[13thLetter]

> While those are certainly relevant control factors, I would presume that any conclusions are premature without demonstrating a lack of bias in the actual positions men vs. women are promoted to, relative to their experience and education.

I'm wondering why the default assumption is that there is bias, and we're being expected to prove a negative here.

[jellicle]

Probably because there have been thousands of studies done showing substantial bias in the amount male and female workers are paid.

No, some social-media guy at DICE looking at a spreadsheet and blithely assuring people (without data or methodology) that there's no bias in tech worker salaries is not sufficient to throw out the mountains of proper methodology, peer-reviewed studies that have been done.

[whiddershins]

I don't know ... have you wandered around the world and actually talked to real people about how they view gender?

Almost no one will assert they think men and women are exactly the same.

So if everyone starts from the presumption that there is some, poorly defined, somewhat-conscious, never agreed upon, but certainly real, difference between men and women ... a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and would probably require conscious effort and/or policy to overcome.

[tomp]

> a bias in treatment would be the default condition, and would probably require conscious effort and/or policy to overcome.

Ironically, people usually assume that the unequal treatment benefits men over women, and completely dismiss the reverse possibility, even though there's no rational reason for this :)

[tveita]

Maybe a priori in a vacuum, but most people are aware of the historical context where women just recently got the right to vote and attend university, and are still considered men's property in some parts of the world.

It's well acknowledged that men are discriminated against in some contexts, but yes, there is no serious debate that the sexism in our society overwhelmingly targets women, and there's a reason that the movement for equality between sexes is called "feminism".

[13thLetter]

> and there's a reason that the movement for equality between sexes is called "feminism".

Except you're going to have a hard time pointing to any of the places where feminism is fighting against this well-acknowledged discrimination against men.

...And that's fine! Really, it's okay to say "this is the movement for women's equality meeting here in this room, if you're interested in men's issues you're going to have to go somewhere else." The NAACP doesn't spend all its time fighting against anti-Semitism, after all, and that doesn't make the NAACP bad in any way. I don't understand the weird compulsion to try and crowd everyone else out of the gender equality mindspace.

[tremguy]

But those are just presumptions, thats why we do quantitative studies in the first place.

[_jmar777]

I don't know if I would consider that a "default assumption", so much as being willing, in the absence of hard empirical data, to put some credibility into the glut of anecdotal evidence.