I am asking why using discrimination (favoring women) to reverse a discrimination trend is a problem. Not why discrimination in general is a problem, which it obviously is.
1. The position that it's OK to fight discrimination with more discrimination is very different from the idea that discrimination is inherently bad.
2. The theory that some gender differences in occupation choice are caused by discrimination is both controversial and unproven.
If the difference is mainly caused by the genders having different statistical distributions of interests, you're actually using discrimination to fight peoples career choices.
> If the difference is mainly caused by the genders having different statistical distributions of interests, you're actually using discrimination to fight peoples career choices.
Conversely, if genders don't have a different intrinsic, permanent distributions of interests, then not using some affirmative action to correct the situation amounts to preserving the status quo of known cultural discrimination.
The problem with what you said is that we already have data, the distributions of interest have changed dramatically over time recently, and they are currently different from country to country.
That's pretty clear, hard evidence that the gender differences in occupation choice we have today in the US (for example) are not intrinsic to the genders. So, what does that leave as possible causes?
At most, it's evidence that intrinsic interest is not the only factor in career choice.
The most fascinating fact here is that the more rich and gender equal societies become, career choices end up more "gender stereotypical"!
It's easy to interpret that as when you're rich enough to pick the career that actually interests you, rather than the career most likely to keep starvation at bay, people follow their interests more.
What evidence is there that there is any intrinsic difference in interest?
> the more rich and gender equal societies become, career choices end up more "gender stereotypical"!
What if gender stereotypical career choices is an indicator that our society is not gender equal, and that we're patting ourselves on the back prematurely?
BTW, not really true that there's a correlation between gender equality metrics and stereotypical career choices. To come to that conclusion, you have to ignore some periods of time and ignore some countries in the world.
There is a huge amount of evidence that women and men are different statistically. That is, anyone can have any interest or personality trait, but on average the genders have separate distributions.
This is very controversial among political activists, but established fact in the relevant sciences.
Pinker's "The Blank Slate" is a good introduction.
I think that response is dodging the question and being very hand-wavy.
I didn't ask if the distributions are different. They are different, that's a fact we know, and what many people believe is the problem.
The question is, what evidence is there that the differences are intrinsic? For that, there's very little evidence in favor and strong evidence against. Specifically, the differences in the distributions of preferences among women over time and country by country are larger than today's differences between men and women in the US. That's pretty solid evidence that the distributions are cultural and not intrinsic to gender.
If those distribution differences were constant over a long time, say a thousand years, and constant globally, then your argument might have a leg to stand on.
If they’ve been controlled for, then point me to some data demonstrating it. If they have been controlled for, doesn’t the fact that some places in the world have greater than 50/50 female participation in STEM mean that the controlled data is nearly certain to show there is negligible or no intrinsic sex difference? It seems like you’re ignoring some of the data we actually do have in favor of belief.
Your second non-answer to my question is to point at the updated version of the Myers-Briggs test, right after saying ‘but, science’? Okay, what do personality tests have to do with cultural sex or race discrimination?
This only repeats your previous argument, it shows that cultural differences currently exist. Again, we already know that. It does not show that intrinsic sex differences exist. I recommend reading all of that article carefully before assuming it’s helping your argument in any way. The conclusion of the section you shared on gender differences says:
“It is important to recognize that individual differences in traits are relevant in a specific cultural context, and that the traits do not have their effects outside of that context.”
And Big Five is “established” as a personality test. Personality tests are pseudoscientific, even if Big 5 is ‘more scientific’ than Myers-Briggs.
“Like the Big 5 model, any personality or behavior assessment can’t know things you haven’t explicitly answered in the questionnaire, Stein says. Sometimes commercial personality tests ask odd questions—like, Do you identify with snakes? or How do you react to a certain color?—and try to draw inferences from your answers. Those kinds of conclusions venture into the pseudoscientific, Stein says.“
I've been on the net long enough to not fall for the "spend hours digging up raw science or I won't believe you" gambit. Those guys will never change their mind even if you do devote your weekend to doing research for them.
I gave you a Pinker book to read and a well footnoted Wikipedia article on the science. I've spent enough work trying to educate someone who gives all the signs of just not wanting to change their mind.
> Okay, what do personality tests have to do with cultural sex or race discrimination?
Nothing, and I never claimed it had.
> Personality tests are pseudoscientific
The big five is the established scientific fact of 2019. Denying science because it doesn't fit with your ideology doesn't put you in great company.
Why did you give me links to Big 5 then, what is your point? How does a personality test demonstrate intrinsic sex differences? It doesn’t, and your well documented source says so clearly and explicitly.
I’m sorry I made you angry, there’s some miscommunication going on here. I’m not convinced we’re talking about the same thing because you haven’t brought anything to this conversation that demonstrates there’s evidence of intrinsic sex differences when it comes to career choices, you’ve only pointed to known cultural differences.
I agree with you that there are cultural differences.
> If those distribution differences were constant over a long time, say a thousand years, and constant globally, then your argument might have a leg to stand on.
So your standard of proof here 1000 years of studies, until you can agree that there is a chance this could be true.
Obviously, nothing anyone can say convince someone with such firm beliefs.
I agree there is miscommunication. I've been as clear as I can be, and I don't think any amount of me restating things can reach you.
A thousand years was just an example of something that could make your argument above work, or at least not disprove it immediately. Your argument doesn’t currently work because gender preference distributions have been changing dramatically in the last hundred years, and they’re still changing. Recent history disproves the notion that current preferences, and the current discrepancies between the sexes, might be intrinsic.
I’m ignoring your ad hominem, but FWIW it weakens your argument because it demonstrates you didn’t understand mine. It has also become clear you didn’t fully understand my question. So, yes, you could keep restating that cultural differences exist or bringing up other irrelevant things like personality tests, and yes, that will continue to fail to show that intrinsic sex differences exist.
> The theory that some gender differences in occupation choice are caused by discrimination is both controversial and unproven.
Its certainly not controversial that _some_ of the discrepancy is caused by discrimination. It is very obviously true historically for many careers. Consider medicine, where women were relegated to nursing because they couldn't cut it as physicians. Today that idea seems absurd, and of the brightest people I met in medical school, there was a fairly even split of men / women. So far medicine was more challenging than the typical programming job I"ve held, which is at least partially relevant.
To be clear I am certainly not arguing that 50/50 is the natural distribution of men/women among programmers. I have no idea what it is. But I'll bet it is higher than 98/2, which is about the ratio in the last 4 programming jobs I've held.
Lastly, I have two young daughters now. Its been a bit shocking to me to see how early they are inundated with messaging steering them towards being pretty, dressing like a girl, etc. I have no doubt the lingering stereotypes and cultural pressure steers women into so called traditional roles from an early age.
My programming demographic experience has been 80/20, FWIW.
Yeah, the smartest women go into medicine and law instead of programming. I claim it's largely because they find working with people more interesting than working with machines.
Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female, and that is who they genuinely are.
FWIW, in her debate with Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Spelke shreds the incorrect argument that females have more interest in people and males have more interest in things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hb3oe7-PJ8
Please think carefully about what happens if your claim turns out to be wrong. If males and females turn out to have equal interest in people and things, then your argument that you're spreading here is unintentionally a cultural gender based bias, in effect unconscious sexism.
> I claim it's largely because they find working with people more interesting than working with machines.
Well two in particular went into pathology and radiology, so its definitely not the social aspect (they don't regularly deal with patients). Also, what do you claim of the equal number of men who go into law and medicine?
> Your daughters being interested in "traditionally female" things might just be because they're female,
They aren't interested in much of anything yet -- they are 6 months and 2 years old.
