5 ms·

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many peop

by 09bjb 9y ago

Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...

drb91 9y ago
Is this equity vs equality, or are you making a deeper argument?
- 09bjb 9y ago
  Equality. If the usual parlance were "Gender Inequity" then we'd be talking about that instead. But that's used so little that googling "Gender Inequity" actually redirects automatically to "Gender Inequality", so the former can't be very much in use.
  - drb91 9y ago
    I suggest using “verbatim” on google when google redirects you. Inequity and inequality are two different, precisely defined words. More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.
BadassFractal 9y ago
Or, try saying that at Google.
collyw 9y ago
...or in a Google memo.
dsnuh 9y ago
>we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. Exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.
Xylakant 9y ago
There’s to the best of my knowledge no study that shows that the biological gender matters for the choice of profession. The issue that often muddies things is that girls have been (and still are) brought up with the notion that some professions are not suited to them. This is especially pronounced in IT, where for a long time at the start of the profession, women had the majority of employed people and things started to switch over when home computers were marketed as a boys toy. There are strong indicators that the biological gender contributes much less than what the society expects in terms of gender roles.
- luddaite 9y ago
  I agree. It seems to be an oversimplification to say that, given the choice, women choose non-STEM jobs. There is centuries of inertia behind the expectations of males and females with regards to career choices. Over time, it is likely that these gender-based expectations will erode and only then will we see if there is true gender-dependent preference when it comes to career choices.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  And, to prove this point, the gender ratio is much better in STEM fields other than computing and engineering. Biology, for example, has more women graduating nowadays than men, despite the fact that a lot of biology work is actually CS (and more intellectually challenging than most software engineering jobs at tech companies, which to a large extent involve creating CRUD apps).
  - makomk 9y ago
    This is a great argument against the idea that women don't go into those fields because they're somehow incapable of this kind of technical work, but I don't think it's so useful against the claim that they don't because they're just not interested in those fields.
  - patall 9y ago
    From working in that field, I can tell you this is not true. There are lots of women in biology but in computational biology its more like one in three (and often much less). In the algorithmic and tool developmental parts even more so. It may be more equal than in pure CS but still the imbalance is huge.
taoistextremist 9y ago
I won't disagree with you, except maybe to point out I don't think it's necessarily just biological, but psychological/physiological gender as well that causes the difference. There is some evidence, though last I checked inconclusive, that gender identity has a fairly strong relation with certain brain structures. I don't think it would be surprising that these differences also cause people to gravitate towards certain interests. Not to say it's always 100% going to make them go towards those interests, before anybody accuses me of making that claim, but it's fairly apparent as far as I'm concerned that even given equal opportunity, people of different genders aren't attracted to the same fields in equal proportion. Gender in multiple senses determines how the brain develops, so it would be surprising if these fields were demographically equal. I think making an equal opportunity approach is definitely the right thing, but equal outcome I think ends up holding people back and forcing others into fields they won't enjoy. It's working not on the idea of cultivating individual people's passions but forcing them to fit some ideal. In any case, though, I don't think any of this means that women should be disproportionately affected by having a child. I'm willing to buy the argument that it's societally caused due to expectations and men taking less time off than women for their children.
- 09bjb 9y ago
  Societal expectations do play a big role, and it's an open questioned as to whether that's a Natural Rule or whether we just haven't tried other cultural configurations enough yet. And you're right, psychological gender probably does play a large role in the effects. It's helpful to note here that biological gender, psychological gender, and gender expression do not vary independently though.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    Lianna K does the best job, insofar as I saw, of making the societal expectations argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA
- Cknight70 9y ago
  I feel like you could simplify your point to just "different personalities tend to gravitate to different interests and careers." No need to even mention gender.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
leilacc 9y ago
I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? I am immensely grateful to my parents, who told me that I could do anything I wanted and put me in math and science camps as a kid. I am not surprised that little girls (and boys) who are not given that kind of support don't go into "competitive" "STEM" careers.
- leadingthenet 9y ago
  > I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. I always see people gasp when they hear things like this, but can you really disprove it? I'm genuinely curious.
- mempko 9y ago
  Thank you. I'm tired of having these discussions and would love to live in a world where men and women are just assumed equal and we don't have to discuss these things. We no longer discuss if people of different color are equal right? It's amazing what shit women have to deal with. Most people in the USA don't realize this but women only became full citizens only as recently as the 1970s when they were finally allowed to be on juries. That's less then 50 years ago.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. A woman should be considered equal to a man. All sentients should be considered equal, in a political and moral framework. However, this should not be conflated with women and men being exactly equal in every conceivable way. If there was ever false equivalence then it is exactly this kind of sloppy thinking. Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? Actually, the extent to which biological factors vs. societal factors are at play is something we're still working out. "Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153857 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... "The Gender Equality Paradox" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 Google & YouTube execs claim that Google's hiring rate for women is the same as the Computer Science graduation rate for women, then go on to espouse James Damore's suggestions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc
mtgx 9y ago
I think this is one of those things that "sounds true" but if we analyzed more deeply and for longer time-spans, we'd find out it's at best half-true, while the other half involves many other factors. Not disagreeing that gender doesn't play a role in making such choices, but I think society, education, and culture play at least as big of a role. People want to be "seen" a certain way among their peers. A man doesn't want to be "seen" as a nurse, for instance... This is not because of gender. It's a cultural/societal issue that a nurse job is not an "appropriate" job for a man. So the man "chooses" whatever is "more appropriate" for a man in his society to obtain. But was it really a true choice?
jaaron 9y ago
I'm not convinced that there still is that full sense of "freedom to choose" that you suggest. In your argument that genders naturally tend towards certain careers, how certain are you that you've eliminated systemic bias that may still cause inequalities in occupation and opportunity? For example, I suspect a similar argument could have been made a few decades ago about why women tend to be nurses not doctors, or why women tend to teach only in elementary but not university settings. For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender." To really challenge yourself, take your comment and swap out gender for race. Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized. Whites tend to choose professional careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and Mexicans tend to choose to become gardeners and low wage workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose." If that feels uncomfortable, then perhaps your premise needs reevaluated.
- asabjorn 9y ago
  What is it about Scandinavia that you believe does not give equal opportunity and choice? Norway’s current and many of the previous prime ministers were female, there is generous social support for working parents, most women get a college degree, etc Women are still free to choose the kind of job they desire, and they do so. It is incredibly undesirable to force women and men to choose different jobs because of an ideological desire for equal outcome. There is no way to achieve that without tyranny and without hurting equal opportunity. With regards to high value jobs that women have chosen due to equal opportunity you have to look no further than doctors. It used to be a mainly male occupation in the western world, and it’s now dominated by women.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender." But for the opposite position to make sense, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the fewer gender differences would show. Studies show that the opposite is the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8
desmonds22 9y ago
Oh here come the SJWs to tell you how wrong you are for even daring to suggest men and women are different or even worse - men and women are merely a social construct and there's really no such thing as gender or abilities there's just systems of power preserving historic gender roles because something something western white male something something evil. Just a hunch... Edit: Apparently this comment triggered some snowflake and got flagged. The mean man on the internet said something I disagreed with! :'(
thomasahle 9y ago
> we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. The issue is how you can really measure 'equality of opportunity'. There are so many ways hidden structures can make it seem like there is equality of opportunity without it being there in practice. With 'equality of outcome' it is at least easy to track how we are doing, though it could be leading us away from the goal. In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot. Weirdly enough, a Google and YouTube exec have made basically the same proposal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc
mempko 9y ago
Go back to the 1800s please, the 21st century does not need you here.
jhomedall 9y ago
A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. Careful with your wording here. I'm assuming you meant 'is not the same as'; however 'does not equal' could easily be interpreted as 'not the equal of', which has an entirely different meaning than you intended.
- Erik816 9y ago
  Careful with your reading here. As written it is perfectly clear.
  - jklinger410 9y ago
    Reading comprehension goes down as political divisiveness goes up. Can't count the number of times I have seen people willingly (hopefully) misinterpret something in order to create drama. That and "always assume negative intent" fallacy makes for an impossible task for anyone talking about certain subjects. Bonus round, add "always defer to identity."
  - BadassFractal 9y ago
    It's the Cathy Newman school of conversation.
- 09bjb 9y ago
  A man is not the same as a woman, and a man is not the equal of a woman. My only argument is that the linguistic categories of "Woman" and "Man" are useful (in everyday communication, in science and biology, etc.) and I will be slow to give them up. To pretend that no categories exist is to invite chaos, as categories are useful. ...metaphysically speaking, all categories distort, but good luck navigating the world with your eyes that wide open.
Leader2light 9y ago
I hope you don't work at Google!
lumberjack 9y ago
I think you will find that the people behind these things are not for equality of choice but for equality of outcome. In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.
- vilmosi 9y ago
  If you truly have equality of choice in any system you will get equality of outcome. There's obviously outside factors at play. "Those people" you mention say it's cultural, other people like you say it's... I don't know honestly...
mc32 9y ago
Assuming freedom to choose, I would say policies should still try to steer choice to address social needs. For example, let's say there is an imbalance in F:M physician ratio such that one class of people are being underserved. Or the market isn't producing enough physicists, for example, then step in and add artificial incentives to attract a different population. Note, I'm not insisting on equality of outcomes, because to me that's really not the general objective, given a population can have individuals predisposed for different things. For example, in farming communities we don't expect to see the same interest in urban planning as in cities.
hk__2 9y ago
> Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Also, since 1990 the ratio of part-time workers lowered among women and went higher among men, so it’s false to claim that women choose more part-time than men now that they have equal "choice". [2] > Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't Women "choosing" to become doctors and nurses while men choose STEM careers has nothing to do with biology. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and healthcare is no exception. [3] [4] -- [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775 [2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter/2010/cedaw_rapporten/annex_3.pdf https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter... [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235590/ [4]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12899913 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12899913
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Apparently graduation rates in medical fields favor women in some parts of the industrialized world. "Women taking over as medical specialists" http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialists/ http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialist...
  - hk__2 9y ago
    Thanks! Unfortunately that’s not exactly the same because the 1997 study talked about doctors while this link talks about students. It does however show a significant increase because in the 1990s the ratio of women in healthcare students was 50%. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27681/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27681/
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
I could accept this argument, but I have not seen compelling evidence that there is equality of opportunity. Do women with children really have the same opportunity to prioritize their career that men with children do? I doubt it. Women face much more social ostracism than men do if they choose to spend prioritize time at work over time with their children. Men also face much more social ostracism if they choose take on the traditionally female role of staying home with their children as opposed to engaging in paying work. Even if women do decide to prioritize work over child-rearing in spite of the social pressure, employers will often assume that their attention will be divided by child-rearing.
vilmosi 9y ago
The only problem is that you don't see this outside western countries. Countries with much stricter gender roles have much higher enrolment in STEM for instance. It's obviously not biological, it's cultural.

by 09bjb 9y ago

drb91 9y ago

Is this equity vs equality, or are you making a deeper argument?

09bjb 9y ago
Equality. If the usual parlance were "Gender Inequity" then we'd be talking about that instead. But that's used so little that googling "Gender Inequity" actually redirects automatically to "Gender Inequality", so the former can't be very much in use.
- drb91 9y ago
  I suggest using “verbatim” on google when google redirects you. Inequity and inequality are two different, precisely defined words. More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.

BadassFractal 9y ago

Or, try saying that at Google.

collyw 9y ago

...or in a Google memo.

dsnuh 9y ago

>we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. Exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.

Xylakant 9y ago

There’s to the best of my knowledge no study that shows that the biological gender matters for the choice of profession. The issue that often muddies things is that girls have been (and still are) brought up with the notion that some professions are not suited to them. This is especially pronounced in IT, where for a long time at the start of the profession, women had the majority of employed people and things started to switch over when home computers were marketed as a boys toy. There are strong indicators that the biological gender contributes much less than what the society expects in terms of gender roles.

luddaite 9y ago
I agree. It seems to be an oversimplification to say that, given the choice, women choose non-STEM jobs. There is centuries of inertia behind the expectations of males and females with regards to career choices. Over time, it is likely that these gender-based expectations will erode and only then will we see if there is true gender-dependent preference when it comes to career choices.
pcwalton 9y ago
And, to prove this point, the gender ratio is much better in STEM fields other than computing and engineering. Biology, for example, has more women graduating nowadays than men, despite the fact that a lot of biology work is actually CS (and more intellectually challenging than most software engineering jobs at tech companies, which to a large extent involve creating CRUD apps).
- makomk 9y ago
  This is a great argument against the idea that women don't go into those fields because they're somehow incapable of this kind of technical work, but I don't think it's so useful against the claim that they don't because they're just not interested in those fields.
- patall 9y ago
  From working in that field, I can tell you this is not true. There are lots of women in biology but in computational biology its more like one in three (and often much less). In the algorithmic and tool developmental parts even more so. It may be more equal than in pure CS but still the imbalance is huge.

taoistextremist 9y ago

I won't disagree with you, except maybe to point out I don't think it's necessarily just biological, but psychological/physiological gender as well that causes the difference. There is some evidence, though last I checked inconclusive, that gender identity has a fairly strong relation with certain brain structures. I don't think it would be surprising that these differences also cause people to gravitate towards certain interests. Not to say it's always 100% going to make them go towards those interests, before anybody accuses me of making that claim, but it's fairly apparent as far as I'm concerned that even given equal opportunity, people of different genders aren't attracted to the same fields in equal proportion. Gender in multiple senses determines how the brain develops, so it would be surprising if these fields were demographically equal. I think making an equal opportunity approach is definitely the right thing, but equal outcome I think ends up holding people back and forcing others into fields they won't enjoy. It's working not on the idea of cultivating individual people's passions but forcing them to fit some ideal. In any case, though, I don't think any of this means that women should be disproportionately affected by having a child. I'm willing to buy the argument that it's societally caused due to expectations and men taking less time off than women for their children.

09bjb 9y ago
Societal expectations do play a big role, and it's an open questioned as to whether that's a Natural Rule or whether we just haven't tried other cultural configurations enough yet. And you're right, psychological gender probably does play a large role in the effects. It's helpful to note here that biological gender, psychological gender, and gender expression do not vary independently though.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  Lianna K does the best job, insofar as I saw, of making the societal expectations argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA
Cknight70 9y ago
I feel like you could simplify your point to just "different personalities tend to gravitate to different interests and careers." No need to even mention gender.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

leilacc 9y ago

I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? I am immensely grateful to my parents, who told me that I could do anything I wanted and put me in math and science camps as a kid. I am not surprised that little girls (and boys) who are not given that kind of support don't go into "competitive" "STEM" careers.

leadingthenet 9y ago
> I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. I always see people gasp when they hear things like this, but can you really disprove it? I'm genuinely curious.
mempko 9y ago
Thank you. I'm tired of having these discussions and would love to live in a world where men and women are just assumed equal and we don't have to discuss these things. We no longer discuss if people of different color are equal right? It's amazing what shit women have to deal with. Most people in the USA don't realize this but women only became full citizens only as recently as the 1970s when they were finally allowed to be on juries. That's less then 50 years ago.
stcredzero 9y ago
I can't believe that in 2018, people are still upvoting posts with lines like "A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.". What the fuck. A woman should be considered equal to a man. All sentients should be considered equal, in a political and moral framework. However, this should not be conflated with women and men being exactly equal in every conceivable way. If there was ever false equivalence then it is exactly this kind of sloppy thinking. Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? Actually, the extent to which biological factors vs. societal factors are at play is something we're still working out. "Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153857 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... "The Gender Equality Paradox" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 Google & YouTube execs claim that Google's hiring rate for women is the same as the Computer Science graduation rate for women, then go on to espouse James Damore's suggestions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

mtgx 9y ago

I think this is one of those things that "sounds true" but if we analyzed more deeply and for longer time-spans, we'd find out it's at best half-true, while the other half involves many other factors. Not disagreeing that gender doesn't play a role in making such choices, but I think society, education, and culture play at least as big of a role. People want to be "seen" a certain way among their peers. A man doesn't want to be "seen" as a nurse, for instance... This is not because of gender. It's a cultural/societal issue that a nurse job is not an "appropriate" job for a man. So the man "chooses" whatever is "more appropriate" for a man in his society to obtain. But was it really a true choice?

jaaron 9y ago

I'm not convinced that there still is that full sense of "freedom to choose" that you suggest. In your argument that genders naturally tend towards certain careers, how certain are you that you've eliminated systemic bias that may still cause inequalities in occupation and opportunity? For example, I suspect a similar argument could have been made a few decades ago about why women tend to be nurses not doctors, or why women tend to teach only in elementary but not university settings. For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender." To really challenge yourself, take your comment and swap out gender for race. Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized. Whites tend to choose professional careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and Mexicans tend to choose to become gardeners and low wage workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose." If that feels uncomfortable, then perhaps your premise needs reevaluated.

asabjorn 9y ago
What is it about Scandinavia that you believe does not give equal opportunity and choice? Norway’s current and many of the previous prime ministers were female, there is generous social support for working parents, most women get a college degree, etc Women are still free to choose the kind of job they desire, and they do so. It is incredibly undesirable to force women and men to choose different jobs because of an ideological desire for equal outcome. There is no way to achieve that without tyranny and without hurting equal opportunity. With regards to high value jobs that women have chosen due to equal opportunity you have to look no further than doctors. It used to be a mainly male occupation in the western world, and it’s now dominated by women.
stcredzero 9y ago
For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender." But for the opposite position to make sense, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the fewer gender differences would show. Studies show that the opposite is the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8

desmonds22 9y ago

Oh here come the SJWs to tell you how wrong you are for even daring to suggest men and women are different or even worse - men and women are merely a social construct and there's really no such thing as gender or abilities there's just systems of power preserving historic gender roles because something something western white male something something evil. Just a hunch... Edit: Apparently this comment triggered some snowflake and got flagged. The mean man on the internet said something I disagreed with! :'(

thomasahle 9y ago

> we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that equality of outcome is expected when there is perfect equality of opportunity. The issue is how you can really measure 'equality of opportunity'. There are so many ways hidden structures can make it seem like there is equality of opportunity without it being there in practice. With 'equality of outcome' it is at least easy to track how we are doing, though it could be leading us away from the goal. In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot.

stcredzero 9y ago
In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot. Weirdly enough, a Google and YouTube exec have made basically the same proposal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

mempko 9y ago

Go back to the 1800s please, the 21st century does not need you here.

jhomedall 9y ago

A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. Careful with your wording here. I'm assuming you meant 'is not the same as'; however 'does not equal' could easily be interpreted as 'not the equal of', which has an entirely different meaning than you intended.

Erik816 9y ago
Careful with your reading here. As written it is perfectly clear.
- jklinger410 9y ago
  Reading comprehension goes down as political divisiveness goes up. Can't count the number of times I have seen people willingly (hopefully) misinterpret something in order to create drama. That and "always assume negative intent" fallacy makes for an impossible task for anyone talking about certain subjects. Bonus round, add "always defer to identity."
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  It's the Cathy Newman school of conversation.
09bjb 9y ago
A man is not the same as a woman, and a man is not the equal of a woman. My only argument is that the linguistic categories of "Woman" and "Man" are useful (in everyday communication, in science and biology, etc.) and I will be slow to give them up. To pretend that no categories exist is to invite chaos, as categories are useful. ...metaphysically speaking, all categories distort, but good luck navigating the world with your eyes that wide open.

Leader2light 9y ago

I hope you don't work at Google!

lumberjack 9y ago

I think you will find that the people behind these things are not for equality of choice but for equality of outcome. In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.

vilmosi 9y ago
If you truly have equality of choice in any system you will get equality of outcome. There's obviously outside factors at play. "Those people" you mention say it's cultural, other people like you say it's... I don't know honestly...

mc32 9y ago

Assuming freedom to choose, I would say policies should still try to steer choice to address social needs. For example, let's say there is an imbalance in F:M physician ratio such that one class of people are being underserved. Or the market isn't producing enough physicists, for example, then step in and add artificial incentives to attract a different population. Note, I'm not insisting on equality of outcomes, because to me that's really not the general objective, given a population can have individuals predisposed for different things. For example, in farming communities we don't expect to see the same interest in urban planning as in cities.

hk__2 9y ago

> Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose. Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Also, since 1990 the ratio of part-time workers lowered among women and went higher among men, so it’s false to claim that women choose more part-time than men now that they have equal "choice". [2] > Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't Women "choosing" to become doctors and nurses while men choose STEM careers has nothing to do with biology. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and healthcare is no exception. [3] [4] -- [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775 [2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter/2010/cedaw_rapporten/annex_3.pdf https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter... [3]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4235590/ [4]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12899913 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12899913

stcredzero 9y ago
Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Apparently graduation rates in medical fields favor women in some parts of the industrialized world. "Women taking over as medical specialists" http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialists/ http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialist...
- hk__2 9y ago
  Thanks! Unfortunately that’s not exactly the same because the 1997 study talked about doctors while this link talks about students. It does however show a significant increase because in the 1990s the ratio of women in healthcare students was 50%. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27681/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27681/

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

I could accept this argument, but I have not seen compelling evidence that there is equality of opportunity. Do women with children really have the same opportunity to prioritize their career that men with children do? I doubt it. Women face much more social ostracism than men do if they choose to spend prioritize time at work over time with their children. Men also face much more social ostracism if they choose take on the traditionally female role of staying home with their children as opposed to engaging in paying work. Even if women do decide to prioritize work over child-rearing in spite of the social pressure, employers will often assume that their attention will be divided by child-rearing.

vilmosi 9y ago

The only problem is that you don't see this outside western countries. Countries with much stricter gender roles have much higher enrolment in STEM for instance. It's obviously not biological, it's cultural.