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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

So can this be used as an argument against the idea that women hold fewer positions of power (and in context of HN, fewer tech positions) not because of institutional/societal sexism, but because they just don't desire them?

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

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As someone in the "we need more diversity crowd" I think the article is consistent with that position. At the end of the day, even if you can make it in an environment where you don't fit in, there is a level of pain and frustration that comes with that.

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.

Damn but this is true. The levels of expectation involved in being a mother is ridiculous (eavesdrop on mothers talking with each other and count the usage of the phrase: "I know {I am|it makes me} a bad mother, but ..." followed by a completely innocuous parenting anecdote), and the bar for "good dad" is to be slightly more involved with your kids than a character from Mad Men.

That will never change, because it's being driven by female intrasexual competition. Men simply don't compete with each other in the same way.

Are you saying that these women subconsciously set the bar for being a good mother unreasonably high by judging their own behavior worse than it is, and thus signal a superior ability to care for a child to the other mothers?

Couldn't it instead rather be signaling to conforming to the modern idea that child raising is an oh so important task?

Child rearing was always considered an important task. The particulars have changed over the years, but the idea isn't new at all.

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.

That does happen, praising men for doing basic things.

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?

I think it does happen, more in some fields than others, and I think it's really unfortunate. As a dad who sometimes has to peace out because it's a teacher workday and its my turn to watch the kid, I feel pretty good about mostly having worked for people who have been in the same position.

These are great points on societal expectations of parents. On the flip side, there is still a lot of judgement against stay at home dads, who are typically just thought of as lazy or not manly enough if they stay at home with the kids, even if it makes sense because their wife has greater income potential due to chosen career/education.

There was recently a study in the news paper that showed men receiving worse discrimination in pay raise than women in relation to the time spent home with children. One suggested explanation to this is that women's wages are per-discriminated with the assumption that they will spend some amount of time home with children, but men spending time home with children doesn't fit the social expectations and they are instead judged as lazy.

>but I go through life with people telling me I'm an awesome dad because I change diapers

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.

We've trained decades of mass media consumers than men are simple buffoons incapable of routine household tasks.

> men are simple buffoons incapable of routine household tasks.

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.

Right, but this is another sexist positive feedback loop with a negative result.

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.

> My mother just expected me to help with laundry when I was a kid.

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.

> Right, but this is another sexist positive

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.

Wow.

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.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience. If my comment was taken with any form of malice, that was not it's intent. It was mostly a joke at men & natures expense.

In all sincerity, women would have it easier if men did not use us as a means to take "humorous" digs at other men. It only makes our lives harder. There is enough friction between the sexes witbout that kind of thing.

Congrats on the pregnancy. Best wishes to you and yours.

> Women would have it easier if men did not use us as a means to take "humorous" digs at other men. It only makes our lives harder.

How so?

Lots of men are already pretty hostile towards women. This kind of behavior only fuels that hostility and it is particularly frustrating to see it because it is a situation where a woman does not have to do anything wrong to catch hell over it. A man who presumably thinks he is championing the cause of women can do this and thereby make our lives harder.

Your logic does not follow.

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.

You realize that the parallel "logic that does not follow" about guns is perfectly legitimate in many/most countries, right? Doesn't exactly help your argument outside of (about half) the US.

Logic and rationality aren't necessarily the basis for laws.

Okay, I can hem someone else's pants, but how do you hem your own? Do you just guess, pin, put the pants on, and repeat until you get the right length to sew?

Fold to the right length, pin, remove, sew?

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.

When I bend-over the hem-height changes, but now that I think about it, the roll doesn't move, so it should be easy.

I put my pants on, roll up the edge until it's the right length, then pin. Then mark the edge so that I can turn the pants inside out when I sew.

Learning how to do basic sewing repairs is one thing I really need to teach myself, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I can sew on buttons though--easy enough really.

Don't people tend to marry later in the US, too? I'd expect most men to have already survived on their own for several years before landing in the haven of marriage. So most would have mastered the washing machine and at least the microwave oven.

>Well we kind of are.

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 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.

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.

Sorry to hear about your wife predicament. Unfortunately this is how society views roles, and it won't change anytime soon. Maybe when all the old people die and the younger ones learn to view things differently...

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.

Thanks for all the down-votes. But could you please explain why is it politically correct for women to complain about the admittedly unfair gender mores that society saddles them with, but if a guy does exactly the same thing, people just attack him and not even bother to post a fucking answer????

You aren't being a real man but a wimp who complains, showing that you are probably just bitter that you can't get any attention from real women.

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.

You don't know me. How could you possibly know if I am a real man or not? Ditto for the attention (or lack thereof) I get from women. Of course if you want to argue that any women that happens to fancy me is not real by definition, you have shown already the quality of your logic.

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."

Stop seeking social approval so much and do what you think is the best for you and your kids.

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.

You know it's pretty childish to dismiss someone's experience right? He didn't say he was seeking approval, he said that when he does the most minor childcare thing he gets praise, while when neither he nor his wife do some completely asinine thing (dressing their daughter as a pirate) his wife (not him) catches flack from the teachers for not being "more involved". Dismissing this as "narcissistic" is completely misreading his comment.

>He didn't say he was seeking approval

>>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.

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cost

When it's not happening to you it's very easy to tell someone else that getting told every day they are a bad parent is no big deal and they should ignore it.

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.

Social cost isn't made up and it isn't really the same as seeking approval. It's related to, but deeper than simple approval. For example, you might not care that someone thinks you are a bad parent for not dressing up your daughter as a pirate, however, you do care that the PTA now won't take your opinion seriously because you "aren't invested in your child's education".

If you take not giving a flying fuck what other people think far enough, there can be very serious consequences, such as being investigated by a social worker for how you treat your kids. Parents cannot afford to be too blithe about "that's just your opinion, man!" Society will butt into your business and interfere with or remove your parental rights if they dislike your behavior enough. You do not have to actually be a bad parent for something like that to happen. Only a fool completely disregards the opinions of others, even if they care not one whit about "social approval."

I would contend that you are a product of your experiences, and that you are a participant in society.

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.

Are you a parent?

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.

> 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.

You're missing a key point. These are unsolicited comments from strangers in public places. To not associate with them I would have to stop going out in public.

I think there's a number of interpretations of the results:

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.

> 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).

I am a woman. I am willing to take on a great deal of stress. Hell, just raising my special needs kids while supporting my husband's military career was a lot of stress. My subjective experience of corporate life was not that work was too stressful for me or caused conflict with my parenting obligations, but that I frequently faced what amounted to sexual harassment from men in positions of power above me. When you are looking for a promotion, you are probably not dealing with people who only see you as a piece of ass. For me, this was the single biggest thing I was aware of as an obstacle to progression and it was the single most stressful work-related issue I had to deal with.

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.

> 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.

To me, the biggest problem is that most of these men were not engaging in behavior I could point out to someone else as "harassment."

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.

> To me, the biggest problem is that most of these men were not engaging in behavior I could point out to someone else as "harassment."

I would be interested in hearing which behaviors they were engaging in to bother you.

One man asked me for a date. He was a very nice man and was doing nothing wrong under company policy. He was a high level IT professional. He worked in a different department. He had no authority over me. There were plenty of people at the company who were married to each other. There was absolutely nothing "wrong" with him asking me for a date. But he was also the only individual I met in over 5 years at the company who knew what GIS was before I explained it. I have a certificate in GIS. I wanted to get into the IT department. It was clear to me that a senior programmer asking me for a date was not bad behavior per se on his part, but it nonetheless was not only not going to open doors for me, it was going to help close them. His interest in dating me was going to make it harder, not easier, to try to get an IT job. I never did get an IT job. I ultimately left the company. (Edit: IT jobs paid about 2-4 times what I was making. Had I gotten an IT job, I likely would have stayed at the company.)

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.

> 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.

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.

There was some female speaker who talked about this. A man in the audience stood up and, iirc, pissed on the idea. She walked out into the audience and placed her hands on his upper arms. He was livid and described it as feeling like he had been "raped."

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.

Thank you for an informative and insightful post. I have a niece who's getting a degree in the technology field, and I constantly worry about her having to face this kind of crap. Do you have any suggestions that I can give here to watch out for, before she enters the world of work?

Edit: Spelling

Once in a while, I blog about this problem space. She might find it helpful to read four of my five blog posts that hit the front page of HN. I am on a tablet, so posting multiple links would be cumbersome, but they are all lunked here:

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

> But he was also the only individual I met in over 5 years at the company who knew what GIS was before I explained it. I have a certificate in GIS. I wanted to get into the IT department. It was clear to me that a senior programmer asking me for a date was not bad behavior per se on his part, but it nonetheless was not only not going to open doors for me, it was going to help close them.

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?

I have a certificate in geographic information systems. It is an IT field. He knew what it was and was a powerful man in the IT department. If I had been male, he could have been a networking opprtunity. He was well positioned to understand the value of my niche training and what relevance it might have for a company drowning in information overload. That angle apparently never crossed his mind. He only thought of me in terms of being an attractive woman that he wanted to date.

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.

> 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.

That clarifies things. So he would have been your manager had you successfully joined the IT team you applied to?

I was not 100% sure what his position was in the departmental heirarchy. But, yes, that was the crux of my concern.

>Therefore, any high ranking man in a different department that slept with me was de facto barring me from ever working under him.

He was? And here I thought that such actions required agreement on both parts to take place (without there being a crime committed).

Let me put it this way:

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.

>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.

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).

"...increases my standing when being selected by partners."

What type of partners?

> 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.

Totally normal. Humans are born with it - it is part of the evolutionary process.

Golddiggers are probably the only ones who are influenced by your job title but whatever floats your boat.

It's a well-researched fact that women are reluctant to "date down" (in terms of social standing, education, professional achievement and wealth), whereas men don't care - they (we) are mostly interested in how attractive a woman is.

While we're throwing around baseless stereotypes, the one I've heard is that men are reluctant to "date up", and successful women have trouble finding mates because of this.

Is this your own personal experience?

Also: define "attractive".

> Is this your own personal experience?

I haven't paid much attention to it personally.

Sorry, by "attractive" I meant "physically attractive".

It's strange - I've lived in several (Western) countries but have to witness this seemingly pervasive behaviour that men are driven mostly by physical attractiveness.

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.

It appears you misunderstood me. I'm not trying to say that there is some objective standard of beauty that all men agree with - there certainly are variations in personal preferences and tastes. Just like in women.

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.

I wouldn't consider doctors, lawyers, and other professionals "golddiggers". Some people want to date "on their level" I've been told.

Well they're not mutually exclusive but I can kind of see where you're coming from.

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.

gold diggers are the best because they're easy to spot, and good for a quick, easy lay.

that's what floats my boat.

quite honestly these days if you're looking for true love you're a fucking fool.

You're either a troll or seriously hung up on an ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend.

i've never been the relationship type. my hangups are on other things.

> 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.

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.

>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.

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.

> To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.

I wonder why that is... After all, men are more likely than women to be assaulted (beaten up, robbed, murdered).

Is that corrected for gender of people walking around alone at night?

If I remember correctly, yes. Women are more likely to be harassed in general, men are more likely to be the victims of physical violence.

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.

> men are more likely to be the victims of physical violence

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...

The question was about walking in the street and a comparison of danger (and I think "seriously hurt" is a good metric for danger).

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.

I doubt it.

Not to mention that women are culturally more cautious about going out than are men when danger is perceived.

> 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.

I'm curious about your statement " Feminism has spent years encouraging women to ignore whatever dangers lurk in public." I've only encountered the kind of feminism that gets mad about dangers that lurk in public, and tries to get women to take self-defense classes/carry a rape whistle/get a ride/get some guy to walk them to the car/agitate for campus escorts/fix broken streetlights/raise non-violent sons/. Where are you experiencing this other angle?

You're right that men are assaulted more often in public and that few people help.

> Where are you experiencing this other angle?

Anytime anyone suggests (in public, in media) that women should be more careful, or not trust strangers, etc, they get charged with "victim blaming".

Right, because the perpetrator of violence does deserve the blame for their actions. It's not the same as telling women to ignore the dangers, though. The same people who decry victim blaming also support rape whistles, self-defense classes, pepper spray, and safe-ride-home services. (Now, drinking less alcohol... that's not an appreciated message.)

> 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?

I guess... I'm not really aware of many attacks in private (friends usually don't fight), except if you count school as private space.

But I'm not sure why exactly you're asking that.

Men are victims of domestic violence in roughly equal numbers to women, according to national health surveys in the US and UK.

(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.)

Although men are not hospitalised by tha violence in anywhere near the same numbers as women. Men are not murdered by their partners as often as women are.

Anecdotally, women encounter verbal assault a lot more frequently than men. Catcalling, whistling, "give me a smile babe" and the like are an awful experience and dehumanizing.

(I stand corrected about the factual matter of public assault rates on men vs. women.)

To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.

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?

> 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.

Women will also take most of the blame if they suffer negative consequences from walking alone at night. People say things like, "Well, she shouldn't have been walking alone at night, it's dangerous." (Perhaps another example of the artificial frailty.) It's less common for these things to be said of men when something bad happens to them when they are walking alone.

> to the point where a man expressing apprehension about walking alone are often ridiculed

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.

I highly doubt this is the way the majority of society views male vs female gender roles in this area. Your egalitarianism is, imo, not demonstrative of the social standard on this issue.

Eh? My point wasn't specifically egalitarian, but to address this common allusion to "men" being oppressed when they're called out on something.

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.

I believe you may have missed the point - it's not that men feel oppressed when called out on something, or that anyone is being called out at all.

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.

But you're making your point with an unsupported allusion, and also implying that a man being generally expected to walk alone is somehow a problem.

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.

Yes, it depends if you view the difference in attitudes between sexes as an inevitable, biological distinction, or the product of a society which shapes their expectations and attitudes differently. There's certainly no 'get out of jail free' card for biological determinist sexism here.

It's not a biological determination (as in biological determined desire), it is a biologically determined wider range of options. Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships. An option men don't usually have. Since women have more options, they can also consider more possible ways of life.

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?

> Women can bear children, men can't. This gives women the first choice to spend time with those children, and also gives them bargaining power in relationships.

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.

You know perfectly well that mother's presence is ESSENTIAL to baby's proper development. Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers?

And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try.

> Whose belly do doctors put fresh-born babies on, their fathers?

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.

There is one more thing I did not mention. The 9-month-long mother-child bonding time, unavailable to the father, the midwife and whoever else.

For older children , any loving adult care is fine. But the original post was about the priority the mother has, indicating post-birth.

My impression that the first post I replied to was speaking of things in general, not locked to any kind of specific post-birth time frame. Even if it was though, I disagree with the mother's presence specifically being "ESSENTIAL" for the baby's health. Do babies' whose mothers die during childbirth suffer severe developmental disorders or other problems? What about babies that are immediately given to their adoptive parents instead of their biological mother after being born? My understanding is that as long as they receive love, support, and nutrition from an adult of either gender they grow up fine, with single parents being generally less effective than pairs.

Just a few quick points, this is going off-topic:

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...

1. No it doesn't still stand. If a mother's presence is biologically necessary for her child's development in the same way her uterus is necessary for fetal development, then the OP is right and childbirth does innately biologically necessitate that women spend more time with their children than their male partners in the same way that it's a biological fact that fathers do not carry fetuses to term and give birth to them. If their presence is, instead of "ESSENTIAL", "optimal" then my question becomes: "optimal" for what compared to what and for whom? It becomes a case of people and the groups they form making decisions to optimize for certain goals by behaving in a particular way, not raw biology empirically operating.

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."

Ad 2. No, you omitted mother-child bonding during pregnancy, because it gives the mother an advantage.

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?

Seriously? Downvotes for stating a fact (not opinion)?

You're as likely to get a positive experience out of sticking your dick in a meat-grinder as posting anything suggesting women and men are not the same on the internet.

For centuries we've taken kids away from their moms and handed them off to wet nurses. A woman is useful, but society has developed a lot of ways of making sure the bio-mom isn't the only one (very logically given our historically high maternal mortality rate). Our current nuclear-family setup is only possible because of improvements in sanitation and medicine.

>And last time I checked, men can't breastfeed no matter how hard they may try.

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.

Bargaining power is obvious: unless women are being enslaved or raped (not the norm in the first world), they control who gets to procreate. Wombs are a limited resource, sperm is not. So that gives women bargaining power (limited resources have a price).

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).

I mostly agree with the idea that women in modern society are given general priority/encouraged to spend time with their children vs their male partners. What I disagree with is that this fact of modern society is biologically inherent to the ability to give birth itself. (Maybe related to biology in other ways, I could see an argument for hormone-based brain differences, but that wasn't what I was nitpicking in your first post.)

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.

I don't understand what you mean by "biologically inherent" - I never claimed that biology forces us to react in such and such a way to mothers.

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).

I don't see the bargaining power. Many women in the US don't want to procreate constantly, as it's quite expensive, and birth rates (esp among teens) fluctuate according to availability of birth control. Perhaps it's news to you that tons of ladies want to have sex without having a kid. They don't want your "bargaining power," they just want to have some enjoyment.

Just procreating once or twice is enough to already cost you several years of your career. And as you say it's expensive - for two children, you can already get a house, a car, nice clothes and regular yoga sessions.

Also yes you can bargain away your sexual attractiveness, but sexual attractiveness of women only exists because of wombs. Think a bit more general.

Tell that to my hysterectomied friends....

Well, how are they doing?

My experience: Most men hoping to get their dick in me are not thinking "Woo! Children!" If I withhold, it mostly isn't about "You aren't allowed to father kids on me." It's about "You are a pig and you deserve to keep self serving. I sure as hell won't be servicing you."

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.)

>It is usually the vagina that men are after, not the womb.

This is true, but until recently("recent" in evolutionary time), the two were one and the same as far as cause and effect went.

If you study the history of sex, humans have long used various methods of birth control. If you have nothing else, there is always the withdrawal method. The degree to which birth control is practiced very strongly suggests that most instances of sex involve a desire for sexual satisfaction and not only no desire to procreate but active desire to intentionally avoid it.

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.

Uh, men want to "put their dick in you" because they want children, even if they might not be aware of it - that's nature's trick. So maybe your vagina has bargaining power, but that's only because there is a womb behind it. I guess men pay for fake plastic vaginas, but not a lot (I don't know, but probably < 100$? That wouldn't be enough for a women to live on for an extended period of time) - that is an indicator of the worth of vaginas vs wombs...

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.

Edit: HN doesn't let me write more comments, so here is my reply to Mz's comment below:

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.

Re poverty: The last statistics I saw, about half of American children are growing up in poverty. The divorce rate is also around 50%. I know a lot more stats than that, but I am time pressured today.

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've added a reply to my previous post yesterday, because HN wouldn't allow me to write more comments.

I think all your data points actually support my thesis.

This argument would hold more water if there was less single mothers with children by multiple men. Eggs might be less abundant than sperm, but there is still plenty for everyone.

Really? Numbers please. Btw I read an interesting thought on that from Nassim Taleb: that this was one of the greatest achievement of the church to give almost everybody access to a womb (by enforcing monogamy), thereby eliminating a lot of cause for conflict. In some societies rich/powerful men can have several women, and accordingly the poorer men get none. Genetics apparently also show that historically it was twice as likely for women to procreate as for men (meaning most of the time a lot of men never had kids, but most women had kids).

I love that way of summing it up: "oh it's totally possible for you to walk home at night. You might just endure much more pain and suffering for it."

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.

We know very little about these things. You are begging the question. Assuming every difference in outcome is the result of discrimination or perverse socialization until proven otherwise is not a rational mindset, though it seems to be the prevailing one.

Actually we know enough to know that assuming that discrimination and perverse socialization is at least part of the cause is totally rational.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test

Traditional gender roles aren't synonymous with "the patriarchy". In the west women are allowed to vote, hold property... There is no such thing as the patriarchy here.

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".

Of course there is no "mysterious male cabal", that's a very gross (and unfortunately common) misinterpretation of patriarchy. Patriarchy is the cultural structure which preserves and reinforces traditional gender roles. That's not patriarchy being synonymous with them, just as Buddhism isn't synonymous with the cultural practice of meditation.

Patriarchy is a gendered term that implies men are in control. Traditional gender roles are reinforced by men AND women.

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.

>Patriarchy is a gendered term that implies men are in control.

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 is a gendered term that implies men are in control

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?

I'm going by the definition in the dictionary.

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

Don't families in Western societies outside of, like, Quebec, "reckon descent and inheritance in the male line", via the vast majority of children adopting the surname of the father and not the mother?

They "reckon descent" by choice since it's legal to use any surname you want.

Definitely not inheritance though. Children of both genders are receiving their inheritance.

You keep invoking the word "legal" as if it has any relevance in this discussion at all; it doesn't. Patriarchy is a structure largely enforced through social mores, not laws (though there are lots of exceptions, obviously).

I continue to use the dictionary definition. Without legal enforcement there is no patriarchy.

lmao. I guess there's no institutional racism, or homophobia, either?

Misogyny is the word you're looking for. That exists, patriarchy doesn't.

Just like slavery is illegal but racism exists, gay marriage is legal but homophobia exists, there is no patriarchy but misogyny exists.

Slavery still exists though, even though it is illegal (not saying anything about western patriarchy).

The thing is, though, that there used to be. White male landowners and business leaders continued to pass power down to their male descendants and controlled the vast majority of political, financial and military power in the United States while denying minorities and women opportunities to gain any control. That lasted around 200 years.

White male landowners also passed great wealth and power down to their daughters. Female offspring weren't being abandoned, they were being raised in the same upper class environment as the males and retained much more power than the vast majority of men and women of lower classes who had essentially no power.

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.

No, actually, men used to hold legal privileges that women did not. Legally, a poor man had more rights than a rich woman, and though he may have less power in society than a rich woman, he had far more power than his own wife or daughter.

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.

I agree that there actually used to be a patriarchy. Only for a subset of society though. During much of this time period, males slaves couldn't vote or own property either for example.

Regardless, that's not how society works anymore. Trying to redefine patriarchy to "traditional gender roles" strikes me as disingenuous.

Dude, it's been 41 years since the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which guaranteed that women could have equal access to credit cards in the US. My mom would not have been admitted to Caltech when she applied for colleges because of her gender, no matter how much money she or her family would have had. My mom is not that old. I appreciate the attempt to bring class consciousness to the discussion but just 41 years ago restricted access to basic banking and (non-basic) higher education was based on your genitals and your skin color, as well as how much money you had.

I think there was a much stronger case for the patriarchy existing 41 years ago. I'm not saying it never existed, just that it doesn't exist now.

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.

"Banking on the Unbanked" (behind a paywall, sorry; by Stafford in 1983) says that in the 1970s 60% of Americans had a bank account. All the women in that group had to have a male family member sign for it, remember. 60% of the US population: a firm majority of the population did have access to banking by the 1960s and 1970s, contradicting your statement.

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.

[1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d99/d99t187.asp

I was talking about credit, not banking accounts. According to this:

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.

> White male landowners also passed great wealth [...] down to their daughters

No they didn't. The money went to the sons. The daughters were kept by their husbands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture

Those women were NOT living in poverty. They had access to the money, land and benefits of being upper class. They had servants and slaves. They didn't have to work or labor to survive.

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.

so it was a patriarchy and the men did have all the power and control of money and land and only passed those on to sons and...what exactly were you arguing against in this subthread again?

There existed women in rich households? I think that was pretty obvious.

> Patriarchy implies men hold some sort of privilege

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?

You list a lot of things that are definitely not proven. This very article is discussing the nature of the pay discrepancies based on sex.

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.

> pass power down to their male descendants

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.

Power was far greater correlated with wealth than with being male. So while society was more of a patriarchy than a matriarchy, it really wasn't either.

You can have both a class system based on economics/birth and a gendered power dynamic. Society is complex.

Power dynamic is vastly dominated by wealth, one wonders why a disproportional focus is given on the vastly less influential gender dynamic.

Because it's better for the rich people if there's a war between men and women rather than a war between the rich and the poor.

No one thinks the patriarchy is a merely legal system enforced by a cabal of men. Patriarchy refers to interwoven social structures that promulgate certain ideologies, doctrines, and social customs. The nuclear family is part of patriarchy, for example.

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.

> The nuclear family is part of patriarchy, for example.

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.

>The nuclear family is part of patriarchy, for example.

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.

Yes, people should not be disparaged for their choices, and in general we want to offer the ability to choose. The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).

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.

> The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).

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.

I think the suggestion would be that everyone should be able to default to an agendered role and then later make an explicit choice to "put on" a particular gender.

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.)

That's a great example. I think it doesn't quite fit what the parent was talking about though, since as you say there are still strongly defined male/female roles (that tribe members are very much expected to follow). It's just that there's a 3rd "pre-gender" that's assigned to infants.

I suppose the real test would be to find a culture that's genderless for people who have reached sexual maturity.

> I think the suggestion would be that everyone should be able to default to an agendered role and then later make an explicit choice to "put on" a particular gender.

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.

>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.

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...

[1] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/3/3/203

[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.024

> 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.

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?"

>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.

>The real problem is are people growing up in a society where they are being subconsciously funnelled towards a particular choice (to the point where they don't see other options as valid choices due to subconscious biases).

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...

So what you're saying is that parents (e.g.) punishing their children for playing with the wrong toys ("Boys can't play with Barbies") is something that is desirable in a society because the only other option would be "let anarchy reign?"

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?

>So what you're saying is that parents (e.g.) punishing their children for playing with the wrong toys ("Boys can't play with Barbies") is something that is desirable in a society because the only other option would be "let anarchy reign?"

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?

Just noticing this -- and the 1st link is quite nice indeed, thanks, but how does it support your argument? Jump from family structures to "safe spaces" is a bit of a stretch imo -- but if we do it, I'd say it argues for us to be accomodating of multiple arrangements depending what fits specific people, rather than forcing everyone into one convention. And the 2nd one is rather unpersuasive on multiple levels.

There is nothing wrong or pathological about people who want nuclear family having nuclear family; the question is, should people who aren't necessarily as interested in it be socially pressured to having one as well?

Who cares, seriously if you can't stand social pressure you're just not cut out to be a leader.

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.

There is also a cabal of (conservative) women campaigning against women's reproductive rights. This example does not prove your point.

Last I checked, the majority of both genders support banning some forms of abortion and legalizing some forms of abortion, generally with later abortions being banned more often and earlier abortions and those involving the classical exceptions being legalized more.

Besides the obvious abortion debate, what is still missing concerning american women's reproductive rights?

[A]part from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Denying birth control based on your employer's religious beliefs, defunding women's health initiatives, ect.

You meant subsidizing women's health issues, I think.

I'm not sure who you mean by "no one" but I certainly don't agree with anything you've stated. It's a pretty extreme view I think few would share.

What's extreme about it? It's just a different definition.

I don't think most people would view traditional society as being "the patriarchy". I've only ever heard that term even used in this context by fairly hardcore feminists.

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.

The view that the GOP engages in "the systematic, coordinated campaign against women's reproductive rights" is a pretty mainstream view in the Democratic party, which is pretty mainstream.

Is it? I'm neither democrat nor republican but that seems like a non-nuanced way to look at things. I doubt the majority of democrats hold such a simplistic 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.

They want to make abortion illegal, a major point of most GOP platforms. So I guess they do believe they have the authority to have a certain amount of control of women's bodies. Certainly it is also a simple view to assume just because something is legal, there is no aspect of control. Funding, access, privacy, there are tons things to consider outside of just if it is legal.

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."

The op said "cabal of men". The GOP is presumably 50/50 male/female.

You're really stretching the original comment to try to make it less extreme.

You're splitting hairs to ignore my point. There are also only three women on the RNC leadership and only 10% of the GOP in Congress is female [1] so I don't know where you got 50/50. There is even a long wikipedia article detailing the "War on Women"[2]. Quotes by Obama and the DNC follow similar rhetoric. You can keep calling it "extreme" but it is a very common view.

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

> The GOP is presumably 50/50 male/female.

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...

>women are socialized to believe that conflict is unladylike

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 because conflict is unladylike? Aggression is tied to testosterone.

Maybe that's not the best example to illustrate this but, a large portion of social norms are not arbitrary. Many reflect biology.

The reason women have different life goals is not because they want to have different life goals, but because society forces them to have different life goals

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?

> To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.

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!

I thought it says that women desire several different things, so sometimes they prefer other things over holding positions of power. No need to call it strife, it's simply a decision between several desirable things that you can not all have at the same time.

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 think you mean "positive feedback loop." A negative feedback loop tends to restore an equilibrium.

Lots of men are programmed/driven to want to be the boss.

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.

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