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One of the points made in the article is that men still have a higher wage in the field. Discrimination leads to bias. If wage/gender matchups were a total co

by tomlock 10y ago

One of the points made in the article is that men still have a higher wage in the field. Discrimination leads to bias. If wage/gender matchups were a total coinflip we'd still expect around 25% in each of the quadrants along the axes of male/female and men have a higher wage/women have a higher wage. It is totally possible for some fields to have women in higher numbers and with higher wages in the field than the men, and for there to still be discrimination. If your argument is that there is also discrimination against men, the vast majority of feminists agree. Its just clear in terms of wages and gender ratios in jobs, men have the upper hand :)

sinxoveretothex 10y ago
> Discrimination leads to bias. What do you mean by bias? As far as I can tell, in the context of gender differences, either the bias IS the discrimination or it is the cause of the discrimination, but I can't make heads or tails of what it'd mean the way you worded it (or, for that matter, why it's relevant here if you just meant the swapped version). > If your argument is that there is also discrimination against men, the vast majority of feminists agree. Its just clear in terms of wages and gender ratios in jobs, men have the upper hand :) First, I'm totally confused by the smiley face. Maybe you just meant to imply 'no hard feelings' which makes the display understandable, but it's at any rate a confusing thing to "read" in context. Now, my argument is not actually that there is discrimination against men. Well, I'm also not saying that there isn't, I'm just saying that my argument is on a different point, but if anything I'm bet there's some sort of evidence of "discrimination" against just about every one characteristic/group. Actually, I didn't really make a specific argument, but if I had to, it would be something along the lines of: evidence of differing treatment (particularly statistical differences) could actually be evidence of differences between groups. Like let's suppose that males just don't, on average, care about veterinary science. Maybe it's something that should be incentivized against, maybe not. But if it's true, one would expect that someone will interpret that hypothetical fact as "males are not good veterinarians" and basically legitimately discriminate against male applicants (and probably there's going to also be people who would believe that males are going into vet science less only because of this discrimination). In this hypothetical world, both of those groups would be anywhere from quite wrong to slightly right, depending on what truth means to the beholder. At any rate, a corollary of this is that even evidence of discrimination doesn't refute the underlying assumption to the degree that we might expect.
- tomlock 10y ago
  Bias is a stats term. I think if we look through history - there has clearly been a change in treatment of women over time. Why is it that now the treatment is reliably indicative of some underlying quality that has remained static through time? Couldn't it just as easily be that the treatment of women currently isn't indicative of some underlying truth? What would indicate to us that now over other times the differing treatment was in line with underlying qualities and not cultural assumptions?

by tomlock 10y ago

sinxoveretothex 10y ago

> Discrimination leads to bias. What do you mean by bias? As far as I can tell, in the context of gender differences, either the bias IS the discrimination or it is the cause of the discrimination, but I can't make heads or tails of what it'd mean the way you worded it (or, for that matter, why it's relevant here if you just meant the swapped version). > If your argument is that there is also discrimination against men, the vast majority of feminists agree. Its just clear in terms of wages and gender ratios in jobs, men have the upper hand :) First, I'm totally confused by the smiley face. Maybe you just meant to imply 'no hard feelings' which makes the display understandable, but it's at any rate a confusing thing to "read" in context. Now, my argument is not actually that there is discrimination against men. Well, I'm also not saying that there isn't, I'm just saying that my argument is on a different point, but if anything I'm bet there's some sort of evidence of "discrimination" against just about every one characteristic/group. Actually, I didn't really make a specific argument, but if I had to, it would be something along the lines of: evidence of differing treatment (particularly statistical differences) could actually be evidence of differences between groups. Like let's suppose that males just don't, on average, care about veterinary science. Maybe it's something that should be incentivized against, maybe not. But if it's true, one would expect that someone will interpret that hypothetical fact as "males are not good veterinarians" and basically legitimately discriminate against male applicants (and probably there's going to also be people who would believe that males are going into vet science less only because of this discrimination). In this hypothetical world, both of those groups would be anywhere from quite wrong to slightly right, depending on what truth means to the beholder. At any rate, a corollary of this is that even evidence of discrimination doesn't refute the underlying assumption to the degree that we might expect.

tomlock 10y ago
Bias is a stats term. I think if we look through history - there has clearly been a change in treatment of women over time. Why is it that now the treatment is reliably indicative of some underlying quality that has remained static through time? Couldn't it just as easily be that the treatment of women currently isn't indicative of some underlying truth? What would indicate to us that now over other times the differing treatment was in line with underlying qualities and not cultural assumptions?