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Comment by hedgew | Hacker News Reader

The widely unacknowledged paradox is that eradication of sexism will actually increase occupational gender imbalances.

Gender equality and national wealth will lead people to choose careers that most appeal to them. The likely truth is that most women would rather work as nurses and teachers than as programmers and engineers.

Equal opportunity causes unequal results.

Until we accept this, we'll waste most of our time fighting shadows instead of actual sexism.

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Remember the stackoverflow poll results that came up last week? One of the interesting stats I saw was that the highest percentage of women in programming came from India, at 15%. The lowest percentage was from Sweden at 2%.

There was a Reddit discussion on why it seemed that countries with higher gender equality yielded less female software engineers. Personally, I think it makes sense; it seems that given more career options, women generally may prefer other fields over software. I dont think there is anything sexist about that observation (I would choose professional footballer over engineer).

As an anecdote, I once had a round-table style english class in college where most of the 20 students in the class were social-justice type folks, (bunch of Gryffindors). The topic of gender inequality in STEM came up, and some of the ladies were complaining about underrepresented women. I found it ironic that all of the ladies in the class were English, Sociology, or Psychology. None had interests in engineering ("oh, it's not for me"), but they still thought there should be more women because it conformed to some imaginary principle of equality. I think that's stupid.

A stack overflow poll isn't a reliable source of data about enginners, fwiw.

> The likely truth is that most women would rather work as nurses and teachers than as programmers and engineers.

How could you possibly know this? Even if this is true in today's society, there's no way to know whether or not it would be true in a counterfactual society where gender equality exists.

I think the natural tendency for most women to care for other people is determined by their usually higher level of oxytocin than men...

EDIT: the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone

I think this an example of the overly-simplistic logic that kept women from voting. It still happens today, CNN pulled a sexist story that attempted to link women's ovulation with the way they would vote. http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/25/after-reader-backlash-cnn-...

I am not talking about suffrage, but in a usual scenario a woman has "higher level of progesterone" than man is a _fact_, isn't it?

EDIT: the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone

My understanding was that you were trying to draw a causal relationship between levels of progesterone in a person's bloodstream and their tendency to care for other people. Further, I understood you to state that women have higher levels of progesterone in their system and, thusly, care more for others.

It's the causal relationship between progesterone levels and how much people care for others that I find repugnant. It's reductive and simplistic and, I might add, entirely untrue. I do not believe that a side effect of progesterone ingestion is "increased caring for others".

but a higher level of oxytocin in a mother's body is directly related to the survival chance of the mother's immediate offspring -- this is not a _casual_ relationship, correct?

EDIT 1: sorry if my comment makes you feel repugnant...my original intention is just to state what I think as fact per the issue in question...

EDIT 2: my mistake...the hormone related to care-giving behavior is oxytocin and not progesterone...but still, woman usually has higher level of oxytocin than man...

Many suffragettes used the same kind of logic, but to argue the other end of the issue. When women were agitating for the vote, in many cases their rationale was that women brought a different perspective and set of sensibilities than that of men. Some even argued that women were more moral.

So conversely, you can't argue the opposite, i.e. that gender equality would lead to women making identical career choices as men.

Nope, you're right. I can't argue the opposite and I'm not. I'm just sick of all the generalizations that get made on HN with no evidence or supporting data.

You could study human behavior in as many different cultures as possible to discover universalities, or study children before they are influenced by culture.

Both of which have been done extensively.

There are actually studies on this. It turns out that the more egalitarian and more wealthy a society, the more unequal the outcomes[1].

Talked about in "Brainwash", a Norwegian documentary[2].

[1] http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&uid=2007...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

This desperately needs some kind of sourcing. In my opinion it is way too over-the-top to take seriously without some factual backing.

Personally, it sounds like sexist male wish fulfillment and I will be very surprised if there is any factual basis for this idea.

Yes, the result is surprising to say the least, but it is apparently well-researched, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9374516

I think one explanation for the data is that in less affluent societies, there is more economic pressure for women to go into fields that do not match their preferences.

Sadly somewhere along the line Gender Balance became the same as Gender Equality. While it is easy to measure it is a foolish metric since it presumes women and men are the same. The sooner we realize that "equal but different" is OK the sooner we can address the real issues.

I agree.

What's the point of fighting all the time for gender equality without knowing what it really means of "gender equality"?

I mean, "gender equality" (or any other type of equality) is not correct and just by itself, and might not be manifested only through equal numbers of both gender representations...Gender equality might have some asymmetric effects to many other facades of the society...But what are those effects and how they matter?

Sure, equality would be comforting to everyone's intuitive feeling, but we need to get this world work in a better way than those personal intuitive feeling alone in the end...

You're right, but feminism (and leftism in general) is guided by Social Marxism and Critical Theory and those are tools being used to divide and conquer the people. So it won't stop.

But yes you're right, look at Sweden with their +70% female nurses and +70% male engineers in university. Also watch Hjarnevask to have an idea of the strength of the hallucination and reality-denial that SM and CT provoke on people. Also watch how many HNers will instantly downvote this upon reading it because it provokes cognitive dissonance on them (hence the lack of arguments).

What? Nobody accepts that because the trends of the last half century or so contraindicate your comment.

I looked this up, it's called "gender essentialism". Here's an article on gender segregation from Wikipedia that mentions this idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_segregation

This is just another way to make the gender discrimination we see today seem acceptable. There's no scientific basis for this idea, it's strikes me as clearly backward.

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