5 ms·

This just in: men and women are biologically different (at the statistical, population level). Shouldn’t affect individual level policy. But any metric of equal

This just in: men and women are biologically different (at the statistical, population level). Shouldn’t affect individual level policy. But any metric of equal outcome is misguided.

ryanwhitney 5y ago
“Despite the long-term and widespread study of the sex differences in interest in people-oriented as compared to things-oriented occupations, there is no consensus on the sources of these differences.”
vhgbh87 5y ago
I believe you are making a conclusion that neither the article nor science in general makes. The differences in preference are exhibited, but whether they have a biological root (and what outcomes we should target) do not have strong evidence.
- Out_of_Characte 5y ago
  Male and females constitute the largest difference you could have in a species. This preprint affirms what all previous work in this space has found; if you try to minimise the cultural/enviromental differences between men and women, you maximise their biological differences. "These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women's empowerment." "We explain this counter-intuitive finding through the indirect effect of wealth. Women's empowerment is associated with relatively high levels of national wealth and this wealth allows more students to aspire to occupations they are intrinsically interested in" Though I think the preprint's reasoning about the influence of wealth is just bad. Especially if you try to reason that wealth and better education is causing alot of women to become nurses instead of doctors.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    I suspect a 2nd factor is competitive vs well-defined. CEO for example is people-oriented but 70% male. Maybe because it's also competitive.
    - Out_of_Characte 5y ago
      Horse riding is a fun example of your observation. Its above 30 to 1 women versus male riders. Untill you enter the higher level of competitions, then its the reverse. I've done horse riding, its unique and fun but definitely not for me.
  - tylerhou 5y ago
    > "These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women's empowerment." There are confounding factors here, though — it's not like the only variable being changed between two countries is a woman's empowerment. See also, Simpson's paradox.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
It should be considered in setting or reviewing individual level policy if said policy assumes no difference
baron816 5y ago
Seems like more research is still needed, but it’s not hard to imagine policy makers or regulators developing quotas and mandates around tech companies hiring women. If women are indeed statistically less interested in working as engineers, governments shouldn’t, for example, require companies match hiring of women to the proportion of their population (not that anyone is actually considering this).
pessimizer 5y ago
My brother and I are also biologically different. It says nothing about expected outcomes that we are distinct. When you say that an expectation of equal outcome is misguided, you're sneaking in a conclusion about the nature of those biological differences. If the biological difference were a large facial birthmark that caused people to treat us differently (although we're otherwise identical twins), would you accept a statistically equal outcome between groups of people with and without facial birthmarks as a sign of a lack of discrimination against people with facial birthmarks?
- gonehome 5y ago
  My hypothesis is that the nature of sexual selective pressures is what is more likely to create differences between the groups. This wouldn't really apply in the birthmark case (unless it was some sort of secondary sexual characteristic). Either way, society should allow for equal opportunity even if there are differences in average interest between groups since the variation within a group is larger anyway. It just means not seeing the same outcome doesn't necessarily mean something has gone wrong.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what outcome would mean something has gone wrong? 75%? 90%?
    - gonehome 5y ago
      I honestly don’t know. I also recognize it’s a politically fraught question. It could still be true though.
      - mcguire 5y ago
        The reason I ask is because... * Women make up 25.2% of "Computer and mathematical occupations" (https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm) * World-wide, women make up < 9% (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-develo...) * "38% of women who majored in computer science are working in the field compared to 53% of men" (https://www.cio.com/article/3516012/women-in-tech-statistics-the-hard-truths-of-an-uphill-battle.html https://www.cio.com/article/3516012/women-in-tech-statistics...) Somehow, it just doesn't smell like a preference.
xnyan 5y ago
That's kind of the opposite of the conclusion of the article. Now, the conclusions of the article (cultural, social and political differences have a huge impact on what what men and women do) may be incorrect, and you may be more correct, but it's a little incongruent to say (I'm paraphrasing here) "Biological differences explain the differences in career outcomes between men and women." Outside of some very specific situations (aka muscle mass dependent jobs like carrying heavy loads on your back) I'm not aware of any scientific evidence that supports a biological cause of career outcome divergence in women vs men, but if you have some literature or other information I'm always willing to admit that I'm wrong in light of new information. On the other hand, there is an ocean of scientific data that cultural, social and political conditions have a huge impact on what jobs men and women do. EDIT: there is actually one argument for biological differences explaining divergent outcomes that I find convincing: for the vast majority of human history, the state's monopoly on the use of violence has been either nonexistent or far weaker as compared to today. Men have had an advantage on the use of violence due to average muscle mass and bone density being higher than women. Technology (firearms, surveillance, etc) has made this disparity of power in capacity for violence less and less relevant.
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Gender_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge... These have been shown to directly affect statistical likelihood of career choice.
  - xnyan 5y ago
    From your link: "men in highly developed world regions were less neurotic, less extraverted, less conscientious and less agreeable compared to men in less developed world regions" If these personality traits are influenced by what country you are born it, would it not support the the non-biological argument?
    - clusterfish 5y ago
      The real answer is probably the most boring: it's both. I wish this wasn't such a controversial topic and research could be done freely on this, but researching biological differences between genders / races / etc. is quite taboo in some western universities now.
clusterfish 5y ago
Even without getting hung up on the "biological" qualifier, that's groundbreaking news to some people, you know. The people who insist that not having 50% females in any occupation is them being underrepresented because they're repressed and discriminated against. (Never heard that female dominated occupations are discriminatory though, I wonder why) Then this translates into laws, policies and scholarships that effectively discriminate against men. Don't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but a lot of policy needs to change.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "Don't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but a lot of policy needs to change." The long-standing beliefs, policies, laws, and scholarships that assume a woman in a male-dominated profession is an abomination and represents a loss of a good job to a deserving man.
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    These are either non-individual laws/policies, or personal beliefs/biases, but not both "individual level" and "policies" at the same time.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    link to the law?
    - kbelder 5y ago
      Or the scholarship, for that matter?
- john_moscow 5y ago
  There's a very very very obvious dollar value attached to these policies. By discouraging the workforce from having families and kids (let alone single-income households) you effectively eliminate their main long-term expenses and reduce the pressure on the wages. You then start substituting the declining population with immigrants from countries with lower standard of living, and you've hit the jackpot. Your profits go up, your stock goes up, your salary expenses stay the same. This wouldn't fly 60 years ago when the economy was much more decentralized. There was no single large entity (or related group of entities) that would benefit from such policies. If you run a small business and personally know every employee, you wouldn't think of such a thing. This bodes well in the current model where every child-free worker is an extra $50K lifetime value for their employer, translating into 5 extra cents per share.
john_moscow 5y ago
We just ended up with a rather perverse definition of equal outcome. What you may intuitively want to do as a society is maximize everyone's happiness. Which is hard to quantify, so you go and try to eliminate things that typically make people unhappy. Being denied the things you want because of the factors you don't control is surely a big depression maker. Not "go study better and you'll pass the exam", but "fuck off, I don't like your face", pardon my French. So how did we solve it? We made a faceless inappealable uncriticizable statistics-driven system designed to tell the majority of people to shut up and cull their ambition. And you know how we ended up here? Every society has a certain amount of people with ambition to power. They want to tell others what to do. They want to make decisions affecting others. That's fine, that's human psychology. That's why the previous generations started companies, studied hard disciplines, took risks, and found their place in the society with the perfect effort/power balance just for them. Except, this doesn't work anymore with the "economies of scale" where there's a bunch of CEOs and investors, but everyone else is a replaceable drone. So there's an incredible power vacuum in the Western society. People are desperate for roles in life that will give them meaning and power - ability to make decisions affecting other people. The corporations have PR departments and centrally owned media companies that steer this force clear of colliding with their financial interests. So, it effectively turned into a cold civil war. Want to change something in the society? Go get a 5-figure loan on a social justice degree, and then exercise your power by telling majority of the people to hate themselves, and enjoy no retaliation. Kinda like every war. On both sides of a conflict there are regular people with friends, children, families, hobbies. But they are too busy demonizing the other side, and eager to be foot soldiers in someone else's game. Someone whos mansion is located far from the front line and whos kids will sit at the board of a munitions manufacturer, rather than in a trench on a battlefield. I don't know how we're gonna get out of this mess.
godelski 5y ago
I think that is a very difficult conclusion to draw. There are a lot of factors in there that are impossible to control. We can't really isolate cultural and historical trends. Yes, we can measure a difference that significantly correlates with sex, but it is a bit naive to draw causal conclusions. But I still agree that equal outcome metrics are misguided. It is too lazy of a metric and statistics will mess it up very quickly with such things as Simpson's or Berkson's paradoxes. These are far too easy to fall prone to. Besides that, the question seems to be more about if the reason for these differences are due to biology or society (rather, which one is more significant), not that the differences don't exist (i.e. causal). But coming up with good metrics to determine what is going on is difficult. I do not think a metric should become a target though, and we have to be more careful in nuanced in our approach.

This just in: men and women are biologically different (at the statistical, population level). Shouldn’t affect individual level policy. But any metric of equal outcome is misguided.

ryanwhitney 5y ago

“Despite the long-term and widespread study of the sex differences in interest in people-oriented as compared to things-oriented occupations, there is no consensus on the sources of these differences.”

vhgbh87 5y ago

I believe you are making a conclusion that neither the article nor science in general makes. The differences in preference are exhibited, but whether they have a biological root (and what outcomes we should target) do not have strong evidence.

Out_of_Characte 5y ago
Male and females constitute the largest difference you could have in a species. This preprint affirms what all previous work in this space has found; if you try to minimise the cultural/enviromental differences between men and women, you maximise their biological differences. "These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women's empowerment." "We explain this counter-intuitive finding through the indirect effect of wealth. Women's empowerment is associated with relatively high levels of national wealth and this wealth allows more students to aspire to occupations they are intrinsically interested in" Though I think the preprint's reasoning about the influence of wealth is just bad. Especially if you try to reason that wealth and better education is causing alot of women to become nurses instead of doctors.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  I suspect a 2nd factor is competitive vs well-defined. CEO for example is people-oriented but 70% male. Maybe because it's also competitive.
  - Out_of_Characte 5y ago
    Horse riding is a fun example of your observation. Its above 30 to 1 women versus male riders. Untill you enter the higher level of competitions, then its the reverse. I've done horse riding, its unique and fun but definitely not for me.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  > "These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher level of women's empowerment." There are confounding factors here, though — it's not like the only variable being changed between two countries is a woman's empowerment. See also, Simpson's paradox.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

It should be considered in setting or reviewing individual level policy if said policy assumes no difference

baron816 5y ago

Seems like more research is still needed, but it’s not hard to imagine policy makers or regulators developing quotas and mandates around tech companies hiring women. If women are indeed statistically less interested in working as engineers, governments shouldn’t, for example, require companies match hiring of women to the proportion of their population (not that anyone is actually considering this).

pessimizer 5y ago

My brother and I are also biologically different. It says nothing about expected outcomes that we are distinct. When you say that an expectation of equal outcome is misguided, you're sneaking in a conclusion about the nature of those biological differences. If the biological difference were a large facial birthmark that caused people to treat us differently (although we're otherwise identical twins), would you accept a statistically equal outcome between groups of people with and without facial birthmarks as a sign of a lack of discrimination against people with facial birthmarks?

gonehome 5y ago
My hypothesis is that the nature of sexual selective pressures is what is more likely to create differences between the groups. This wouldn't really apply in the birthmark case (unless it was some sort of secondary sexual characteristic). Either way, society should allow for equal opportunity even if there are differences in average interest between groups since the variation within a group is larger anyway. It just means not seeing the same outcome doesn't necessarily mean something has gone wrong.
- mcguire 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what outcome would mean something has gone wrong? 75%? 90%?
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I honestly don’t know. I also recognize it’s a politically fraught question. It could still be true though.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      The reason I ask is because... * Women make up 25.2% of "Computer and mathematical occupations" (https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm) * World-wide, women make up < 9% (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-develo...) * "38% of women who majored in computer science are working in the field compared to 53% of men" (https://www.cio.com/article/3516012/women-in-tech-statistics-the-hard-truths-of-an-uphill-battle.html https://www.cio.com/article/3516012/women-in-tech-statistics...) Somehow, it just doesn't smell like a preference.

xnyan 5y ago

That's kind of the opposite of the conclusion of the article. Now, the conclusions of the article (cultural, social and political differences have a huge impact on what what men and women do) may be incorrect, and you may be more correct, but it's a little incongruent to say (I'm paraphrasing here) "Biological differences explain the differences in career outcomes between men and women." Outside of some very specific situations (aka muscle mass dependent jobs like carrying heavy loads on your back) I'm not aware of any scientific evidence that supports a biological cause of career outcome divergence in women vs men, but if you have some literature or other information I'm always willing to admit that I'm wrong in light of new information. On the other hand, there is an ocean of scientific data that cultural, social and political conditions have a huge impact on what jobs men and women do. EDIT: there is actually one argument for biological differences explaining divergent outcomes that I find convincing: for the vast majority of human history, the state's monopoly on the use of violence has been either nonexistent or far weaker as compared to today. Men have had an advantage on the use of violence due to average muscle mass and bone density being higher than women. Technology (firearms, surveillance, etc) has made this disparity of power in capacity for violence less and less relevant.

artificialLimbs 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Gender_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge... These have been shown to directly affect statistical likelihood of career choice.
- xnyan 5y ago
  From your link: "men in highly developed world regions were less neurotic, less extraverted, less conscientious and less agreeable compared to men in less developed world regions" If these personality traits are influenced by what country you are born it, would it not support the the non-biological argument?
  - clusterfish 5y ago
    The real answer is probably the most boring: it's both. I wish this wasn't such a controversial topic and research could be done freely on this, but researching biological differences between genders / races / etc. is quite taboo in some western universities now.

clusterfish 5y ago

Even without getting hung up on the "biological" qualifier, that's groundbreaking news to some people, you know. The people who insist that not having 50% females in any occupation is them being underrepresented because they're repressed and discriminated against. (Never heard that female dominated occupations are discriminatory though, I wonder why) Then this translates into laws, policies and scholarships that effectively discriminate against men. Don't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but a lot of policy needs to change.

mcguire 5y ago
"Don't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but a lot of policy needs to change." The long-standing beliefs, policies, laws, and scholarships that assume a woman in a male-dominated profession is an abomination and represents a loss of a good job to a deserving man.
- clusterfish 5y ago
  These are either non-individual laws/policies, or personal beliefs/biases, but not both "individual level" and "policies" at the same time.
- ryan93 5y ago
  link to the law?
  - kbelder 5y ago
    Or the scholarship, for that matter?
john_moscow 5y ago
There's a very very very obvious dollar value attached to these policies. By discouraging the workforce from having families and kids (let alone single-income households) you effectively eliminate their main long-term expenses and reduce the pressure on the wages. You then start substituting the declining population with immigrants from countries with lower standard of living, and you've hit the jackpot. Your profits go up, your stock goes up, your salary expenses stay the same. This wouldn't fly 60 years ago when the economy was much more decentralized. There was no single large entity (or related group of entities) that would benefit from such policies. If you run a small business and personally know every employee, you wouldn't think of such a thing. This bodes well in the current model where every child-free worker is an extra $50K lifetime value for their employer, translating into 5 extra cents per share.

john_moscow 5y ago

We just ended up with a rather perverse definition of equal outcome. What you may intuitively want to do as a society is maximize everyone's happiness. Which is hard to quantify, so you go and try to eliminate things that typically make people unhappy. Being denied the things you want because of the factors you don't control is surely a big depression maker. Not "go study better and you'll pass the exam", but "fuck off, I don't like your face", pardon my French. So how did we solve it? We made a faceless inappealable uncriticizable statistics-driven system designed to tell the majority of people to shut up and cull their ambition. And you know how we ended up here? Every society has a certain amount of people with ambition to power. They want to tell others what to do. They want to make decisions affecting others. That's fine, that's human psychology. That's why the previous generations started companies, studied hard disciplines, took risks, and found their place in the society with the perfect effort/power balance just for them. Except, this doesn't work anymore with the "economies of scale" where there's a bunch of CEOs and investors, but everyone else is a replaceable drone. So there's an incredible power vacuum in the Western society. People are desperate for roles in life that will give them meaning and power - ability to make decisions affecting other people. The corporations have PR departments and centrally owned media companies that steer this force clear of colliding with their financial interests. So, it effectively turned into a cold civil war. Want to change something in the society? Go get a 5-figure loan on a social justice degree, and then exercise your power by telling majority of the people to hate themselves, and enjoy no retaliation. Kinda like every war. On both sides of a conflict there are regular people with friends, children, families, hobbies. But they are too busy demonizing the other side, and eager to be foot soldiers in someone else's game. Someone whos mansion is located far from the front line and whos kids will sit at the board of a munitions manufacturer, rather than in a trench on a battlefield. I don't know how we're gonna get out of this mess.

godelski 5y ago

I think that is a very difficult conclusion to draw. There are a lot of factors in there that are impossible to control. We can't really isolate cultural and historical trends. Yes, we can measure a difference that significantly correlates with sex, but it is a bit naive to draw causal conclusions. But I still agree that equal outcome metrics are misguided. It is too lazy of a metric and statistics will mess it up very quickly with such things as Simpson's or Berkson's paradoxes. These are far too easy to fall prone to. Besides that, the question seems to be more about if the reason for these differences are due to biology or society (rather, which one is more significant), not that the differences don't exist (i.e. causal). But coming up with good metrics to determine what is going on is difficult. I do not think a metric should become a target though, and we have to be more careful in nuanced in our approach.