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> For example, you could believe that gender gaps in engineering are 60% personality-driven and 40% discrimination/sexism-driven. There is nothing toxic about t

> For example, you could believe that gender gaps in engineering are 60% personality-driven and 40% discrimination/sexism-driven. There is nothing toxic about this opinion... What's potentially toxic about this "opinion" is that, until it cites evidence, it entirely confuses what is social science and what is armchair philosophy. One can either state: "Study X suggests that the gender gap is roughly due to Y% of A and Z% of B", or they can say "Anecdotally speaking, I have experienced the following, which suggests to me that $REASON may be at play here". When one carelessly mixes the two together, they drape an assertion in the unearned aesthetics of quantitative reasoning. Which, in my experience, is sadly where a lot of these rationalist arguments end up.

theptip 6y ago
Right, but the original comment was the one making sweeping claims without evidence, and the your parent comment is defending the position of Scott Alexander who has put more footnotes on this subject than anybody I’ve seen that doesn’t have a gender studies PhD. The OP linked https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-..., but https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... would be the later / more rigorous one.
- turtleboughs 6y ago
  I'm certain that the author of SSC is not educated in these issues, and calling any of his polemics "rigorous" is a great illustration of fringe though process in action.
  - dainchi 6y ago
    [citation needed]
  - civilized 6y ago
    Comparing your unsubstantiated claims with the extensive citations of studies and data in the articles linked here, I can come to my own conclusions on whose education to trust.
- throwaway19937 6y ago
  I'm generally a fan of SSC but the second link is missing some significant factors on why law and medicine have become open to women. > "This makes no sense. There were negative stereotypes about everything! Somebody has to explain why the equal and greater negative stereotypes against women in law, medicine, etc were completely powerless, yet for some reason the negative stereotypes in engineering were the ones that took hold and prevented women from succeeding there." There were class action lawsuits that required law firms, law schools, medical schools, and hospitals to accept women doctors and lawyers. After sexism was recognized as a problem law schools used affirmative action to admit gender-balanced classes and law firms hired equal numbers of men and women. STEM subjects didn't have these interventions so it's unsurprising that sexism is more of an issue than in other fields.
  - theptip 6y ago
    Absolutely - and with a bit more work you could come up with some citations for “rate of affirmative action cases by industry” and bulk up that fact-based argument to the level of rigor that I’m advocating. My point was at the meta level that we should be using facts and evidence when we talk about this rather than saying “we just know we are right.” as the original commenter did. Worth noting though that your theory doesn’t actually have enough explanatory power to explain the interesting part of the data; one of the points in Grant’s original article (which Scott is arguing against) was this juicy graph: https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQGEJuKqIh95Ng/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1520213448722?e=1619049600&v=beta&t=TOifHBI9JaSwa-2YwP5X8JAjEC7Dvxz2Z69xR4MFr4E https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQGEJuKqIh95Ng/a... Note that female participation in CS increases along with other fields in the 70s, then something happens in 84/85 and participation plummets. Your theory would support a graph where CS never tracked with those other fields. But this is as clear an exogenous event as you are going to see in social science data. What happened in 84? Maybe there is an explanation in the affirmative action caseload? I didn’t look at that dimension but your theory (fleshed out with data) might shed some light on that. (Also note that this graph looks worse than it really is; total CS enrollment also plummeted in 84 due to a recession and so there is a confounding effect there.) Again, this is why data is so important in these discussions. The reality is way more complex than the “we know we are right” crowd appreciate; if you get this wrong then you won’t be able to fix the problem (or even identify the real problem).
civilized 6y ago
This criticism is a bit pedantic. The numbers aren't doing any real work here, beyond concisely illustrating how a person can believe both A and B are important drivers of X without thinking they are equally important.
pie_flavor 6y ago
And the article in question did cite evidence, and lots of great reasoning.
PoignardAzur 6y ago
Ok, but how is that more the case when you argue that the gender ratio is personality-driven than when you argue that the gender ratio is discrimination-driven?
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  Wait, no, I misunderstood your point. I still disagree, but my reply above was a bad argument.

theptip 6y ago

Right, but the original comment was the one making sweeping claims without evidence, and the your parent comment is defending the position of Scott Alexander who has put more footnotes on this subject than anybody I’ve seen that doesn’t have a gender studies PhD. The OP linked https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-..., but https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-differences/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... would be the later / more rigorous one.

turtleboughs 6y ago
I'm certain that the author of SSC is not educated in these issues, and calling any of his polemics "rigorous" is a great illustration of fringe though process in action.
- dainchi 6y ago
  [citation needed]
- civilized 6y ago
  Comparing your unsubstantiated claims with the extensive citations of studies and data in the articles linked here, I can come to my own conclusions on whose education to trust.
throwaway19937 6y ago
I'm generally a fan of SSC but the second link is missing some significant factors on why law and medicine have become open to women. > "This makes no sense. There were negative stereotypes about everything! Somebody has to explain why the equal and greater negative stereotypes against women in law, medicine, etc were completely powerless, yet for some reason the negative stereotypes in engineering were the ones that took hold and prevented women from succeeding there." There were class action lawsuits that required law firms, law schools, medical schools, and hospitals to accept women doctors and lawyers. After sexism was recognized as a problem law schools used affirmative action to admit gender-balanced classes and law firms hired equal numbers of men and women. STEM subjects didn't have these interventions so it's unsurprising that sexism is more of an issue than in other fields.
- theptip 6y ago
  Absolutely - and with a bit more work you could come up with some citations for “rate of affirmative action cases by industry” and bulk up that fact-based argument to the level of rigor that I’m advocating. My point was at the meta level that we should be using facts and evidence when we talk about this rather than saying “we just know we are right.” as the original commenter did. Worth noting though that your theory doesn’t actually have enough explanatory power to explain the interesting part of the data; one of the points in Grant’s original article (which Scott is arguing against) was this juicy graph: https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQGEJuKqIh95Ng/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1520213448722?e=1619049600&v=beta&t=TOifHBI9JaSwa-2YwP5X8JAjEC7Dvxz2Z69xR4MFr4E https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQGEJuKqIh95Ng/a... Note that female participation in CS increases along with other fields in the 70s, then something happens in 84/85 and participation plummets. Your theory would support a graph where CS never tracked with those other fields. But this is as clear an exogenous event as you are going to see in social science data. What happened in 84? Maybe there is an explanation in the affirmative action caseload? I didn’t look at that dimension but your theory (fleshed out with data) might shed some light on that. (Also note that this graph looks worse than it really is; total CS enrollment also plummeted in 84 due to a recession and so there is a confounding effect there.) Again, this is why data is so important in these discussions. The reality is way more complex than the “we know we are right” crowd appreciate; if you get this wrong then you won’t be able to fix the problem (or even identify the real problem).

civilized 6y ago

This criticism is a bit pedantic. The numbers aren't doing any real work here, beyond concisely illustrating how a person can believe both A and B are important drivers of X without thinking they are equally important.

pie_flavor 6y ago

And the article in question did cite evidence, and lots of great reasoning.

PoignardAzur 6y ago

Ok, but how is that more the case when you argue that the gender ratio is personality-driven than when you argue that the gender ratio is discrimination-driven?

PoignardAzur 6y ago
Wait, no, I misunderstood your point. I still disagree, but my reply above was a bad argument.