5 ms·

Surgery has a large gap to but I rarely hear it brought up in these discussions. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/medical-specialties-vary-gender http

by rcpt 10y ago

Surgery has a large gap to but I rarely hear it brought up in these discussions. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/medical-specialties-vary-gender http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/medical-specialtie...

Bartweiss 10y ago
That's a particularly interesting one, because it's not susceptible to the usual charges of "no one cares because it's low pay/status". If you look to radiology rather than surgery, the gender imbalance is enormous. Suddenly we're looking at gender skew in two highly technical, prestigious, lucrative fields, and seeing that they prompt totally different types and amounts of discussion.
- aphextron 10y ago
  It's almost as if men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology that affect their preferred choice of career.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    > men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology This was largely debunked from a biological perspective [1]. Any psychological perceptions you may be referring to are largely cultural and subject to the biases that this product is trying to combat. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.full http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.full
    - Udik 10y ago
      The study you linked doesn't absolutely say what you are trying to make it say (that there aren't fundamental differences in psychology between men and women). It seems to say that male and female brains and cognitive abilities aren't as dimorphic as their genitalia, but instead there is a continuum and overlaps for many distinct cognitive traits. In other words: (almost) all men have normally formed penises, (almost) all women have normally formed vaginas. Mixed situations are rare. Brains are another matter, genders mix and overlap. That doesn't mean that there are NO genders though.
      - bduerst 10y ago
        >That doesn't mean that there are NO genders though. The study isn't saying that there are no genders - specifically it is saying: Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
        Udik 10y ago
        "most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males" Nothing in this view says it's not possible that, for example, an interest or a skill for engineering, while rare in both genders, might be n times more common in men than in women.
    - omginternets 10y ago
      That paper has little, if anything, to do with aphextron's point. It's a study of brain anatomy. Here's some directly-relevant literature, which points to a systematic preference for occupations in men vs women: [0] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
      - bduerst 10y ago
        Hence saying it was largely debunked from a biological perspective. aphextron didn't elaborate on the source of the psychological differences. I was pointing out that it wasn't biological and most likely cultural.
        omginternets 10y ago
        And that's completely irrelevant to the current discussion. BTW it's not even debunked from the biological perspective. It's debunked from a brain anatomy perspective.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jean_claude 10y ago
    Or perhaps many children are raised to conform to particular gender roles that affects their social development, and possibly, just possibly, this might also affect their job opportunities not just by self-selection, but by biases in the interviewer/hiring manager. It seems like a very complicated issue that doesn't have a simplistic answer.
    - Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
      Gender roles exist because they are adaptive. They are inseparable from actual average differences in characteristics.
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    There's a documentary titled Brainwash: The Gender Equality Paradox that explored those differences [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE
- grb423 10y ago
  I worry about this mentioning occupations' "prestige." That seems to be incompatible with our goals of universal equality. We shouldn't discount gender bias because of privilege.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    I didn't mean to address whether prestige is necessary to consider an occupation. Rather, I was drawing parallels between software and radiology careers, and observing that one is considered a major, public issue while the other is basically an internal discussion within medicine.
_dark_matter_ 10y ago
To be fair, my wife is in medical school, and gender imbalances in specialties is brought up all the time.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Similarly, educators talk a great deal about gender imbalances in teaching (K-8 is female-dominated, physics and economics skew, biology female, and so on). What I think is interesting is that there are a handful of fields - primarily technology and corporate leadership - where the gender imbalance is a national topic. I'm sure it's largely down to the visibility of those fields, but there are a lot of people discussing sexism in tech whose backgrounds are neither research nor technology. That seems much less true for something like radiology. It also seems to muddy the waters a great deal. With inside-baseball discussions like medicine, I assume(?) things like roughly when the gender imbalances form are common knowledge. In tech, we seem to be constantly rehashing those matters (see: corporate diversity reports constantly stressing "our applicant pool is lower-diversity than our staff, so please stop reducing this issue to discriminatory hiring").
Grae 10y ago
That's because you aren't as steeped in medical culture as you are in tech culture and don't hear about it. It is brought up all the time. Source: my wife just finished her medical residency.
- rcpt 10y ago
  > It is brought up all the time. Around HN?

by rcpt 10y ago

Bartweiss 10y ago

That's a particularly interesting one, because it's not susceptible to the usual charges of "no one cares because it's low pay/status". If you look to radiology rather than surgery, the gender imbalance is enormous. Suddenly we're looking at gender skew in two highly technical, prestigious, lucrative fields, and seeing that they prompt totally different types and amounts of discussion.

aphextron 10y ago
It's almost as if men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology that affect their preferred choice of career.
- bduerst 10y ago
  > men and women have some fundamental differences in psychology This was largely debunked from a biological perspective [1]. Any psychological perceptions you may be referring to are largely cultural and subject to the biases that this product is trying to combat. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.full http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.full
  - Udik 10y ago
    The study you linked doesn't absolutely say what you are trying to make it say (that there aren't fundamental differences in psychology between men and women). It seems to say that male and female brains and cognitive abilities aren't as dimorphic as their genitalia, but instead there is a continuum and overlaps for many distinct cognitive traits. In other words: (almost) all men have normally formed penises, (almost) all women have normally formed vaginas. Mixed situations are rare. Brains are another matter, genders mix and overlap. That doesn't mean that there are NO genders though.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      >That doesn't mean that there are NO genders though. The study isn't saying that there are no genders - specifically it is saying: Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
      - Udik 10y ago
        "most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males" Nothing in this view says it's not possible that, for example, an interest or a skill for engineering, while rare in both genders, might be n times more common in men than in women.
  - omginternets 10y ago
    That paper has little, if anything, to do with aphextron's point. It's a study of brain anatomy. Here's some directly-relevant literature, which points to a systematic preference for occupations in men vs women: [0] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Hence saying it was largely debunked from a biological perspective. aphextron didn't elaborate on the source of the psychological differences. I was pointing out that it wasn't biological and most likely cultural.
      - omginternets 10y ago
        And that's completely irrelevant to the current discussion. BTW it's not even debunked from the biological perspective. It's debunked from a brain anatomy perspective.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jean_claude 10y ago
  Or perhaps many children are raised to conform to particular gender roles that affects their social development, and possibly, just possibly, this might also affect their job opportunities not just by self-selection, but by biases in the interviewer/hiring manager. It seems like a very complicated issue that doesn't have a simplistic answer.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
    Gender roles exist because they are adaptive. They are inseparable from actual average differences in characteristics.
- sah2ed 10y ago
  There's a documentary titled Brainwash: The Gender Equality Paradox that explored those differences [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE
grb423 10y ago
I worry about this mentioning occupations' "prestige." That seems to be incompatible with our goals of universal equality. We shouldn't discount gender bias because of privilege.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I didn't mean to address whether prestige is necessary to consider an occupation. Rather, I was drawing parallels between software and radiology careers, and observing that one is considered a major, public issue while the other is basically an internal discussion within medicine.

_dark_matter_ 10y ago

To be fair, my wife is in medical school, and gender imbalances in specialties is brought up all the time.

Bartweiss 10y ago
Similarly, educators talk a great deal about gender imbalances in teaching (K-8 is female-dominated, physics and economics skew, biology female, and so on). What I think is interesting is that there are a handful of fields - primarily technology and corporate leadership - where the gender imbalance is a national topic. I'm sure it's largely down to the visibility of those fields, but there are a lot of people discussing sexism in tech whose backgrounds are neither research nor technology. That seems much less true for something like radiology. It also seems to muddy the waters a great deal. With inside-baseball discussions like medicine, I assume(?) things like roughly when the gender imbalances form are common knowledge. In tech, we seem to be constantly rehashing those matters (see: corporate diversity reports constantly stressing "our applicant pool is lower-diversity than our staff, so please stop reducing this issue to discriminatory hiring").

Grae 10y ago

That's because you aren't as steeped in medical culture as you are in tech culture and don't hear about it. It is brought up all the time. Source: my wife just finished her medical residency.

rcpt 10y ago
> It is brought up all the time. Around HN?