Comment by arbutus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arbutus | Hacker News Reader

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There's a piece of info in that article that I think might be a part of the problem:

For men, the results were as expected. Hunks were more likely to be called for an interview if they included a photo. Ugly men were better off not including one. However, for women this was reversed. Attractive females were less likely to be offered an interview if they included a mugshot.

Without knowing much about the person who wrote the article (as it's an anonymous guest post), I know a lot of women, myself included at points in the past, can be very harsh and judgemental towards other women. There's an attitude among a lot of women, especially in youth, that other women are too emotional, gossips, obsessed with looks, and so on. Many grow out of this, and some don't. If there is any real psychological difference between women and men, I think this sort of unnecessary competition, jealousy, or general discomfort towards other people of our same gender is where it lies. I'm sure there's some interesting studies on this kind of thing out there somewhere.

I reckon sexual competition is at play here. Guys generally fare better in the mating game by associating with other good looking men. Assuming heterosexuality here for simplicity's sake, being a good looking guy in a group of good looking guys increases the chance that one or more good looking women will hang out with the group. Anecdotally men succeed in the mating game when mating as a group to group. Dunno why that is the case. Maybe a larger group communicates presence of a powerful male that females may try to vie for.

For attractive women, there generally is no benefit from being part of a group of attractive women, since it doesn't materially increase propinquity with attractive men as far as I can tell, but it does materially increase competition for the alpha male.

Basically, mating-wise, men win more often when they cooperate and women win more often when they compete. Anyone know of any science to support this observation or am I way out on a limb here?

Looks like just hypothesizing, even when admitting as much is downvote worthy.

Another hypothesis worth considering is that intrasexual selection tactics of women are tolerated in the workplace but those of men are not.

Across many species and many societies, male intrasexual selection takes places as overt direct competition (hand-to-hand combat, sports, male elephant seals). With females (again across species and across societies), intrasexual selection is more often indirect due to female choice.

Direct competition is observable and easily addressed. Indirect competition is not by virtue of being indirect. This means that the modern workplace does not afford the conditions for men to compete much if at all except via promotion for doing good work. There are not the same mechanisms and norms in place in many modern workplaces to direct energy spent on indirect competition to more productive outlets.

I expect another downvote here too because acknowledging the existence of differences between genders is only frowned upon when talking about humans, but whatever.

You aren't noting an intrinsic difference between genders, only a cultural one.

I've lived in North America, South America and Asia. In my experience, these observations span at least those three places I've lived in. The behavior of men in the workplace in Asia and to a lesser degree South America is worse than the major counterparts in the US, but only because those societies are more patriarchal and that behavior is not as frowned upon.

After far as the workplace behavior of women, I've found that it's approximately the same, but perhaps more muted in Asian cultures.

Again, all anecdotal here. So take it with a grain of salt. What has been your experience?

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