Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf]
pnas.org
pnas.org
I don't think many of the there-needs-to-be-more-diversity crowd disagree with that. Their position is more nuanced than that, and of course, to be fair, the we-can't-make-things-have-diversity crowd is unfairly pigeonholed as being shut-up-women.
But in my reading of the paper's conclusion, women have less desire for promotions and power, but it's because they see those things as causing them strife. The we-need-more-diversity crowd believes that having more women in power is one way of alleviating a positive feedback loop.
To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.
edit: corrected mistake of "negative feedback loop" to "positive" via lexcorvus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694
That's just my take, though - but it's only a matter of time until some unbiased gender researcher (who is not predetermined to prove suppression of women) will set out to confirm it.
Edit: honestly, downvotes of this comment make me laugh. Do you feel so threatened by an opinion that does not require suppression of women to explain our modern reality?
Your second sentence doesn't follow from your first. There isn't anything inherent in the ability to give birth that gives mothers "first choice" of spending time with their children forevermore or more "bargaining power" in their romantic relationships than their partner. The only thing biologically inherent to childbirth is the ability to carry and birth children.
And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try.
I wasn't the one who downvoted you, but I think it's unfortunate that you're citing a social practice to try and establish biological fact and claiming to understand what I "know."
Nothing about a distinctly female presence is necessary for a child's proper development, much less the specific woman that birthed the baby originally. All the major psychological associations that I know of support gay adoption as healthy for children. The biologically necessary thing is a loving parental presence, gender non specific. Formula exists and can be given to children, midwives existed to feed babies before that.
For older children , any loving adult care is fine. But the original post was about the priority the mother has, indicating post-birth.
1. Let's replace "essential" with "optimal". The original point still stands.
2. You conveniently omitted the 9-month bonding time.
3. Formula is good enough, but breast milk is optimal. Never heard of midwives breastfeeding other women's babies in 21st century.
4. Researchers have long known that newborns recognize – and prefer – their mom's voice. http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-can-rec...
2. Yes, I did. It didn't seem relevant to the point I was arguing, see #1.
3. For optimal, see 1, and for midwives—yes, and that's a societal trend rather than a biological fact.
4. True but still irrelevant, see #1.
I'm not arguing that biological mothers aren't generally inclined to want to spend more time with their children than their male partners, or that newly born infants aren't going to instinctively want to spend time with their mothers. It's just OP's original claim didn't logically follow from the evidence he presented—nothing about childbirth necessitates women having "the first choice to spend time with those children, and [...] bargaining power in relationships."
Also, breast-feeding is how nature intends it, milk formula (invented relatively recently) is a crutch. So it does give women an advantage over men. As for midwives - they are women, not men.
Following your reasoning, we could say "there is nothing that necessitates sex between a man and a woman" - because we have in-vitro conception?
My understanding is that they can lactate. Normally this is the result of certain medications, but I think all the necessary equipment is there and stimulation alone could cause it. But I don't suspect it would provide enough nutrients.
The first (option to spend time with children): maybe that just follows from the bargaining power. But if you have been present at the birth of your kids, maybe you can agree that it seems ridiculous to take children away from their mother shortly after birth, after all they have been through. The importance of breast feeding is another aspect, although obviously children can also grow up without that.
It's only feminism that needs to frame mothering as a form of suppression, because otherwise their narrative would fall apart. The reality is that it is usually a privilege (a fair privilege, but still) that women gladly accept. (Yes, women who don't enjoy spending time with their children exist, ask your local feminist for a bunch of anecdotes. They are still a minority).
The multiplicity of options that women currently have (stay at home mom without shame and/or a career), is a result of how our society reacts to the biological fact of childbirth (among other things), not an innate result inherent to the fact itself. You suggest this yourself by saying "unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate." In other societies, the ability to give birth could result in widely different outcomes for women.
Additional edit: Even accepting your premise that women have more "bargaining power" than men in interpersonal relationships, that would again be a function of society's reaction to biology rather than biology itself. It's true that bearing a child to term takes several orders of magnitude more time and resources than the act of impregnating someone. But the idea that "limited resources have a price" and so the people who can become pregnant have leverage against the ones who don't isn't biological. Limited resources could just as well be seized and then redistributed by the government to the general population for free. The fact of childbirth is biological, but the reaction is societal.
The only thing you need to assume to understand the modern situation of men vs women is that women can give birth and men can't. That is a purely functional thing, no "biological programming" necessary. I am not making any claims about biological programming.
Are you saying plausibly women could be seized by the government and distributed to men to create children? I think this actually happens in some societies/cults, or it even was the norm in the past (and in the third world, where arranged marriages are the norm). But we are talking about western society here.
Still, it might not be that easy to distribute wombs - women can perhaps secretly abort pregnancies or use contraceptives, or make themselves infertile.
Again, if you have witnessed your wife giving birth, I think the idea to take the children away from her becomes quite absurd. There is a reason it is usually not randomly determined who gets to stay home to look after the offspring. (Historically presumably other factors, too, such as pregnant women and women after birth not being able to do hard manual work which was necessary for survival - so the division of work was a no-brainer).
So I have a lot of trouble understanding your point about the scarcity of the womb. It is usually the vagina that men are after, not the womb.
Also, if having a womb were such a precious and rare resource, poverty in America shouldn't be overwhelmingly women and their children.
(Edit: It should have said "overwhelmingly." Statistically, in America, poverty skews strongly along demographic lines and the largest cohort is single moms and their kids.)
Does poverty overwhelm single women, or married women? You have to trade well... Can't really comment on the poverty issue of women and children in the US. In my country, technically child support goes to the children, not the mother, which leads to technically (on paper) some mothers having not a lot money. I think they can use their children's money to pay for housing, food and other things, so I am not sure how poor they really are.
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Edit: HN doesn't let me write more comments, so here is my reply to Mz's comment below:
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Your observations about male desires and behavior only support my point: if men would call the shots, would you expect many long term relationships and marriages? My claim is women control procreation and get to make demands in exchange. That claim is consistent with your observation of male behavior.
The story is of course oversimplified (this is just an internet comments forum): of course men have some value, sometimes. As your poverty example shows, men are helpful in providing for women and children via their work power. There are some "markets" where the power dynamics are reversed. For example I remember an article about places in the US where most black men are in jail, so the few eligible non-jailed men are in high demand. And as expected, they are not very willing to settle down. There also was that recent story in Vanity fair about men on Tinder in New York, with the same power dynamics, but I thought that article was rather low quality.
Women have their own desires - they would like to not put all eggs into one basket and have kids with multiple men (genetic diversity, better chances). That is why supposedly one in five children are cuckoo children (which I myself find very hard to believe, but I have read that several times). It's also why women don't signal strongly when they can get pregnant and get impregnated inside of the body, so that men can't be sure who is the father of the kids - and that's also why we want sex all the time, not just during periods of fertility.
As for the poverty, how exactly does it work, where do the men go? Either they are poor as well, or they are dead, or left the country? In my country fathers have to give everything they earn except for a minimum to their kids if they are liable for child support. Maybe it demotivates some of them so they stop earning money, that might be a possibility.
I am well aware that nature makes sex desirable in order to encourage procreation. As you said, "that's nature's trick." That doesn't mean men actually desire to procreate. From what I have seen, a lot of men want fun without consequences and children are consequences many of them have no desire to deal with.
Suffice it to say, I don't agree with you. But you already knew that.
I think all your data points actually support my thesis.
This is true, but until recently("recent" in evolutionary time), the two were one and the same as far as cause and effect went.
The lure of sexual release may be nature's way of tricking humans into making babies, but we aren't all rubes. We don't just let nature have its way with us.
Also yes you can bargain away your sexual attractiveness, but sexual attractiveness of women only exists because of wombs. Think a bit more general.
Also, women desire casual sex as much as men do (and men don't desire it as much as mass media would have you believe), but find the sex mediocre or unsatisfying, and are wary of the dangers and conflict arising from being promiscuous.
It should be no surprise to anyone that women have internalized the idea that attaining power, independence, or acting on their personal desires leads to conflict. It used to be the fucking law that it would lead to conflict!
It's a complicated issue. To continue your example: Do we insist that women should just feel more comfortable walking alone? Or do we try to create the necessary conditions so that women feel safer walking alone?
Taking this thought experiment a step further -- did we create the necessary conditions so that men feel safer walking alone? Or did we insist men should just feel more comfortable walking alone?
Now, it's obvious the later is what transformed into our social norm; to the point where a man expressing apprehension about walking alone is often ridiculed.
It's interesting that we've built a social norm where women are often apprehensive about walking alone, often citing fears of conflict, harassment, rape, or worse - when in reality these events are about as likely to occur as someone getting hit by a bus, or a man experiencing the same events. It's almost an artificial frailty thrust upon women in our society.
Citation needed.
If someone expressed apprehension about walking in a perfectly safe area for no reason, I'd tell them I was concerned for their well being. Just as if they expressed nonchalance about walking in a demonstrably dangerous area. It's called consensus.
Calling each other out is how people keep each other in check. It sucks really bad until you're 15-25 years old and develop the self confidence to handle things in context.
I doubt the people being called out for being too risky are blogging about it.
It's about how it's socially normal for a man to be expected to walk alone and be "OK", but the opposite is expected of women, even though the potential dangers are the same (and about as likely to occur) for both sexes.
In reality, most adults are expected to walk alone most of the time (where are the parking lot attendants?). Sometimes women get a pass on this expectation, which is primarily a benefit, although not necessarily a wanted one.
To the extent this culture encourages women to be weaker and not self-actualize, how significant is this one specific thing compared to the onslaught of commercial advertising doing that exact thing to everyone in every aspect of life?
Are car companies oppressing me by tell me I have to drive everywhere? And the culture which reinforces that expectation? In a sense yes. But it's counterproductive to dwell on it rather than simply filing these messages in the "fuck off" bucket.
1. Women suffer more "stress and anxiety", "difficult tradeoffs", "time constraints", "burden of responsibility" and "conflict with their life goals" (direct quotes from article) in the same jobs as men due to discrimination
2. Women suffer more of the above, but due to biological differences. IOW the same situations result in more stress for women than for men.
3. Women and men suffer the same amount of these but assign them higher weight in their decision-making process. IOW the same amount of stress is enough to dissuade a woman, but not a man, from taking a position, due to different life priorities.
As a male, I'm willing to take on much more stress if the position is a position conveying substantial power, as that increases my standing when being selected by partners.
Its a hard problem to solve to put everyone on equal footing when genders (in the aggregate) seem to have different life goals (individuals are different then aggregate numbers of course).
What type of partners?
Female partners seeking a relationship or sexual encounter. I'm 32, male, do well financially as well as career wise (I'm highly in demand). I still want to be desirable to the opposite sex. I'm sure its part biology, part psychology.
I think you're setting yourself up to miss out on a lot if you're only interested in dating someone who makes X dollars a year though.
Also: define "attractive".
I haven't paid much attention to it personally.
Sorry, by "attractive" I meant "physically attractive".
Anecdata I know but I've seen lots of good looking girls get minimum attention because of their shyness or insecurity. I've seen the opposite of this tons of times.
The point is, if a man finds a girl physically attractive, it doesn't matter to him whether she's a waitress or a CEO. On the other hand, women are more likely to find the CEO more attractive than a waiter.
that's what floats my boat.
quite honestly these days if you're looking for true love you're a fucking fool.
I processed accident claims for a living. Many of my coworkers found it stressful to read the medical and police reports that were part and parcel of the job 8 hours a day. I rarely was bothered by that. Once in a great while something particularly gruesome would disturb me. But the degree to which I felt I had to walk on eggshells to simultaneously avoid offending some man with a hard-on for me AND avoid anything that could be interpreted as encouragement of his interest was a tightrope walk I was happy to give up when I left my corporate job.
I don't have time to read the full report we are discussing, but what little I did read of it makes me wonder at the details of what causes other women to feel that it is all just too stressful. I get the impression, both from what I read of the article and some of the comments here, that the expectation of stress is sort of hand-wavy as to what the exact causes were. I know they are legion, but now that my kids are adults and I am divorced (etc) and I have arranged my life such that work can be the most important thing I focus on, I still find it challenging to cope with the fact that so many men see me as just a skirt. When a man sees me that way, it matters little whether he is hoping to get into my panties or not, he will take me seriously as a professional and he will never be a stepping stone to better things for me. He will either be a closed door because he doesn't take me seriously or he will be an even bigger obstacle and source of pain, while I try to neutralize the threat his unwanted sexual interest represents for me.
This is something you likely almost never face as a man in the world of work.
I agree. Stress is something each person must decide how much they're willing to tolerate. Harassment of any sort (sexual or otherwise) should never be tolerated.
I can't truly appreciate the difficulty of being a woman attempting to climb the corporate ladder (just because I'll never have the experience, being a male). I can argue that society as a whole should be working actively to prevent the sort of behavior you described. Shifting an entire generation's attitude takes time unfortunately.
I have pretty good radar for this stuff and I pay close attention to subtext. I often see this stuff well before other people would recognize the problem. My ability to conclude that "Oh, this man's problem with me he is has a Thing for me" is something that helps me protect myself from far worse outcomes than walking on eggshells, but I am almost never in a position to prove to other people that I really need to walk on eggshells because some powerful man has a Thing for me and, therefore, no matter what I do, it will be wrong. But I can still feel the weight of this constant burden.
I imagine (and have reason to believe) women with worse radar (or worse "luck") have it much harder.
My main point is that because most people in positions of power are heterosexual men, most men hoping to get promoted do not need to spend enormous amounts of time and energy worrying whether a man at work who is being friendly is really just hoping to get him out of his clothes. (Edit: That is poorly worded but I don't know how to fix it. In my experience, it matters little whether or not they actually hope to act on their attraction. In most cases, just the fact that a man has attraction to me turns into a big problem, regardless of what his actual intentions are.)
I am 50 years old. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two men (in my entire life, not just work experience) who were married, seemed to find me attractive, and weren't assholes to me over it. The majority of the time, if a man desires me and can't have me, I am going to suffer over it. Very few men are any good at going "Welp, it's unfortunate I met her after I got married." In fact, many men will be downright angry at me for the crime of turning their head and serving as temptation. It's a really terrible position for me to be in. There is just zero upside. It is all downside.
I would be interested in hearing which behaviors they were engaging in to bother you.
Another man, also high ranking and also with no actual power me, kept looking for excuses to touch me in a "punch you in the shoulder" sort of expression of affection. It was clear to me it was an expression of sexual interest. He was a married man. I left the company not long after this began. Because I did not work directly with him and only knew him socially as someone I talked with in the cafeteria, I saw no reason to report it. Had it continued or escalated or had circumstances changed such that I did need to actually work with him, I was clear this was something I might eventually have to raise as a concern.
Women almost never initiate touching with men. It is well established this is a sex based "male privilege." Men tend to take it for granted that no woman is allowed to touch them without permission. I am clear that a man touching me without permission -- a married man, doing nothing to in any way benefit me and intentionally avoiding being helpful so as to not be seen as being sweet on me -- was violating my boundaries.
Another man -- well, it is a long story. I knew him socially through chit chat in the cafeteria. Purely by chance, he called me "doll" and "babe" the week before I learned he was slated to become my new boss. At the time, he did not know my name and I did not know he was married. The first incident occurred away from work and I was clear he called me "doll" in part because he did not know my name. It wasn't really offensive or bad behavior, but I discussed the matter with my current boss and got myself quietly moved to another team. I then walked on egg shells around him for 24 months until he was finally fired. One rumor was that he had been fired for sexual harassment. Another was that he had been fired for an illicit affair with a lower ranking employee. I made sure to side step trouble with him. I did so successfully, so there was no smoking gun. His actions were nothing to report to HR but I was clear I did not want him in charge of me. After he was fired, a former team mate who did stay on the team -- a very attractive woman -- confided in me that he piled work on her, made inappropriate remarks and gave her so-so reviews, probably as punishment for not be interested in his attentions. She had asked me earlier why I got moved and I had not divulged the real reason. I felt bad when I learned what he had been doing to her, none of which was blatant enough for her to go to HR. Like me, she was relieved when he was fired.
Those are the most obvious things I can think of off the top of my head and I have a deadline to meet today, so that shall have to do for now.
Edit: Spelling
Http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-tools.html
The titles are:
The Grey Zone
Glass Walls
Oh my god, it's a girl
Nothing but a bunch of boobs
Best of luck to your niece.
Oh, I also wrote another one that might help her, it is linked from here where there is additional commentary: Http://feministslacking.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-silence-of-lambs.html
I'm not sure I understand this. What import does familiarity with GIS have? What led you to conclude that hanging out with IT department employees socially would make it more difficult for you to join the IT department?
It was against the rules at the company to sleep with someone you were in charge of, even if not directly -- even if there were several layers between your position and theirs. Therefore, any high ranking man in a different department that slept with me was de facto barring me from ever working under him. Depending on his position in the department, this could bar me from a single team or multiple teams or the entire department.
I wanted an IT job. Him asking me for a date was potentially making it impossible to ever pursue that at the company where we both worked. I am sure that did not cross his mind. He made enough money, he could have provided for me even if I did not work. But I want a career. I did the homemaker and mom thing already. I am not looking for a man who wants me to be his little lady. I want one who will support my dreams instead of one who assumes it is all about his. I did that once. I got burned. I want something better the second time around. If I can't get it, I am content to remain alone.
That clarifies things. So he would have been your manager had you successfully joined the IT team you applied to?
He was? And here I thought that such actions required agreement on both parts to take place (without there being a crime committed).
If we slept together, it was against company rules for him to be my boss. If I turned down the date, I would not be barred from working for him, but rejecting him was not going to establish a good working relationship. It would not be a good career move to personally reject a man and then seek out a job working for him.
So, in practical terms, simply asking me for a date, regardless of the outcome, was closing doors for me. I am sure that before he asked, he thought about whether or not this could harm his career. He apparently did not think about the impact on mine.
So, yes, while you are correct that I would have to consent for sex to happen, his decision to take an action based on his attraction to me that limited my career prospects was, in fact, unilateral and something I had no control over.
This honestly is news to me as a male. I've had a fair amount of women touch me without permission. Not like hand on thigh or anything, well a couple times, but hand on hand, hand on shoulder, hand on ass, hand on waist.
Not saying you're wrong but from my personal anecdata this is not well established. >.< I could bring up more things but to be honest all they are is experiences I've had with the women I've worked with. I try not to let it paint my views of women overall. Also trying to think back if i've accidentally touched anyone at work wrongly, I probably have but might have just been absent minded about it.
If that happens absentmindedly is that bad? If so that probably means I'm some sort of male pig because I can't say I never did that at all with any certainty.
Things are changing, but this remains generally true.
If you were absentmindedly touching me, my judgement of that would depend on a great many factors. I have had male friends who were honest to god just friends.
Again, I drew my conclusions about the man in question based on a great many factors. It wasn't any one thing. But the touching really stood out, in part because he smacked me hard enough one day that I felt assaulted. I chose to not contact HR. Purely coincidentally, I quit not much after that incident.
Not what I've seen at all. My own experience and socialization is that women are allowed to touch with far less risk than a man is. This stems from the false stereotype 'men always want it' be it sexual advances or touching. Men also have less recourse to complain about such incidents and are treated far harsher when they do (may not within the last few years as the LGBT movement went mainstream, but some time ago it would result in many others ridiculing you for being gay).
If anything, men are more allowed to touch other men than women, which itself may be a problem (as touching tends to build trust, thus resulting in a tighter knit group of men only which, completely unconsciously, excludes women).
Another thing worth pointing out: women are socialized to believe that conflict is unladylike. For them to avoid positions that they have an expectation of generating conflict is to fit with what the patriarchy teaches.
People have free will and many will exercise it to choose to act in a traditional manner. There is no mysterious male cabal forcing that to happen.
On a personal note, I would find it incredibly boring if men and women acted exactly the same. I recognize others may have different opinions, but I don't think anyone can say either side is "right" or "wrong".
Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
I also think this statement is very extreme:
> Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
I don't think that's a mainstream view.
Regardless the GOP is not a "cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways". Even if they believed that (I don't think all republicans do) they in no way have the authority to "force" women to do anything. Abortion is legal in the US.
Also GOP != patriarchy.
I never said GOP = patriarchy. Just that there is a "systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights" and that certainly isn't a fringe statement. This campaign is indicative of one of the OP's definitions: "interwoven social structures that promulgate certain ideologies, doctrines, and social customs."
You're really stretching the original comment to try to make it less extreme.
A group, the large majority of are male, are trying to limit what a women can do with her body. The same thing the OP said.
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/upshot/gop-women-in-congre... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Women
While I can't find good figures on male/female split in the GOP, the fact that the US has overall a slightly lower than 1:1 male/female ratio [0] and the fact that women are substantially more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than the Republican while (including leanings of independents in both cases) men are about equally likely to identify as Republican as Democratic, suggests that that presumption would be wrong.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio
[1] http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-part...
You are presuming that traditional behaviour is pathological. Why? Why exactly is the nuclear family pathological? Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour? This seems pretty rational. My mother did this. Was she a victim for doing so?
It is good to offer people the freedom to choose, but when they choose something other than what you would do not blame it on brainwashing.
The entire point of leaders is to do things that are unpopular that benefit the group. You don't need leaders to do popular things, they just happen.
Fundamentally if you want to make omelettes you're going to have to break some eggs, if your friends say breaking eggs is bad you have two choices, tell them off, or don't break eggs. Those that are willing to break eggs are allowed to be chefs.
You just have to look at all of the crazy responses to Target (a US retailer) removing the gender-specific labelling of toys (from "Girl Toys" and "Boy Toys" to just "Toys") to see how as a society we are not at a point where "we" aren't trying to impose a particular ideal (e.g. "Barbies are girl toys") on children as they grow up.
> Two people in a partnership raising the children they love together using division of labour?
This is more generic than the "nuclear family" traditionally is viewed. If it was just two people dividing up labour, then the "nuclear family" could equally have the father as the homemaker and the mother as the breadwinner. When people typically refer to the "nuclear family" they are referring to some idealized Leave It To Beaver type setup.
Is this a problem? Is the funneling people into an androgynous role any better than funneling them into traditional gender roles? If anything the current system seems more "natural" in that it's emergent behavior, whereas moving to a genderless society will require top down engineering.
Our society is free enough that regardless of the direction the masses take, people can and will step out of the role most commonly held by other people of their gender. I think we all agree that it's a good thing to have that option.
With that in mind I don't think there's anything "bad" about genders existing in society. People's free will is strong enough to live the life they want regardless of cultural nudging.
This happens in some tribal cultures: children treated as neuter until they reach a certain age, then choosing to go through an explicit ritual to "make them a man" or "make them a woman."
(These cultures aren't particularly modern otherwise; you can't choose to undertake the ritual to become a man if you are biologically a woman, and people would think you were crazy to not want to undergo the ritual. The point is more that it's possible for a culture to start doing the "treat people as agendered by default" thing with no top-down pressure.)
I suppose the real test would be to find a culture that's genderless for people who have reached sexual maturity.
Why would that be preferable to a society where people are assigned a default gender but can easily switch it later on (i.e. the present society)?
Also, while your suggestion might work for certain languages, it would be very difficult in others (e.g. in Slovenian) that use mainly gendered pronouns.
It's not about what they should prefer but about what they are more likely to prefer. We have studies that show this isn't merely a human social phenomenon [0] [1] [2]. There are gender preferences for toys and to most people it's silly to take offence at the idea that genders have different preferences. Now whether we should nurture these differences is a slightly different argument. The phrasing difference is important - and starting with something more people can understand (which color for "boys" has changed not only over time, but varies across populations) would help the discussion. If girls and boys are attracted to [type] of toy, can we nurture their interests in a different direction? The answer is "probably, yes". But that's a different debate.
The "crazy responses" you see are people irritated that a group of hyper-sensitive people who have placed a disturbing level of importance on their gender identity (and the gender identity of others) harped on about this non-issue until Target felt forced to change it to get them to shut up and leave them alone.
The constant bullying and what boils down to online smear campaigns done by these extremist self-identity-crisis groups annoys most people who don't place nearly as much importance on their (or others') racial/gender/sexual identities.
[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08...
It's a non-issue in the same way that homophobia is a "non-issue" to straight white people living in suburbia.
Also, the "crazy responses" I refer to are people getting upset that Target was "encouraging boys to play with Barbies" which "goes against the Bible." Or that Target was "trying to turn people transgender." Are you saying that these people are perfectly normal and represent the way that we want to run society? Do you honestly believe that Target's actions will "turn people transgender?"
No more than I believe that by labeling the toys "boys" and "girls" Target was supporting the patriarchy and perpetuating rape culture by marketing violence-orientated toys towards boys while objectifying woman and furthering the "house wife image" by marketing girls with dress-up and doll houses.
Thank you for clarifying you meant the more extremist "crazies". There happens to be extremist viewpoints on both sides and when either political side speaks of "crazies" from the other side, I immediately think of the moderates from that side to account for political biases.
It's rare they mean the actual extremists, as you did. :) So thanks for clarifying who you were regarding as "crazy". And no, I don't agree with the extreme right either.
Mechanisms like this exist in large part to defeat a sort of social entropy that would arise if everybody made their own descisions. It is desirable to be able to have expectations about others behavior and a larger shared social game like 'Nuclear families and husband/wife'. Pretty much necessarily you're going to get something like a competing access need[0] where some people are going to be really hurt by these games because they don't want to play or can't play[1]. We only have a select few remedies to this which aren't 'destroy all the social rules and let anarchy reign', and while some people think that option would result in good outcomes I have a hard time finding faith that it would.
A position likes yours worries me massively because it seems to be something like 'systematic coercion to maintain social norms is never okay unless it's explicitly part of the law and then it's still not okay because the intent is to maintain a social norm rather than keep the peace'.
[0]: http://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/100561778176/safe-spa...
[1]: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-m...
Seems like a fragile argument to make.
I'm not saying that we need to force people into some sort of agender roles, but the way we run society now with these ideas that there are "proper" toys for a child to play with, re-enforces the ideas that lead to people beating up their kids because "I'm not gonna raise no fag." What you seem to be saying is that we as a society throw those kids under the bus as part of some sort of "plan for stability" and because you benefit from that stability you support the plan. Am I reading that right?
No, and that's a strawman. (I never said the only option was to 'let anarchy reign'. I said that our options for remedy were not particularly spacious.)
My understanding is that direct single-person targeted interventions like that don't seem to work particularly well. (And to the extent that they 'work' they often do so by breaking people. Broken people are not desirable.) I'm not a child psychologist, but I doubt that children need to be micromanaged in their play or that such micromanagement would avoid 'raising fags'. I don't really feel qualified to comment beyond that.
EDIT: You keep silently editing your post, perhaps you should write a reply instead?
So in your view, basically patriarchy == culture? Why use a new word then?
> Also, actually, there is still a cabal of men in America forcing women to behave in certain ways: The systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights.
You could equivalently claim that there exists a cabal of women that is forcing unborn babies to die. Populist claims are populist.
If traditional gender roles included things like women can't vote or own property, then I could see making a case for calling that patriarchy. In the west there is no such thing though.
It implies that, given its etymology, but that is not how it is defined in the literature. Tons of idiomatic words and phrases operate that way in our culture. If I were to tell you "break a leg" as you were heading out onto a theatre stage, would you imply maliciousness or benign well-wishing on my part?
From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriarchy
Full Definition of PATRIARCHY
social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
Definitely not inheritance though. Children of both genders are receiving their inheritance.
Just like slavery is illegal but racism exists, gay marriage is legal but homophobia exists, there is no patriarchy but misogyny exists.
It doesn't even do that. It is an equivalent of 'God did it'.
Men get better treatment: Sexism by the patriarchy.
Whoops, findings were wrong, women are actually getting better treatment: Reverse sexism by the patriarchy.
It is like talking with a creationist.
Patriarchy implies men hold some sort of privilege whereas it's really rich people that have the privilege. If all instances of "patriarchy" were replaced with "the upper class" I think we'd have much more accurate and fair representation of reality.
As it stands I don't think you'll ever get the millions upon millions of poor men out there to see themselves as part of the patriarchy, because they hold no power in society.
There are plenty of things that men usually get to avoid because of their sex. The majority of sexual harassment, sexual violence, domestic abuse, pay discrepancies based on sex, the list goes on and on. All of that is even worse for lower class women and even worse then that for lower class women of color. What would you call those advantages besides privilege?
Even if we take what you say as facts, there are many things women get to avoid because of their sex (warning, as speculative as your list): incarceration, violent crime, stressful manual labor, less representation in higher ed, weakened paternity rights...
I think it makes a lot of sense that differences between the sexes would offer different advantages and disadvantages. I don't see any one gender having a monopoly on advantage.
Important note: that is no longer the case. It hasn't been for years. I'm just saying that this actually existed, the Patriarchy was a real thing.
Regardless, that's not how society works anymore. Trying to redefine patriarchy to "traditional gender roles" strikes me as disingenuous.
No they didn't. The money went to the sons. The daughters were kept by their husbands.
While the law was clear that the men owned the money (I agree that this situation IS patriarchy btw), rich women enjoyed access to that money and power as well.
There existed women in rich households? I think that was pretty obvious.
At the time the vast majority of men and women didn't have access to consumer credit or higher education. I think a common mistake made in these discussions is to generalize the perks some elite men had to all men. In reality most people (men and women) have always had it pretty rough.
Easier to check [1]: in 1970, 55.2 percent of graduating high school men and 48.5 percent of graduating high school women enrolled in college. Again, for men a majority, and close to half for women.
A common mistake is to forget how fast (and how slow) history can move. Certainly most people have always had it pretty rough, but my life is easier now that I can get a bank account without my husband's permission. Even one generation ago that wasn't exactly the case.
https://www.bostonfed.org/education/ledger/ledger04/sprsum/c...
> The use of consumer credit had become a fixture of everyday life. In 2000, more than 70 percent of U.S. households had at least one gener- al-purpose credit card — MasterCard, Visa, Optima, or Discover. Thirty years earlier, in 1970, the number was only 16 percent.
Your point is well taken about bank accounts though. What you say about history moving fast and slow is very interesting. In this case it seems to have moved very fast. Did you feel you had any trouble getting a bank account as a women in your generation? My wife set up most of our accounts so I can only assume it's not a problem. That is indeed a very large change for one generation.
The university enrollment data is very interesting. The data you linked to only goes to 1998 but still shows a 15% increase in enrollment.
Even more interesting how the gender ratio has changed:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_306.10.a...
1976: 53% male, 47% female = 6% difference
2012: 43% male, 57% female = 14% difference
Women dominate higher education now much more than med did in 1976.
Because it makes sense. Passing money and power to a son will help him get a "better" bride. On the other hand, a daughter from a powerful family, even with no own money, will be able to marry a rich, powerful man and improve the overall family's power.
Correction: _physical_ conflict is unladylike.
My female friends often complain about conflicts with fellow _female_ workers. There are a lot of conflicts among high-school girls, etc. They are just not physical conflicts.
Maybe that's not the best example to illustrate this but, a large portion of social norms are not arbitrary. Many reflect biology.
Actually, the paper does not draw such a conclusion. They explicitly say that both "powerful positions have more negative consequences for women" and "women have less intrinsic desire for power and related privileges" are viable, possibly complimentary theories, and that distinguishing between these theories goes beyond this paper.
> Identifying the origin of the differences between men’s and women’s professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender-based discrimination, or both. In addition, supply-side factors (e.g., personal goals) and demand-side factors (e.g., gender-based backlash and discrimination) are inextricably linked.
There could be less positive consequences as well. At least in the culture I was raised in, a man's position factors more into their 'general attractiveness' than a woman's does. There are likely many different explanations as to why and I don't know which ones have evidence supporting and which ones have been shown false. Even if this isn't true at all, if men think it is true, it still means that earning promotions has more perceived benefit.
Otherwise you could also say the co-existence of chocolate muffins and blueberry muffins is causing women strife (and other people, too), because it forces them to decide.
I wonder why that is... After all, men are more likely than women to be assaulted (beaten up, robbed, murdered).
Not to mention that women are culturally more cautious about going out than are men when danger is perceived.
I'm not too sure about that. Feminism has spent years encouraging women to ignore whatever dangers lurk in public, while men have been trained for centuries to help a woman in need. Conversely, men are themselves very well aware that they are the primary target of many violent man (if someone is looking for a fight, it's unlikely that they're going to choose a woman) and that they have nobody to count on if push comes to shove.
Anecdotally, all of my male friends have been assaulted (before being 25), some multiple times, whereas even the worst statistics don't imply nearly as much assault of women.
Are you restricting this to assaults in public?
But I'm not sure why exactly you're asking that.
(Sidenote: Crime data tells a different story, because men report less often and because official policy in many places is to always charge the man with assault even if he reports being assaulted.)
You're right that men are assaulted more often in public and that few people help.
Anytime anyone suggests (in public, in media) that women should be more careful, or not trust strangers, etc, they get charged with "victim blaming".
The difference in perception is because our culture is currently much more concerned with violence from "creepy" or "stalker" types (anything perceived as sexually motivated) than any other kinds.
I read a document [1] yesterday saying that's not entirely true, but if you only count aggravated assault (or something similar - i.e. actually getting seriously hurt, not just a slap or being lightly pushed), men "win".
[1] https://www.notehub.org/2015/1/8/not-all-is-great-in-the-wor...
It is entirely true. Only if you combine spousal abuse statistics, which are circumstances with different causes and different solutions, can you manufacture some useless but close to 50/50 statistic. It is a useless statistic because it serves only as a manufactured factoid for some stupid internet gender related argument. It can't serve as part of a basis of facts for anyone looking to reduce the levels of violence for anyone. It can't serve as information when trying to judge personal risk.
I know you acknowledged this point by putting "win" in quotes, I'm just distancing myself from that entire attitude.
Anecdote: My wife and I have similar careers in the same field. We're not the world's most involved parents, but I go through life with people telling me I'm an awesome dad because I change diapers and my wife goes through life with nursery school teachers wondering why she didn't dress our daughter up as a pirate when they gave us notice it was pirate day two whole days in advance. Every time a grandparent notes that it's a shame she comes home so late (while never mentioning how late I come home) is another drop in the "is it even fucking worth it?" bucket.
But it would be erroneous to conclude that she "just wants it less" than I do. Rather, the social cost of her getting it is higher than it is for me.
Couldn't it instead rather be signaling to conforming to the modern idea that child raising is an oh so important task?
I don't think it's so much that women are subconsciously setting the bar too high. Rather, as in any competition the level of the bar gets set in the aggregate. Some combination of the media and their social circle.
You are living a good life if your only problem is "someone wondering why you are bad parent". Seems a little narcissistic to think that people are analyzing/judging you so much. People are self obsessed, you can almost always be sure that they are thinking about themselves.
Also, interesting that people invent strange/vague/meaningless phrases like "social cost" to justify imagined slights against them.
You are product of society, you are "the society". Your thoughts/actions make up society. You cannot be in conflict with it. There is no evil society out there judging and analyzing you every move.
>>is another drop in the "is it even fucking worth it?" bucket
I read that as seeking approval. Is it not?
What does "social cost getting higher" mean to someone not seeking approval?
He even invented a term for it. "social cost[1]" goes higher when someone judges you negatively and goes lower when someone commends your actions, like a carefully managed bank account.
But when it is happening to you, no matter how hard you try, it eventually gets to you. At least a little bit.
People aren't robots. It's hard work to ignore these things. And, in the case under discussion, it's work that falls more heavily on moms than dads.
Unless you are alone on an island, one person is not a society. One's thoughts and actions are inputs into society. Society itself would then be comprised of an aggregate of everyone's thoughts and actions. There would then be some sort bell curve for thoughts and actions, leading to an accepted norm for the society within some sigma value. Holding a position significantly distance from that sigma does make it part of society, would make it absolutely on conflict with societal norms.
Holding to the emergent norm theory, i would think that, yes, there is not an evil society judging you, but rather the society you participate in itself that will emphasize your contrast to the norms allowing others to judge you. Even if people are egocentric, a visible contrast to norms would be noticed and at best avoided, or at worst confronted.
The social cost is the degree in the action of others impacts an individual. there is a cost in dealing with the resulting time/resource/emotional effort with what ever action or inaction the judgmental individual(s) takes to address/correct/ignore you, directly or indirectly.
and... as other posters stated, i believe you missed the purpose of the previous post.
The way you know that people actually are thinking about you being a bad parent is they tell you to your face you are a bad parent. This has happened to me, it happens to my wife a lot more. There is a certain fraction of the population that sees nothing wrong with publicly shaming a parent for parenting in ways outside of their perceived social norms.
Why do you associate them with though? If they shame you then you don't want those people in your life.
That said, I'm interested in your thoughts about something else… I read (sorry no cite, I think it was in the nytimes though) that while men are less likely to suffer a career penalty due to having kids, that's largely because men are less likely to sacrifice work for child care in the first place. People can argue about the reasons, but it's pretty indisputable in the data that this burden is more likely to fall on the mother than the father.
However, the study (again, I can't cite it, apologies for that) suggested that those men who do take time off from work for child care may face an unusually harsh career penalty for it. In short, employers don't like it when either parent takes time off to watch kids, but they may be particularly resentful when a man does it.
Do you think there may be harsher judgement for men who do this, something akin to pressure not to take paternity leave?
Well we kind of are.
When I was in college, the RAs had classes to teach students some basic things like do laundry. They were all pretty much attended by male students.
If you believe the anecdotes about dating males in tech, this problem has only been exacerbated--self important tech guys with disposable income who outsource as much of their life as possible: grocery shopping, meal cooking, lawn care, routine car maintenance, routine house maintenance, cleaning, driving, and other normal household tasks to "Uber of X" like services.
Add to that the propensity for certain cultures to have a Mother-in-law dominated household, and you can see that the "media" isn't too far off in it's portrayals.
My mother just expected me to help with laundry when I was a kid. I also helped with cooking and other chores. Now people are amazed when I hem my own pants or cook lunch.
I can sew on buttons though--easy enough really.
Google found: http://www.themodestman.com/how-to-hem-dress-pants/ which says pretty much this but makes it sound complicated somehow.
Might be a problem if you can't reach your feet, I guess.
My mom was a traditional indian mom, living in an 2-income required american world. So she did most of the normal household chores, and worked ~full time (seriously props to my mom, because most people today complain bitterly if they have to cook after working all day).
She didn't want me to have that the expectation that I was to be taken care of by my wife, after being taken care of by my mom, so at a young age she taught me how to be self-sufficient. Doing laundry, as well as other basic things--balancing checkbook, making a grocery list, planning a weekly dinner menu, etc.
My sister and I also had chores too.
However there were plenty of kids (especially when I got to college and older), that had no concept of self sufficiency. I even had to teach my wife (who has a PhD in engineering) how to do the laundry, cook--no, Babe, turning the stove temp higher does not cook the food faster, load the dishwasher--sorry no, you can't use regular dish soap, wash dishes by hand, tend to the yard, make a grocery list, etc.
Also, I don't get why pointing out and celebrating the differences in genders (i.e. being sexist) is inherently bad.
My wife is pregnant, and it's super apparent that if Men were the ones that had babies, there would be no humans left, because as soon as the first guy popped out a kid, they would tell the others how terrible it was, and we'd figure out some way to make babies without having carry them inside us.
I get that pregnancy, partum and post-partum creates some sort of dream haze, so that women seem to forget the trauma of pregnancy & child birth. It seems pretty common that despite the "discomfort" regarding pregnancy and newborn care, women fantasize and choose to have multiple children, even those who had "rough" pregnancies.
I knew a couple. He was over 6 feet tall and she was a little thing. Their first baby was enormous and he missed the birth by minutes. He showed up all excited about the birth of their first baby and she sat up and yelled at him "You are never touching me again!" They went on to have two more kids.
My first pregnancy was really hard -- I threw up for 8 months and the birth was hard -- and it took me more than a year to be willing to try again. When I intentionally got pregnant again, I began throwing up and remembered how hard the first pregnancy had been. I think I also had the flu. I told someone "I hope I am pregnant, because this is making me remember my first pregnancy. If I am not already pregnant, I may not have another baby. Ugh. I don't want to go through this again."
Hormonal birth control has potentially deadly side effects. Women by the millions take it anyway because the risks and side effects involved are less worse than having babies.
Please realize I was a very devoted mother, desperately wanted kids, and still have a strong relationship to my now adult sons. I was baby-crazy in my twenties. I have talked to lots of women over the years and many women a) do not want kids and never did and b) after having the first, took a long time to be willing to try again because it was such a dreadful experience.
Women don't do this because being born female makes us more virtuous (or some crap) than men. We do it because we have the equipment, thus it is ours to do. That's it.
Also, female or not, memory is state dependent. This is not specific to pregnancy. When I had a serious health crisis and was in constant excruciating pain for more than 3 years, I could CLEARLY remember the birth of my first child. Most of the time, I cannot. I am usually not miserable enough to have good access to those memory pathways.
Again, state dependent memory is not some gender based or pregnancy based weirdness. The inability to fully access traumatic memories likely has a protective function for the human race and it is extremely well known, not some "pregnant woman" anomaly.
Congrats on the pregnancy. Best wishes to you and yours.
How so?
Lots of men are hostile to women. Making jokes regarding women's issues fuels hostility. Therefore men should not make jokes regarding women's issues.
Some people are mentally unstable. Guns in the hands of mentally unstable people can cause catastrophic results. Therefore people should not own guns.
Not as a rule, no. Normal men can do laundry. But you may be right about single guys on the right end of the salary curve.
But rest assured that the day your family faces any degree of financial distress, it is going to be your fault, only your fault, and nothing but your fault!!! Such is the fate of he, the breadwinner.
/s
This is the summary of how it was explained to me. A man who complains about gender roles does have inherently different judgments made about who he is and why he is complaining than a woman who does the same. And complaining about those judgments does nothing but make the problem worse.
And, speaking of general principles. Take a look to the template-argument: "Because <group X> are inherently different of <group Y>, they get treated differently and that's the way it is. Therefore, any member of <group X> that complains about the status quo only makes things worse". Whenever you see that, you can be pretty sure the people who floated that idea in the first place, must be taking unfair advantage of group X (though not necessarily has to belong to group Y). So, a counter argument can be made that every member of group X that believes in such argument is brainwashed and acting against the interest of group X in general.
Speaking of gender roles, there was a time still on living memory, when wife-beating was socially acceptable. I know for a fact, because I have spoken with a number of old folks, that even if those times, there were plenty of decent guys who would never hurt their wives, but when they learned of a jackass kicking the crap out of his wife, they would not move a finger unless (maybe) if it was clear that her life was in imminent danger.
Now, the sad thing about that history was not that there were jack-asses half a century ago (there are plenty of those today, too), but that the victims were shooed down by society at large. And the really sad thing is that the individuals doing the enforcing and keeping the beated wives quiet were all other women applying the logic of "women that complain about their husband's methods of discipline make matters worse."
Society gives you praise for basic child rearing tasks because then you will feel good about not being involved with your kids and will focus on work first. Try and actually be a more involved dad and you will face a lot of backlash.
I was constantly discriminated against because I worked a 9-day fortnight and spent the other day with my kids.
Is this discrimination against men or discrimination against women? Imagine if some software company went out of their way to praise women working there for every minor thing. Every code commit gets cheers at surpassing expectations. Every time an informative comment is added, they send out company wide emails congratulating the woman who added it. Actually adding a feature gets a small lunch party where the woman is treated as the star. It would create a very negative environment for any women working there and be considered discrimination against women.
I'd like to ask the same questions to men who branch out to be SMEs in a particular field (say being a consultant) vs the traditional "climb the ladder" path. The reality is that with ladder climbers, the effort expended is usually expensive relative to the reward.
/s
I mean, maybe there's some truth to that argument. But it's really stretching the idea of forced. At some level, everything we do is forced. Do we even have free will?
"The C students run the world because the A students don't want the hassle."
Some men also are not so motivated by this either.
I suppose it's slightly interesting that slightly more women than men say this. Maybe not though.
In talking with the women around me, most don't really like working with men in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women. I have male friends that are nurses, they miss working with other men, and kind of avoid working with women. In talk with my wife and her married friends, most of the wives would prefer their husbands not work with other women (and these women trust their husbands).
Now throw in the rest of the work and society. I just got done with sexual harassment training. To be fair, most of the stuff is pretty obvious and straight forward. But the undertone is "everything will be used against you when dealing with the opposite sex"; best bet is to avoid them as best you can, don't speak, don't look them in the eye, and no matter what, don't be alone with them.
TL:DR: In western society, I just don't think we are comfortable with the sexes working together, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm hoping I'm wrong on this.
Something is awfully wrong with these women, if they like/don't like working with someone solely because of their gender. I can understand you may not like working with someone, because he is a jerk/she is a bitch, I judge people based on whether they are good/bad people, not their gender.
In particular, that's basically the only way for men to get rich (while for many women marrying a rich men is also an option), and women view more successful men as more desirable, where men don't care as much about women's successes.
It would be interesting to explore if there are any differences in the gay populations.
I think that playing with dolls is attainable (I could just go out and get me some), but undesirable for me. It has nothing to do with sex role stereotyping from a young age, honest. It's just a strictly personal preference, nothing more.
So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological, gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Why should the society be defined by some other metric than preference of its individuals? AFAICT, the article tries to measure the preference, as precisely as possible.
It strikes to me as unfair to the people expressing those preferences to say "your preferences are influenced by culture and therefore less valid". (If they are not less valid, what is the problem?)
Because, for instance, you're a social sciences researcher and it's your job to figure it out and stick it in a paper.
We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition, and that's why they are under-represented in the top echelons of organizations".
The authors of the paper touch on this in the Discussion:
> Identifying the origin of the differences between men’s and women’s professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender-based discrimination, or both.
> We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans naturally lack ambition"
Why is it a bad conclusion? Maybe it's the truth (for arguably narrow definition of ambition). You don't want to get wrong conclusions from the research (whether you jump to them or not), but you cannot pick in advance which conclusion is morally good or bad. Preferences simply are somehow.
I actually think we should consider psychological research into group differences to be unscientific, unless it is firmly based on biology. Ideally, these studies should be based on DNA rather than gender or race or religion or ethnicity.
You can research preferences of people if you need to know them, but you shouldn't correlate them to some social group. I don't think society needs that kind of results apart from dinner conversations, because these results cannot inform the policy, which should be to respect everybody's preferences equally.
Men do not have the opportunity to give birth, so they can weigh in more heavily on self-sacrifice without the contingency that their body could be used as a medium for life-production.
Basically, men are more like prototypal inheritance whereas women are more like classical inheritance, or at least we like to think that men are more "existential" while women are conservative in their "recreate the self".
Most men advance in careers that are inherently lethal; so naturally women are going to be less driven to advance themselves in careers that compromise their total contract not only as financial agents but as well as genetic agents.
In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like successful men do.
Men, specially young men, are genetically programmed to not think about that. A typical 18 year old that goes to war does not think he's going to die. He thinks he's going to come back as a war hero and enjoy the... shall we say "admiration" of all his dead comrades' girlfriends.
> In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like successful men do.
Successful men can sire offspring in 15 minutes (or less, but there's already a pill for that) and delegate. Successful women have to fight their body for at least six months in order to hold on to their position during pregnancy. Then comes the postpartum depression and a whole other array of nasties.
So, not the same thing.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-...
The gender equality and feminism movement has been hijacked by corporate interests! The question is if ANYONE of any gender should bust their butt for someone else's company.
And if you really want to achieve gender equality at all costs, start with making the primary care provider for kids 50/50 men/women. Right now women are the ones expected to care for children which is where most of the salary inequality comes from!
That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect.
There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals that support this.
One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-...
Poor people view professional advancement as unequally attainable, but more desirable.
edit// okay, here's another article that dives into the nuance and doesn't just try to plaster Tim Hunt. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt...
Source X claims Y.
I know very little about Y.
I know a fair amount about X, and what I know indicates that X is an unreliable source.
Therefore, I will not significantly alter my beliefs about Y until a more reliable source than X comes around.
I don't want to make the argument. I want to snark about Reason. So I did. Shrug.
Did this offend anyone? Please explain how. Otherwise I would perceive the downvotes to be the work of trolls.
> IME, approximately 10% . . .
How is this substantive?
"I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless."
Don't be so worried about internet points.
BTW, that comment netted several magical internet points for whatever reason.