[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.