Not to say it's always 100% going to make them go towards those interests, before anybody accuses me of making that claim, but it's fairly apparent as far as I'm concerned that even given equal opportunity, people of different genders aren't attracted to the same fields in equal proportion. Gender in multiple senses determines how the brain develops, so it would be surprising if these fields were demographically equal.
I think making an equal opportunity approach is definitely the right thing, but equal outcome I think ends up holding people back and forcing others into fields they won't enjoy. It's working not on the idea of cultivating individual people's passions but forcing them to fit some ideal.
In any case, though, I don't think any of this means that women should be disproportionately affected by having a child. I'm willing to buy the argument that it's societally caused due to expectations and men taking less time off than women for their children.
No need to even mention gender.
For example, I suspect a similar argument could have been made a few decades ago about why women tend to be nurses not doctors, or why women tend to teach only in elementary but not university settings.
For your argument to have full merit, you'd have to run an experiment in a truly unbiased, gender equal culture. One does not exist. Therefore, your argument rests largely on a hypothesis that, "see, this is the way things are and that says something about the innate nature of gender."
To really challenge yourself, take your comment and swap out gender for race. Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized. Whites tend to choose professional careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and Mexicans tend to choose to become gardeners and low wage workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose."
If that feels uncomfortable, then perhaps your premise needs reevaluated.
Norway’s current and many of the previous prime ministers were female, there is generous social support for working parents, most women get a college degree, etc Women are still free to choose the kind of job they desire, and they do so.
It is incredibly undesirable to force women and men to choose different jobs because of an ideological desire for equal outcome. There is no way to achieve that without tyranny and without hurting equal opportunity.
With regards to high value jobs that women have chosen due to equal opportunity you have to look no further than doctors. It used to be a mainly male occupation in the western world, and it’s now dominated by women.
But for the opposite position to make sense, the more egalitarian a society becomes, the fewer gender differences would show. Studies show that the opposite is the case.
I don't, and I wouldn't! The Scandinavian countries are much further along on this, but probably still don't constitute a perfectly level playing field where being a man or a woman doesn't confer advantages in certain disciplines. I'm just not holding my breath for perfect equality of outcome once the playing fields are fully level; in fact, the science points to it being pretty likely that the only way you'll get men and women to do exactly the same things in exactly the same way in exactly the same proportions is by tyrannical force, which I don't think helps either sex.
> Would you still feel as comfortable to suggest that, "... where all races have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that racial effects are actually maximized.
Sure! This one is trickier as I can't point to any society that's very far along the path of actually leveling the playing fields between races. Certainly in the U.S. the stakes are stacked abhorrently high against blacks in particular (the drug war in particular is disgustingly deliberate legislative racism, in my opinion). Many Mexicans in the U.S. are not free to choose. However, we've already run a lot of well-designed experiments that show that race is not at all correlated with intelligence, drive, job choice independent of other factors (family, education, and level of poverty, for example). Gender, on the other hand, has been shown to correlate not at all with things like intelligence, and correlate fairly tightly with things that affect your work and your choice of occupation, such as: disagreeableness (one of the strongest predictors of ending up in a leadership position), empathy, interest in people vs. interest in ideas, etc.
All categories should be open for discussion, and additional good science will gradually wither the fields/distinctions that have no predictive ability or bearing on reality (phrenology, eugenics, antiquated theories of physics, etc.).
This last statement is subjective opinion, but my assessment of the science (plus my real-world experience and fallible human schemas) tell me that we won't find perfect equality between genders once we have perfect equity between genders. That equity is absolutely worth striving for but not at the expense of good science, healthy debate, and dialogue itself, things that are at times threatened in these emotionally-charged discussions.
Citation needed. In 1997, only 1 out of 3 doctors were women in Norway. [1] Did it significally change during the past 20 years? Also, since 1990 the ratio of part-time workers lowered among women and went higher among men, so it’s false to claim that women choose more part-time than men now that they have equal "choice". [2]
> Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't
Women "choosing" to become doctors and nurses while men choose STEM careers has nothing to do with biology. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions, and healthcare is no exception. [3] [4]
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[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11144775
[2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/bld/rapporter...
Apparently graduation rates in medical fields favor women in some parts of the industrialized world.
"Women taking over as medical specialists"
http://norwaytoday.info/news/women-taking-medical-specialist...
Exactly. Thank you for putting it so succinctly.
A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't.
Can't count the number of times I have seen people willingly (hopefully) misinterpret something in order to create drama.
That and "always assume negative intent" fallacy makes for an impossible task for anyone talking about certain subjects.
Bonus round, add "always defer to identity."
...metaphysically speaking, all categories distort, but good luck navigating the world with your eyes that wide open.
Not disagreeing that gender doesn't play a role in making such choices, but I think society, education, and culture play at least as big of a role. People want to be "seen" a certain way among their peers. A man doesn't want to be "seen" as a nurse, for instance...
This is not because of gender. It's a cultural/societal issue that a nurse job is not an "appropriate" job for a man. So the man "chooses" whatever is "more appropriate" for a man in his society to obtain. But was it really a true choice?
When there's equality of opportunity, then women tend to outscore men on average in Danish high schools (and this trend is true all over the world, given any equal-opportunity situation).
Since women are scoring higher, they have more choice in what fields they want to study since the grade average tend to determine this. In contrast, men have to pick the subjects they can "get" which tend to be the STEM fields. All the typical "female subjects" are the ones which usually requires unethically high grades in Denmark.
Now, to convince a young woman to study STEM not only requires you to convince her that it is an awesome field (which it is, and we should definitely encourage that!). It also requires you to argue why she shouldn't put all her high-grade-work into effect by gravitating to a subject which is women-dominated and the competition is fierce. And that she can live out her dream: she has worked hard and can be anything she wants!
Whereas the young boy who were lazy in school (because he had a hobby of playing a lot of computer games) has to pick one of the "boring fields" where they accept anyone because there are always space for more people.
It is a two-sided situation and as much as you want to focus on the women not picking a given area, you have to focus on why men are so friggin' outright obsessed with the same thing.
There is one type of study which determines part of this: namely that men are interested in things and women in people (on average: The split is something like 33/66 and there is a considerable overlap - but it is one of the strongest gender effects!).
Of course, reality is a mix between biology and environment. And thus also location: the strong welfare state of Denmark could easily play a role.
I think realizing this is a false paradigm will be the next phase in the evolution of this social issue, I just have no idea how it will happen or how it will play out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc
So a hiring rate of 40% would indicate a level playing field in hiring. 33/40 is around 82%. The doubling down policies of "The (metaphoric) beatings will continue until equality is achieved," would seem to be misplaced at the workplace level. If there is systemic bias, it would seem to exist at the educational level.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/belinda-parmar/sugar-and-spic...
The general conclusion being that men tend to focus on ideas and woman gravitate towards people.
The issue is how you can really measure 'equality of opportunity'. There are so many ways hidden structures can make it seem like there is equality of opportunity without it being there in practice. With 'equality of outcome' it is at least easy to track how we are doing, though it could be leading us away from the goal.
In the James Damore memo, he actually proposed reaching equality of outcome by e.g. changing the jobs until they appealed equally to men and women on average. Perhaps that's one way to cut this knot.
Weirdly enough, a Google and YouTube exec have made basically the same proposal:
Note, I'm not insisting on equality of outcomes, because to me that's really not the general objective, given a population can have individuals predisposed for different things. For example, in farming communities we don't expect to see the same interest in urban planning as in cities.
Do women with children really have the same opportunity to prioritize their career that men with children do? I doubt it.
Women face much more social ostracism than men do if they choose to spend prioritize time at work over time with their children. Men also face much more social ostracism if they choose take on the traditionally female role of staying home with their children as opposed to engaging in paying work.
Even if women do decide to prioritize work over child-rearing in spite of the social pressure, employers will often assume that their attention will be divided by child-rearing.
In particular they would say that women are not equal to men unless they hold equal power in society. They want women to be in >=50% of corporate executive roles and in >-50% of government positions.
"Those people" you mention say it's cultural, other people like you say it's... I don't know honestly...
More than that, equity does speak to exactly what you’re talking about—the egaltarian ideal defined by leveling the outcome, not the opportunity.
Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field? I am immensely grateful to my parents, who told me that I could do anything I wanted and put me in math and science camps as a kid. I am not surprised that little girls (and boys) who are not given that kind of support don't go into "competitive" "STEM" careers.
A woman should be considered equal to a man. All sentients should be considered equal, in a political and moral framework. However, this should not be conflated with women and men being exactly equal in every conceivable way. If there was ever false equivalence then it is exactly this kind of sloppy thinking.
Do you have any idea how much social/cultural conditioning influences men and women's "biological" decisions to go into whatever field?
Actually, the extent to which biological factors vs. societal factors are at play is something we're still working out.
"Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differences in Mathematics Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls"
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
"The Gender Equality Paradox"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8
Google & YouTube execs claim that Google's hiring rate for women is the same as the Computer Science graduation rate for women, then go on to espouse James Damore's suggestions:
I always see people gasp when they hear things like this, but can you really disprove it? I'm genuinely curious.
Most people in the USA don't realize this but women only became full citizens only as recently as the 1970s when they were finally allowed to be on juries. That's less then 50 years ago.
What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose.
Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...