Very nice, I'm missing the city names though :)
Crazy how little women there are, it's like for our entire recorded history we have been ignoring 50% of our potential. Let's hope it gets a lot more mixed!
Crazy how little women there are, it's like for our entire recorded history we have been ignoring 50% of our potential. Let's hope it gets a lot more mixed!
The men were in charge of public affairs of the family, while women were in charge of private and domestic affairs.
It was only recently the basic unit has been further subdivided into individuals, which required many to rely on institutional support on matters that used to be within the family, eg education, pensions, restaurants, clothing shops, apartment complexes, birth control.
The truly ignored throughout history were the peasants and serfs. Most men of significance were from aristocratic or upper class upbringings.
The divide is not between men and women, but haves vs have nots.
What I find most interesting as I explore history and civilisation is the marginal web that supports what is "notable". Almost every breakthough has a "revisionist" version of someone else who made a simultaneous advance. Or allegedly had the limelight stolen from them. Every Crick and Watson have their Rosalind Franklin. For every Charles Babbage and Alan Turing there's an Ada Lovelace or Mavis Batey. And yet those are at least "noted". Who and what lies behind those figures in the third and fourth rows of history's group photograph, "fame"?
Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters is first impressions, “clout”/fame, and standing above the crowd.
In today’s society we no longer value things like domestic affairs, honor, integrity, and humbleness. Now we try to maximise visibility, fame, and brand.
There is probably a huge forgotten mass of people who humbly did their work, improved their local communities as they needed, and raised the next generation. Those who specifically seek fame will easily outcompete these humble people.
I think you're right about all those things J7ke. Values have really shifted. Yet that still leaves strange unanswered questions that puzzle me.
Most all of the intelligent people I know are deeply unhappy about it. And I've worked with a good few "famous" people. They were all unhappy too. Now we're all older, and great levellers like health, children and life fulfilment have come into play those that survived (drugs and more money than they could handle) are happier being "nobody" again (or at least getting recognised occasionally on the bus by strangers who say "Didn't you used to be...?"). I actually think many who were "successful" and had their 15 minutes feel tricked. Even though they "made it", in the sense of "Being there", they were never there. The cake was a lie.
By contrast, my father and grandfather's generation lived through awful, awful times, in wars, rationing, brothers and sisters died, and they were certainly never "on" the TV or Internet. If they had recognition it was a medal and a parade. However they seemed to go to their graves with a sense of having lived.
What does it mean then, when we talk about "what matters"?
Is "what matters" a cruel trick and illusion? Perhaps a way to rob us of the ordinary well-lived life that really does matter?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville
Worth noting:
"In 1834 she became the first person to be described in print as a 'scientist'"
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
This is logic of capitalism. This is our society's justification for incredible differences in pay and wealth.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10793226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14282791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10451733
Why do rich people work?
They don't need to escape the cotton fields and sweatshops.
Slaves worked the American cotton fields - why did they work with no chance of membership in the elite?
I'm pretty sure people in 1860 justified slavery with the same argument "It is the only reason that our world has seen amazing advancements in science, technology and business."
> In December 1932 Einstein decided to leave Germany forever (he would never go back). It became obvious to Einstein that his life was in danger. A Nazi organization published a magazine with Einstein's picture and the caption “Not Yet Hanged” on the cover. There was even a price on his head.
He certainly had an uphill struggle and wasn't simply handed everything because of some innate privilege.
Of course, it doesn't disprove being born in favourable circumstances can and will affect your quality of life. But this list seems largely indifferent to how much money or power daddy has.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01369-4/tables/3
Potential is cheap and abundant. Using it is what changes the world.
Being recognized for it is what changes the world.
Virtually no-one knows who came up with the paperclip (Johan Vaaler), and still it is one of the world-changing inventions.
Way harder to fix because no one wants to do affirmative action for young boys born in trailer parks.
I don't think it helps to have a contest about which forms of discrimination are more impactful, because they all add up.
Gender, race, social class, within which nation's borders one is born... they all add up, and it gets worse if you "lose" in more than one category.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality
But there are cases when the comparison should be made, and I hint at it in my first sentence. We do spend more effort on gender equality than racial equality because, frankly, white women have more power and value in our society than black men or women. For example the #MeToo movement was triggered and driven by the injustices done to powerful, privileged white women.
Sadly, social justice is driven too often by self-serving interests rather than social justice itself.
But it often seems like some are easily overlooked. When I was born into a poor working family in Poland, my father's monthly salary was worth 15$.
When I was studying I had to carefully plan things like bread in my budget, and I was eating with homeless people regularly. Yet, I have preserved, got a job as a programmer and life has been relatively easy from that point.
On the grand scale of things I consider myself lucky. But it's tilting when I hear German doctor raised in upper middle class loudly complaining about how underprivilaged she is compared to me because I'm a man.
For example in france there was a real movement to make school accessible for "every citizen regarding of race, gender and class" during the 3rd republic. But still the new trend now in america is to promote "black-only school". WTF.
Sorry for trolling especially since we don't disagree but sometimes reading american forums is a constant facepalms i just cant' help.
I'm so sick of shit like this. It's so intellectually offensive, I can't be polite any longer.
It's so incredibly rude to dismiss so many great women just because you didn't hear about them, as if being famous is the ultimate test of potential. As if being a famous author or famous SOMETHING is the ultimate goal in this life.
I'll use my mother as an example. She's a truly great woman. She'll never be famous to you (she has no such vain desires anyway), but she's a great human being, much greater than you'll ever be, for she rejects DEMOGRAPHIC quotas, she's honest, and compassionate, and pious, and loving, and fun, and courageous, and every day she lives up to her potential and more, and she inspires her family and friends to do the same. She does what she does and she loves doing it and she does it well.
And how willfully ignorant it is to ignore the different powers and motivations unique to men and to women.
If you think there's a problem with so few famous women, then that's a personal problem, that's a you problem. You are the problem, because you are imposing your own personal beliefs and personal standards onto women.
https://ideas.ted.com/you-can-help-fix-wikipedias-gender-imb...
https://www.wikiloveswomen.org/
There must be other initiatives if others have links to share in this thread.
Sometimes I wonder whether the entire contemporary American obsession with race and gender has been deliberately and cynically manufactured or at least blown up beyond all proportion to keep everyone's eyes away from class, the most formidable societal barrier almost everywhere, including societies that are ethnically fairly homogenous.
It turns out that if you look for notability or exceptional attributes you will get mostly men. This is due to biology and essentially the whole reason males and sexual reproduction exists.
This doesn't mean that being male will give you a better chance of being exceptional or notable, though. Quite the opposite, in fact. The bar is lower for women because simply being a woman is considered notable precisely because there are so few notable women.
But definitely not 50%.
Well, most all had a mom...
Off topic: I imagine parenting must feel extra weird. :)