The gender equality paradox

[Traitorfish]

I don't get it. In the first part you say that women couldn't do your job because the level of lead were too high. In the second part you say that the level of lead in the blood was more than acceptable for both men and women. So to me it sounds like women can do your job.

The subtext is "but they shouldn't, because I wouldn't like it".

 

[Flying Pig]

I would instinctively have argued that women can't serve in the infantry, but realised that the same argument works equally well for banning men from doing it. So I'm not convinced that these biological arguments are as reasonable as they sound on first impression. It is, after all, very easy to pass over something without much scrutiny if you agree with it anyway.

 

[Borachio]

Link to video.


Link to video.

 

[LamaGT]

It is almost definitely because the people who first did those things or made those things cool happened to in the previous paradigm be the ones who could both access the new stuff and had a position that allowed them to need it to stay on top. Political power leads to wealth power and wealth power leads to being the first kid in the neighborhood to grow up on a computer.

Today having a computer is no longer a privilege, girls have just as much access to it as boys. For some reason though, girls almost always limit themselves to using Facebook and chatting. Really, nothing stops them from tinkering with it and learning how it works, and yet we all know the prevalence of wieners in any computer related field.

If you really want to talk about some actual sexism, then let's talk about how men are still supposed to always make the first step, how they are supposed to work to support the family (don't you agree that a dad in paternity is "worse" than a mom working?), how they're supposed to be tough and teach toughness to their children? There are many more, mostly for relations.

Just to be clear, I fully support gender equality. However, my idea of equality is either having the same rights AND obligations or having pros and cons that balance each other.
Also, since it seems that you guys misunderstood me, I'm perfectly fine with women doing men jobs, just that you really shouldn't be surprised that there are so few.

 

[Flying Pig]

Today having a computer is no longer a privilege, girls have just as much access to it as boys. For some reason though, girls almost always limit themselves to using Facebook and chatting. Really, nothing stops them from tinkering with it and learning how it works, and yet we all know the prevalence of wieners in any computer related field.

I find it impossible to believe that anything other than a tiny minority of computer-owning boys ever take the thing apart, and equally impossible to believe that boys don't primarily use their computers for socialising. I think this is sexism applied backwards - we observe that most computer scientists are men, we seek to find an explanation which preserves our natural inclination that this is entirely fair, and come up with something like this. Given the same level of encouragement from birth to be interested in technical subjects, I think it's a fair bet that a boy and a girl are equally likely to become interested in computing.

 

[luiz]

I find it impossible to believe that anything other than a tiny minority of computer-owning boys ever take the thing apart, and equally impossible to believe that boys don't primarily use their computers for socialising. I think this is sexism applied backwards - we observe that most computer scientists are men, we seek to find an explanation which preserves our natural inclination that this is entirely fair, and come up with something like this. Given the same level of encouragement from birth to be interested in technical subjects, I think it's a fair bet that a boy and a girl are equally likely to become interested in computing.

It may be a fair bet. But I'd bet boys would still be more likely to "tear things apart" to learn how they work, even if both are brought up the same. To be honest I never met a single girl who does/did that sort of stuff. It's of course not that common among boys either, but we've all met some like that (well, I was like that). Seems like too big a difference to be pure nurture, but I could be wrong.

 

[Hygro]

For some reason though, girls almost always limit themselves to using Facebook and chatting.

I almost always limit myself to Facebook and chatting.

When I was RAing last year, there were two kids I remember on my floor doing computer science. One was a boy. The other was a pretty blonde girl who likes to wear dresses and take selfies. She started doing computer science on a whim her freshman year, and immediately began outperforming all the boys. Last I saw her she said she was also going to minor in women's studies.

 

[Farm Boy]

You can look at it as a generalized propensity to focus on different things, with and without encouragement present, and it starts pretty early. Take a toddler, he or she has 24 hours in a day. Some of those hours are generally going to be spent sleeping, some are generally going to be spent eating, some are generally going to be spent doing something dictated for them like riding in the car, and some are generally going to be spent paying attention to one of a number of choices available to the child. We know that people of all ages tend to enjoy doing things they feel they are good at. We also know that female children tend to pick up verbal and nonverbal interpersonal communication earlier and more adroitly than male ones. It would be my personal guess that the finite hours of self-directed or semi-self-directed play tend to wind up mattering a lot later in life. If my niece is very good at talking, and she knows it, she's likely to spend more of her time choosing to talk. Which means not only does she get better at it, she probably likes doing it more since it was her choice. If my son is very good at disassembling parts of his toys and figuring out where the pieces fit, but not as good at verbal pronunciation as was my niece, he may tend to be more likely to spend more of his time choosing to do those things, with the same ramifications.

At a certain point over the years, do you not think a propensity for having self-selected seeing how the pieces fit together in a toy may tend to lead to enjoying seeing how the pieces fit in a car, or a bridge, or a computer program? That in highly complicated fields which requires years of interest to climb in, or be successful in, that small differences in levels of interest over previous years may compound to fairly significant differences(I'm talking about being say a mechanic or a nurse in the 21st century, not a CEO, being a mechanic or a nurse are both remarkably complicated when you start to take into account all the skills you actually need to possess to be any good at them)? It seems like this would make sense in the light that the video in the OP seems to suggest that children in more egalitarian countries often settle into "gender-normative" roles at higher rates in some ways than do children that were raised in less egalitarian ones, wouldn't it? The children in more egalitarian countries were able to choose their routes on their own more frequently instead of perhaps feeling as if they were missing out on something different.

 

[Traitorfish]

It may be a fair bet. But I'd bet boys would still be more likely to "tear things apart" to learn how they work, even if both are brought up the same. To be honest I never met a single girl who does/did that sort of stuff. It's of course not that common among boys either, but we've all met some like that (well, I was like that). Seems like too big a difference to be pure nurture, but I could be wrong.

There's no obvious reason why boys would be more likely to act that way, and girls less so, outside of a cultural context that encourages them to do so.

 

[LamaGT]

I find it impossible to believe that anything other than a tiny minority of computer-owning boys ever take the thing apart, and equally impossible to believe that boys don't primarily use their computers for socialising. I think this is sexism applied backwards - we observe that most computer scientists are men, we seek to find an explanation which preserves our natural inclination that this is entirely fair, and come up with something like this. Given the same level of encouragement from birth to be interested in technical subjects, I think it's a fair bet that a boy and a girl are equally likely to become interested in computing.

Of course not everyone becomes a programmer, but an interest in computers could be just a hobby with no repercussions on work.
Anyway, reading a few articles on the internet it seems that a lot of study connect fetal testosterone levels with toy preference, but in general even male monkeys are more attracted to cars than dolls. Fetal testosterone is not so strongly related to sex, but on average male fetuses get more.

 

[luiz]

There's no obvious reason why boys would be more likely to act that way, and girls less so, outside of a cultural context that encourages them to do so.

Well we are different. We have different biologies, a different hormonal balance, and even different brains (though we don't really understand what that last difference means). There's a lot of reason to believe we're different in all sorts of ways.

 

[BenitoChavez]

nevermind

 

[LamaGT]

There's no obvious reason why boys would be more likely to act that way, and girls less so, outside of a cultural context that encourages them to do so.

Evolution?

 

[Hygro]

Well we are different. We have different biologies, a different hormonal balance, and even different brains (though we don't really understand what that last difference means). There's a lot of reason to believe we're different in all sorts of ways.

But we have no reason to codify social norms because of these differences, nor to assume they cause specific differences gendered differences behavior.

 

[Farm Boy]

But we have no reason to codify social norms because of these differences, nor to assume they cause specific differences gendered differences behavior.

There seems to be a lot of evidence that suggests testosterone levels have a pretty significant impact on developmental and behavioral patterns, both physical and social. Small children may not have a ton of testosterone in either gender, but prior to birth and starting again at puberty, the differences tend to be pretty stark. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that there may be some differences in the bell curve for activities and propensities of people depending on their chemical/hormonal gender.

 

[luiz]

But we have no reason to codify social norms because of these differences, nor to assume they cause specific differences gendered differences behavior.

That's true, of course, specially the codifying part. As for assuming different behaviors... well, that's tricky. I'd say there is some evidence of different behavior/abilities which is significantly established to be independent from nursing. But of course we have to be careful here. But as far as betting goes, I think the odds are definitely in the side of men being more inclined in average to mechanical activities such as the aforementioned disassembling stuff to learn how they work. The evidence that men have better spatial skills is also considerable, even if perhaps not decisive.
The opposite of what Traitorfish said is actually true: there is no good reason to assume the genders don't have some significant behavioral differences independent from nursing.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well we are different. We have different biologies, a different hormonal balance, and even different brains (though we don't really understand what that last difference means). There's a lot of reason to believe we're different in all sorts of ways.

That's true. But it's not an answer to my question. It's not enough to observe that differences exist to conclude that any particular difference is rooted in biology.

Evolution?

What about it?

 

[Hygro]

That's true, of course, specially the codifying part. As for assuming different behaviors... well, that's tricky. I'd say there is some evidence of different behavior/abilities which is significantly established to be independent from nursing. But of course we have to be careful here. But as far as betting goes, I think the odds are definitely in the side of men being more inclined in average to mechanical activities such as the aforementioned disassembling stuff to learn how they work. The evidence that men have better spatial skills is also considerable, even if perhaps not decisive.
The opposite of what Traitorfish said is actually true: there is no good reason to assume the genders don't have some significant behavioral differences independent from nursing.

But the important part, which you acknowledge implicitly, is that even if we should assume that there might be bio-differences in personality, it does not follow that any of the ones popularly ascribed are the ones to reflect those differences.

 

[civ_king]

I know that the gender gap in computer science simply just doesn't make sense, its mad (I've seen it as bad as 20:1), there were in fact a number of influential women in the early days of computer science such as Grace Hopper who invented the compiler and to that we owe her a great debt, but no one ever mentions her nor Babbage's assistant who was the first programmer.

 

[Borachio]

Do you mean Ada Lovelace?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

She who the language Ada is named after?

(Or should that be "She after whom the language Ada is named"? Hmm. Dunno. I'm not fond of either.)