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This seems to be the issue every time people bring up equality. The truth is that we are doing a lot better in terms of equality of opportunity than we give our

This seems to be the issue every time people bring up equality. The truth is that we are doing a lot better in terms of equality of opportunity than we give ourselves credit for. And equality of opportunity often produces disparate, unequal results - like in countries with better gender equality, where we see more unequal distributions of workers in different fields [0]. The dishonest argument that equality = equality of outcomes will harm us in the long run and push us towards unhealthy and draconian social policies. [0]: 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...

aiisjustanif 4y ago
> The truth is that we are doing a lot better in terms of equality of opportunity than we give ourselves credit for. Who is “we”?
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  Humans
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    A category that seems to be smaller every day.
- Gwarzo 4y ago
  The subjects of the equality in discussion - i.e human beings or, "we"
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  Sorry you're bing downvoted, I also didn't know if the author meant Humans or we here in the US .... a common internet default.
magicalist 4y ago
> like in countries with better gender equality, where we see more unequal distributions of workers in different fields [0]. I wish the correlation/causation and replication crisis crowd would update their priors on that paper. They published a correction (notably after all the press coverage) because they weren't measuring what they said they were measuring, but it was still a pretty lousy study, and of course demonstrates nothing about causation. [1] has a commentary, but maybe other people have better coverage. [1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard/files/richardson_et_al_gender_equality_paradox.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard/files/richardson_...
- LeftHandPath 4y ago
  I had not seen that before, thank you for the link.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > What does Stoet and Geary’s propensity ratio measure? Worldwide, women earn more tertiary degrees than men. In Algeria, 62.7% of tertiary graduates, and 53.55% of STEM graduates, are women. Yet Stoet and Geary reported a value of 40.7 for Algeria. Propensity is when you normalize the value to the base rate of graduates for men and women. 53.55 / 62.7 is the women in STEM divided by women getting degrees, 46.45 / 37.3 is the men in STEM divided by men getting degrees. This gives you the rate of stem degrees normalized by how many of each gender gets tertiary degrees. 53.55 / 62.7 /(53.55 / 62.7 + 46.45 / 37.3) = 40.7% And conversely same equation for men: 46.45 / 37.3 /(53.55 / 62.7 + 46.45 / 37.3) = 59.3% So basically they wrote that paper not knowing anything. But I can see why a group of gender studies professors would write that piece anyway for political reasons, as this paradox is very uncomfortable for them.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Yet these adjusted figures more of less reinforce the thesis of the original theory. Algeria and Poland, more conservative countries, actually had higher adjusted representation of women in STEM. Luxembourg has fewer. This is important nuance in statistics, but it looks like it's reinforcing the thesis that more equal societies see greater gender disparities in employment.

aiisjustanif 4y ago

> The truth is that we are doing a lot better in terms of equality of opportunity than we give ourselves credit for. Who is “we”?

ghufran_syed 4y ago
Humans
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  A category that seems to be smaller every day.
Gwarzo 4y ago
The subjects of the equality in discussion - i.e human beings or, "we"
kjeetgill 4y ago
Sorry you're bing downvoted, I also didn't know if the author meant Humans or we here in the US .... a common internet default.

magicalist 4y ago

> like in countries with better gender equality, where we see more unequal distributions of workers in different fields [0]. I wish the correlation/causation and replication crisis crowd would update their priors on that paper. They published a correction (notably after all the press coverage) because they weren't measuring what they said they were measuring, but it was still a pretty lousy study, and of course demonstrates nothing about causation. [1] has a commentary, but maybe other people have better coverage. [1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard/files/richardson_et_al_gender_equality_paradox.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard/files/richardson_...

LeftHandPath 4y ago
I had not seen that before, thank you for the link.
Jensson 4y ago
> What does Stoet and Geary’s propensity ratio measure? Worldwide, women earn more tertiary degrees than men. In Algeria, 62.7% of tertiary graduates, and 53.55% of STEM graduates, are women. Yet Stoet and Geary reported a value of 40.7 for Algeria. Propensity is when you normalize the value to the base rate of graduates for men and women. 53.55 / 62.7 is the women in STEM divided by women getting degrees, 46.45 / 37.3 is the men in STEM divided by men getting degrees. This gives you the rate of stem degrees normalized by how many of each gender gets tertiary degrees. 53.55 / 62.7 /(53.55 / 62.7 + 46.45 / 37.3) = 40.7% And conversely same equation for men: 46.45 / 37.3 /(53.55 / 62.7 + 46.45 / 37.3) = 59.3% So basically they wrote that paper not knowing anything. But I can see why a group of gender studies professors would write that piece anyway for political reasons, as this paradox is very uncomfortable for them.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  Yet these adjusted figures more of less reinforce the thesis of the original theory. Algeria and Poland, more conservative countries, actually had higher adjusted representation of women in STEM. Luxembourg has fewer. This is important nuance in statistics, but it looks like it's reinforcing the thesis that more equal societies see greater gender disparities in employment.