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Everyone's preferences are going to have some social element. Why is this a bad thing? The only thing that should matter is that people are free to pursue whate

by jm__87 9y ago

Everyone's preferences are going to have some social element. Why is this a bad thing? The only thing that should matter is that people are free to pursue whatever life they are interested in, whatever the reason.

cimmanom 9y ago
In practice it's a problem because there are so many people who the the difference in numbers as an indicator of an inherent (i.e. biological) lack of aptitude. See also: Google Memo. Socially influenced preferences aren't necessarily a bad thing in theory. Personally, as a woman in software, I loathe that we socialize our children to have different interests based on gender even when their aptitudes are the same. It means that a lot of girls who might find STEM careers fulfilling don't even consider investigating let alone pursuing them, because they think of STEM as being "not for me".
- jm__87 9y ago
  The fact that you currently understand that lower aptitude is not the reason there are fewer women in STEM, in spite of the numbers, tells me that this problem could be solved by giving people the correct facts regarding the situation and showing how the arguments for aptitude being the reason for the imbalance are flawed. Secondly, there could very well be some evolutionary basis for differences in preferences between men and women when it comes to liking "things" vs "people" (in addition to culture being a factor - just want to note I'm not trying to argue there is no cultural factor here). I am currently reading a book called "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky that in one part discusses a study where they put chimps in a room full of toys and observed which type of toy the male and female chimps went for. If my memory is correct, the female chimps more often went for the dolls and the male chimps went for the cars (I don't have the name/authors of the study handy, but I can dig it up. The fact that Sapolsky, a respected primatologist from Stanford, thinks this study is legitimate enough to mention in his book indicates to me that the study doesn't have any serious flaws). Clearly the female chimps were never culturally predisposed to prefer playing with dolls, so there is something else going on here.

by jm__87 9y ago

cimmanom 9y ago

In practice it's a problem because there are so many people who the the difference in numbers as an indicator of an inherent (i.e. biological) lack of aptitude. See also: Google Memo. Socially influenced preferences aren't necessarily a bad thing in theory. Personally, as a woman in software, I loathe that we socialize our children to have different interests based on gender even when their aptitudes are the same. It means that a lot of girls who might find STEM careers fulfilling don't even consider investigating let alone pursuing them, because they think of STEM as being "not for me".

jm__87 9y ago
The fact that you currently understand that lower aptitude is not the reason there are fewer women in STEM, in spite of the numbers, tells me that this problem could be solved by giving people the correct facts regarding the situation and showing how the arguments for aptitude being the reason for the imbalance are flawed. Secondly, there could very well be some evolutionary basis for differences in preferences between men and women when it comes to liking "things" vs "people" (in addition to culture being a factor - just want to note I'm not trying to argue there is no cultural factor here). I am currently reading a book called "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky that in one part discusses a study where they put chimps in a room full of toys and observed which type of toy the male and female chimps went for. If my memory is correct, the female chimps more often went for the dolls and the male chimps went for the cars (I don't have the name/authors of the study handy, but I can dig it up. The fact that Sapolsky, a respected primatologist from Stanford, thinks this study is legitimate enough to mention in his book indicates to me that the study doesn't have any serious flaws). Clearly the female chimps were never culturally predisposed to prefer playing with dolls, so there is something else going on here.