yes, it is hard to believe.
i don't really care to speculate on the cause - that can be debated. there are plenty of differences in brain physiology and development between sexes though. its a much weaker hypothesis to assume that there is no difference imo. we have every reason (including the objective data) to believe that there should be a difference - even if small.
The way science works is that you start with a hypothesis of how the world works, based on cause and effect, then you test that hypothesis. Data by itself can have any number of explanations. In particular, you cannot construct a hypothesis from statistical data and expect that to hold water.
its a much weaker hypothesis to assume that there is no difference imo.
Nobody says that there isn't any difference. But you have to exclude the possibility that the difference is caused (primarily) by cultural factors. You also offer no explanation why, if there is a biological difference, it does not favor women instead; if the entire basis of your hypothesis is that men and women are different in some way (which is as of yet unknown), then any difference can go either way.
> But you have to exclude the possibility that the difference is caused (primarily) by cultural factors.
fine, if we are going to have a very serious discussion on this... (i'm always mildly flabbergasted this isn't common sense --- we have all met men and women right?)
this has been very well covered over the last half a century or so. we have the many 'sex reassignment' disasters on hermaphrodite babies showing us that women and men are intrinsically so - we can also point at the related psychological issues of transgender people... ( i don't want a negative connotation - but if you are confused about your sex - that is an issue for you i would assume )
sure this might not apply to precisely this, but afaik medical professionals believe that there are gender differences beyond naive physiology and treat their patients accordingly - when they assumed the differences were merely cultural they caused well documented suffering.
looking around the area the nurture/culture side of the debate is very weak imo. but there are certainly ample studies and papers on both sides of the debate...
i'm always mildly flabbergasted this isn't common sense --- we have all met men and women right?
If science were just "common sense", we'd still believe in the impetus theory [1]. Plus, personal experience tends to suffer from all kinds of confirmation bias.
we can also point at the related psychological issues of transgender people...
Looking at transgender people is indeed interesting, if not the way you think it is. In particular, how the same person gets treated completely differently based on which gender he or she is perceived as [2]. E.g.:
"After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, 'Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's.'" (Ben and his "sister" are one and the same person, of course.)
sure this might not apply to precisely this, but afaik medical professionals believe that there are gender differences beyond naive physiology and treat their patients accordingly - when they assumed the differences were merely cultural they caused well documented suffering.
And how do you conclude that any such difference reflects a higher aptitude of men for STEM subjects instead of a higher aptitude of women for STEM subjects?
i'm not talking about aptitude and i hope i didn't give this impression. desire to do something does not make you inherently better at it...
maybe i miss your point, but 'impetus' as classically defined is nearly equivalent to the newtonian concept of momentum and yes - the common sense there does make sense. the usual real problem here is that vaccuum is not something we experience - so the idea that the natural state is to be 'at rest' is common sense but misleading - one can of course argue that the presense of air and the resistance it gives is also common sense. its a wooly term.
when i use it here what i mean to say is that imo its blatantly obvious.
There is plenty of research showing women and men do actually behave differently on average. One of the more interesting is when it comes to there jobs women are more rational as in they chose jobs that better fit their goals. Another is you find more men at the extremes both high and low height, weight, IQ etc. As in there standard deviation is generally higher which is just as often a good thing as a bad thing.
Note: Averages and standard deviations say nothing about individuals but they do explain trends.
This is true, but why do these differences change so dramatically when you cross national borders? Specifically, Men have a higher variability in IQ in countries that have higher gender inequality. To me this seems to indicate that it's an issue of culture and the way men and women are socialized, not something biologically inherent to each sex.
I don't think that the way you're phrasing this is as tactful as it could be, given that it's going to be a really divisive thing to say no matter the efficacy, but I don't necessarily think you're trying to be an ass.
I think it's better to assume that two groups of people are less different than one would initially think, because of the natural tendency to create in and out groups. When there has been a history of systemic oppression between those groups, I'd lean toward requiring more rigorous proof of the differences before accepting it, and I'd be very careful as to what I accepted as rigorous proof.
This is my quick thought on the subject. Please don't consider it my philosophical magnum opus on discrimination.
it may be surprising but the lack of tact is intentional (and more muted than i feel i should feel free to use without lashback).
> I think it's better to assume that two groups of people are less different than one would initially think, because of the natural tendency to create in and out groups.
this is a very valid point and one i've never really considered before. i've never really fallen into that kind of behaviour but have observed it plenty (with some mystification tbh). thanks. you are probably right that the problems caused by discrimination against women in e.g. strongly patriarchal society in recent times (Saudi Arabia or something) massively outweighs the trouble caused by the reverse situation - botched gender reassignments and dubious equality policies, but nothing on a large scale directed against the whole of a portion of society. :)
I'm ambivalent about having to consider blowback from conversations like this. For me it's less about the content or the topic, though and more about the emotional content. I don't think you should get flayed for expressing an unpopular viewpoint, but I don't want someone's emotional content, or outrage. I want information, conversation, and counterpoints. I don't think being purposefully evocative leads towards changing minds. I think it tends toward polarization. I'm in it to figure things out and learn, if I can, and to help other people figure things out, if I can do that. Mostly I just want productive dialogue where I get to pat myself on the back for trying to be a better person ;).
And yeah, I definitely think it would be disingenuous for someone to say or imply that we haven't made a lot of progress in the last hundred years.
That being said, I'm on the side of the gender and ethnic fence that has largely benefited from discrimination in the past, so I try to be relatively sensitive to it, especially since it can be so subtle and hard to spot.
that men and women are actually different and that it implies different behaviour?
Individual variation within gender is almost always far, far greater than demographic variation between genders.
Here's an easy example: most men are not in STEM and aren't all that interested in STEM. In these debates people throw around 'man' as a term, assuming the archetype of the engineer, when actually the 'average' man (if there is such a thing) is not particularly interested in STEM. So painting STEM as 'what men do' is inaccurate, because most men do not do it.
i think of the construction, driving/motor and manufacturing industries as being part of STEM and that covers a significant portion of men - several of the most common modes of employment for men if not all of them.
i could be wrong, but i am skeptcial - is this not a common interpretation?
oh sure - in desperation people will take the jobs they can get, but what it does is wash out the natural tendency for men to prefer stem - which is very clear if you look at western nations and those considered to have good sex equality in general (Scandanavia, western europe)
its a shame i cant find any of the studies on this to link. they are buried beneath rubbish populist/magazine articles on google...
i am ashamed to belong to a society that necessitates such an article saying in its opening paragraph 'Leaving aside politcal correctness, there is compelling evidence...'
that men and women are actually different and that it implies different behaviour?
that actually you know what... the more freedom women get the /less likely/ they are to work in a stem field?
maybe we should pay them more in our naive quest to make the unequal equal - because it is 'politcally correct' - which ever kind of correct that is because it certainly isn't 'true'