[TeMPOraL]

> 'Gender equality' doesn't mean that everyone should be 'the same' but rather that everyone should have equal rights.

The GP was being very sarcastic (there's no way he/she actually meant this).

What you wrote is what gender equality should be about. However, the gender equality being fought for and pushed in the media is the one of conveniently pretending there's no biological differences between genders when it suits you, and then complaining that different results must surely be a result of conspiracy of one gender against the other.

[rayiner]

> What you wrote is what gender equality should be about. However, the gender equality being fought for and pushed in the media is the one of conveniently pretending there's no biological differences between genders when it suits you, and then complaining that different results must surely be a result of conspiracy of one gender against the other.

Gender equality being fought in the media is about presuming that disparities in representation are the result of discrimination unless there is evidence to rebut that presumption. Nobody in the mainstream media is talking about the low representation of women in positions that require lots of physical strength because we have evidence of such differences.

The difference is not being willing to accept "oh it's just different preferences" as a reason for observed disparities without evidence.

[shasta]

> The difference is not being willing to accept "oh it's just different preferences" as a reason for observed disparities without evidence.

Not accepting such an explanation is fine, but making unwarranted assumptions about the cause until they're disproved is not.

The goal isn't statistical equality of outcomes. It's minimized injustice. When a woman is passed over for a job or offered less money than a less qualified man, that's an injustice. Those who seek to equalize outcomes by adding injustice "the other way" are missing the point.

[rayiner]

> The goal isn't statistical equality of outcomes. It's minimized injustice

The mainstream presumption is that statistical inequality presumes the existence of injustice unless proven otherwise. That's a reasonable presumption.

> Those who seek to equalize outcomes by adding injustice "the other way" are missing the point.

That's a short-run versus long-run issue. From 1970 to 2010, the proportion of women earning medical or law degrees increased from under 10% to almost 50%. That was, in part, the result of affirmative action measures to increase the representation of women. But those measures are no longer necessary and no longer applied. The new ratios are self-perpetuating.

The point that people preoccupied with short-term injustice miss is that skewed gender ratios in professions are often the result of past discrimination and so are in and of themselves a continuing injustice. All else being equal, a rational person would rather enter a profession where they will not face career headwinds as a minority than one where they will. Some measure of additional injustice in the short term can set up a more just equilibrium in the long term.

The opposition to that is an emotional rather than a rational argument. The rational approach is to look at the net level of injustice integrated over time.

[shasta]

> statistical inequality presumes the existence of injustice unless proven otherwise. That's a reasonable presumption.

I disagree. There are too many other factors that are plausibly contributing. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

I'm fine with attempting to change the culture to make e.g. STEM more appealing to women. Achieving this by enforcing an artificial prioritization of women over men in tech jobs seems to me a last resort approach. Is that really the only way to achieve the culture shift? In any event, at least I would find reasoning along these lines honest and am not opposed in principle.

[rayiner]

> The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.

Who properly bears the burden of proof is a question of your policy objective. For example, we place the burden of proof on the prosecutor in criminal proceedings because we have a policy objective of rather having guilty people go free than innocent people imprisoned. But nothing intrinsically says the burden of proof has to be with the prosecutor. If our goal was to prioritize making sure guilty people are held accountable, we could shift the burden of proof to the defendant.

Placing the burden of proof it on the person making the claim simply prioritizes the status quo, which may or may not be what you want. Given our status quo is the product of proven, vicious discrimination against women, protecting the status quo through allocation of the burden of proof is the opposite of what we want.

So instead, we have chosen to place the burden of proof on the party citing intrinsic differences as an explanation/excuse for evidenced disproportionate representation.

> Achieving this by enforcing an artificial prioritization of women over men in tech jobs seems to me a last resort approach

It has the strong advantage of being an approach that has actually worked in the past.

[YoureWrong]

> Placing the burden of proof it on the person making the claim simply prioritizes the status quo, which may or may not be what you want. Given our status quo is the product of proven, vicious discrimination against women, protecting the status quo through allocation of the burden of proof is the opposite of what we want.

Except that presuming the opposite allows us to flap around on the whims of opinion, unsupported by factual evidence, and thus allows us to do things that are massively harmful to the long-term well being of women (such as raising a generation of men after the inflection point on gender issues which faced institutionalized discrimination in places such as universities), and thus undermine our own end-goals through emotive decisions rather than rational ones.

The problem with the current approach is that you can't continue it long enough to cause the necessary change to restabilize the social trends, because the accumulated backlash of your intentionally inflicted injusticed builds faster than your positive social change, and you've simply entrenched a good reason to retaliate (they were intentionally discriminated against by a group who had previously suffered discrimination and knew what they were doing), and have already entrenched that intentional infliction of injustice is the means of correcting past injustices.

Far from changing the underlying social dynamic, the intentional discrimination against men actually reaffirmed the status quo one meta-level up from where your concern was: women will be just as sexist towards men as men were ever to women, given the chance, and even when they are personally "concerned" with the topic of discrimination.

Because it failed to use science in developing its methods, recent feminism has been a massive failure: far from standing against discrimination, modern feminism has demonstrated that women believe gender relations is a game of tit-for-tat, and they should be positively discriminated against by men looking for retaliation over their intentional discrimination anywhere that feminism has acted in excess.

This is a destabilizing force in gender relations, and should be set aside as an immature view. Instead, we should look honestly at the situation and develop a stance from actual ethics, rather than emotions.

[shasta]

> Who properly bears the burden of proof is a question of your policy objective.

Well, the context was the discussion of policy objectives. If you're saying that we should presume the existence of ongoing discrimination to be the cause of gender inequality during those discussions, then that seems flatly wrong. The rational way to discuss policy is to have an honest assessment of the current situation and then predict how policies will affect outcomes. You don't start by making unproven assumptions. The burden of proof in an argument is on the person making the claim.

You can certainly weigh potential outcomes and decide to go ahead with a course of action even though the benefits haven't been proven.

> It has the strong advantage of being an approach that has actually worked in the past.

Maybe.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The mainstream presumption is that statistical inequality presumes the existence of injustice unless proven otherwise. That's a reasonable presumption.

That's just begging the question. We may be able to attribute some proportion of statistical inequality to factors other than injustice, or affirmatively attribute some proportion to specific injustice, but we will never be able to fully explain everything.

If you assume malice in all cases of uncertainty then it becomes impossible to recognize defeat of the injustice. Once you have actually defeated it you end up fighting your own shadow forever because the biased assumption always tells you that you haven't.

> From 1970 to 2010, the proportion of women earning medical or law degrees increased from under 10% to almost 50%. That was, in part, the result of affirmative action measures to increase the representation of women. But those measures are no longer necessary and no longer applied. The new ratios are self-perpetuating.

Those anecdotes don't generalize unless you assume the conclusion again. We don't know what the equilibrium proportion of women in each profession is "supposed" to be. Some professions may already be near their only stable equilibrium even if they are heavily unbalanced. Even the idea that there is a "correct" stable equilibrium proportionality in every profession is flawed. There could be professions with tipping points such that whichever sex dominates the culture becomes a substantial majority.

> The point that people preoccupied with short-term injustice miss is that skewed gender ratios in professions are often the result of past discrimination and so are in and of themselves a continuing injustice. All else being equal, a rational person would rather enter a profession where they will not face career headwinds as a minority than one where they will.

Being prohibited by law or violence from working a job because of your sex or race is an injustice. Being the first woman or minority in the old boy's club is a challenge. They are not the same thing. And the subtlety of the latter is not amenable to fine tuning via Uncle Sam's sledgehammer.

> The opposition to that is an emotional rather than a rational argument. The rational approach is to look at the net level of injustice integrated over time.

"In the long run we are all dead." -John Maynard Keynes

It isn't irrational to consider justice on a timescale that affects the people who are alive today.

[Kalium]

> The goal isn't statistical equality of outcomes.

Given that statistical inequality is frequently and loudly trumpeted as proof of injustice, one could be forgiven for reaching precisely this conclusion.

[JDiculous]

> Gender equality being fought in the media is about presuming that disparities in representation are the result of discrimination.

That's the problem, making assumptions of discrimination and identifying as a victim when it's convenient. If you're the one making the accusation, the onus is on you to support that with evidence.

The cultural narrative is to identify those who aren't straight men as victims (women, LBGT). Drunk female has sex with drunk male? The female is a "victim" and not responsible for her actions, while the male gets kicked out of school (this happened at Occidental College). Female prostitute willingly has consensual sex with a man for $1,000? The male is a criminal and the woman is a victim (that's the law in countries like Sweden, and I once spoke to a human trafficking prevention worker at a top non-profit who tried to convince me that all prostitutes are victims). Male tells a woman on the street she's cute? Sexual harassment (unless he's Brad Pitt).

And look at the media. Lead male celebrity actors in Hollywood movies get paid more than female leads? This is seen as a "problem" and must be the result of discrimination, and articles about it go viral on social media. Female models and pornstars get paid significantly more than their male counterparts? Supply and demand baby, nobody gives a shit.

The worst part is that it's heresy for a straight male to even question assumptions of discrimination without being accused of misogyny. Even the mildest joke alluding to differences between the sexes is grounds for being fired from your job and ostracized (eg. recent Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt).

[norea-armozel]

>The cultural narrative is to identify those who aren't straight men as victims (women, LBGT).

As one of those people who isn't straight (B and T for me), I am a victim. It's a fact of life that in the United States if you are openly LGBT you will get hurt or even killed. So, unless you got FBI crime stats that says otherwise, I'm sure your conservative/reactionary nonsense will fly for long.

[JDiculous]

Don't get me wrong, women and LBGT can definitely be victims of discrimination. I'm sure you suffer from real harassment on a daily basis, and that's totally unacceptable.

I was just trying to say that when there is a conflict between a man and a woman, we tend to want to identify the woman as a victim and "protect" her. The mere questioning of this by a straight male makes him a misogynist and subject to a ton of scrutiny, but if a woman or a gay male does the same it's somehow permissible and given more weight. This guy (a gay male) summed it up pretty well https://youtu.be/VCaEO6ue_io?t=3m36s (3:36-3:54).

My statement probably applies less to transexuals, so apologies for that.

[norea-armozel]

I was just trying to say that when there is a conflict between a man and a woman, we tend to want to identify the woman as a victim and "protect" her. The mere questioning of this by a straight male makes him a misogynist and subject to a ton of scrutiny, but if a woman or a gay male does the same it's somehow permissible and given more weight

-

But in reality feminists don't assume women are mere victim as many have illustrated how women reinforce the patriarchy sometimes to their own benefit. Consider the fact that folks like Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin exist. They're not just cold and calculating in their views as they genuinely believe in the patriarchal values they espouse. For them, it gets them votes and political power. The rest of us get screwed over.

[caseysoftware]

> Nobody in the mainstream media is talking about the low representation of women in positions that require lots of physical strength because we have evidence of such differences.

The hundreds of articles about lack of women in combat positions and in the special forces tend to disagree with you. In both of those areas, pure physical strength is one of the first requirements.

[rayiner]

The articles about women in combat positions are almost all about the military's removing explicit bans on women in combat positions and instituting gender neutral physical requirements.

[scottlocklin]

Which we all know means "lower physical requirements" -which is, as some people like to say, "problematic."

[aninhumer]

What paranoid nonsense is this?

Gender neutral physical requirements just means you change "men who can lift Xkg" into "people who can lift Xkg". If that still happens to exclude most women, so be it.

[caseysoftware]

Except that's not how it works:

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/marine-corps-fitnes...

For example: To get top scores, men are expected to run 3 miles in 18 minutes, while women only have to do it in 21.

[scottlocklin]

That isn't what happens. What happens is women can't do it, so they change the physical requirements. Which is why for years, "lady marines" or whatever you're supposed to call them didn't have to do pull ups, and when they gender normed it, the standard went from 10 to 3 chin ups (which 55% of women failed).

[daenz]

> The difference is not being willing to accept "oh it's just different preferences" as a reason for observed disparities without evidence.

Take a look at The Gender Equality Paradox. https://vimeo.com/19707588 Sweden, considered the most "gender equal" place in the world, has an extreme gender bias in certain professions like engineering and nursing. The documentary tries to uncover why that bias still exists, even though the genders have very little influence in terms society imposing gender roles. It's a fantastic watch.

[danharaj]

Such a peer reviewed source..

[daenz]

The host interviews many researchers who have published papers in peer-reviewed journals on both sides of the debate.

[danharaj]

That's well and good, but the composition of such interviews itself is a synthetic action, and the result has now interpreted its sources in some particular way. Is the video itself peer reviewed? I doubt it.

Interpretation is an important part of science and itself is subject to peer review.

[daenz]

Unless you've seen it in its entirety, I'm not sure how you can comment on how the interviews are presented. It seems like you're suggesting that you think there's a bias in it that you don't like. Do you have a problem with any specific parts of the documentary?

[ap22213]

Maybe I'm missing a lot of the important media, but I haven't seen what you're describing. Which are the media outlets where you're seeing a fight and push for pretending that biological differences don't exist? Even the original article states that there are differences. Could you provide some examples so that I can see what you're seeing?

Most reasonable people that I know, of either gender, understand that the average man is physically stronger than the average woman. That's a clear distinction. But, lots of other traits are not clear at all, even though they are implied without good evidence. And, in most or all cases there is enough overlap in ability (e.g. the strongest woman is much stronger than the weakest man)

As others mention, the issue of gender rights that I see is one of opportunity and access. The question that's raised is whether the culture imposes biases, implicit restrictions and even punishments when there should be none.

[humanrebar]

> Which are the media outlets where you're seeing a fight and push for pretending that biological differences don't exist?

It started in academia, but quickly spread to media, but the Larry Summers kerfuffle at Harvard comes to mind. In an academic context, Summers decides to be provocative and asks if biological differences could account for some gender gaps. He later gets run out of town.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_b...

[leereeves]

This kind of political opposition might explain why less research exists documenting the existence of sex differences.

[rayiner]

Funny, I was going to use his example to prove the opposite point. How many people in the mainstream media are talking about the underrepresention of women among Fields Medalists? The vast amount of attention is focused on jobs where the distribution of genius-level IQs,[1] is not relevant: programmers, CEOs, business executives, etc.

And speaking of Summers, it's hilarious how people will cite him while ignoring his underlying point about aptitude distribution. Almost 40% of kids who have a 700+ math SAT are girls. Using Summers' reasoning we should see a lot more women in programming and engineering.

[1] This is leaving aside findings subsequent to Summers' comments that over time the disparity between men and women in IQ scores is narrowing.

[LanceH]

He proposed a scientific approach to finding the differences. The search for truth was rejected.

veritas indeed.

[ll123]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/women-m...

[001sky]

every article that compares people who hold job 'x' with the percentage of the population with trait 'z' makes the very assumption you are blind too. the issue is like wondering why sprinters and endurance athletes are no evenly distributed at the olympics in the various events. (eg, a marathoner is not a crap athlete because they cannot sprint).

xx and xy simply puts different brain chemistry at work. it doesn't mean that the variation disqualifies anyone from anything. the issue is much, much more subtle (like fast twitch vs slow twich muscles in athletes).

oversimplyin it simply makes a mockery of understanding & analysis.

the fact that you use 'brute strength' as an obvious irrelevant characteristic seems to play into this ignorance. ('brute strentgh' doesn't even matter amongst most athletes in most endeavors, at best its a gating criteria, but again what about endurance vs speed vs hand-eye co-ordination vs tactial application of effort?).

...and there's loads of science if you are bored

[Retric]

The biological differences between genders are fairly small in comparison to the standard deviation. Consider on average men may have 20% more upper body strength than the average women. But, some men have 1/2 the upper body strength of the average women, and some women have twice the upper body strength than the average man.

Further there are lot's of trends that run counter to the biology, for example on average women make better snipers than men.

[TeMPOraL]

That's all good. In the case you described, in a perfect egalitarian, meritocratic society you would expect to find more men than women in the army in general, but maybe more women than men doing sniper duty. That's how averages will play out with zero gender discrimination.

In other words - just because an industry is not 50/50 men/women, doesn't mean there's sexual discrimination going on.

Even if the differences themselves are small, the very fact that they're there mean that women have comparative advantage over men in some areas, while men have that advantage over women in other. We exploit that concept in international trade, and yet many find it wrong to exploit it at the society level.

The question we should be asking is: which "social biases" arise from comparative advantage of sexes? Maybe they're ok and we should leave those biases be, while removing those that don't give any utility? Hard-equalizing everything (by e.g. pushing for 50/50 ration of genders in every industry) seems to be an outcome worse for everybody.

[aianus]

Even a small difference in the mean or sd for a given attribute will result in enormous gender imbalances for jobs requiring an extreme value of that attribute.

If you select people totally at random (no discrimination!) from the population of people with >130 IQ to work at Facebook and the sd for men in the general population is 11 IQ points instead of 10 for women, you'll wind up with a 70% male workforce at Facebook.

Similarly if men had a mean IQ of 101 instead of 99 for women, Facebook would have a 66% male workforce.

From R:

women <- pnorm(130, mean = 100, sd = 10, lower.tail = FALSE)

men <- pnorm(130, mean = 100, sd = 11, lower.tail = FALSE)

scaling <- 100/(women+men)

men * scaling

[1] 70.28561

women * scaling

[1] 29.71439

women <- pnorm(130, mean = 99, sd = 10, lower.tail = FALSE)

men <- pnorm(130, mean = 101, sd = 10, lower.tail = FALSE)

scaling <- 100/(women+men)

men * scaling

[1] 65.8503

women * scaling

[1] 34.1497

[osipov]

Bravo! You are a gentleman and a scholar! This comment if packaged a Jupyter notebook could move the world!

[Retric]

The centeral problem with that line of thinking is it's really hard to both set aside "social biases" and it's really hard to seperate what's useful for getting a job done and how we currently measure thinks. Consider, in an 100% egalitarian society the NBA might end up with 1-5 women. However, a similar game in an egalitarian society might be much closer to 50-50 if the rules focused on slightly different gameplay. Ex: does making the basket 5% higher change the gender balance.

Granted, the NBA is entertainment which complicates things, but the same line of thinking probably applies to the Navy Seals. IMO, whenever you see a biased rule you need to deside if it's useful before you can view it as egalitarian.

[Lawtonfogle]

Even if the averages are the same, differences in deviations could still result in differences in outcomes.

Say that men and women were, on average, completely identical at programming computers (average of 50). But say that men had greater deviation. So you had more men with a 10 and more men with a 90. But there were more women with a 40 and a 60. 75 and 25 are the break even points.

But, software development companies don't want average programmers, they want good programmers. So they only hire those who are a 80 or better. End result: more men hired as programmers even though men and women are equal on average.

[norea-armozel]

Nothing personal, but I'm calling bs on that statement of companies hiring the "best" in any position. The reality is that companies hire what they can afford and are willing to take a hit on productivity in the short term if it means getting a service or product out of the door. You can always make something better later but you can't make something if you have no one you can hire to get it done. As for women in programming, I would argue that I know more women programmers that are far better than me at the job despite my knack for teasing out oddities in bugs. My own talent doesn't always make up for solid performance. So that Cowboy Programmer schtick doesn't work when you're trying to get hired at any company that most of the Valley would consider boring.

[Lawtonfogle]

First consider that I was initially talking about all people. The average person probably can't even get hello world to run (also depend if we mean mean, median, or more).

>The reality is that companies hire what they can afford and are willing to take a hit on productivity in the short term if it means getting a service or product out of the door.

Redefine best to be a more complex variable that depends upon what the individual is willing to work for, how good they are, and set limits on the max they can pay.

For example, perhaps best is defined as highest skill for those willing to work for no more than 50k. Anyone who isn't willing to work for it is eliminated. You still have a remaining group, that when divided by gender, has both male half and female half each with an average and a standard deviation, and which the company is wanting to hire from the top.

>You can always make something better later but you can't make something if you have no one you can hire to get it done.

Perhaps best is defined not by who can make the most perfect program given infinite time, but who can make the program that best fits the business needs for a minimally viable product in the least amount of time. Once again, best can be redefined as you want. My argument doesn't depend upon any given implementation of best.

>So that Cowboy Programmer schtick doesn't work when you're trying to get hired at any company that most of the Valley would consider boring.

Once again (again), I never defined best. Best may mean a cowboy to some group who only needs one or two individuals, and it may mean a great team player to a far larger organization.

[mratzloff]

20% more upper body strength? Try 2-3x.

[Retric]

At similar body sizes it's ~20%, women are also generally shorter and often significantly less fit in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_w...

At unlimited weight it's 151kg vs 212kg, but far more men get into weight lifting so there is bias in those numbers.

[mratzloff]

How many women are comparable to a 6', 185 lb man? And we're talking averages, not Olympic competitors.

[Retric]

Average man in the US is 5' 10" and out of shape. Which is my point the average is a low bar.

Now, 0.1% of females might be at the fit 6' male standard but that's over 150,000 in the US. And there are sub 6' NBA players which suggests is an unreasonably high bar for the vast majority of things.

[mark_integerdsv]

I am not a smart man.

It is slowly dawning on me that I am missing some not so subtle sarcasm.

[rorykoehler]

If you were a woman however....

[mjevans]

Speaking of gender equality, neither he/she nor she/he (though I've been told by those who've focused on that in college that both are correct) is equal. True equality is the use of singular they; though they is really a set of any (unspecified) size.

[humanrebar]

> True equality is the use of singular they

I find rigid rules for language to be Orwellian, and I've always found the singular 'they' to be at least as awkward as the gender-neutral 'he'.

An alternate "true equality" would be to generously extend the benefit of the doubt to everyone. And to teach our children to be strong enough to deal with inaccurate pronouns, on occasion. I'd rather my daughter get her strength from better sources than offense and identity politics.

[yarrel]

I find "they" to only be awkward where it's ambiguous (the same as "he"). It's more Shakespearean than Orwellian. ;-)

[TeMPOraL]

I try to use singular "they" whenever it doesn't sound utterly awkward or doesn't make sentence ambiguous (e.g. "OP went to see the group but they're late"). But singular they is a relatively new concept for me (I haven't heard of it when I was first learning English), so I sometimes default to he/she when writing quickly.

[pron]

> However, the gender equality being fought for and pushed in the media is the one of conveniently pretending there's no biological differences between genders when it suits you, and then complaining that different results must surely be a result of conspiracy of one gender against the other.

Not at all. The idea is that the sexes (and the races) be treated similarly in society, and not have their choices limited -- not just by laws but by hidden biases which translate to social pressure.

Most of what you call "gender equality being fought for and pushed in the media" is actually the ideology of gender equality which was formed after studying the results of decades of research. OTOH, most of its opponents base their opposition on nothing but their personal perception of the world, which is, of course, skewed and very inaccurate. Like in some other issues, there's a huge knowledge gap between both opposing sides.

[TeMPOraL]

> by hidden biases which translate to social pressure

There are two kinds of biases here. Those which are just accidents of history and those which arise from the observable biological differences between sexes. If you deny the existence of the second group, you also have to deny that there are biological differences between sexes (apart from reproductive organs), at which point I'd suggest going outside and taking a look around.

Conversely, if you accept that different sexes have different strengths and weaknesses, you should expect nonequal representation of genders in various occupations even in the most perfect, utopian, egalitarian and meritocratic society.

My issue with the way gender equality is currently discussed is that people deny the existence of biological differences and their consequences, treating everything as baseless cultural bias that needs to be conquered.

(Actually, my real issue is with people who are being assholes about promoting their side. Which happens equally on both sides of the issue, and that makes the whole topic toxic.)

And whatever results are of those "decades of research" (I've never personally seen being invoked, by either side), they have to agree with observable reality - otherwise, they're just results of crap research. Given the state of psychology and social sciences, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest (and no, I don't approve or criticize research based on wich side it supports, I view all soft science research with very strong suspicion).

[Ntrails]

It's really not difficult to recognise that two statements can be true.

On average men are better at x than women

Given a requirement for someone who is at least k good at x, one cannot make assumptions about an applicants abilities based on gender

[TeMPOraL]

Yes, but if you accept those two statements as true, then it follows that:

Given x-skill is uniformly distributed among all people, you'll expect more men than women in fields which require candidates at least k good at x.

A lot of people seem to have trouble with accepting that last thing.

[pron]

> If you deny the existence of the second group, you also have to deny that there are biological differences between sexes (apart from reproductive organs), at which point I'd suggest going outside and taking a look around.

I don't deny the existence of the second group, but you'd have to prove that those biases are somehow justified, which is a hard task because there are very few completely universal and immutable biases (or at least biases that change at the same temporal and spatial pace as biology). So, in short, that seems to comprise of a very small, very insignificant, set of social biases.

> My issue with the way gender equality is currently discussed is that people deny the existence of biological differences and their consequences, treating everything as baseless cultural bias that needs to be conquered.

That's not how it's discussed. It's just that there is very little evidence that biological differences are a significant cause of the great power inequality we see in society between the sexes and among the races, and a lot of evidence to suggest that mutable social biases are by far the dominant cause. So there's very little reason to talk about the biological differences if so far they've not been shown to be too pertinent to the discussion of inequality.

> Which happens equally on both sides of the issue, and that makes the whole topic toxic.

But there is a big knowledge gap. Those in favor of feminism, while not immune from assholishness -- at least have decades of study to at least support the premise of their position, while those against have just their own personal feelings on the matter.

> they have to agree with observable reality - otherwise, they're just results of crap research.

They do.

> I've never personally seen being invoked, by either side

They're invoked often by the only side that has them. Most government policy choices refer at some point in their inception to academic studies.

> Given the state of psychology and social sciences, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest (and no, I don't approve or criticize research based on wich side it supports, I view all soft science research with very strong suspicion).

Suspicion is good, and it is quite probable that many specific findings are questionable, but when you're confronted with such a huge body of evidence -- from history, sociology, anthropology and psychology -- you must admit that it accounts to much more than a gut feeling (which is what the other side base their arguments on).

[Singletoned]

I'm quite suspicious about your statement that your side is supported by "such a huge body of evidence", whereas "the other side base their arguments on [...] a gut feeling".

I think from that we can safely assume that you (at best) massively overstate your position and massively understate your opponents.

[leereeves]

I agree, particularly when pron claims that history is part of the huge body of evidence against gender biases.

pron, what is the evidence from history against traditional gender biases?

[pron]

Why, that many of those biases disappeared completely after a social struggle. And I don't mean disappeared from the lawbooks, but from the minds of most individuals.

One notable example is the struggle for women's suffrage. For a long time it was a wide-held belief that women shouldn't vote because they lacked the mental state of mind for making decisions in matters of state. Then, after that idea slowly faded, other excuses were given from preserving tradition to encouraging women to stay at home because that's what's best for the children.

Other notable examples are women education, and especially allowing women to become doctors and lawyers (both medieval professions or earlier) only in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was obvious to everyone that women simply did not have the mental faculties required.

Yet, all of that has thankfully changed, society is better for it, and very few people still believe that women are unfit to vote or to be lawyers or physicians.

[generic_user]

> not just by laws but by hidden biases which translate to social pressure.

The fallacy with this line of thinking is that the 'hidden bias' is being determined by someone with 'hidden bias' which translates to 'social pressure'. Its completely subjective. Its an accusation based on a belief not a set of external facts. You can not be free of 'hidden bias' any more then you can be free of self conciousness. You are protected from certain forms of 'discrimination' under the law. The burden of proof for 'hidden bias' is simply not attainable by any standard of law.

[pron]

It's quite simple:

1. We don't wish to eliminate personal biases (like your preference for blue over green), but social biases (like that Africans are sub-human)

2. We don't wish to eliminate all social biases (like murder is bad and fairness is good), but only those that increase power inequality (like that Africans are sub-human or that women belong in the home)

So there is a subjective ideology here (preference for fairness), but it makes recognizing incompatible biases rather objective and very much based on a set of external facts.

> The burden of proof for 'hidden bias' is simply not attainable by any standard of law.

No one has said that this change is to be done by changing the law alone. It is mostly educational.

[TeMPOraL]

I'm going out on a limb here, but did anyone consider that some of those "social biases" you want to eliminate arise naturally from society exploiting comparative advantage of sexes?

When women are on average better at doing X and men are on average better at doing Y, even if the advantage is very slight, it's beneficial to let women focus on X and men on Y. I think some of the customs may have arisen there. I'm not saying that they haven't become twisted or outdated and shouldn't be pruned - just that we should take a closer look before deciding to get rid of them.

[pron]

I think that the near universality of many of those biases, and the fact that civilization arose pretty much independently around the world, it's pretty clear that that is the case. I don't think saying that is even controversial.

However, you must be careful with your history, because many biases (such as the place of women in the workplace) have actually changed considerably through history and across different cultures, and many of them actually peaked in Victorian times, and it is mostly the Victorian biases that we in the West are left with.

Nevertheless, the origin of the biases says nothing about their benefit. Obviously, beneficial behavior in pre-historical times was very different from what benefitted it in classical times, medieval times, the early-modern period, and certainly after the industrial revolution.

Finally, it is very hard to define what you mean by "a benefit to society" by any objective means. For simple organisms, increasing the population count is beneficial (although even that is not clear because that's assigning a value judgment to a mere fact). But what does it mean for human society? Obviously many people thought for a long time that slavery is very beneficial, although the slaves obviously disagreed. So the basic ideology of feminism basically has one tenet -- that of fairness -- and says that power should be more-or-less equally distributed among social categories that are determined at birth (except for individual misfortunes etc., which is another matter).

[PeterisP]

I would be very, very wary of a statement like "we wish to eliminate only those social biases that increase power inequality".

Yes, there untrue and unfair biases that increase power inequality, and those should be eliminated.

But what about preferences which, after careful deliberation, turn out to be actually objective to the best of our knowledge? If I understand your statements correctly, then they would imply that in this case, the if that bias/belief/preference/opinion would benefit the socially dominant group (thus increase power inequality), then then it should be eliminated; and if/when that same bias would benefit the socially disadvantaged group (this increasing power equality) then the exact same thing should be praised... which feels not okay to me.

I mean, people are different, and groups of people are also pretty different. For pretty much any useful property, when we split people in groups (e.g. by genders, by ager, or "all the current USA citizens with X ethnical background") we see examples where one of the group will have (on average) a significant objective advantage over another group in that property. Most likely it's not because of something they did or deserve, it's some effect of past generations of socioeconomic situations, ingrained cultural practices that favoured different attitudes to e.g. directions of education, or simple genetics - but there differences are real.

If you would achieve perfect equality of opportunity for each individual - you would still have a significant inequality of results and power between such groups.

If you would achieve perfect equality of results or power equality - that could only be done through very significant inequality of opportunities for individuals, significantly aiding or hampering them depending on which social groups they belong to. This does not seem acceptable to me at all; the goal is nice, but it definitely doesn't justify such (IMHO horrible) means.

[pron]

> but there differences are real.

But those differences aren't the laws of physics. We can change them, and we do change them all the time. The only question is in which direction? Saying "leave things alone" simply means let the existing dynamics continue and is as much of an ideology as "let's figure out what change would be in accordance with our values and do that".

> you would still have a significant inequality of results and power between such groups.

Between what groups? Struggle over power never stops. It's not a problem that can be solved once and for all, and people fight over it all the time. Even the most powerful fight to stay in power and even increase their power. All I'm saying is, find out what your values are and fight for those, rather than believe that the current state of affairs is "natural". It isn't. It is simply a recent snapshot of the situation after all previous struggles. Not fighting for your values is simply yielding to those who do.

> If you would achieve perfect equality of results or power equality - that could only be done through very significant inequality of opportunities for individuals, significantly aiding or hampering them depending on which social groups they belong to. This does not seem acceptable to me at all; the goal is nice, but it definitely doesn't justify such (IMHO horrible) means.

I said nothing of the means, and all of those fears are completely unfounded. Decades of research show us that people are being "aided or hampered them depending on which social groups they belong to" right now. All we want is to people to study and be aware of the state of affairs, and the goal is not to achieve perfect equality among all individuals, but to exactly remove the existing pressures on social groups -- that's all.

[leereeves]

Where does that definition of personal bias come from?

It seems to me that the dictionary definition and common understanding of personal bias is "a bias held by a particular person".

I've often seen social engineering redefine terms to redirect or derail discussions and find that very Orwellian.

[pron]

> It seems to me that the dictionary definition and common understanding of personal bias is "a bias held by a particular person".

Yes, and some biases are shared by many and propagate through social mechanisms. Those are called social biases.

> I've often seen social engineering redefine terms to redirect or derail discussions and find that very Orwellian.

Much of it is no more than a more careful, organized terminology designed to assist academic study. I find that many people who find stuff like that to be Orwellian are simply not interested to learn what it's really all about. If they did, they's find a fascinating field for research, and a clearer understanding of human society. Instead, many of them dismiss the study of human society because it eludes simple mathematical models (as all complex systems do), and may require a re-examination of things they take for granted.

Comments like this sounds to someone with a social sciences education as the statement "I feel this messing about with particles angers the gods, and, in particular, Zeus" would sound to anyone with a science education.

[outofcuriosity]

When a scientist measures the behaviour of particles in a carefully-defined system, they can replicate that behaviour such that they can say, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the particles always behave that way under those conditions.

Such replicability has not been demonstrated in systems as complex, chaotic, and essentially unmeasurable as the human brain, let alone a human society. A field of study is not a science without replicability.

Academic terminology, especially in the social "sciences," creates a scaffold of "theory" without any replicable data, and uses it to pass judgement on the behaviours of individuals without actually examining the individual's own motives for a behaviour. It's a dehumanizing assumption of determinism to believe that individuals are incapable of making decisions for themselves, or that conjectured Foucaultian structures (which could be said to exist only as linguistic sign for the speaker's own level of education) govern all human behaviour.

I'd even go so far as to say that if you believe that Power Structures determine all human behaviour, you're living in the worst sort of Bad Faith.

One either accepts that all study of human society (and all reexamination of values which occurs in its pursuit) is little more than observation, conjectures, and untestable hypotheses--or, one accepts that they do not understand what science is and how it is conducted and how it proceeds.

Calling the social sciences "science" is about as disingenuous and unscientific as calling Art History "Temporal Paint Physics."

[leereeves]

Do you believe that political manipulation by careful use of language exists?

That's a big difference between Zeus's wrath and Orwellian tactics. One is real.

Perhaps social science should be more aware, or more open about, the political influence of its chosen terms, if it wants to be a neutral search for truth.

But I admit, I may have misinterpreted your definitions. From your examples, I thought you meant that personal bias was about something of little social import, like blue vs green, while a bias regarding other people (even one held personally) was not a personal bias.