How women are more equal than men

[Kashka]

Any evidence to show you're not just making up statistics? Considering there are plenty of examples where women fare equal or better in terms of GPA than men, don't you think that even your example is a tad misogynistic?

Also, grades are far from the only metric available to people making a hiring or admittance decision. It's rightfully a combination of things, so it's never that easy in the real world to determine who is "the best of the best".

From a review:
Women were found to be as academically successful as men, but what is intriguing is the fact that the former receive fewer rewards for their academic achievement later in life (Mickelson 1989). What differentiates men and women seems to be their ethical and behavioral approaches to their academic pursuits, social environment, and more or less traditional gender ideology.

Not so easy to put in a box labeled GPA eh?

GPA and college admissions is actually a terrible example since 1) on average, women earn a higher GPA than men and 2) the current imbalance of the make-up of college student bodies is sometimes giving white men lower entrance standards than women (it depends on if it's publicly funded or private, and is up to the institution). 57% of students are women now, which is roughly a woman and a third for every man. So no, in terms of college admissions, women aren't getting a free pass.

Other areas differ though; women can get scholarships if they aim to get into male-dominated fields, but men going into female-dominated fields cannot. Women do not make up nearly as much of a percent of boards of directors, and there is significant pressure to hire for higher level positions like these as well. You're right that women don't gain as much from men from their education, but culture factors into that to some extent and it isn't all discrimination. Furthermore, stereotypes like "men go into finance and women into the humanities" are somewhat true; there's still more men going into those kinds of fields than women, and those are the kind that make up a board of directors.

If you want to see more women in high level positions, it needs to become OK to say "my career comes before my family" instead of just saying the reverse and acting like this, like so many people do. The CEO of, I think it was pepsi but I'm not sure, essentially said this in a documentary, and by putting out her stance this way she was able to climb the corporate ladder with support in her family life because she made it clear what she wanted. Women get much more pressure than men to stay at home when the baby is young/whatever than men do, and need to put their foot down saying that's not what they want and stop getting guilted into it because it's become such a ridiculous taboo to say your family doesn't come first. Men have gotten away with focusing on career advancement on the premise of supporting the family, and it needs to be the same way for women.

To answer another question you posted earlier:

In the vast majority of cases where gender inclusiveness is "mandated", there are an excess of qualified applicants for a limited number of positions. When this is the case, why shouldn't the gender ratio in the position reflect the gender ratio of society?

Society did not apply for the position, an applicant pool did. Ostensibly, the ratio of hired should be the same as the applicant pool, that would be "fair", in this one instance, and looking at it superficially. Where you fall there is probably going to depend a lot on whether or not you think AA is proper or not.

[#686578]

Any evidence to show you're not just making up statistics? Considering there are plenty of examples where women fare equal or better in terms of GPA than men, don't you think that even your example is a tad misogynistic?

Making up statistics? You mean those obviously fake examples? I didn't use any statistics.

And no, my example is not misogynistic, apparently you skipped the last part where I reversed the sexes.

Also, grades are far from the only metric available to people making a hiring or admittance decision. It's rightfully a combination of things, so it's never that easy in the real world to determine who is "the best of the best".

...not disagreeing. I was using GPA at a college that only bases their admissions on GPA so that it would be a clear, measurable, determinable standard. I could've easily left GPA out of it and say "100/200 of the women who applied are demonstratively better candidates for 20 positions at a company than 5/10 of the men who applied"--which lacks anything for you to attack now--why should all 10 of those men be guaranteed positions? Especially when 5 of those men are less qualified than 90 women who were consequentially refused the position because of "equality"

If it were truly equal admissions they would all be judged by the same standards and not arbitrarily by their gender.

From a review:
Women were found to be as academically successful as men, but what is intriguing is the fact that the former receive fewer rewards for their academic achievement later in life (Mickelson 1989). What differentiates men and women seems to be their ethical and behavioral approaches to their academic pursuits, social environment, and more or less traditional gender ideology.

Not so easy to put in a box labeled GPA eh?

Okay? Completely irrelevant.

But now that you've got me thinking about it here are two videos detailing an argument that asserts that education is systematically being geared towards helping women and consequentially ignoring men. In any field if men are found doing better than women then people are confused and things are studied and changed until women are excelling. However no one turns around and says "Wait, now women are out performing men. Should we do something that?"

Spoiler: show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrV7Q06NzI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLCRi51Kaec

And I apologize ahead of time to those people who complain that all I'm doing is posting videos, it's simply that he's already made a well spoken statement on his view, which I share for the most part, and do not think I could provide the same quality in my own words.

[Tristam]

To answer another question you posted earlier:

Society did not apply for the position, an applicant pool did. Ostensibly, the ratio of hired should be the same as the applicant pool, that would be "fair", in this one instance, and looking at it superficially. Where you fall there is probably going to depend a lot on whether or not you think AA is proper or not.

Just to address this, it assumes the fact that there isn't bias at other levels of hiring, resulting in a "fair" applicant pool. Because bias exists and has existed for some time, there is attrition at nearly every vertical level, resulting in an increasing inequality of opportunity. I wasn't saying that necessarily a particular positions gender ratio should reflect society, just that it's important to ask why that is. For instance, I once served on a board of selectors for a scholarship to graduating high school students who wished to pursue a degree in engineering/physical sciences. I quickly noticed that all members of the board were male, thus presenting a potential source of bias which existed at an upper level but affected entry level students. When I asked why the board was all male, I was matter of factly told that there were very few female engineers/scientists in the company at that particular location. That by itself is essentially an admission that the selection procedure was biased. That realization had a pretty profound effect on me, and I consequently believe that some sort of AA is necessary to reduce the effect of bias on decisions like this.

For numbers, my point was that at some level, decisions are usually somewhat subjective, even if just a little bit, therefore you can't usually have a perfect system of metrics for assessing an applicant's qualifications for a job, or school. Google had what's called an "airplane test" for new hires. Which was simply "Could you imagine sitting next to this person on a plane for several hours?" When I reviewed scholarship applications, I had a number of criteria to look at, including things like community service and financial need, which were difficult to quantify. At some level, I had to use my personal judgement, because there were many, many, many qualified applicants, thus (because I make no claim to perfection) introducing a potential source of bias. Similarly, many top schools take one's background into account when making admissions decisions, not simply for the benefit of the individual student, but because an educational environment truly thrives on diversity of view and opinion.

Finally, I'm not sure if your final statement was in reference to women dominated fields. But people have looked at the performance of males in female dominated fields and found no evidence that males were impeded in progress. Furthermore, some fields even have a "glass escalator" where a minority of males progressed faster vertically than did females who were in the majority. I also don't think education is a zero sum game where females can only thrive at the expense of males. But that's another topic for another time.

[Darus Grey]

When I asked why the board was all male, I was matter of factly told that there were very few female engineers/scientists in the company at that particular location. That by itself is essentially an admission that the selection procedure was biased. That realization had a pretty profound effect on me, and I consequently believe that some sort of AA is necessary to reduce the effect of bias on decisions like this.

That's some straight up conspiracy-nut shit.

There is no grand plot to keep females out of engineering fields, it just happens to be the case that virtually NO FEMALES APPLY. At my university the engineering department gets 1 female applicant for like every 500 males.

Affirmative Action is obviously the answer, has nothing to do with the simple fact that females, on average, simply don't want to be engineers(and this *could* be as much biological/chemical as it is societal).

Despite all this equality bullshit(and it IS bullshit), there is a line where you simply have to accept that the genders are DIFFERENT(omgz!), and no amount of cattle prodding with change that, anything else is simply delusional.

[Kashka]

Finally, I'm not sure if your final statement was in reference to women dominated fields. But people have looked at the performance of males in female dominated fields and found no evidence that males were impeded in progress. Furthermore, some fields even have a "glass escalator" where a minority of males progressed faster vertically than did females who were in the majority. I also don't think education is a zero sum game where females can only thrive at the expense of males. But that's another topic for another time.

What I meant by my last statement was whether or not you think it's proper to have AA as a means of achieving social equality or not; does society owe the oppressed a leg up in catching up in status or just the same laws and consideration as the majority, and if so, what about the members of the majority that are in the same financial/social position as the oppressed classes, etc. I wasn't implying anything at all about men in women dominated fields, nor was I really putting forth an opinion on AA either. I put fair in quotes for a reason. The only point I had to make about that was that similar actions taken to boost women's presence have not been made for men's sake, which I think is rather unfortunate since if there were more male nurses etc, the stigma of women's work might fade away a bit quicker. Also in reference to your glass elevator, it's entirely possible that the reason men are more successful isn't linked to bias at all: since the stigma to entering that kind of work for men is a bit higher, chances are they're more motivated etc. Of course I can't back that up, but oftentimes there are explanations aside from discrimination. Rarely is anything between the genders perfectly discriminatory or not, because drawing the line between where the genders actually differ seems to be impossible.

Also as a point for education, it hardly is a zero-sum game, many of the reforms that help one gender can help the other as well. As of late though, the gender gap in higher education is enormous and it's still growing; something should be done about it because it just isn't good for either gender. The UK has been seriously looking at the issue, and it's kind of a shame the US is not.

[Tristam]

What I meant by my last statement was whether or not you think it's proper to have AA as a means of achieving social equality or not; does society owe the oppressed a leg up in catching up in status or just the same laws and consideration as the majority, and if so, what about the members of the majority that are in the same financial/social position as the oppressed classes, etc. I wasn't implying anything at all about men in women dominated fields, nor was I really putting forth an opinion on AA either. I put fair in quotes for a reason. The only point I had to make about that was that similar actions taken to boost women's presence have not been made for men's sake, which I think is rather unfortunate since if there were more male nurses etc, the stigma of women's work might fade away a bit quicker. Also in reference to your glass elevator, it's entirely possible that the reason men are more successful isn't linked to bias at all: since the stigma to entering that kind of work for men is a bit higher, chances are they're more motivated etc. Of course I can't back that up, but oftentimes there are explanations aside from discrimination. Rarely is anything between the genders perfectly discriminatory or not, because drawing the line between where the genders actually differ seems to be impossible.

Also as a point for education, it hardly is a zero-sum game, many of the reforms that help one gender can help the other as well. As of late though, the gender gap in higher education is enormous and it's still growing; something should be done about it because it just isn't good for either gender. The UK has been seriously looking at the issue, and it's kind of a shame the US is not.

Actually, I meant that last paragraph in reference to numbers' post (686578 or w/e). Sorry for the confusion. I had an original post that got deleted by accident that referenced each post correctly.

With reference to women's work, I was making the argument that besides the social stigma associated with men participating in it, there aren't any barriers to entrance or advancement in the field. But again that's not in reference to your posts.

[Tristam]

That's some straight up conspiracy-nut shit.

There is no grand plot to keep females out of engineering fields, it just happens to be the case that virtually NO FEMALES APPLY. At my university the engineering department gets 1 female applicant for like every 500 males.

Affirmative Action is obviously the answer, has nothing to do with the simple fact that females, on average, simply don't want to be engineers(and this *could* be as much biological/chemical as it is societal).

Despite all this equality bullshit(and it IS bullshit), there is a line where you simply have to accept that the genders are DIFFERENT(omgz!), and no amount of cattle prodding with change that, anything else is simply delusional.

It's not a conspiracy, it's just bias. No member of the board was against women participating in science or engineering, but since we are all imperfect creatures with individual histories and prejudices, we all have bias.

Fwiw, I didn't mention the applicant gender statisttcs, but it wasn't that far from 50/50. Again it wasn't just engineering, someone wanting to major in physics, math, chemistry, probably even biochemistry would have gotten a fair shake. We purposefully didn't make the qualifications super restrictive wrt major, since we didn't want to provide a financial DISincentive to pursue other careers. There's plenty of interest from women to enter these fields. I have not said the genders are not different. I have only said there is no reason to believe they are less capable in the work force.

[#686578]

What I meant by my last statement was whether or not you think it's proper to have AA as a means of achieving social equality or not; does society owe the oppressed a leg up in catching up in status or just the same laws and consideration as the majority, and if so, what about the members of the majority that are in the same financial/social position as the oppressed classes, etc.

They dont.

We already have laws in place without AA to protect the minorities, those specific amendments that state that you cant discriminate based on certain qualities such as age, gender, race, or religion; and that's really all we should need otherwise you're protecting the minorities at the detriment of the majority. Think if we protected the minorities in religion by forcing something on the majority.

Instead of men/women & jobs, think Christianity/Judiasm & religion. Christianity is more popular than Judiasm as far as religion in America goes. Do we have to step in and protect the rights of Jews and say for every church there must be at least one synagogue per area? I mean, after all that would be equal treatment right?

[#686578]

Actually, I meant that last paragraph in reference to numbers' post (686578 or w/e). Sorry for the confusion. I had an original post that got deleted by accident that referenced each post correctly.

Oh, ok.

But now that you've got me thinking about it here are two videos detailing an argument that asserts that education is systematically being geared towards helping women and consequentially ignoring men. In any field if men are found doing better than women then people are confused and things are studied and changed until women are excelling. However no one turns around and says "Wait, now women are out performing men. Should we do something that?"

Spoiler: show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrV7Q06NzI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLCRi51Kaec

Finally, I'm not sure if your final statement was in reference to women dominated fields. But people have looked at the performance of males in female dominated fields and found no evidence that males were impeded in progress.

It was specifically in reference to girl dominated education which is most public school systems these days. Watch the videos and he gives clear evidence that yes, there is indeed an impedance to progress for boys.

Furthermore, some fields even have a "glass escalator" where a minority of males progressed faster vertically than did females who were in the majority.

...You're really suggesting that a minority constitutes a trend or has any significant value what so ever? You know it's a commonly held practice to ignore significant outliers for a reason right? Because they're abnormal. There are some fields that even a minority of women progress faster vertically than did males who were in the majority. See what I did there? A completely true statement with no relative value.

I also don't think education is a zero sum game where females can only thrive at the expense of males. But that's another topic for another time.

It's not that only females can thrive. It's just that current standards of education are highly oriented towards helping female children over male children in primary and secondary schools where the lesson plans and teaching methods have drastically changed over the decades to accommodate a female centered environment. It's not that males cant thrive in the environment, it's that no one cares if they do or dont. When males are becoming significantly out numbered or out performed in any field no study is conducted to find out why and no methods are put into place to "balance the scales."

Thus, women are more equal than men.

[Tristam]

I may not have described the glass escalator properly. What I meant is that in some fields that are traditionally female oriented, males in general progress faster. Not that one or two outlier males progress faster, but as a whole males progress faster. I know of no traditionally male oriented field where women in general progress faster up the ladder.

[Beckwin]

don't worry, numbers basically admitted that females are impeded in a variety of fields. His arguments are shit anyway (especially the "forcing a minority religion on everyone" angle, lol).

[#686578]

(*'-') never once said that females are impeded in a variety of fields.

I said forcing a majority religion on everyone, by the way.

You can say my arguments are shit, but it just sounds like umad and saving face.

[Beckwin]

you claimed that males were impeded in public education because of the overwhelming majority of female teachers/female-centered environment. hence it would only stand that by the same reasoning, female students in fields like hard sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, etc are impeded because of the overwhelming majority of male professors/male-centered environement, not to mention in actual career fields.

[Beckwin]

and comparing some stupid hypothetical about forcing people to choose a religious belief to representative/diverse hiring practices is absofuckinglutely retarded. pack your shit and go home.

unless perhaps you'd like to discuss how major religious hierarchies are patriarchal and an area where men are more equal than women...

[Visc]

There's no stigma attached to a woman leaving a relationship (or a potential one) with a man for one of the two common and usually the only reasons:
1. Found a bigger dick.
2. Found a bigger paycheck.

If one or both of the criterion is met, she's gone in a flash for the next retard. With no consequences following actions, that makes things evidently a bit unequal.

[#686578]

you claimed that males were impeded in public education because of the overwhelming majority of female teachers/female-centered environment. hence it would only stand that by the same reasoning, female students in fields like hard sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, etc are impeded because of the overwhelming majority of male professors/male-centered environement, not to mention in actual career fields.

What? No. Wrong you're confusing a couple of things I've said. Firstly you're referring to

Turn it around so it's female in the majority and men in the minority. Should we be forcing 50% of all elementary teaching degree positions to be filled solely by men? Why do we need that standard? If there are 19 competent women and 1 competent man that can do the job, so what? Those are the best 20 PEOPLE not the best TEN MEN an TEN WOMEN.

Where I picked a profession regardless of what the facts may actually be and made a hypothetical situation. I didnt provide any real statistics here, nor did I imply that this was a real scenario.

Then second you've blended that together with my assertions that the primary and secondary schools are geared towards teaching females not for female teachers. I made no effort to link the amount of female teachers and the ease with which females learn in that environment. I did state that efforts have been made to make the environment in which female students learn has been made specifically easier because of the perceived disparity between female and male performance.

Every single thing you've said is wrong in that post.

and comparing some stupid hypothetical about forcing people to choose a religious belief to representative/diverse hiring practices is absofuckinglutely retarded. pack your shit and go home.

Wow, I was going for an OBVIOUSLY retarded statement to make you INSTANTLY disagree with me. I thought this tactic was without subtlety but I guess not. Let me explain it for you, the choices were either,

A) You disagree with the example and answer "No, this is not what should be done" which only further goes to support my effort

B) You actually analyze the example I made and realize "No, this doesnt apply to the situation at all. You cant make this sort of comparison because these situations are different. "--hopefully you would go on to think--"This is because the amount of places of worship would be directly related to the amount of worshipers. More worshipers = more places to worship. But this isnt the case with jobs because we dont simply judge it based on the amount of people who applied but on whether or not they can perform the job."

At this point my intention was you would rethink about what you just thought

"We dont simply judge it based on the amount of people who applied but on whether or not they can perform the job."

Oh! I see what he's saying now! We shouldnt be basing our practices on population ratios at all regarding applicant structures, of course grading people by their merits rather than by their belonging to a specific group makes sense.

But obviously, I failed, you took it at face value, and dispite you disagreeing with the statement you didnt take either of these first two predicted outcomes

My third outcome
C) You agree with the example, and I give up because I realize it's not worth it

unless perhaps you'd like to discuss how major religious hierarchies are patriarchal and an area where men are more equal than women...

Not my intention, but hey let's address that anyway. Because as you say men are more equal to women, by which I assume you're referring to how traditionally women arent actually allowed into the higher hierarchical levels within the organizations, does that mean we should be forcing that there be exactly an even amount of men and women in those positions regardless of there comparative qualifications?

[#686578]

I'd like to address how you are repeatedly only refuting the way I make my argument, not the actual argument itself. Hopefully this one assertion can be taken without you finding some error in the way it's stated for the purpose of discussing the ideal behind the statement.

Turn it around so it's female in the majority and men in the minority. Should we be forcing 50% of all elementary teaching degree positions to be filled solely by men? Why do we need that standard? If there are 19 competent women and 1 competent man that can do the job, so what? Those are the best 20 PEOPLE not the best TEN MEN an TEN WOMEN.

What about this? Is there anything wrong with choosing the 20 best PEOPLE for any given job based solely on their merit regardless of any factor of what group they might belong to?

[aduidarnenye]

Why not just segregate the sexes in education? You could have just female teachers teaching the girls and just male teachers teaching the boys.

Of course, I have read that girls tend to do better in a girl-only classroom while boys do poorer in a boys-only classroom, so I suppose that wouldn't be fair either?

[Kashka]

Segregating sexes improves the education of both as long as you don't just segregate for the sake of separating. Teaching in a more male-suited manner drastically improves the performance of boys. If you don't change the pedagogy, you're still teaching a style more suited to girls to a class full of boys, who are going to distract one another more because even fewer people in the class want to listen now. I would imagine a classroom of only boys would be less inclined to read The Hundred Dresses three times like I had to.

It also bears mentioning that for some reason eating disorders, female bullying, and other things are more common in all-girls environments too... but they do indeed perform better academically. At my all-girls high school eating disorders were so prevalent/feared that no one was allowed to bring their own lunch and the lunch staff would keep track of how much each student was eating.

There's pros and cons to both approaches. I think the best idea would be to have co-ed education with a class period or two separating sexes and focusing on the traditional weaknesses (english for boys, maths for women) in a single or two class periods a day. It's a very generalized approach, but when you're trying to improve the average you have to look at where and how the averages would best benefit.

[Beckwin]

numbers, if you're gonna say that primary school teaching is geared toward females, you're gonna have a really hard time saying that college level hard sciences are not taught in a fashion geared towards males. and yes, I did note that ("female-centered" and "male-centered").