[KirinDave]

What's curious to me about this stance is no one questions if the measures taken, when coupled to there outcomes, don't suggest failed policies.

"Well we made policies and they didn't do what we expected, therefore women are making choices!" seems to me (with an American bias perhaps) to be a failure in the design or implementation of the policies, rather than immediately blaming women.

I'm surprised how credulously people engage these policies

[Majestic121]

I agree with your skepticism, but it's important not to fall back on the other end : i.e., "I know there's no difference between men and women therefore the policies are wrong !"

Second, I don't think anyone is blaming women here. Choosing (or being pressured by the environment) to have more 'gendered' (whatever that means) career path is not necessarily a bad thing.

It can become a bad thing if it hinders opportunity, but not before

[KirinDave]

> I agree with your skepticism, but it's important not to fall back on the other end : i.e., "I know there's no difference between men and women therefore the policies are wrong !"

An awful lot of women have negative things to say about that situation, so maybe I should just quote them?

I don't think I am falling back on the "other side" here. I'm pointing out that the effectiveness of these measures seems quite low according to the data. It's odd to assume that the entire effect is therefore determined uniquely by "women's choice." Is there evidence of that?

It's one thing to say, "Keep an open mind." It's another to hedge off what's at least an equally likely scenario from discussion at all, which with the flood of downvotes I'm getting certainly seems like what's happening to me

[sonnyblarney]

"I'm pointing out that the effectiveness of these measures seems quite low according to the data"

No ... the data shows that there is actually more equal opportunity, and yet there is gender divergence.

The objective was never to 'equalize choices or outcomes' in fields - it was to provide access and opportunity, which is happening.

It would be really, really hard to argue against the flood of data points indicating women have considerably greater choice, flexibility and support especially in places like Sweden ... and then to have women doing different things, highlights the apparent paradox.

[KirinDave]

> No ... the data shows that there is actually more equal opportunity, and yet there is gender divergence.

Actually, it shows that there are more of these "opportunity metrics." But we need to ask how reflective of reality these metrics actually are, don't we? If the metrics are bad, that's also another explanation of this "paradox." If someone says, "equal time for paternity and maternity should cause this outcome", but it didn't... well... then we need to examine every reason why that might be? It could be that the law is counterproductive, that men are choosing not to exercise rights, that women are choosing to exercise their rights differently, or that the measures themselves were not actually effective (either by not addressing root causes, or by not actually being deployed effectively).

Why is this question controversial?

[sonnyblarney]

I think it's controversial because of the implied assumption that given equality measures, there would be basically equal outcomes ... and that if we don't see that, then for some reason should be skeptical. I don't think we should be. I think we should mostly trust the data.

After my long while on this planet, I'm of the inclination that gender is existential and that only a huge degree of social coercion would lead to some kind of equal outcomes.

In other words, the data I think agrees with many people's intuition, and that the continued quest to fix outcomes is maybe kind of more ideological than not.

As you point out, there are other ways to look at it, and surely we could dig deeper on this ... but we have a number of studies that are pointing towards the same thing.

I think we're probably going to have to accept that the world is gendered, and that this will mean some deviations here and there from a specific kind of aesthetic egalitarian which is neither possible, nor in the case of most people I think even aspirational.

I think most fields that women want to actually break into, they'll be able to do that in sufficient capacity even if it's not 50/50. But I also believe that in 100 years, the vast majority carpenters will still be men, that women will still be choosing to be primary caregivers to children more of then than men, and that we'll probably still be arguing about this.

[KirinDave]

> I think it's controversial because of the implied assumption that given equality measures, there would be basically equal outcomes ... and that if we don't see that, then for some reason should be skeptical. I don't think we should be. I think we should mostly trust the data.

I'm curious: do you know what these metrics actually are? Have you investigated how they are defined or what they're measuring? If so, do you find them sufficient? I ask out of genuine curiosity, because I'm having a lot of trouble fidning metrics that are not ad hoc or that don't have a lot of tricky assumptions about household income.

> I think we're probably going to have to accept that the world is gendered, and that this will mean some deviations here and there from a specific kind of aesthetic egalitarian which is neither possible, nor in the case of most people I think even aspirational.

One of the reasons I'm making a point of objecting to this is that folks like you are essentially reading this as a confirmation of a whole host of biases, which will subsequently (and have historically) been used to disadvantage a bunch of people. There isn't a question if "the world is gendered." In fact, the only people who assert this are in fact trans-exclusionary radical feminists and they're quite radical indeed.

So the question is not, "Is the world gendered?" But, "Are the measures we're taking sufficient to assure that talented individuals in any given field are not unduly coerced by social pressure to give up that work."

> I think most fields that women want to actually break into, they'll be able to do that in sufficient capacity even if it's not 50/50. But I also believe that in 100 years, the vast majority carpenters will still be men, that women will still be choosing to be primary caregivers to children more of then than men, and that we'll probably still be arguing about this.

This does seem like a significant simplification of the argument at hand. It's somewhat misleading as it stands to suggest that we should actually see 50/50 splits, and again in fact very few people suggest this. They suggest that systemic biases actually impact a variety of people to coerce their behavior in order to cater to these patterns. For example, women are multiply penalized by their choice to have childbirth, and men face systemic disadvantages if they want to be primary caretakers.

I'm not sure who you're retorting with this, but it isn't a common sentiment that the world is not gendered, just that gender is more nuanced than folks like to admit. I don't think anyone genuinely expects to see 50/50 splits in every profession, but we might expect to see more than 0.05% representation in boardrooms while also facing a storm of controversy about how male executives receive millions of dollars for sexually harassing women and abusing their power over other people's jobs.

[0x445442]

> It's odd to assume that the entire effect is therefore determined uniquely by "women's choice." Is there evidence of that?

I don't think anyone is claiming choice is the "entire effect" but I do think there is evidence that choice is the overwhelming effect. Let me ask this, do the women you know complain about an under-representation of women working at Discount Tire or in the field of Underwater Welding?

In America, during WWII a large number of women went into these types of occupations because of war time necessity and they showed they could perform the required duties just fine. But after the war most returned to traditional domestic roles. Are you saying that was not, by and large, their choice?

[SolaceQuantum]

It wasn’t their choice. Most women wanted to keep their jobs after the war and were refused rehire.[1] I would argue that the history of female employment demographics is highly complex and has a multitude of factors, with each factor constituting of many sub-factors. The study in this thread provides an excellent evidence of one behavior, but the amount of heuristics that feed into this behavior is up for massive debate and question, many of which are politically unattractive on both sides, resulting in dissatisfaction of any academic research into any one influencing factor and also any research into a holistic heuristic evaluation... by focusing on this example, you may be over-simplifying the behavior the study is representing.

[1]http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/7027/

[C1sc0cat]

They where forced out :-(

[dijit]

FWIW, I upvoted your grand-parent comment but downvoted this.

People are trying to have an open discussion here, and I agree that we should keep as open a mind as possible. Part of that precludes the notion of falling back into another ideology, which the parent to this comment is warning about. They are not blaming you of doing it, just warning.

There exists many theories as to why this is happening, we should identify the data we have and determine the most plausible theories based on evidence and research. That's the only rational way forward.

[KirinDave]

I'm confused. Can you identify where I didn't do that in the comment that you decided to disagree-by-downvoting?

I'm quite tired of being warned of drawing conclusions I did not draw, while taking 10-15 karma point penalties. From my perspective, I'm receiving overwhelming feedback that even questioning these programs at the level of efficacy is unwanted and I should be silenced.

I can't really work out how these votes are actually reflective of a disruptive presence in the conversation, unless the idea is to avoid asking that question in any capacity.

> There exists many theories as to why this is happening, we should identify the data we have and determine the most plausible theories based on evidence and research. That's the only rational way forward.

Then I find your response to be disappointing. If the goal is an open debate, shouldn't we actually question these base assertions that underly and inform the statistical machinery of the study?

[dijit]

At first you asserted: that it's possible that these outcomes could have been a byproduct of a failure to remove barriers to men and women going into workforce's which are majority dominated by their opposite sex.

In fact you asserted that point quite strongly, and the reply was to the effect: "It's possible, but lets not just assume, since many people are already doing that"

At which point you double-down on defending your original position with no data, instead pressuring the commenter to provide you evidence.

You are not being downvoted for having an opinion, you are being downvoted for how you go about having your opinion.

[KirinDave]

Well, I don't agree with that at all. I'm surprised by the lack of skepticism towards the policies themselves.

Can you count the number of other people in this entire discussion asking the same question? For awhile, I think I was the only one!

It's quite obvious to me that you and others do not want to even enterain these questions, to the point where you're offended and candidly talking about disagree-by-doenvote for considering a fairly obvious question.

This is a discussion forum. But you're not pointing to a way in which I was hurting the discussion. You're talking about muting my questions using downvotes because you find the idea of considering them as a tough experiment offensive.