4 ms·

Yeah, isn't it wonderful that when you factor out the discriminating variables, discrimination all but disappears? Choices made by women are influenced by the

Yeah, isn't it wonderful that when you factor out the discriminating variables, discrimination all but disappears? Choices made by women are influenced by the glass ceiling, society expectations that women will take care of children and the elderly, and the traditional fields where they're expected to work. The decision to measure the gender gap by comparing equal working hours and equal job positions is not innocent, is itself a politically motivated and comforting way to make rational people think "I told you, there's nothing to see here". You need to evaluate what causes women to have those less hours in less paying jobs, to see whether there's discrimination or not. Yet the salary wages discrimination reappears when you factor in hours dedicated to domestic work (the "second shift"), differences in salary between fields with equal risks (exposition to chemicals, hardship) where workers are majority women vs those with more men, or companies' (irrational) tendency to default in promoting male workers over females in similar situations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-pay-gap/?utm_term=.ff49a7159e26 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-...

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
If women choose to take less lucrative careers, make less lucrative family roles, and negotiate their salaries less than men, than that's fine with me. Personal freedom and equal opportunity will not always mean equality of outcome, especially in richer countries where women are free to live the life and career they want instead of the life and career they need to survive.
- TuringTest 9y ago
  For some definition of "choose", a significant part of the choice is imposed from external forces, not freely decided. You're saying that you're OK with people not offering the more lucrative jobs to some people just because they're women, paying less for comparable works that are traditionally done by women, and men expecting that their wives - mothers - female relatives will adopt caretaking roles in addition to their professional careers; i.e. you're OK with the societal factors that make a high percentage of women put up with less income.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    These aren't the 1950's anymore. The career choices of women _are_ freely decided nowadays. They have the ability to go to college, get a STEM degree, and become computer scientists if they want. Equal opportunity will not mean equal outcome when there are broad physical and psychological differences between the genders.
    - TuringTest 9y ago
      You're missing the part where those free decisions are made with less options from which to choose, because the people that would otherwise collaborate with women are restricting their options because of irrational factors like their gender alone (without physical and psychological differences having anything to do). You're missed to take prejudice into account.
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        I'm confused. Are you saying that women are kept from going into STEM careers? Because they have every incentive to do so currently, yet still choose other career paths.
TuringTest 9y ago
Can people downvoting explain what part of my post you disagree with? I'd like to have a rational debate and maybe learn if there's something wrong in my assumptions, rather than discussion being suppressed by knee-jerk reactions.
- foobardeveloper 9y ago
  I wonder how much of this is a result of female sexual selection pressure? It is seen in human beings and animals that statistically females mate sidewards or upwards in terms of providability. This in turn applies a pressure on males to compete for more and accumulate more resources, whereas females are not measured by males on their providability hence have no pressure on them to fight for the same resources. So, men will always compete more to get a greater share of the pie, this combined with capitalism explains whatever income gap remains after attaining equality of opportunity. Shouldn't the underlying metrics of mating preferences also be taken into account before putting it all under male sexism and patriarch umbrella ?
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    You would first need to achieve equality of opportunity, which is not the current starting point. You can't ignore that we come from a culture with a tradition of 60+ centuries of male-favouring sexism and patriarchy, which has not vanished merely because of a theoretical solution to it (legal equality) has been formally declared. There's a lot of social inertia introducing biases in the opportunities available to women. You can take into account mating preferences all you want, but how do those affect choices of job positions other than very indirectly? On the other hand, irrational prejudices in recruitment and career advancement processes have a direct impact on the quality of job positions that women have access to, and therefore in their opportunities. Unless you're downright denying that such prejudices exist, this cultural factor would have a larger influence than biology.
    - belorn 9y ago
      When two people make two opposing theories it is often best to judge each based on their ability to predict, how it match current data sets, and how well it works out in experimental studies. The incentive models, which take data from both biology and culture, claims a prediction that as you measure equality of opportunity and compare nations it will correlate to inverse gender segregation in the work force. The more equality of opportunity the higher gender segregation will be, caused by incentives that is derived from gender roles, sexual strategies, and sexual dimorphism. The prejudices model make the opposite prediction. It claims that when measuring the equality of opportunity the higher it is the lower the gender segregation should be. In order to resolve the question one measure equality of opportunity and gender segregation, creating data. This create a scientific valid argument in favor of one model over the other. That is one aspect of the theory. An other aspect would be to measure difference in prejudices between different professions. If the model is correct then it should be able to predict based on such measure which professions are gender segregated and which are not, and inversely predict the level of prejudices exist per profession given any country. The incentive model claim that incentives are a large influence and such you could not make a predictive model based on measuring prejudices. The incentive model also predict that nation where the incentives are different (based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs), you should see a correlated change in gender segregation. Incentives such as reproduction is listed last among the physiological need, so nations where water and food is scare for women should result in higher incentive to seek professions where those are easier achievable. The prejudices model would argue that there is no such correlation. This is of course just a small sample in order to scientifically evaluate the two different theories. There is also matching philosophy theories (their names escape me right now), arguing in different direction to explain the data.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

If women choose to take less lucrative careers, make less lucrative family roles, and negotiate their salaries less than men, than that's fine with me. Personal freedom and equal opportunity will not always mean equality of outcome, especially in richer countries where women are free to live the life and career they want instead of the life and career they need to survive.

TuringTest 9y ago
For some definition of "choose", a significant part of the choice is imposed from external forces, not freely decided. You're saying that you're OK with people not offering the more lucrative jobs to some people just because they're women, paying less for comparable works that are traditionally done by women, and men expecting that their wives - mothers - female relatives will adopt caretaking roles in addition to their professional careers; i.e. you're OK with the societal factors that make a high percentage of women put up with less income.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  These aren't the 1950's anymore. The career choices of women _are_ freely decided nowadays. They have the ability to go to college, get a STEM degree, and become computer scientists if they want. Equal opportunity will not mean equal outcome when there are broad physical and psychological differences between the genders.
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    You're missing the part where those free decisions are made with less options from which to choose, because the people that would otherwise collaborate with women are restricting their options because of irrational factors like their gender alone (without physical and psychological differences having anything to do). You're missed to take prejudice into account.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      I'm confused. Are you saying that women are kept from going into STEM careers? Because they have every incentive to do so currently, yet still choose other career paths.

TuringTest 9y ago

Can people downvoting explain what part of my post you disagree with? I'd like to have a rational debate and maybe learn if there's something wrong in my assumptions, rather than discussion being suppressed by knee-jerk reactions.

foobardeveloper 9y ago
I wonder how much of this is a result of female sexual selection pressure? It is seen in human beings and animals that statistically females mate sidewards or upwards in terms of providability. This in turn applies a pressure on males to compete for more and accumulate more resources, whereas females are not measured by males on their providability hence have no pressure on them to fight for the same resources. So, men will always compete more to get a greater share of the pie, this combined with capitalism explains whatever income gap remains after attaining equality of opportunity. Shouldn't the underlying metrics of mating preferences also be taken into account before putting it all under male sexism and patriarch umbrella ?
- TuringTest 9y ago
  You would first need to achieve equality of opportunity, which is not the current starting point. You can't ignore that we come from a culture with a tradition of 60+ centuries of male-favouring sexism and patriarchy, which has not vanished merely because of a theoretical solution to it (legal equality) has been formally declared. There's a lot of social inertia introducing biases in the opportunities available to women. You can take into account mating preferences all you want, but how do those affect choices of job positions other than very indirectly? On the other hand, irrational prejudices in recruitment and career advancement processes have a direct impact on the quality of job positions that women have access to, and therefore in their opportunities. Unless you're downright denying that such prejudices exist, this cultural factor would have a larger influence than biology.
  - belorn 9y ago
    When two people make two opposing theories it is often best to judge each based on their ability to predict, how it match current data sets, and how well it works out in experimental studies. The incentive models, which take data from both biology and culture, claims a prediction that as you measure equality of opportunity and compare nations it will correlate to inverse gender segregation in the work force. The more equality of opportunity the higher gender segregation will be, caused by incentives that is derived from gender roles, sexual strategies, and sexual dimorphism. The prejudices model make the opposite prediction. It claims that when measuring the equality of opportunity the higher it is the lower the gender segregation should be. In order to resolve the question one measure equality of opportunity and gender segregation, creating data. This create a scientific valid argument in favor of one model over the other. That is one aspect of the theory. An other aspect would be to measure difference in prejudices between different professions. If the model is correct then it should be able to predict based on such measure which professions are gender segregated and which are not, and inversely predict the level of prejudices exist per profession given any country. The incentive model claim that incentives are a large influence and such you could not make a predictive model based on measuring prejudices. The incentive model also predict that nation where the incentives are different (based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs), you should see a correlated change in gender segregation. Incentives such as reproduction is listed last among the physiological need, so nations where water and food is scare for women should result in higher incentive to seek professions where those are easier achievable. The prejudices model would argue that there is no such correlation. This is of course just a small sample in order to scientifically evaluate the two different theories. There is also matching philosophy theories (their names escape me right now), arguing in different direction to explain the data.