The word "fact" is used extremely loosely in this article. While the first "fact" is in fact factual it then very quickly goes down the rabbit hole of personal opinion/perspective.
By the time we get to "fact 3" the author isn't even pretending any more and the "fact" is just a bizarre "you're a mathematician, you can solve this!!1!" point...
I'm happy to have a discussion about gender politics/equality, this article is just a very poor starting point for such a discussion.
This is nothing more than a rant, pretending to be something more.
Oh come on, just substitute rebuttal or response for fact. Do you dismiss a FAQ because the questions aren't actually asked frequently?! I think we should be discussing the actual content, not the form of presentation.
I'd say you dismissed the content, but I'd also say that, in your own words, you did it by going down "the rabbit hole of personal opinion/perspective" ...
Which is to say, you can't have much of a discussion if you only allow a recital of facts.
That's a common trope now in the political discourse. Since mere opinion journalism got almost completely consumed by partisan hackery, in the search for credibility and reader's trust a new crop of opinion writing has emerged - the "fact checking". Some time ago, you would write "my political opponents claim A, but my opinion is B, and here are the arguments supporting it". Now, you write: "Myth: A. Fact: B. Resolution: my political opponents are liars-liars-pants-on-fire".
So, that website pulls my least favorite "social justice" trick: pretending that every oppressive action is willful and premeditated. A lot of those issues are very, very subtle from a privileged POV, and it doesn't do a damn bit of good to pretend otherwise.
That web-site's tone is more than a little offensive. If you're going to sink that low that quickly I'm just going to outright refuse to have a discussion with you at all.
You might be interested that 'Derailing for Dummies' is nothing but a rhetorical escape hatch, used mainly to declare victory without actually making a logical argument.
That's an extremely shallow criticism of the article. It uses the Myth/Fact device which is quite common in articles, read then as Point/Counterpoint or something if you must. But let's talk about the content, not the style.
Common != right. Spam is common too :) If you write an opinion piece, there's nothing shameful in that, but it's not a fact. Word "fact" used to have meaning...
If you'd take a look you'd find that most any word is used extremely loosely. That's why dictionaries contain vague circumscriptions of words, often listing as many as 20 overlapping and/or separate word senses. Which is not to deny that people operate with the idea that words have a definite, literal meaning (perhaps even neatly delineated with necessary and sufficient conditions), it's just not the reality.
So yes, when a particular use of a word is common, it's very hard to argue it's not right, because there are no facts to point at, only an idea in someone's head (but who's to say who is right?), or some historical data (but languages change, and prima facie that's neither good nor bad).
The article is so shallow its self that I didn't feel it deserved my time for a deep criticism.
The author just stop justifying their points after the first couple. It is like they starting writing a really good piece, then got two "myths" in and then switched to random opinion mode.
Of course they do. Sexism is a very real issue. It is an issue that directly impacts people's lives.
However I've been to this rodeo before many times, and unfortunately if you get drawn into a discussion that is, at the foundation, based on personal opinion/perspective then you never get anywhere.
You need to try and stick to the science. When the study that the author used as their first point was published there was some great discussion that focused around the science of sexism.
Even the first fact is a bit biased. In controlled experiments that rarely go beyond changing names on resumes, you observe bias against women.
When you observe actual practice (with official and unofficial AA, hiring committees, and of course various statistical problems), you tend to observe bias in favor of women.
The benefit of an article like this is that it makes you think about your own actions in a new way. Your are making it about politics by choice. Considering how embedded sexism is that would be a bad choice. Does this match your own experience or not? Is your desire for facts merely confirmation bias for your own anecdotal views.
I've worked with a lot of programmers. Some of them have character flaws that make them unpleasant to work with. These character flaws do not affect their ability to "get the job done", but I'd rather not work with them and take steps to avoid doing so when possible.
From a link in the article:
Renowned conductors have asserted that female musicians have "smaller techniques," are more temperamental and are simply unsuitable for orchestras
I think that "simply unsuitable for orchestras" is vague and unquantifiable, but "smaller techniques" and "more temperamental" seem like assertions that could be challenged.
I have a general concept of what "smaller technique" means, is this something that is difficult to measure in a standard audition? Do female musicians in fact have "smaller technique" in general?
Are female musicians "more temperamental" than male musicians in general? Is there a male equivalent of a "diva", if not does that support the assertion that female musicians are more temperamental? Can you determine how temperamental someone is from a blind audition? Is temperament a valid reason to not hire someone?
To me, these senior conductors, scientists, etc. are asserting that, in general, women differ from men in certain dimensions that factor into hiring decisions but are not detectable in initial screening process.
If you really want to end sexism, I feel like these sorts of questions need to be asked and answered. My observation of the subject is that many people have an intuition, gut feeling, opinion formed from personal experience, etc. that men and women in general have innate differences that make men (or women) more suitable for certain functions.
The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist.
On the other hand, if gender differences do exist, then fighting gender bias is an eternal struggle that will never end. It is human nature to min / max and game the system.
Gender differences definitely do exist - the question to prove is if they are small or orthogonal to actual ability, or somehow relevant. For example, if a job position requires hauling refrigerators to customers, then the requirements do favor males, and a genetic subset of them with large body frames. The question is, if any of this actually applies to positions such as orchestra musician or mathematician?
There are many studies about significant differences between twins caused by a single gene expression. There are studies about differences in physical properties, mental abilities and inherited diseases linked to genes of ethnic/racial groups - I believe the Ashkenazi case is the most popular, but there are others. And there are numerous studies about male/female differences - for example, in expressiveness of agression, average temperament and different cooperate/defect-style decisions in game theory and econometrics experiments.
But it all is irrelevant - the whole concept of gender/race/etc equality is that it is grossly unfair to use group-membership to judge individuals, and we should evaluate each person on her/his own merits.
"The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist."
The problem is that if you really do proper scientific examination of mental capabilities between genders and races you might not like the results. Results might turn out to be ugly and incompatible with the modern democracy. What will we do then?
The commitment to equality should not be based on any assumption about 'mental capabilities'. Supposing (against the general scientific consensus) for the sake of argument, that you could show that women had on average less 'mental capabilities' why should that lessen our commitment to fair evaluations in employment or an equal consideration of interests?
We think people should be treated equally not because they are the same, but because they deserve equal consideration. Women are people and they deserve to be treated as such. Frankly the way I see it the cost of dehumanising half the population is far higher than potentially employing people who belong to a group that has on average less 'mental capabilities' than another.
Further unless your study shows that all men have stronger 'mental capabilities' than all women* it still makes sense to evaluate on a case by case bases and not generalisations, even if we only think about hiring the 'best' person for the job. To pass over someone who is talented because they happen to be the same gender as people who had a lower average score in some intelligence test doesn't make sense even thinking only about getting the best person for the job.
Science can tell you the way things are, but not how they should be. There might be biological sex differences related to intellectual capacities, sure. But what we are certain of is that humans in general operate with irrational biases and prejudices, such that even in the absence of such differences, people will be treated unfairly.
My observation of the subject is that many people have an intuition, gut feeling, opinion formed from personal experience, etc. that men and women in general have innate differences that make men (or women) more suitable for certain functions.
Sounds like you'd like to ignore the science to the contrary and just rely on your gut.
You're entitled to that, but I've found science to have a lot of usefulness.
I think a more careful reading of the whole post, and particularly the sentence immediately following the one you quoted, will show that Claudus was not claiming that this feeling is true. The statement is that a lot of people feel a particular way. Do you really disagree that is the case?
For what it's worth, I think one of the points of the blog post is that this bias is more difficult to spot than Claudus's statement would imply, and I tend to agree with that.
I have a scary thought. What if you set out to prove they didn't exist and turns out they do? I'm not saying that would necessarily happen but what if it does? Men and women have serious differences both biologically and psychologically... What if it turns out that, for example, statistically female musicians are more temperamental?
It's more scary to think that people think that any of the "qualities" mentioned would make a person an inferior or unhireable candidate for any of these roles. Aside from, of course, simple issues of body build for which a similarly-sized male would also be unsuitable.
That's a different question. So far I think people are trying to prove that there are actually no difference. If we found out there is a difference and acknowledged it, then depending on a kind of position it could be completely irrelevant or highly relevant. For example, hiring a socially awkward person as a computer programmer is nothing uncommon, but hiring one as a salesman or customer service representative may be unwise. Other qualities may have similar effects.
It's hard to distinguish bias from genuine preconceptions based on experience - for that one would need gender neutral data that is impossible to obtain. The reverse kind of gender bias could be found in divorce custody cases for example.
Maybe one could do an experiment in online job marketplaces: change the gender of a large number of work providers and observe how payouts change.
In any case this was a shallow and one-sided article. [But suitable for Sunday morning heated arguments over coffee and
cookies]
Maybe one could do an experiment in online job marketplaces: change the gender of a large number of work providers and observe how payouts change.
Do you really think that the problem is that enough studies haven't been done?
The linked article mentions a study on the gender pay gap in academia[0], the results section of which includes
"After accounting for [ underrepresentation of women at the full Professor level
allocation of faculty members across departmental units, and experience] there
remains an unexplained female pay disadvantage of about $3000. This finding is
robust to alternative specifications of the gender gap decomposition."
and later
"... the female salary disadvantage found in the study can be interpreted as
a lower bound."
There is a similar study based on results from the financial industry, which if anything is even more extreme[1]
"The gender pay gap for annual gross earnings in the sector is 60 per cent."
"There is a gender gap of 80 per cent for performance-related pay"
"The gender pay gap in finance sector companies cannot be explained away as a
historical legacy. Analysis of salaries for new recruits shows that in 86 percent
of the cases reported to us, women have lower salaries than men."
"In 63 per cent of cases more than half of all job grades/categories exhibited a
significant gender pay gap."
It's a huge presumption, but it's equally huge presumption that every person on the planet secretly hates women and isn't even aware of it. Either one needs proof to be called true, and neither is proven by just stating the statistics and postulating that one's favorite explanation is the right one.
>how do we know it's not justified? Presumably the pay reflects the work done.
Again, do you think studies haven't been done? That's the core of the discussion: pay does not reflect the work done, and it is sometimes even inverted.
That's nonsense. The work of a financial executive might be quantified by how much money the company is making, but judging the output of a professor is completely subjective. Sure you can do some bean counting by looking at the number of publications and citations, but 10 years of work condensed in one paper may just be more of a contribution than 10 derivative papers, or not, it's difficult to tell without hindsight, and even then presumably lots of work is under-appreciated.
My conclusion is that we cannot with a straight face claim that we can justify such a pay gap in this case, so whether it is justified is the wrong question.
I almost wish the author had included this trope too: "If I begin a conversation about sexism I am experiencing, that means that sexism against men must immediately become part of the focus of the conversation".
It's not that those issues are unimportant, but does it not strike you as strange that the very first comment doesn't discuss the content of the article directly, but does make sure to bring up sexism against men? It's not the first time this has happened, either, on HN or elsewhere.
(And, sure, this may be the first time you've brought it up. But just like the other issues she's bringing up, the "what about the men who are discriminated against?" response is a durable and ubiquitous trend. Check any other HN thread that mentions sexism if you don't believe me. It therefore becomes very annoying to people trying to have a conversation about the persistent sexism against women in technology/maths/science spaces.)
Until this concern is taken seriously, I don't see why it should not be repeated. So far I only see it reflexively dismissed as "oh this, yet again". While the silent assumption is that only certain people and certain biases are discussed and "we are all biased" actually means only certain set of data is taken into account, and other data is dismissed as irrelevant. It's not about focus, it's about basic inclusion.
I remember hearing a lot about sexism in disciplines which are 80+% male in this list. But I pretty much never hear about sexism in disciplines that are 80+% female.
Now, I don't make any claims here about existence or non-existence of sexism one way or another just basing on the percentage data. Maybe there is sexism in one place, maybe there is not in another, even though percentages looks the same. That's not my point here. What I am questioning is that seeing 80% on one side is universally taken alone as supporting the claim of sexism, if not proving it completely, but the same study showing the same bias to the other side is not considered the base to the same claim. I think this is related to the content of the article.
No, my main point was that it's not pure bias, there might be real reasons why women get paid less and men are considered bad fathers (personally, i don't agree with both statements, but see the wsj article). I suggest, if we want to get rid of this bias, change the underlying situation that perpetuates it (e.g. not by introducing gender quotas, but by making childraising less time-consuming, or educating men to be better fathers and getting rid of ridiculous stereotypes that are perpetuated in mass culture).
... And which she outright dismisses citing an irrelevant study. (I did mention it's a poor article, didn't i?)
When we talk about real-life statistical evidence, that’s
not conclusive, either, because all differences are
explained by women having babies, other priorities, etc
(Except they’re not, as the linked document explains very clearly.)
The linked document is a report with some recommendations about how to measure pay gap
Btw, can someone explain the usage of the word "trope" here?
A trope is a recurring theme. In this context, it refers to highly predictable responses to particular arguments.
I don't think the post was super well written, but I also don't see how the cited study was irrelevant -- it shows the existence of a gender bias that operates completely independently of the choices of any individual woman:
If you actually had read the linked "shallow" article, you would have noticed that the author cited exactly the kind of study you want to see. In the very first paragraph.
The average man is pumped full of a hormone called testosterone. This leads them to take more risks and have a generally more aggressive way of doing things. This fact has been scientifically proven over and over again.
In a fast moving market with high competition you need these qualities hence it is no secret why in average males are more employable in tech than women. This is a healthy market response and has nothing to do with sexism.
Article is talking about Math, not tech (although we have the same problem). It also starts with a specific study showing a female name alone reduces the perceived competence of a mathematician in the eyes of others (including woman).
So if you are correct that increased testosterone leads to men being more driven to achieve that still leaves the fact that when a woman "overcomes" her lack of testosterone and achieves the same as a man sheis still judged as being less competent than a man.
This kind of thing is hard. I don't think there are easy solutions, but let's not pretend the problem doesn't exist.
I think you're right that it's a generally accepted fact that the average man has more testosterone than the average women.
Also I think you're right that it's a generally accepted fact that high levels of testosterone in animals is associated with more risky and aggressive behaviour.
But I'm very sceptical of the way you've linked levels of testosterone in average males to risky and aggressive behaviour, and additionally linked risky and aggressive behaviour to being more employable in tech.
However if you really believe this, I had a look on wikipedia and it links to a paper that says that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to drink five or more alcoholic drinks a day, and to smoke. Also that men with low levels of testosterone are more likely to be obese.
Wikipedia also links to another study that says that mens' levels of testosterone generally lower when they fall in love, and recover about 1-3 years into their relationships.
Maybe you should consider this when you're next hiring, and go for a skinny, smoking, drinking male, who is not in the early stages of a relationship.
I don't like the biology argument. It sounds as if we would care about our biology in any other respect. The whole tech industry is about extending our human capacities beyond our natural limitations, fitting low-testosterone entities (aka women) into "fast moving markets with high competiton"* for the sake of equity [and to show the rest of the world just how awesome we are] is just another obstacle we want to overcome.
*I guess this makes it sound more manly and heroic than it actually is.
An excellent example of structural discrimination - one group both organizes and controls the perception of value in a field. It becomes hard to unless you support the structure - hence women who are forced to act on male terms. "Karen's alright, she's like one of the guys."
Such a structure becomes "sex inclusive" (accepting biological men and women who act masculinely) and not "gender inclusive" (accepting biological men and women who act masculinely or femininely).
And really, in this thread people apparently come with the intention of confirming everything in this article. The sexism proudly displayed by some here is appalling: most shocking is the "sexism is based upon biology" argument, because you know, so were segregation and apartheid.
"
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
- JFK
"
So, you're going to start your blogpost on sexism with a quote from JFK... how does that work?
It's funny how 'sexism' is used as if it could only be against women. Let's just say it: a white straight middle class young male is a public enemy. Why doesn't she just solve one of those Millennium Prize Problems? That would be a really nice case against anti-women kind of sexism.
What's missing in the article - what the author wants to achieve.
I mean, I agree with the description of gender bias and the other stuff, I have seen events like this first hand, and I have reflectively noticed my own biases that were unfair, so I'd like to correct that.
But after the article, what would you like me (as a 'dude' in a science field) to do? Your own point #5 states that you do not want just to be 'heard and understood'; so what actions would you like to be the result of this?
Gender bias will never cease to exist, and for good reasons, the fight for equality happened many times before in history, and never ended well.
Male and female are very dismorphic, we cannot change that easily, male and female have very specialized roles and purposes.
Yes, I am happy that people now in general have more equal opportunity than ever, and that we can have awesome workers on some areas from any background, but we should not push it too much now, society now is already very different, and failing in some aspects, more equality won't make things better, but can make things worse, much worse.
Understand that past societies were not forced to be the way they were, they just changed until they settled on something that works, and it worked for good reasons.
Why several societies in the world are severely against gays, especially male ones? It is because it was very important on these societies to have children, not having children was unacceptable. Today having children became too expensive, so the focus of relationships changed, and now several countries even allow gay marriage or civil union, but the need to maintain your population don't changed.
Some people will argue about over population, yes, I agree that it is a danger, but we must remember that we are not even replacing our populations, we are outright declining, and the result will be some cultures disappearing, and others with higher birth rates taking their place.
The funny thing about equality seeking cultures, is that they tend to erase themselves and give way to totally non equal cultures to take their place.
People forget that we still live in a world, where in many contexts, might make right.
- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing (correction 18+ century and limited to the industrial world); never happened before
- Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential (not only on moral grounds but economic as well)
- Most societies for most of history were less hostile to homo/bi-sexuality than the modern (pre-1970s) West (Even in today's islamic countries there's a dont-ask-dont-tell attitude)
You also seem to forget that the Western culture was not invented or developed by the same ethnic groups who maintain it nowadays.
- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before
As another poster already commented, and you already acknowledged, the fight for gender equality has been continuing for at least three centuries. It certainly isn't exclusively a 20th century thing.
- Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential
It's certainly not yet proven to be "essential" in any sense of the word that I recognise. Positive, perhaps, but the survival of the species doesn't rest on gender equality. For long periods of history the human race has not had gender equality, and we've survived it. No-one has ever proven that our continued existence (or even prosperity) rests on recognising the rights of others.
- Most societies for most of history were less hostile to homosexuality than the modern West
I'm fairly certain that this is simply wrong too. While there have been some societies in history that have been ambivalent or positive towards homosexuality, the vast majority of societies through history have treated homosexuality as deviant behaviour that should be shunned - most societies that are dominated by Christianity or Islam (which, for obvious reasons, tend to be the societies with the best and most available records) have treated homosexuality as a terrible sin. Even if you look at modern societies, the west is amongst the most inclusive - compare attitudes in Germany, Canada, the US and the UK with attitudes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc.
This isn't to say that the west's attitudes to gender equality and homosexuality couldn't be improved! However, when you massively overstate the scale of the problem, people will generally find it difficult to take seriously whatever else you have to say. We have ways in which we can improve, but things are getting better.
> The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before
No, this is false. All that differed in historical accounts of gender struggles were the methods and the scale, not the goals. Do the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony ring any bells (19th century)? Or Margaret Cavendish from the 17th century?
I would not consider a few exceptional single individuals (there were others, beyond the recent anglo-saxon part of history) to constitute a "movement". The social equilibrium at the time did not leave a place for gender equality until the 20th century (industrialization/the need for women to work away from home/the washing machine etc).
WRT homosexuality - you are confusing cause and effect. The Bible was what brought homosexuality to such a negative light in the christian/western world.
Regardless of how Bible affected homosexuality in Rome and later Europe, it does document that homophobia (i.e., automatic death penalty) existed in semitic cultures ~500 BC.
And we have evidence of exact contrary opinions at the same time on the other side of Mediterranean - so this attitude clearly was not something forced by the objective reality of that time, but simply a cultural/traditional choice.
> I would not consider a few exceptional single individuals (there were others, beyond the recent anglo-saxon part of history) to constitute a "movement".
Please read the post to which I replied -- no mention of "movement". The post said "The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before." That's false -- this is not a new fight. All that has changed is the scale, a factor I addressed by using that word.
> WRT homosexuality - you are confusing cause and effect. The Bible was what brought homosexuality to such a negative light in the christian/western world.
The Bible is a historical record of old values and practices, and homophobia is included in that record for a reason. The Bible's influence on modern history is an effect, but its contents allude to causes that were present in ancient times.
I doubt that people are taught by the Bible to be homophobes, or to be intolerant in any other way -- that comes naturally to people with poor educations. All the Bible does is encourage the natural intolerance of the illiterate.
You mean sexually dimorphic. This is actually the subject of significant controversy (esp. with regards to intelligence), so you cannot state this so carelessly. An uncontroversial case of sexual dimorphism is a male spider which is three times smaller than its female counterpart.
> It's only controversial with regards to sensitive issues like intelligence.
Granted.
> Of course humans are indisputably sexually dimorphic
Only in a trivial/technical sense, i.e., there have to be differences for there to be distinguishable sexes. But for a biologist, humans as a species are not known for and do not stand out for their sexual dimorphism, compared to other species. Which leads me to conjecture that the differences and problems with sexism are more related to the social construct of gender.
Homosexuality exists for a scientific reason. Specifically, the genes that make a male gay, when expressed in a female, make her hyper-fertile, 3-5 children as opposed to the 1-2 on average. The homosexual males then assist in the raising of the additional siblings. So your position that homosexuality leads to population decline is an ignorant one. It's a boon to population, in fact, our entire evolution engineered it to insure the survival of the species. Gender bias may never cease to exist, but the idea that equality can be a bad thing was dead on arrival. No equality seeking culture has ever erased themselves. Name one, and point out what makes that an equality seeking culture that killed itself because it was seeking equality and not because of hundreds of more relevant reasons.
I downvoted you because I don't think the post was very coherent. It rambles, it doesn't make any effort to directly connect to the original story, and in general comes across more as a rant than a piece of thoughtful commentary.
Well you didn't really change your argument or raise any interesting points half way through. I mean, you're probably better off that people don't finish it if you want to avoid downvotes, considering that you suggest discrimination against gay people is due to societies wanting to maintain a population.
Your points suffer from the is-ought problem. Your last sentence about "might makes right" even reveals you are aware of this, without any attempt to address it. This takes away the foundation of your whole post.
> I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted
Posts aren't judged based on size, but content. And anonymous voting is often completely unfair -- just like life.
I suggest that you take this as useful feedback to improve how you express yourself. Your post has word usage issues (as other have commented), a problem with length versus content, things like that. At risk of quoting a cliche, make lemonade.
It was downvoted in the time between me hitting submit and the page loading again, how it was a judgement of content? The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?
By the time we get to "fact 3" the author isn't even pretending any more and the "fact" is just a bizarre "you're a mathematician, you can solve this!!1!" point...
I'm happy to have a discussion about gender politics/equality, this article is just a very poor starting point for such a discussion.
This is nothing more than a rant, pretending to be something more.