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Comment by simula67 | Hacker News Reader

Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. Indeed, it appeared that it was not “diversity” (having equal numbers of men and women) that mattered for a team’s intelligence, but simply having more women. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at “mindreading” than men.

I wonder how this article would have been received if it stated : 'Teams with more men performed better. This can be explained by the fact that men, on average, are better at solving certain problems than women'. I almost never hear about a scientific study where they discover that men are better than women at something.

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I thought I'd add a few tidbits here on gender differences.

I play women's football and coach high school guys football. Football is one of the most teamwork-dependent sports out there. Everyone has to be doing his job every single play. There's no way for one player to carry the team.

Before I started coaching guys' football, I had heard consistently from other coaches in my women's league that women are way easier to coach than men in the game of football. Reasons given included less attitude, less individualism, less ego, more willing to work together, etc. When I started coaching high school ball, this was exactly the case. So much of my time was wasted beating the individualism out of these boys and getting them to play for each other, not themselves.

Maybe it's that football attracts a certain type of male. But I think women might be more naturally disposed to working on a team than men on average.

I'm pretty sure Manning and other great QBs were capable of carrying entire teams. Not to argue your point, with which I agree, but just saying :)

I'm going to say sure, great players can make their teams better. Much more so in fact. However it takes more than just one person to be able to win games.

Look at Favre. Great in Green Bay, dismal on the Jets, pretty darn good in Minnesota. Differences were the teams/line/wr's were better in Green Bay and Minnesota. If you are getting sacked every third play, you aren't going to be able to carry your team like in other sports.

Also Adrian Peterson (before all the legal issues) was amazing before last year. All of a sudden parts of the offensive line of MN starts imploding and he goes from best in the league to 'just' really good. If it only takes 2 players on a team to bring a player from almost breaking one of the greatest records in football to average, there is something to be said there.

Note I'm a vikings fan, hence my MN examples.

I don't see how even an exceptional quarterback can be effective if the offensive line and other backs don't block consistently well, or if the receivers don't consistently run the right routes, escape their coverage, actually catch the ball, and run well with it after the catch, or if the running backs don't find the holes the line must create, make good cuts, deflect tackles, and never fumble, or if the place kicker and/or punter don't consistently deliver when one of those things goes wrong, or if despite doing all that stuff right the defense never makes a stop.

I agree. Offense can't do anything without a solid line. QB would be sacked every play and RBs would be tackled for loses all day long.

Talk to any football coach and they'll tell you how critical the line is to the entire offense. Our old QB used to cook a special dinner for all her o-line every season as a thank-you.

Without an offensive line? Yeah right.

Poor o-line. Their importance to recognition ratio is probably one of the greatest injustices in the sport.

A huge part of a quarterback's success is their ability to organize their teammates--through leadership and knowledge--for the best chance of success on every play.

First, women playing football have a common enemy: the evil men who tell them they can't, the patriarchy! A common enemy is great for team dynamics.

I can't imagine a spot on the team is sought after by girls the same way it is for guys. When I was in H.S. the football players were the top, they were kings. They had special privileges, they were treated better by teachers, it was always the other guys fault if they picked a fight, etc. They had fought for and earned social status and they were constantly fighting to keep it. The worst player on the team was still part of the team which earned them at minimum social status and physical protection. They also had enormous expectations of winning, of making the playoffs, they were "representing the school."

There were other implications of football as well, like college scholarships. Being good could have a drastic effect on their quality of life in the long term. I don't want to diminish what the girls are doing, but I don't see any way they have the same incentives or pressures that the guys have.

"I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion." - Mia Hamm (For who do know who she is, she is a ex-US soccer captain)

Mia Hamm only proves my point: female athletes don't face the pressures or incentives that males face. When she was playing women's professional soccer in the U.S. the league even existing was considered a success. Her salary peaked at $93,000. Peak salary for the WNBA in 2013 was $107,000. As of 2014 being on an NFL practice squad for a season pays a minimum of $102,000. Being signed to the team pays a minimum over $400k, the max salary for 2014 is $22,000,000.

In 2009 the average salary for Women's Professional Soccer players was $32,000. We can idealize female athletes all day, but they simply don't have the same incentives as men to be selfish so it's not a telling comparison.

Think about this, the University of Michigan is willing to pay the football coach ten times what they pay their own president[0].

[0] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2014/12/18/universit...

I don't think your incentives argument is actually valid. In order for a player to be, say, drafted by an NFL team, he has to be able to work with the team. Teams routinely blacklist players from the draft that have poor sportsmanship or teamwork skills.

Furthermore, when I started coaching guys, we had a terrible football team. 1-7. There was no school pride, barely anyone attended the games. To the school, the team was a joke. The only players we had on the field were the guys that loved the sport would tough out a losing season. And we still had the same issues with teamwork/ego/individualism as with winning seasons.

Individual success for a member of an NFL team is the difference between $22,000,000 and $405,000. Per year. That's a massive incentive to act as an individual.

It great that you enjoy what you do, but a better comparison would be kickball teams, because everybody's there for the same reasons.

You've created a false dichotomy between "individual success" and "being a team player." Part of being an exceptional individual football player is being a good team player, which will be reflected in salaries.

Your argument has gotten incredibly tangential at this point and it's clear that you just want to pick a fight about the mens vs womens sports. (Backhanded comment comparing women's football to "kickball" not appreciated.)

Have a good day sir.

Then you've almost completely misunderstood me. My whole argument is that men's vs. women's football is a bad area for teamwork comparisons because of the wildly differing cultures, costs, risks and rewards involved. And what's a team sport that both men and women play in the same way where everybody has about the same amount to gain/lose? Kickball.

It's not a backhanded comment nor an insult, it's not tangential because it's my central argument. But I suppose we'll agree have to agree to disagree.

> First, women playing football have a common enemy: the evil men who tell them they can't, the patriarchy! A common enemy is great for team dynamics.

^^^ Really? This is a rather immature statement.

Also I don't really see how your point relates to my argument that women have a natural penchant for teamwork.

I guess playing because you're passionate about the sport isn't sufficient 'incentive?'

Women's football has pressures and hardships that men's football doesn't have. For one, teams are not affiliated with any school so we have to buy our own equipment, rent the field, pay for traveling across the country. I spent about 1K every year playing football (and have spent a few more Ks paying for three sports injury surgeries).

We all have full-time jobs, and many have families and children. Most of my free time from January to July is taken up by weightlifting, practicing, watching film, and traveling for games. So a typical practice day for me looks like 8-4:30 programming job, 5pm get home, 5:30 leave for practice, 9pm get home, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat.

No fame. No social status++. If anything, you're making an argument that female football players have a more "pure" reason behind playing football. (Though I would never make that claim, so as to insult our male counterparts that are just as passionate about the game.)

> If anything, you're making an argument that female football players have a more "pure" reason behind playing football. (Though I would never make that claim, so as to insult our male counterparts that are just as passionate about the game

This is -exactly- what I'm saying. Exactly. But I would add that for males struggling for social status is a very old and pure pursuit in and of itself.

I believe everything you said is correct. This is still a non issue.

What the GP was complaining about is the political climate where it is natural for a scientist to openly state that women are better than men at X, while it would be career suicide to claim that men are better than women at Y.

I agree with the statement on political climate. No argument there.

Counter example: I worked with a woman who was such a team player that after literally every email she sent me she would walk over to my desk and disturb me to check that I got it and get my response. Maybe she had only ever used a one way email system. I could have done with a little less teamwork in that situation.

Just for clarity: which kind of football are you talking about?

I don't think you'd even get published for presenting any result that runs counter to the feminist orthodoxy in academia. Or that any career-minded researcher would ever take the risk of being labeled as misogynist.

With that said, the result itself is interesting enough. We know intuitively that women tend to make consensus decisions, and men are more individualist. That consensus building leads to measurable results in the quality of group decisions is very interesting. I wonder how those results would hold in nonWestern cultures, where men are group-oriented already.

Keep in mind that there is a slight bit of bias built in to the study. It provides evidence women are more adept at making group decisions (confirming our intuition), but would leave us to assume that a good group decision is the best decision. What about the decision of a single leader (where we'd expect men to have an advantage)? So an interesting follow-up to this study might be to compare the quality of group versus individual decisions.

A few decades ago there were papers and popular reports like that. They were fashionable then. This is what is fashionable now. It will change back. Then back again.

Having highly-skilled women is a status symbol for companies in some cities, particularly in NYC. They're simply harder and more expensive to attract - e.g. women without children get paid 30% more than men with the same education in NYC.

In other words:

More success -> able to attract and afford more of the expensive status symbols like high-skilled women.

Not too sure about a cause and effect in the other direction though.

women without children get paid 30% more than men with the same education in NYC.

I've never heard that before, and some quick research doesn't seem to back it up.

US wide, recent female graduates with the same education as men earn 82% of their salary.[1]

[1] http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-th...

That study doesn't take into account children, which are a huge factor, I would imagine. In households with children it is common for the woman to assume the role as the primary caregiver while the man assumes the role of the provider. As such, I imagine the woman likely feels less pressure and has less time to pursue a higher pay, while inversely the man feels pressure to increase his pay to fulfill his assumed role in the family.

The point was about NYC in particular, so US-wide statistics are not particularly relevant. And the original point was also about highly skilled workers without children. Your article is a study about 1 year after graduation (from undergrad).

Yes I understand that. Hence my request for evidence.

The person you originally responded to provided one in another comment (which seems to suggest 20%, not 30%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8912097

> female graduates ... earn 82% of their salary

That's wrong. By the AAUW's own numbers, the women in their study earned 93% of the men's salaries. Get the PDF. Scroll nearly to the end, look for the infographic and text with the 93% number. Personally, then, I split it in the middle, and I'd guess that an unbiased researcher might discover that women earn 96.5% of what men do.

The 82% number which the report pushes much more strongly is the difference _before_ womens' choices are taken into account.

The sad and disturbing part is that the AAUW (and most of modern feminism?) is pushing bad data for political gains and unfair preferences.

Actually the OP's own reference uses the 80% figure too[1]. Wikipedia says between 93% and 96% after controlling, though this isn't for graduates.[2]

It is worth noting that it shows a reverse pay gap in a very limited circumstance (some cities, under 30 with no kids).

[1] http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274...

[2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#United_States

women without children get paid 30% more than men with the same education in NYC.

Can you provide your source for this?

Sorry, I stand corrected. It's only 20% higher for young women than men in NYC.

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274...

To my original point -- lots of status symbol trends are conflating the cause and effect analysis of why teams with women are more successful.

Decent analysis won't be simple, and the analysis is a total failure if they simply ignore this strong factors.

Your source does not suggest that the cause of the salary differential has anything to do with smart women as business status symbols. The article states that the most likely source of the difference is education, that the women are better educated and therefore have higher salaries. Further it holds true more so in cities that have a knowledge based economy.

I, too, would like a citation on this (not that I disbelieve you, but I am curious what data and methodology were used to come up with it).

Are you comparing women without children against men in general, or women without children against men without children?

The study measured the ability to "mindread" and that sentence simply states that the women in the study performed better in that test. It's not a generalized statement about women.

The reason that articles seem to skew toward women in their overt descriptions of ability is that the prevailing presumption for decades has been that men are better at everything in business.

What's your point?

Isn't the idea that you can say one but not the other somewhat concerning?

> the idea that you can say one but not the other

If that was the parent's point then I wish he would have simply said that so that I could have disagreed, rather than whatever weaselly thing he wrote.

It probably wouldn't have been posted.

I did kind of feel as though they buried the lede when I read that part. Oh, communication and emotional intelligence make for better group dynamics? Snooze. Wait, women are categorically better group members, and are better at "mindreading"? Why is this not being researched further?

That's because controversy and polarization are the two biggest propaganda techniques to sell papers. Everyone knows that women are better at some things than guys and vice versa - men can't have babies and breast feed. Women can't have babies without sperm. Everything else is kind of a free for all

>I almost never hear about a scientific study where they discover that men are better than women at something.

Maybe women are just better than men at everything?

What about teams of, say, construction workers or lumber jacks?

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