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Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

At the start of our teens, we lose the intrinsic value that society places on us as children. For many boys, after this, their only worth is in what they can accomplish, for themselves or for others. For many girls, they learn that they are intrinsically valuable as women, as long as they're attractive.

It's not an issue of 'explaining' the odds. It's an issue of women knowing that they're worth something in and of themselves, competing against men who are motivated by a lifetime of experience telling that if they can't achieve, they are nothing.

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Jumping directly to discrimination in society seems a bit hasted as an explanation for the data, since men entering the teaching profession also show the exact same data. When hitting a roadblock, men a several times more likely to quit the teaching profession than a woman hitting the same roadblock. Surely it not an issue of men knowing that they're worth something in and of themselves, competing against women in the teaching profession.

Theory should be testable. Failure rate after interview rejection should be fairly easy to gather over any number of profession, so why not do that. Rather than just studies on teaching and tech profession, lets have 20-30 different profession, about which 50% will be male dominated and 50% female dominated (should be easy since about 90% of all profession in Sweden have major gender imbalance, and >80% of both women and men are employed).

Rather than explaining the odds, and rather than talking about intrinsic value, maybe we should be talking about the psychological effect of diverging behavior. If 60% of people in a restaurant pick vanilla ice-cream as desert and 40% pick chocolate, the 40% is more likely to have buyers remorse than those in the 60%. Being in a minority, be that based on gender, race, language, or ice cream preference, will have an confidence impact. When it comes to carer choice, that impact has then a very noticeable effect.

Very interesting, I'd never heard that about male teachers quitting more often than females. I wonder if that holds true across different cultures? Here, at least, teaching is often seen as a bit of a fallback plan if you don't succeed at your chosen profession or you hit mid-20s and still don't know what you want to do.

I like the diverging behaviour angle too. That actually sounds like it could have a serious impact, and doesn't rely so heavily on stereotyping one particular teen experience across each gender.

If it culture has a major impact, it should be fairly testable. Any differences, after correlated to gender distribution in the work force, should hint to it.

Theories that can be tested to either be false or true is always valuable in this kind of discussions.

"since men entering the teaching profession also show the exact same data"

This is really interesting, could you provide a citation?

Yes I can. But first I would like to say that I could too just have requested citation from the parent comment and be done. Finding papers you read a month/year/years ago take times, and links goes sometimes dead, and in a online forum like this it is generally appreciated if the requester has done some initial attempts themselves to search online for sources.

Anyway, it was a polite request and I happened to save the pdf. Source: Rapport 2009:7 R, Swedish national agency of higher education, title: Man ska bli lärare!.

"I could too just have requested citation from the parent comment and be done"

Been done with what? Yes, I know, sometimes people say "citation please" as a way of refuting without reasoning, but other times, people are actually interested in reading the citation. This is one of those cases.

Furthermore, this is not one of those cases would something could be easily established through a quick google search, this sounds like a very specific study.

Thanks for showing that was the case, and Im glad that source was helpful. Chapter that begins at Page 27 is especially interesting since it directly address potential reasons, and the aspect of being in minority vs majority.

Wouldn't the message of "you are your accomplishments" make men more likely to give up after a failure rather than less?

Subtle(ish) distinction: You aren't your past accomplishments, you are your capability to generate future accomplishments.

Who is more likely to persevere; someone who believes they have to keep achieving things or they are worthless, or someone to whom achievements are a nice bonus to the intrinsic value that they already have?

I'm pretty sure the psychological research would say the latter. Failure is a lot less scary when your ego isn't tied up in it.

That makes absolutely no sense. By definition, giving up is failure. So the options are "100% chance of failure" vs "less than 100% chance of failure", and you think they are more likely to pick "100% chance of failure" because failure is scary?

Obviously it doesn't make sense rationally (you miss 100% of the shots you don't take and all that), but it's emotionally very powerful. It's much easier to emotionally justify giving up (I'm not really interested in switching jobs/getting in to tech/etc.) than it is to face the prospect of being rejected many times.

Humans are not rational agents.

You are describing the wrong group of people. The "emotionally justify giving up" you describe is precisely what we observe with the group of people who are not considered failures for doing so: women. For men, that is failure. That is not easy to justify emotionally, it is the very thing they are trying to avoid in the first place. The emotional toll of giving up is the same as the emotional toll of trying and failing: you are a loser and not a real man, you have no worth or value. This is why they try again, because it gives them another chance to succeed, and demonstrate their value and worth.

Do you have any evidence to back up that opinion, or is it just your theories on what human nature?

If we want to trade opinions and anecdotes, I personally know plenty of "real men" who have justified giving up on different goals to avoid the pain of continued failure. Heck, I'll admit to having done it myself: many years ago I thought I might want to work in finance but after applying to a few banks and never hearing back I "decided" that it's not really for me when in reality I was just avoiding the pain of further rejection.

I realize this sounds confrontational, but I really do want to know where you're coming from that men don't give up on things due to fear of failure. In my personal and professional lives, I see it all the time.

>Do you have any evidence to back up that opinion

The very article we're discussing? Remember, it shows 7 times as many women give up as men do.

A generalization is not contradicted by one example to the contrary, it would need a majority of examples to the contrary. Obviously some men do give up. But only 1/7th as many as with women. I am simply supporting the explanation someone else offered: that this is because women have inherent value and men's value is purely based on their current level of success. So men have an additional strong incentive to not give up. And when they do give up, it is often just to pursue another avenue where they feel success is more likely, rather than just giving up altogether.

All that is evidence of is that women give up more often than men. That doesn't provide any evidence that it's because men's value is tied to achievement.

I could just as readily argue that women give up more than men because they have stronger priors of tech not being for them (fewer peers and role models, less experience, etc.) so any evidence they get confirming that hypothesis is more likely to push them into giving up.

We could, in fact, have both things happening simultaneously: some men giving up to protect their ego, but even more women giving up because they think it's not for them.

>All that is evidence of is that women give up more often than men

Yes, that's the point.

>That doesn't provide any evidence that it's because men's value is tied to achievement.

Indeed, that's what we're offering a potential explanation for.

>I could just as readily argue that women give up more than men because they have stronger priors of tech not being for them

Then do so. Saying "I could make a bunch of other arguments but won't because I know they are contradicted by evidence" is not compelling. In fact, I find it inherently dishonest, in that you are trying to rely on the assumption that any other random explanation you could put forth is just as good, but you won't put them forth because then they would be demonstrated to not be just as good.

> Then do so.

Sorry, I should have been clear: I do believe that my explanation (women quit more because they have a stronger prior of tech not being for them) is much stronger and more likely than yours. At the very least, its assumptions are backed by basic evidence (that there are fewer women in tech to look up to as role models).

Except they are more likely to give up in other fields too. Even fields with lots of women in them. So no, your assumption is not backed by basic evidence.

You miss an important aspect. You won't succeed in 100% cases you don't take an action, but you also don't fail due to your lack of skills in 100% cases you don't take an action. You can't be blamed for failing if you didn't even try. You can only be blamed for not succeeding.

No, that's not how it works, which is the point. As they said, men's value is judged on their current success. Not trying makes you just as valueless as trying and failing, it is the exact same outcome.

> No, that's not how it works [...]

Are you sure the people's feelings align with how your rational thinking goes?

I am sure that assuming their behavior does not follow the obvious explanation because you simply dislike the obvious explanation is silly.

Failure being scary is exactly why I hustle so hard though. I don't deliver? People will stop caring about me within a year.

Let's not confuse scary with bad.

e.g. Paris Hilton is not scared of being homeless.

At least I am more scared of not having a job to go to tomorrow than the job interview today.

Depends: does the first option shrug off failures and keep at it, or become suicidally depressed and die?

It's likely that it does make men more likely to give up after a failure than less - male labor force participation rates are at a historic low, and there are plenty of underemployed men who were shut out of a high-paying job. But these men drop out of the sample set, and so they aren't talked about when discussing industries with diversity problems.

Paul Graham once wrote [1] 'As a kid there's a magic button you can press by saying "I'm just a kid" that will get you out of most difficult situations. Whereas adults, by definition, are not allowed to flake. They still do, of course, but when they do they're ruthlessly pruned', which to my college mind seemed incredibly draconian, but that is largely the way the world works.

I think a better sense of intrinsic worth and the knowledge that our accomplishments are what we do and not who we are would benefit both sexes.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html

No one likes to go here but in addition to the cultural reinforcements, young men have 17x serum testosterone compared to women of the same age [1].

Avg. Adult Male 270-1,070 Avg. Adult Female 15-70

Hormones affect behavior and in this case competitiveness.

[1] http://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/testostero...

Time for performance enhancing drugs for interviews?

That definitely plays into it. A certain amount of aggressiveness is crucial in career success (for example, men are much more willing to apply for jobs where they don't meet all the stated requirements).

But what else are the men going to do? Women can opt out - men can't.

Sure, but "giving up" is frowned upon even more than failing. Nobody wants to be a "quitter".

this sounds like something you're making up right now. i can make something up that gives the opposite impression: it is implicit in our culture that the cost to women of failure is higher than to men.

or, i could say, anyone is more likely to give up something more quickly if they believe they "aren't the sort of person" who does that thing; if they don't fit the model that has been given to them by the surrounding culture of what that thing is. men are more likely to quit pursuing a career in early childhood education at the first rejection; women are more likely to abandon their ambitions of working in tech.

or, even just riffing off yours, i could say men are taught that their value comes from their accomplishments, and women are taught that their value doesn't come from their accomplishments. or even that ambitions and accomplishment carries a degree of cost. actually, i think we're seeing some of this playing out in the u.s. election.

but i'm just making things up on the spot...

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