32 ms·

As women have more equal opportunity, the more their preferences differ from men

534 points by seagullz 8y ago

ddingus 8y ago
This seems like non-news to me. Really, what we are discussing here is lowering of inhibition. As we see equality better represented out there, women should feel less inhibited, in terms of role compliance to get opportunity, and with that, should be expressing themselves through work, as they would any other thing they are doing.
- seagullz 8y ago
  Yet, the preferential difference in expressing themselves implies that genders are not identical after all, an idea that doesn't get treated as a truism.
  - kijin 8y ago
    equal != identical. It's just as easy to confuse the two concepts in the human society as it is in weakly typed programming languages. If all genders were truly identical, there would be no point distinguishing between them in the first place.
    - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
      Most of the time there probably is no point in distinguishing between them. Unless you are looking for a sexual partner of one specific kind or another.
  - starbeast 8y ago
    I don't know anyone pushing the notion that genders are or should be identical.
    - retrogradeorbit 8y ago
      Did you not get the memo? Gender is purely a social construct. It has no biological underpinning. One can identify as any gender they feel. And then they are that gender. Thus any "differences" you may think you perceive between genders are not real. They are purely cosmetic.
      - starbeast 8y ago
        Did you not get the memo? All social constructs are biological. All behaviour has a biological underpinning, how could it be otherwise?
        retrogradeorbit 8y ago
        I don't disagree with you at all. There are a huge amount of people who do disagree with you, though. You just commented that you didn't know anyone pushing such a narrative. And that surprised me because it's everywhere. So I thought I'd just flesh out that dominant point of view so that you could identify it in the society around you. What I think this study shows (and its not the first) is that it debunks the notion that discrimination is the only reason for any differences in gender representation. If a particular field does not have a 50/50 gender split, then that must be wholly explainable by discrimination. This study shows that this is not the case. There is a component of the unequal split that is based on personal preference. And that personal preference has a biological component. This idea is taboo.
        starbeast 8y ago
        I generally take the view that any time you are dealing with a biological system, whether it be a single cell or the global economy, should you find yourself in a quandary where you are wondering if something is caused by this thing or that thing (nature/nurture being the classic), the answer is nearly always both, plus a whole bunch of some other stuff you hadn't even begun to consider. Biology is horrendously complex and messy, and anything built on biology is even messier.
        8y ago
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  > This seems like non-news to me. Well, they do state their analysis is consistent with other data available (which they cite). > Really, what we are discussing here is lowering of inhibition. Not sure why you're getting down-voted, I think that's fairly accurate. I just read Sandberg's Lean In (recommended by a colleague), from the perspective of a male manager for multiple teams with women at multiple levels (I have 2 to 3 levels of folks below me and all my bosses are women). This concept of affluence lowering inhibition seems to hit Sandberg's thesis and frustration on the head. She knows, knows, friends-with-Gloria-Steinem, knows, that women worked really hard to get what they have, and she worries the current generation is not consolidating those gains and pushing forward but may instead be ceding won territory. But that's consistent with the resource hypothesis. They has, so they don't want moar. They want to be who they believe they should be, which, at least based on the 6 metrics I see in the paper, seems to be generally nicer people. Interestingly, IF I read that right, then by correlation, in those same affluent, gender-equal societies, the model predicts men would tend to be more male.
  - watwut 8y ago
    > They want to be who they believe they should be, which, at least based on the 6 metrics I see in the paper, seems to be generally nicer people. My impression is that there is a lot more social pressure on women to be nice in western countries and especially united states. To the point that expectation is sometimes that women dont swear etc. I dont think I encountered that in Slavic countries that much despite them being less equal overall - the expected differences are elsewhere. The whole women and niceness issues sounded to me like crazy talk, until I learned more about western culture and spend more time in it at which point it started to make sense. The other thing is that I was personally the most like stereotype when I was stay at home with kids - and I was most unhappy during that time despite it being "choice". It seemed from outside I am choosing stereotypical things, but it was mostly adaptation to situation that looks good and sucked in ways that are hard to explain. Everyone chooses similar friends, but I was not alone in that. Similarly the least happy women I knew were wifes of well paid men (googlers) who effectively had to stay at home for social/practical reasons (she earned less and it was easier to organize kids/life this way). It was their choice, but primary topic was depression despite seemingly having zero problems in life.
- ramblerman 8y ago
  You are doing a disservice by sweeping this under the rug as common sense. We live in a political climate where people are looking at the tech industry and especially FANG companies with a microscope and unless they see 50/50 representation they feel there must be inequality at work. James Damore was fired for highlighting this very fact.
  - jexah 8y ago
    Fair point.
  - pentae 8y ago
    Thank you
  - ddingus 8y ago
    Oh I do not think so. People vary considerably, and gender is a part of that. What I did not do was declare all people of a given gender different in some immutable way. Women and men overlap. What we are seeing is more of the feminime presented, and that is womens contribution as inhibition is reduced. There are guys who operate that way, and they are not common. There are women who operate quite masculine too. Both not so common. Over time, again as inhibition is reduced, people will present more as who they are, with greater role freedom, and that is a very good thing. The workplace will be more vibrant as people are represented in all their shades. That too is a good thing. I am not judging people, the genders, etc... others have, and the pushback on that is understandable. The goal here is those who can do the work, desire to do it, should be doing it. Ideally, they present as who thay are and everyone works together with mutual consideration, respect, etc... None of that is controversial.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Lowering inhibition is one thing, but the measure of success used everywhere is equality of outcome, and that’s the problem.
theonewhogroks 8y ago
Can anyone see the abstract?
triodan 8y ago
I think this phenomenon was known a while back as the gender equality paradox[0]. It's always nice to see more data on the topic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox
- tarkin2 8y ago
  It's not much of a paradox surely. Those countries introduced equality systems because the imbalance. Now of course those same countries with the imbalance have those introduced systems.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    Ah but why would those differences become greater after the introduction of the equality systems? That's the paradox.
    - classicsnoot 8y ago
      It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. Why you end up where you do is either confusing or predictable based on how you start, particularly in the world of unverified assertion.
      - KirinDave 8y ago
        > If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. It's odd though how so often this "traditional" viewpoint is eager to suggest, "These are the preferences of women and their outcomes," when it's suggested women result in a net disadvantage, but is a crisis when men see these outcomes. An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability." This position is so common you can find it represented internationally in both the US and several European nations. It shows up in think tank materials like PraegerU videos and on America's Fox news. In the context of the paper at hand, it seems particularly poignant how much effort goes to making one case but not the other.
PeterisP 8y ago
Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences, which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.
- icebraining 8y ago
  The problem is distinguishing the two. People (and not just women) feel understandably cross when they come across real obstacles - which may seem very subtle to others - preventing them from choosing a path, and then hear someone else say it's just a result of preferences.
  - sharpneli 8y ago
    Indeed. It is not easy to always distinguish what is due to obstacle and what is due to preference. However if we say that any difference from equal representation is due to obstacle then in reality we will introduce new obstacles in order to get a end result that is different from preferences. There is no silver bullet here. The obstacles must be found and torn down individually. Making obstacles elsewhere will just make things worse for everyone involved.
    - kamaal 8y ago
      >>It is not easy to always distinguish what is due to obstacle and what is due to preference. That's because even without the role of society, a person's preferences are made out of mental outlook they have developed over time. What one person finds to be impossible, the other person might find it to be perfectly easy to do. There is nothing you do to fix that. That largely depends on personal enterprise and what the person wants to do in life. I have seen people throw away perfectly fine opportunities while in position of advantage. I have also seen people run though opportunity famine, move mountains and earth all to create a small opening some where. Ultimately its just on the person. And most importantly You can't fix people against their will.
  - 8y ago
magicalist 8y ago
aka the more women differ from men, the more they have equal opportunities. But it's weird, where are all the correlation/causation and "soft science" comments? I guess it's still early.
- pluma 8y ago
  Correlation equals causation if you like the implications. Soft science is hard science if it helps you justify your biases. Same reason people flock to a failed "psychologist" who tells them to clean their room and live like lobsters (except, y'know, he doesn't actually understand lobsters either). Same reason some random Xoogler kid misquoting cherry-picked "facts" is defended by HN commenters. Same reason a throwaway troll comment remains unflagged and undeleted for hours. But hey, as long as we all pretend to be anarcho-capitalists, we can still claim we're revolutionaries.
grenoire 8y ago
This follows a series of validation studies (incl. e.g. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719) from this year especially. The results seem to consistently show the same 'paradoxical' outcome. J. Peterson came to my campus last week and I think he mentioned this one specific study, and also noted several other ones, which brought the one I linked to my attention. It really isn't the only one, and it's good to see that it's getting a stronger foothold by the day.
- faceplanted 8y ago
  Is Jordan Peterson any better in person than he seems in his book? I read it after a friend recommended it and he seemed completely insufferable and possibly mildly autistic based on what seemed like a real lack of understanding of the internal lives of others. Lots of people seem to like him, but I can't bring myself to watch him speak in person since everything I see just traversing the internet is framed as him "destroying liberals" in some fashion, which just affirms the insufferable idea.
  - cal5k 8y ago
    I’d recommend watching one of his lectures rather than clips framed as “Jordan Peterson DESTROYS leftist” (the scourge of YouTube). He’s often intentionally put on the defensive in interviews and can understandably get prickly at continued attempts to wilfully misinterpret his arguments. Better yet, interviews with him and Dave Rubin or Joe Rogan, or his discussions with Sam Harris, are great ways to get a non-combative side of him.
    - Reedx 8y ago
      The in-person discussions between Peterson and Sam Harris were great. It's what discourse should look like. They "steel man" each other, putting up the best form of each other's arguments. The opposite of creating/attacking straw men.
    - andromedavision 8y ago
dandare 8y ago
Can someone with an access to the article provide more information on the direction in which the "willingness to take risks, patience, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity, and trust" is associated with gender?
- grenoire 8y ago
  There's a figure for those properties, and the textual summary would be: "The symbols + and − in the panel titles indicate the sign of the difference for each preference; + indicates that positive differences correspond to women exhibiting higher levels of the respective preference, whereas − indicates that positive differences correspond to women exhibiting lower levels of the respective preference." There are the six categories in the order of: Altruism, Trust, Positive and Negative Reciprocity, Risk Taking, and Patience. The signs associated are, for the log GDP per capita quartiles: +, +, +, -, -, - respectively for categories listed above, where the graphs demonstrate increasing levels of differences (in standard deviations). For the Gender Equality index, it's almost exactly the same except for positive reciprocity, where the curve is a little flatter than its GDP per capita counterpart.
- Kaveren 8y ago
  > "Women tended to be more prosocial and less negatively reciprocal than men, with differences in standard deviations of 0.106 for altruism (P < 0.0001), 0.064 for trust (P < 0.0001), 0.055 for positive reciprocity (P < 0.0001), and 0.129 for negative reciprocity (P < 0.0001). Turning to nonsocial preferences, women were less risk-taking by 0.168 standard deviations (P < 0.0001) and less patient by 0.050 standard deviations (P < 0.0001) (26). The observed differences in preferences set the stage for our analysis."[0] The context of this quote and the tables are provided by the other commenter. [0] "(26)" in the quote refers to a footnote. Edit: Fixed hyphen space in quote.
  - belorn 8y ago
    There difference is then in the realm of 5-17%, right?
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
kace91 8y ago
I wonder how it adjusts for culturally pushed gender differences. Women could have the same opportunities as men but be expected to have different tastes, be subjected to different experiences growing up, etc. which could affect their choices in latter life.
- jezze 8y ago
  Yeah this is the part I don't see the clear logic in. I mean how much of a persons preferences are biological vs taught/environmental behaviour. I would accept the results straight up if it's all because of biological reasons but to me it's not that clear. Imagine if we brought up women to be amazon warriors, of course they would have different preferences compared to women today no? You often pick a career after what you are good at already.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    It seems pretty obvious to me that gender differences are due to a mix of cultural pressures and biology. Here's a study that indicates some biological origin, for example: https://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-differences-childrens-toy-preferences-across-range-ages-countries-50488 https://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-diffe... It weirds me out to find people who believe that these preferences are solely due to cultural pressure. It reeks of ideological blindness to me.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      People who believe this is solely cultural pressure should try having children. While, sure, you can raise children to be much more willing to challenge gender norms, and you can raise them to not hide or be ashamed of where their personal preferences violate cultural gender norms, every parent I've known that have strongly believed it was all cultural have ended up changing their mind after they've tried their hardest to give their kids gender neutral toys and clothes, or a mix of "boys" and "girls" stuff, and found their kids even at toddler stage gravitate to "typical" boys/girls stuff. I think it's great they give their kids the choice and don't judge if they pick stuff that doesn't "conform", and I personally find it very annoying how e.g. clothes stores often draw hard lines between boys and girls stuff even when there's not even a half-plausible reason (no, a minecraft t-shirt for a prepubescent child is not gender specific in any way), but at the same time I also personally saw my son express a very strong preference for or against certain things related to gender identity from he was very little, and if we'd tried to push him to ignore that preference we'd be just as bad as parents who push for conformity.
Tomminn 8y ago
The strongest correlations seem related to the wealth of the country. One reading of this finding is that more effort is directed toward gender performance in rich countries. This could be due to a number of factors. I wouldn't discount the difference in the quantity of media consumed by both countries.
- taneq 8y ago
  That's what spun me out when I first traveled in Asia. Backpacking through Thailand there was (as far as I could see) pretty equal representation in almost all different job roles, from street vendors to travel agents to IT. (Come to think of it, tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers were universally male, though...) After years of being told that all women loved tech and only shied away from it because it was full of horrible misogynistic neckbeards, and that the only solution to the problem of fewer women in tech than men was to remove any slight negative experience they may have (note that these messages weren't all, or even mostly, coming from women!), it was strange to see so many accomplished, professional women in a culture that gave women no special treatment whatsoever.
  - aleeds 8y ago
    Consider that "women dealing with horrible misogynistic neckbeards" and "women that get no special treatment" are in fact, compatible. For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men that keep them from being in the industry.
    - naasking 8y ago
      > For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men that keep them from being in the industry. That's conjecture that isn't supported by any evidence. And in fact, there's considerable evidence that women don't choose STEM for far more fundamental reasons. The very existence of the gender equality paradox, and the fact that women have achieved gender parity in fields they actually care about but which were arguably even more sexist, like medicine and law, and did it without people fawning over whether they are having "negative experiences", completely undermines your narrative.
jernfrost 8y ago
I am highly sceptical to this study. Does anyone have a list of what they measured as differences and how they did it? The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are. I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian rather than say Italian. I do there is something to the equality paradox but I suspect it is more complex than this research suggests. 60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish. So statistically speaking one should have a natural scepticism to any bold claims.
- tralarpa 8y ago
  > 60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish Research in life science: - Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size - Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money through projects with industry like engineers) - Done by people with problems with logical thinking - Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without understanding them The perfect combination... I welcome all downvotes.
  - Majestic121 8y ago
    > - Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size Fair point > - Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money through projects with industry like engineers) Fair point > - Done by people with problems with logical thinking What ? > - Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without understanding them What ? > I welcome all downvotes. Asking for downvotes is the best way to make your message looks like it's coming from an edgy teenager. If you actually want to make your message go through, I would recommend refraining from doing so, even if you think/know you're going against the crowd.
    - tralarpa 8y ago
      I don't say those people are stupid. But if you look at the publications it's very obvious that they are not trained in the same way as other scientists. The jumping to conclusions, the application of methods without knowing their constraints, the lack of imagination when exploiting a problem (i.e. asking questions like "Are there other theories that could explain our results"). I have been in several situations where those people were explaining to me one of their research problems (in a friendly chat) and then I ask a question ("What about...?") that appears logical to me and they stare at me and reply "Why didn't you tell us you are working in this field, too?". > If you actually want to make your message go through What message? Go through what/where?
throwawaynpc123 8y ago
we must do something about those women not thinking like men and driving the average female wage down. remember equal pay is utopia.
- pluma 8y ago
  Seriously, mods? The name clearly indicates this as an intentional troll throwaway. EDIT: Funny, I wasn't able to flag the comment until it was already flagged and dead.
justanegg 8y ago
we can't be having differences here can we, outcome NEEDS to be the same.
atoav 8y ago
The question is: What follows from that difference? Should a society treat a subset of the population different (in a positive or negative way) because on average they act different, because they have a different story to tell, because they had a different place throughout history and society? Isn't planfully treating a subset of the population different reproducing that difference? Isn't not treating a subset of the population different against justice in a historical sense? Should we treat different what seems different to us? Should we ignore the difference, essentially becoming ignorant to what lead to the difference? Hard questions. A better approach might be to look at the individual. If you presume things about people because of traits they had no control about, you are probably a better person if you keep this presumtions to yourself, even if parts of these seem to match at times. In the end, often these differences don't really matter that much, especially a Nerd community should realize this: a nerd from a never heard of minority might be much closer to you in spirit, than most of your neighbourhood with traits matching yours. The thing is, presumtions can (and often will) get in the way of seeing the complexity of the individual that is on the other side. If you are not in a war zone where ignoring presumtions ("this looks like the enemy") will get you killed, you can usually afford that luxury.
- Abutere 8y ago
  You bring up very good points. I especially like your last sentence, it's a bit of a Churchill-esque call to action that great societal conflicts are solved by average people working together. I do feel that it is not compatible with internet culture as it currently stands. Facebook and oh my especially Tinder all rely on the viewer to be fed generalizations and make them back. These algorithms do not encourage a nuanced view of people.
throw2016 8y ago
Here is an interesting discussion and debate between 2 experts in the field on sex differences. Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which girls have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the field is still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles and culture remain. Simon Baron-Cohen is also well known in the field for his work on autism and stands on the ‘essentialist’ side of gender differences and as readers will note in his review [2] of Cordelia Fine’s book and the ensuing 3 part debate [3] [4] [5] with her that there are far too many important new questions raised and many that remain unresolved. Everything from past studies, preconceptions, cultural bias, data, methodology to conclusions remain in question leaving very little room to draw any kind of conclusions. In light of this perhaps its best to leave the field of sex differences to experts who continue to study but do not have the answers or data to draw any conclusions. [1] https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/battle-sex-differences https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/batt... [2] https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book-reviews https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book... [3] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum [4] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letters http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letter... [5] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letters http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letter...
- TheAdamAndChe 8y ago
  > ...perhaps its best to leave the field of sex differences to experts who continue to study but do not have the answers or data to draw any conclusions. A difficulty here is the substantial liberal bias in social sciences[1]. How can we avoid it affecting the outcomes of their studies? [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science-politically-biased/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science...
- naasking 8y ago
  > Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which girls have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the field is still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles and culture remain. This is called stereotype bias, and it's recently been debunked because replications have almost all failed.
pluma 8y ago
There's a fairly simple explanation: in egalitarian societies femininity is socially acceptable even in "traditionally male" occupations. So women don't need to act "masculine" to make progress in those jobs. When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a career. There's another fairly simple explanation: "equal opportunity" is not the same as "non-sexist". Without knowing how "gender-egalitarian"-ness is measured (it's suspicious that it uses the phrase "more developed") it's impossible to tell what the societal attitudes actually look like. But it's entirely possible that the countries with the most egalitarian laws still have strict gender roles that are socially reinforced. So either way the lesson isn't "feminism is wrong" or "equal opportunity is meaningless": either equal opportunity allows women to succeed without abandoning their gender role, or egalitarianism masks the harm of socially reinforced gender roles, or maybe even both. Much like "if climate change is wrong", even if "gender disparity is innate and egalitarianism doesn't eliminate the differences" (or whatever one might construe the paper's outcome to mean), the worst case outcome of social justice is that we've made the world a nicer place and "butch" women, "girly" men and non-binary folk face less resistance. Or, y'know, maybe we're right and the changes actually eliminate injustice and help everyone. That said, it's telling that Jordan Peterson and James Damore are mentioned in these HN comments as if they were legitimate authorities (not to mention actual "NPC" throwaways as if this were reddit) and nobody bats an eye. So maybe to those people social progress is bad.
- busterarm 8y ago
  > When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a career. Unfortunately this is probably going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I've seen how much work goes into both being a CEO and being a full-time parent up close. (With the caveat of: in the work culture here in the US...) Running a business that employs a significant number of people and having daily, hands-on parent interaction with your child are mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if you are a mother or a father. If you want to change this fact, you'll need to start implementing controls on working hours & days like Germany did. You also have to do that knowing that crunch time is one of the competitive market advantages that the US offers.
knorker 8y ago
Woah there, you can't say that! That's what Damore got fired for!
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  Stealing from myself from an old comment [1]: there is a difference between what Damore intended to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo actually said. He might have wanted to say "women tend like other things", but his memo ended up saying "women are incapable of doing this thing". He may have had good intentions, but in writing the difference matters. A similar result is seen when authors argue that widely assumed interpretations of their literary characters are not what they intended. That, I believe, is what got him fired. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758
  - jki275 8y ago
    I just went back and read Damore's memo, and that idea does not appear anywhere in it. I'm curious how you tortured that out of his words.
    - probably_wrong 8y ago
      I don't want to copy-paste from myself, so I would suggest checking the comment I linked, or even better, the article where I commented.
      - jki275 8y ago
        It's still not in what he wrote. Perhaps you see it there, but it's not. In fact, it's the opposite of what he wrote.
  - zwischenzug 8y ago
    Where did he say that?
  - naasking 8y ago
JimGuns 8y ago
It's a weird world. Women want to stop being women so they can be like men, intellectually, mentally, and physically. Still though, many want the best of both world. So there is not much equality when you actually just don't want to be a woman, but have to struggle with being one. A recent article was saying, roughly, that women sports for example are not at all popular for men to watch, and therefore that is sexist, and because of this sexism, these sports don't get watched which reduces the income into these sports, and doesn't equate to big payouts for female athletes. The cause of this is all male sexism of course.. As we know, there are only two genders, but masculine women and feminine men just dont fit into the typical 'men and women' mentality. As we continue to deplatform traditional male and female ideologies, and replace them with the misbelieve that men are all feminine and women are masculine, and telling people that traditionalists are all Nazis, we're never going to improve anything.
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  I got perminently shadow banned for a post supporting the same notion a few months ago... Very true, but I would not say, "women want." They're very subject to propaganda. Women being women is literally shunned in the last 50+ years of film and media, for the most part. With the exception of conservative and traditionalist movements that are constantly slandered, when you look into it. Women are less happy today than they've ever been - and so those of us who really love women and want to see them happy need to start standing up for the truth.
- sctb 8y ago
  Most of your posts have been breaking the guidelines by being unsubstantive, uncivil, or uninformative flamebait. Please read and follow them or we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - pokemongoaway 8y ago
    No they don't. You just disagree. Stop being dishonest and pro-censorship! I support the parent comment.
Mon29Oct 8y ago
This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked than ever. The book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox submits two pieces of explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a significant duration, but which made the mothers gain less experience than the fathers who usually don't take the leave and 2/ Those reforms incurred strong taxes and diminished spending power, more especially making child care less affordable, again distancing mothers from work.
- msh 8y ago
  I don't know that book, but it's wrong on childcare being less affordable. Atleast in Denmark and Sweden child care is heavily subsidized, to the point of being free for very low income parents (in dk). So there is no way it can make economic sense for mothers not to work. And stay at home moms (for more than 1-2 years) is rare compared to the USA.
  - toxik 8y ago
    You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time? Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of modern feminism, but really, what's the alternative? Going against our primal instincts is essential for a productive society. "Man strong - hunt food, woman caring - raise child" or some religious justification of similar dubiousness is _not_ enough. At the end of the day, it's going to be a balancing act of imposing on individual freedom such that individual freedom is at all possible. I personally am more inclined towards letting people be who they are, but that's what created gender inequality and racism in the first place.
    - avar 8y ago
      The alternative is equality of opportunity. If some people in society want to do some activity knowing they won't build job experience while doing so, let them, even if other people don't want to and become more employable as a result. That's freedom. Whether e.g. women on average tend to take more parental leave is only a small subset of those sorts of situations in society. I (a man) took a months-long parental leave fairly recently which surely hurt my job prospects, how could it not? But I chose to do it anyway. Should other men that didn't make that choice be forced to do the same to even things out?
sureaboutthis 8y ago
Is this the first time someone figured out that women are different than men?
- neolefty 8y ago
  But how much of that difference is nature vs nurture, and how much variation is there? The more egalitarian society becomes, the easier it is to see what is intrinsic and what is imposed. We still have some progress to make before we'll get a completely clean signal.
JimGuns 8y ago
I guess the alt.left and feminists are busy today flagging the opinions they dont like. Typical one sided liberal debates.
- sctb 8y ago
  Since it really doesn't look like you're going to follow the guidelines, we've banned this account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start using the site as intended. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - JimGuns 8y ago
    Sorry. Didn't know that this was a site that was only for leftist opinions. Sad.
  - JimGuns 8y ago
    Ban everyone that doesn't want to ride the alt-left Hilliary train. Go eat a dick.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
lgleason 8y ago
This, along with the study in the UK on preferences of kids based on testosterone levels is why we will probably not ever have equal representation of women in engineering. It has nothing to do with discrimination, or a woman's ability to do the job etc., it's about how hormones etc. affect ones preferences.
gammateam 8y ago
Which is a good thing right? What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result of the domesticated housewife. I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to grow the economic pie and cater to the most people, then hiring/career growth practices based on "the best" at the theoretical best academic or refined practice will have diminishing returns for companies. And this isn't saying that there is no circumstance where women or some other subgroup would be able to conform to the strict merit based regime in proportional numbers as incumbent groups. It is saying that the barking up this tree is flawed to begin with, if you can address a greater market by having a variety of views of the market. Now that we have participation in the workforce, it would be more productive addressing how goods and resources are appropriated amongst people that help in any way, how incentives are aligned with the growth of the effort.
- manfredo 8y ago
  This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a good thing? I'd say no. I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the gender gap in tech: universities can just mandate that a certain percentage of women major in computing related fields. Just select 30% of women by lottery and forbid them to choose a major other than computing related ones. Of course, most reasonable people are against such a measure.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    I'm all for facetious humor but this is a bad joke for this thread
    - manfredo 8y ago
      Perhaps "joke" is the wrong term, it's more of a thought exercise. The point is to illustrate the fact that equal representation at the expense of agency is not a good thing - which absolutely is relevant to the discussions going on in this thread.
xster 8y ago
I'm curious about the social psychological effects at play here since it's more or less presenting the same content as James Damore (first paragraph page 5) to more or less the same audience. What made one presentation more palatable than the other.
Mikersio 8y ago
Anusbang p p place freshy
lilfatbitch 8y ago
Women and men will always be different. No matter how hard we try to push engineering to 50%/50%, it will never be. And that's ok.

534 points by seagullz 8y ago

This seems like non-news to me. Really, what we are discussing here is lowering of inhibition. As we see equality better represented out there, women should feel less inhibited, in terms of role compliance to get opportunity, and with that, should be expressing themselves through work, as they would any other thing they are doing.

seagullz 8y ago
Yet, the preferential difference in expressing themselves implies that genders are not identical after all, an idea that doesn't get treated as a truism.
- kijin 8y ago
  equal != identical. It's just as easy to confuse the two concepts in the human society as it is in weakly typed programming languages. If all genders were truly identical, there would be no point distinguishing between them in the first place.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Most of the time there probably is no point in distinguishing between them. Unless you are looking for a sexual partner of one specific kind or another.
- starbeast 8y ago
  I don't know anyone pushing the notion that genders are or should be identical.
  - retrogradeorbit 8y ago
    Did you not get the memo? Gender is purely a social construct. It has no biological underpinning. One can identify as any gender they feel. And then they are that gender. Thus any "differences" you may think you perceive between genders are not real. They are purely cosmetic.
    - starbeast 8y ago
      Did you not get the memo? All social constructs are biological. All behaviour has a biological underpinning, how could it be otherwise?
      - retrogradeorbit 8y ago
        I don't disagree with you at all. There are a huge amount of people who do disagree with you, though. You just commented that you didn't know anyone pushing such a narrative. And that surprised me because it's everywhere. So I thought I'd just flesh out that dominant point of view so that you could identify it in the society around you. What I think this study shows (and its not the first) is that it debunks the notion that discrimination is the only reason for any differences in gender representation. If a particular field does not have a 50/50 gender split, then that must be wholly explainable by discrimination. This study shows that this is not the case. There is a component of the unequal split that is based on personal preference. And that personal preference has a biological component. This idea is taboo.
        starbeast 8y ago
        I generally take the view that any time you are dealing with a biological system, whether it be a single cell or the global economy, should you find yourself in a quandary where you are wondering if something is caused by this thing or that thing (nature/nurture being the classic), the answer is nearly always both, plus a whole bunch of some other stuff you hadn't even begun to consider. Biology is horrendously complex and messy, and anything built on biology is even messier.
        8y ago
killjoywashere 8y ago
> This seems like non-news to me. Well, they do state their analysis is consistent with other data available (which they cite). > Really, what we are discussing here is lowering of inhibition. Not sure why you're getting down-voted, I think that's fairly accurate. I just read Sandberg's Lean In (recommended by a colleague), from the perspective of a male manager for multiple teams with women at multiple levels (I have 2 to 3 levels of folks below me and all my bosses are women). This concept of affluence lowering inhibition seems to hit Sandberg's thesis and frustration on the head. She knows, knows, friends-with-Gloria-Steinem, knows, that women worked really hard to get what they have, and she worries the current generation is not consolidating those gains and pushing forward but may instead be ceding won territory. But that's consistent with the resource hypothesis. They has, so they don't want moar. They want to be who they believe they should be, which, at least based on the 6 metrics I see in the paper, seems to be generally nicer people. Interestingly, IF I read that right, then by correlation, in those same affluent, gender-equal societies, the model predicts men would tend to be more male.
- watwut 8y ago
  > They want to be who they believe they should be, which, at least based on the 6 metrics I see in the paper, seems to be generally nicer people. My impression is that there is a lot more social pressure on women to be nice in western countries and especially united states. To the point that expectation is sometimes that women dont swear etc. I dont think I encountered that in Slavic countries that much despite them being less equal overall - the expected differences are elsewhere. The whole women and niceness issues sounded to me like crazy talk, until I learned more about western culture and spend more time in it at which point it started to make sense. The other thing is that I was personally the most like stereotype when I was stay at home with kids - and I was most unhappy during that time despite it being "choice". It seemed from outside I am choosing stereotypical things, but it was mostly adaptation to situation that looks good and sucked in ways that are hard to explain. Everyone chooses similar friends, but I was not alone in that. Similarly the least happy women I knew were wifes of well paid men (googlers) who effectively had to stay at home for social/practical reasons (she earned less and it was easier to organize kids/life this way). It was their choice, but primary topic was depression despite seemingly having zero problems in life.
ramblerman 8y ago
You are doing a disservice by sweeping this under the rug as common sense. We live in a political climate where people are looking at the tech industry and especially FANG companies with a microscope and unless they see 50/50 representation they feel there must be inequality at work. James Damore was fired for highlighting this very fact.
- jexah 8y ago
  Fair point.
- pentae 8y ago
  Thank you
- ddingus 8y ago
  Oh I do not think so. People vary considerably, and gender is a part of that. What I did not do was declare all people of a given gender different in some immutable way. Women and men overlap. What we are seeing is more of the feminime presented, and that is womens contribution as inhibition is reduced. There are guys who operate that way, and they are not common. There are women who operate quite masculine too. Both not so common. Over time, again as inhibition is reduced, people will present more as who they are, with greater role freedom, and that is a very good thing. The workplace will be more vibrant as people are represented in all their shades. That too is a good thing. I am not judging people, the genders, etc... others have, and the pushback on that is understandable. The goal here is those who can do the work, desire to do it, should be doing it. Ideally, they present as who thay are and everyone works together with mutual consideration, respect, etc... None of that is controversial.
cm2187 8y ago
Lowering inhibition is one thing, but the measure of success used everywhere is equality of outcome, and that’s the problem.

theonewhogroks 8y ago

Can anyone see the abstract?

triodan 8y ago

I think this phenomenon was known a while back as the gender equality paradox[0]. It's always nice to see more data on the topic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox

tarkin2 8y ago
It's not much of a paradox surely. Those countries introduced equality systems because the imbalance. Now of course those same countries with the imbalance have those introduced systems.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  Ah but why would those differences become greater after the introduction of the equality systems? That's the paradox.
  - classicsnoot 8y ago
    It is only a paradox if one has calcified their thinking about the desires of women _in general_ in a particular way. If one starts from the presumption that men and women are exactly the same (in terms of desires and methods), than it is indeed a paradox. If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. Why you end up where you do is either confusing or predictable based on how you start, particularly in the world of unverified assertion.
    - KirinDave 8y ago
      > If one retains the traditional perspective, a much disliked but surprisingly defensible position, of the disparate desires of men and women, these results comport well with the presumption. It's odd though how so often this "traditional" viewpoint is eager to suggest, "These are the preferences of women and their outcomes," when it's suggested women result in a net disadvantage, but is a crisis when men see these outcomes. An excellent example of this is how a 6-10% wage gap is considered an acceptable outcome of biological differences and choice, but a 10% average difference in primary education among young men is a crisis, with multiple think tanks suggesting society caters too much to young women and that being a young man is "a liability." This position is so common you can find it represented internationally in both the US and several European nations. It shows up in think tank materials like PraegerU videos and on America's Fox news. In the context of the paper at hand, it seems particularly poignant how much effort goes to making one case but not the other.

PeterisP 8y ago

Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are incompatible as long as the source groups differ in any meaningful way, even "just" in preferences, which is a very big factor in choice of profession. In order to get equality of outcomes, you would need to enforce inequality of opportunities.

icebraining 8y ago
The problem is distinguishing the two. People (and not just women) feel understandably cross when they come across real obstacles - which may seem very subtle to others - preventing them from choosing a path, and then hear someone else say it's just a result of preferences.
- sharpneli 8y ago
  Indeed. It is not easy to always distinguish what is due to obstacle and what is due to preference. However if we say that any difference from equal representation is due to obstacle then in reality we will introduce new obstacles in order to get a end result that is different from preferences. There is no silver bullet here. The obstacles must be found and torn down individually. Making obstacles elsewhere will just make things worse for everyone involved.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    >>It is not easy to always distinguish what is due to obstacle and what is due to preference. That's because even without the role of society, a person's preferences are made out of mental outlook they have developed over time. What one person finds to be impossible, the other person might find it to be perfectly easy to do. There is nothing you do to fix that. That largely depends on personal enterprise and what the person wants to do in life. I have seen people throw away perfectly fine opportunities while in position of advantage. I have also seen people run though opportunity famine, move mountains and earth all to create a small opening some where. Ultimately its just on the person. And most importantly You can't fix people against their will.
- 8y ago

magicalist 8y ago

aka the more women differ from men, the more they have equal opportunities. But it's weird, where are all the correlation/causation and "soft science" comments? I guess it's still early.

pluma 8y ago
Correlation equals causation if you like the implications. Soft science is hard science if it helps you justify your biases. Same reason people flock to a failed "psychologist" who tells them to clean their room and live like lobsters (except, y'know, he doesn't actually understand lobsters either). Same reason some random Xoogler kid misquoting cherry-picked "facts" is defended by HN commenters. Same reason a throwaway troll comment remains unflagged and undeleted for hours. But hey, as long as we all pretend to be anarcho-capitalists, we can still claim we're revolutionaries.

grenoire 8y ago

This follows a series of validation studies (incl. e.g. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719) from this year especially. The results seem to consistently show the same 'paradoxical' outcome. J. Peterson came to my campus last week and I think he mentioned this one specific study, and also noted several other ones, which brought the one I linked to my attention. It really isn't the only one, and it's good to see that it's getting a stronger foothold by the day.

faceplanted 8y ago
Is Jordan Peterson any better in person than he seems in his book? I read it after a friend recommended it and he seemed completely insufferable and possibly mildly autistic based on what seemed like a real lack of understanding of the internal lives of others. Lots of people seem to like him, but I can't bring myself to watch him speak in person since everything I see just traversing the internet is framed as him "destroying liberals" in some fashion, which just affirms the insufferable idea.
- cal5k 8y ago
  I’d recommend watching one of his lectures rather than clips framed as “Jordan Peterson DESTROYS leftist” (the scourge of YouTube). He’s often intentionally put on the defensive in interviews and can understandably get prickly at continued attempts to wilfully misinterpret his arguments. Better yet, interviews with him and Dave Rubin or Joe Rogan, or his discussions with Sam Harris, are great ways to get a non-combative side of him.
  - Reedx 8y ago
    The in-person discussions between Peterson and Sam Harris were great. It's what discourse should look like. They "steel man" each other, putting up the best form of each other's arguments. The opposite of creating/attacking straw men.
  - andromedavision 8y ago

dandare 8y ago

Can someone with an access to the article provide more information on the direction in which the "willingness to take risks, patience, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity, and trust" is associated with gender?

grenoire 8y ago
There's a figure for those properties, and the textual summary would be: "The symbols + and − in the panel titles indicate the sign of the difference for each preference; + indicates that positive differences correspond to women exhibiting higher levels of the respective preference, whereas − indicates that positive differences correspond to women exhibiting lower levels of the respective preference." There are the six categories in the order of: Altruism, Trust, Positive and Negative Reciprocity, Risk Taking, and Patience. The signs associated are, for the log GDP per capita quartiles: +, +, +, -, -, - respectively for categories listed above, where the graphs demonstrate increasing levels of differences (in standard deviations). For the Gender Equality index, it's almost exactly the same except for positive reciprocity, where the curve is a little flatter than its GDP per capita counterpart.
Kaveren 8y ago
> "Women tended to be more prosocial and less negatively reciprocal than men, with differences in standard deviations of 0.106 for altruism (P < 0.0001), 0.064 for trust (P < 0.0001), 0.055 for positive reciprocity (P < 0.0001), and 0.129 for negative reciprocity (P < 0.0001). Turning to nonsocial preferences, women were less risk-taking by 0.168 standard deviations (P < 0.0001) and less patient by 0.050 standard deviations (P < 0.0001) (26). The observed differences in preferences set the stage for our analysis."[0] The context of this quote and the tables are provided by the other commenter. [0] "(26)" in the quote refers to a footnote. Edit: Fixed hyphen space in quote.
- belorn 8y ago
  There difference is then in the realm of 5-17%, right?
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago

kace91 8y ago

I wonder how it adjusts for culturally pushed gender differences. Women could have the same opportunities as men but be expected to have different tastes, be subjected to different experiences growing up, etc. which could affect their choices in latter life.

jezze 8y ago
Yeah this is the part I don't see the clear logic in. I mean how much of a persons preferences are biological vs taught/environmental behaviour. I would accept the results straight up if it's all because of biological reasons but to me it's not that clear. Imagine if we brought up women to be amazon warriors, of course they would have different preferences compared to women today no? You often pick a career after what you are good at already.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  It seems pretty obvious to me that gender differences are due to a mix of cultural pressures and biology. Here's a study that indicates some biological origin, for example: https://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-differences-childrens-toy-preferences-across-range-ages-countries-50488 https://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-diffe... It weirds me out to find people who believe that these preferences are solely due to cultural pressure. It reeks of ideological blindness to me.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    People who believe this is solely cultural pressure should try having children. While, sure, you can raise children to be much more willing to challenge gender norms, and you can raise them to not hide or be ashamed of where their personal preferences violate cultural gender norms, every parent I've known that have strongly believed it was all cultural have ended up changing their mind after they've tried their hardest to give their kids gender neutral toys and clothes, or a mix of "boys" and "girls" stuff, and found their kids even at toddler stage gravitate to "typical" boys/girls stuff. I think it's great they give their kids the choice and don't judge if they pick stuff that doesn't "conform", and I personally find it very annoying how e.g. clothes stores often draw hard lines between boys and girls stuff even when there's not even a half-plausible reason (no, a minecraft t-shirt for a prepubescent child is not gender specific in any way), but at the same time I also personally saw my son express a very strong preference for or against certain things related to gender identity from he was very little, and if we'd tried to push him to ignore that preference we'd be just as bad as parents who push for conformity.

Tomminn 8y ago

The strongest correlations seem related to the wealth of the country. One reading of this finding is that more effort is directed toward gender performance in rich countries. This could be due to a number of factors. I wouldn't discount the difference in the quantity of media consumed by both countries.

taneq 8y ago
That's what spun me out when I first traveled in Asia. Backpacking through Thailand there was (as far as I could see) pretty equal representation in almost all different job roles, from street vendors to travel agents to IT. (Come to think of it, tuk-tuk drivers and taxi drivers were universally male, though...) After years of being told that all women loved tech and only shied away from it because it was full of horrible misogynistic neckbeards, and that the only solution to the problem of fewer women in tech than men was to remove any slight negative experience they may have (note that these messages weren't all, or even mostly, coming from women!), it was strange to see so many accomplished, professional women in a culture that gave women no special treatment whatsoever.
- aleeds 8y ago
  Consider that "women dealing with horrible misogynistic neckbeards" and "women that get no special treatment" are in fact, compatible. For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men that keep them from being in the industry.
  - naasking 8y ago
    > For women every day, those negative experiences are the difference from men that keep them from being in the industry. That's conjecture that isn't supported by any evidence. And in fact, there's considerable evidence that women don't choose STEM for far more fundamental reasons. The very existence of the gender equality paradox, and the fact that women have achieved gender parity in fields they actually care about but which were arguably even more sexist, like medicine and law, and did it without people fawning over whether they are having "negative experiences", completely undermines your narrative.

jernfrost 8y ago

I am highly sceptical to this study. Does anyone have a list of what they measured as differences and how they did it? The reason I am a sceptic is because as a Scandinavian I notice easily how much more macho men are in less gender equal societies and how much more feminine the women are. I don’t think it is an accident that the world’s top female boxer is Norwegian rather than say Italian. I do there is something to the equality paradox but I suspect it is more complex than this research suggests. 60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish. So statistically speaking one should have a natural scepticism to any bold claims.

tralarpa 8y ago
> 60% of published papers in life sciences turns out to be rubbish Research in life science: - Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size - Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money through projects with industry like engineers) - Done by people with problems with logical thinking - Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without understanding them The perfect combination... I welcome all downvotes.
- Majestic121 8y ago
  > - Very difficult to conduct repeatable experiments of sufficient size Fair point > - Lot of pressure because of lack of funding (e.g. hard to get money through projects with industry like engineers) Fair point > - Done by people with problems with logical thinking What ? > - Done by people who apply methods (data analysis, statistics,...) without understanding them What ? > I welcome all downvotes. Asking for downvotes is the best way to make your message looks like it's coming from an edgy teenager. If you actually want to make your message go through, I would recommend refraining from doing so, even if you think/know you're going against the crowd.
  - tralarpa 8y ago
    I don't say those people are stupid. But if you look at the publications it's very obvious that they are not trained in the same way as other scientists. The jumping to conclusions, the application of methods without knowing their constraints, the lack of imagination when exploiting a problem (i.e. asking questions like "Are there other theories that could explain our results"). I have been in several situations where those people were explaining to me one of their research problems (in a friendly chat) and then I ask a question ("What about...?") that appears logical to me and they stare at me and reply "Why didn't you tell us you are working in this field, too?". > If you actually want to make your message go through What message? Go through what/where?

throwawaynpc123 8y ago

we must do something about those women not thinking like men and driving the average female wage down. remember equal pay is utopia.

pluma 8y ago
Seriously, mods? The name clearly indicates this as an intentional troll throwaway. EDIT: Funny, I wasn't able to flag the comment until it was already flagged and dead.

justanegg 8y ago

we can't be having differences here can we, outcome NEEDS to be the same.

atoav 8y ago

The question is: What follows from that difference? Should a society treat a subset of the population different (in a positive or negative way) because on average they act different, because they have a different story to tell, because they had a different place throughout history and society? Isn't planfully treating a subset of the population different reproducing that difference? Isn't not treating a subset of the population different against justice in a historical sense? Should we treat different what seems different to us? Should we ignore the difference, essentially becoming ignorant to what lead to the difference? Hard questions. A better approach might be to look at the individual. If you presume things about people because of traits they had no control about, you are probably a better person if you keep this presumtions to yourself, even if parts of these seem to match at times. In the end, often these differences don't really matter that much, especially a Nerd community should realize this: a nerd from a never heard of minority might be much closer to you in spirit, than most of your neighbourhood with traits matching yours. The thing is, presumtions can (and often will) get in the way of seeing the complexity of the individual that is on the other side. If you are not in a war zone where ignoring presumtions ("this looks like the enemy") will get you killed, you can usually afford that luxury.

Abutere 8y ago
You bring up very good points. I especially like your last sentence, it's a bit of a Churchill-esque call to action that great societal conflicts are solved by average people working together. I do feel that it is not compatible with internet culture as it currently stands. Facebook and oh my especially Tinder all rely on the viewer to be fed generalizations and make them back. These algorithms do not encourage a nuanced view of people.

throw2016 8y ago

Here is an interesting discussion and debate between 2 experts in the field on sex differences. Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which girls have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the field is still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles and culture remain. Simon Baron-Cohen is also well known in the field for his work on autism and stands on the ‘essentialist’ side of gender differences and as readers will note in his review [2] of Cordelia Fine’s book and the ensuing 3 part debate [3] [4] [5] with her that there are far too many important new questions raised and many that remain unresolved. Everything from past studies, preconceptions, cultural bias, data, methodology to conclusions remain in question leaving very little room to draw any kind of conclusions. In light of this perhaps its best to leave the field of sex differences to experts who continue to study but do not have the answers or data to draw any conclusions. [1] https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/battle-sex-differences https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/batt... [2] https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book-reviews https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-11/book... [3] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-23/edition-12/forum [4] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letters http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-1/letter... [5] http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letters http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-24/edition-2/letter...

TheAdamAndChe 8y ago
> ...perhaps its best to leave the field of sex differences to experts who continue to study but do not have the answers or data to draw any conclusions. A difficulty here is the substantial liberal bias in social sciences[1]. How can we avoid it affecting the outcomes of their studies? [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science-politically-biased/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-social-science...
naasking 8y ago
> Cordelia Fine in her book Delusions of Gender [1] reports even something as simple as telling girls before a maths test that this is a test in which girls have done well results in dramatically higher scores suggesting the field is still in its infancy and fundamental questions about gender roles and culture remain. This is called stereotype bias, and it's recently been debunked because replications have almost all failed.

pluma 8y ago

There's a fairly simple explanation: in egalitarian societies femininity is socially acceptable even in "traditionally male" occupations. So women don't need to act "masculine" to make progress in those jobs. When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a career. There's another fairly simple explanation: "equal opportunity" is not the same as "non-sexist". Without knowing how "gender-egalitarian"-ness is measured (it's suspicious that it uses the phrase "more developed") it's impossible to tell what the societal attitudes actually look like. But it's entirely possible that the countries with the most egalitarian laws still have strict gender roles that are socially reinforced. So either way the lesson isn't "feminism is wrong" or "equal opportunity is meaningless": either equal opportunity allows women to succeed without abandoning their gender role, or egalitarianism masks the harm of socially reinforced gender roles, or maybe even both. Much like "if climate change is wrong", even if "gender disparity is innate and egalitarianism doesn't eliminate the differences" (or whatever one might construe the paper's outcome to mean), the worst case outcome of social justice is that we've made the world a nicer place and "butch" women, "girly" men and non-binary folk face less resistance. Or, y'know, maybe we're right and the changes actually eliminate injustice and help everyone. That said, it's telling that Jordan Peterson and James Damore are mentioned in these HN comments as if they were legitimate authorities (not to mention actual "NPC" throwaways as if this were reddit) and nobody bats an eye. So maybe to those people social progress is bad.

busterarm 8y ago
> When it's socially acceptable for a CEO to be a mother and a woman, more women will feel comfortable pursuing a family in addition (rather than in exclusion) to a career. Unfortunately this is probably going to be an unpopular thing to say, but I've seen how much work goes into both being a CEO and being a full-time parent up close. (With the caveat of: in the work culture here in the US...) Running a business that employs a significant number of people and having daily, hands-on parent interaction with your child are mutually exclusive. It doesn't matter if you are a mother or a father. If you want to change this fact, you'll need to start implementing controls on working hours & days like Germany did. You also have to do that knowing that crunch time is one of the competitive market advantages that the US offers.

knorker 8y ago

Woah there, you can't say that! That's what Damore got fired for!

probably_wrong 8y ago
Stealing from myself from an old comment [1]: there is a difference between what Damore intended to say (assuming the best case) and what his memo actually said. He might have wanted to say "women tend like other things", but his memo ended up saying "women are incapable of doing this thing". He may have had good intentions, but in writing the difference matters. A similar result is seen when authors argue that widely assumed interpretations of their literary characters are not what they intended. That, I believe, is what got him fired. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984758
- jki275 8y ago
  I just went back and read Damore's memo, and that idea does not appear anywhere in it. I'm curious how you tortured that out of his words.
  - probably_wrong 8y ago
    I don't want to copy-paste from myself, so I would suggest checking the comment I linked, or even better, the article where I commented.
    - jki275 8y ago
      It's still not in what he wrote. Perhaps you see it there, but it's not. In fact, it's the opposite of what he wrote.
- zwischenzug 8y ago
  Where did he say that?
- naasking 8y ago

JimGuns 8y ago

It's a weird world. Women want to stop being women so they can be like men, intellectually, mentally, and physically. Still though, many want the best of both world. So there is not much equality when you actually just don't want to be a woman, but have to struggle with being one. A recent article was saying, roughly, that women sports for example are not at all popular for men to watch, and therefore that is sexist, and because of this sexism, these sports don't get watched which reduces the income into these sports, and doesn't equate to big payouts for female athletes. The cause of this is all male sexism of course.. As we know, there are only two genders, but masculine women and feminine men just dont fit into the typical 'men and women' mentality. As we continue to deplatform traditional male and female ideologies, and replace them with the misbelieve that men are all feminine and women are masculine, and telling people that traditionalists are all Nazis, we're never going to improve anything.

pokemongoaway 8y ago
I got perminently shadow banned for a post supporting the same notion a few months ago... Very true, but I would not say, "women want." They're very subject to propaganda. Women being women is literally shunned in the last 50+ years of film and media, for the most part. With the exception of conservative and traditionalist movements that are constantly slandered, when you look into it. Women are less happy today than they've ever been - and so those of us who really love women and want to see them happy need to start standing up for the truth.
sctb 8y ago
Most of your posts have been breaking the guidelines by being unsubstantive, uncivil, or uninformative flamebait. Please read and follow them or we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pokemongoaway 8y ago
  No they don't. You just disagree. Stop being dishonest and pro-censorship! I support the parent comment.

Mon29Oct 8y ago

This has been observed since Scandinavian countries pushed very female-friendly work laws, only to have differences in gender preferences more marked than ever. The book The Nordic Gender Equality Paradox submits two pieces of explanation to it, which are that 1/ One of the reforms was to offer sumptuous parent leave, encouraging parents to distance themselves from work for a significant duration, but which made the mothers gain less experience than the fathers who usually don't take the leave and 2/ Those reforms incurred strong taxes and diminished spending power, more especially making child care less affordable, again distancing mothers from work.

msh 8y ago
I don't know that book, but it's wrong on childcare being less affordable. Atleast in Denmark and Sweden child care is heavily subsidized, to the point of being free for very low income parents (in dk). So there is no way it can make economic sense for mothers not to work. And stay at home moms (for more than 1-2 years) is rare compared to the USA.
- toxik 8y ago
  You still pay the opportunity cost, even if you are getting a monthly income. Why should I hire the person who was away for a solid year on parental leave over the guy who has been working diligently during that time? Forcing parents to have equal amounts of parental leave, as we do in Sweden (well, we incentivized it,) is a form of imposed equality of outcome. Equality of outcome is often said to be some disease of modern feminism, but really, what's the alternative? Going against our primal instincts is essential for a productive society. "Man strong - hunt food, woman caring - raise child" or some religious justification of similar dubiousness is _not_ enough. At the end of the day, it's going to be a balancing act of imposing on individual freedom such that individual freedom is at all possible. I personally am more inclined towards letting people be who they are, but that's what created gender inequality and racism in the first place.
  - avar 8y ago
    The alternative is equality of opportunity. If some people in society want to do some activity knowing they won't build job experience while doing so, let them, even if other people don't want to and become more employable as a result. That's freedom. Whether e.g. women on average tend to take more parental leave is only a small subset of those sorts of situations in society. I (a man) took a months-long parental leave fairly recently which surely hurt my job prospects, how could it not? But I chose to do it anyway. Should other men that didn't make that choice be forced to do the same to even things out?

sureaboutthis 8y ago

Is this the first time someone figured out that women are different than men?

neolefty 8y ago
But how much of that difference is nature vs nurture, and how much variation is there? The more egalitarian society becomes, the easier it is to see what is intrinsic and what is imposed. We still have some progress to make before we'll get a completely clean signal.

JimGuns 8y ago

I guess the alt.left and feminists are busy today flagging the opinions they dont like. Typical one sided liberal debates.

sctb 8y ago
Since it really doesn't look like you're going to follow the guidelines, we've banned this account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start using the site as intended. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JimGuns 8y ago
  Sorry. Didn't know that this was a site that was only for leftist opinions. Sad.
- JimGuns 8y ago
  Ban everyone that doesn't want to ride the alt-left Hilliary train. Go eat a dick.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

lgleason 8y ago

This, along with the study in the UK on preferences of kids based on testosterone levels is why we will probably not ever have equal representation of women in engineering. It has nothing to do with discrimination, or a woman's ability to do the job etc., it's about how hormones etc. affect ones preferences.

gammateam 8y ago

Which is a good thing right? What are the goals here? the top level responses I see are using this as an opportunity to talk about why experience is lacking, or as if this is an ironic outcome showing how its all a waste of time to get to the same result of the domesticated housewife. I think at this point, focusing exclusively on the highest selective evolution of "merit" and skill is the flaw. If we are trying to grow the economic pie and cater to the most people, then hiring/career growth practices based on "the best" at the theoretical best academic or refined practice will have diminishing returns for companies. And this isn't saying that there is no circumstance where women or some other subgroup would be able to conform to the strict merit based regime in proportional numbers as incumbent groups. It is saying that the barking up this tree is flawed to begin with, if you can address a greater market by having a variety of views of the market. Now that we have participation in the workforce, it would be more productive addressing how goods and resources are appropriated amongst people that help in any way, how incentives are aligned with the growth of the effort.

manfredo 8y ago
This summarized my view as well. If you plot the share of women's majors over time, computing's decline coincides with an increase in medical and law school enrollment. If, say, a woman wanted to be a doctor or lawyer but knew society wouldn't respect women in these roles and chose computing instead, was that a good thing? I'd say no. I like to joke with people, there is an extremely simple way of solving the gender gap in tech: universities can just mandate that a certain percentage of women major in computing related fields. Just select 30% of women by lottery and forbid them to choose a major other than computing related ones. Of course, most reasonable people are against such a measure.
- gammateam 8y ago
  I'm all for facetious humor but this is a bad joke for this thread
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Perhaps "joke" is the wrong term, it's more of a thought exercise. The point is to illustrate the fact that equal representation at the expense of agency is not a good thing - which absolutely is relevant to the discussions going on in this thread.

xster 8y ago

I'm curious about the social psychological effects at play here since it's more or less presenting the same content as James Damore (first paragraph page 5) to more or less the same audience. What made one presentation more palatable than the other.

Mikersio 8y ago

Anusbang p p place freshy

lilfatbitch 8y ago

Women and men will always be different. No matter how hard we try to push engineering to 50%/50%, it will never be. And that's ok.