4 ms·

So the only (weak) conclusion mentioned is the possibility that men are less ambitious/driven/motivated, meandering around from major to major; from job to job,

by rahidz 4y ago

So the only (weak) conclusion mentioned is the possibility that men are less ambitious/driven/motivated, meandering around from major to major; from job to job, while women know what they want and do everything possible to achieve it. Which is odd, it seems like almost a reversal of the typical gender stereotypes (men are strong, ambitious, career driven; women are fragile lilies who don't really know what they want). I'm curious, is this limited to the United States? And is it possibly something biological? (declining testosterone?)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dageshi 4y ago
I have a theory that it comes down to women's biological clock. They know they will only have the option of having a child between certain age ranges (ideally) and that's close enough in the future to plan for. They need good grades to get into college, they need college to have a career and establish themselves before they hopefully find a partner and have a child around 30ish? Might not go according to plan, but it's a template of sorts. Men really don't have anything like that, in the past perhaps there was, an expectation of getting educated and established by a certain age in order to attract a wife and provide for her and the family. I think it probably leaves some men unanchored with no real direction or ambition, no clue even what they should do.
dcolkitt 4y ago
Seems like it's mostly driven by changes to the composition of the job market. 50 years ago many more good paying jobs required a degree of physical labor that heavily favored men. The economy today has shifted from manufacturing to the service sector, which favors cooperation and communication. Women, even a hundred years ago, have always been more pro-social than men. They tend to have more friends, talk to their friends and family more often, know and ask more about the personal lives of the people around them. This far predates modernity, and has probably been true going all the way back to the neolithic era. The only difference is that in an age where email jobs have replaced the factory floor, the economic premium to these skills has gone way up.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Yet women are barely present in high-paying STEM fields, despite hundreds of incentives, while STEM jobs typically pay well and are relatively safe options career-wise. Furthermore, we see the differences in income primarily in the 20-30 bracket, where most would get their first job. Despite the whole "cooperation and communication" argument, most individuals aren't going to be in such a position for quite a few years, where the income differences are. During those times, most individuals are stuck doing grunt work. Call me crazy, but things don't add up here.
  - dcolkitt 4y ago
    STEM is a pretty small subset of total employment, only about 5% of Americans. And it's not like most of the jobs pay astoundingly high. By contrast healthcare is more than 3X the size of STEM, and when looking at new entrants is just as skewed towards women as STEM is to men. When you step outside STEM and healthcare, and look at high-paying jobs that actually employ at scale, you see that most of them heavily favor "soft skills". Attorneys, real estate agents, middle management, marketing, sales, speech pathology, graphic design. All of them are much more about working with people than working with things.
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      Most of them heavily favor "soft skills" a few years in. You're not getting into middle management right off the bat without being given a priority lane (read: network / family favor). Graphic design is years of grunt work and pays shoddily. Marketing and sales aren't remotely about "cooperation and communication" as much as you claim they are. The only things remaining are speech pathology, attorneys and real estate agents, for which I have no anecdotal experience nor knowledge, and can only infer real estate agents behave similarly to sales. Ultimately the point still stands. "Cooperation and communication" are not the super valued soft skills you claim they are in the initial years, which is about the only period women outperform men in earnings. Afterwards, women are left behind in the dust as a whole. It's blatantly obvious there's more going on here than "women are better in the post-modern labor market".
stuckinhell 4y ago
It's because women are given far more advantages in the corporate workplace. I'm a woman in tech, who is now a full time manager part-time developer. I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers (even if under qualified). Resumes are filtered by third party contractors before they even get to me, so our company has plausible deniability. We have third party diversity groups give seminars, that are borderline insidious because they imply all men are just handed their positions and money or there is a global conspiracy to keep women out of tech. This causes me EXTREME difficulty because my team is extremely high performance highly technical and critical team. I cannot compromise on skills or allow a hire that would demoralize the team.
- karencarits 4y ago
  > I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers Out of curiosity; how would lgbt developers be identified in this case? Since sexual orientation is not visible per se and I guess you cannot ask, is one just looking for specific patterns of behavior or dressing etc?
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    It's easy. People mention being part of various LGBT groups on their resumes, or they put rainbow flags on their social media. Sexual orientation is actually very visible these days. Staffing agencies even have facets in their CRMs/spreadsheets list/search system to quickly identify candidates.
    - uejfiweun 4y ago
      Does this sort of thing actually help your career development in a meaningful way? This may sound fucked up but I'd happily put myself down as LGBT if I knew it would speed up my career ladder climbing.
      - nickthegreek 4y ago
        At my job, we have 3 separate bonus referral rates. One for standard hire, an increased bonus if they are a veteran, and a higher one for poc/lgbt.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
In my experience women have much better emotional control. I've seen so many women clearly express no interest in university classes but still be able to put the work in to pass. For men, I've seen that if they have no interest in something, they have a hard time getting themselves to see something through. On the other hand, I've also seen a small group of men become obsessive over something and pretty much neglect everything in pursuit of this obsession which I'm sure in the long term leads some of these men to be at the top of their fields.

by rahidz 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dageshi 4y ago

I have a theory that it comes down to women's biological clock. They know they will only have the option of having a child between certain age ranges (ideally) and that's close enough in the future to plan for. They need good grades to get into college, they need college to have a career and establish themselves before they hopefully find a partner and have a child around 30ish? Might not go according to plan, but it's a template of sorts. Men really don't have anything like that, in the past perhaps there was, an expectation of getting educated and established by a certain age in order to attract a wife and provide for her and the family. I think it probably leaves some men unanchored with no real direction or ambition, no clue even what they should do.

dcolkitt 4y ago

Seems like it's mostly driven by changes to the composition of the job market. 50 years ago many more good paying jobs required a degree of physical labor that heavily favored men. The economy today has shifted from manufacturing to the service sector, which favors cooperation and communication. Women, even a hundred years ago, have always been more pro-social than men. They tend to have more friends, talk to their friends and family more often, know and ask more about the personal lives of the people around them. This far predates modernity, and has probably been true going all the way back to the neolithic era. The only difference is that in an age where email jobs have replaced the factory floor, the economic premium to these skills has gone way up.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Yet women are barely present in high-paying STEM fields, despite hundreds of incentives, while STEM jobs typically pay well and are relatively safe options career-wise. Furthermore, we see the differences in income primarily in the 20-30 bracket, where most would get their first job. Despite the whole "cooperation and communication" argument, most individuals aren't going to be in such a position for quite a few years, where the income differences are. During those times, most individuals are stuck doing grunt work. Call me crazy, but things don't add up here.
- dcolkitt 4y ago
  STEM is a pretty small subset of total employment, only about 5% of Americans. And it's not like most of the jobs pay astoundingly high. By contrast healthcare is more than 3X the size of STEM, and when looking at new entrants is just as skewed towards women as STEM is to men. When you step outside STEM and healthcare, and look at high-paying jobs that actually employ at scale, you see that most of them heavily favor "soft skills". Attorneys, real estate agents, middle management, marketing, sales, speech pathology, graphic design. All of them are much more about working with people than working with things.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Most of them heavily favor "soft skills" a few years in. You're not getting into middle management right off the bat without being given a priority lane (read: network / family favor). Graphic design is years of grunt work and pays shoddily. Marketing and sales aren't remotely about "cooperation and communication" as much as you claim they are. The only things remaining are speech pathology, attorneys and real estate agents, for which I have no anecdotal experience nor knowledge, and can only infer real estate agents behave similarly to sales. Ultimately the point still stands. "Cooperation and communication" are not the super valued soft skills you claim they are in the initial years, which is about the only period women outperform men in earnings. Afterwards, women are left behind in the dust as a whole. It's blatantly obvious there's more going on here than "women are better in the post-modern labor market".

stuckinhell 4y ago

It's because women are given far more advantages in the corporate workplace. I'm a woman in tech, who is now a full time manager part-time developer. I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers (even if under qualified). Resumes are filtered by third party contractors before they even get to me, so our company has plausible deniability. We have third party diversity groups give seminars, that are borderline insidious because they imply all men are just handed their positions and money or there is a global conspiracy to keep women out of tech. This causes me EXTREME difficulty because my team is extremely high performance highly technical and critical team. I cannot compromise on skills or allow a hire that would demoralize the team.

karencarits 4y ago
> I'm under extreme pressure to hire and promote female, lgbt, or poc developers Out of curiosity; how would lgbt developers be identified in this case? Since sexual orientation is not visible per se and I guess you cannot ask, is one just looking for specific patterns of behavior or dressing etc?
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  It's easy. People mention being part of various LGBT groups on their resumes, or they put rainbow flags on their social media. Sexual orientation is actually very visible these days. Staffing agencies even have facets in their CRMs/spreadsheets list/search system to quickly identify candidates.
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    Does this sort of thing actually help your career development in a meaningful way? This may sound fucked up but I'd happily put myself down as LGBT if I knew it would speed up my career ladder climbing.
    - nickthegreek 4y ago
      At my job, we have 3 separate bonus referral rates. One for standard hire, an increased bonus if they are a veteran, and a higher one for poc/lgbt.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

In my experience women have much better emotional control. I've seen so many women clearly express no interest in university classes but still be able to put the work in to pass. For men, I've seen that if they have no interest in something, they have a hard time getting themselves to see something through. On the other hand, I've also seen a small group of men become obsessive over something and pretty much neglect everything in pursuit of this obsession which I'm sure in the long term leads some of these men to be at the top of their fields.