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Have you heard of the Norweigen gender equality paradox? In countries like Norway where gender equality is high, you see men and women taking on more stereotypi

Have you heard of the Norweigen gender equality paradox? In countries like Norway where gender equality is high, you see men and women taking on more stereotypical jobs (e.g. women as nurses, men as firefighters) I think this is because when social freedom is maximized, biological differences are more able to fully express themselves. Conversely, in countries that are less free, men and women may be compelled to take on jobs they don't really want in order to survive. Men and women have obvious biological differences that have evolved over millions of years. Women as mothers have evolved compassion and emotional bonding to maximize the survival of their infants, which explains the stereotypical nursing, administrative, and care taking roles. Men have evolved as hunters and warriors, where emotion is secondary to rationality, and at worse a hindrance in the brutality of war. Since technical roles are largely divorced from emotion, masculine rather than feminine traits are better suited at a biological and psychological level. I think we should absolutely strive for gender equality in a legal and social sense, but then we shouldn't be surprised if women aren't rabid about sitting at computers all day.

rayiner 9y ago
This sort of handwaving doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For example, what is the "feminine, emotional" dimension of accounting that leads to the majority of accountants being women? For that matter, what is different between accounting and programming via-a-vid cold hard rationality that makes the gender ratio so different? What biological changes explain the dramatic decrease in women getting computer science degrees since 1980? It's not even internally consistent. Why is programming more like "hunting" than "gathering?" Hunting is all about intense bouts of focus for short durations. Good programmers, in contrast, need to be able to focus on details for sustained periods of time. And isn't a big part of programming focused on communicating and working in groups, something women are supposedly better suited to doing?
- tptacek 9y ago
  And, of course, the reminder: CS and physics are unique among science STEM fields in how poor their gender parity is. Every other science field (including mathematics) is significantly better. Some fields, like molecular biology, have essentially full parity.
  - programmarchy 9y ago
    Again, biology has predictive power in the realm of IQ distribution by gender. The bell curve for male IQs is wider but flatter than female IQs, which could explain why there are more men than women in physics, a profession with the largest demands for exceptional intelligence. It also explains why there are more homeless men than there are homeless women.
    - Mz 9y ago
      It also explains why there are more homeless men than there are homeless women. IQ distributions don't explain that at all. It is vastly more complicated than that.
      - programmarchy 9y ago
        Many things are complicated but that doesn't mean we can't use data to understand and predict them. IQ correlates almost perfectly (~ r = .95) with income at an ecological/epidemiological level (again, not at an individual level). The average IQ among the homeless is around 80. It may not be the only factor, but it's part of the story.
        Mz 9y ago
        I once did volunteer work for an organization aimed at supporting gifted individuals. IQ tests are highly biased and not reliable. They often correlate not to intelligence so much as to social bias. Immigrants, the poor, etc tend to do more poorly on them purely for reasons of not having in-group knowledge required to do well on them. Historically, this has been used to ill effect to justify racism, anti-immigration sentiment, etc. I am something of a subject matter expert in homelessness and I just wrote this a few minutes ago: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/gender-and-homelessness.html http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/ge... Putting it here for the benefit of other people. I don't expect anything I say to sway you.
        9y ago
- programmarchy 9y ago
  The data is what it is, and I think you'd be hard pressed to dismiss the biological differences between males and females. Would be interested in hearing your interpretation, though. First, I am not saying men cannot have feminine traits and women cannot have masculine traits on the individual level. Of course there will be exceptions, and those individuals deserve respect. But on average, I think biology is the dominating factor determining those traits due to mammalian evolution. To address your points, I see accounting as administrative, akin to housekeeping, a supportive role of keeping the house in order. Programming is more about problem solving, entering unknown territories, and has more risk involved. And it doesn't sound like you've ever been hunting. It's a slog, where you're out in the woods for hours or days at a time, constantly paying attention to minute details to track animals. Finally there's an aha moment where you go in for the kill. Seems similar to programming to me. Running up to the 80s, computers were a huge fad with promises of making big money. As such many were attracted, until some people realized it wasn't satisfying for them. My mother got a CS degree and quit IBM after realizing she hated being inside all day writing networking code. She's an extremely intelligent woman and I'm proud of that, but also grateful that she stayed home to raise me and my siblings. And I never made any claims about women being better at communicating or working in groups. My claim is jobs that have similarities to mothering are more likely to attract women.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > The data is what it is, and I think you'd be hard pressed to dismiss the biological differences between males and females. I'm not dismissing biological differences between men and women. I'm wondering how you're getting from "there are biological differences between men and women" to "biological differences explain explain why fewer women pursue engineering." There's a smoking crater where your causation argument should be. > To address your points, I see accounting as administrative, akin to housekeeping, a supportive role of keeping the house in order. Programming is more about problem solving, entering unknown territories, and has more risk involved. This is a superficial characterization (and also demonstrates an ignorance of what accountants do). In reality, the two jobs use basically the same skills: attention to detail, mathematical reasoning, and creativity within the very narrow frameworks of rules. Consider something like debugging code versus following money through a series of transactions. It's basically the same thing: keeping track of a lot of state in your head while going through various steps, each of which changes the set based on well-defined rules.

rayiner 9y ago

This sort of handwaving doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For example, what is the "feminine, emotional" dimension of accounting that leads to the majority of accountants being women? For that matter, what is different between accounting and programming via-a-vid cold hard rationality that makes the gender ratio so different? What biological changes explain the dramatic decrease in women getting computer science degrees since 1980? It's not even internally consistent. Why is programming more like "hunting" than "gathering?" Hunting is all about intense bouts of focus for short durations. Good programmers, in contrast, need to be able to focus on details for sustained periods of time. And isn't a big part of programming focused on communicating and working in groups, something women are supposedly better suited to doing?

tptacek 9y ago
And, of course, the reminder: CS and physics are unique among science STEM fields in how poor their gender parity is. Every other science field (including mathematics) is significantly better. Some fields, like molecular biology, have essentially full parity.
- programmarchy 9y ago
  Again, biology has predictive power in the realm of IQ distribution by gender. The bell curve for male IQs is wider but flatter than female IQs, which could explain why there are more men than women in physics, a profession with the largest demands for exceptional intelligence. It also explains why there are more homeless men than there are homeless women.
  - Mz 9y ago
    It also explains why there are more homeless men than there are homeless women. IQ distributions don't explain that at all. It is vastly more complicated than that.
    - programmarchy 9y ago
      Many things are complicated but that doesn't mean we can't use data to understand and predict them. IQ correlates almost perfectly (~ r = .95) with income at an ecological/epidemiological level (again, not at an individual level). The average IQ among the homeless is around 80. It may not be the only factor, but it's part of the story.
      - Mz 9y ago
        I once did volunteer work for an organization aimed at supporting gifted individuals. IQ tests are highly biased and not reliable. They often correlate not to intelligence so much as to social bias. Immigrants, the poor, etc tend to do more poorly on them purely for reasons of not having in-group knowledge required to do well on them. Historically, this has been used to ill effect to justify racism, anti-immigration sentiment, etc. I am something of a subject matter expert in homelessness and I just wrote this a few minutes ago: http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/gender-and-homelessness.html http://sandiegohomelesssurvivalguide.blogspot.com/2017/07/ge... Putting it here for the benefit of other people. I don't expect anything I say to sway you.
        9y ago
programmarchy 9y ago
The data is what it is, and I think you'd be hard pressed to dismiss the biological differences between males and females. Would be interested in hearing your interpretation, though. First, I am not saying men cannot have feminine traits and women cannot have masculine traits on the individual level. Of course there will be exceptions, and those individuals deserve respect. But on average, I think biology is the dominating factor determining those traits due to mammalian evolution. To address your points, I see accounting as administrative, akin to housekeeping, a supportive role of keeping the house in order. Programming is more about problem solving, entering unknown territories, and has more risk involved. And it doesn't sound like you've ever been hunting. It's a slog, where you're out in the woods for hours or days at a time, constantly paying attention to minute details to track animals. Finally there's an aha moment where you go in for the kill. Seems similar to programming to me. Running up to the 80s, computers were a huge fad with promises of making big money. As such many were attracted, until some people realized it wasn't satisfying for them. My mother got a CS degree and quit IBM after realizing she hated being inside all day writing networking code. She's an extremely intelligent woman and I'm proud of that, but also grateful that she stayed home to raise me and my siblings. And I never made any claims about women being better at communicating or working in groups. My claim is jobs that have similarities to mothering are more likely to attract women.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > The data is what it is, and I think you'd be hard pressed to dismiss the biological differences between males and females. I'm not dismissing biological differences between men and women. I'm wondering how you're getting from "there are biological differences between men and women" to "biological differences explain explain why fewer women pursue engineering." There's a smoking crater where your causation argument should be. > To address your points, I see accounting as administrative, akin to housekeeping, a supportive role of keeping the house in order. Programming is more about problem solving, entering unknown territories, and has more risk involved. This is a superficial characterization (and also demonstrates an ignorance of what accountants do). In reality, the two jobs use basically the same skills: attention to detail, mathematical reasoning, and creativity within the very narrow frameworks of rules. Consider something like debugging code versus following money through a series of transactions. It's basically the same thing: keeping track of a lot of state in your head while going through various steps, each of which changes the set based on well-defined rules.