Sex differences in work preferences among gifted men and women | Hacker News Reader

Sex differences in work preferences among gifted men and women

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29 pointslopkeny12ko33 comments

Does anyone have the study where this originated?

This chart is quite difficult to read, and it's not clear how the data was collected or what amount of overlap exists between the people in each category. Also, what were the sample sizes? Are the men and women in approximately the same careers? These are preferences; were individuals asked to rank preferences or did they rate each preference independently? What does a standard deviation mean here (units)?

I take the display to mean that, for example, the sampled profoundly gifted women prefer to have satisfaction in their work much more than the sampled profoundly gifted men. Or does it mean that women rank satisfaction over other items more than men but they really do care equally about satisfaction in a nominal sense?

Can anyone else chime in on their interpretation?

EDIT: Link to study

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00169862231175831

For interpretation: https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/sex-differences-in-wo...

(seems like paulg got the chart from this guy's tweet, which refers to the article I link above, which is informed by the study you linked to)

I find this kind of data interesting and hope we can pick out what’s biological and what’s social/cultural.

It seems like there used to be more of these “look at these interesting results” type discussions but are fewer now that just posting things can upset people and gather lots of folks meta debating instead of digging into knowledge development and understanding.

Isn’t everything biological? How can something magically only be cultural? There is a root of behavior and that’s biology. Men are on average larger, more aggressive, stronger, etc. of course this would influence culture.

So how do you explain things that vary from culture to culture, or that drift over time?

Such as?

North and South korea are a striking example of very different cultures, despite very similar biology.

gender roles such as division of labor has shifted over time, for one.

men wearing makeup has a long and fascinating history from ancient times, to the Middle Ages, renaissance, 19th and 20th centuries, and the modern resurgence.

Trousers for men, dresses for women.

clearly, togas -- essentially dresses -- mean that the Ancient Romans were almost entirely 100% women

"In early 17th-century Europe, high heels were a sign of masculinity and high social status." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-heeled_shoe

I don’t think only, but can be a factor.

For example, I think lots of fashion is some factor of culture and not biology. That’s why costumes are different in Germany than China.

And there are things that are biology (height, etc). It’s interesting to find what’s nature and what’s nurture.

Relevant study:

Look up the gender equality paradox in Nordic countries. Nordic countries are the most egalitarian countries in the world that offer the best equal opportunities for men and women. The initial conclusions were that as Nordic countries made opportunities for either gender more equal the differences in choice for careers between genders became more pronounced.

There's various cooked interpretations of the result from agenda based groups but those are the initial results. This person illustrates the whole study the best:

https://youtu.be/_iudkPi4_sY?si=DPtr46-vw94sa70v

It's hard to draw a definitive conclusion from the study due to all the controversy and various parties cooking the numbers for their own agenda but take from it what you will, but the initial conclusion was that most of this is biological.

Perhaps most interesting (or rather surprising) to me are the ones were it goes an opposite way (whether male or female that more often holds the preference) according to whether it's the 'Top STEM doctoral students' class, or 'Profoundly gifted top 0.01%'.

Is that because of STEM or academic career inclination vs. general giftedness? Or is it just pointing to a small sample and not statistically significant?

I would surmise that a great deal of this is biological, but a radical gender theorist would likely rebut that these differences are due to social conditioning. He would say that men/males are conditioned to take more risk, conditioned to desire working with _things_, and conditioned to desire prestige in their jobs.

How would one go about designing a study that eliminates the variable of social conditioning when trying to study sociological differences between the sexes, or is that even important to indicate these sentiments are/aren't linked to biology?

Here's one study that tried to eliminate that variable, by using rhesus monkeys:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

Thank you! I have to say, I find the gender-neutral toy layout here in CA stores very annoying when I go shopping for children's toys. It's bizarre to me that the state has mandated it, and I was really disappointed when Newsom glossed over this question in his interview with Maher last week.

Here is the original source: https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/sex-differences-in-wo...

I thought Paul didn't respect behavioral psychology.[0] Guess it depends on the bias its pushing.

[0]https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1476550040135024648?lang=da

With this tweet, he’s bringing attention to a particular set of data and not supposing any conclusions. Not quite the same as the “replication crisis” he mentions in that tweet.

What do you think of the data being presented here?

That's quite the jump to get to that conclusion.

If anyone thinks you learn something from this type of exercise, do a brief thought experiment. Who will say they value more highly having a job at a company with protections against sexual harrassment: an attractive young female, or a middle-aged overweight male.

As a middle aged heterosexual male I consider sexual harassment from hot young babes to be highly highly offensive and disgusting.

Sexual harassment is largely irrelevant to a "middle-aged overweight male". You can find it offensive and disgusting, but if you never experience it, it's not going to have any impact when you choose between two job offers.

I find it more offensive if it's a hot babe doing the harassment. Someone told me I might be homosexual but that was just even more offensive.

Also you added the word "overweight". I never said I was overweight. You calling me fat? I'm Offended.

Yea, he casually added that term as if people wouldn't notice it. High earning, attractive, middle aged men are often targets for sexual harassment by women but it is not taken seriously at all.

tbf I was kidding, but his response was straight up malicious. You're not wrong though, that's a real issue.

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