6 ms·

I've been questioning the general assumption that male-dominated things are always desirable. Maybe some things are stupid to do, and men tend to get tricked i

I've been questioning the general assumption that male-dominated things are always desirable. Maybe some things are stupid to do, and men tend to get tricked into them more often. Maybe moderately high pay is a trick to get people to do draining, unhealthy jobs, and men are more likely to succumb to the temptation. It's not a good idea to become an underwater welder, but you do get paid a lot. It all goes into medical care, but you do get paid a lot.

pmarreck 9y ago
I would agree that there is a certain, eh... stupidity, around risk-taking, lol. Or perhaps just a "not giving into loss aversion." For whatever reason (and while it pains me to generalize), the high-risk, high-reward jobs are all almost all men. Any woman who feels a calling should of course go for it, and no one should stand in that person's way, but I wouldn't ever expect, say, a 50/50 perfect proportion of gender participants at some future date (as this article indicates, this is a dysfunctional expectation) Back when bitcoin was only $10 a pop, a bunch of guys in our programming shop wanted to get involved. 100% of their wives nixed it. 100%. I was the only single guy, so I put in some money... Crazy at the time? Perhaps. Crazy now? Not with 20/20 hindsight...
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Despite just-so explanations from evolutionary psychology, there is definitely an argument to be made that this is the byproduct of our culture, rather than something innate.
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Culture is just as real as physiology and physics.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    That a culture can survive the death of a much higher percentage of men than it can of women is not a "just-so" story. It is a fact.
    - holografix 9y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head here. Are there any studies showing men have a higher predisposition to taking risks? I cant quote one but I think there are. There is an evolutionary reason for men to take more risks and have a desire to engage in hunting behaviours. We just have to be conscious of that and as per one of the top commenter's remarks not "fall" for something irrational or be driven by societal pressures.
      - steanne 9y ago
        white men, actually "What on first inspection seemed like a sex difference was actually a difference between white males and everyone else." http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-think-about-risk http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-...
        kalleboo 9y ago
        Interesting. The sexist aspect also seems to be a U.S. thing. From that article: > Interestingly, a recent study conducted in the more socially egalitarian and gender-equal Sweden failed to find the “white male effect.” This national survey of nearly 1,500 households found that, all else being equal—and in stark contrast with the U.S. data—Swedish men and women had very similar perceptions of lifestyle, environmental, technological, health, and social risks
      - vacri 9y ago
        In order to make 100 babies in 1 year, you need a minimum of 1 man and 100 women. Men actually are more disposable in terms of propagation of the species. However, our societies are considerably more complex than that one fact; it's a mistake to use it to explain the fundamentals of everything our society does.
      - xiaoma 9y ago
        On data point to help pull apart the nature vs nurture question is that very similar trends with respect to risk-taking behaviors occur in wild chimpanzees (who share nearly all our genes but not our cultural influences): http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099099 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
  - solidsnack9000 9y ago
    What is the argument?
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    It's definitely true that guys are encouraged to take risks by peers, parents and others.
- soup10 9y ago
  Software isn't high-risk for women though. Diversity thirsty companies are desperate to hire technical women with even a shred of competency. It's just not a cool thing to do though, women don't want to be geeks. There is much more stigma against non-normie women than there is men. Nay for men, there is a heavy stigma against being normal and boring.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    The article pointed out that men are typically more interested in working with things than women, and women are typically more interested in working with people than men, and that this is highly correlative and can explain many of the differences we see in STEM, because most STEM fields have a lot of "things" going on. The article even generously suggests that many women are adept in BOTH math and verbal, but end up in more verbal jobs because men are typically NOT adept in both, so all the high-math low-verbal guys end up doing mathy jobs, and all the high-math high-verbal women do verbal/people jobs, because the mathy jobs are all the guys can do, while the women can do either (but take the non-mathy jobs due to market effects). Software is kinda mathy, I guess.
    - jerf 9y ago
      "Software is kinda mathy, I guess." Food for thought: Software has a bizarre curve if you look at it from a math/verbal skills perspective. For what could very well be the first 10-15 years of a software career, software is very math-y. Then, if you want to continue to grow, it takes a very verbal turn. If you want to continue to grow in software leadership and capabilities, you need to be able to express yourself, convince others, navigate politics, and figure out how to translate these issues into the code you structure and write. It isn't a sudden transition and some may transition earlier than 10 years, but it's an interesting way of looking at things. (Note I'm not talking "management", but continuing up an engineering path.) A lot of engineering looks like that. If software has any unique characteristics it is how far a single math-oriented programmer can get due to our unique abilities to pull down huge libraries with incredible functionality without having to work with anyone to do it. Again, just food for thought with no particular argument in sight here.
0xbear 9y ago
Men often do those stupid high paying things simply due to societal pressure. Barring being physically beautiful (which most men just aren't), for a male to be attractive as a mate it helps tremendously to not be poor. I don't see that changing in my lifetime no matter how much people gnash their teeth. There's the political stance, and then there are down to earth, real life considerations such as having a comfortable lifestyle for yourself an your children. Currently, and as far as the eye can see into the future, men are responsible for providing that, and they largely don't have a choice in the matter.
matt4077 9y ago
Maybe, maybe not. But even if, it's pretty clear that it were men who declared those things to be desirable. So it sounds a bit hollow when they now tell women "Oh, you don't want to do that anyway. It's too dangerous!"
- noobermin 9y ago
  Another thing to touch on even if you agree with the article, this is mostly talking about choices in career, not how well we pay such people in those careers.
- meric 9y ago
  If men find it desirable then is it automatically desirable to women?
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Men write, direct, and play the lead in most movies. They write the news, journal articles, books, speeches, and laws. Then, they're more likely to hold those speeches, break those laws, and peer-review those journal articles. They hold more power deciding which job gets paid how much, which group of people gets a parade on July 4th (soldiers, not nurses), and which profession to glorify in the next credit card commercial. So, yes: our impression of a job's prestige is formed by culture, and that culture certainly was–and largely still is–dominated by men. And yes, of course that culture has the same impact on mens' and women's views. They are people, you know?
    - meric 9y ago
      According to your logic - A patriarchal culture has influenced what roles society find desirable, and therefore we ought to declare that those roles ARE in fact desirable, and the roles patriarchal culture has deemed less desirable , we declare they ARE in fact less desirable. How does that do anything to patriarchy except by reinforcing it? If those who are not in the roles patriarchy has defined as desirable, and are in the roles patriarchy has defined as less desirable, by doubling down on the patriarchy's preferences, they have rigged the game and declared themselves the losers. How can equality be achieved?
cropsieboss 9y ago
Testosterone does wonders. Logarithmic increase in quality of life, if any, by time wasted, yet men do it all the time. Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. These things influence and create inequalities. There's no discrimination in modern western world capable enough and encompassing to create that kind of impact. It might be that exactly discrimination (as is done in Iran) influences women to pursue STEM fields (and they do) but in the free world women go for their own desires.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- klipt 9y ago
  > Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. I don't know the demographic breakdown, but they might even be in the majority?
  - Shorel 9y ago
    Writing is not a quick improvisation activity. I think we can say there are plenty of successful male stand up comedians. It is more related to the issue.
  - cropsieboss 9y ago
    > And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. And yet the more verbally competent the woman, more she's inclined to go away from stem. More women played the piano during the era when blues was in the making, yet it was mostly african-american men that pushed the genre, and women inventing no genres at all. There's obviously an inherent biological drive making men do stuff large scale, and women do stuff in their small circles.

pmarreck 9y ago

I would agree that there is a certain, eh... stupidity, around risk-taking, lol. Or perhaps just a "not giving into loss aversion." For whatever reason (and while it pains me to generalize), the high-risk, high-reward jobs are all almost all men. Any woman who feels a calling should of course go for it, and no one should stand in that person's way, but I wouldn't ever expect, say, a 50/50 perfect proportion of gender participants at some future date (as this article indicates, this is a dysfunctional expectation) Back when bitcoin was only $10 a pop, a bunch of guys in our programming shop wanted to get involved. 100% of their wives nixed it. 100%. I was the only single guy, so I put in some money... Crazy at the time? Perhaps. Crazy now? Not with 20/20 hindsight...

Eridrus 9y ago
Despite just-so explanations from evolutionary psychology, there is definitely an argument to be made that this is the byproduct of our culture, rather than something innate.
- dilemma 9y ago
  Culture is just as real as physiology and physics.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  That a culture can survive the death of a much higher percentage of men than it can of women is not a "just-so" story. It is a fact.
  - holografix 9y ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head here. Are there any studies showing men have a higher predisposition to taking risks? I cant quote one but I think there are. There is an evolutionary reason for men to take more risks and have a desire to engage in hunting behaviours. We just have to be conscious of that and as per one of the top commenter's remarks not "fall" for something irrational or be driven by societal pressures.
    - steanne 9y ago
      white men, actually "What on first inspection seemed like a sex difference was actually a difference between white males and everyone else." http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-think-about-risk http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-...
      - kalleboo 9y ago
        Interesting. The sexist aspect also seems to be a U.S. thing. From that article: > Interestingly, a recent study conducted in the more socially egalitarian and gender-equal Sweden failed to find the “white male effect.” This national survey of nearly 1,500 households found that, all else being equal—and in stark contrast with the U.S. data—Swedish men and women had very similar perceptions of lifestyle, environmental, technological, health, and social risks
    - vacri 9y ago
      In order to make 100 babies in 1 year, you need a minimum of 1 man and 100 women. Men actually are more disposable in terms of propagation of the species. However, our societies are considerably more complex than that one fact; it's a mistake to use it to explain the fundamentals of everything our society does.
    - xiaoma 9y ago
      On data point to help pull apart the nature vs nurture question is that very similar trends with respect to risk-taking behaviors occur in wild chimpanzees (who share nearly all our genes but not our cultural influences): http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099099 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
- solidsnack9000 9y ago
  What is the argument?
- pmarreck 9y ago
  It's definitely true that guys are encouraged to take risks by peers, parents and others.
soup10 9y ago
Software isn't high-risk for women though. Diversity thirsty companies are desperate to hire technical women with even a shred of competency. It's just not a cool thing to do though, women don't want to be geeks. There is much more stigma against non-normie women than there is men. Nay for men, there is a heavy stigma against being normal and boring.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  The article pointed out that men are typically more interested in working with things than women, and women are typically more interested in working with people than men, and that this is highly correlative and can explain many of the differences we see in STEM, because most STEM fields have a lot of "things" going on. The article even generously suggests that many women are adept in BOTH math and verbal, but end up in more verbal jobs because men are typically NOT adept in both, so all the high-math low-verbal guys end up doing mathy jobs, and all the high-math high-verbal women do verbal/people jobs, because the mathy jobs are all the guys can do, while the women can do either (but take the non-mathy jobs due to market effects). Software is kinda mathy, I guess.
  - jerf 9y ago
    "Software is kinda mathy, I guess." Food for thought: Software has a bizarre curve if you look at it from a math/verbal skills perspective. For what could very well be the first 10-15 years of a software career, software is very math-y. Then, if you want to continue to grow, it takes a very verbal turn. If you want to continue to grow in software leadership and capabilities, you need to be able to express yourself, convince others, navigate politics, and figure out how to translate these issues into the code you structure and write. It isn't a sudden transition and some may transition earlier than 10 years, but it's an interesting way of looking at things. (Note I'm not talking "management", but continuing up an engineering path.) A lot of engineering looks like that. If software has any unique characteristics it is how far a single math-oriented programmer can get due to our unique abilities to pull down huge libraries with incredible functionality without having to work with anyone to do it. Again, just food for thought with no particular argument in sight here.

0xbear 9y ago

Men often do those stupid high paying things simply due to societal pressure. Barring being physically beautiful (which most men just aren't), for a male to be attractive as a mate it helps tremendously to not be poor. I don't see that changing in my lifetime no matter how much people gnash their teeth. There's the political stance, and then there are down to earth, real life considerations such as having a comfortable lifestyle for yourself an your children. Currently, and as far as the eye can see into the future, men are responsible for providing that, and they largely don't have a choice in the matter.

matt4077 9y ago

Maybe, maybe not. But even if, it's pretty clear that it were men who declared those things to be desirable. So it sounds a bit hollow when they now tell women "Oh, you don't want to do that anyway. It's too dangerous!"

noobermin 9y ago
Another thing to touch on even if you agree with the article, this is mostly talking about choices in career, not how well we pay such people in those careers.
meric 9y ago
If men find it desirable then is it automatically desirable to women?
- matt4077 9y ago
  Men write, direct, and play the lead in most movies. They write the news, journal articles, books, speeches, and laws. Then, they're more likely to hold those speeches, break those laws, and peer-review those journal articles. They hold more power deciding which job gets paid how much, which group of people gets a parade on July 4th (soldiers, not nurses), and which profession to glorify in the next credit card commercial. So, yes: our impression of a job's prestige is formed by culture, and that culture certainly was–and largely still is–dominated by men. And yes, of course that culture has the same impact on mens' and women's views. They are people, you know?
  - meric 9y ago
    According to your logic - A patriarchal culture has influenced what roles society find desirable, and therefore we ought to declare that those roles ARE in fact desirable, and the roles patriarchal culture has deemed less desirable , we declare they ARE in fact less desirable. How does that do anything to patriarchy except by reinforcing it? If those who are not in the roles patriarchy has defined as desirable, and are in the roles patriarchy has defined as less desirable, by doubling down on the patriarchy's preferences, they have rigged the game and declared themselves the losers. How can equality be achieved?

cropsieboss 9y ago

Testosterone does wonders. Logarithmic increase in quality of life, if any, by time wasted, yet men do it all the time. Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. These things influence and create inequalities. There's no discrimination in modern western world capable enough and encompassing to create that kind of impact. It might be that exactly discrimination (as is done in Iran) influences women to pursue STEM fields (and they do) but in the free world women go for their own desires.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
klipt 9y ago
> Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. I don't know the demographic breakdown, but they might even be in the majority?
- Shorel 9y ago
  Writing is not a quick improvisation activity. I think we can say there are plenty of successful male stand up comedians. It is more related to the issue.
- cropsieboss 9y ago
  > And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. And yet the more verbally competent the woman, more she's inclined to go away from stem. More women played the piano during the era when blues was in the making, yet it was mostly african-american men that pushed the genre, and women inventing no genres at all. There's obviously an inherent biological drive making men do stuff large scale, and women do stuff in their small circles.