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Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

Getting into gender biases is a touchy subject to many but I would highlight that (and this is all generalities, please don't assume this applies to everyone who identifies as this gender) men tend to be a lot better at single task focus while women tend to be a lot better at multi-task focusing. I'm in an extreme camp here as I'm a man with ADHD and thus tend to hyperfocus on tasks (or be unable to latch onto them) to the detriment of other tasks.

But I'd actually disagree about gender being the primary drive of this - I'd instead state that the "young" (vaguely defined) tend to be more willing to invest everything singlemindedly compared to the "mature". With an understanding that gender also seems to contribute this but also contributes to maturity with women tending to mature to the idea of having a family at a younger age then men.

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Having a family doesn't make men work less. It's more usual for the opposite to happen.

One of my many disagreements with feminism is that it has somehow persuaded itself that this is somehow a privilege for men, and not an intolerable and sometimes literally fatal burden.

Feminists I know (including myself) consider that the "patriarchal society" is a trap for both gender.

There are other brands of feminism, of course.

> One of my many disagreements with feminism is that it has somehow persuaded itself that this is somehow a privilege for men, and not an intolerable and sometimes literally fatal burden.

It definitely is a privilege, as a whole. People bring up workplace fatalities, and compare the experience of poor or working-class men vs women in general. The experience of a working class woman in this country is absolutely worse than that of a working class man, but both are very bad, because our country is not built for our working class or poor, regardless of gender.

If you compare women vs men in the same class, men undeniable have privilege.

Become a roofer for your entire working life, blow your back and knees out at 45, and tell me that's a privilege. Or maybe tell the overwhelming majority of male homeless they simply squandered it.

I don't know why the possibility of "Yes, men encounter unique problems" is met with derision. I'm not dismissing or trying to minimize problems women encounter, and life at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap sucks in general. But men absolutely don't enjoy some sort of privilege there; it's a grind and it will literally consume you unless you can come up with an out regardless of sex or creed. That suckage is gong to be different depending on circumstances, but I will say nobody really cares, good luck, and can you please keep it to yourself in polite company, because it's gross and makes people uncomfortable.

Seems quite easily deniable to me. Men dominate school dropouts, suicides, prisoners, and the homeless. All of these issues disproportionately affect the working class and other disadvantaged groups, so that strawman can go back in its box for another conversation.

On overwork specifically, fathers are the most likely to work overtime and swap shifts - more so than men without children (and women in general). When it's a choice even other men don't make, it should be obvious even to the most frothy ideologue that there's a unique pressure on fathers in this regard. They're giving something up that literally everyone else finds valuable.

I work less with a family. Having to watch the kid means I can't put in extra hours.

Last I looked into this, the whole single focus vs multitasking gender split was a complete urban myth with no scientific background whatsoever. Do you happen to know of any studies to back this?

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