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I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organiz

I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation. And, it has nothing to do with whether they were giving dolls or cars as toddlers. The differences are there as early as one day after birth [ http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf ]. Primate studies show the same differences with our relatives. Everyone should be able to pursue any career they want to, but there should be no surprise when you see gender disparities across different occupations.

cconcepts 11y ago
Yeah the challenge is the way we attach value judgements to the different things genders tend (generalization) to be better at. This is purely anecdotal, but in my extended family many members believed the "we're all the same" view. I was given whatever toys I wanted whether they were considered masculine or feminine. It challenged people to see me grow up and be obsessed with heavy machinery - something they obviously saw within a masculine stereotype. EDIT: I'm male
- deleted 11y ago
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- iNate2000 11y ago
  I've noticed the same thing with kids close to me. I wonder how much is (1) subconscious reinforcement of tradition or influences from outside the home.
geomark 11y ago
Having lived through so much of the polictically correct conditioning about equality of everybody I became pretty numb to it. Then having a child and seeing the stark difference between play habits of boys and girls made me think about it again. Anecdotal, of course, although consistent with many other people's anecdotes, which starts to look like data after a while.
- nailer 11y ago
  Check out the work by Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge, which includes studies on newborns showing clear differences between genders. http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf Also check out the work of John Money, who popularised the concept of 'gender as a social construct', and wrecked the life of a young man whose penis had been destroyed by trying to raise him as a girl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer.
  - chillingeffect 11y ago
    Yes, indeed. If anyone ever fails us to understand how blind spots in our perception and cognition work, one of the best examples is to contrast the intensity of calls for equal treatment for the sexes with the fact that up to 80% by region of American baby boys [1] get a piece of their sexual organs removed shortly after birth. Moreover, we even allow Mohels to suck the baby's penis clean and have a celebratory meal afterward, called a Seudat Mitzvah [2]. And the fact that babies sometimes contract herpes and die from it [3] doesn't stop it. So that's a hell of a blind spot, although I won't say it's just academics with power, it's numerous institutions including the religious ones, the corporate ones and even outlaw institutions. The evil that happens to people is the accumulation of all the mundane evil people in institutions do to protect themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#/media/File:United_States_Neonatal_Circumcision_Rate_by_Region.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#/me... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-stricken-HERPES-ritual-oral-blood-sucking-circumcision-New-York-City.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-s...
  - chi-sq 11y ago
    (currently finishing Masters in Methodology/Statistics in Psychology) There is evidence of inter-sex differences (and in many areas girls are at advantage), but the provably innate part is small, and the intra-group variance coming from other factors (that may include elements of culture) is much bigger. This allows for conclusions on population, not individual level. On a related note, affirmative action programs seem to work to societies benefit. Another comment that phrased it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845165 And absolutely regardless of John Money being misguided and vilified (I don't think I even heard of him before recent Catholic backlash), gender is a legitimate and in depth academic topic.
EmanueleAina 11y ago
> Men and women, on average, differ significantly The linked article explicitly does not take any stance on that. What the article points out is that males are more extreme in their traits, eg. exceptionally tall or exceptionally short, which in no way means that there are average differences. Even if the deviation is different, the mean may be the same. Not that I'm saying that those differences are or are not there, but to say that the current differences are entirely due to biological differences would seem a bit naive to me.
- erikb 11y ago
  More extremes in males is true, but height was exactly one problem where the mean really deviates and the curve is pretty much the same. IQ was one where males have way more extremes than women.
- speeder 11y ago
  You managed to misquote BADLY the article to support your point. The article opens stating that there are TWO types of gender differences, one, like Height (that you quoted wrongly) is when the mean changes. The other (like IQ) the distribution changes. Then the article focus on theorizing why that second type happens, and don't discuss the first (wisely for the author, the same website used to have other authors on the subject, and they were all fired after public outcry after focusing on the first type of differences).
  - EmanueleAina 11y ago
    No need to SHOUT to convey your message. Indeed, I wasn't really trying to quote the article when I was talking about height, I just took a bad analogy on my own (certainly influenced by what I just read, but that's not the point). Sorry for the confusion.
- kristjankalm 11y ago
  hence, if you sample either tail of the distribution you get on the average more men than women. and sampling one of the tails is exactly what selective schools/companies/sports clubs/etc tend to do.
brc 11y ago
I thought the 'there is no differences' thing was debunked completely? There will always be warriors against everything who will claim gender is just conditioning or whatever and probsly get eyeballs and publishing as a result. Happily you can completely ignore all that and lead a happy and productive life knowing the gender you were born with has a big factor in determining what you choose to do in your life.
jrs235 11y ago
An excellent read is Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about The Emerging Science of Sex Differences. http://amzn.to/1NKVQ6d http://amzn.to/1NKVQ6d
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  Both "Why Gender Matters" and the study linked in your parent are discussed rather critically here http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261
- kaitai 11y ago
  Another great read is Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244 http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-D...
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    See this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845263 for a criticism of Fine and "Delusions of Gender."
lowmagnet 11y ago
> Everyone should be able to pursue any career they want to, but there should be no surprise when you see gender disparities across different occupations. Even the word "disparity" (instead of difference) assumes that there should be some sort of parity between sexes. And I use "sexes" because "gender" is likely incorrect in reference to genetics. Unless they find some genetic link to it, in which case a lot of arguments will need to cease.
carapat_virulat 11y ago
Is the percentage of women in STEM low in all STEM degrees in the US? I'm Spanish and math and chemistry usually have a 50/50 or >50% of women here. Not sure if those are considered STEM at all in the US.
- totalrobe 11y ago
  Yes math and chem are STEM. In my experience, women were found in greater percentages in the basic science and maths (required for pre-med) and in the life sciences which were geared more towards medical professions.
- kaitai 11y ago
  Our social constructions heavily influence how "Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation," (from grandparent comment). In Spain and Italy and Portugal, math occupies a very different social role than it does in the US. In particular, it's not seen as so thoroughly unfeminine. This is one reason there are so many fabulous women mathematicians from Spain, Italy, and Portugal, and why they stay there rather than moving to the US for academic positions. I think the GP has a point but sort of a weak understanding of what people are selecting for. We change the characteristics we find most important about many jobs to make them fit the gender roles our society has. It's not the act/job alone, it's the role in society. In Malaysia being a programmer is a job that doesn't require mythical powers, so it's close to 50-50 in gender split. In Italy being a mathematician does not stereotypically require brilliance, Asperger's, or general social ineptitude, so it's ok for women. Being a schoolteacher in the US has shifted from a prestigious starter job for educated men who could keep discipline, "a stepping-stone on [the] way to careers in the church or the law" (colonial times, 1800s) to a job for nurturing women who love children (today) [1]. And we can look at computer science: women went from being the original "computers" and programmers to being... not suited to it (?). Right, not interested. For innate reasons. [1] http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html
pyre 11y ago
> gender disparities across different occupations. I guess it would depend on the occupation. For example, I don't see much difference between nurses and doctors in terms of something that could be quantified as a gender-specific preference. It seems to me that the idea of "nurses are women, doctors are men" came about more from the idea that women were "too stupid" to be doctors and that it was a "man's job." Even today many doctors look down on nurses (as 'below' them; people whose opinions don't matter), and men that decide to become nurses also face a uphill battle of social acceptance.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  It has more to do with the pay disparity between nurses and doctors, rather than gender, these days. While only 30% of active physicians in the US are female, the gender split among residents (entering the profession) is close to 50%/50%.
  - pyre 11y ago
    Well, it's not just doctors/nurses. You also have dentists/dental assistants, which in my anecdotal experience is pretty heavily a male/female divide. I will comment, that it seems easier for women to move "up" than for men to move "down." It seems like there is more friction against male nurses/dental assistants than there is against women doctors/dentists.
    - geebee 11y ago
      Where do you think the "friction" comes from? The men themselves? Honestly, men really should consider these fields. In SF, the median pay for a dental hygienist is almost as high as for a software developer, and median pay is actually higher for a registered nurse (again, in SF, this isn't the case nationally) [1]. Nursing and dental hygiene have less upside, but less age discrimination and better career stability. If you'd like more career flexibility, would like to be able to work part time, step back from the career track to take care of kids, and get back into it later, dental hygiene and nursing are probably better than software development. This is particularly important if you'd like to be able to have kids and spend time with them, while keeping stable employment and/or not badly harming your future prospects of employment. [1] US news "best jobs", drill down to pay by region, will provide a summary of BLS data.
belorn 11y ago
While what you are saying is partial true, the picture of genetics vs nurture is much more complex. I would recommend a excellent lecture series at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&index=1&list=PL45A5E21ECA5FA850 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&index=1&list=PL4...) which goes into quite into depth about the subject. For example, while there are clear differences at birth, nurture can permanent shutdown genes. Additionally a lot of activators for genes are triggered by mental thought process and the environment around individuals. To make a car analogy, we could assume that faster cars are more often breaking the speed limit than slower cars, and we might very likely find this to be true in practice regardless of the actually speed limit. From there we need to be careful to conclude that its the fault of the car when a driver choses to ignore the law, or that just because the acceleration is faster and it is easier to drive fast in a fast car a person is not conscious in their choice.
amyjess 11y ago
> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.
- songshu 11y ago
  Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether trans or not, to express their gender in terms of constructs like name, language, manner of dress etc which are clearly social (sometimes clearly invented in the last 100 years). We have no easy way of deciding how these seemingly superficial things relate to underlying gender.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    This is absolutely true. A few years ago the majority of Americans couldn't even wrap their heads around marriage equality.
    - kefka 11y ago
      Most still can't. It was because 5 people "made it so".
      - ScottBurson 11y ago
        You need to check the latest poll results: http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx
  - pluma 11y ago
    Trying to explain to a girl who's never seen a kilt why you're "dressed like a girl" is a great exercise for anyone who thinks gender isn't at all a social construct. Like many things, gender is a mix of both. It's an immutable core wrapped in various social and cultural markers we've come to associate with "masculine" and "feminine". And of course the range of possible cores is more of a continuum than a simple binary flag (even though we like sorting all the arbitrary markers into two neat piles as if that really means anything). Considering we still largely refused to acknowledge something as intuitively obvious[0] as non-right-handedness less than two generations ago, I wonder how long it will take until we've learned to deal with the fact that gender (and sexuality) is as idiosyncratic as nearly everything else about an individual's identity. [0]: Seriously. People generally have two hands. Why on Earth should we assume that there's something special about the one that is dominant for most people? Good luck explaining gender and sexuality to a society that can't even imagine not everybody is strictly right-handed.
paperrr1 11y ago
Someones 1 + 1 really does equal 2.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
A large part of the problem is the failure to distinguish between the aggregate and the individual. For the sake of argument let's say that the population of individuals who would make good engineers is 60% male and 40% female. From an aggregate level that's a huge difference. Once you gather enough of people that statistical inferences can be made, the difference becomes obvious. In a classroom, for instance. But at an individual level that difference becomes insignificant. If you grab one boy and one girl at random, there's a very significant chance the girl is better at engineering than the boy. At the individual level, there are much better predictors of whether a person is good at engineering than their sex. Five minutes of conversation wouldn't be authoritative but it would be much more predictive than the individual's sex.
- mikeash 11y ago
  That really is the crux of the matter. Everyone should be given an equal chance with no prejudice, and then if population differences still emerge, that's OK. Unfortunately there isn't much room for this middle ground. People who want to acknowledge sex difference want to use sex as a filter, e.g. "no women in combat roles." People who want to give everybody a chance also want to even things out, e.g. "Allow women in combat roles, and lower the standards for women so they have just as much of a chance as men have."
  - hiou 11y ago
    I hesitate to bring up extreme cases, but the relationship between social darwinism and the rise of the nazi party make many people, including myself, very hesitant to speak about differences in sex etc. Not because we deny their existence, but because we've seen how far large groups of uninformed electorate can be persuaded into supporting some scary stuff because of it. It's just a very tricky subject when it comes to the masses. EDIT: Clarified to social darwinism from darwinism.
    - jerf 11y ago
      It's not the masses you need to be worried about, hiou. It wasn't the masses gassing people by the millions... it was the elites, who got a few people to go along with them. "The masses" organize poorly... it's the people who are smart enough to successfully do something with their bad idea, but not smart enough to see through the bad idea, that must be feared. The deep-rooted fear of academia isn't that the masses may do something stupid with the idea of gender differences... it's the fear that they, the academics, will do something stupid. (Again. Although, not the same literal people, of course.)
Kelly2 11y ago
> I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. Indeed, it's such a taboo that it's brought up here every time the subject is discussed here. Unless you would take all your information from radicalfeminist.com, I never saw a reputable news channel denying there would be differences between sexes. Actually, I see this meme of "Gender differences are taboo!" MUCH more often than I see the actual behavior so decried in actual action.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - Kelly2 11y ago
    I was implying a reputable one but I can see where the confusion could arise, so I edited my post to make it clear.
duaneb 11y ago
> The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Gender is, by current academic definition, a cultural construct, an identity. Sex, i.e. "plumbing", is the definition of the difference between biological men and women. People with trans operations do not deny their chromosomes, and I'm sure they'd be the first to assure you about the hormonal differences between the sexes. The problem people are grappling with is ascribing identity assumptions based on sex. You haven't listened carefully enough to understand the difference between gender, sex, identity, etc.
pessimizer 11y ago
You're just posting your agenda here. What's in dispute is that there has been any reasonable natural experiment that has had the power to show that women have any functional cognitive differences with men. This is due to 1) the influence of pervasive beliefs in both experimenters and subjects that women are inferior to men (in often contradictory ways with specifics that vary by culture and over time), and 2) the actions of both men and women who subscribe to those beliefs to punish women for deviating from them. These beliefs are part of a large corpus colloquially known as "common sense," which purport to describe what is "obvious" but tend to simply defend what daddy said from the communists at the university. The Saudis believe that driving is physically and mentally harmful to women. Dr. Pangloss believes that everything is as it should be. edit: In addition, I doubt that the study that took place in a bubble that excluded or properly controlled for the influence of overt sexism and anti-female suppression was a group of Scottish IQ tests from 1932. 21 year-old Scottish women had been allowed to vote for at least three years by then. Get with the program you nurturers! edit2: And to go on forever about this, I'll say how shocked I am to discover that a class of people who were constrained to a certain narrow range of education in a certain narrow range of practical skills intended to lead them to a certain narrow range of outcomes have test scores that tend towards a more narrow range than people outside that class.
vacri 11y ago
> I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. In all honesty, I see more consistent whining about 'feminism taking over' than I do actual gender politics in day-to-day HN.
Confusion 11y ago
> there should be no surprise when you see gender disparities across different occupations. On the one hand, anyone that ignores/denies the influence of different hormones [1] on body and mind is simply ignorant. On the other hand you can question how relevant hormones can be to a deeply cultural concept as 'career choice'. On the one hand tiny differences can accumulate over a lifetime, but on the other hand tiny differences can also cancel out and its hard to say what it will add up to via so many layers of indirection. Accepting the existence and influence of physical differences does not imply having to accept all cultural differences. Some may indeed result unavoidably from the physical differences, while others may be impossible to link to physical differences. Given differences in the relation between men and women, and career preferences, across cultures, I suspect the distribution of men and women over careers is often dominated by contingent cultural factors. I definitely believe this is the case for STEM careers. [1] As an example of an undeniable physical difference, not the defining difference
lectrick 11y ago
> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The problem is that correlating things with sex (even when such a correlation seems apparent) is just as bad as correlating things with race, ethnicity, religion, age, index finger length, eye color, and pretty much anything else. It disadvantages those in the arbitrarily-designated outgroup, and subjects everyone to the Fallacy of Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition. Which means that you're STILL ideally stuck on evaluating each person on an individual level, anyway. Correlating things to something like blood serum testosterone level would make more sense to me, than an entire sex.
- Claudus 11y ago
  The reason that is important for group differences to be studied and known is because the group level is where discrimination (and accusations such) seem to be studied. If someone wants to hire the tallest 50% of the population to be fruit pickers and fairly evaluates every member of the population resulting in a 90% male workforce, how can they defend themselves against accusations of discrimination? In such an instance, it would be important to understand the height differences in male and female populations. What about the most intelligent 5% of the population being best suited for STEM fields? With fair evaluations would that result in even splits across sex (or race, for that matter)? Even with self selection, people are going to select into roles they are best suited for. Does the Jamacian ACTN3 gene variation result in more Olympic gold sprinters, or is it a result of racial discrimination? Articles like this on HN and the interest in studying differences between different groups is at least partially a direct result of pressure and accusations of discrimination based on sex/race distributions of groups. I agree, ideally evaluating each person should be done on an individual level. I also think evaluating issues of discrimination should be done on an individual level.
backprojection 11y ago
>The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. I think it's the right political conclusion, even if the reasoning is questionable. Just because you could conduct research to root out differences in populations of females and males, it doesn't mean that you should. What's the point? It seems to be that these arguments are used to justify gender disparity in occupations, achievement, etc. I like Dan Dennet's response to this question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKC_7rlTuw&feature=youtu.be&t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKC_7rlTuw&feature=youtu.be...
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I fully agree with this and often make this argument, usually to 100+ downvotes on reddit and elsewhere. My only addition would be that there's probably as much deviation within the genders as between them. But that doesn't make gender a meaningless thing. The frequency of those aspects is important too. Only, say, 10% of women are "butch" personality types but 90% of men are. So holding up a butch woman as an example and going "See, see gender is meaningless" is unconvincing. I think eventually society will sober up and realize that when we talk about social aspects, more than likely we're talking about personal types. Certain ones simply exist with higher frequency per gender. I feel like we're on this long path of migrating away from "default brain" assumptions made about race, nationality, gender, etc and will probably settle on something like the modern day understanding of personiality types. Its scary how well I fit the INTJ mold. The idea that I represent all men or am part of masculine culture is fairly ridiculous. Ladies, I find male ISTJ's and ESTJ's hard to deal with as well.
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  >>My only addition would be that there's probably as much deviation within the genders as between them. If you read the article, it makes the point that there that there is FAR more deviation within the genders as between (averages of) them.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. No, its not. Just about everyone, on all sides of the gender issues debates expressly acknowledges that sex-correlated differences exist, though the nature, extent, invariability, and policy relevance of those differences is endlessly debated. The idea that the existence of differences is a "taboo" is simply a strawman constructed by one side to pretend to be a victim of suppression and avoid meaningful engagement on specific issues.
wesnerm2 11y ago
Most of what we believe about gender is based on societal beliefs rather than biological reality. I am reminded about how high heels were worn by men in the past and the preferred colors for boys and girls (pink and blue) were switched. (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist; http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-st... http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350) Our faulty assumptions become clear when viewing other societies. For example, in the former USSR, 58% of engineers were women. In China, 40% of engineers are women, where less than 47% of the population are women. The communist countries placed a greater emphasis on gender equality in workforce. Sharp differences between west and the east are evident in other occupations such as medicine. In the study cited, the mean age of the babies (neonates) was 3 days. That's enough time for babies to be influenced by adult interactions. Babies have been shown to be handled differently by adults based on their gender. Female babies are spoken to more, whereas male babies are handled more. In the study, a substantial number of babies exhibited behaviors associated with the other gender. I would resist talking about a real sexual dimorphism when gender is not determinative of social vs mechanical preference.
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  The communist countries placed a greater emphasis on gender equality in workforce. They also give the individual very little choice in their future career, while the final assignment is based predominantly on (at least in the case of China) the outcome of a single test. So while it differs from the American process, I don't think you can hold it up as a correct normative solution.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
I was with you until here: "it has nothing to do with whether they were giving dolls or cars as toddlers" Either you're being hyperbolic in which case I can't really parse your comment because I don't know which points you're serious about, or you actually believe that there is no relationship between the specific toys children play with and their development, which ignores a massive body of reasonably well conducted research in developmental psychology.
lexcorvus 11y ago
Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. I'd argue that race-based differences are even more taboo. But it's close.

cconcepts 11y ago

Yeah the challenge is the way we attach value judgements to the different things genders tend (generalization) to be better at. This is purely anecdotal, but in my extended family many members believed the "we're all the same" view. I was given whatever toys I wanted whether they were considered masculine or feminine. It challenged people to see me grow up and be obsessed with heavy machinery - something they obviously saw within a masculine stereotype. EDIT: I'm male

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
iNate2000 11y ago
I've noticed the same thing with kids close to me. I wonder how much is (1) subconscious reinforcement of tradition or influences from outside the home.

geomark 11y ago

Having lived through so much of the polictically correct conditioning about equality of everybody I became pretty numb to it. Then having a child and seeing the stark difference between play habits of boys and girls made me think about it again. Anecdotal, of course, although consistent with many other people's anecdotes, which starts to look like data after a while.

nailer 11y ago
Check out the work by Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge, which includes studies on newborns showing clear differences between genders. http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf http://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/godis/sex.pdf Also check out the work of John Money, who popularised the concept of 'gender as a social construct', and wrecked the life of a young man whose penis had been destroyed by trying to raise him as a girl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer.
- chillingeffect 11y ago
  Yes, indeed. If anyone ever fails us to understand how blind spots in our perception and cognition work, one of the best examples is to contrast the intensity of calls for equal treatment for the sexes with the fact that up to 80% by region of American baby boys [1] get a piece of their sexual organs removed shortly after birth. Moreover, we even allow Mohels to suck the baby's penis clean and have a celebratory meal afterward, called a Seudat Mitzvah [2]. And the fact that babies sometimes contract herpes and die from it [3] doesn't stop it. So that's a hell of a blind spot, although I won't say it's just academics with power, it's numerous institutions including the religious ones, the corporate ones and even outlaw institutions. The evil that happens to people is the accumulation of all the mundane evil people in institutions do to protect themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#/media/File:United_States_Neonatal_Circumcision_Rate_by_Region.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#/me... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_milah [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-stricken-HERPES-ritual-oral-blood-sucking-circumcision-New-York-City.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304793/Two-babies-s...
- chi-sq 11y ago
  (currently finishing Masters in Methodology/Statistics in Psychology) There is evidence of inter-sex differences (and in many areas girls are at advantage), but the provably innate part is small, and the intra-group variance coming from other factors (that may include elements of culture) is much bigger. This allows for conclusions on population, not individual level. On a related note, affirmative action programs seem to work to societies benefit. Another comment that phrased it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845165 And absolutely regardless of John Money being misguided and vilified (I don't think I even heard of him before recent Catholic backlash), gender is a legitimate and in depth academic topic.

EmanueleAina 11y ago

> Men and women, on average, differ significantly The linked article explicitly does not take any stance on that. What the article points out is that males are more extreme in their traits, eg. exceptionally tall or exceptionally short, which in no way means that there are average differences. Even if the deviation is different, the mean may be the same. Not that I'm saying that those differences are or are not there, but to say that the current differences are entirely due to biological differences would seem a bit naive to me.

erikb 11y ago
More extremes in males is true, but height was exactly one problem where the mean really deviates and the curve is pretty much the same. IQ was one where males have way more extremes than women.
speeder 11y ago
You managed to misquote BADLY the article to support your point. The article opens stating that there are TWO types of gender differences, one, like Height (that you quoted wrongly) is when the mean changes. The other (like IQ) the distribution changes. Then the article focus on theorizing why that second type happens, and don't discuss the first (wisely for the author, the same website used to have other authors on the subject, and they were all fired after public outcry after focusing on the first type of differences).
- EmanueleAina 11y ago
  No need to SHOUT to convey your message. Indeed, I wasn't really trying to quote the article when I was talking about height, I just took a bad analogy on my own (certainly influenced by what I just read, but that's not the point). Sorry for the confusion.
kristjankalm 11y ago
hence, if you sample either tail of the distribution you get on the average more men than women. and sampling one of the tails is exactly what selective schools/companies/sports clubs/etc tend to do.

brc 11y ago

I thought the 'there is no differences' thing was debunked completely? There will always be warriors against everything who will claim gender is just conditioning or whatever and probsly get eyeballs and publishing as a result. Happily you can completely ignore all that and lead a happy and productive life knowing the gender you were born with has a big factor in determining what you choose to do in your life.

jrs235 11y ago

An excellent read is Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about The Emerging Science of Sex Differences. http://amzn.to/1NKVQ6d http://amzn.to/1NKVQ6d

steveklabnik 11y ago
Both "Why Gender Matters" and the study linked in your parent are discussed rather critically here http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=261
kaitai 11y ago
Another great read is Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244 http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-D...
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  See this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845263 for a criticism of Fine and "Delusions of Gender."

lowmagnet 11y ago

> Everyone should be able to pursue any career they want to, but there should be no surprise when you see gender disparities across different occupations. Even the word "disparity" (instead of difference) assumes that there should be some sort of parity between sexes. And I use "sexes" because "gender" is likely incorrect in reference to genetics. Unless they find some genetic link to it, in which case a lot of arguments will need to cease.

carapat_virulat 11y ago

Is the percentage of women in STEM low in all STEM degrees in the US? I'm Spanish and math and chemistry usually have a 50/50 or >50% of women here. Not sure if those are considered STEM at all in the US.

totalrobe 11y ago
Yes math and chem are STEM. In my experience, women were found in greater percentages in the basic science and maths (required for pre-med) and in the life sciences which were geared more towards medical professions.
kaitai 11y ago
Our social constructions heavily influence how "Men and women, on average, differ significantly on career choice, likes, dislikes, and motivation," (from grandparent comment). In Spain and Italy and Portugal, math occupies a very different social role than it does in the US. In particular, it's not seen as so thoroughly unfeminine. This is one reason there are so many fabulous women mathematicians from Spain, Italy, and Portugal, and why they stay there rather than moving to the US for academic positions. I think the GP has a point but sort of a weak understanding of what people are selecting for. We change the characteristics we find most important about many jobs to make them fit the gender roles our society has. It's not the act/job alone, it's the role in society. In Malaysia being a programmer is a job that doesn't require mythical powers, so it's close to 50-50 in gender split. In Italy being a mathematician does not stereotypically require brilliance, Asperger's, or general social ineptitude, so it's ok for women. Being a schoolteacher in the US has shifted from a prestigious starter job for educated men who could keep discipline, "a stepping-stone on [the] way to careers in the church or the law" (colonial times, 1800s) to a job for nurturing women who love children (today) [1]. And we can look at computer science: women went from being the original "computers" and programmers to being... not suited to it (?). Right, not interested. For innate reasons. [1] http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html http://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/timeline.html

pyre 11y ago

> gender disparities across different occupations. I guess it would depend on the occupation. For example, I don't see much difference between nurses and doctors in terms of something that could be quantified as a gender-specific preference. It seems to me that the idea of "nurses are women, doctors are men" came about more from the idea that women were "too stupid" to be doctors and that it was a "man's job." Even today many doctors look down on nurses (as 'below' them; people whose opinions don't matter), and men that decide to become nurses also face a uphill battle of social acceptance.

jazzyk 11y ago
It has more to do with the pay disparity between nurses and doctors, rather than gender, these days. While only 30% of active physicians in the US are female, the gender split among residents (entering the profession) is close to 50%/50%.
- pyre 11y ago
  Well, it's not just doctors/nurses. You also have dentists/dental assistants, which in my anecdotal experience is pretty heavily a male/female divide. I will comment, that it seems easier for women to move "up" than for men to move "down." It seems like there is more friction against male nurses/dental assistants than there is against women doctors/dentists.
  - geebee 11y ago
    Where do you think the "friction" comes from? The men themselves? Honestly, men really should consider these fields. In SF, the median pay for a dental hygienist is almost as high as for a software developer, and median pay is actually higher for a registered nurse (again, in SF, this isn't the case nationally) [1]. Nursing and dental hygiene have less upside, but less age discrimination and better career stability. If you'd like more career flexibility, would like to be able to work part time, step back from the career track to take care of kids, and get back into it later, dental hygiene and nursing are probably better than software development. This is particularly important if you'd like to be able to have kids and spend time with them, while keeping stable employment and/or not badly harming your future prospects of employment. [1] US news "best jobs", drill down to pay by region, will provide a summary of BLS data.

belorn 11y ago

While what you are saying is partial true, the picture of genetics vs nurture is much more complex. I would recommend a excellent lecture series at (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&index=1&list=PL45A5E21ECA5FA850 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&index=1&list=PL4...) which goes into quite into depth about the subject. For example, while there are clear differences at birth, nurture can permanent shutdown genes. Additionally a lot of activators for genes are triggered by mental thought process and the environment around individuals. To make a car analogy, we could assume that faster cars are more often breaking the speed limit than slower cars, and we might very likely find this to be true in practice regardless of the actually speed limit. From there we need to be careful to conclude that its the fault of the car when a driver choses to ignore the law, or that just because the acceleration is faster and it is easier to drive fast in a fast car a person is not conscious in their choice.

amyjess 11y ago

> gender is a cultural construct Trans people such as myself are proof that gender is not a social construct. In my experience, the nastiest transphobes are the ones who believe gender is a social construct. They're called TERFs. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that we prove their pet theories wrong, so they stalk, harass, and doxx us.

songshu 11y ago
Stalking, harassing and doxxing is indefensible, but not being able to wrap one's head around gender is understandable I think. Often people want, whether trans or not, to express their gender in terms of constructs like name, language, manner of dress etc which are clearly social (sometimes clearly invented in the last 100 years). We have no easy way of deciding how these seemingly superficial things relate to underlying gender.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  This is absolutely true. A few years ago the majority of Americans couldn't even wrap their heads around marriage equality.
  - kefka 11y ago
    Most still can't. It was because 5 people "made it so".
    - ScottBurson 11y ago
      You need to check the latest poll results: http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx
- pluma 11y ago
  Trying to explain to a girl who's never seen a kilt why you're "dressed like a girl" is a great exercise for anyone who thinks gender isn't at all a social construct. Like many things, gender is a mix of both. It's an immutable core wrapped in various social and cultural markers we've come to associate with "masculine" and "feminine". And of course the range of possible cores is more of a continuum than a simple binary flag (even though we like sorting all the arbitrary markers into two neat piles as if that really means anything). Considering we still largely refused to acknowledge something as intuitively obvious[0] as non-right-handedness less than two generations ago, I wonder how long it will take until we've learned to deal with the fact that gender (and sexuality) is as idiosyncratic as nearly everything else about an individual's identity. [0]: Seriously. People generally have two hands. Why on Earth should we assume that there's something special about the one that is dominant for most people? Good luck explaining gender and sexuality to a society that can't even imagine not everybody is strictly right-handed.

paperrr1 11y ago

Someones 1 + 1 really does equal 2.

bryanlarsen 11y ago

A large part of the problem is the failure to distinguish between the aggregate and the individual. For the sake of argument let's say that the population of individuals who would make good engineers is 60% male and 40% female. From an aggregate level that's a huge difference. Once you gather enough of people that statistical inferences can be made, the difference becomes obvious. In a classroom, for instance. But at an individual level that difference becomes insignificant. If you grab one boy and one girl at random, there's a very significant chance the girl is better at engineering than the boy. At the individual level, there are much better predictors of whether a person is good at engineering than their sex. Five minutes of conversation wouldn't be authoritative but it would be much more predictive than the individual's sex.

mikeash 11y ago
That really is the crux of the matter. Everyone should be given an equal chance with no prejudice, and then if population differences still emerge, that's OK. Unfortunately there isn't much room for this middle ground. People who want to acknowledge sex difference want to use sex as a filter, e.g. "no women in combat roles." People who want to give everybody a chance also want to even things out, e.g. "Allow women in combat roles, and lower the standards for women so they have just as much of a chance as men have."
- hiou 11y ago
  I hesitate to bring up extreme cases, but the relationship between social darwinism and the rise of the nazi party make many people, including myself, very hesitant to speak about differences in sex etc. Not because we deny their existence, but because we've seen how far large groups of uninformed electorate can be persuaded into supporting some scary stuff because of it. It's just a very tricky subject when it comes to the masses. EDIT: Clarified to social darwinism from darwinism.
  - jerf 11y ago
    It's not the masses you need to be worried about, hiou. It wasn't the masses gassing people by the millions... it was the elites, who got a few people to go along with them. "The masses" organize poorly... it's the people who are smart enough to successfully do something with their bad idea, but not smart enough to see through the bad idea, that must be feared. The deep-rooted fear of academia isn't that the masses may do something stupid with the idea of gender differences... it's the fear that they, the academics, will do something stupid. (Again. Although, not the same literal people, of course.)

Kelly2 11y ago

> I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. Indeed, it's such a taboo that it's brought up here every time the subject is discussed here. Unless you would take all your information from radicalfeminist.com, I never saw a reputable news channel denying there would be differences between sexes. Actually, I see this meme of "Gender differences are taboo!" MUCH more often than I see the actual behavior so decried in actual action.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- Kelly2 11y ago
  I was implying a reputable one but I can see where the confusion could arise, so I edited my post to make it clear.

duaneb 11y ago

> The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. Gender is, by current academic definition, a cultural construct, an identity. Sex, i.e. "plumbing", is the definition of the difference between biological men and women. People with trans operations do not deny their chromosomes, and I'm sure they'd be the first to assure you about the hormonal differences between the sexes. The problem people are grappling with is ascribing identity assumptions based on sex. You haven't listened carefully enough to understand the difference between gender, sex, identity, etc.

pessimizer 11y ago

You're just posting your agenda here. What's in dispute is that there has been any reasonable natural experiment that has had the power to show that women have any functional cognitive differences with men. This is due to 1) the influence of pervasive beliefs in both experimenters and subjects that women are inferior to men (in often contradictory ways with specifics that vary by culture and over time), and 2) the actions of both men and women who subscribe to those beliefs to punish women for deviating from them. These beliefs are part of a large corpus colloquially known as "common sense," which purport to describe what is "obvious" but tend to simply defend what daddy said from the communists at the university. The Saudis believe that driving is physically and mentally harmful to women. Dr. Pangloss believes that everything is as it should be. edit: In addition, I doubt that the study that took place in a bubble that excluded or properly controlled for the influence of overt sexism and anti-female suppression was a group of Scottish IQ tests from 1932. 21 year-old Scottish women had been allowed to vote for at least three years by then. Get with the program you nurturers! edit2: And to go on forever about this, I'll say how shocked I am to discover that a class of people who were constrained to a certain narrow range of education in a certain narrow range of practical skills intended to lead them to a certain narrow range of outcomes have test scores that tend towards a more narrow range than people outside that class.

vacri 11y ago

> I'm surprised to see this ranking so high on HN. Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. In all honesty, I see more consistent whining about 'feminism taking over' than I do actual gender politics in day-to-day HN.

Confusion 11y ago

> there should be no surprise when you see gender disparities across different occupations. On the one hand, anyone that ignores/denies the influence of different hormones [1] on body and mind is simply ignorant. On the other hand you can question how relevant hormones can be to a deeply cultural concept as 'career choice'. On the one hand tiny differences can accumulate over a lifetime, but on the other hand tiny differences can also cancel out and its hard to say what it will add up to via so many layers of indirection. Accepting the existence and influence of physical differences does not imply having to accept all cultural differences. Some may indeed result unavoidably from the physical differences, while others may be impossible to link to physical differences. Given differences in the relation between men and women, and career preferences, across cultures, I suspect the distribution of men and women over careers is often dominated by contingent cultural factors. I definitely believe this is the case for STEM careers. [1] As an example of an undeniable physical difference, not the defining difference

lectrick 11y ago

> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. The problem is that correlating things with sex (even when such a correlation seems apparent) is just as bad as correlating things with race, ethnicity, religion, age, index finger length, eye color, and pretty much anything else. It disadvantages those in the arbitrarily-designated outgroup, and subjects everyone to the Fallacy of Composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition. Which means that you're STILL ideally stuck on evaluating each person on an individual level, anyway. Correlating things to something like blood serum testosterone level would make more sense to me, than an entire sex.

Claudus 11y ago
The reason that is important for group differences to be studied and known is because the group level is where discrimination (and accusations such) seem to be studied. If someone wants to hire the tallest 50% of the population to be fruit pickers and fairly evaluates every member of the population resulting in a 90% male workforce, how can they defend themselves against accusations of discrimination? In such an instance, it would be important to understand the height differences in male and female populations. What about the most intelligent 5% of the population being best suited for STEM fields? With fair evaluations would that result in even splits across sex (or race, for that matter)? Even with self selection, people are going to select into roles they are best suited for. Does the Jamacian ACTN3 gene variation result in more Olympic gold sprinters, or is it a result of racial discrimination? Articles like this on HN and the interest in studying differences between different groups is at least partially a direct result of pressure and accusations of discrimination based on sex/race distributions of groups. I agree, ideally evaluating each person should be done on an individual level. I also think evaluating issues of discrimination should be done on an individual level.

backprojection 11y ago

>The current educational and political system is organized toward exclusively presenting the view that gender is a cultural construct and there are no differences between men and women other than plumbing. I think it's the right political conclusion, even if the reasoning is questionable. Just because you could conduct research to root out differences in populations of females and males, it doesn't mean that you should. What's the point? It seems to be that these arguments are used to justify gender disparity in occupations, achievement, etc. I like Dan Dennet's response to this question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKC_7rlTuw&feature=youtu.be&t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beKC_7rlTuw&feature=youtu.be...

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I fully agree with this and often make this argument, usually to 100+ downvotes on reddit and elsewhere. My only addition would be that there's probably as much deviation within the genders as between them. But that doesn't make gender a meaningless thing. The frequency of those aspects is important too. Only, say, 10% of women are "butch" personality types but 90% of men are. So holding up a butch woman as an example and going "See, see gender is meaningless" is unconvincing. I think eventually society will sober up and realize that when we talk about social aspects, more than likely we're talking about personal types. Certain ones simply exist with higher frequency per gender. I feel like we're on this long path of migrating away from "default brain" assumptions made about race, nationality, gender, etc and will probably settle on something like the modern day understanding of personiality types. Its scary how well I fit the INTJ mold. The idea that I represent all men or am part of masculine culture is fairly ridiculous. Ladies, I find male ISTJ's and ESTJ's hard to deal with as well.

erroneousfunk 11y ago
>>My only addition would be that there's probably as much deviation within the genders as between them. If you read the article, it makes the point that there that there is FAR more deviation within the genders as between (averages of) them.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. No, its not. Just about everyone, on all sides of the gender issues debates expressly acknowledges that sex-correlated differences exist, though the nature, extent, invariability, and policy relevance of those differences is endlessly debated. The idea that the existence of differences is a "taboo" is simply a strawman constructed by one side to pretend to be a victim of suppression and avoid meaningful engagement on specific issues.

wesnerm2 11y ago

Most of what we believe about gender is based on societal beliefs rather than biological reality. I am reminded about how high heels were worn by men in the past and the preferred colors for boys and girls (pink and blue) were switched. (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist; http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-st... http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21151350) Our faulty assumptions become clear when viewing other societies. For example, in the former USSR, 58% of engineers were women. In China, 40% of engineers are women, where less than 47% of the population are women. The communist countries placed a greater emphasis on gender equality in workforce. Sharp differences between west and the east are evident in other occupations such as medicine. In the study cited, the mean age of the babies (neonates) was 3 days. That's enough time for babies to be influenced by adult interactions. Babies have been shown to be handled differently by adults based on their gender. Female babies are spoken to more, whereas male babies are handled more. In the study, a substantial number of babies exhibited behaviors associated with the other gender. I would resist talking about a real sexual dimorphism when gender is not determinative of social vs mechanical preference.

CWuestefeld 11y ago
The communist countries placed a greater emphasis on gender equality in workforce. They also give the individual very little choice in their future career, while the final assignment is based predominantly on (at least in the case of China) the outcome of a single test. So while it differs from the American process, I don't think you can hold it up as a correct normative solution.

erikpukinskis 11y ago

I was with you until here: "it has nothing to do with whether they were giving dolls or cars as toddlers" Either you're being hyperbolic in which case I can't really parse your comment because I don't know which points you're serious about, or you actually believe that there is no relationship between the specific toys children play with and their development, which ignores a massive body of reasonably well conducted research in developmental psychology.

lexcorvus 11y ago

Sex-based difference is the biggest taboo of our time. I'd argue that race-based differences are even more taboo. But it's close.