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Comment by gphil | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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

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.

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.

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.

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