tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post193087028378691128..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: Men and Women are More Different in Rich CountriesJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-68057598001087269702017-08-12T09:46:20.066-04:002017-08-12T09:46:20.066-04:00Verloren, and somehow the one group of girls suspi...Verloren, and somehow the one group of girls suspiciously immune to the cultural expectations are those with raised testosterone levels. <br /><br />Moreover, you really should read Scott's piece. I don't know why the fact that girls choose to become veterinarians with 88k annual income over being programmer with 80k annual income somehow means things are being held back.szopenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02234132446740838968noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-9543119349582645852017-08-10T11:37:10.639-04:002017-08-10T11:37:10.639-04:00"I remain a complete egalitarian, vehemently ...<i>"I remain a complete egalitarian, vehemently opposed to all limits on the lives women can pursue. But I no longer think this will by itself lead to a just or happy society, and it seems to have made it even more difficult for many men and women to get along."</i><br /><br />Why would you think this? We've never seen a situation in which there are no limits on the lives women (and men!) can pursue.<br /><br />My take away is that sexism is more than just systemic - it's cultural. You can change the laws of a society to be totall non-sexist, but until the culture itself catches up, you'll get distortions.<br /><br />Look at David's example of technology. The single biggest reason there aren't more women in the tech field is because of the cultural expectations surrounding it. There are certain systemic biases, of course, but they have a lot smaller of an effect than our cultural biases.<br /><br />Technology has been built up as a place of "masculine" refuge in our culture, and we unwittingly communicate that to children. Little boys are "supposed to" like vehicles and weapons and technology, and little girls are "supposed to" -NOT- like those things, and instead like things related with domesticity and emotions. Our society think it's weird and even concerning if a little girl wants a toy helicopter instead of a toy house, wants plastic army men instead of dress-up dolls, and shows a fascination for machines and science instead of dreaming about getting married and fantasizing about their emotional future.<br /><br />There's nothing actually stopping little girls from embracing technology in our society, except for our own cultural expectations. As egalitarian as our laws and systems might be (and they're still imperfect, sometimes very badly so), our culure is nowhere near as egalitarian as even that. And that's the bottleneck that is holding things back, and which creates the distortions we're seeing.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-63535815323233183472017-08-10T04:58:45.490-04:002017-08-10T04:58:45.490-04:00How it's possible you have not heard about thi...How it's possible you have not heard about this research before? I thought this is pretty much a common knowledge, especially after Brainwashed gained notoriety on the net. szopenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02234132446740838968noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-91716128066562855102017-08-09T08:15:18.041-04:002017-08-09T08:15:18.041-04:00An interesting wrinkle here would be the role that...An interesting wrinkle here would be the role that computer and tech involvement plays in a given culture. In the US, at least when I was growing up, tech was thought of as the refuge for young males who couldn't compete in more classically masculine ways, such as sports, physical aggression, defying teachers, getting girls, etc. Tech-bound males would of course then start to compete with each other, masculinizing the tech field.<br /><br />As a corollary to this, overall it seems to me that in the US, tech is thought of as something that defines you as a person: it's thought of as a place for people of certain types, and we often expect them to have been at it since their early teens if not earlier.<br /><br />In places like South Asia and Africa, I wouldn't be surprised if the culture presents tech as a more gender- and personality-neutral, "good way to earn a living," a ticket to modernity and the middle class. I suspect the cultural anxiety is more to define oneself by class and location (city, not village) rather than by gender or what Americans think of as personality. The expectation may be that men and women working in an office in Bangalore or Mumbai have much more in common with each other, regardless of gender, than they do with low-caste street cleaners or village rice farmers (reflected in turn in the tremendous bitterness in movements like the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge, or that incident between madames and maids that you posted about a while back).Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08993570411881726772noreply@blogger.com