15 ms·

Why are boys academically underperforming? [audio]

126 points by respinal 6y ago

throwaway2245 6y ago
Can you imagine an article on the BBC or on HN front page saying: "Girls are trailing boys in engineering jobs: why?" implicitly identifying that as a problem which needed to be fixed.
- theplague42 6y ago
  Sure, here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37254851 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37254851 Not really sure what you're implying
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    Never submitted to HN. Based on the search results and point scores, I'd wager that no article with "women" and "engineering" has ever been at the top of the front page, as this presently is.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mmillin 6y ago
      You're moving the goalposts set in your original post, but a quick search[1] shows many articles on Hacker News about the gap between men and women in engineering. Many with more points than this post currently has. It does seem like this post is growing more quickly than these did, but perhaps because this is a more surprising/novel development, whereas the gap of women in engineering roles is much more commonly known? [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=women+engineering https://hn.algolia.com/?q=women+engineering
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
        There are 4 such articles with more points, at the time of your writing (and I expect there will soon be 0 or 1). There are also 4 such articles with more points referencing boys and education (not including this one).
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    I'm implying that "a gender difference which ostensibly disadvantages boys in education" will get more attention than "a gender difference which ostensibly disadvantages women in engineering". On a forum which is organised around engineering. And people will claim that the latter gets more attention, despite being shown evidence to the contrary. That's pretty average sexism. (I also would note that this hasn't been up for long enough for people to be up-voting for the content, given that you can only access it as a 23-minute podcast.)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      > And people will claim that the latter gets more attention, despite being shown evidence to the contrary. Except this has not been demonstrated at all. The BBC has both covered the topic and it has been discussed in highly upvoted posts on Hacker News.
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
        As discussed above - despite widening the goalposts to include any article with 'women' and 'engineering' in the title, there is now only one such article which matches the popularity of this one - and based on the trajectory, that is unlikely to remain the case.
- apsec112 6y ago
  I've seen many discussions like that. The title sounds a bit weird because everyone already knows that many engineering fields are mostly male, so nobody would write a headline as if this was news.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I don’t know what point you’re making, but it’s certainly not uncommon to see articles noting that women lag men in certain professions, even insinuating strongly that the cause is discrimination without a shard of evidence.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  If you listen to it the gap between them is growing which is why there's concern, 1:45 onwards.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    The gap has grown also in engineering professions.
    - bbrree66 6y ago
      Is it time to blame the patriarchy yet?
- quelltext 6y ago
  Do you maybe mean what if they were reporting about trailing in job performance? Because the headline you gave seems pretty close to what is in fact reported all the time.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
I taught in public schools and studied pediatric ADHD. From those experiences, I found boys had a number of disadvantages. First off, they are more motor-hyperactive, they move, fidget, get out of their chairs: their very neurochemistry develops differently, making them less adept at the "sit still and write notes" aspect of school. This isn't "bad parenting" or "overdiagnosis of ADHD" by the way, the brain of a young male develops differently, specifically their pre-frontal cortex (executive function, how to behave/regulate oneself) develops much slower, whereas the motor-neural cortex is overly developed, relative to girls. Beyond any developmental difference in the sexes, there's culture. Where I taught, the South and West sides of Chicago, any troubled boy was more likely to join a gang, sell drugs, commit violence, etc. These poor boys could be jumped and beaten for living on the wrong street. One student was having anger issues, his cousin got killed, he had latent anger issues which prevented prioritization of school work. Another common issue: his father is gone, he's switching homes constantly, there's no stability to facilitate the slow, incremental progress that is school and learning. Beyond sheer dangerous problems like the above, I'd say boys channel their effort into sports and gaming more, whereas the girls I taught were more concerned with social circles, popularity, social media, etc. Question, do we think gaming is "better" for mental health than social media? If so, boys may be advantaged, I recall my boy students used their Chromebook to play this bubble game where their bubbles had to chase and eat other students' bubbles: very benign and strategic. There is a change that happens around puberty, when I was in seventh grade I noticed it acutely. Students transition from caring what their authority figures think (teachers/parents) to caring what their peers think (friends). This leads to a degradation in class morale, unity, and overall drive and focus to follow the teacher's lesson. It was crazy that the 5th graders could stare at me doe-eyed as I explained volcanoes and robotics, but the 7th and 8th graders just zoned out on their hidden phones (god, that's a huge issue as well) or incessantly talked to one another. Edit: There's a bit of discussion of "overdiagnosis" or "misdiagnosis" of ADHD. This is a complex issue, but I will say I don't think anecdata is constructive here. By blaming bad parenting or video games or candy, we ignore the reams of data which show that many children can not focus and struggle MIGHTILY due to this. Children with ADHD have less friends, less academic success, more likelihood to abuse drugs, like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/nicotine (their dopaminergic system is uniquely vulnerable to stimulants). This is a sad trajectory for these kids, and I think we should consider carefully before we blanket accuse the medical system of overdiagnosis or misdiagnosis.
thower234324234 6y ago
Is this new ? It happens routinely in India IIRC (though the stats are flipped for entrance exams).
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
Isn't this literally the explicit goal of the girls/women in stem and education movement? UNESCO [1], World Bank [2], Unicef [3] have specific goal programs here. [1] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/gender-and-science/improving-measurement-of-gender-equality-in-stem/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas... [2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation [3] https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education
- hyko 6y ago
  No, I thought the goal of those programs was to invest in the education of girls where it is lacking, and improving the representation of women in STEM fields to reflect their school achievements?
nprz 6y ago
Probably because boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD compared to girls.
- hammock 6y ago
  Do you believe diagnoses are causing performance decreases?
- xondono 6y ago
  This is not a cause, but a consequence. Attitudes and norms around how school have changed a lot, and the modern school severely penalizes boys. For instance it was typical for schools to encourage competition between students, but this is very frown upon in most places nowadays. For a lot of boys, the drive to compete is pretty much the only positive thing keeping them focused on schoolwork. Another typical trend has been to reduce and to almost eliminate the amount of multiple choice testing and to change it to written questions. There’s evidence enough to claim that this significantly penalizes boys (specially in the 10 to 14 age range) due to developmental reasons. The difference in ADHD diagnosis is easy to explain. As we’ve moved our expectations of kid behavior from what “the typical boy does” to “what the typical girl does”, a lot of perfectly normal boy behavior is reinterpreted as ADHD.
  - souprock 6y ago
    Competition is simply prohibited. It used to be that grades were posted publicly, for all to see. Instructors aren't allowed to do that anymore.
blahblahblogger 6y ago
I haven't listened to this yet, but am wondering if the gender gap in teaching could be an issue? I work in tech where the gender disparity between men and women is discussed very often -- but I don't see these conversations taking place amongst teachers, most especially for earlier primary education which is more female than male. Maybe there is a bias here or maybe women teachers have teaching styles that resonate with female students more. It definitely needs more attention.
- absolutelyrad 6y ago
  Yeah, I had women math teachers that sucked. Made it boring. Then I got a math teacher who was a guy with deep voice. Dude talked too much political stuff but he taught too good, it was like he had my attention. I didn't even study for the exam except for the last 10 minutes and aced it, his lectures were enough, I got everything in a single class, no revision. We used to have internationally accredited exams and everyone taught by him used to do well for some reason. Before him I didn't care about math at all. I only learn when it's a guy teaching me for some reason. I can't focus on a woman if she's teaching, I get bored and started thinking about what to app to make. But not every guy teacher was the one I could focus on. He was the guy with the deepest voice, for some reason it didn't let my attention drift away. Before that, I sucked in Chemistry, until some guy taught me. I don't know how that worked but did. Then some guy taught me physics but his voice wasn't manly, and I started sucking at physics after that. So I'd say as a guy, I was almost always better taught by men. Women (young or middle aged) bored me away from the subject. And that used to reflect in the batch performance for almost every guy. Girls weren't impacted by it at all. They got good grades either ways man or woman. I realize now how horrible it all sounds, but trust me I tried.
  - koop123 6y ago
    Either you are gay or you hate women.
- rgblambda 6y ago
  Also there's a recognised gender bias in how teachers grade assignments. Boys messier handwriting results in lower scores than girls tidier handwriting, even controlling for content and legibility. source: https://www.tes.com/news/could-handwriting-bias-write-exam-chances https://www.tes.com/news/could-handwriting-bias-write-exam-c... Women in general tend to be more compliant, which becomes an issue later in life when standing up for oneself in the workplace (e.g. getting promotions and pay raises), but it's an advantage in the classroom. Men need to be shown the value of something before they will learn it. This can be a problem as a lot of school lessons have no immediate practical value.
BaronVonSteuben 6y ago
Could it be that girls get tons of encouragement, accolades, and praise when they do something, but when boys do they're told it's just their privilege that made them succeed? In our current school there are 3 STEM programs for girls, one that is for both boys and girls. One of the programs for girls is very well funded by local startup money and gets designers, marketers, etc to make them fun. The one for both boys and girls is volunteer run and while I respect and appreciate the effort, frankly it not fun and exciting at all. It's little better than someone just handing you a textbook to read. I'm all for making STEM (coding especially) inclusive and welcoming for all. Nobody should face discrimination or harassment based on gender (or any other attribute). Unfortunately it's the boys getting the shaft right now. I can't imagine the outrage that would happen if someone started a "boys only" program, yet it almost seems like that's what needs to happen. We're back to the days of striving for "separate but equal."
- geofft 6y ago
  Also, most of the discrimination in STEM happens later in life, in the workplace - the only real effect of getting more girls into STEM is to have a larger pool of women entering STEM careers so you still have some left after driving a bunch of them off. Businesses donating to STEM-for-schoolgirls programs is a way for them to assuage their conscience (or to do PR) without having to ask what they can be doing directly to solve the actual problem. And I'm afraid this increases the perception that men are naturally fine at STEM and women need special support because of inherent gender attributes (and not because of social problems that we could just address at the root)... which at the end of the day makes life harder for women in their careers.
  - petsormeat 6y ago
    +1. Everybody's setting up balloon drops and loud publicity stunts for these "let's get girls to code!" initiatives. Nobody's calling serious attention to the lack of female tech leads, directors, and VPs, because that would require uncomfortable investigation into why non-male employees aren't retained and promoted.
hyko 6y ago
This was widely being talked about at least thirty years ago. The elephant in the room is that Boys’ academic underperformance is tied to class, and thus resolving the issue has gone nowhere, because there’s no such thing as class and because the responsibility for all under-achievement therefore lies with the individual.
- wowowowow 6y ago
  > The elephant in the room is that Boys’ academic underperformance is tied to class Can you explain this?
  - krona 6y ago
    Its explained in the podcast by work of David Figlio [1]. One theory (from the podcast) is boys are more sensitive than girls to poor environmental factors involved in educational attainment. 1. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161074 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161074
- hammock 6y ago
  Balls187's comment suggests the opposite. Would be interesting to see at least one of you cite some data.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    I don't understand why you say these things are opposites. This one suggests (socioeconomic) class is a factor in lower performing boys' performance. This is true: at least in the US, boys' academic performance is more affected by socioeconomic class than girls' (though both are very much so). balls187 says that the way boys' and girls' academic performance evolves vs. age is different. This is also true.
  - hyko 6y ago
    Sure, the UK GCSE data has shown a gap for the past 30 years: https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GCSE14AGS.pdf https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GCSE... Edited to add: please also see the work from David Figlio et al. mentioned in Krona’s comment below. That’s an interesting study design that tries to demonstrate that boys in aggregate need higher quality schooling to achieve the same level of performance as girls in aggregate.
7OVO7 6y ago
these are those articles that in Italy are interpreted as media spam propaganda: women are smarter than men. misleading and inconsistent, and not because I am a male, but because as there are males intellectually superior to other females, there are inevitably females intellectually superior to males, and it is absolutely random and chaotic. if we then discuss what favors or disadvantages the intellect, it is quite another matter.
balls187 6y ago
This was true when I was in grade school as well (late 80's-90's). Prior to puberty, nearly all the top performing students were girls. After puberty, boys were more represented. The theory I heard was societal pressure in the US was higher on girls to be "liked" and accepted, and that girls felt that doing well in school was counter to that. Girls would stop focusing on performance and ultimately move towards the center of the curve. Pressure to be liked, and antithetical attitudes towards academic performance also applied to boys as well, but to a lesser degree.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hammock 6y ago
  Hyko's comment suggests the opposite. Would be interesting to see at least one of you cite some data.
  - balls187 6y ago
    I suspect it will be difficult to find information about academic performance from that time period. This article from 18 years ago suggests that girls received extra encouragement to overcome the lowered expectations due to their gender. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/
yters 6y ago
I enjoyed homeschooling much more than public school. Both contain subjects that seem irrelevant, but with homeschool I could knock all that out quickly and move onto my favorite activities of reading, coding and playing outside. Then I went to public school and spent hours bored out of my mind because I didn't understand why different subjects mattered, and some seemed to be indoctrination which was both annoying and boring at the same time. I like the older approach of emphasizing reading writing 'rithmetic, and then teaching practical skills and classics. All obviously relevant skills and knowledge for everyone.
im3w1l 6y ago
The high level story is that men were doing better in society, so feminists tried to change that but they overcompensated which lead to boys starting to do worse. It should also be mentioned that young men are now doing worse than young women in the workplace. That's because this is a generational thing. When millenials are 50, then 50 year old men will do worse than 50 year old women. How specifically was this accomplished? Well many small actions were taken. So it's hard to pinpoint which one exactly it is. Women are favored both with explicit policies to favor them, as well as by being given more consideration when policies are designed ("How will this affect women"). Hence I don't think there is one big thing that needs fixing, rather it's many small things. And doing so will take a long time, decades possibly.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  Men have also been doing worse in college for quite some time.
grenoire 6y ago
Just gave the whole thing a listen, it doesn't seem to add more to the discussion than what is already known (to people who've been following the discussion, at least). The most critical point seems to be the social aspect: Boys ostracize academically successful boys, and therefore boys are afraid to be seen as academically successful. Other minor social factors seem to be that teaching methods unintentionally disparage boys who weren't academically successful, often by creating competitive environments where they fall into a failing feedback loop and just quit participating in the competition altogether. It ends on a note saying that the way to fix is by acknowledging the fact that boys are falling behind, and adjusting our teaching methods and schools' social environments.
- xondono 6y ago
  Except this only reinforces the current environment. Anyone with experience in teaching environments knows girls are way worse at ostracizing successful students. It’s very interesting to me the claim that boys are quitting because there’s too much competition, because my experience is the complete opposite. The only thing that makes boys quit competing in my experience is either seeing the competition as pointless (“bad boy” attitude) or realizing that the competition is not fair. A lot of teachers are unaware as to how smart some kids can be. I’ve seen kids swap their names in tests just to validate the hypothesis that their language teacher was assigning grades based on who wrote what (which, having seen their numbers, looks like it was indeed happening).
  - grenoire 6y ago
    I don't at all disagree; the variety of researchers interviewed had their own focuses, neither necessarily discounted what the others said. I do believe that a part of your anecdotal 'seeing competition as pointless' case must've leaked into the researcher who was discussing competition being discouraging.
andi999 6y ago
I attended the opening ceremony of the international physics Olympics, and it was interesting to see the gender distribution of the teams. Most western countries had 0-1 female in a team of 5. Countries traditionally perceived as less gender equal had more. I remember Kuwait having an all girls team.
- mjh2539 6y ago
  Someone did a study on this recently. Women in the developing world are much more likely to study STEM than in the developed world. There was speculation as to why.
  - Latour 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure the consensus is that in the developing world, STEM education is considered a more viable path to financial independence [1]. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
- analog31 6y ago
  Anecdote: The two women whom I'm closest to (my spouse and my mom) both went into science because they were encouraged to do so by the nuns at the Catholic high schools that they attended. One possible explanation is that the social expectation of becoming a wife and mother is decoupled from the choice of what they study in school.
bondarchuk 6y ago
Girls are more well-organised, and diligent, better at planning etc. Don't know why this would be a surprise to anyone. Apologies in advance for not beating around the bush.
hoka-one-one 6y ago
Hacker News comment sections are becoming pretty socially right-wing. Strange to watch.
- baskire 6y ago
  Society is becoming more right wing. It’s what happens when people see less opportunities for them and their children. The system as current stands doesn’t care about middle class white Westerners. A group who’s slowly becoming poorer and poorer. Donald trump and people like him will continue to rise into power as the middle class is oppressed.
  - bzudo 6y ago
    At their perceived oppression. In reality, they still hold all the cards.
    - hoka-one-one 6y ago
      Powerful comment
Noos 6y ago
A big issue is that boys read less than girls overall. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-gi... Boys read for pleasure much less and apparently don't read as well as girls when they do: they use less challenging books and skip/skim more. In general somehow reading has seemed to grow more gendered over time; if you go into the average chain bookstore its apparent that its heavily targeted towards women, and something like Amazon's free Prime reads are often almost entirely women-targeted genre selections. Young adult books for example are targeted almost entirely towards teen girls now, and even manga or comic books seem focused on the female market in increasing amounts. Jon Scieszka, a kids author, noticed this over fifteen years ago and started guys read, a website trying to encourage boys to do so and raise awareness about it. But it seems to have stalled, and I don't hear a lot of talk about the feminization of reading. I really think that this is a major part of why boys fall behind. Reading in general is the basis of learning, and boys over time have moved away. There's always been cultural resistance against "book-larning" but its weird how gendered reading itself has become lately.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  It is mentioned in the article, but I also have seen this anecdotally. How often do school libraries have things boys want to read? In high school, even among those who did read, very few of us ever used the library because it mostly had fantasy novels, fiction, etc. My friend group wanted to read about history and economics, topics not really covered.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Your school library was mostly fiction? That's bizarre. Our school library probably had more books under the 500 section alone (pure science) than it had fiction. I went to the public library for fiction.
  - Noos 6y ago
    Supply side is an issue, but I don't think it explains everything. I think also some problems are that boys and men only like to read nonfiction and are too hyperactive to sit still. Could you imagine if it was said that men only really like to watch documentaries if they watch TV or movies at all? We'd think it absurd right? But for some reason the idea men shun fiction is seemed as a truism. And if people would say "oh boys are too energetic, they can't sit still for a movie" we'd think they are nuts. I'm not sure how it happened. I wish someone would research how this idea came into dominance
slumdev 6y ago
Boys require more physical activity. They're just wired for it. Sitting at a desk for hours on end is incompatible with their physiology. Sitting like that isn't good for girls, either, but they seem to cope better. Schooling, as it is widely administered today, is not humane. It's not that it benefits one sex. It's that it hurts one more than it hurts the other. If you have a boy who's on the verge of failing because he can't pay attention, make a serious effort to get him several hours of moderate or intense physical activity every day. You'll see a world of difference.
longtom 6y ago
tl;dl: * Sex differences in general intelligence are small, so the F>M achievement gap in higher education likely is not explained by women being smarter. * The gap emerges already in elementary school and the gap in elementary school is predictive of performance in higher education. * The gap in elementary school is not new, and can likely be attributed to females maturing earlier in their attention skills and being less unruly. * So girls/women may have always been more fit for school, but they lacked incentives to make something of themselves and were held back by their biology in earlier times. * What is new is a strong incentive for girls to succeed in school due to the economic opportunities and reduced investment in the children and birth (e.g. birth control). * The gap mainly exists in lower-to-middle income families, not so much higher income, so a good environment can presumably aid boys to be more focused, or boys may be more sensitive to a poor environment. * It concludes with anecdotes by a teacher about how a return to more manly competition may not actually be helpful for boys as it discourages slow learners. Rather, boys should be more supported, and they need to get over the stereotype that nerdiness and conscientiousness is for the girls. Plus the topic of boys falling behind should not be a taboo.
99_00 6y ago
Why isn't the answer: females are more intelligent than males.
- username90 6y ago
  "Males" do better on standardized tests like SAT and ACT than "females", they just trail behind on grades.
- xenocratus 6y ago
  I don't have direct links to the papers, but IQ levels are statistically similar, with the standard deviation for males a bit larger. Will dig for papers and update. Edit: One paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000962 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Another: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.180.2251&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.180...
- dudul 6y ago
  Because school grades do not reflect intelligence.
dageshi 6y ago
I have always wondered if girls knowledge that they're likely to want a child some day factors into this. That is it gives them a timeframe (between late 20's and late 30's say) that they kinda know they want to be in a position to have a child and working back from that they need to get an education and begin a career. It gives them almost a timescale to plan against and boys have nothing similar in the biological sense. I genuinely have no clue if it actually holds any weight, just something I've always been curious about.
08-15 6y ago
Are girls actually outperforming boys academically? It's repeated a few times, that girls attend college more often than boys, and achieve higher grades. But college is a broad term; you can study electrical engineering or gender studies and get a master's degree either way, yet these are very different fields and require very different skills. Relatively more girls pick gender studies over electrical engineering. It's possible that boys outperform girls in every single field, but averaged over all fields, it appears the other way around (Simpson's Paradox). I wonder if there is any data that shows girls' superior performance broken down by field.
throwmylifawy 6y ago
As with all of these types of posts there are those who complain about how women (or insert any protected class) have unfair advantages. They seem to see the world as a zero sum. If anyone class has an advantage, the other class will be disadvantaged. The proposed solution is usually to do a blind audition. If you don't know anything about the candidate there is no discrimination. However this seems to have a major flaw. How do you account for all of the disadvantages that occurred before or might occur after the blind audition?
- confidantlake 6y ago
  You strive to eliminate bias everywhere. Putting your thumb on the scale during the audition portion because there may have discrimination before does not make sense.
  - throwmylifawy 6y ago
    I get that it would be impossible to solve all forms of discrimination everywhere. I think my fundamental question is can you solve the problem of systemic discrimination, by ignoring it? My problem with the blind audition is you are fixing a local problem and in turn ignoring the global problem. It seems that corporations and governments are trying to solve the global problem (lack of diversity due to discrimination) which then in turn causes local problems (reverse discrimination).
smartkiddo 6y ago
I come from Kenya, and this thing is already apparent. If you what is happening in our country, the new constitution mandates gender equality. So, what is happening is this, tribes, such as mine, which do not favor men over women, have many highly educated women. Therefore, when government jobs are being distributed, I am at disadvantage. Men from other tribes are hired but to comply with gender equality, women from our tribes are hired to our exclusion. So, people like me have lost opportunities. This gender thing is kinda discriminatory. We need to think about it more carefully.
croh 6y ago
As society, humanity still lacks a proper vision and far away from calling a modern society. Same problem persists under different disguises e.g. Gender based policies, religion based policies, cast based policies, region based policies. You name it. There are people who suffer for being in minority and then there are people who take advantage of being in minority. - Why only black lives matters, what about white people, asians and many others? Why do we scare to say 'all lives matter' ? - Why only 'lets girls to get code', what about boys and trans ? Why do we scare to say 'lets get everyone to code' ? - Why do countries identify themselves with a single religion ? Why can't we respect the all religions ? In this well connected world, the price of being politcally incorrect could be huge. People are so scared to say right things and get shunned publicly. We should not create our policies based on phobias, stigmas and to allur particular votebank, but for universal integration. Let's have first right vision. It needs a real courage to say the right things and more to do the same.
- itronitron 6y ago
  The answer to your 'why' questions is that there are (and were) exclusionary behaviors and/or tactics that either actively prevent or passively discourage those minorities from participating.
- runarberg 6y ago
  > and then there are people who take advantage of being in minority I honestly don’t see this as a problem. So what if a person gets a little privilege just because they belong in a minority? What bothers me is the more common case of privileged person taking advantage of their privilege. > Why do we scare to say 'all lives matter'? Because I always hear “all lives matter” said in response to “black lives matter”. To me that sounds like you are discounting my previous statement, as if it’s not entirely sufficient, that black lives matter. “All lives matter” is something that people also say. e.g. I hear animal rights activists say that all the time. Even the very same people that say “black lives matter” in an anti-racist rally are likely to say “all lives matter” in an pro-immigration rally, pointing to the fact that many immigrants suffer preventable deaths on the migratory routes. > In this well connected world, the price of being politcally incorrect could be huge Good. If I say something that insults a lot of people I would like to know about it, so that I can know better in the future. I hate to be the one that speaks like an idiot and never gets corrected.
trianglem 6y ago
The school system is not built for men. Shorter attention spans, highly spontaneous behavior, attracted to large displays of prominence and a lack of rewards for creativity and abstract thinking. All of these are deliberately crushed either through regulation or more recently drugs.
jvreagan 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4 Old news. Been happening for decades, by design.

126 points by respinal 6y ago

Can you imagine an article on the BBC or on HN front page saying: "Girls are trailing boys in engineering jobs: why?" implicitly identifying that as a problem which needed to be fixed.

theplague42 6y ago
Sure, here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37254851 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37254851 Not really sure what you're implying
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Never submitted to HN. Based on the search results and point scores, I'd wager that no article with "women" and "engineering" has ever been at the top of the front page, as this presently is.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mmillin 6y ago
    You're moving the goalposts set in your original post, but a quick search[1] shows many articles on Hacker News about the gap between men and women in engineering. Many with more points than this post currently has. It does seem like this post is growing more quickly than these did, but perhaps because this is a more surprising/novel development, whereas the gap of women in engineering roles is much more commonly known? [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=women+engineering https://hn.algolia.com/?q=women+engineering
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      There are 4 such articles with more points, at the time of your writing (and I expect there will soon be 0 or 1). There are also 4 such articles with more points referencing boys and education (not including this one).
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  I'm implying that "a gender difference which ostensibly disadvantages boys in education" will get more attention than "a gender difference which ostensibly disadvantages women in engineering". On a forum which is organised around engineering. And people will claim that the latter gets more attention, despite being shown evidence to the contrary. That's pretty average sexism. (I also would note that this hasn't been up for long enough for people to be up-voting for the content, given that you can only access it as a 23-minute podcast.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > And people will claim that the latter gets more attention, despite being shown evidence to the contrary. Except this has not been demonstrated at all. The BBC has both covered the topic and it has been discussed in highly upvoted posts on Hacker News.
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      As discussed above - despite widening the goalposts to include any article with 'women' and 'engineering' in the title, there is now only one such article which matches the popularity of this one - and based on the trajectory, that is unlikely to remain the case.
apsec112 6y ago
I've seen many discussions like that. The title sounds a bit weird because everyone already knows that many engineering fields are mostly male, so nobody would write a headline as if this was news.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I don’t know what point you’re making, but it’s certainly not uncommon to see articles noting that women lag men in certain professions, even insinuating strongly that the cause is discrimination without a shard of evidence.
mattmanser 6y ago
If you listen to it the gap between them is growing which is why there's concern, 1:45 onwards.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  The gap has grown also in engineering professions.
  - bbrree66 6y ago
    Is it time to blame the patriarchy yet?
quelltext 6y ago
Do you maybe mean what if they were reporting about trailing in job performance? Because the headline you gave seems pretty close to what is in fact reported all the time.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

I taught in public schools and studied pediatric ADHD. From those experiences, I found boys had a number of disadvantages. First off, they are more motor-hyperactive, they move, fidget, get out of their chairs: their very neurochemistry develops differently, making them less adept at the "sit still and write notes" aspect of school. This isn't "bad parenting" or "overdiagnosis of ADHD" by the way, the brain of a young male develops differently, specifically their pre-frontal cortex (executive function, how to behave/regulate oneself) develops much slower, whereas the motor-neural cortex is overly developed, relative to girls. Beyond any developmental difference in the sexes, there's culture. Where I taught, the South and West sides of Chicago, any troubled boy was more likely to join a gang, sell drugs, commit violence, etc. These poor boys could be jumped and beaten for living on the wrong street. One student was having anger issues, his cousin got killed, he had latent anger issues which prevented prioritization of school work. Another common issue: his father is gone, he's switching homes constantly, there's no stability to facilitate the slow, incremental progress that is school and learning. Beyond sheer dangerous problems like the above, I'd say boys channel their effort into sports and gaming more, whereas the girls I taught were more concerned with social circles, popularity, social media, etc. Question, do we think gaming is "better" for mental health than social media? If so, boys may be advantaged, I recall my boy students used their Chromebook to play this bubble game where their bubbles had to chase and eat other students' bubbles: very benign and strategic. There is a change that happens around puberty, when I was in seventh grade I noticed it acutely. Students transition from caring what their authority figures think (teachers/parents) to caring what their peers think (friends). This leads to a degradation in class morale, unity, and overall drive and focus to follow the teacher's lesson. It was crazy that the 5th graders could stare at me doe-eyed as I explained volcanoes and robotics, but the 7th and 8th graders just zoned out on their hidden phones (god, that's a huge issue as well) or incessantly talked to one another. Edit: There's a bit of discussion of "overdiagnosis" or "misdiagnosis" of ADHD. This is a complex issue, but I will say I don't think anecdata is constructive here. By blaming bad parenting or video games or candy, we ignore the reams of data which show that many children can not focus and struggle MIGHTILY due to this. Children with ADHD have less friends, less academic success, more likelihood to abuse drugs, like alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/nicotine (their dopaminergic system is uniquely vulnerable to stimulants). This is a sad trajectory for these kids, and I think we should consider carefully before we blanket accuse the medical system of overdiagnosis or misdiagnosis.

thower234324234 6y ago

Is this new ? It happens routinely in India IIRC (though the stats are flipped for entrance exams).

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

Isn't this literally the explicit goal of the girls/women in stem and education movement? UNESCO [1], World Bank [2], Unicef [3] have specific goal programs here. [1] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/gender-and-science/improving-measurement-of-gender-equality-in-stem/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas... [2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation [3] https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education

hyko 6y ago
No, I thought the goal of those programs was to invest in the education of girls where it is lacking, and improving the representation of women in STEM fields to reflect their school achievements?

nprz 6y ago

Probably because boys are more often diagnosed with ADHD compared to girls.

hammock 6y ago
Do you believe diagnoses are causing performance decreases?
xondono 6y ago
This is not a cause, but a consequence. Attitudes and norms around how school have changed a lot, and the modern school severely penalizes boys. For instance it was typical for schools to encourage competition between students, but this is very frown upon in most places nowadays. For a lot of boys, the drive to compete is pretty much the only positive thing keeping them focused on schoolwork. Another typical trend has been to reduce and to almost eliminate the amount of multiple choice testing and to change it to written questions. There’s evidence enough to claim that this significantly penalizes boys (specially in the 10 to 14 age range) due to developmental reasons. The difference in ADHD diagnosis is easy to explain. As we’ve moved our expectations of kid behavior from what “the typical boy does” to “what the typical girl does”, a lot of perfectly normal boy behavior is reinterpreted as ADHD.
- souprock 6y ago
  Competition is simply prohibited. It used to be that grades were posted publicly, for all to see. Instructors aren't allowed to do that anymore.

blahblahblogger 6y ago

I haven't listened to this yet, but am wondering if the gender gap in teaching could be an issue? I work in tech where the gender disparity between men and women is discussed very often -- but I don't see these conversations taking place amongst teachers, most especially for earlier primary education which is more female than male. Maybe there is a bias here or maybe women teachers have teaching styles that resonate with female students more. It definitely needs more attention.

absolutelyrad 6y ago
Yeah, I had women math teachers that sucked. Made it boring. Then I got a math teacher who was a guy with deep voice. Dude talked too much political stuff but he taught too good, it was like he had my attention. I didn't even study for the exam except for the last 10 minutes and aced it, his lectures were enough, I got everything in a single class, no revision. We used to have internationally accredited exams and everyone taught by him used to do well for some reason. Before him I didn't care about math at all. I only learn when it's a guy teaching me for some reason. I can't focus on a woman if she's teaching, I get bored and started thinking about what to app to make. But not every guy teacher was the one I could focus on. He was the guy with the deepest voice, for some reason it didn't let my attention drift away. Before that, I sucked in Chemistry, until some guy taught me. I don't know how that worked but did. Then some guy taught me physics but his voice wasn't manly, and I started sucking at physics after that. So I'd say as a guy, I was almost always better taught by men. Women (young or middle aged) bored me away from the subject. And that used to reflect in the batch performance for almost every guy. Girls weren't impacted by it at all. They got good grades either ways man or woman. I realize now how horrible it all sounds, but trust me I tried.
- koop123 6y ago
  Either you are gay or you hate women.
rgblambda 6y ago
Also there's a recognised gender bias in how teachers grade assignments. Boys messier handwriting results in lower scores than girls tidier handwriting, even controlling for content and legibility. source: https://www.tes.com/news/could-handwriting-bias-write-exam-chances https://www.tes.com/news/could-handwriting-bias-write-exam-c... Women in general tend to be more compliant, which becomes an issue later in life when standing up for oneself in the workplace (e.g. getting promotions and pay raises), but it's an advantage in the classroom. Men need to be shown the value of something before they will learn it. This can be a problem as a lot of school lessons have no immediate practical value.

BaronVonSteuben 6y ago

Could it be that girls get tons of encouragement, accolades, and praise when they do something, but when boys do they're told it's just their privilege that made them succeed? In our current school there are 3 STEM programs for girls, one that is for both boys and girls. One of the programs for girls is very well funded by local startup money and gets designers, marketers, etc to make them fun. The one for both boys and girls is volunteer run and while I respect and appreciate the effort, frankly it not fun and exciting at all. It's little better than someone just handing you a textbook to read. I'm all for making STEM (coding especially) inclusive and welcoming for all. Nobody should face discrimination or harassment based on gender (or any other attribute). Unfortunately it's the boys getting the shaft right now. I can't imagine the outrage that would happen if someone started a "boys only" program, yet it almost seems like that's what needs to happen. We're back to the days of striving for "separate but equal."

geofft 6y ago
Also, most of the discrimination in STEM happens later in life, in the workplace - the only real effect of getting more girls into STEM is to have a larger pool of women entering STEM careers so you still have some left after driving a bunch of them off. Businesses donating to STEM-for-schoolgirls programs is a way for them to assuage their conscience (or to do PR) without having to ask what they can be doing directly to solve the actual problem. And I'm afraid this increases the perception that men are naturally fine at STEM and women need special support because of inherent gender attributes (and not because of social problems that we could just address at the root)... which at the end of the day makes life harder for women in their careers.
- petsormeat 6y ago
  +1. Everybody's setting up balloon drops and loud publicity stunts for these "let's get girls to code!" initiatives. Nobody's calling serious attention to the lack of female tech leads, directors, and VPs, because that would require uncomfortable investigation into why non-male employees aren't retained and promoted.

hyko 6y ago

This was widely being talked about at least thirty years ago. The elephant in the room is that Boys’ academic underperformance is tied to class, and thus resolving the issue has gone nowhere, because there’s no such thing as class and because the responsibility for all under-achievement therefore lies with the individual.

wowowowow 6y ago
> The elephant in the room is that Boys’ academic underperformance is tied to class Can you explain this?
- krona 6y ago
  Its explained in the podcast by work of David Figlio [1]. One theory (from the podcast) is boys are more sensitive than girls to poor environmental factors involved in educational attainment. 1. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161074 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161074
hammock 6y ago
Balls187's comment suggests the opposite. Would be interesting to see at least one of you cite some data.
- mlyle 6y ago
  I don't understand why you say these things are opposites. This one suggests (socioeconomic) class is a factor in lower performing boys' performance. This is true: at least in the US, boys' academic performance is more affected by socioeconomic class than girls' (though both are very much so). balls187 says that the way boys' and girls' academic performance evolves vs. age is different. This is also true.
- hyko 6y ago
  Sure, the UK GCSE data has shown a gap for the past 30 years: https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GCSE14AGS.pdf https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GCSE... Edited to add: please also see the work from David Figlio et al. mentioned in Krona’s comment below. That’s an interesting study design that tries to demonstrate that boys in aggregate need higher quality schooling to achieve the same level of performance as girls in aggregate.

7OVO7 6y ago

these are those articles that in Italy are interpreted as media spam propaganda: women are smarter than men. misleading and inconsistent, and not because I am a male, but because as there are males intellectually superior to other females, there are inevitably females intellectually superior to males, and it is absolutely random and chaotic. if we then discuss what favors or disadvantages the intellect, it is quite another matter.

balls187 6y ago

This was true when I was in grade school as well (late 80's-90's). Prior to puberty, nearly all the top performing students were girls. After puberty, boys were more represented. The theory I heard was societal pressure in the US was higher on girls to be "liked" and accepted, and that girls felt that doing well in school was counter to that. Girls would stop focusing on performance and ultimately move towards the center of the curve. Pressure to be liked, and antithetical attitudes towards academic performance also applied to boys as well, but to a lesser degree.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hammock 6y ago
Hyko's comment suggests the opposite. Would be interesting to see at least one of you cite some data.
- balls187 6y ago
  I suspect it will be difficult to find information about academic performance from that time period. This article from 18 years ago suggests that girls received extra encouragement to overcome the lowered expectations due to their gender. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/

yters 6y ago

I enjoyed homeschooling much more than public school. Both contain subjects that seem irrelevant, but with homeschool I could knock all that out quickly and move onto my favorite activities of reading, coding and playing outside. Then I went to public school and spent hours bored out of my mind because I didn't understand why different subjects mattered, and some seemed to be indoctrination which was both annoying and boring at the same time. I like the older approach of emphasizing reading writing 'rithmetic, and then teaching practical skills and classics. All obviously relevant skills and knowledge for everyone.

im3w1l 6y ago

The high level story is that men were doing better in society, so feminists tried to change that but they overcompensated which lead to boys starting to do worse. It should also be mentioned that young men are now doing worse than young women in the workplace. That's because this is a generational thing. When millenials are 50, then 50 year old men will do worse than 50 year old women. How specifically was this accomplished? Well many small actions were taken. So it's hard to pinpoint which one exactly it is. Women are favored both with explicit policies to favor them, as well as by being given more consideration when policies are designed ("How will this affect women"). Hence I don't think there is one big thing that needs fixing, rather it's many small things. And doing so will take a long time, decades possibly.

DangitBobby 6y ago
Men have also been doing worse in college for quite some time.

grenoire 6y ago

Just gave the whole thing a listen, it doesn't seem to add more to the discussion than what is already known (to people who've been following the discussion, at least). The most critical point seems to be the social aspect: Boys ostracize academically successful boys, and therefore boys are afraid to be seen as academically successful. Other minor social factors seem to be that teaching methods unintentionally disparage boys who weren't academically successful, often by creating competitive environments where they fall into a failing feedback loop and just quit participating in the competition altogether. It ends on a note saying that the way to fix is by acknowledging the fact that boys are falling behind, and adjusting our teaching methods and schools' social environments.

xondono 6y ago
Except this only reinforces the current environment. Anyone with experience in teaching environments knows girls are way worse at ostracizing successful students. It’s very interesting to me the claim that boys are quitting because there’s too much competition, because my experience is the complete opposite. The only thing that makes boys quit competing in my experience is either seeing the competition as pointless (“bad boy” attitude) or realizing that the competition is not fair. A lot of teachers are unaware as to how smart some kids can be. I’ve seen kids swap their names in tests just to validate the hypothesis that their language teacher was assigning grades based on who wrote what (which, having seen their numbers, looks like it was indeed happening).
- grenoire 6y ago
  I don't at all disagree; the variety of researchers interviewed had their own focuses, neither necessarily discounted what the others said. I do believe that a part of your anecdotal 'seeing competition as pointless' case must've leaked into the researcher who was discussing competition being discouraging.

andi999 6y ago

I attended the opening ceremony of the international physics Olympics, and it was interesting to see the gender distribution of the teams. Most western countries had 0-1 female in a team of 5. Countries traditionally perceived as less gender equal had more. I remember Kuwait having an all girls team.

mjh2539 6y ago
Someone did a study on this recently. Women in the developing world are much more likely to study STEM than in the developed world. There was speculation as to why.
- Latour 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure the consensus is that in the developing world, STEM education is considered a more viable path to financial independence [1]. 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
analog31 6y ago
Anecdote: The two women whom I'm closest to (my spouse and my mom) both went into science because they were encouraged to do so by the nuns at the Catholic high schools that they attended. One possible explanation is that the social expectation of becoming a wife and mother is decoupled from the choice of what they study in school.

bondarchuk 6y ago

Girls are more well-organised, and diligent, better at planning etc. Don't know why this would be a surprise to anyone. Apologies in advance for not beating around the bush.

hoka-one-one 6y ago

Hacker News comment sections are becoming pretty socially right-wing. Strange to watch.

baskire 6y ago
Society is becoming more right wing. It’s what happens when people see less opportunities for them and their children. The system as current stands doesn’t care about middle class white Westerners. A group who’s slowly becoming poorer and poorer. Donald trump and people like him will continue to rise into power as the middle class is oppressed.
- bzudo 6y ago
  At their perceived oppression. In reality, they still hold all the cards.
  - hoka-one-one 6y ago
    Powerful comment

Noos 6y ago

A big issue is that boys read less than girls overall. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-gi... Boys read for pleasure much less and apparently don't read as well as girls when they do: they use less challenging books and skip/skim more. In general somehow reading has seemed to grow more gendered over time; if you go into the average chain bookstore its apparent that its heavily targeted towards women, and something like Amazon's free Prime reads are often almost entirely women-targeted genre selections. Young adult books for example are targeted almost entirely towards teen girls now, and even manga or comic books seem focused on the female market in increasing amounts. Jon Scieszka, a kids author, noticed this over fifteen years ago and started guys read, a website trying to encourage boys to do so and raise awareness about it. But it seems to have stalled, and I don't hear a lot of talk about the feminization of reading. I really think that this is a major part of why boys fall behind. Reading in general is the basis of learning, and boys over time have moved away. There's always been cultural resistance against "book-larning" but its weird how gendered reading itself has become lately.

MattGaiser 6y ago
It is mentioned in the article, but I also have seen this anecdotally. How often do school libraries have things boys want to read? In high school, even among those who did read, very few of us ever used the library because it mostly had fantasy novels, fiction, etc. My friend group wanted to read about history and economics, topics not really covered.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Your school library was mostly fiction? That's bizarre. Our school library probably had more books under the 500 section alone (pure science) than it had fiction. I went to the public library for fiction.
- Noos 6y ago
  Supply side is an issue, but I don't think it explains everything. I think also some problems are that boys and men only like to read nonfiction and are too hyperactive to sit still. Could you imagine if it was said that men only really like to watch documentaries if they watch TV or movies at all? We'd think it absurd right? But for some reason the idea men shun fiction is seemed as a truism. And if people would say "oh boys are too energetic, they can't sit still for a movie" we'd think they are nuts. I'm not sure how it happened. I wish someone would research how this idea came into dominance

slumdev 6y ago

Boys require more physical activity. They're just wired for it. Sitting at a desk for hours on end is incompatible with their physiology. Sitting like that isn't good for girls, either, but they seem to cope better. Schooling, as it is widely administered today, is not humane. It's not that it benefits one sex. It's that it hurts one more than it hurts the other. If you have a boy who's on the verge of failing because he can't pay attention, make a serious effort to get him several hours of moderate or intense physical activity every day. You'll see a world of difference.

longtom 6y ago

tl;dl: * Sex differences in general intelligence are small, so the F>M achievement gap in higher education likely is not explained by women being smarter. * The gap emerges already in elementary school and the gap in elementary school is predictive of performance in higher education. * The gap in elementary school is not new, and can likely be attributed to females maturing earlier in their attention skills and being less unruly. * So girls/women may have always been more fit for school, but they lacked incentives to make something of themselves and were held back by their biology in earlier times. * What is new is a strong incentive for girls to succeed in school due to the economic opportunities and reduced investment in the children and birth (e.g. birth control). * The gap mainly exists in lower-to-middle income families, not so much higher income, so a good environment can presumably aid boys to be more focused, or boys may be more sensitive to a poor environment. * It concludes with anecdotes by a teacher about how a return to more manly competition may not actually be helpful for boys as it discourages slow learners. Rather, boys should be more supported, and they need to get over the stereotype that nerdiness and conscientiousness is for the girls. Plus the topic of boys falling behind should not be a taboo.

99_00 6y ago

Why isn't the answer: females are more intelligent than males.

username90 6y ago
"Males" do better on standardized tests like SAT and ACT than "females", they just trail behind on grades.
xenocratus 6y ago
I don't have direct links to the papers, but IQ levels are statistically similar, with the standard deviation for males a bit larger. Will dig for papers and update. Edit: One paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289608000962 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602... Another: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.180.2251&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.180...
dudul 6y ago
Because school grades do not reflect intelligence.

dageshi 6y ago

I have always wondered if girls knowledge that they're likely to want a child some day factors into this. That is it gives them a timeframe (between late 20's and late 30's say) that they kinda know they want to be in a position to have a child and working back from that they need to get an education and begin a career. It gives them almost a timescale to plan against and boys have nothing similar in the biological sense. I genuinely have no clue if it actually holds any weight, just something I've always been curious about.

08-15 6y ago

Are girls actually outperforming boys academically? It's repeated a few times, that girls attend college more often than boys, and achieve higher grades. But college is a broad term; you can study electrical engineering or gender studies and get a master's degree either way, yet these are very different fields and require very different skills. Relatively more girls pick gender studies over electrical engineering. It's possible that boys outperform girls in every single field, but averaged over all fields, it appears the other way around (Simpson's Paradox). I wonder if there is any data that shows girls' superior performance broken down by field.

throwmylifawy 6y ago

As with all of these types of posts there are those who complain about how women (or insert any protected class) have unfair advantages. They seem to see the world as a zero sum. If anyone class has an advantage, the other class will be disadvantaged. The proposed solution is usually to do a blind audition. If you don't know anything about the candidate there is no discrimination. However this seems to have a major flaw. How do you account for all of the disadvantages that occurred before or might occur after the blind audition?

confidantlake 6y ago
You strive to eliminate bias everywhere. Putting your thumb on the scale during the audition portion because there may have discrimination before does not make sense.
- throwmylifawy 6y ago
  I get that it would be impossible to solve all forms of discrimination everywhere. I think my fundamental question is can you solve the problem of systemic discrimination, by ignoring it? My problem with the blind audition is you are fixing a local problem and in turn ignoring the global problem. It seems that corporations and governments are trying to solve the global problem (lack of diversity due to discrimination) which then in turn causes local problems (reverse discrimination).

smartkiddo 6y ago

I come from Kenya, and this thing is already apparent. If you what is happening in our country, the new constitution mandates gender equality. So, what is happening is this, tribes, such as mine, which do not favor men over women, have many highly educated women. Therefore, when government jobs are being distributed, I am at disadvantage. Men from other tribes are hired but to comply with gender equality, women from our tribes are hired to our exclusion. So, people like me have lost opportunities. This gender thing is kinda discriminatory. We need to think about it more carefully.

croh 6y ago

As society, humanity still lacks a proper vision and far away from calling a modern society. Same problem persists under different disguises e.g. Gender based policies, religion based policies, cast based policies, region based policies. You name it. There are people who suffer for being in minority and then there are people who take advantage of being in minority. - Why only black lives matters, what about white people, asians and many others? Why do we scare to say 'all lives matter' ? - Why only 'lets girls to get code', what about boys and trans ? Why do we scare to say 'lets get everyone to code' ? - Why do countries identify themselves with a single religion ? Why can't we respect the all religions ? In this well connected world, the price of being politcally incorrect could be huge. People are so scared to say right things and get shunned publicly. We should not create our policies based on phobias, stigmas and to allur particular votebank, but for universal integration. Let's have first right vision. It needs a real courage to say the right things and more to do the same.

itronitron 6y ago
The answer to your 'why' questions is that there are (and were) exclusionary behaviors and/or tactics that either actively prevent or passively discourage those minorities from participating.
runarberg 6y ago
> and then there are people who take advantage of being in minority I honestly don’t see this as a problem. So what if a person gets a little privilege just because they belong in a minority? What bothers me is the more common case of privileged person taking advantage of their privilege. > Why do we scare to say 'all lives matter'? Because I always hear “all lives matter” said in response to “black lives matter”. To me that sounds like you are discounting my previous statement, as if it’s not entirely sufficient, that black lives matter. “All lives matter” is something that people also say. e.g. I hear animal rights activists say that all the time. Even the very same people that say “black lives matter” in an anti-racist rally are likely to say “all lives matter” in an pro-immigration rally, pointing to the fact that many immigrants suffer preventable deaths on the migratory routes. > In this well connected world, the price of being politcally incorrect could be huge Good. If I say something that insults a lot of people I would like to know about it, so that I can know better in the future. I hate to be the one that speaks like an idiot and never gets corrected.

trianglem 6y ago

The school system is not built for men. Shorter attention spans, highly spontaneous behavior, attracted to large displays of prominence and a lack of rewards for creativity and abstract thinking. All of these are deliberately crushed either through regulation or more recently drugs.

jvreagan 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4 Old news. Been happening for decades, by design.