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I just hate that the emphasis seems to be strictly based on careers with high income. There is no focus spreading equality or equity or informing everyone when

• zarkov99 7y ago
  Yes, don't forget all the shitty careers, with long hours, danger, and significant health hazards. Not much equality of outcome on those either. Somehow no one is claiming sexism is the cause of disparity for those.
  • foldr 7y ago
    Actually, a lot of people are saying that sexism is the cause of disparity in those cases. It's a commonplace observation that sexism harms men as well as women. Historically, the professions you're alluding to have been closed to women by men. So for example, the reason that women couldn't serve in the military until relatively recently is not that women used their power and influence within society to get a pass on military service. Rather, it's that men didn't want to let women serve.
    • zarkov99 7y ago
      Really? Below is a list of the top 8 most dangerous jobs in the US. Which ones do you think would have equal gender representation if there was no sexism? 1 - Logging workers 2 - Fishers and fishing workers 3 - Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 4 - Roofers 5 - Refuse and recyclable material collectors 6 - Structural iron and steel workers 7 - Truck drivers 8 - Farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers
      • foldr 7y ago
        That list is obviously a bit whack (how can being a pilot possibly be the third most dangerous job in the US?) But yeah, many of those jobs have a skewed gender distribution in significant part due to sexist stereotypes.
        • zarkov99 7y ago
          Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-for-men.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-f... I ignored the "for men" qualifier as it seems obvious that these are the most dangerous jobs period.
          • foldr 7y ago
            Fair enough. I believe those stats are skewed by a small number of pilots doing relatively dangerous kinds of flying. In any case, yes, more women would be doing these jobs if sexism were eliminated.
            • zarkov99 7y ago
              OK, but would you expect a 50/50 split if it was? And if you do not expect it, then how would you explain any remaining disparity?
              • foldr 7y ago
                You are talking about a hypothetical scenario where all sexist stereotypes are eliminated. It’s obviously silly to guess at what the numbers would be. I see no reason to expect a precise 50/50 gender balance in every one of the listed fields. Conversely, I would also not expect to see the massive disparities that we see currently. The problem in STEM isn’t that the gender balance isn’t exactly 50/50. It’s that substantial numbers of women are discouraged from STEM careers by sexism.
                • zarkov99 7y ago
                  If you cannot guess what the numbers should be then how would you know the problem is fixed? Or even if there is any problem at all?
                  • foldr 7y ago
                    First of all, note that this argument works both ways. You also can’t put exact numbers on how many women we’d expect there to be in the industry in the absence of any sexism whatever. So how do you know that there’s no problem? But actually, the question is quite easy to answer for me. I am more interested in sexism per se than in the gender distribution. When women in the industry infrequently report that they are experiencing sexism, then I’ll consider that we’re well on the way to solving the problem. The current gender imbalance is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
    • grimjack00 7y ago
      And now that women can serve in the military, it's time to update the Select Service law so it requires both men _and_ women to register on their 18th birthday.
      • foldr 7y ago
        Sure. Do you think that there are many people who both (a) agree with the registration requirement in the first place and (b) think that it should apply to men only?
        • zarkov99 7y ago
          Yes.
          • foldr 7y ago
            Who? This is an obscure issue. I should think that very few Americans are even aware of the disparity.
            • zarkov99 7y ago
              I think people who are not part of the culture war, which I believe is most people, would be perfectly fine with this disparity.
              • foldr 7y ago
                Speculate as you please. This is an extremely obscure issue, and I suspect that very few people have a strong opinion on it. (If I'm wrong about this, it should be easy to point to a counterexample.)
                • remarkEon 7y ago
                  It is an extremely obscure issue because the vast majority consider women signing up for the draft to be ludicrous, and dismiss the conversation thereafter.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      I'd hope if women had thought about the serving example they would have made the same choice out of a sensible respect for setting up the future. A society that keeps their women from dying needless deaths has a reproductive advantage over societies that send them into the meat grinder - the protective society can produce more children after the conflict. From a quick and lazy glance at some statistics [0] losing a young man in 1945 is statistically losing a man, losing a young women is more like statistically losing 6 people (1 now, 5 next generation). The baby boom doesn't work out as well as it did if a big group of women just died off. Equality of opportunity to die serving a country is all very well, but until men figure out how to operate wombs without women there are practical differences when deciding who is risks probable death. The situation has probably changed now that growing populations no longer looks like an easy win but the calculus goes a bit beyond 'men just didn't like the idea'. Men didn't like the idea because it is an objectively bad idea in an era where population really mattered. The women probably agreed with that one on the whole. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
      • foldr 7y ago
        >Men didn't like the idea because it is an objectively bad idea in an era where population really mattered. This is an argument that's rarely if ever been used against allowing women to serve in the military. I think it's the argument that you'd like people to make rather than an argument that people have actually historically made. More broadly, if you see women primarily as baby machines, then military service should be the least of your worries when it comes to fertility.
        • roenxi 7y ago
          Well it is is pretty obvious to me that in day to day practice women were kept out of the army because (as sibling poster) they are physically worse fighters than men by raw strength. But it is also pretty obvious to me that over the centuries brilliant military planners would have regularly thought about using women on the front lines and then rejected the idea for much better reasons than 'I'm a sexist'. The stereotypes here aren't arbitrary, an unbiased thinker would have reasonably reached the same practices. And we can't really say for certain that what everybody thought was controlling what happened. What everybody thinks and what actually happens in, eg, banking and finance are completely different. The people in control are not the people talking on the street. > More broadly, if you see women primarily as baby machines, then military service should be the least of your worries when it comes to fertility. Call me old fashioned but I'm ruling out the idea that men are the primary baby making engine of humanity. On your actual point; the fact that there are other things to think about doesn't stop people thinking about this specific thing. The US lost 400,000 servicemen in WWII without really even seeing a foreign invasion; those sort of numbers absolutely should involve someone asking the question 'who can we most and least afford to lose?'. The militaries of the world are not warm and happy-go-lucky organisations. They ask quite unpleasant questions all the time.
    • belorn 7y ago
      Historically, the military mostly drafted people, especially if we look at the last 100 years. Conscription has very little to do with choices, and male only conscription has a long history. There is a good discussion to be had over why conscription has mostly been male only. Is it powerful men wanting to get rid of young expendable men in some form of evolutionary benefit to themselves? It it because of historical benefit of muscle differences? Did women use their power and influence within society to get a pass on conscription? Men did not choose to be forced into the military. People do not generally chose to be forced to the front line and die. It is also worth mentioning that in the US, black males were proportionally drafted in higher rates than white males during the Vietnam war. Most people would agree that white men used their power and influence to get a pass on military service. Maybe the first question to discuss is if being drafted is a benefit or disadvantage in term of power and influence.
      • foldr 7y ago
        Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. As you point out, the people in charge were all men. It was up to them to make the rules about who could or couldn't volunteer and who would or wouldn't be conscripted. >Most people would agree that white men used their power and influence to get a pass on military service. This perfectly illustrates my point. That is exactly not how women got a pass on military service. Thus, it misses the point to complain that men disproportionately do certain dangerous jobs. Women have been kept out of those jobs by men, and by sexist attitudes more broadly, not by some kind of inverse sexism that favors women over men.
        • belorn 7y ago
          > Voluntary military service was also male only, so I'm not sure why you are focusing so much on conscription. Most worlds armies are conscription, and even the US army had conscription during the American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It culturally defines the military. > This perfectly illustrates my point. No it does not. Men as a group did not keep women out of conscription so men alone could get the privilege of being conscripted. It not a privilege. A better claim is that society pick which ever demographic is most expendable and force them to pick up arms during major conflicts. Young men, especially men of color, is consistently seen as expendable. It is racism, sexism, ageism, and a bunch more isms, and part of it favor women over young men. During world war 2 almost all nations involved used prison population for conscription purposes. It is the most obvious place to find a lot of expendable people. Voluntary military service still carries with it that culture and non-expendable people tend to not be near the front line.
    • Cougher 7y ago
      Side note: it's interesting that it's these male-dominant fields that have the noble "serve" descriptor associated with them. Given that women have dominated the fields of educating children and nursing our sick, it seems that these are more deserving of the serving label rather than those who destroy.