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There's no way that women are better. The implication of that would be if you have a furniture assembly business of female employees versus male employees, all

by xyzzy4 11y ago

There's no way that women are better. The implication of that would be if you have a furniture assembly business of female employees versus male employees, all other conditions being the same, the female business would be more profitable. Which wouldn't make any sense.

maerF0x0 11y ago
Personally I see it similar to how I see technologies. Each has had purposeful evolutionary pressures. I'm not talking gender-normative roles here, but traits like Men tending to hold more muscle mass than women. In this specific case I think the research is very informative for the current state of affairs, but maybe not so informative about how male/female sexed individuals differ. That is, it really sounds to me like ppl who would be identified as men have more experience being expected to work w/o instructions, with physical things etc. Vs it sounds like women are often expected to work with instructions etc. -- Nether was faster when they worked with the expected "mode" of operations. Anyways, this whole subject is flamebait. So I'll leave it at this.
qntty 11y ago
That doesn't follow. Things don't always scale like one would expect them to.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  If women were better, you could have less workers for the same amount of productivity, and it would increase your profit margin.
  - qntty 11y ago
    What I mean is that women might be better at assembling furniture that they're not familiar with, compared to men. But if you have an assembly line operation, and familiarizing yourself with the instructions isn't a bottleneck, men might be faster then women. There is no reason to say one way or another based on a study of university students who weren't trained to assemble the furniture.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Right. And further, two months into the job the woman is still showing up on time, sober and ready to work. So there are lots of variables to consider.
Kluny 11y ago
Nothing about that statement makes sense. For one thing, furniture assembly is normally paid for by piecework. Each assembler's personal speed level makes no difference. If furniture isn't getting built fast enough, more assemblers are hired or existing assemblers work more hours. "All other conditions being the same" - a business operated only by women will be very different from one operated only by men. All other conditions will not be the same. There will be different assembly line procedures, different levels of teamwork and communication, different expectations about how much work must be done and how many items must be sold, different customer interactions. "The female business would be more profitable. Which wouldn't make any sense." This statement is meaningless.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  Each assembler's personal speed level makes no difference. If furniture isn't getting built fast enough, more assemblers are hired or existing assemblers work more hours. Personal speed makes a lot of difference. For example, if the speed was zero, nothing would be built. It would cost your business more money if you have to pay people for more hours. So having male assemblers would cost more if they are worse at it.
  - Kluny 11y ago
    See the part re: piecework. Furniture assemblers are not paid by the hour. They are paid by the number of items they build to an acceptable standard. Assemblers whose assembly speed is zero don't get paid. Unless your furniture shop exists only in a hypothetical math universe at the extreme end of a graph, there will be assemblers available who can build furniture adequately fast for the company to stay in business.
drdaeman 11y ago
Such business would likely fail. Filtering by less significant factor is meaningless, when there are other factors that are way more important. It's probably that one biological gender has an some tiny edge over another here - in statistically significant way - but in practice I think individual differences are likely to be order(s) of magnitude more important. Not like I have any researches to quote, though. If a furniture assembly business has a giant candidate list (like, millions of applicants) they gender may start having some statistical significance and get useful as a metric. Huh, if they have countless myriads of candidates, then even something as silly as zodiac sign may become useful - if there are statistics about those, of course. But if they have, say, half a hundred applicants, they'd better look at something more relevant, like past experience (huh), individual physical shape or spatial intelligence.

by xyzzy4 11y ago

maerF0x0 11y ago

Personally I see it similar to how I see technologies. Each has had purposeful evolutionary pressures. I'm not talking gender-normative roles here, but traits like Men tending to hold more muscle mass than women. In this specific case I think the research is very informative for the current state of affairs, but maybe not so informative about how male/female sexed individuals differ. That is, it really sounds to me like ppl who would be identified as men have more experience being expected to work w/o instructions, with physical things etc. Vs it sounds like women are often expected to work with instructions etc. -- Nether was faster when they worked with the expected "mode" of operations. Anyways, this whole subject is flamebait. So I'll leave it at this.

qntty 11y ago

That doesn't follow. Things don't always scale like one would expect them to.

xyzzy4 11y ago
If women were better, you could have less workers for the same amount of productivity, and it would increase your profit margin.
- qntty 11y ago
  What I mean is that women might be better at assembling furniture that they're not familiar with, compared to men. But if you have an assembly line operation, and familiarizing yourself with the instructions isn't a bottleneck, men might be faster then women. There is no reason to say one way or another based on a study of university students who weren't trained to assemble the furniture.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Right. And further, two months into the job the woman is still showing up on time, sober and ready to work. So there are lots of variables to consider.

Kluny 11y ago

Nothing about that statement makes sense. For one thing, furniture assembly is normally paid for by piecework. Each assembler's personal speed level makes no difference. If furniture isn't getting built fast enough, more assemblers are hired or existing assemblers work more hours. "All other conditions being the same" - a business operated only by women will be very different from one operated only by men. All other conditions will not be the same. There will be different assembly line procedures, different levels of teamwork and communication, different expectations about how much work must be done and how many items must be sold, different customer interactions. "The female business would be more profitable. Which wouldn't make any sense." This statement is meaningless.

xyzzy4 11y ago
Each assembler's personal speed level makes no difference. If furniture isn't getting built fast enough, more assemblers are hired or existing assemblers work more hours. Personal speed makes a lot of difference. For example, if the speed was zero, nothing would be built. It would cost your business more money if you have to pay people for more hours. So having male assemblers would cost more if they are worse at it.
- Kluny 11y ago
  See the part re: piecework. Furniture assemblers are not paid by the hour. They are paid by the number of items they build to an acceptable standard. Assemblers whose assembly speed is zero don't get paid. Unless your furniture shop exists only in a hypothetical math universe at the extreme end of a graph, there will be assemblers available who can build furniture adequately fast for the company to stay in business.

drdaeman 11y ago

Such business would likely fail. Filtering by less significant factor is meaningless, when there are other factors that are way more important. It's probably that one biological gender has an some tiny edge over another here - in statistically significant way - but in practice I think individual differences are likely to be order(s) of magnitude more important. Not like I have any researches to quote, though. If a furniture assembly business has a giant candidate list (like, millions of applicants) they gender may start having some statistical significance and get useful as a metric. Huh, if they have countless myriads of candidates, then even something as silly as zodiac sign may become useful - if there are statistics about those, of course. But if they have, say, half a hundred applicants, they'd better look at something more relevant, like past experience (huh), individual physical shape or spatial intelligence.