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> I think all of those who concluded that he was being a misogynist have no leg to stand on. I don't necessarily believe he's a misogynist, but I do think he's

> I think all of those who concluded that he was being a misogynist have no leg to stand on. I don't necessarily believe he's a misogynist, but I do think he's in denial about the impact of sexism on gender gaps. To quote his letter: "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism." The fact is that we don't have to assume. It's fairly unlikely such gaps are entirely the result of sexism. But to suggest that sexism does not play a role in gender gaps is absurd. Edit: To respond to similar points in the replies, yes, I'm quite aware that you can read this sentence in the strictest logical sense as saying a gender gap, in and of itself, does not imply sexism. This is obviously and trivially true. But studies on evaluatory bias tell us that biases, such as and including sexism, are in fact the norm. It is so fantastically unlikely that they are not present among Google's interviewers / hiring committees that the sentence, taken in the strictest sense, is making an irrelevant point. Rhetorically, however, it serves the effect of suggesting we ought to consider it plausible that perhaps sexism isn't at all at play in Google's hiring. Which, again, is absurd.[1] It would be far more likely that Google's hiring tilts sexist against men than sexism not being a factor at all. [1] Note that this has nothing to do with Google specifically, but rather with humans generally.

Banthum 9y ago
Read your quote. It just means that just because there is a gender gap, we cannot simply assumed there must be sexism. It is not a statement about a specific case, but a general point on rationality. And it is undeniably true in the general sense. This means that if someone wants to convince us there is sexism in a specific case, they must demonstrate that specifically, not just note a lopsided gender ratio and assume the mechanism.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  While we're on the rational point, I personally take inspiration from Bayes Law---A gender gap is weak evidence for sexist practices. All else equal, sexists worlds are more likely to produce gender gaps than non-sexist ones. To me, part of the trickiness of the entire "equality" discussions is that we don't have clear, "correct" distributions of variable X for demographic Y. Pure egalitarianism is iffy, because given any distribution, we can manufacture a demographic that is "underrepresented", so it's not at all clear that flat equality across "reasonable" demographics is even logically sound. I kind of piggy backed off your comment there and ran in a bit of a different direction. Hope you don't mind.
haberman 9y ago
He is saying that a gender gap, by itself, is not evidence of sexism. A gender gap alone doesn't prove sexism. It doesn't mean that there is no sexism. Sexism can be shown in other ways. But he is pushing back against a prevalent mindset that society is a priori sexist until we have equal representation everywhere.
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belorn 9y ago
> But to suggest that sexism does not play a role in gender gaps is absurd. I have written before that I would love to see statistical data that can predict gender segregated as a factor based on the number of reported cases of sexism. What I have seen is that the causes of segregation differ massively based on if it is male or female dominated. If it is male dominated profession, sexism is always and early included as the suggested cause. If its female dominated it is rarely included. There seems to be a strong sex difference in studies studying gender segregation, so the thing I find most interesting is the few areas where they do converge, which is: a) Work culture, which tend to incorporate gender identity in seemingly similar way in both heavily male dominated and female dominated professions. b) Social pressure, especially for students, by peers of the same gender and age. What I would like to see is meta studies on gender segregation that can incorporate a large number of different professions and make a unified theory to explain why only 12.5% (data from Sweden) of the population work in a profession which is not gender segregated (defined as having less than 60% of a single gender).

Banthum 9y ago

Read your quote. It just means that just because there is a gender gap, we cannot simply assumed there must be sexism. It is not a statement about a specific case, but a general point on rationality. And it is undeniably true in the general sense. This means that if someone wants to convince us there is sexism in a specific case, they must demonstrate that specifically, not just note a lopsided gender ratio and assume the mechanism.

xelxebar 9y ago
While we're on the rational point, I personally take inspiration from Bayes Law---A gender gap is weak evidence for sexist practices. All else equal, sexists worlds are more likely to produce gender gaps than non-sexist ones. To me, part of the trickiness of the entire "equality" discussions is that we don't have clear, "correct" distributions of variable X for demographic Y. Pure egalitarianism is iffy, because given any distribution, we can manufacture a demographic that is "underrepresented", so it's not at all clear that flat equality across "reasonable" demographics is even logically sound. I kind of piggy backed off your comment there and ran in a bit of a different direction. Hope you don't mind.

haberman 9y ago

He is saying that a gender gap, by itself, is not evidence of sexism. A gender gap alone doesn't prove sexism. It doesn't mean that there is no sexism. Sexism can be shown in other ways. But he is pushing back against a prevalent mindset that society is a priori sexist until we have equal representation everywhere.

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belorn 9y ago

> But to suggest that sexism does not play a role in gender gaps is absurd. I have written before that I would love to see statistical data that can predict gender segregated as a factor based on the number of reported cases of sexism. What I have seen is that the causes of segregation differ massively based on if it is male or female dominated. If it is male dominated profession, sexism is always and early included as the suggested cause. If its female dominated it is rarely included. There seems to be a strong sex difference in studies studying gender segregation, so the thing I find most interesting is the few areas where they do converge, which is: a) Work culture, which tend to incorporate gender identity in seemingly similar way in both heavily male dominated and female dominated professions. b) Social pressure, especially for students, by peers of the same gender and age. What I would like to see is meta studies on gender segregation that can incorporate a large number of different professions and make a unified theory to explain why only 12.5% (data from Sweden) of the population work in a profession which is not gender segregated (defined as having less than 60% of a single gender).