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I know it is not politically correct to say it, but I remain unconvinced that gender parity is a desirable goal. Particularly given the current state of resear
by btilly 7y ago
I know it is not politically correct to say it, but I remain unconvinced that gender parity is a desirable goal. Particularly given the current state of research into differences in gender averages.
Here is a real example. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_visualization_ability#Gender_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_visualization_ability#... men have about a one standard deviation advantage in spacial reasoning over women. Assuming that both distributions are normal with the same variance, that means that if we pick the top X% of the population on spacial reasoning where X is fairly small, we will get about an 80/20 split of male/female. Within that top group there will be no remaining difference between men and women.
Back in the 1960s there was discrimination and no women were in engineering. This was a terrible waste of talent. But by the late 1980s, women were 20% of engineering students. Decades of hand-wringing later, women are still about 20% of engineering students. Based on spacial reasoning ability, perhaps women SHOULD be about 20% of engineering students.
What happens if we force gender parity? If the research on gender differences is right, selecting on spacial reasoning except making sure to select 50% women would result in a situation where you had 50% men, 12.5% women who are as good as the men, and the remaining 37.5% women who are worse than EVERY man at spacial reasoning. The result is that 3/4 of the women are worse than all the men. Is this a better outcome? Why?
Now I picked an example where men have an advantage. But men don't in all fields though. According to other research, women are better on average at management. This is an argument to accept the data and do our best to hire and promote on competence.
Now that argument applies to hard engineering. It isn't software development. I do not know why the ratio is so extreme in software development. (More extreme than in, say, mechanical engineering.) However I have also never seen data suggesting that sorting on interest and ability shouldn't result in the ratios that we see. Before we double down on equality as a mandate, I would like to see that data collected.
As long as, on average, the men and women you hire are equally good, your hiring process is not broken. If your data finds that there is a difference in average ability, then adjust your practices to get higher average competence. Encourage everyone to have the opportunity. Make it clear that all people with title X are equivalent regardless of secondary characteristics, AND work to make that true. (I believe that it is pretty true today.)
- wrs 7y agoOf course, if doing more things that involve spatial reasoning makes you better at spatial reasoning (which seems like a very likely assumption), this becomes a circular argument. (Did you read the Gender Differences section of that Wikipedia article?)
- btilly 7y agoYes, I did read the Gender Differences section of that article. You will note that I stated what research shows about population differences and did not wade into the more controversial question about why those differences exist. That said, I have found that on controversial subjects, people grab every sliver of support for their own ideas, and ignore data that might contradict it. The more heated the debate, the harder it is to find a neutral data driven point of view. So rather than engage with the argument that I made, you grabbed on to, "But it might still be social and not biological!" And thereby bypass the argument that the gender discrepancy in engineering can be explained by population differences in ability and not by bias within engineering departments. That said, articles like https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.00012/full#h5 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.0001... are highly suggestive that on this particular item there really could be a biological component to it.
- wrs 7y agoIt could be explained by lots of things — my point was that population differences in abilities that can be learned will obviously result if the population doesn’t have a uniform opportunity to practice those abilities uniformly, so it’s hard to avoid explaining the lack of learning by the lack of abilities without becoming circular. It’s biological fact that brains are extremely plastic, and I’m sure we all know (or are) people who have rendered “innate” talents or lack thereof irrelevant by the application of study and practice. If cultural biases limit practice in a population, that population will certainly skew lower in ability as a result.
- btilly 7y agoQuestion. What evidence would it take to convince you that there are real biological differences? In the hypothetical, yes. Absolutely. Social differences can explain a lot of what look like biological differences. The opposite is also true. Biology may cause large differences. These two explanations are also not necessarily in conflict. Biological factors may work through social dynamics. For example hormones can change our actions which affects our immediate social environment at impressionable ages. That said, evidence suggests that testosterone levels during puberty affects our spatial reasoning abilities for the rest of our lives. Given the very large difference in testosterone levels between men and women, this suggests a biological explanation of the measured gender difference.