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The most important thing that matters is ability to earn a decent living. Decent living is essentially ability to afford most things like a property in good nei
by iamsb 7y ago
The most important thing that matters is ability to earn a decent living. Decent living is essentially ability to afford most things like a property in good neighborhoods, personal identity (clothes), transportation, quality education for children, and safety.
People are really smart and they optimise for their own survival. Essentially - decent wage -> better options for partner -> better standard of living.
In some countries, like Norway, a teacher makes a decent wage. Not as much as a software engineer, but good enough to support a pretty good lifestyle.
Where in some countries, like India, a stem graduate makes a LOT more money than a teacher. I made more money in my third year as a software engineer, than my father who worked in public sector as a civil engineer with 25+ years of experience. Comparison with non technical workers with stem fields is really lop sided when it comes to earning potential. Plus if you are possibly the first generation which can break out of poverty cycle for your entire family, then that adds another layer of pressure to choose certain fields. Hence men or women tend to choose these fields.
As wealth creation in some of these countries reaches to a point where non stem fields receive similar earning potential, already happening in India, we will see lower number of women opting for these fields as well.
We would really like to find a non economic reason for some of these disparities, like patriarchy, gender discrimination and so on, but it is probably mostly economic.
- throwaway8548 7y agoBut why doesn't this affect men's decision making as well?
- throwaway8459 7y agoMen and women are optimised for _slightly_ different thinking that results in _huge_ divergences at scale?
- Doingmything123 7y agoWhy do you think the issue is biological and not social? Isn't this the nature vs nurture debate?
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoBecause..Uterus. (Short answer)
- throwaway8459 7y agoLike all things, it's not a black and white split between nature vs nurture, it's both.
- Doingmything123 7y agoI don't disagree but I think that in the average case nurture has a much larger affect on our lives that nature.
- iamsb 7y agoIt absolutely does. I know many men in India who would rather do something else than do engineering. Look at the background of most standup comedians in India for example. Most of them come from engineering/stem background and use that to fulfill their side hustle to be a comic and then become full time comics if successful. I was personally far more interested in studying classic Sanskrit literature, but was talked into becoming an engineer.
- throwaway8548 7y agoI should rephrase. Why does it affect men disproportionately less?
- danbolt 7y agoMy gut take is that our society is socialized to value men that have some sort of "breadwinner" status.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoNot just society, but women especially. It’s not even an issue of socialization. Unemployed or underemployed men are heavily penalized in the dating pool. You don’t have to be a gold digger to value a stable provider as a partner. And women who are self-sufficient still generally tend to prefer men who are at least roughly equal in their ability to provide.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoThe hypothesis is that when economics are less of a factor, people tend towards work they find more enjoyable. Men control most of STEM, so it sucks less for them, which is why you see women disproportionately leaving.
- cortesoft 7y agoCould be a lot of reasons.... if STEM majors have a 'bro' culture, then more men would feel comfortable in that culture than women, and would not be driven away from it.
- malandrew 7y ago> We would really like to find a non economic reason for some of these disparities I don't even know if we like to find a non-economic reason or if most people simply don't know economics well enough to reason through 2nd and 3rd order economic consequences. Since they can't reason through it they choose simple explanations despite it being wrong. This is the same reason why people used to believe that deities controlled things like the weather and their fortune in life. The "patriarchy" gets basically the same faith-based treatment as Zeus/Jupiter.
- iamsb 7y agoIt is quite difficult to reason with people who would rather blame an invisible force. For example - most women did not work in factories until much later or even today. More Americans died in making stuff for the WW1 than in the actual war, as the conditions of factory work was brutal. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to that environment if they can avoid it? Not even for a minute suggesting that women should not be allowed to work in dangerous environments. Having said that no one wants to subject themselves to dangerous work and it is perhaps slightly easier for women to avoid that.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoIf women started working in dangerous environments that harms their bodies, it would have a direct impact on their reproductive ability..which on a large scale would be detrimental to the perpetuation of humans as a species and hence our survival. This is how we evolved. Not likely going to be a popular opinion, but it is mine.
- iamsb 7y agoAlso remember lot (most) of Marxism predates Darwin and evolutionary biology. Even though Darwin and Marx were contemporaries. Since left is still quite based on Marxists ideas, it just does not account for many evolutionary biology theories and hence tends to find reasons which do not explain things correctly.
- iamsb 7y agoAlso just to add - In countries like India, it is incredibly difficult to defer which major to choose. You basically have to choose a major as soon as you have graduated high school and it is quite painful and costly(time+money) to change it afterwords. Which is why we see far higher percentage of engineers go get a MBA in India, as most do not want to be engineers in the first place.