Serious question, why is this a data point we are required to ignore? There's been a lot of discourse about bias lately, so I feel like this is a data point people will welcome hearing. Thanks for sharing it.

Because if you don't characterize women as an oppressed people in every possible instance then you're sexist. The truth is that women benefit a great deal from the general goodwill that society grants them. From legal sentencing, to taking your kids to the park, to mentorship opportunities, to simply crossing the road. The list goes on, but western society generally goes out of its way to accommodate the needs of women, particularly in areas such as the job market, where men pave the way with increased risk taking.

I can see why you worry your commentary will be perceived as sexist.

Non-specific virtual signalling.

Uncomfortable facts are racist/sexist/-ist/-ic/etc.

> Because if you don't characterize women as an oppressed people in every possible instance then you're sexist.

Do people really say this? I've seen mens rights issues being raised carefully in the last few years, and I've never seen any backlash when done right. Like when you see articles written about women abusing men, or mens rights regarding children. Even women write about these issues. Feels like it's being accepted, just not being taken seriously enough yet. Maybe it's different in northern europe, but I haven't seen any backlash from international/US websites either.

I think part of the problem is that men are afraid of defending these issues. In part because of projection about how others will react. Either if it's from womens right activists going against it, or other macho men saying men shouldn't care about child custody or equality for male in women-dominated workspaces and such.

And there ARE also mens rights activist who are just using the issue to fight against womens rights, through whataboutisms and such. But don't let arguments against those people deter you from talking about reasonable mens rights issues.

Try mentioning men's day at mens day on company slack or twitter to raise awareness of the abuse that young boys suffer in early school. Try to raise awareness of why men are sentenced harder for comparable offenses, graded more harshly (unless anonymous) etc.

Count how many people immediately jump in to try to ridicule you, typically with something like: there are already 364 mens days in the year, why aren't you happy already?

> Do people really say this?

I didn't see any such replies here -- maybe at some other places some people do (Reddit / subreddits?)

(I didn't downvote)

> don't let arguments against those people deter you from talking about reasonable mens rights issues.

Good point

How to put this factually...

Discourse about bias usually makes strong distinctions between groups that are known have relative positions of power in their society (because this discourse is mostly held in Western culture, that usually boils down to "white heterosexual christian-adjacent men") and minority/disenfranchised groups (women, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, etc).

Progressive groups are perceived to get extremely testy when it's suggested that minority groups might benefit from / majority groups might suffer from systemic effects in some ways.

Women are neither a minority nor disenfranchised. And before someone points to male over-representation in government, maybe think for a moment: whose votes put those men there?

This failure to think critically leads to some very silly arguments, for example abortion control being "male politicians controlling women's bodies", when in reality men's and women's opinions on abortions are extremely similar (in the US, at least).

Not only is this toxic, it's also counter-productive when we're supposed to pretend that women aren't half of society and thus perfectly capable of contributing to gender roles, e.g. [1]

[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/boys-don-t-cry-study-suggest...

> Not only is this toxic, it's also counter-productive when we're supposed to pretend that women aren't half of society and thus perfectly capable of contributing to gender roles

I never said or implied that.

The fact that members of oppressed groups can be bigoted (including against their own group) isn't a novel concept.

Yes, women can be sexist against women, and yes, women can be sexist against men. That doesn't mean patriarchy doesn't exist.

> And before someone points to male over-representation in government, maybe think for a moment: whose votes put those men there?

That's not really convincing.

Rich people and families with old money are over-represented in government. And yet we must presume that poor people voted to get them in place too. There are explanations for that (eg maybe rich people can afford expensive schools where they learn to be competent politicians), but overall any system that can select against poor people can select against women too, even if that system is mostly democratic.

> The fact that members of oppressed groups can be bigoted (including against their own group) isn't a novel concept.

If women are being sexist against men, then men are also an oppressed group. This isn't a novel concept.

You're classifying one side as oppressed and the other as oppressor on the basis of a single data point - looking at the very top of society. This would be valid if gender roles were handed down from the top of society, but that's simply not the world you and I live in.

Modern gender roles are a much more grass-roots affair and women are perfectly positioned to influence them. Every complaint about gendered toys, for example, implicates women more so than men.

When mothers push gender roles on their sons that fathers do not, it is absurd to suggest that there is some self-sustaining system called "patriarchy" (literally "the rule of fathers") at fault. You may deny it, but it is a transparent attempt at denying women's agency and placing the blame on men instead.

Frankly, it's boring and at this point I'm comfortable discarding the opinions of anyone who uses the word "patriarchy" outside discussions on religion (i.e. the only context in which gender roles are still top-down).

> Rich people and families with old money are over-represented in government. And yet we must presume that poor people voted to get them in place too

While wealthier people have advantages in terms of getting into politics, they still have to conform to popular opinion to get elected. Most European countries have strong labour movements that reflect this. I don't deny that men have an advantage getting into politics. I do deny that this single data point is sufficient to prove an oppressor/oppressed relationship between men/women. Gender roles are a trade, and women are active participants.

Because people interested in bias, are only interested when the bias is in other direction.

If the poster works at a big tech company, there’s a reasonable chance they could get fired for bringing up a point like that. That’s the world we live in now.

Right, I wish there could be a place where these sort of things could be discussed without the stigmas of "discrimination".

My wife and I talk about these sort of things sometimes: We believe there are differences between man and woman (and between different human descents, like people from the mayan descent [from where I am from] are shorter, while people from Germanic descent are taller, among others). That does not have to mean that one is better/worse than the other. But if society accepted and understood those differences, we could make better use of each feature for good.

This always reminds me of the equality vs equity cartoon ( http://www.vestidosdecordura.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/... )

If you raise a point that shows a slice of society discriminates against men more than women you'll face criticisms that range from "what about the men" to being called an incel to being let known you are not welcome in a community. It is worse online than off but it happens in both. I've personally had it happen numerous times when bringing up statistics concerning gender bias in prison sentencing.

Doesn’t that mean that 79% of the difference is not due to bias? So boys would still be behind girls even if the bias didn’t exist. Or am I misunderstanding this?

Tables 1-6 show you the actual results on the page labeled 40 (PDF page 42) and the page prior shows actual numbers.

In blinded effects, boys overperform in math and underperform in literacy. In non-blinded effects, boys underperform everywhere.

I wonder how this plays with the experiments that found that that girls tended to score much closer to boys on math tests when primed with the idea that they would do better and worse when primed with the idea that they would do worse.

This is called stereotype threat and there is clear publication bias in the literature. It's not replicating well in pre registered trials: https://replicationindex.com/tag/stereotype-threat-and-women...

>>Girls receive better grades until you blind the teachers. Teachers are biased in favor of girls, maybe because their behavior is better.

In my country(India) we have board exams, where people evaluating and candidates are both anonymous to each other. People don't write their names, but use a number.

Still Girls do better. Let's just agree girls are better at academic work.

On top of that there was also patriarchy that favored boys over girls. The teachers were more receptive and attentive to boys' well being. The resounding success of girls in India (and the subcontinent) in academics is a great indicator that teachers are biased in favor of girls.

Girls do better in boards, and boys do better in math-intensive tests like JEEs. It's balanced out here.

> this is one of the data points you are required to ignore in polite society.

Actually it's not; it's fine to bring it up. It is PC and OK

You are citing a study that isn't peer reviewed as a "data point" but when you summarize it like that looks like a factual claim when no factual conclusion should be drawn.

It would be an interesting data point if there was any particularly reason to believe the document you cited would hold up to further study.

> study that isn't peer reviewed

Terrier, C., 2020. Boys lag behind: How teachers’ gender biases affect student achievement. Economics of Education Review, 77, p.101981.

"Economics of Education Review is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering education economics. It was established in 1981 and is published by Elsevier."

What are you talking about?

The link I followed upthread was to a working paper from 2016, not a journal article published in 2020.