Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nydhal | Hacker News Reader

I know this might be an unpopular opinion here, but there are so many unspoken assumptions and generalizations in a lot of these discussions. As someone from a developing country who has witnessed the rise of extremism and civil unrest there are some beliefs that many times go unquestioned which are not necessarily true:

- Men and women can and should fulfill the same roles in society, a perfect society is one where we have a 50/50 ratio in everything.

- There is nothing we can do about culture/religion, if anything, it is an insignificant factor.

- Economic models work the same everywhere.

- As long as things are relatively stable, they will remain stable, provided we make small incremental improvements.

- Politics still has the same power to change society as it did in the past, and politicians know what they are doing.

- We understand the effects of technology.

just my 50 ¢.

View on HN

There's a lot of wisdom in your list, but I would take issue with the men/women point, that one is a bit of a straw man. No one reasonable is advocating for a mandated perfect 50/50 split.

The reasonable take on gender equality is to remove the social obstacles that prevent sufficiently motivated women from climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, or sufficiently motivated men from committing themselves to nurturing their families, as one example. Gender equality is simply the expansion of choice via elimination of constraints generated by too-rigid gender identities.

I am from Brazil...

Let me see.

Laws requiring 30% of election candidates be women? check. University quotas? Check. Arguments about "not enough women in <insert random profession here>" because it is not 50% split? Check.

I guess your "No one reasonable is advocating for a mandated perfect 50/50 split." phrase is true, specially the reasonable part, it seems most politicians are unreasonable.

The quotas are not motivated by a desire to force a perfect split. Rather, they're attempting to correct a current imbalance create by past and present sexism. I agree that it's a blunt and sloppy instrument. Of course it would be better to attack the root cause and eliminate sexism, and then any imbalances would be perfectly acceptable. If only we could figure out how.

Your numbers might improve, but there is a change if you don't find good candidates, you have to fill them in with bad candidates. This could make things worse in the long term because all those poor candidates results in a reinforcement of the assumptions that men are better at <insert job>.

Except for politics, can't be bad at having an opinion ;) Or jobs that any human should be able to perform.

Like I said, blunt, sloppy instrument with many unintended consequences, and the one you're pointing out is a big concern. That's why replacing quotas with many smaller gentler "nudges" may be preferable.

As a women, I don't understand the whole "Men and women can and should fulfill the same roles in society, a perfect society is one where we have a 50/50 ratio in everything."

My only prerequisite is that no one should assume what my role should me. Lady wants to be a housewife? Awesome. I want to be an engineer? Awesome. All we need is to reduce barriers to that opportunity which I agree to close to complete in America.

I've never heard anyone advocate for a 50/50 split.

I've never heard anyone advocate for a 50/50 split.

What happens instead is that anything that isn't a 50/50 split is assumed to be proof that there are barriers, that someone is telling you what your role should be, etc.

> I've never heard anyone advocate for a 50/50 split.

It's lazy thinking, combined with political expediency.

And

- The same economic model is valid for all markets

Reply on news.ycombinator.com