38 ms·

Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf]

153 points by snake117 11y ago

t2015_08_25 11y ago
Fascinating results, I would only caution people before taking this article's results to apply to "all" women. IME, approximately 10% of women desire employment success way more than the others.
- justaman 11y ago
  Women can be opinionated, especially feminists. I'm going to avoid ever bringing this up with one.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    How rational of you. After all, nothing is more unpleasant than a woman rejecting one's opinion.
    - hoopd 11y ago
      Oh is that what happened to Tim Hunt?
      - civilian 11y ago
        And here's a reference for hoopd's comment: https://reason.com/archives/2015/07/23/sexist-scientist-tim-hunt-the-real-story https://reason.com/archives/2015/07/23/sexist-scientist-tim-... edit// okay, here's another article that dives into the nuance and doesn't just try to plaster Tim Hunt. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt-witch-hunt/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt...
        danharaj 11y ago
        reason.com follows the same naming convention as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Attacking the source rather than the content is usually the mark of a poor debating position. If the content is good, the source doesn't matter. If the content is bad, the source's badness will be self-evident.
        danharaj 11y ago
        A debate is a formal event with rules. These are Internet comments. I'm not debating a position. I'm expressing myself. If you think my observation is nonconstructive, that's fine, but it's not because if I were debating I would have made a blunder, it's because we have different expectations and desires in this conversation.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        That's fine, I'm just pointing out that your expression is incompatible with basic logic. Saying "this source sucks because x" does not address in any way what they actually said.
        aidenn0 11y ago
        It's actually completely compatible with logic: Source X claims Y. I know very little about Y. I know a fair amount about X, and what I know indicates that X is an unreliable source. Therefore, I will not significantly alter my beliefs about Y until a more reliable source than X comes around.
        pkinsky 11y ago
        Fortunately in this year 2015 we have a thing called hyperlinks via which evidence for assertions can be easily provided. If you treat op-eds from 'unreliable' sources as unreliable, fine. If you refuse to even check well-cited articles from 'unreliable' sources, you're probably more interested in ideological correctness than truth.
- t2015_08_25 11y ago
  So what on Earth is objectionable in my comment? I speak from a moderate viewpoint, to take the study seriously, but not apply it blindly, apply my own small amount of experience, and get downvoted to -4? Did this offend anyone? Please explain how. Otherwise I would perceive the downvotes to be the work of trolls.
  - buckbova 11y ago
    Might be this: > IME, approximately 10% . . . How is this substantive?
    - t2015_08_25 11y ago
      Ah you're right. Thanks. That was driving me crazy. I should have learned by reading substantive comments found elsewhere. This one below, for example, struck me as exceptionally substantive and now I can see why it hasn't been voted below zero: "I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless."
      - buckbova 11y ago
        I didn't downvote you. You asked. Don't be so worried about internet points. BTW, that comment netted several magical internet points for whatever reason.
danso 11y ago
So can this be used as an argument against the idea that women hold fewer positions of power (and in context of HN, fewer tech positions) not because of institutional/societal sexism, but because they just don't desire them? I don't think many of the there-needs-to-be-more-diversity crowd disagree with that. Their position is more nuanced than that, and of course, to be fair, the we-can't-make-things-have-diversity crowd is unfairly pigeonholed as being shut-up-women. But in my reading of the paper's conclusion, women have less desire for promotions and power, but it's because they see those things as causing them strife. The we-need-more-diversity crowd believes that having more women in power is one way of alleviating a positive feedback loop. To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable. edit: corrected mistake of "negative feedback loop" to "positive" via lexcorvus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694
- jameshart 11y ago
  Yes, it depends if you view the difference in attitudes between sexes as an inevitable, biological distinction, or the product of a society which shapes their expectations and attitudes differently. There's certainly no 'get out of jail free' card for biological determinist sexism here.
  - facepalm 11y ago
    It's not a biological determination (as in biological determined desire), it is a biologically determined wider range of options. Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships. An option men don't usually have. Since women have more options, they can also consider more possible ways of life. That's just my take, though - but it's only a matter of time until some unbiased gender researcher (who is not predetermined to prove suppression of women) will set out to confirm it. Edit: honestly, downvotes of this comment make me laugh. Do you feel so threatened by an opinion that does not require suppression of women to explain our modern reality?
    - 11y ago
plg 11y ago
Bigger, better, faster, more! Some men also are not so motivated by this either. I suppose it's slightly interesting that slightly more women than men say this. Maybe not though.
- cwbrandsma 11y ago
  All of these come down to 200M anecdotes really, partially because we are talking about preferences and comfort levels. In talking with the women around me, most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women. I have male friends that are nurses, they miss working with other men, and kind of avoid working with women. In talk with my wife and her married friends, most of the wives would prefer their husbands not work with other women (and these women trust their husbands). Now throw in the rest of the work and society. I just got done with sexual harassment training. To be fair, most of the stuff is pretty obvious and straight forward. But the undertone is "everything will be used against you when dealing with the opposite sex"; best bet is to avoid them as best you can, don't speak, don't look them in the eye, and no matter what, don't be alone with them. TL:DR: In western society, I just don't think we are comfortable with the sexes working together, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm hoping I'm wrong on this.
  - Thriptic 11y ago
    I work in a lab which has approximately a 50/50 gender split. I personally have never felt uncomfortable with or been confused about working with people of the opposite sex, and I haven't heard any negative stories regarding inter-sex conflict or awkwardness from colleagues. As long as everyone acts like a professional, which isn't really that difficult, then I don't foresee many problems arising in a mixed gender workplace.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    >most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women Something is awfully wrong with these women, if they like/don't like working with someone solely because of their gender. I can understand you may not like working with someone, because he is a jerk/she is a bitch, I judge people based on whether they are good/bad people, not their gender.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
swagswag 11y ago
Evaluate the veracity: Poor people view professional advancement as unequally attainable, but more desirable.
ajmurmann 11y ago
This might be a chicken/egg problem, where society doesn't expect women to gain high professional positions and so they feel less driven to achieve it.
- thenerdfiles 11y ago
  No. It's for the fact that in order to climb the corporate ladder, one must sacrifice "empathy-potential" because one becomes conditioned to hypercompetitive behavior. Think of this as "learned winning"; it's cheaper to win because one is in "win-mode" than to actually always win through exhaustion of relevant skill (so, too, winning by "luck" or succeeding through luck, is better than succeeding through hard work — so being conditioned to a hypercompetitive attitude is like being on "luck mode" because others who are not in that attitudinal predisposition will essentially fail to maximize their relevant skills whereas someone in "win-mode" will already be in a conditioned skill-optimal (total maximalization) state.). The asymmetry here is that if you stress yourself out well before your menopausal stage, now you've risked it all only to sacrifice yourself — and you lose out on having a healthy body to support childbirth physiologically and psychologically. Men do not have the opportunity to give birth, so they can weigh in more heavily on self-sacrifice without the contingency that their body could be used as a medium for life-production. Basically, men are more like prototypal inheritance whereas women are more like classical inheritance, or at least we like to think that men are more "existential" while women are conservative in their "recreate the self". Most men advance in careers that are inherently lethal; so naturally women are going to be less driven to advance themselves in careers that compromise their total contract not only as financial agents but as well as genetic agents.
  - aianus 11y ago
    Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes either. In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like successful men do.
    - crpatino 11y ago
gwern 11y ago
Reminds me of the SMPY results: even extremely capable women don't desire professional advancement as much as their male counterparts but value other things like a work-life balance http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-in-preferences.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-in-p...
lapecc 11y ago
To me the most interesting part of this study is the equality of potential advancement. I cannot imagine that 10 years ago that would have been the case and goes to show some serious progress. Also, I appreciate the fact that this study approaches the discussion from an opportunity perspective. Taking a end-result perspective when discussing equality generally leads to false theses and confusion.
6stringmerc 11y ago
Not sure where my Dad appropriated / paraphrased this saying before passing it along to me, but I think it relates to the "attitude" component with respect to career success and priorities in life: "The C students run the world because the A students don't want the hassle."
notliketherest 11y ago
tl;dr women are different than men.
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.
  - Tsagadai 11y ago
    I cannot vote this up enough. There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger. Numerous studies have debunked garbage science about brain differences and whatnot because they are cultural not biological. Culturally, women are treated, raised and nurtured differently. Culture can, and does, change though so it cannot be really considered a persistent 'difference' when during my own brief lifetime things have changed dramatically in gender relations.
    - douche 11y ago
      > There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect. There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals that support this. One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rift-sexist.html http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-...
kazinator 11y ago
Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning. I think that playing with dolls is attainable (I could just go out and get me some), but undesirable for me. It has nothing to do with sex role stereotyping from a young age, honest. It's just a strictly personal preference, nothing more.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  > Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning. So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Why should the society be defined by some other metric than preference of its individuals? AFAICT, the article tries to measure the preference, as precisely as possible. It strikes to me as unfair to the people expressing those preferences to say "your preferences are influenced by culture and therefore less valid". (If they are not less valid, what is the problem?)
  - kazinator 11y ago
    > So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Because, for instance, you're a social sciences researcher and it's your job to figure it out and stick it in a paper. We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition, and that's why they are under-represented in the top echelons of organizations". The authors of the paper touch on this in the Discussion: > Identifying the origin of the differences between men’s and women’s professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender-based discrimination, or both.
    - asgard1024 11y ago
      Maybe I misunderstand you, but: > We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition" Why is it a bad conclusion? Maybe it's the truth (for arguably narrow definition of ambition). You don't want to get wrong conclusions from the research (whether you jump to them or not), but you cannot pick in advance which conclusion is morally good or bad. Preferences simply are somehow. I actually think we should consider psychological research into group differences to be unscientific, unless it is firmly based on biology. Ideally, these studies should be based on DNA rather than gender or race or religion or ethnicity. You can research preferences of people if you need to know them, but you shouldn't correlate them to some social group. I don't think society needs that kind of results apart from dinner conversations, because these results cannot inform the policy, which should be to respect everybody's preferences equally.
EGreg 11y ago
http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-... The gender equality and feminism movement has been hijacked by corporate interests! The question is if ANYONE of any gender should bust their butt for someone else's company. And if you really want to achieve gender equality at all costs, start with making the primary care provider for kids 50/50 men/women. Right now women are the ones expected to care for children which is where most of the salary inequality comes from!
agile_crusher 11y ago
Most women need to stop asking for a certain position at work. Instead ask about what is the work that is available to do. Lets get this straight there is no such thing as equality. Men and women are different. There are things women cannot do that men can do and vice versa. If you think this is wrong then why there are not many women lifting rocks/manual work at a construction site or just construction work in general compared to men. And when it comes to software companies I've been through 10 different startups and big companies and I haven't seen many woman (almost zero) fixing code late nights when there are production issues that are crucial for business or just any important issue for that matter even though I have seen significant women engineers at certain companies. And some women do agree that they need some man to do that kind of Job. I don't think companies are stupid enough to give them a higher position because they are women. When women talk about a position or a salary raise ask them to justify the work. And if they do it "hell yes" pay the equal salary.
idibidiart 11y ago
So much better than the title of an article in a recent Time magazine issue: "Ambition is not working for women" Lame.
miramardesign 11y ago
When will people understand that traditional gender roles were a part of human evolution? e.g. societies and people that didn't adopt them simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete. The fact that we are in a transition from them because of modern tech shouldn't let us be ignorant of the past and what the past shaped us into our humanity.
- jegutman 11y ago
  The costs and benefits of things change over time and hence the stable outcomes can change a lot over time. It's only in the last few 100 years that anything resembling a "job" where you sit at a desk all day existed. 1000s of year so of human evolution is people moving around, people who didn't "simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete". Obviously the claim that this means we can't modify this at all is completely ridiculous.

153 points by snake117 11y ago

t2015_08_25 11y ago

Fascinating results, I would only caution people before taking this article's results to apply to "all" women. IME, approximately 10% of women desire employment success way more than the others.

justaman 11y ago
Women can be opinionated, especially feminists. I'm going to avoid ever bringing this up with one.
- danharaj 11y ago
  How rational of you. After all, nothing is more unpleasant than a woman rejecting one's opinion.
  - hoopd 11y ago
    Oh is that what happened to Tim Hunt?
    - civilian 11y ago
      And here's a reference for hoopd's comment: https://reason.com/archives/2015/07/23/sexist-scientist-tim-hunt-the-real-story https://reason.com/archives/2015/07/23/sexist-scientist-tim-... edit// okay, here's another article that dives into the nuance and doesn't just try to plaster Tim Hunt. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt-witch-hunt/ https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt...
      - danharaj 11y ago
        reason.com follows the same naming convention as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Attacking the source rather than the content is usually the mark of a poor debating position. If the content is good, the source doesn't matter. If the content is bad, the source's badness will be self-evident.
        danharaj 11y ago
        A debate is a formal event with rules. These are Internet comments. I'm not debating a position. I'm expressing myself. If you think my observation is nonconstructive, that's fine, but it's not because if I were debating I would have made a blunder, it's because we have different expectations and desires in this conversation.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        That's fine, I'm just pointing out that your expression is incompatible with basic logic. Saying "this source sucks because x" does not address in any way what they actually said.
        aidenn0 11y ago
        It's actually completely compatible with logic: Source X claims Y. I know very little about Y. I know a fair amount about X, and what I know indicates that X is an unreliable source. Therefore, I will not significantly alter my beliefs about Y until a more reliable source than X comes around.
        pkinsky 11y ago
        Fortunately in this year 2015 we have a thing called hyperlinks via which evidence for assertions can be easily provided. If you treat op-eds from 'unreliable' sources as unreliable, fine. If you refuse to even check well-cited articles from 'unreliable' sources, you're probably more interested in ideological correctness than truth.
t2015_08_25 11y ago
So what on Earth is objectionable in my comment? I speak from a moderate viewpoint, to take the study seriously, but not apply it blindly, apply my own small amount of experience, and get downvoted to -4? Did this offend anyone? Please explain how. Otherwise I would perceive the downvotes to be the work of trolls.
- buckbova 11y ago
  Might be this: > IME, approximately 10% . . . How is this substantive?
  - t2015_08_25 11y ago
    Ah you're right. Thanks. That was driving me crazy. I should have learned by reading substantive comments found elsewhere. This one below, for example, struck me as exceptionally substantive and now I can see why it hasn't been voted below zero: "I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless."
    - buckbova 11y ago
      I didn't downvote you. You asked. Don't be so worried about internet points. BTW, that comment netted several magical internet points for whatever reason.

danso 11y ago

So can this be used as an argument against the idea that women hold fewer positions of power (and in context of HN, fewer tech positions) not because of institutional/societal sexism, but because they just don't desire them? I don't think many of the there-needs-to-be-more-diversity crowd disagree with that. Their position is more nuanced than that, and of course, to be fair, the we-can't-make-things-have-diversity crowd is unfairly pigeonholed as being shut-up-women. But in my reading of the paper's conclusion, women have less desire for promotions and power, but it's because they see those things as causing them strife. The we-need-more-diversity crowd believes that having more women in power is one way of alleviating a positive feedback loop. To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable. edit: corrected mistake of "negative feedback loop" to "positive" via lexcorvus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694

jameshart 11y ago
Yes, it depends if you view the difference in attitudes between sexes as an inevitable, biological distinction, or the product of a society which shapes their expectations and attitudes differently. There's certainly no 'get out of jail free' card for biological determinist sexism here.
- facepalm 11y ago
  It's not a biological determination (as in biological determined desire), it is a biologically determined wider range of options. Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships. An option men don't usually have. Since women have more options, they can also consider more possible ways of life. That's just my take, though - but it's only a matter of time until some unbiased gender researcher (who is not predetermined to prove suppression of women) will set out to confirm it. Edit: honestly, downvotes of this comment make me laugh. Do you feel so threatened by an opinion that does not require suppression of women to explain our modern reality?
  - 11y ago

plg 11y ago

Bigger, better, faster, more! Some men also are not so motivated by this either. I suppose it's slightly interesting that slightly more women than men say this. Maybe not though.

cwbrandsma 11y ago
All of these come down to 200M anecdotes really, partially because we are talking about preferences and comfort levels. In talking with the women around me, most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women. I have male friends that are nurses, they miss working with other men, and kind of avoid working with women. In talk with my wife and her married friends, most of the wives would prefer their husbands not work with other women (and these women trust their husbands). Now throw in the rest of the work and society. I just got done with sexual harassment training. To be fair, most of the stuff is pretty obvious and straight forward. But the undertone is "everything will be used against you when dealing with the opposite sex"; best bet is to avoid them as best you can, don't speak, don't look them in the eye, and no matter what, don't be alone with them. TL:DR: In western society, I just don't think we are comfortable with the sexes working together, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm hoping I'm wrong on this.
- Thriptic 11y ago
  I work in a lab which has approximately a 50/50 gender split. I personally have never felt uncomfortable with or been confused about working with people of the opposite sex, and I haven't heard any negative stories regarding inter-sex conflict or awkwardness from colleagues. As long as everyone acts like a professional, which isn't really that difficult, then I don't foresee many problems arising in a mixed gender workplace.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  >most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women Something is awfully wrong with these women, if they like/don't like working with someone solely because of their gender. I can understand you may not like working with someone, because he is a jerk/she is a bitch, I judge people based on whether they are good/bad people, not their gender.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

swagswag 11y ago

Evaluate the veracity: Poor people view professional advancement as unequally attainable, but more desirable.

ajmurmann 11y ago

This might be a chicken/egg problem, where society doesn't expect women to gain high professional positions and so they feel less driven to achieve it.

thenerdfiles 11y ago
No. It's for the fact that in order to climb the corporate ladder, one must sacrifice "empathy-potential" because one becomes conditioned to hypercompetitive behavior. Think of this as "learned winning"; it's cheaper to win because one is in "win-mode" than to actually always win through exhaustion of relevant skill (so, too, winning by "luck" or succeeding through luck, is better than succeeding through hard work — so being conditioned to a hypercompetitive attitude is like being on "luck mode" because others who are not in that attitudinal predisposition will essentially fail to maximize their relevant skills whereas someone in "win-mode" will already be in a conditioned skill-optimal (total maximalization) state.). The asymmetry here is that if you stress yourself out well before your menopausal stage, now you've risked it all only to sacrifice yourself — and you lose out on having a healthy body to support childbirth physiologically and psychologically. Men do not have the opportunity to give birth, so they can weigh in more heavily on self-sacrifice without the contingency that their body could be used as a medium for life-production. Basically, men are more like prototypal inheritance whereas women are more like classical inheritance, or at least we like to think that men are more "existential" while women are conservative in their "recreate the self". Most men advance in careers that are inherently lethal; so naturally women are going to be less driven to advance themselves in careers that compromise their total contract not only as financial agents but as well as genetic agents.
- aianus 11y ago
  Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes either. In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like successful men do.
  - crpatino 11y ago

gwern 11y ago

Reminds me of the SMPY results: even extremely capable women don't desire professional advancement as much as their male counterparts but value other things like a work-life balance http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-in-preferences.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-in-p...

lapecc 11y ago

To me the most interesting part of this study is the equality of potential advancement. I cannot imagine that 10 years ago that would have been the case and goes to show some serious progress. Also, I appreciate the fact that this study approaches the discussion from an opportunity perspective. Taking a end-result perspective when discussing equality generally leads to false theses and confusion.

6stringmerc 11y ago

Not sure where my Dad appropriated / paraphrased this saying before passing it along to me, but I think it relates to the "attitude" component with respect to career success and priorities in life: "The C students run the world because the A students don't want the hassle."

notliketherest 11y ago

tl;dr women are different than men.

dang 11y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.
- Tsagadai 11y ago
  I cannot vote this up enough. There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger. Numerous studies have debunked garbage science about brain differences and whatnot because they are cultural not biological. Culturally, women are treated, raised and nurtured differently. Culture can, and does, change though so it cannot be really considered a persistent 'difference' when during my own brief lifetime things have changed dramatically in gender relations.
  - douche 11y ago
    > There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect. There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals that support this. One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rift-sexist.html http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-...

kazinator 11y ago

Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning. I think that playing with dolls is attainable (I could just go out and get me some), but undesirable for me. It has nothing to do with sex role stereotyping from a young age, honest. It's just a strictly personal preference, nothing more.

asgard1024 11y ago
> Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning. So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Why should the society be defined by some other metric than preference of its individuals? AFAICT, the article tries to measure the preference, as precisely as possible. It strikes to me as unfair to the people expressing those preferences to say "your preferences are influenced by culture and therefore less valid". (If they are not less valid, what is the problem?)
- kazinator 11y ago
  > So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Because, for instance, you're a social sciences researcher and it's your job to figure it out and stick it in a paper. We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition, and that's why they are under-represented in the top echelons of organizations". The authors of the paper touch on this in the Discussion: > Identifying the origin of the differences between men’s and women’s professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender-based discrimination, or both.
  - asgard1024 11y ago
    Maybe I misunderstand you, but: > We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition" Why is it a bad conclusion? Maybe it's the truth (for arguably narrow definition of ambition). You don't want to get wrong conclusions from the research (whether you jump to them or not), but you cannot pick in advance which conclusion is morally good or bad. Preferences simply are somehow. I actually think we should consider psychological research into group differences to be unscientific, unless it is firmly based on biology. Ideally, these studies should be based on DNA rather than gender or race or religion or ethnicity. You can research preferences of people if you need to know them, but you shouldn't correlate them to some social group. I don't think society needs that kind of results apart from dinner conversations, because these results cannot inform the policy, which should be to respect everybody's preferences equally.

EGreg 11y ago

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-... The gender equality and feminism movement has been hijacked by corporate interests! The question is if ANYONE of any gender should bust their butt for someone else's company. And if you really want to achieve gender equality at all costs, start with making the primary care provider for kids 50/50 men/women. Right now women are the ones expected to care for children which is where most of the salary inequality comes from!

agile_crusher 11y ago

Most women need to stop asking for a certain position at work. Instead ask about what is the work that is available to do. Lets get this straight there is no such thing as equality. Men and women are different. There are things women cannot do that men can do and vice versa. If you think this is wrong then why there are not many women lifting rocks/manual work at a construction site or just construction work in general compared to men. And when it comes to software companies I've been through 10 different startups and big companies and I haven't seen many woman (almost zero) fixing code late nights when there are production issues that are crucial for business or just any important issue for that matter even though I have seen significant women engineers at certain companies. And some women do agree that they need some man to do that kind of Job. I don't think companies are stupid enough to give them a higher position because they are women. When women talk about a position or a salary raise ask them to justify the work. And if they do it "hell yes" pay the equal salary.

idibidiart 11y ago

So much better than the title of an article in a recent Time magazine issue: "Ambition is not working for women" Lame.

miramardesign 11y ago

When will people understand that traditional gender roles were a part of human evolution? e.g. societies and people that didn't adopt them simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete. The fact that we are in a transition from them because of modern tech shouldn't let us be ignorant of the past and what the past shaped us into our humanity.

jegutman 11y ago
The costs and benefits of things change over time and hence the stable outcomes can change a lot over time. It's only in the last few 100 years that anything resembling a "job" where you sit at a desk all day existed. 1000s of year so of human evolution is people moving around, people who didn't "simply went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete". Obviously the claim that this means we can't modify this at all is completely ridiculous.