7 ms·

For the same reason why there are more female kindergarten teachers than male ones. Equal distribution of gender across jobs is nonsense, equal opportunity is w

For the same reason why there are more female kindergarten teachers than male ones. Equal distribution of gender across jobs is nonsense, equal opportunity is welcome though (see Scandinavian countries)

rayiner 9y ago
Do you really mean “equality of opportunity?” It seems self-evident that the term requires substitutability: someone would have the same experience going into STEM if you switched around the gender. My recollection of engineering school was that the experience was not substitutable. The five women in a class did not have the same experience as the 45 men. For example, as a man I never tried to make a professional connection with someone, but then realized that they wanted a date instead.
- NiklasMort 9y ago
  Maybe my English is off there, I meant that there should be no restrictions based on gender for jobs/studies etc. I think you get my point. Everybody should have the same options to choose from
  - rayiner 9y ago
    “We won’t formally discriminate against you” is a pretty watered definition of “equality.” It’s like saying everyone has an equal chance to win the race” because the rules allow anyone to win. But there could still be rocks in one of the lanes and not in the others. For a race, nobody would say each racer had an equal chance unless there was substitutability: your race experience is the same no matter which lane you start in.
    - NiklasMort 9y ago
      But that is not only about gender, discrimination is everywhere...male as female suffer from that
      - rayiner 9y ago
        Its not evenly distributed by field. I wouldn’t say men have “equality of opportunity” when it comes to say being kindergarten teachers.
    - deltron3030 9y ago
      Equal lanes is impossible to accomplish, the're just too many variables. What makes more sense is focusing on the best possible path forward for everybody, or creating the opportunity for the racer to be as fast as he can be, independent of the speed of other racers.
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      > “We won’t formally discriminate against you” is a pretty watered definition of “equality.” Disagree. > It’s like saying everyone has an equal chance to win the race” because the rules allow anyone to win That's pretty much the definition of equal chance. > But there could still be rocks in one of the lanes and not in the others. Could. Maybe. But, staying in the metaphor: it's both exceedingly rare for there to be rocks in one lane and not another, and exceedingly obvious if it is the case. And nobody assumes that there are rocks because there are clear winners and losers in races. Everybody assumes that the person who won was fastest. But for some bizarre reason in other fields, we not just assume that there being winners means there must be rocks, we absolutely insist that that is the only possible explanation and vilify people who say "well, maybe the person who won was fastest?"
      - rayiner 9y ago
        > Could. Maybe. But, staying in the metaphor: it's both exceedingly rare for there to be rocks in one lane and not another, and exceedingly obvious if it is the case. It is obvious if you’re not willfully blind. How many women have to tell stories of, e.g., trying to make professional connections only to have a coworker make a sexual advance on them instead before you’ll believe that there’s rocks in their lane?
        mpweiher 9y ago
        Well yes, you are being willfully blind (a) Anecdotes != data (b) You cannot assume that a man in the same situation would have made a successful professional connection (c) In fact, the woman, if she isn't entirely daft, will have additional levers to pull (d) You might have noticed "staying in the metaphor"
        psyc 9y ago
        (a) Ah yes, the conversation-stopping killer of thousands upon thousands of Hacker News threads. Can I get a published study on whether this is a good cultural norm for a discussion forum?
- titanix2 9y ago
  The experiences or feelings of individuals are not what define equal opportunity. Are the entrance examinations (if any) the same for everyone? Are the tuition fees (if any) the same for both genders? Are the curriculum and facility access the same for everyone? If yes to all theses questions, equal opportunity is already implemented.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The fact that feelings are subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t draw objective conclusions about things that affect peoples’ feelings. For example, kids who feel ostracized won’t do well in school. By your definition, we could have schools where, say, left handed people are systematically ostracized, but those kids would still have equality of opportunity. You’re just arbitrarily defining “equality” based on the degree of equal treatment that you think society should have to provide to people. But your definition defies “equality” as a mathematical concept.
    - roenxi 9y ago
      Equality as a mathematical construct doesn't have a place in this debate; there are too many variables affecting lifestyle that are geographic, temporal, genetic and random. You'd need more than a personsworth of resources to achieve that sort of equality for every person. Feelings and experiences are very real and can be evidence of a problem. However to act on them we need some sort of evidence that is present in the observable world, otherwise we are setting people up to give up quickly and report they feel bad rather than trying to solve their own problems. It is a tightrope to walk, but feelings need to be treated simultaneously with respect and cynicism. Biasing the world in favour of strongly emotioned people at the expense of stoics is not an improvement.
    - titanix2 9y ago
      It's funny that you chose the ostracized example as I was bullied myself in high school. This did not prevent me for succeeding way more than any of them at university, nor make me hate a very general and large group of people. The dice were piped way before by the both the cultural capital of my parents and by the genetics lottery. If you want a total outcome of equality and behavior of people, you need bio-engineering to lower differences from the start. Maybe even clones, so you are sure people are 100% equal at the starting line. This is of course not the society I want. And if you put the reasoning even further, you need to actually suppress sexes as well. They are at the source of the problem after all. And this is technically feasible with assisted reproductive technics. Of course, the unneeded sex is the male one, you just keep one or two at hand. Then it will be 100% female everywhere at every jobs, isn't that wonderful? But again, not the future I want. But then, not every job is equal, right? Why a doctor earn more than a nurse? Why does some work 70+ hours and other 35? It's inequal and injust. But as all these jobs are needed but different to keep the system running, the only solution is to suppress jobs altogether. Then we back at a pre-pre-historic stage. And then maybe we will live in the bliss of the True Equality Attained (albeit without Internet to congratulate ourselves). Back to reality. Your comment also shows how you put the blame on "society". You can pass laws and regulations to influence the society, but reengineering it totally from the micro-level of individuals is not realistic at all. However, it was tested for 4 decades in USSR and China and the results are telling.
- lobotryas 9y ago
  Your claim doesn't pass my smell test because every individual will have a unique experience. You may have wanted to add the term "on average", but I understand that's a problematic expression presently.
- weberc2 9y ago
  It doesn't seem that way to me at all. Surely, we need to optimize for population-level happiness or something like it, and it hardly seems evident that this is compatible with optimizing for identical experiences. Besides, who is to say that "professional loneliness" is worse than the "personal loneliness" that your male cohorts experience? Do women generally want to trade easy access to optimal partners to avoid the tedium of negotiating relationship ambiguity? Even if they do want that, are they taking for granted the current balance (all groups are prone to think the grass on the other side is greener, after all). Are women even worse off overall in the first world? Men are more likely to be victims of almost every kind of violence, to be falsely convicted, to die younger, to die at the workplace, to lose child custody battles, to pay more in divorces, drafted into war, etc. Are these issues overall better than the issues women have to deal with? Is it safe to assume that the epistemological institutions charged with answering these questions (the media and social sciences) are trustworthy, given that they skew hard to one side of the political spectrum? I really don't know the answer, but I'm disappointed that these questions are so rarely broached in national debate. It seems like the epistemological institutions (universities, newsrooms, etc) responsible for addressing these questions prefer to ignore these questions and impugn the moral credentials of anyone who tries to answer them (if indeed these questions are invalid, surely an explanation would be more effective and expedient than an inquisition).
  - T2_t2 9y ago
    When it comes to happiness, it is really interesting the choices people make. Thought experiment: in an ideal world, what is the preference that leads to 100/0 split in career choice? By that I mean in an ideal world, by how much does someone have to prefer career A over career B before there is a 100% chance people choose A? At an 80-20 preference for A, surely 100% of people choose A - why would you choose B when you overwhelmingly prefer A? But what about 60-40? Of even 51-49? Unlike say eating lunch, where you have 300 odd per year, which means you can have Thai 200 times, Italian 100 and other things the rest, given how costly most careers are to establish - University is time AND money, and progressing the career ladder is time - I think a rather small preference, closer to 51-49 than than 60-40, is going to lead, in an ideal world, to 100-0 A over B. Because why would anyone choose a lesser preference? In an unideal world, where the cost of in income over a lifetime is large, job prospects limited and risks of failing large, preference will be negated, muted or reversed. In an ideal world, that tiny preference is going to really matter. TL;DR Happiness is as much a measure of what you can reasonably choose from as what you actually choose.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
Did you mean "kindergarten teachers"? What is the reason?
- rayiner 9y ago
  And what is a reason that also accounts for the fact that in India, 80% of teachers are men (more than the overall proportion of men in the work force)?
  - NiklasMort 9y ago
    because women in India dont have equality of opportunity? so not many get higher education and those who do probably go into tech or some high paying jobs and/or leave the country alltogether
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - sumedh 9y ago
    Its cultural as well, in India specially the older generation it was expected that women stay at home and take care of the kids while the men work.
  - WillSlim95 9y ago
    Huh That is weird, As an Indian I have to ask you to cite a source. My mom is a middle school teacher and I studied in the same school I remember the ratio of female to male teachers at around 7:1 and similar ratios were through out schools in the city
- NiklasMort 9y ago
  yes, fixed, actually kindergartners was autosuggested by Firefox autocorrect
Synaesthesia 9y ago
Speech Therapy also comes to mind. It’s almost exclusively female.
- gaius 9y ago
  When I was at college, in a mainly male course (Mech Eng) our professors had already solved all social issues by establishing links with the Speech Therapy department (or maybe they made their first move, I don't know). Therefore all parties and social events were joint Mech Eng/Speech Therapy. It worked really well! Tho' I guess this is only really possible at a college that makes an effort to be 50:50 across its entire student population.
mrep 9y ago
The bias against male early education teachers is strong. My girlfriend worked at bright horizons temporarily and most of parents would look at the male teachers as if they were a pedophil which really drives them out.
- ghettoimp 9y ago
  Yup. Even volunteering in the kids classroom (elementary) was an eye opening experience. It would be nuts to be under that much suspicion day in and out.
  - err4nt 9y ago
    This is so sad to me, but my experiences volunteering as a male have been the same. Even though women are statistically more likely to be a child murderer, it's fine for women to be alone with children, where men are viewed as a liability any time they are alone with kids. Not looking forward to that part of fatherhood once I have kids of my own.
    - toasterlovin 9y ago
      Yeah, because a child is much more likely to get molested than murdered. And that’s before taking into account that most child murders are probably committed by the child’s parents, not by teachers.
      - naasking 9y ago
        And most child molestations also happen from family, not teachers. Do you see his point now?
        toasterlovin 9y ago
        The only thing that matters is whether molestation by non-family members is common enough to not be a freak occurrence (which is what a non-family member murdering your child would be).

rayiner 9y ago

Do you really mean “equality of opportunity?” It seems self-evident that the term requires substitutability: someone would have the same experience going into STEM if you switched around the gender. My recollection of engineering school was that the experience was not substitutable. The five women in a class did not have the same experience as the 45 men. For example, as a man I never tried to make a professional connection with someone, but then realized that they wanted a date instead.

NiklasMort 9y ago
Maybe my English is off there, I meant that there should be no restrictions based on gender for jobs/studies etc. I think you get my point. Everybody should have the same options to choose from
- rayiner 9y ago
  “We won’t formally discriminate against you” is a pretty watered definition of “equality.” It’s like saying everyone has an equal chance to win the race” because the rules allow anyone to win. But there could still be rocks in one of the lanes and not in the others. For a race, nobody would say each racer had an equal chance unless there was substitutability: your race experience is the same no matter which lane you start in.
  - NiklasMort 9y ago
    But that is not only about gender, discrimination is everywhere...male as female suffer from that
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Its not evenly distributed by field. I wouldn’t say men have “equality of opportunity” when it comes to say being kindergarten teachers.
  - deltron3030 9y ago
    Equal lanes is impossible to accomplish, the're just too many variables. What makes more sense is focusing on the best possible path forward for everybody, or creating the opportunity for the racer to be as fast as he can be, independent of the speed of other racers.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    > “We won’t formally discriminate against you” is a pretty watered definition of “equality.” Disagree. > It’s like saying everyone has an equal chance to win the race” because the rules allow anyone to win That's pretty much the definition of equal chance. > But there could still be rocks in one of the lanes and not in the others. Could. Maybe. But, staying in the metaphor: it's both exceedingly rare for there to be rocks in one lane and not another, and exceedingly obvious if it is the case. And nobody assumes that there are rocks because there are clear winners and losers in races. Everybody assumes that the person who won was fastest. But for some bizarre reason in other fields, we not just assume that there being winners means there must be rocks, we absolutely insist that that is the only possible explanation and vilify people who say "well, maybe the person who won was fastest?"
    - rayiner 9y ago
      > Could. Maybe. But, staying in the metaphor: it's both exceedingly rare for there to be rocks in one lane and not another, and exceedingly obvious if it is the case. It is obvious if you’re not willfully blind. How many women have to tell stories of, e.g., trying to make professional connections only to have a coworker make a sexual advance on them instead before you’ll believe that there’s rocks in their lane?
      - mpweiher 9y ago
        Well yes, you are being willfully blind (a) Anecdotes != data (b) You cannot assume that a man in the same situation would have made a successful professional connection (c) In fact, the woman, if she isn't entirely daft, will have additional levers to pull (d) You might have noticed "staying in the metaphor"
        psyc 9y ago
        (a) Ah yes, the conversation-stopping killer of thousands upon thousands of Hacker News threads. Can I get a published study on whether this is a good cultural norm for a discussion forum?
titanix2 9y ago
The experiences or feelings of individuals are not what define equal opportunity. Are the entrance examinations (if any) the same for everyone? Are the tuition fees (if any) the same for both genders? Are the curriculum and facility access the same for everyone? If yes to all theses questions, equal opportunity is already implemented.
- rayiner 9y ago
  The fact that feelings are subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t draw objective conclusions about things that affect peoples’ feelings. For example, kids who feel ostracized won’t do well in school. By your definition, we could have schools where, say, left handed people are systematically ostracized, but those kids would still have equality of opportunity. You’re just arbitrarily defining “equality” based on the degree of equal treatment that you think society should have to provide to people. But your definition defies “equality” as a mathematical concept.
  - roenxi 9y ago
    Equality as a mathematical construct doesn't have a place in this debate; there are too many variables affecting lifestyle that are geographic, temporal, genetic and random. You'd need more than a personsworth of resources to achieve that sort of equality for every person. Feelings and experiences are very real and can be evidence of a problem. However to act on them we need some sort of evidence that is present in the observable world, otherwise we are setting people up to give up quickly and report they feel bad rather than trying to solve their own problems. It is a tightrope to walk, but feelings need to be treated simultaneously with respect and cynicism. Biasing the world in favour of strongly emotioned people at the expense of stoics is not an improvement.
  - titanix2 9y ago
    It's funny that you chose the ostracized example as I was bullied myself in high school. This did not prevent me for succeeding way more than any of them at university, nor make me hate a very general and large group of people. The dice were piped way before by the both the cultural capital of my parents and by the genetics lottery. If you want a total outcome of equality and behavior of people, you need bio-engineering to lower differences from the start. Maybe even clones, so you are sure people are 100% equal at the starting line. This is of course not the society I want. And if you put the reasoning even further, you need to actually suppress sexes as well. They are at the source of the problem after all. And this is technically feasible with assisted reproductive technics. Of course, the unneeded sex is the male one, you just keep one or two at hand. Then it will be 100% female everywhere at every jobs, isn't that wonderful? But again, not the future I want. But then, not every job is equal, right? Why a doctor earn more than a nurse? Why does some work 70+ hours and other 35? It's inequal and injust. But as all these jobs are needed but different to keep the system running, the only solution is to suppress jobs altogether. Then we back at a pre-pre-historic stage. And then maybe we will live in the bliss of the True Equality Attained (albeit without Internet to congratulate ourselves). Back to reality. Your comment also shows how you put the blame on "society". You can pass laws and regulations to influence the society, but reengineering it totally from the micro-level of individuals is not realistic at all. However, it was tested for 4 decades in USSR and China and the results are telling.
lobotryas 9y ago
Your claim doesn't pass my smell test because every individual will have a unique experience. You may have wanted to add the term "on average", but I understand that's a problematic expression presently.
weberc2 9y ago
It doesn't seem that way to me at all. Surely, we need to optimize for population-level happiness or something like it, and it hardly seems evident that this is compatible with optimizing for identical experiences. Besides, who is to say that "professional loneliness" is worse than the "personal loneliness" that your male cohorts experience? Do women generally want to trade easy access to optimal partners to avoid the tedium of negotiating relationship ambiguity? Even if they do want that, are they taking for granted the current balance (all groups are prone to think the grass on the other side is greener, after all). Are women even worse off overall in the first world? Men are more likely to be victims of almost every kind of violence, to be falsely convicted, to die younger, to die at the workplace, to lose child custody battles, to pay more in divorces, drafted into war, etc. Are these issues overall better than the issues women have to deal with? Is it safe to assume that the epistemological institutions charged with answering these questions (the media and social sciences) are trustworthy, given that they skew hard to one side of the political spectrum? I really don't know the answer, but I'm disappointed that these questions are so rarely broached in national debate. It seems like the epistemological institutions (universities, newsrooms, etc) responsible for addressing these questions prefer to ignore these questions and impugn the moral credentials of anyone who tries to answer them (if indeed these questions are invalid, surely an explanation would be more effective and expedient than an inquisition).
- T2_t2 9y ago
  When it comes to happiness, it is really interesting the choices people make. Thought experiment: in an ideal world, what is the preference that leads to 100/0 split in career choice? By that I mean in an ideal world, by how much does someone have to prefer career A over career B before there is a 100% chance people choose A? At an 80-20 preference for A, surely 100% of people choose A - why would you choose B when you overwhelmingly prefer A? But what about 60-40? Of even 51-49? Unlike say eating lunch, where you have 300 odd per year, which means you can have Thai 200 times, Italian 100 and other things the rest, given how costly most careers are to establish - University is time AND money, and progressing the career ladder is time - I think a rather small preference, closer to 51-49 than than 60-40, is going to lead, in an ideal world, to 100-0 A over B. Because why would anyone choose a lesser preference? In an unideal world, where the cost of in income over a lifetime is large, job prospects limited and risks of failing large, preference will be negated, muted or reversed. In an ideal world, that tiny preference is going to really matter. TL;DR Happiness is as much a measure of what you can reasonably choose from as what you actually choose.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

Did you mean "kindergarten teachers"? What is the reason?

rayiner 9y ago
And what is a reason that also accounts for the fact that in India, 80% of teachers are men (more than the overall proportion of men in the work force)?
- NiklasMort 9y ago
  because women in India dont have equality of opportunity? so not many get higher education and those who do probably go into tech or some high paying jobs and/or leave the country alltogether
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sumedh 9y ago
  Its cultural as well, in India specially the older generation it was expected that women stay at home and take care of the kids while the men work.
- WillSlim95 9y ago
  Huh That is weird, As an Indian I have to ask you to cite a source. My mom is a middle school teacher and I studied in the same school I remember the ratio of female to male teachers at around 7:1 and similar ratios were through out schools in the city
NiklasMort 9y ago
yes, fixed, actually kindergartners was autosuggested by Firefox autocorrect

Synaesthesia 9y ago

Speech Therapy also comes to mind. It’s almost exclusively female.

gaius 9y ago
When I was at college, in a mainly male course (Mech Eng) our professors had already solved all social issues by establishing links with the Speech Therapy department (or maybe they made their first move, I don't know). Therefore all parties and social events were joint Mech Eng/Speech Therapy. It worked really well! Tho' I guess this is only really possible at a college that makes an effort to be 50:50 across its entire student population.

mrep 9y ago

The bias against male early education teachers is strong. My girlfriend worked at bright horizons temporarily and most of parents would look at the male teachers as if they were a pedophil which really drives them out.

ghettoimp 9y ago
Yup. Even volunteering in the kids classroom (elementary) was an eye opening experience. It would be nuts to be under that much suspicion day in and out.
- err4nt 9y ago
  This is so sad to me, but my experiences volunteering as a male have been the same. Even though women are statistically more likely to be a child murderer, it's fine for women to be alone with children, where men are viewed as a liability any time they are alone with kids. Not looking forward to that part of fatherhood once I have kids of my own.
  - toasterlovin 9y ago
    Yeah, because a child is much more likely to get molested than murdered. And that’s before taking into account that most child murders are probably committed by the child’s parents, not by teachers.
    - naasking 9y ago
      And most child molestations also happen from family, not teachers. Do you see his point now?
      - toasterlovin 9y ago
        The only thing that matters is whether molestation by non-family members is common enough to not be a freak occurrence (which is what a non-family member murdering your child would be).