Why Women Choose Differently at Work
nautil.us
nautil.us
I personally see the lack of women in STEM in Western countries as a good thing, it means that they are doing well economically and don't have to deal with the tedious STEM education and workload.
"I asked Wendy Williams, founder and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, what she makes of these findings. She wrote that if girls expect they can "live a good life" while working in the arts, health or sciences, then girls choose to pursue what they are best at—which could be STEM, or it could be law or psychology. She added, "However, if the environment offers limited options, and the best ones are in STEM, girls focus there...""
I have a blog and a youtube channel that talks about raspberry pi, open source, embedded, and other programming projects that I do for fun in my spare time. I checked the youtube stats yesterday and my female audience was 0% (not rounded down, it was 0.0% according to Youtube) among about 10K people who watched them last week - globally. When I had google analytics on my site, it reported the same thing. Because my channel is new and no one knows whether I am a sexist person or not, so we can safely filter out the reputation problem. Also, I have a foreign name so people can't guess my gender by looking at my name. I think that anyone who watches my video has to be curious about what I do, not because they are used to me talking in a certain way.
Now my channel is a small sample, but I have a feeling that not many girls find tech (or at least what I do) fun and appealing the current way it is while many boys do. So it's just about an opportunity, money and job and whatnot as it is a hobby, a thing to have fun with that attracts certain demographic to a profession.
And the stats are not surprising, I have about half females, and they participate way more in "girly" things.
The same happened in another forum I had.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some women were miscategorised by whatever algorithmarked their gender.
For everyone's reference, for some reason dang migrated this comment thread wholesale from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510442
I personally would like the same freedom applied to men.
2. Men know that women value their ability to provide. In other words, money/power/status/ambition makes men sexier (in the eyes of women). This doesn't apply to women (although you can make the reverse argument on why women spend more on makeup/clothing/skin- and hair-care.
I really don't buy this notion that women look out for all. I don't doubt that they believe it, but I have yet to see women come together en masse to redress imbalances they benefit from. Unlike the entirety of civilization, built by men, many at the very bottom rungs of the ladder.
I wouldn't call my STEM education tedious. Demanding more like it. Tedious gives impression of rote learning and abstract concepts separated from practical considerations and lack of joy of discovery and achievement. I could call the curriculum of my MSc in physics a decade ago by many things (I was straining at several points) but not "tedious".
Perhaps there is regional variation in the curriculum, culture and method of education (my university training was in Finland).
0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classe_pr%C3%A9paratoire_aux_g...
I have spent considerable time in Kuwait. It is interesting to see many women continuing to wear the niqab that so many western societies find repressive and possibly sexist opposed to the more western accepted hijab. This garment is not forced by society or law, but is typically a choice of the head of household and the person themselves. I can tell you from my own observations with the wealth and freedoms available women absolutely do not appear strongly repressed in Kuwait and there also does not appear to be ambitious career goals among many (certainly not all) women in Kuwait. Compared to Americans Kuwaitis are lavishly wealthy.
Contrast that with Kuwait's southern neighbor Saudi Arabia where my mother-in-law has been more than once on business. Women were given the right to drive themselves for the first time only about 6 months ago, and the niqab garment is absolutely not a choice. Compared to Kuwait and much of the rest of the world women are heavily repressed in general freedoms. Despite all the limits there appeared a very strong effort of women to wanting to join the work force and take on ambitious careers. Compared to Americans the average Saudi is in a similar place economically, but I suspect the difference is observable societal pressures cause Saudi women to more frequently question their independence and work ethic compared to US women.
What I gather from those observations is that when you have anything you want and almost no performance pressures you simply won't have the motivation to work towards ambitious objectives. On the other hand when societal pressure to perform and compete is high a person is heavily motivated to work towards ambitious objectives.
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia make for good extreme examples, but I would say the stated conclusions apply universally. The US is still so far away from achieving gender parity.
In the US many women do not feel pressured to invest in career ambitions when conservative traditional social pressures say they can marry a man who does feel so pressured and still enjoy median financial results. The important thing about that statement is that it isn't claiming anything about a willingness to work, but is merely talking about investment in a future career. This thinking is largely to blame for far fewer women entering advanced careers of an abstract nature and why in many locales many women are more eager to take on menial work compared to males.
Another interesting observation is the US military. Women are a minority population in the military, but compared to US culture at large the military is generations ahead in achieving gender parity with regards to compensation, opportunities, and so forth. Pay in the military is based upon rank and years of service where subjective qualities have no influence. In about the past year and half the military eliminated its final restrictions upon women entering elite combat training. Promotions are more objective in the military compared to the corporate world (I am a military officer in the reserves and a senior developer at a fortune 50 company).
What makes the US military interesting to observe is performance of women compared to men in the force generally given that women are a minority population. My personal observation is that given a more challenging opportunity and sufficient preparation women tend to fail substantially less compared to males as ratio of sex to total population. In other words once societal pressures are normalized for individual pressures of success/failure take over and individual pressures are high given that there is already an investment in a career.
Are you saying that there's an inherent difference between men and women regarding science/technology?
Because I didn't get into science/technology because of money. I got in because it's fucking awesome.
I guess what I'm saying is that, if I had the choice, I would rather be a sculptor making the same salary as a Senior Soft Eng than an engineer at a large company. Too bad our society isn't set up like that, eh?
It'd be interesting to see what proportion of the pay gap/high status job gap comes from different sociosexual incentives, though I have a hard time imagining a good way to measure that.
Obviously this is highly speculative but for quite some time now I have the theory that the former Sowiet Union states (Russia et al) and large parts of Latin America don't progress as much simply because male financial success isn't tied as much to better dating options. At least to me as a traveler it seems that many men in those countries have a wide choice of attractive girls, regardless of how well they are off.
This would also explain the rise of the Chinese economy in the recent decades, as they have a surplus of men and I heard that they need to own at least a flat and a car to have chances on the dating market.
I am from an ex-Soviet block country (Poland). I agree that people in here are less obsessed with success and money than the Westernerns. This also translates into dating/marriage choices of women.
Obviously, this is a huge generalization, but I think it can be justified by looking at our history. Over time, so much terrible things happened here that people learned not to create too strong attachments to material things and societial hierarchies (which disappear when you're invaded by another country). It was wiser to try to find joy in family, human connection and simple things that cannot be taken away from you so easily.
I was working in Rome a few years ago and people there are very practical with cars, they are small and cheap.
On the other hand here they are very much status symbols. People like to drive big and powerful German cars - you would never see someone driving a Fiat Cinquecento, even though they are much more appropriate for wages here.
Interesting. When I was visiting Malmo (in suposedly egalitarian Sweden) I was shocked about the amount of premium cars (Audis, BMWs etc.) on the streets. Seemed anything but egalitarian to me. I had similar impressions in Germany or the UK. It's interesting why Rome is different.
There’s definitely an advantage to having a small car in Italy (I had a Prius and it felt too big), but most people had cars that would even feel old here (where most people have 2nd or 3rd hand cars).
There are a few factors at play here.
At least in Poland women more often than men choose to leave rural areas in favor of cities and that results in city-dwelling populations dominated by women(often single) and rural population dominated by men(also single).
Also there's a social stigma connected to being a woman over 30 who is still single/childless.
Lastly in post-soviet countries men commit suicide significantly more often than women - often early in life - which further skewes the gender ratio.
Men here are still regarded as providers and status, or at least status signaling, matters - one obvious example is how much people(men) spend on cars.
I'd love to live in a place where this were true. Which cities exactly have such thing going on?
> Also there's a social stigma connected to being a woman over 30 who is still single/childless.
Or is there?
Also, either there is stigma for being single woman or there are vast numbers of single women. Both at the same time cannot be true in even somewhat stable system, and it's hard to argue that Polish cities are in total chaos.
> Lastly in post-soviet countries men commit suicide significantly more often than women - often early in life - which further skewes the gender ratio.
Yes, because suicide is a primary or at least a major reason that men die (or die young).
> I'd love to live in a place where this were true. Which cities exactly have such thing going on?
Warsaw is a great example, but ironically these womens' standards are pretty high - all in all they didn't leave their 30k-something-souls towns for the Big City to marry a man who doesn't enjoy a decent social status himself.
> Or is there? Also, either there is stigma for being single woman or there are vast numbers of single women. Both at the same time cannot be true in even somewhat stable system, and it's hard to argue that Polish cities are in total chaos.
Anecdata: my sister was born in 86' and is currently single and childless, just like a few of her friends. On one hand they're pressured to do something about this, on the other there aren't many eligible bachelors available because well, they're taken. This song[0] illustrates this point beautifully.
Hell, the problem is so visible right now that a TV show dedicated to making couples out of (most of the time)well-off farmers and city-dwelling women[1] was created.
How is that sad. You've actively decided to trade more of your effort to get more of other people's effort. Its a win win.
And you can stop at any time.
That said, it's a choice I didn't choose to have. I'd much sooner choose to live in a world where gender norms would allow me to both a) pursue the things I want to pursue and b) have as much dating success doing them as I do now (a fair amount, having led up to several successful long term relationships) instead of then (going months without a date while actively trying to date).
Additionally, I question the viewpoints of people who think that the pay gap come purely from evil men discriminating against deserving women instead of social norms that are enforced in significant part by women.
I would also like to live in a world where I get to do whatever I want and get from other people whatever I want. However, we live in a world where we have to give and take, so we need to give something we dont want to give to take something we want..
I'm sure you'd be much happier sculpting, but the consequences would be similar to you getting paid for doing nothing.
You're right in that I'm having trouble seeing your point because what you write doesn't follow at all. If I'm a sculptor I'm producing something. Arguably something that people want and are willing to pay at least some money for. I would even disagree that society needs me to do anything. Certainly it doesn't need me to be a software engineer - a large corporation needs me to do that so they can sell more features.
If I want to maintain a certain standard of living then in many cases I have a limited set of paths on how to achieve that. The balance comes in having more ways of reaching the same goal.
Then why shouldn't you receive a salary without doing anything?
When I unexpectedly found myself presented with those two options, wouldn't you know it, I chose exactly how I said I would. I was happy with my choice, and if I found myself in the same situation I would make it again.
I'm leaving my current company because they expected me to cancel planned trips, vacations, and time with friends simply because they can't plan anything. And management was openly resentful when I wouldn't. My twenties and thirties are the best years of my life and if you won't let me have them I'll find someone who will.
That's largely a function of markets. You make it sound like it's a policy of some kind, or some kind of social problem that needs fixing. Also, you yourself are guilty of exaggerating the value of money.
> Alternatively, we wouldn't be having this discussion if our society did not largely judge a man's success in life by his wealth (and the things money can buy, like a nice car).
Who's judging you? Some people might, but what do you care? Associate with people that value similar things, not with people whose highest values are cars and money.
> I guess what I'm saying is that, if I had the choice, I would rather be a sculptor making the same salary as a Senior Soft Eng than an engineer at a large company.
Again with the money. If you want to be a sculptor, be a sculptor.
> Too bad our society isn't set up like that, eh?
Set up? Nothing is "set up". You seem to be living under the impression that there's this abstract looming thing called "society" that lords over the affairs of man, and that you are this lone ego occupying its center. Society is the set of individual human beings in a network of a variety of relationships. Money doesn't fall from the sky. Who's going to pay you for your sculptures? Are people supposed to pay you just so you can do what you want, market demand be damned?
(Btw, some sculptors make ludicrous amounts of money. Many probably make okay money, though apparently the avg. salary for sculptors, painters and illustrators in Delaware is the same as the average for software engineers.)
Women.
https://mobile.twitter.com/simonsarris/status/95977643265320...
I know lots of men who would love a simple extremely frugal lifestyle with early retirement, but work stressful (and well paying jobs) to secure a date.
Unlike you, how many of them 'failed' to plan a lucrative career, who conveniently married a husband who didn't fail to plan? Or does the number of women outearning their SOs in your social group approach 50%?
I'd wager the attitudes about men's and their resources that you state to abhor, are quietly shared by a lot more of your female friends than you care to accept, to a greater or lesser extent.
One. Also my only religious friend and I think her religion is the factor here.
(You're also assuming all my friends are into the "husband" thing, I have proudly single by choice friends and queer friends too)
>how many of them 'failed' to plan a lucrative career, who conveniently married a husband who didn't fail to plan?
None had zero career planning. Some of them their plans haven't quite worked out for them as they would have hoped though. Same with some of my male friends too though. It's pretty 50/50 among couples that I am friends which person has more of a "career" vs "job." I even had a female friend nearing 40 who just started college. One of my friends who works low paying jobs but is married to a doctor paid the bills for 8 years so he could go to college then medical school.
In my own marriage I (female) am the "simple extremely frugal lifestyle with early retirement" one and my husband much more of a spender. He also earns less money than me.
So, yes, it does "work that way," but first you must realize that women are humans too and not just fuckholes you pay for.
Money is incredibly important and valuable in our society. We've largely arranged our society around acquiring it, spending it, saving it and (sometimes to a sickening degree) glorifying it. Please see the fact that most people spend roughly 4,000 hours a year in their pursuit for money.
The rest of your post seems a bit incoherent to me. My original post was not a demand or a policy prescription; just wistful thinking. If pressed for something even more specific I would say: "It would be great if there was a more concrete path coupled with high demand for creative careers as there is for writing more code."
Out of curiosity I did look up average sculptor salaries in CA, but they are more than half that of an average software engineer so I guess I'll still be heading in to work on Monday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Women do and I care because I like sex. When you have a luxury downtown apartment with a view and a sports car, it's playing the game on easy mode.
- A woman who earns more than her husband
I guess what I'm saying is that, whatever personal situation, I doubt you would be interested in a man who just lazed around the couch all day watching Netflix, playing video games, and having little ambition beyond that.
just an interpretation
They don't. They judge the success by the succession of success. Money is just a byproduct and used as proxy. Perhaps that's more pronounced where-ever you are. But boasting about money increases the chances that it will be lost soon.
I wish it weren't the case but it seems to be reality.
Congratulations, you’ve invented communism.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=generic%20ideological&sort=byD...
I very much appreciate all the hard work you do here, btw. HN is my favorite place to discuss things online. I also understand the difficulty of not letting the place get overrun with unproductive political debates. I just think we have to be careful to not unreasonably single out certain topics in a way that may seem confusing or arbitrary.
If it was solely the unnecessary snark and lack of good faith, then I think I understand. But by referring specific content in the comment, it becomes less clear.
Such discussions are off topic for a reason: they are repetitive. Worse, they turn into flamewars (case in point, see the replies to my comment downthread). This is emphatically not what HN is for. The value of this site—intellectual curiosity—withers under repetition and dies under attack.
Take a look at the comments through the search link I posted. There's a long history there. If you then still don't understand why we're doing this, I'd be happy to discuss it further (but you'll probably need to email hn@ycombinator.com).
We don't really need to discuss it further, but, to clarify, I think the thing that caught my eye is when a reasonable discussion naturally starts to veer towards these more difficult, ideological topics.
Those topics aren't meaningless. It is just very hard to discuss them productively on a public internet forum, as you noted. However, it is also not unexpected for productive, intellectual discussions of other issues to meaningfully brush up against these "ideological tangents" on occasion.
The part that seems a little arbitrary to me is to say that the discussion can't proceed further purely based on content alone, as opposed to instead drawing the line based on content-neutral criteria such as civility, substantiveness, novelty, etc.
But I understand that this desire may be overly idealistic in a public internet forum, and certain pragmatic lines may need to be drawn. It sounds like might be the case on HN. Again, thanks for engaging with me on this.
Such arguments are always the same and only interest a small minority of HN users who want to yell at each other while calling it "ideas". These threads get dumber and nastier as they grow, and drown out the quieter, thoughtful things we actually do want here. Therefore we have to moderate them. Intellectual curiosity is a fragile thing, like a garden that needs protecting from off-road vehicles.
Perhaps you're the rare person who really has something original to say about political ideologies, and I missed that in your HN comments. In that case I'm sorry for misinterpreting you. Nevertheless an internet forum is not the medium for such ideas—even if you're deep and original, others won't be, and the space is too constrained for all but shallow comments on grand topics. So if that's the case, you should write a book instead.
It seems that you might be unaware that the user 'dang' is a moderator.
No. lobotryas was saying that we're only discussing shortage of women writing software because it's a well-paying office job. If anything else was kept intact, but either the job was low wage or other jobs that women currently choose much more often were paid as highly, we wouldn't have the discussion about too little women writing software.
> How is criticising this as communism not valid?
Because it was not the lobotryas' point.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
The point is, it is uncommon to reach that level in those given fields because the average person gets average pay.
My one data point: I'm basically in it for the money. In fact the state, through child support enforcement, made it very clear that at least in my case, the meaning of my life is and shall be, to earn as much money as possible to support the children. If I had a spouse supporting me, I would probably be doing something fun and artistic. (Not that there aren't fun and artistic elements in my work sometimes. And not that there aren't elements of methodical discipline required to be a good artist.)
OK. When I met my current wife, who is much more supportive than the first one, I didn't even have a bank account and was living paycheck to paycheck, and literally cashing them at the check-cash place. She also was just scraping by, as a student. So that put us on a more even footing economically I guess. We're also neither one, especially materialistic in the first place. So I think that allowed us to not put money concerns first & foremost in our evaluation of each other. Which I would say might be a prerequisite or at least a help, for that mysterious and random-ass thing called love to take hold.
(On the other hand we probably both could tell that both of us were smart & discerning enough to know how to get money and what to do, and not do, with it if we had it. And we were probably both giving off innumerable small cues that we each came from the same socioeconomic class, which might be more important than anybody wants to admit, especially after the previous paragraph.)
Anyway we just went with it. Over time I continued on my technical path until I was making decent money, while she continued on her non-technical one and basically... isn't. So now, strictly speaking, I'm "subsidizing" her. So am I struggling with it? Kind of. But she helps me too in a lot of ways that are both practical and intangible. I dunno at some point you have to make the decision to be generous. If you find someone you can trust, that is a lot easier. But then again trusting is kind of up to you too. I mean there's a certain level of basic trustworthiness needed on their end obviously, but you do sort of have to decide to trust someone. Or don't, but it sounds like you do want to. Anyway bottom line, you can't live your life in fear of what might happen, that's too shitty!
So I guess the TL;DR from all this nonsense is: find someone from your own socioeconomic class but otherwise ignore money. Make sure you share important values, and establish trust. Don't let money fears make you lonely.
Final note: Those who want money from you, that's all they can get from you is money. Which at the end of the day is not much.
I'm not divorced, but I had similar questions before my own marriage. In the end we moved forward on a more traditional basis, where we both acknowledge that we bring different things to the table, and we're OK with that (i.e. "equitable" as in "fair", but not "equitable" as in "equal").
I'm wondering why you make that assumption? I'm asking as a woman who earns more than her husband. This hasn't matched my experience AT ALL from talking to other women either.
I, on the other hand, start to become very self-conscious about my income level and wonder whether it is too low sometimes. I also have a close friend whose girlfriend broke up with him after dating for >5 years because he was just a mere accountant (making just about 70k at the time) and she, after grad school, got a six-figure job as a risk analyst at a big bank. She said to him that she wanted a more ambitious man who can support her and make sure they can afford a nice house with a yard and a nice car. That's the reality most men have to deal with.
She eventually left me because I wasn't trying hard enough to please her; I was studying from 8am to 5pm, then working until 9pm, and she wanted me to stop eating lunch for several months so I could smother her with roses. I suggested that she should go fk herself because I was working 13 hours a day plus catching up on study at weekends while she did four hours on a Sunday if she felt like it, so she wandered off with .. well, a pile of my furniture and equipment, plus a few grand from my bank account and my one (emergencies only) credit card, as well as my overdraft, all of which took me a few years to pay back.
I sure that not all women are like this, and I wonder if the masculine version of this is the trophy wife. Most of the women I've known have been the opposite. Maybe you could adjust your profile in some way to discourage that sort of approach?
Most likely that was not the only reason why she dumped him. May be she wanted to have children and he was against it. May be he was not intellectually challenging enough.
Heterosexual men do not have that same option.
As for why an already wealthy woman would likely choose an even wealther man: I'm not sure how prevalent this is. If this does happen, I think it's an effect of the culture where men are expected to be the "provider", pay for everything, etc.
Men are expected to pay more for everything even in modern, progressive/feminist countries like Sweden. Last time I lived in Sweden, my girfriend at the time — well educated and quite progressive — expected me to pay more than my fair share even though she earned more than me. This is something you must do as a "gentleman".
Come to think of it, I had a girlfriend in California and she was the same.
Thinking more about it, dozens of examples are flooding into memory of wealthier women expecting me to pay more.
Not true, I know a bunch of men who dropped out of the workforce due to laziness once they got married and had kids.
I am not accusing women of laziness, which is what you seem to be reading into this.
In the general case, societal expectation is that the man provides. It is an accepted and common "career option" for a woman (especially a good looking one) to simply meet a wealthy man.
The same is not true in reverse.
I'd wager (a little) that if you only consider (heterosexual) couples, then you will have mostly men making more money...
Not saying that that's good or bad...
I knew going into the dating world that I would probably make more than most of my potential partners due to just numbers, I was unlikely to meet someone who I got along with that makes more than me because I make more money than most people. Since I already have/had all the money I need that didn't bother me in the least, either way I was looking for human companionship not a bank account.
I ended up marrying someone who has a good career but still earns less than I do.
http://www.firstmet.com/dating-blog/online-dating-money-fact...
And this stays true after finding someone:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/05/...
They both make the important point that there is no F to M wealth gap resentment in partnerships where the man takes on additional domestic responsibilities that are traditionally reserved for women. That makes intuitive sense both practically (bandwidth) and symbolically (fairness/partnership). The HBR/Herald thing goes into detail.
And the US News article points out the status quo has already grown to 20% female breadwinner households. If it wasn't a successful model, it probably wouldn't be growing in share.
If you look at the scatter plots and (visually, unscientifically!) pull out subsets of countries in the same region (southeast Asia, the nordics, mediterranean Europe, southeast Europe, etc), there appears to be no correlation between general equality and STEM bias. For example, Vietnam has about the same level of inequality as Thailand, but 50% more women STEM graduates. That makes me suspect that there's some other factor at play. I could be completely wrong about that - but i didn't see anything in the paper which rules it out. Please do correct me if i missed it - it was a quick read, i'm not a social scientist, and i have a cold.
That gender preferences explain much of the STEM gender gap is worth reporting on, as the article does, because it's not well known. That doesn't mean there aren't other factors, which of course there are.
Susan Pinker even addresses the larger issue very specifically:
> Q: Are these differences the result of biological or cultural differences? A: I think that both play a role. It’s simplistic and scientifically untrue to say it’s one or the other.
It’s extremely refreshing to see this discussed. It seems intersectional feminism is laser focused on prioritizing career and monetary success and nothing else. There’s so much more to life than spending your life earning a paycheck. Raising a healthy family, building a community and many other non-career based objectives seem entirely missing from the conversation. Instead the goal seems to be everyone becoming an office worker and mass consumer. I’d love to see other dimensions recognized as success.
This was a refreshing, relatively balanced perspective. I'm glad to see an article acknowledging both nature and nurture, and not blindly insisting that all differences are purely social constructs.
So, for example, if you see quotes that aren't in the OP, it's because they came from the other OP.
Maybe simply because the workplace has nothing to do with how school is organized?
If boys chose careers based on their own strengths—the approach usually suggested by parents and guidance counselors—they would be most likely to land in a STEM discipline or another field drawing on the same sorts of skills. Girls could choose more widely, based on their own strengths."
Not looking forward to that part of fatherhood once I have kids of my own.
What is the reason?
My recollection of engineering school was that the experience was not substitutable. The five women in a class did not have the same experience as the 45 men. For example, as a man I never tried to make a professional connection with someone, but then realized that they wanted a date instead.
I really don't know the answer, but I'm disappointed that these questions are so rarely broached in national debate. It seems like the epistemological institutions (universities, newsrooms, etc) responsible for addressing these questions prefer to ignore these questions and impugn the moral credentials of anyone who tries to answer them (if indeed these questions are invalid, surely an explanation would be more effective and expedient than an inquisition).
Thought experiment: in an ideal world, what is the preference that leads to 100/0 split in career choice? By that I mean in an ideal world, by how much does someone have to prefer career A over career B before there is a 100% chance people choose A? At an 80-20 preference for A, surely 100% of people choose A - why would you choose B when you overwhelmingly prefer A? But what about 60-40? Of even 51-49?
Unlike say eating lunch, where you have 300 odd per year, which means you can have Thai 200 times, Italian 100 and other things the rest, given how costly most careers are to establish - University is time AND money, and progressing the career ladder is time - I think a rather small preference, closer to 51-49 than than 60-40, is going to lead, in an ideal world, to 100-0 A over B. Because why would anyone choose a lesser preference?
In an unideal world, where the cost of in income over a lifetime is large, job prospects limited and risks of failing large, preference will be negated, muted or reversed. In an ideal world, that tiny preference is going to really matter.
TL;DR Happiness is as much a measure of what you can reasonably choose from as what you actually choose.
For example, kids who feel ostracized won’t do well in school. By your definition, we could have schools where, say, left handed people are systematically ostracized, but those kids would still have equality of opportunity.
You’re just arbitrarily defining “equality” based on the degree of equal treatment that you think society should have to provide to people. But your definition defies “equality” as a mathematical concept.
And if you put the reasoning even further, you need to actually suppress sexes as well. They are at the source of the problem after all. And this is technically feasible with assisted reproductive technics. Of course, the unneeded sex is the male one, you just keep one or two at hand. Then it will be 100% female everywhere at every jobs, isn't that wonderful? But again, not the future I want.
But then, not every job is equal, right? Why a doctor earn more than a nurse? Why does some work 70+ hours and other 35? It's inequal and injust. But as all these jobs are needed but different to keep the system running, the only solution is to suppress jobs altogether. Then we back at a pre-pre-historic stage. And then maybe we will live in the bliss of the True Equality Attained (albeit without Internet to congratulate ourselves).
Back to reality. Your comment also shows how you put the blame on "society". You can pass laws and regulations to influence the society, but reengineering it totally from the micro-level of individuals is not realistic at all. However, it was tested for 4 decades in USSR and China and the results are telling.
Differences in income are not a problem per se. If there is a problem, the biggest one is poverty, another is the way in which the ultra-rich use their money to gain power over lots of people. The former is not unrelated to the latter. The discussion should shift away from the self-indulgent paranoia and petty jealousies of upper middle class navel-gazers and focus on these more pressing issues.
Feelings and experiences are very real and can be evidence of a problem. However to act on them we need some sort of evidence that is present in the observable world, otherwise we are setting people up to give up quickly and report they feel bad rather than trying to solve their own problems.
It is a tightrope to walk, but feelings need to be treated simultaneously with respect and cynicism. Biasing the world in favour of strongly emotioned people at the expense of stoics is not an improvement.
What makes more sense is focusing on the best possible path forward for everybody, or creating the opportunity for the racer to be as fast as he can be, independent of the speed of other racers.
Disagree.
> It’s like saying everyone has an equal chance to win the race” because the rules allow anyone to win
That's pretty much the definition of equal chance.
> But there could still be rocks in one of the lanes and not in the others.
Could. Maybe. But, staying in the metaphor: it's both exceedingly rare for there to be rocks in one lane and not another, and exceedingly obvious if it is the case.
And nobody assumes that there are rocks because there are clear winners and losers in races. Everybody assumes that the person who won was fastest.
But for some bizarre reason in other fields, we not just assume that there being winners means there must be rocks, we absolutely insist that that is the only possible explanation and vilify people who say "well, maybe the person who won was fastest?"
It is obvious if you’re not willfully blind. How many women have to tell stories of, e.g., trying to make professional connections only to have a coworker make a sexual advance on them instead before you’ll believe that there’s rocks in their lane?
(a) Anecdotes != data
(b) You cannot assume that a man in the same situation would have made a successful professional connection
(c) In fact, the woman, if she isn't entirely daft, will have additional levers to pull
(d) You might have noticed "staying in the metaphor"
It feels like we must be letting the liberal arts majors down by setting lower expectations.
Even in engineering for instance, mechanical engineering was way more strict and difficult than CS, as screwing up industrial machines or physical artifacts (at school and on the job) had a bigger impact than bugs in a CRUD app.
I think as long as the English course is not directly linked to an activity that costs to screw up, (like law school for instance) expectations won’t change.
Edit: the Nautilus article wins. We moved most comments from the other thread hither.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_School_of_Comp...
[1] https://www.facebook.com/pg/jhuengineering/about/
Edit. The NPR article [2] links to the raw NSF data [3].
EE gender data for 1984:
BS, M: 19,252 F: 2,289
MS, M: 5,081 F: 438
PhD, M: 579 F: 14
CS gender data for 1984:
BS, M: 20,369 F: 12,066
MS, M: 4,379 F: 1,811
PhD, M: 258 F: 37
We can also observe a decline in CS BS female enrollment, from 12k in 1984 [peaking at 15k in 1986, 2003, 2004] to 7k in 2010. Unclear what the causes are, but we can't dismiss the shifts in CS meaning itself that happens during this period. Alas, in the current climate, it is unlikely we can have an unbiased public analysis of this trend.
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
[3] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/content.cfm?pub_id=4...
Presumably, like most phenomena, it involves a variety of factors.
Hence, being an extremely sexually successful male is much more rewarding for the propagation of their genes than being an extremely sexually successful female.
Thus, males evolved to take more risks than females since there is a much bigger payoff for them: if a male can become an "omnipotent king" he can father children with every woman and spread his genes a lot, while a female "omnipotent queen" still can only make one child for every nine months.
Hence, males have more variance, meaning that the top in any field are very likely to be males, but also there are going to be much more men who are extremely unsuccessful.
This also means that women are probably better off on average, since psychological (as opposed to genetic-propagation-related) utility is logarithmic and thus reducing variance is advantageous for the individual.
PS one of the most entertaining things to do is grab the girl's phone and read through the messages on her dating app. We men write some hilariously shitty messages. None of us are becoming an omnipotent king anytime soon.
The NSF keeps track of "Science and Engineering Degrees" in higher-education in the US, which basically translates to STEM degrees [0]. Assuming I'm interpreting this correctly, 50% of STEM bachelor's degrees are awarded to women [1], and 40% of STEM phds are awarded to women [2]. However, CS and engineering stand out: they are closer to 20% (for both bachelors and phds). So this isn't really a STEM issue, it's a CS and engineering issue.
[0] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15326/#chp2
[1] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15326/pdf/tab11.pdf
[2] https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15326/pdf/tab25.pdf
(For some reason, these tables group CS and math together. There's a separate table that breaks them down, and shows that most of the gender imbalance comes from CS; math is closer to balanced.)
Please don't! That makes HN worse. It leads to the sort of generic, predictable threads that sink discussion into mediocrity and which we're most trying to avoid here. Plenty of explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants more.
(People generally post workarounds to paywalls in the threads, which means that it's ok to submit such articles, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 and in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.)
All four of them switched to design, and they're all Photoshop/Sketch experts now. They're extremely happy with their decisions. They stayed in tech, and still work/interact with the "culture" on a daily basis.
I wonder how many people just assume they were driven out when they find out that they did CS but didn't pursue a career in software development/engineering, when in reality they just didn't like it and wanted to do something else.
The best manager I ever had was a woman, because she managed by connecting and by learning about me. Contrast this with the male engineer managers that I've had, who've all been average or sub-par because they assume that the only correct way to motivate me is to give me more money, and they assume that all I want to do is work on "interesting" problems. In short, they don't take the time to actually learn who I am or to connect with me, they just assume that I work exactly like them. It's a very cookie-cutter approach to management that fails to create diversity.
If your friends' management is similar then it doesn't surprise me that they left the field. The job I'm leaving made me question on a weekly basis whether I belonged in software engineering despite management telling me I was a good engineer repeatedly. And I'm a lot more interested in the types of problems UI/UX designers solve than I am in solving traditional software problems.
Luckily I'm moving to a company where management is less "technical" and more intuitive/connected. If it pans out I'll stay in the field.
> Sure you can point to a couple of ‘bad apples’
> you can point to a couple of ‘bad apples’, but you can point to far more examples where those ideologies drive organisations decision making from the top down.
I sure would love to see some citations for those opinions.
I would say that's a bit...extreme. lol.
Even where you see girls excel more at verbal and arts and boys at STEM, how much of that is due to what they were encouraged to be interested in and spend their time on when younger?
I don't remember exactly which study it was, but there's evidence that in some cultures (IIRC China?) girls do better than boys at math. That suggests there's a significant cultural/social element at play.
Regarding preferences: boys and girls show distinct preferences for toys and style of play from an early age (basically, before they could possibly be socialized). Even chimpanzee children show distinct toy preferences by sex (and they match human toy preferences).
Speaking anecdotally: I often speculate that the only people who could possibly believe that boys and girls do not have fundamentally different preferences are the childless. I live in Portland, OR. This is one of the most liberal, politically correct subcultures in the entire world. My kids are enrolled in a program at the local park and the person administering the program made sure to specify their gender pronouns. They had a discussion about the gender of a species of worm that is a hermaphrodite. And yet, everywhere I go, the boys are into monster trucks and super heroes and the girls are into dolls and princesses.
As the culture wars have heated up over the last few years, I have started asking parents we encounter about how they socialized their kids. Basically ever single one tells the same story: we went out of our way to make everything as non-gendered as possible, but our boy wanted to play with trucks and our girl wanted to play with dolls.
Come on! If you actually open the paper, https://michaelfergusonphd.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/sex-d...
You will see that the "total interactions" with boy toys is the same for male and female. You might say: No, the women's one is lower. Well, that's what error bars are for. Error bars tell you: Be honest, you actually don't know. So for all intents and purposes they are equal. It's also surprising that they are comparing humans and monkeys, but the don't use the same metric. The paper for humans uses "Mean seconds of play-time", but the study for monkeys had to come up with a new metric "total interactions" to achieve a similar looking graph. Why?
For the plush toy, the female result was 1.5 minutes, ... but the standard deviation was 3.8 minutes ... so ... what does that tell us? It tells me, design a better experiment!
Here's a better methodology: Take 2 "gendered" toys with accelerometers and take 200 monkeys one-by-one, with trackers. Then automatically measure (in a fully blind study) how long each monkey spends which each type of toy presented. I'm not saying the effect does not exist. But this paper does not show it does.
[1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-choc...
But it was still exclusively guys spending their free time in the computer labs.
Socially influenced preferences aren't necessarily a bad thing in theory. Personally, as a woman in software, I loathe that we socialize our children to have different interests based on gender even when their aptitudes are the same. It means that a lot of girls who might find STEM careers fulfilling don't even consider investigating let alone pursuing them, because they think of STEM as being "not for me".
Secondly, there could very well be some evolutionary basis for differences in preferences between men and women when it comes to liking "things" vs "people" (in addition to culture being a factor - just want to note I'm not trying to argue there is no cultural factor here). I am currently reading a book called "Behave" by Robert Sapolsky that in one part discusses a study where they put chimps in a room full of toys and observed which type of toy the male and female chimps went for. If my memory is correct, the female chimps more often went for the dolls and the male chimps went for the cars (I don't have the name/authors of the study handy, but I can dig it up. The fact that Sapolsky, a respected primatologist from Stanford, thinks this study is legitimate enough to mention in his book indicates to me that the study doesn't have any serious flaws). Clearly the female chimps were never culturally predisposed to prefer playing with dolls, so there is something else going on here.
Nothing special about China there: girls do better than boys at math pretty much everywhere. But the difference (in girls' favor) is even bigger at verbal tasks. The article talks about this specifically, and the implications from it.
Aside from that, sure, preferences are influenced by both society and by biology. The article states that directly:
> "It’s simplistic and scientifically untrue to say it’s one or the other."
Pinker tends to lean to the side of nature rather than nuture in debate around gender influence. The article assumes the readers believe the same. Perhaps Pinker's prior research justifies this language. But after reading Cordola Fine's works, which I think definitely throws salt on nature assumptions, id call assuming this language are held by most to be very bold of Pinker.
Susan Pinker Vs Cordelia Fine:
She's getting to a point I'd like to emphasize. A new pregnancy changes a woman into what's almost a third kind of biological human: a mother. A father? Meh.
But meanwhile, our economic paymasters can only promise a new mother "If you take an unpaid 6 mos absence, we'll probably hire you back for a full-time (only) position". This seems unfair at best, and diabolical at worst. But that's the US.
I'm struggling to get across my true thoughts on this, but I think we should pay more attention to the mother-child dynamic.
It is tough, because headlines and short articles like this are easy to twist into misguided views. Too easy. And yet, I definitely want these fields researched. I can't imagine anyone doesn't want it. Having the patience to get real answers is not easy. :(
More often than not, today, we teach each other that there can't possibly be a reason -- other than "taught to".
Let's put it this way: such talk wont make you very popular in the mainstream media and progressive urban folks. At best you have a chance on FOX and in the Bible Belt.
Could there be intrinsic differences? I don't know anything that precludes them. The evidence seems fairly strong otherwise, though. Lots of it. More, most of the people rhetorically asking about the differences, do so in a way that is clearly not in good faith.
Now, I am a little worried about the damage for people looking in good faith. But, by and large, the evidence doesn't appear to support this actually being a problem. Most of the complaints about not being "very popular" with these sorts of views are fairly weak when put into perspective of actual persecution.
Edit: Forgot to explicitly answer. I meant today. I have seen a lot of search for intrinsic differences. I'll try and pay more attention for a bit. I realize confirmation bias can easily paint what I see.
I happen to assume them, based on everything we know about biology and various species, and how human life on earth developed for several thousands of years.
I also know that it's difficult to take any grants and have any sort of career outside of fringe right-wing sponsored institutions if your research is to chance upon any of such "intristic differences" today, so I take modern findings in soft-sciences on the matter with a grain of salt.
That is, even assuming there are differences, I'd imagine they would be slight and barely noticeable except at the extremes. Think Olympic running. Obvious differences, but rather close. Especially when measured against what most people can do.