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Comment by fromMars | Hacker News Reader

I found this article to be an enlightening analysis of the "Gender Equality Paradox".

https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-gir...

In particular,

“Broader economic factors appear to contribute to the higher participation of women in STEM in countries with low gender equality and the lower participation in gender-equal countries.”

I agree that outcome as an indicator is not entirely reliable.

Most likely many factors, including cultural, genetic, and economic, also play large roles in these outcomes.

However, I think it is a reasonable policy to try and reduce differences in outcomes if a group has been historically denied opportunities, at least for some period of time.

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> However, I think it is a reasonable policy to try and reduce differences in outcomes if a group has been historically denied opportunities, at least for some period of time.

Honestly, at some point the corrupting effect of history (especially in sex discrimination, where the effect is not generational [everyone is the descendant of a woman]) is less severe than the corrupting effect of accepting discrimination today as some sort of "balance" to that perception of history.

You could make a credible case that Gen Z (my generation, by a hair) North American girls have had considerably more encouragement and opportunity to enter TEM fields (the S is more evenly split) than the boys who grew up with them; so will we still discriminate in their favour when it comes to hiring?

Well, to some companies it seems the answer is still no. That first company I worked at is still today pouring resources into a free training program only for women and girls.

> Honestly, at some point the corrupting effect of history (especially in sex discrimination, where the effect is not generational [everyone is the descendant of a woman]) is less severe than the corrupting effect of accepting discrimination today as some sort of "balance" to that perception of history.

Agree, which is why I stated that these policies should only last a limited time. The tough question is how long should these policies last.

> You could make a credible case that Gen Z (my generation, by a hair) North American girls have had considerably more encouragement and opportunity to enter TEM fields (the S is more evenly split) than the boys who grew up with them; so will we still discriminate in their favour when it comes to hiring?

I would not find such an argument credible. Clearly males are not being prevented from entering these fields as the ratios of males to females is still greatly skewed.

So it would be far fetched to claim that the effect of these programs that encourage women to participate has denied a significant number of men to enter into these fields.

I would be interested in some concrete facts on just how many of these programs even exist and the monetary expenditure of such programs. As someone from generation X, I know that no such programs existed at that time.

> I would not find such an argument credible. Clearly males are not being prevented from entering these fields as the ratios of males to females is still greatly skewed.

Part of my point is that you can not know that by looking at the outcome. That is, it is not clear that the ratio of males to females says that either is being excluded.

> So it would be far fetched to claim that the effect of these programs that encourage women to participate has denied a significant number of men to enter into these fields.

This is a claim that nobody is making. The claim that can be made is that no equivalent effort is made to include men. That is, there is more opportunity for women, but still fewer women ultimately participate.

> I would be interested in some concrete facts on just how many of these programs even exist and the monetary expenditure of such programs. As someone from generation X, I know that no such programs existed at that time.

If you have had any connection to an HR department at a typical North American company in the 2010s, you would know that programs to specifically recruit men are effectively nonexistent; so it doesn't much matter what the specific measurements for the female recruitment programs are, because no matter how much or how little the investment, it is infinitely more than no investment whatsoever.

> This is a claim that nobody is making. The claim that can be made is that no equivalent effort is made to include men. That is, there is more opportunity for women, but still fewer women ultimately participate.

I think we are at an impasse here. Our definitions of what it means to be denied opportunity in a field are divergent.

I was imagining systemic hurdles to participation. I don't think outreach to a community or even specific scholarships qualify as such.

> If you have had any connection to an HR department at a typical North American company in the 2010s, you would know that programs to specifically recruit men are effectively nonexistent; so it doesn't much matter what the specific measurements for the female recruitment programs are, because no matter how much or how little the investment, it is infinitely more than no investment whatsoever.

I would also posit that focusing on any particular program and claiming since it isn't accessible by all that there is unequal opportunity.

Do you object to the myriad of scholarships that are only available to specific ethnicities?

> I think we are at an impasse here. Our definitions of what it means to be denied opportunity in a field are divergent.

I haven't talked about anyone being "denied" opportunity. The vast majority of all people have some opportunity. The unequal part is that more opportunity is extended to some, not that all opportunity is denied to others.

The inequity would not be so much my problem if it didn't mess with the priorities of a functioning business or other organization. If I send my money to a non-profit, I want them to be effective; if they spend resources on discriminatory programs, they will inevitably be less effective than if they had run those programs without arbitrary discrimination.

> Do you object to the myriad of scholarships that are only available to specific ethnicities?

Yes, and those are under tremendous scrutiny over the last couple years, particularly Harvard's treatment of East Asian applicants. I think MLK had the right general premise with his "multiracial army of the poor".

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