I've not been able to wrap my head around this issue. What is the thinking behind the desire to even sex ratios in various profession? Why are some professions receiving more attention than others when it comes to evening sex ratios. Is a perfect world when every construction site, hospital, and dreary programming job (lets be honest most of them aren't fun) has an even mix of the sexes? What is the benefit? Can someone explain this in logical, non-political, terms. Surely there's some benefit to individuals or society but I can't figure out what that might be. I don't want my daughters sucked into dangerous oil field work prone to boom and bust cycles. Why would that be ideal?
It all starts with the dubious (to say the least) premise that men and women are exactly the same. Both sexes on average want the same things, like the same things, are interested in the same things, and have the same priorities and proclivities.
Therefore, in a just world, we'd see an exact 50/50 ratio of men and women in every possible occupation, because there are no differences between men and women, therefore the only possible explanation for non-parity anywhere is because some kind of "systemic" factor is unfairly preventing one of the sexes from achieving the career results that they obviously want.
And if men and women don't want the same things on average, then that itself is a symptom of some kind of systemic problem. Because biology plays no role in human psychology; we're the only species in the animal kingdom to come into this world with no pre-programming and absolutely everything that we do is the result of cultural conditioning. So men and women could be exactly the same if only more parents would let their sons play with Barbie and their daughters play with GI Joe.
There are some extreme but isolated examples of people who are disposed to this opinion, but more commonly the objection to fields being dominated by one gender or the other is because those workplaces, as this study points out, can't seem to stop themselves from discriminating and gatekeeping against those of the other gender. While it should in theory be no problem that a workplace is 90% men and 10% women because they live in a platonic ideal where they've been free to attain to their true ambition that is influenced by biological traits related to sex, in reality, once one gender gains enough dominance in a field or workplace, sexual discrimination, harassment, and gatekeeping end up deepening the imbalance. This feedback loop ends up pushing out people of the non-dominant gender who want nothing more than to work in that field but are constantly and systemically met with prejudice and disenfranchisement.
It would be nice to deftly and precisely ameliorate this issue by just being able to say “stop acting in a sexually discriminating way because you're impeding someone's will,” and have it be so. But there are still far too many people who are willing to abet the discrimination either silently or willfully, writing the disparity off as a “natural outcome of biology.” So the alternative way to establish justice is the sledgehammer approach that equates the unequal representation with inequity. Because that is _also_ true.
> While it should in theory be no problem that a workplace is 90% men and 10% women because they live in a platonic ideal where they've been free to attain to their true ambition that is influenced by biological traits related to sex, in reality, once one gender gains enough dominance in a field or workplace, sexual discrimination, harassment, and gatekeeping end up deepening the imbalance.
The assumption that an industry that has a large gender imbalance will inevitably end up discriminating against the minority gender is incorrect. Plenty of studies have shown tech companies to actually favor women in hiring:
There are policies that can eliminate bias: Strip names and identifying information out of resumes before recruiters see them. Modulate voices in interviews to eliminate ability to infer gender or foreign accents, and use no video so as to prevent people from identifying races. The problem is that this often doesn't produce the results people are expecting.
The comment you're answering to is talking about harassment and gatekeeping.
Hiring is one gate, but if you're hired just to reach gender goals or to satisfy the lust of your new manager, you will not have the same experience at the company than someone from the other gender. Like getting raises or being promoted.
How do we quantify "discrimination and gatekeeping"? Focusing on hiring makes sense because it's the gate that you need to pass through to join the company. It's by far the most important form of gatekeeping, and the one with the most influence over the representation of the company. It's also where I see the most focus on attempting to "fix" the imbalance, but introducing policies to favor underrepresented groups. I've worked at multiple companies with overt affirmative action programs in favor of women.
Other factors like harassment are important, but again the evidence doesn't seem to suggest it's responsible for gender imbalances. Engineering has one of the lower rates of harassment among professional industries (32%) less than plenty of industries with more balanced gender representation like healthcare (35%) and media (41%) [1]. And this is just among white-collar industries, service industries and blue collar industries are by far even worse [2].
I'll concede this probably does happen to varying extents in some (but not all) workplaces. But since it seems we're in agreement that it isn't the only factor at play, I'm sure you can see why using unequal outcomes as the sole evidence of discrimination in any specific workplace or industry is flawed.
Furthermore, I would argue that even in cases where discrimination is actually occurring, "stop acting in a sexually discriminating way because you're impeding someone's will" can be the only just solution to the problem. The alternative of actively and intentionally discriminating against other people in the majority group who did nothing wrong is unacceptable, both because it does nothing to address the root of the problem, and because discrimination on the basis of irrelevant factors like sex is wrong regardless of who the target of that discrimination is.
What's worse is when people use unequal outcomes as the sole justification for actively discriminating against majority groups, because now not only are you perpetrating these injustices in the pursuit of an ideal percentage of men and woman in the industry, but you're also running the risk of being wrong about what that ideal percentage is in the first place, actively pushing men and women into roles they wouldn't naturally choose in an ideal world where unjust discrimination didn't exist.
“Stop discriminating,” by itself frequently doesn't cut it, though. And when it doesn't, playing to the numbers is another tool to use to attempt to reach a just equilibrium. It gives the minority gender a means of establishing networks of power, gaining positions of authority that can shift the culture and reduce the gatekeeping. While it may be true that deliberately aiming for a ratio stands the chance of disenfranchising some qualified people, the existing situation quite possibly does the same but we don't know it. Survivorship bias and default bias make it very difficult to discern whether the existing ratio is appropriately reflective of the population's nature.
I understand the point you're making that ratio targeting seems immune to indications that a different natural ratio exists that differs from the imposed one, but I argue there is sensitivity to negative feedback. If there really is a natural sample ratio that differs materially from that found in the broader population, businesses will eventually be unable to hire according to the ratio. The danger is of course setting up a system that's wholly immune to that possibility and risk coming to lay upon a Procrustean bed. But I think profit motive is sufficient to dampen that risk. Businesses who are simply unable to find and hire qualified candidates who fulfill their target ratio will abandon that ratio by degrees.
> Because biology plays no role in human psychology; we're the only species in the animal kingdom to come into this world with no pre-programming and absolutely everything that we do is the result of cultural conditioning.
I suspect when these people finally cede on biological differences between the genders, they will just argue that these biological differences themselves are a product of our sinful and fallen world. Don't underestimate the incredible portability of these folks' goalposts.
Nope. All evidence shows that human psychology is a mix of biology and culture. That’s why you often see sisters and brothers being very different even though they were brought up the same way. Also, you can’t make somebody have a high IQ through culture. It is a biological trait. And your IQ has a high impact on how you perceived the world and learn.
> Why are some professions receiving more attention than others when it comes to evening sex ratios.
I think some people in the technology field unfortunately take everything at face value and are not really thinking about the various power plays in motion when it comes to persuasion and influence. I would point out that some people stand to make money and gain power off of promoting these views, and of course some employers stand to make a hell of a lot of money off of promoting these views.
I'd say that until there's a societal movement to even out the gender imbalance in boilermakers, roofers, deep sea fishers, oil drillers, and other difficult but very profitable careers, that distrusting the motives of those that claim to want to even out the gender imbalance in the workplace is fair game.
it's hard to give a non-political answer because it's really about money and who gets it. on average, men make more money than women. a lot of people (especially women) consider this to be unfair. software engineer is one of the highest paid roles for someone with only a bachelor's degree. most software engineers are men. if your goal is to decrease the income gap between men and women, it probably seems easier to get more women into the lucrative subset of male-dominated professions than to increase the wages of female-dominated roles above market. no one is particularly interested in increasing "representation" in poorly compensated (or dangerous, see "oil rig") roles.
> it's hard to give a non-political answer because it's really about money and who gets it. on average, men make more money than women. a lot of people (especially women) consider this to be unfair.
I doubt women are significantly more inclined to think this arrangement is unfair. I believe social progressives think it’s unfair, and the media would have us believe that women and racial minorities are largely socially progressive when in fact they aren’t (consider that only a small minority of blacks support defunding the police and women’s and men’s views on abortion are very similar).
In any case, not all compensation is monetary, and it’s widely understood that women prioritize flexibility and other perks over money directly, while men optimize for monetary compensation. Further, much of the money made by men is spent by women anyway—in married households, women spend the majority of the money.
This may not be the case in Europe. Sw engineer profession is roughly as male dominated, but I think you'll need a msc/PhD level in EU and with that kind of diploma IT pays vastly less than in US.
This has always struck me as strange. Software is surely one of the most easily exported commodities, so surely Europeans can easily play in the same global software market as Americans and moreover, I’m of the impression that software engineers in Europe are largely unionized so one would think they’d be able to bargain more effectively for better salaries.
For Finland. Even if they are unionized, the unions only set the minimum rates and very reasonably inflation raises. Ofc, there is some perks negotiated, but these really aren't too major things.
With IT the actual wages are much higher than union rates, and employers will have hard time to find anyone outside fresh graduates at those rates.
And this system has broken down this year, so things might go different.
> of the impression that software engineers in Europe are largely unionized
That somewhat varies by country (i.e. a bunch of Swedish developers I know are, just because it's so common there for entire companies to have blanket union contracts for everyone), but in general: no.
>Can someone explain this in logical, non-political, terms.
Probably not, because it's ultimately a political phenomenon. In left-leaning circles it's popular to deny that there can be significant statistical differences between demographics for any reason other than discrimination. Based on that logic they view all unequal gender ratios as problems that need to be solved.
This is does not quite fit the general "left-leaning" belief that I have heard.
I would rephrase it as "it's popular to deny that there's an underlying preference at play when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative."
Bringing it back to the subject of the article, this entire discussion is really about tribalism. Humans tend to look favorably on their group and askance at other groups. Where people get into trouble with this is assuming you know from the outside what groups someone thinks they belong to (e.g. do you see yourself as a man who happens to be a programmer or a programmer who happens to be a man).
I've heard a lot of people argue that women and men would have identical preferences, and their different preferences are entirely attributable to differences in socialization from a young age.
As for the "jobs became male dominated when they became lucrative" observation, it seems like very weak evidence for discrimination. If I were a betting man, I would guess that as the field became lucrative, the number of jobs in the field rapidly outpaced the supply of qualified women (how many women were literate in math or programming in a time when it wasn't common for women to go to college at all).
Moreover, women achieved parity with men in fields like medicine and law in the 80s and 90s when discrimination and harassment were pervasive, explicit, and severe by today's standards. What's going on in tech today that only 20% of our workforce is female despite many, considerable advantages:
* Explicit sexual discrimination and harassment have been illegal and taboo for decades
* The overwhelming majority of US tech jobs have been concentrated in the most ideologically progressive counties for decades (one would expect lower levels of harassment and discrimination in these places)
* Every sizable tech company has a dedicated DEI department and quarterly DEI seminars
* Most tech companies have diversity hiring and retention targets
And not only that, but there appears to be a pronounced inverse correlation between gender equality in a society and the careers that women select into. In other words, the societies in which women are the most free are often the societies that have the least even gender/job distributions and vice versa.
All of this is to say that your perception of "left leaning beliefs" is hardly better than the parent's.
> ... when jobs which used to be female dominated, like programming, became male dominated shortly after they became lucrative.
Programming was never female dominated. What we call "programmer" now (writing algorithms to compute artillery trajectories or whatever) would have just been "scientist" back then. "Coder" (and before that, human "computer") were indeed female-dominated positions but there's no analog to that in the modern world; we've completely replaced those jobs with assemblers/compilers and electronic calculators respectively.
I think it is a matter of perceived status. Whenever I see complaint about lack of diversity in some field, it is something that is not only white-male dominated but also high status relative to similar endeavors. People who want to increase representation in higher status areas are trying to improve the perceived status of their cultural group. A type that I encounter is persons of some demographic who want to see greater presence of their kind in areas like the sciences or classical music, but who themselves have no interest in those things. For them, it is not at all about labor economics.
I think this line of thought could fruitfully develop. It is inline with Chris Aranade’s theory of dignity changes in the US. There is a great Econtalk interview about it:
Photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader Chris Arnade talks about his book, Dignity, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Arnade quit his Wall Street trading job and criss-crossed America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive. The conversation centers on what Arnade learned about Americans and about himself.
> People who want to increase representation in higher status areas are trying to improve the perceived status of their cultural group.
If status here means “respect” rather than “wealth”, there are precious few groups with lower status than that of white males these days. At least in many places, “white male” is practically a slur.
The simplistic version of the premise is more like: women are under-represented in occupations which have more money and/or power, and also within the more senior positions of all occupations (which also tend to correlate with more money and/or power), which must be because they are either discriminated against when seeking those positions, or because they are discouraged from seeking those positions by an expectation of discrimination.
This is simply not true. There are a highly paid professions in US that are dominated by women, like that of veterinarians (as I wrote on another comment it pays better in US than programming) or some fields in medicine or law.
Because diversity is productive. If your constituents are similar with similar backgrounds, upbringing, sex etc, they will tend to have similar ideas, biases etc and that will lead to groupthink. In other words, they will be more likely to get stuck in a local minimum.
Diversity in general is good because you'll get different ideas into the mix and will be more likely to be able to envision and explore different possibilities.
Has this been proven? If so based upon what specific factors? "Background" and "upbringing" encompass a multitude of meanings. I also have not personally ever seen a job ad for "Data Scientist with rural WV / trailer park upbringing" yet that cohort is likely to have a near zero representation. I have seen things offered by "race" and sex. Race seems to be determined by melanin level and self identification, not DNA sequencing.
My reading is that diverse teams are seen as more productive and innovative. Another angle could be that given how impactful technology is, women need the seat at the table to take part in shaping it.
Any evidence for this or is it just wishful thinking? The more diverse a group is the harder it is to communicate because of culture/language barriers. So it doesn’t seem to be obviously true to me.
The parent comment uses “seems” so doesn’t claim certainty. I attended a seminar by Amy Edmunson [0] that cited studies indicating that teams of higher diversity were slightly lower performing on average but had higher variance. The takeaway was that a route to a higher performing team was increased team diversity plus psychological safety can lead to improved results by keeping the top end of the variation range.
It doesn’t match my experience. The most successful teams I have worked on were not diverse at all. And the worst teams I have worked on were very diverse. It is hard enough to understand each other and communicate clearly in a team without also having to overcome language/culture barriers.
> I don't want my daughters sucked into dangerous oil field work prone to boom and bust cycles.
Are you implying that it is ok for your sons to be in such a field?
To answer your question though...
To establish a baseline, women get paid, as a whole, less than men for a particular job title (women doctor paid less than male doctor, women electrician paid less than male electrician). This is on a statistical basis when normalized for experience, location, etc. It may not be that eg. a particular iTunes team at apple has this imbalance, but across all industries, across all companies, across all locations, this statistic emerges. This is wrong, because men and women are equally deserving of money. Thats not politics, that's human decency. To quote an SNL skit "she made the unfortunate choice of career after getting a law degree. Instead of working a lawyer, she chose to work as a female lawyer".
Beyond this, women also tend to occupy jobs that pay less than men (teacher vs lawyer, nurse vs SWE, etc). This means, again, that as a whole, women in society have less money than men. People tend to be skeptical in the issue here because of the perception of choice a women has over her career. I (a man) have heard from countless women in engineering school and later as a professional that women are made to feel like they don't belong. My own mother (who has no reason to lie to me), an engineer, made the newspaper for being one of the first females licensed in her field. She told me countless stories of men passively trying to make her feel like she didn't belong. This sense of not-belonging means that the "choice" to work a lower-paid job is less of a truly independent choice and more of a societal nudge.
Now that there is some established evidence of why women make less than men, I'll let the reader decide if its wrong.
Now that we've decided it is wrong that women are paid less without choice, we should try to fix it.
How should we fix it? Lets get women into higher-paid job that's don't have many women! But which ones? Like you said, you don't want your daughters in oil fields, but surely you'd be much happier with your daughter in an office building somewhere typing at a computer? Maybe something with good WLB? Maybe without the need for a decade of education (and loans!)?
Great! SWE is a job that pays well, is safe, and has a generally "easy" way to enter - just a bachelors degree, and amble internships. Bonus is that all the equipment you need to learn is a computer (which most people have), so that's a lot easier to supply to poor kids who may have more trouble getting lessons.
Other jobs that are high-focus for female-occupation are doctors/lawyers/finance. Those jobs also pay well but have higher education requirements, or worse WLB, or are harder to get. But some (like doctors) have huge prestige. Who doesn't want their daughter to have a safe, high-prestige, well-paid job? No one is trying to get their daughter (or son!) to work on a crabbing boat - one of the most dangerous jobs in America!
TLDR: Why do we as a society focus on ending the professional gender ratio mis-alignment on certain jobs? Because no one wants those other jobs (for any gender really), and the goal is to get women equal opportunity for salary or equal prestige, and that is easier in some fields.
> This is on a statistical basis when normalized for experience, location, etc. It may not be that eg. a particular iTunes team at apple has this imbalance, but across all industries, across all companies, across all locations, this statistic emerges. This is wrong, because men and women are equally deserving of money.
It is a misuse of aggregate descriptive statistics to ascribe moral right or wrong since the state of the world for this dimension, “income,” is the result of 7b+ choices that might still add up to “wrong” even if all those choices were “right.”
It would be helpful if the ideas of Judah Pearl [0] were more in the minds of people, in particular the identification of causes.
A woman is interested in computers and gains skills in that area, then tries to get a job in the field. People making hiring decisions like their boys-club culture (maybe even subconsciously) so the woman doesn't get hired even though equivalently qualified, and somehow thinks or figures out that this is somewhat due to herself being a woman.
Then the woman makes actions to fix this for herself and future women.
If you're going to assert that tech companies, by and large, discriminate against women you should try and back up such a claim with evidence. If anything, the evidence indicates the opposite: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
Nearly 900k applications analyzed, with the conclusion of preference in favor of women.
This is simply not true. Tech companies are leaning backwards to hire woman. I myself have gone out of my way to hire female software developers. And have hired quite a few who were excellent.
I do. High-stress high-stakes careers dealing in the macabre tend to result in dark/inappropriate senses of humor as a coping/bonding mechanism.
Although not predictive on an individual level, the (perceived?) general trend is that men are more accepting of that kind of environment than women are.
I've seen people make the argument that a woman shouldn't lead an infantry platoon because it would prevent grunts from coping with the death and destruction they face every day. Similar for defense attorneys. Nobody wants to risk being reported for sexual harassment because they laugh at something that happens in a rape trial; they also don't want to be forced to be 100% serious at all times behind closed doors.
I'm not convinced these ideas have merit, particularly due to self-selection. Most women don't volunteer to be infantry officers unless they want to be part of the infantry culture. But that does seem to be the operating perception.
Why is it that the US military has different physical fitness standards for men and women ? Shouldn't standards be gender neutral ?
Men must complete a three-mile run within 18 minutes to get a maximum score on that portion of the PFT, while women younger than 40 have up to 21 minutes.
For Marines between 17 and 20 years old, men must do 20 pullups to get a maximum score; women must do seven.
On the CFT, men must lift a 30-pound ammunition can between 106 and 120 times within two minutes to get a max score. Women must lift the can between 66 and 75 times for a maximum score.
If the standards are un-equal discrimination is natural.
> Men must complete a three-mile run within 18 minutes to get a maximum score on that portion of the PFT, while women younger than 40 have up to 21 minutes.
Former active duty Marine here. I'm on your side in this 100% for several reasons I won't go into, but the 18 and 21 minutes you stated is off by quite a bit. It's roughly 28 (male) and 32 minutes (female) for 3 miles - it may have changed by a minute or two since I've been out. This still aligns with the basic premise of your statement.
For reference, 3 miles at 18 or sub-18 minutes is getting to an elite level of running, while low to mid 20's is average.
Help an autist out here.