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Those studies seemingly never take into account the opposite end of the spectrum, meaning that men are 3 times more likely to endup homeless than women, an hone

Those studies seemingly never take into account the opposite end of the spectrum, meaning that men are 3 times more likely to endup homeless than women, an honest non-biased comparison would measure the full economical spectrum and not just the gap at some specific office jobs.

readthenotes1 3y ago
Prisons and garbage men... I think it would be interesting if someone did a survey across all of Mike Rowe's dirty Jobs to see what the sex representation was.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  I think that those are not generally seen as desirable career paths, and thus there are no vested interests by various cohorts to break into them and achieve parity. When you consider how materially comfortable working from home, writing code, and sending emails, or working on a research project at a university lab in a tenure-track position is as opposed to doing those "dirty jobs", it should become apparent why the focus is on the PMC sector of jobs as opposed to those "dirty jobs".
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Private Military Contractors like Blackwater/Xe/Academi/Constellis have indeed long been a lucrative and male-dominated field :)
    - layman51 3y ago
      They meant “professional-managerial class” which might be a political or social science term.
      - rjbwork 3y ago
        Huh. Indeed it is. I must have picked it up via osmosis, I had not before read the wikipedia page on it with all its underlying political implications. It is the concept I intended to convey, however.
    - rjbwork 3y ago
      Sorry, I was referring to "Professional-Managerial Class."
    - wnoise 3y ago
      A couple people missed the smiley...
  - hx8 3y ago
    This is exactly the point. Men are over represented in some of the best jobs and some of the worst jobs.
- XorNot 3y ago
  And what, just pretend that any woman trying to enter those fields wouldn't face immense sexist hostility and harassment?
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    I never considered that women trying to get into felonious crime might face sexist hostility. Made me think!
GuB-42 3y ago
This article is actually not about gender bias, though it does uses an article about gender bias as an example. The topic is adversarial collaboration, essentially, the idea is to have people with diverging opinion work together as a way to limit bias and make something better in the end. Because gender studies are a highly polarizing topic, it is an appropriate example, but I think the same ideas can be applied to topics like programming. For example, by pairing an architecture astronaut with a hacker, one may get something sensible, if both survive the encounter. For me that's what diversity is all about, more than narrow concerns about race, gender, religion and sexuality.
- Klathmon 3y ago
  I've found this to be such a powerful thing in the workplace. I work with some people who I almost always disagree with, almost like magic. But from that disagreement can often come better solutions than either one of us would have been able to come up with on our own. It obviously doesn't work in every situation, and everyone needs to ultimately be on the "same team" and want a similar overarching goal, and everyone needs to know when it's time to back off and concede a point. But there's just something so powerful about working together to solve problems from completely different viewpoints that prevents anyone from getting too focused on some small part of a problem.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  > For example, by pairing an architecture astronaut with a hacker, one may get something sensible, if both survive the encounter. This sounds a lot like my workplace, where we have a shop foreman and fabrication team who tends to just want to build to print and get it shipped on time and at a profit, an engineering team who tends to hyper-optimize and inspect every parameter of the design, and an administration team that prioritizes process following. Left to their own devices, build would throw together something unreplicable and in desperate need of a redesign, engineering would be perpetually making ever more complicated prototypes and never ship anything, and admin would be holding so many meetings to go over so many forms that there would be no time remaining to make any mistakes (or to make anything at all), but together, it's a pretty successful team. Sure, we poke fun at each other in the lunchroom, but it's all good-natured. Perhaps that's a better example of adversarial collaboration than a highly-polarizing gender studies paper...
olalonde 3y ago
The bigger issue in those studies is to assume that absent of sexism/racism/etc., outcomes would be equal. Or in other words, that discrimination is solely responsible for outcome disparities. For example, it's been shown that the woman pay gap is largely explained by different life choices rather than sexism. And more men end up in prison, not because of sexism, but also because of life choices and perhaps, higher levels of testosterone. In reality, there are many, many reasons that explain outcome disparities between groups and it's not safe to assume that disparities are caused by discrimination. Thomas Sowell has a great book on this topic, aptly named "Discrimination and Disparities".
- isykt 3y ago
  > For example, it's been shown that the woman pay gap is largely explained by different life choices rather than sexism. How were life choices controlled for in these studies? I’m sure lots of black people in the pre-civil rights American South never applied for jobs only given to white people because not getting lynched is a pretty important “life choice.” Put another, less stark way: if you see no one like you in a certain field, starting as a child, can you really say it was a “life choice” not to pursue, I.e, computer science?
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    Yes. Assuming you accept individualism. Further, quotas mean you are basically guaranteed a spot in a job where you are vastly outnumbered by group (i.e. gender). However, a lot of folks let group mentality ruin otherwise great opportunities.
    - vkou 3y ago
      > Assuming you accept individualism. We don't need to accept individualism to accept that argument, we need to accept that people are blind and deaf to the world around them, and somehow make major life decisions without basing them on any sensory and social input. Which is a much harder sell.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
godelski 3y ago
This comment feels off topic and more about stoking rage than actually discussing the content of the article.

readthenotes1 3y ago

Prisons and garbage men... I think it would be interesting if someone did a survey across all of Mike Rowe's dirty Jobs to see what the sex representation was.

rjbwork 3y ago
I think that those are not generally seen as desirable career paths, and thus there are no vested interests by various cohorts to break into them and achieve parity. When you consider how materially comfortable working from home, writing code, and sending emails, or working on a research project at a university lab in a tenure-track position is as opposed to doing those "dirty jobs", it should become apparent why the focus is on the PMC sector of jobs as opposed to those "dirty jobs".
- michaelt 3y ago
  Private Military Contractors like Blackwater/Xe/Academi/Constellis have indeed long been a lucrative and male-dominated field :)
  - layman51 3y ago
    They meant “professional-managerial class” which might be a political or social science term.
    - rjbwork 3y ago
      Huh. Indeed it is. I must have picked it up via osmosis, I had not before read the wikipedia page on it with all its underlying political implications. It is the concept I intended to convey, however.
  - rjbwork 3y ago
    Sorry, I was referring to "Professional-Managerial Class."
  - wnoise 3y ago
    A couple people missed the smiley...
- hx8 3y ago
  This is exactly the point. Men are over represented in some of the best jobs and some of the worst jobs.
XorNot 3y ago
And what, just pretend that any woman trying to enter those fields wouldn't face immense sexist hostility and harassment?
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  I never considered that women trying to get into felonious crime might face sexist hostility. Made me think!

GuB-42 3y ago

This article is actually not about gender bias, though it does uses an article about gender bias as an example. The topic is adversarial collaboration, essentially, the idea is to have people with diverging opinion work together as a way to limit bias and make something better in the end. Because gender studies are a highly polarizing topic, it is an appropriate example, but I think the same ideas can be applied to topics like programming. For example, by pairing an architecture astronaut with a hacker, one may get something sensible, if both survive the encounter. For me that's what diversity is all about, more than narrow concerns about race, gender, religion and sexuality.

Klathmon 3y ago
I've found this to be such a powerful thing in the workplace. I work with some people who I almost always disagree with, almost like magic. But from that disagreement can often come better solutions than either one of us would have been able to come up with on our own. It obviously doesn't work in every situation, and everyone needs to ultimately be on the "same team" and want a similar overarching goal, and everyone needs to know when it's time to back off and concede a point. But there's just something so powerful about working together to solve problems from completely different viewpoints that prevents anyone from getting too focused on some small part of a problem.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
> For example, by pairing an architecture astronaut with a hacker, one may get something sensible, if both survive the encounter. This sounds a lot like my workplace, where we have a shop foreman and fabrication team who tends to just want to build to print and get it shipped on time and at a profit, an engineering team who tends to hyper-optimize and inspect every parameter of the design, and an administration team that prioritizes process following. Left to their own devices, build would throw together something unreplicable and in desperate need of a redesign, engineering would be perpetually making ever more complicated prototypes and never ship anything, and admin would be holding so many meetings to go over so many forms that there would be no time remaining to make any mistakes (or to make anything at all), but together, it's a pretty successful team. Sure, we poke fun at each other in the lunchroom, but it's all good-natured. Perhaps that's a better example of adversarial collaboration than a highly-polarizing gender studies paper...

olalonde 3y ago

The bigger issue in those studies is to assume that absent of sexism/racism/etc., outcomes would be equal. Or in other words, that discrimination is solely responsible for outcome disparities. For example, it's been shown that the woman pay gap is largely explained by different life choices rather than sexism. And more men end up in prison, not because of sexism, but also because of life choices and perhaps, higher levels of testosterone. In reality, there are many, many reasons that explain outcome disparities between groups and it's not safe to assume that disparities are caused by discrimination. Thomas Sowell has a great book on this topic, aptly named "Discrimination and Disparities".

isykt 3y ago
> For example, it's been shown that the woman pay gap is largely explained by different life choices rather than sexism. How were life choices controlled for in these studies? I’m sure lots of black people in the pre-civil rights American South never applied for jobs only given to white people because not getting lynched is a pretty important “life choice.” Put another, less stark way: if you see no one like you in a certain field, starting as a child, can you really say it was a “life choice” not to pursue, I.e, computer science?
- iinnPP 3y ago
  Yes. Assuming you accept individualism. Further, quotas mean you are basically guaranteed a spot in a job where you are vastly outnumbered by group (i.e. gender). However, a lot of folks let group mentality ruin otherwise great opportunities.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Assuming you accept individualism. We don't need to accept individualism to accept that argument, we need to accept that people are blind and deaf to the world around them, and somehow make major life decisions without basing them on any sensory and social input. Which is a much harder sell.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

godelski 3y ago

This comment feels off topic and more about stoking rage than actually discussing the content of the article.