Gender roles in reality

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

I don't believe there are too many black people out committing crimes just because they themselves believe the stereotype [emphasis added].

You make it sound silly, but maybe you should not dismiss it so easily. There have been several studies about self-fulfilling prejeduices lately, and all of them show that there is no need to actively believe a stereotype in order to be effected by it.

My qualifiers (now with bold added) were not just the usual academic reflex to hedge. The scale of the gender imbalance problem IS the gender imbalance problem. In psycho-sociological study you get points for squeezing out every last tiny nuance of possible cause, but to actually change things, you need a killer factor, a main driver, a first priority that will break the back of the job alone in itself. Is moral suasion against stereotypes really that factor in this case?

Let me take up Lilith's analogy. The proportion of female scientists in STEM faculty is something around 15%, give or take about 5% depending on country and field and just how recent the data is. Suppose that if things were working properly that figure would be close to 50%. That means that, of the pool of women who ought to be in academic science, about 70% are in the undesirable case instead.

If 70% of black people were in prison, would addressing stereotypes about black criminality really be our first priority? Or would we really be a lot smarter to first do whatever it might possibly take to just bring that number a long way down?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

You might help the process by stopping to spread the idea of a "patriarchal culture" exiting somewhere in the western civilizations.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are still absolutely rampant throughout society. This really is just not the kind of problem where you can ignore it and it'll go away.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

My qualifiers (now with bold added) were not just the usual academic reflex to hedge. The scale of the gender imbalance problem IS the gender imbalance problem. In psycho-sociological study you get points for squeezing out every last tiny nuance of possible cause, but to actually change things, you need a killer factor, a main driver, a first priority that will break the back of the job alone in itself. Is moral suasion against stereotypes really that factor in this case?

The problem with this analysis is that, even if we "need" a primary cause, we cannot provide one. Society is made up of people, and each of those people are different from each other due to their different social identities - race, sex, religion, gender, sexuality, class, etc. All of these differences shape everyone's actions, such that while we may be able to find individual causation for any number of people, applying this to everyone in society is unrealistic.

Moreover, it's not even important. Challenging gender roles isn't an either-or decision, but a marginal decision. Society, as a whole, has the resources to pursue multiple routes of action. Academics in the STEM fields can try to combat stereotypes on one end by making it such that reality does not reflect the stereotype. Academics in social studies on the other end can work to end the stereotypes by deconstructing the gender binary.

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

You might help the process by stopping to spread the idea of a "patriarchal culture" exiting somewhere in the western civilizations.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are still absolutely rampant throughout society. This really is just not the kind of problem where you can ignore it and it'll go away.

This, definitely. A useful analogy for this, though imperfect, is with race. People can say that the United States is a post-racial society, that the Civil Rights Movement solved the major issue and all the minor issues have been resolved by now. Indeed, I believe that this is the narrative that gets taught all too often. However, these claims are just a way to delegitimize real claims of oppression and violence that happen racially and mask over white privilege.

Of course, race is not gender and racism isn't sexism. While there is a definite intersection between these social identities, they themselves are not the same.

[Lilith]

I guess where I'm coming from with this is that many of the people I know already seem to think that sexism is no longer a real social problem while simultaneously perpetuating sexism through their actions. As such, I can't buy the idea that people being too aware of sexism is in any sense the real problem here.

[Student of Trinity]

We can certainly afford to do many things at once. But "deconstructing the gender binary" only really means publishing books that no-one else reads. How does that end any stereotypes? How the heck does it come to seem like an achievement comparable to actually changing the numbers of women in science?

 

We can, in fact, provide key factors. It's not easy, but energy invested in finding a few practical tricks that really work is energy well spent. This is how change really happens.

 

And the fact that people can perceive sexism as being over, when hard facts clearly belie the perception, is again a demonstration that words and perceptions are not enough. If you tell people to change how they think, then as soon as they think they have changed how they think, they think they are done. If you change some facts, they'll really have to change how they think.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

And the fact that people can perceive sexism as being over, when hard facts clearly belie the perception, is again a demonstration that words and perceptions are not enough. If you tell people to change how they think, then as soon as they think they have changed how they think, they think they are done. If you change some facts, they'll really have to change how they think.

That's assuming that most people base their thinking on facts in the first place. I'm very pessimistic about that assumption when it comes to most social issues.

[nikki.]

If I were a bigoted academic in the STEM field and suddenly a lot more women were doing the same jobs as me, I wouldn't necessarily change my thinking to face the fact all people are equal. I mean, I might just as easily come to the conclusion that none of the work they were producing was worth any real merit (and that if work was produced that was worthwhile, it would clearly have been either a lucky break or the work of both male and female academics).

 

That's an extreme example, but it's incredibly difficult to change the mind of somebody who is already set in their ways. And no, I'm not saying that Butler's is the way to go (really, I was hoping people would more pick up on the breaking down of the binary than picking up of performativity). If we're talking about destroying stereotypes and creating a society where genders are equal (or even moot), what's wrong with changing the way kids in school are taught about these things? That's much more likely to produce results than introducing underreppressed social groups into bigoted fields.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

My qualifiers (now with bold added) were not just the usual academic reflex to hedge. The scale of the gender imbalance problem IS the gender imbalance problem. In psycho-sociological study you get points for squeezing out every last tiny nuance of possible cause, but to actually change things, you need a killer factor, a main driver, a first priority that will break the back of the job alone in itself. Is moral suasion against stereotypes really that factor in this case?

In case of Lilith's analogy I am sure there are more relevant factors, but in the case of female professors in STEM fields, I do indeed believe it is . At least based on my own experiences I can not identify any other relevant factors.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

The proportion of female scientists in STEM faculty is something around 15%, give or take about 5% depending on country and field and just how recent the data is.

Let's look at the numbers in a little more detail. I will use numbers from germany, as I know how to find them easily, of course the situation may differ significantly in other countries.

The proportion of female graduate students as well as PhD in Math and Nature Sciences is at around 45%. The proportion of women working in post-doc positions is then immediatly below 30%. Finally, 24% of all applications for tenure are by women, and 27% of positions are granted to women (So, obviously no discrimination in this process). The difference between these 27% and the 15% to 20% of women in the current postions is due to lag, as some of the current professors got their position almost 30 years ago, the ratio in this group is relatively close to 0% still.

Now, there is no indication of women being discouraged or downright discriminated in the process at any point before they achieve their PhD, there is no increased failure or abandoning rate of female graduate or PhD students as compared to their male counterparts. There is also no increased failure rate of women who do apply for tenure. Based on these facts, I would be really surprised if there is much discrimination in place in the process of hiring postdocs, which is done by the same persons that also judge PhD work and sit in tenure commitees.

That only leaves the conclussion that young women are less likely to apply for a post-doc position after achieving their PhD. A minor contribution to this may come from the fact that you achieve your PhD at about 30 years of age, which is generally considered a good age to start a family these days (in germany). But the major contribution I think is that everybody makes the trade-off between the academical and the industry careers after getting their PhD. And even for men, Industry is winning in 2 out of 3 cases due to significantly higher salaries.

Now if you look for a reason why women should prefer the industry more often than men, I am sure that academias reputation of being an "old boys club" will appear as a big "CON" bullet in the trade-off lists of most women. Thus it is my belief, as stated, that all we have to do to increase the number of women in tenure in STEM fields is change the prevalent communicated statistic from the current "Only 20% of professors are female" to the equally accurate but more positive "Female and male applicants for a tenured position have indeed exactly the same chance to get the position."

[Prince of Kitties]

I don't usually get involved in this kind of discussion, but for some reason I feel like giving my 2 cents...

 

I think a lot of the inertia in acknowledging gender (and racial) oppression in first-world countries is about guilt. For a huge number of people - particularly white men - acknowledging this oppression means acknowledging that they have acted, and may still be acting, in the role of the oppressor. I think most people engaged in these oppressive behaviors do have consciences; they don't oppress because they're sociopaths, they oppress because they've gotten good at rationalizing, and justifying their behavior to themselves. Strip away that bogus justification and they will feel guilty.

 

Some people will find ways of dealing that that guilt. But a lot of them will just say, "I don't want to deal with this." They'll rationalize it away and stick their heads back in the sand. And others will just crack under it.

 

See... A while ago, I decided that I might be more comfortable in a gender role other than the one I was raised in. I might have been right, I might have been wrong. It doesn't really matter; not that long after that, I took a Women's Studies class at my university, and gave up on the idea entirely. Since then I've dropped out of college, and mostly dropped out of life.

 

It is not a lie to say that that class all but broke me as a person. That is how heavy that guilt trip was. And granted that some of the material presented in the class struck me as uncomfortably close to a kind of religion - "we can't prove this, but you should believe it anyway" - I still think that most of it was factually correct. So my feeling is that, if you want to introduce people to the idea that they too might be oppressors, the Guilt Trip is the first barrier you need to overcome. If you want to educate people about gender and racial oppression in modern society - and I think that's what all sane and practical methods for dealing with those problems boil down to - you have to find some way of not either a) crushing them with their new awareness, or triggering their Mental Firewall and making them stop listening.

 

... Yeah. My 2 cents. That turned out a lot longer and wordier than I wanted, and I'm not sure posting it on a public forum was a good idea, but whatever. With luck I won't cause too much offense.

 

/steps off podium

 

Edit: BTW, speaking of causing offense... I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying that "being made to feel guilty" is anywhere near as awful a thing as being the target of gender or racial oppression.

 

Also, I'm aware that "making the oppressors feel guilty" might strike victims of oppression as quite justified. Didn't the oppressors do much worse to them? Well, I'm not saying it isn't justified; just that it may be (dangerously) counterproductive.

 

Again, just my 2 cents.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

You might help the process by stopping to spread the idea of a "patriarchal culture" exiting somewhere in the western civilizations.

Sexual harassment and discrimination are still absolutely rampant throughout society. This really is just not the kind of problem where you can ignore it and it'll go away.

The existance of discrimination and the existance of a "patriarchal culture" are very different facts.

Even though I personally have to disagree that discrimination is "rampant" in my society (germany), this may still be the case for you. In either case, I did not at any point deny the existance of discrimination. I am fully aware that there still exist more than enough cases. I am also quiet aware that in a lot of cases, the discrimination is ocurring against men, but that those men will have a hard time finding help, as admitting being discriminated as a man is still not considered socially acceptable.

What I refuse to accept is thus the allegation that gender discrimination has been designed by men, with women as a whole being nothing more than the victim. There is no indication for this being the case, but rather the gender roles, once implemented, have been defended just as persistently by women as they have by men. Even these days, there are plenty of mothers who will actively pressure their daughters to choose raising a familiy as a fulltime occupation instead of their careers.

Discrimination occurs generally due to a set of ideas imprinted in a society, ideas which generally have grown from generalizations and misunderstandings of reality, but have not been deviously designed by a group of people as a tool of suppression.

Also, keep in mind that the "Women are no good at work" was created at a time when for most people, work began to mean "work in a mine" or "work in a steel factory", and that work had a tendency of crippling and slowly killing people. At this point in time this rules allowed women to generally outlive their husbands by 20 years or more. I have a little trouble to imagine that they were designed by men as a means to suppress women, and just backfired horribly. We just stuck to the rules long after they lost their original meaning, and jobs started including comfy office chairs.

[nikki.]

I can't see how that could cause offence; your post is one of the more level-headed posts in this series of debates we've been having, so thanks for sharing.

 

Is it enough to target these issues before college-age, then? Obviously you don't want to be teaching 4 or 5 year olds about sexual/social/racial opression of any group (or do you), but instilling the idea of equality into kids makes it easier to say to them, when they hit college, "you know how we're all equal, here's what things used to be like...".

 

Edit: the above is in reference to Miramor.

 

In answer to the charge that all genders are guilty of perpetuating stereotypical gender roles: sure, and we can argue all day about who created/enforced them. What we need to do is to stop them from being spread altogether. I can't remember where I read it, or who said it, but all stereotypes do is label something as "Other", reducing it to something outside; if it is Other, and you can label it as such, you're automatically creating a system of heirarchy whereupon you are placed above the subject being stereotyped.

 

Now, if we want equality, and for society not to be filled with bigoted asses, the answer is education, and the reevaluation of what gender/race/sexuality/etc really mean.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

What I refuse to accept is thus the allegation that gender discrimination has been designed by men, with women as a whole being nothing more than the victim. There is no indication for this being the case, but rather the gender roles, once implemented, have been defended just as persistently by women as they have by men. Even these days, there are plenty of mothers who will actively pressure their daughters to choose raising a familiy as a fulltime occupation instead of their careers.

Discrimination occurs generally due to a set of ideas imprinted in a society, ideas which generally have grown from generalizations and misunderstandings of reality, but have not been deviously designed by a group of people as a tool of suppression.

This post suggests a misunderstanding of what patriarchy is. It's not primarily some kind of conscious conspiracy by men against women; rather, it's a system of social relations that tends to give power to men at the expense of women (or, more precisely, to men who live up to a particular ideal of masculinity at the expense of everyone else). It sounds like you do in fact agree that patriarchy exists; you were just under a misconception as to what it is in the first place. It really is, at its core, little more than the "set of ideas imprinted in a society" that you describe in the second paragraph I quoted.

[Prince of Kitties]

Originally Posted By: thursday

I can't see how that could cause offence; your post is one of the more level-headed posts in this series of debates we've been having, so thanks for sharing.

Thank you. I kind of expected to be told off for siding with the oppressor.

Quote:

Is it enough to target these issues before college-age, then? Obviously you don't want to be teaching 4 or 5 year olds about sexual/social/racial opression of any group (or do you), but instilling the idea of equality into kids makes it easier to say to them, when they hit college, "you know how we're all equal, here's what things used to be like...".

I think high school level might be the right place. From what I've seen that's where a lot of the tensions really start brewing; IMO, requiring schools to counteract that macho rubbish at the time it starts taking hold would be a really good idea. Also, high school kids are
- probably more malleable, and less likely to throw up mental barriers
- less likely to crash and burn under the guilt, since they'll have less of it (and see also malleability)
- maybe more likely to understand the whole deal with oppression, since it dovetails so neatly with the High School Experience

The main problem with making Women's Studies stuff a required part of high school education, I think, would be (grossly ignorant) public opposition.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Miramor

See... A while ago, I decided that I might be more comfortable in a gender role other than the one I was raised in. I might have been right, I might have been wrong. It doesn't really matter; not that long after that, I took a Women's Studies class at my university, and gave up on the idea entirely. Since then I've dropped out of college, and mostly dropped out of life.

It is not a lie to say that that class all but broke me as a person. That is how heavy that guilt trip was. And granted that some of the material presented in the class struck me as uncomfortably close to a kind of religion - "we can't prove this, but you should believe it anyway" - I still think that most of it was factually correct. So my feeling is that, if you want to introduce people to the idea that they too might be oppressors, the Guilt Trip is the first barrier you need to overcome. If you want to educate people about gender and racial oppression in modern society - and I think that's what all sane and practical methods for dealing with those problems boil down to - you have to find some way of not either a) crushing them with their new awareness, or triggering their Mental Firewall and making them stop listening.

hey uh i don't know how much i can help but if you want to talk or something i'm on AIM most days. my username's in my profile

[Prince of Kitties]

I'm afraid you probably can't help, but thank you very much anyway. Don't worry, I'm (slowly) clawing my way back into normalcy.

 

BTW, please don't let me sidetrack this discussion with personal issues. I may have them (in spades) but that wasn't my point; I was basically using myself as an example of where educators can unwittingly go wrong.

 

Edit: seriously though, thanks. Your compassion has been noted.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

This post suggests a misunderstanding of what patriarchy is. It's not primarily some kind of conscious conspiracy by men against women; rather, it's a system of social relations that tends to give power to men at the expense of women (or, more precisely, to men who live up to a particular ideal of masculinity at the expense of everyone else). It sounds like you do in fact agree that patriarchy exists; you were just under a misconception as to what it is in the first place. It really is, at its core, little more than the "set of ideas imprinted in a society" that you describe in the second paragraph I quoted.

Mmh, fair enough. I didn't use a dictionary in this case but rather reverse-defined the term from the contexts in which I had hear it before, which were almost exclusively ultra-feminist in nature.

Still, even with your definition, I can not by any means agree that germany is, or has been in the last few centuries, a patriarchical society as such. The ancient germanic concept of "The men are always hunting or at war, the women rules and controls the house" has never been significantly replaced by the mediterranean/christian concept of "submit to your husbands", outside of the greater noble families of course.

And gender misconceptions as "Women are bad at math/technical things" do not so much work at keeping women out of occupation, as they are just mirrored by "Men are bad at language/social concepts" stereotypes that is used to keep men out of those fields. And they are not really specific to occupations that grant power, as there are really no prejeduices against women in law, medicine, politics or Business Administration.

So, stupid gender roles and prejeduices and incorrect actions based on those, sure. But all in all, men don't seem to profit from it at the expense of women over here, rather than both men and women being restricted in their options.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

And gender misconceptions as "Women are bad at math/technical things" do not so much work at keeping women out of occupation, as they are just mirrored by "Men are bad at language/social concepts" stereotypes that is used to keep men out of those fields. And they are not really specific to occupations that grant power, as there are really no prejeduices against women in law, medicine, politics or Business Administration.

Are men really kept out of fields involving social interaction, based on stereotypes about their gender? It seems that if this were true, you'd expect to see men have a hard time getting into fields such as politics, compared to women. Is this in fact the case? It seems to me that it isn't, which means your argument that men and women are harmed equally by gender stereotypes is based on a false equivalence.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Are men really kept out of fields involving social interaction, based on stereotypes about their gender? It seems that if this were true, you'd expect to see men have a hard time getting into fields such as politics, compared to women. Is this in fact the case? It seems to me that it isn't, which means your argument that men and women are harmed equally by gender stereotypes is based on a false equivalence.

Political sciences are not generally considered to be a field related to language or social skills. It is also not generally considered a field of study that will help you get a job or any political power. It is probably a worse economical decision than philosophy. As far as studying something supporting a political career goes, Law seems to be your best bet.

In germany the path to political power is very much connected to being an active part of an political party, ideally joining as a teenager in one of the dedicated youth-sections. This is done besides and independantly of your "normal" job. E.g. Gerhard Schröder had studied Law, while our current chancellor Angela Merkel holds a PhD in Quantum Chemistry.

But as a side-note, with 6 out of 16 ministers of the current german government being women, man are seemingly getting a little bit discriminated there. Keeping in mind that the currently ruling CDU only consists to 20% of women, 3 out of 16 would seem more accurate.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

Political sciences are not generally considered to be a field related to language or social skills.

Who said anything about political science? I was talking about politics, and surely it's hard to argue that you don't need social skills to succeed in politics.

And if your best evidence is that the proportion of German cabinet ministers who are women is only a bit less than 50% instead of much less... then things really aren't looking too good for your contention that men are discriminated against for positions requiring social skills, are they?

[Prince of Kitties]

Quote:

Still, even with your definition, I can not by any means agree that germany is, or has been in the last few centuries, a patriarchical society as such.

[bolding mine]

Umm. I hate to go there, but what would you call the Third Reich?

Quote:

And gender misconceptions as "Women are bad at math/technical things" do not so much work at keeping women out of occupation, as they are just mirrored by "Men are bad at language/social concepts" stereotypes that is used to keep men out of those fields. And they are not really specific to occupations that grant power, as there are really no prejeduices against women in law, medicine, politics or Business Administration.

Disagree, disagree, and disagree.

- In what passes for my field (CS/IT) there are enormously more men than women. And I've seen some pretty ugly attitudes towards women from other men in the field. No, I can't provide empirical data, but it doesn't take a genius to think that these might be connected.

- I've never seen "men are bad at language/social concepts" pushed to the same degree as "women are bad at math/logic/spacial reasoning." Not by my peers, and certainly not by the media, which for a while was latching onto every damn chance to glorify the supposed cognitive differences between men and women.*

- Not sure about law, medicine, or business, but good gods, have you seen the treatment women in politics get around here? Even wingnuts like Sarah Palin have to put up with misogynist halfwits. Also, dare I remind you of former president Bush's treating your Chancellor Merkel to an impromptu backrub?

*NB: not to say that there are no cognitive differences on average between men and women. I just think it's absurd the way pop psychology amplifies them into "OMG men are vastly superior logical thinkers."

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Who said anything about political science? I was talking about politics, and surely it's hard to argue that you don't need social skills to succeed in politics.

I find it rather trivial to argue that politics are rather unrelated to social skill, but I assume there may be a mistranslation from german to english at work here, let me try to clarify this. When I refer to social skill, I do not mean something like "Knows ho make friends" or "Can talk convincingly". I rather am talking about an analytical understanding of social interactions and structures, as you would use it in Pedagogy or Psychology. Those are not considered the core competency of a politician in general (unless he specializes in propaganda).

Originally Posted By: Lilith

And if your best evidence is that the proportion of German cabinet ministers who are women is only a bit less than 50% instead of much less... then things really aren't looking too good for your contention that men are discriminated against for positions requiring social skills, are they?

See, that is a prime example of how you can change the meaning of an statement by incorrectly simplifying it. My Argument, jokingly as it was made, was that the rate of female ministers (37.5%) far exceeds the rate of female politicians applying for those positions (20%), not that it is too close to 50%.

If we had a green government right now, the 37.5% would be an underrepresentation (which knowing the greens would not happen). But with the situation within the ruling party being as they are right now, a male member has a lower chance to become a minister than a female member of equal qualifications. No Idea if that is for publicity reasons, or due to personal reference of our chancellor, or just a statistical glitch though (16 samples aren't all that much).

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: thursday

If I were a bigoted academic in the STEM field and suddenly a lot more women were doing the same jobs as me, I wouldn't necessarily change my thinking to face the fact all people are equal. I mean, I might just as easily come to the conclusion that none of the work they were producing was worth any real merit (and that if work was produced that was worthwhile, it would clearly have been either a lucky break or the work of both male and female academics).

I'm moderately pessimistic about fixing the present or near future. That professor who's overtly sexist? His colleague who insists he believes in ecology but always votes against giving women tenure? They might be lost causes. But the grad students a decade from now, if they enter a field that's half women and never see it any other way, will have a much easier time thinking that those old professors are crazy and that obviously women deserve equal treatment because they're just as good, and in the bad old days everyone was too stupid and biased to see it. That's progress. That's been a lot of progress on the race front, and it will only get better as the old guard gets supplanted by a newer, less racist generation. The next generation will be even better.

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

The proportion of female graduate students as well as PhD in Math and Nature Sciences is at around 45%. The proportion of women working in post-doc positions is then immediatly below 30%. Finally, 24% of all applications for tenure are by women, and 27% of positions are granted to women (So, obviously no discrimination in this process). The difference between these 27% and the 15% to 20% of women in the current postions is due to lag, as some of the current professors got their position almost 30 years ago, the ratio in this group is relatively close to 0% still.

Those are fascinating numbers that are very different from my anecdotal experience. Are they specific for Germany? Could you site your source?

—Alorael, who doesn't even think those numbers support a conclusion that there is no discrimination. Those quarter of women, roughly, who stick it out may be the cream of the crop, who are good enough to succeed no matter what and no it. The real question is why so many vanish from the field. It might be discrimination at the post-grad level, but even that's not necessary. If women are led to believe they can't succeed in the field, even if no one deliberately inculcates such thinking, there's a huge systemic failure.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Miramor

[bolding mine]

Umm. I hate to go there, but what would you call the Third Reich?

Well, I did talk about centuries, and the Third Reich lasted for approximately zero centuries. But of course you are correct there, the Nazi-Regime did portray the woman mainly as "child-giving machines". Still, the ratio of married women working in the third reich was basically the same as in the US at that time, so I have no clue how serious the propaganda was really taken by the broad populace. Mostly because basically all germans got amnesia in 1945, and couldn't remember their own role in those years anymore.

Quote:

Disagree, disagree, and disagree.

- In what passes for my field (CS/IT) there are enormously more men than women. And I've seen some pretty ugly attitudes towards women from other men in the field. No, I can't provide empirical data, but it doesn't take a genius to think that these might be connected.

Sounds like there are indeed extreme differences between our nations. I can't talk about CS, but Physics is also a field where there are few women (interested), but I have never seen myself, and never heard from my female colleagues, of any negative attitudes towards them. Still, the sample size of my personal experiences is rather small of course.

Quote:

- Not sure about law, medicine, or business, but good gods, have you seen the treatment women in politics get around here? Even wingnuts like Sarah Palin have to put up with misogynist halfwits. Also, dare I remind you of former president Bush's treating your Chancellor Merkel to an impromptu backrub?

Are you suggesting that I base my conception of the american society on Bush's behaviour? I would rather not do that. I am already hard at work trying to balance the rubish I see in american media with the good experiences I have with personel experiences with americans. I am sure I will be shocked for the rest of my life by the fact that a person without any recognisable skills and an apparent IQ of 70 could survive the supposedly democratical process of a vote, but please don't tell me that I should consider him as a typical example of the american male.

Quote:

*NB: not to say that there are no cognitive differences on average between men and women. I just think it's absurd the way pop psychology amplifies them into "OMG men are vastly superior logical thinkers."

Go ahead and say it. I have read a dozen or so studies on the question, and nobody ever managed to find an actual biological difference in the mental capabilities of men and women. Only acquired preferences.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

Are you suggesting that I base my conception of the american society on Bush's behaviour? I would rather not do that. I am already hard at work trying to balance the rubish I see in american media with the good experiences I have with personel experiences with americans. I am sure I will be shocked for the rest of my life by the fact that a person without any recognisable skills and an apparent IQ of 70 could survive the supposedly democratical process of a vote, but please don't tell me that I should consider him as a typical example of the american male.

I do not have a very fond opinion of George W. Bush, but he is hardly an imbecile. His policies were antithetical to most of my beliefs, but that does not mean has was an idiot. The man is intelligent. Others are smarter to be sure, but an IQ of 70 would put him firmly in the mentally disabled category, and that is completely false.

Also, if one were to rely entirely on intelligence quotient as a measure of how smart someone is, (not a practice I would endorse) that would mean I am almost exactly twice as smart as he is. I consider myself to be intelligent, but that's a bit preposterous.

[ShieTar]

Well, yes, the IQ 70 was Hyperbole on my part. Nevertheless I am truly not aware of any sign of even average intelligence on his part. And this not merely my personal opinion. If I may cite former german chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who did meet Bush personally on several occasions:

 

Quote:

"We noticed that the intellectual reach of the president of the most important nation at the time was exceptionally low. For this reason it was difficult to communicate with him. He had no idea what was happening in the world. He was so fixated on being a Texan. I think he knew every longhorn in Texas."

 

Considering how diplomatic politicians usually try to be about international colleauges, I would consider this kind of official judgement to be rather telling.

[Student of Trinity]

What do you mean by 'applications for tenure' in Germany? My wife and I are both professors in Germany, but we're immigrants from Canada via the US, and I may not have noticed how it works differently in some states here. For what it's worth, though, my understanding is that tenure doesn't really work that way anywhere in this country. Only a few Juniorprofessor positions have a tenure track option to convert to W2 after six years. Most Juniorprofessuren are simply glorified post-docs that throw you out after six years no matter how good you are. All the actual professor positions (W2 and 3) come with automatic tenure at hire.

 

In any case I draw the opposite conclusion from the statistics. Fewer women apply for academic jobs than should. These are smart people who have already invested a lot in academia. I don't think re-spinning the statistics is all it takes to change their minds. Frankly, a woman who has simply not grasped your perspective on the statistics, even after devoting all the thought appropriate to such an important career decision, is not a woman who would ever have a shot at a professorship in natural science. I think there must rather be practical factors that discourage women, and that if we can identify these and address them, they will vote with their feet and apply more.

 

About patriarchy in Germany, I'm afraid I also have a different view, having come here just over six years ago from Boston. It is much more the default here that every family with children is expected to have a mother at home in the afternoons. It is quite hard to find all-day child care, and school normally ends early in the afternoon, at which point most children go home to have lunch. The cafeteria in my older daughter's Gymnasium (high school) is tiny, because in a school of several hundred students only a couple of dozen eat lunch at school.

 

It's not like anybody's judging us or calling us weird, but things just aren't set up normally to handle both parents working full time. That might not necessarily be patriarchy in a strict sense, I suppose, since in principle everything would work just as well with a working mother and a stay-at-home dad. Somehow that seems to be an extreme minority in practice, though.

[ShieTar]

Yes, sorry for messing up that sentence a little, what the statistics gather up are W2/W3 positions, which in general are the only ways and also a almost sure way to get tenure. So I used tenure as a synonyme for the positions, not really correctly.

 

Even though I seem to recall there used to be the option to achieve tenure (or something very similar) by simply working for more than six years at the same position at an university. Which is why most postdocs only received 5-year contracts, as the tenured contracts were somewhat more expensive.

 

Quote:

Frankly, a woman who has simply not grasped your perspective on the statistics, even after devoting all the thought appropriate to such an important career decision, is not a woman who would ever have a shot at a professorship in natural science.

 

From very personal experience, namely with myself, I can not agree to the assumption that people will invest appropriate research and rationale thought into important personal decisions, if some kind of emotional pre-disposition exists.

 

On top of that keep in mind that, at least for scientists and engineers in germany, a career in the private industry is already the prefered option from an economical point of view. Also keep in mind the absolute numbers at work here, the fact that only about 3% of all PhDs can achieve tenure, and less than 20% of all PhDs will continue to work at universities at all. IF only 30% of those 20% are female, that still means that 88% of all female PhDs and 72% of all male PhDs will leave the academic career. That is a difference in decision-making, but not a huge one.

[Student of Trinity]

For the benefit of the rest of the world, it might be worth explaining how German universities work. Most university employees have the equivalent of tenure, as state employees, but being a professor is kind of like being a small state yourself. Until you retire, you effectively own a little chunk of your campus, and can occupy or furnish it as you see fit. You get a permanent annual budget even without having to apply for grants, so you're essentially guaranteed to be the leader of your own little institute — or maybe even a large one, in some cases. You do also normally want to apply for grants, but it's not so hard to get them.

 

You have a quite modest teaching obligation in terms of mandatory contact hours, and you can literally teach whatever you want, whenever you want. You literally answer to no-one, and if you really want to do something in your field, nothing on earth can stop you. The pay is decent, too. Being a professor is highly respected, not only for its nobleness as a calling, but also for its cushiness as a job.

 

Very few professors in Germany are women, especially in science and engineering. But if we get more female professors, see, it really makes a difference. Conversely, if we don't, then all the advertising in the world isn't going to be convincing.

 

The percentages of PhDs choosing academic careers are misleading for this argument, I'm afraid, because it's only the very brightest that are actually in the running. Among these very brightest, the women are alarmingly under-employed.

[Alorael at Large]

You're still throwing these numbers around. Where did they come from?

 

—Alorael, who doesn't care if the documentation is in German. He can probably muddle through the WordReference and Google Translate.

[Harehunter]

I don't know about most families, but the one I married into is definitely a matriarchy. The women allow the men to think they are the CEO, but the women are the CFO's, who control the men by the power of the purse. (no pun. period.) In a room with four men and two women, the men are outnumbered. The women do not seek equality; that would be a demotion from their perspective.

 

I don't know about academia, my professional world is 90% male, but the sharpest knife in the drawer is my backup DBA, and she has no problem being the backup. She is also backup Sysadmin on Windows servers, Unix servers, and primary on document management systems. She is a valuable asset to the company, and an excellent team player, as is everyone in my department. Her only flaw... she likes my puns. So much so that she is now dishing them up to me.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

I don't know about most families, but the one I married into is definitely a matriarchy. The women allow the men to think they are the CEO, but the women are the CFO's, who control the men by the power of the purse. (no pun. period.)

So the women earn more than the men? Such families do exist, but certainly you recognise that they're atypical.

If, on the other hand, you're talking about some kind of more nebulous supposed power over the family's financial affairs, consider this: if all the men in the family were to drain all the money they're legally entitled to take out of any joint bank accounts and just walk out one day, what kind of economic position would the women be in? If the women did the same, what kind of economic position would the men be in? When you want to know which party in a relationship holds more power, it's worth looking at who could more credibly threaten the other into not walking away.

[Soul of Wit]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

... Even if it could be shown to work, is systematically lying to people an ethical or sustainable thing to do?

This could have been lifted from one of the political discussions in this forum. In general, lying is sustainable, if far from ethical. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to sustain.

[ex post slarto]

One of the most important words in Lilith's definition of patriarchy, IMHO, was "system." It isn't just the incidental result of different personalities interacting; there are forces at work that systematically maintain the equilibrium of the imbalance of power. Often, these forces are not formalized, but they are no less real: in different societies you might picture overt, covert, or unconscious sexism, the impact of the way different children are brought up, economic forces, religious traditions, etc.

 

So when you say you married into a matriarchy, Harehunter, do you mean that the men of the family literally can't make decisions for the family on their own, but the women can? Or do you just mean that the women happen to be the dominant personalities of the social group?

 

(This is a real question. It could very plausibly be either one. Your description sounds kind of like the _I Love Lucy_ stereotype of domestic affairs, with women who manipulate their way to getting what they want, but who are proven time and again to be powerless compared to their husbands. But I might be misinterpreting what you meant.)

[Harehunter]

A serious question deserves a serious answer.

 

Lilith, not all women consider having their own careers the measure of their worth or equality. Whether this in ingrained into them from their upbringing or not, they view their importance in raising their families. If that means they have to work to aide in that endeavor, then so be it. They can be independent, if need be, and they keep their men on notice that tom-foolery is not to be tolerated. They rule the roost, they keep the hearth and home, and that is how they measure their worth.

 

Slarty, once again your questions are pointed and direct. The women in this family are strong willed, not coercive, but they know how to motivate their men into doing their best to provide for the family. They are also the bond that holds family together, the ones who keep the family unit whole so that when one member of the family needs assistance, they are taken care of. Yes, the men make decisions, but they take the opinion of their women into consideration. The men have their role to provide for the family, the women have their role to keep that family whole and hale.

 

A matriarchy? Maybe not so much as that as a partnership, where each party is empowered to the extent that best serves the family. Does this sound old-fashioned? I will conclude that for the past 26 years that I have been in this family, I could never be more happy. Given the choice, I wouldn't have to give it a thought, I would still choose the woman who is now my wife.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

A serious question deserves a serious answer.

Lilith, not all women consider having their own careers the measure of their worth or equality. Whether this in ingrained into them from their upbringing or not, they view their importance in raising their families. If that means they have to work to aide in that endeavor, then so be it. They can be independent, if need be, and they keep their men on notice that tom-foolery is not to be tolerated. They rule the roost, they keep the hearth and home, and that is how they measure their worth.

Either you've missed my point or you're deliberately dodging it: in either case, you haven't answered my question. As long as a woman is dependent on someone else to maintain her standard of living, then there's a very clear limit to her power and independence. Therefore, I want to know whether that's the case for the women in your family.

[Harehunter]

Lilith, we can go around the world and back on this and wind up right where we started. As I said, the women in this family hear your quarrel and wonder what all the fuss is about. Your standards of independence does not apply to their standard of interdependence. Neither half of the relationship is whole without the other half. I swear that half my brain is in her head and vice versa. When she tries to remember some obscure bit of information, she can ask me with only a grain of data to work with, and the rest of it pops out my head. Conversely, I do the same thing with her.

 

I have heard it said that after a time a couple will gain the ability to finish their partners thought. My wife and I were finishing sentences in stereo after only a month. Not just the words, but the inflection as well. When we were bringing our dog home from the SPCA, we kept thinking about what we would name her. Suddenly the word Missy popped into my head. A few minutes later I asked my wife what we should name her. She said, "I don't know. How about Missy?" This was not the first nor the last time she has read my mind like that.

 

I wish that someday you can find a relationship as strong as the one I am blessed with. Perhaps you already are, but your stance on independence indicates that you are not yet ready for such. May you find happiness without measure.

[Lilith]

Good luck with your marriage, then. I hope for her sake that you don't change your mind about her one day and leave her destitute -- and that she doesn't live in fear that you may do so.

[Harehunter]

You have no idea, and for that you have my regrets. I wish you could find the deep, soul satisfying joy that I have.

[Student of Trinity]

This is not the place for anyone to be getting too personal, folks. Apart from anything else, it amounts to argumentum ad hominem, even when you yourself are the hominem in question.

 

If various classical sources are to be believed, there were numerous ancient cases of masters and slaves finding their association mutually rewarding. The aforementioned classical sources would all seem to have been masters. But even if their remarks are taken at face value, they do nothing to justify slavery, for those mutually rewarding associations could easily have continued between two free citizens.

 

If somebody like Harehunter himself can have both financial independence and a strong relationship, then there would seem to be no reason why women cannot also have both. So it is irrelevant, whether it is possible to be happy without financial independence. Why can't women have both, the same as men? This is the issue here.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

If various classical sources are to be believed, there were numerous ancient cases of masters and slaves finding their association mutually rewarding. The classical sources in question would all seem to have been masters. But even if their remarks are taken at face value, they do little to justify slavery, for those mutually rewarding associations could easily have continued between two free citizens.

This is a big part of the point I was trying to make. It's not that I have any specific reason to expect that Harehunter will abuse his power and privilege: it's just that he has it, and therefore has the capacity to do so, and this in itself is a problem. I think we can all agree that it's not a good idea for a government to have unlimited, unaccountable power just because the people running it are doing a good job right now: the same logic applies to a family.

[Prince of Kitties]

Originally Posted By: "Lilith"

This is a big part of the point I was trying to make. It's not that I have any specific reason to expect that Harehunter will abuse his power and privilege: it's just that he has it, and therefore has the capacity to do so, and this in itself is a problem. I think we can all agree that it's not a good idea for a government to have unlimited, unaccountable power just because the people running it are doing a good job right now: the same logic applies to a family.

I hope you don't take offense at this, but while your logic is impeccable, I think there's a problem with the way you present it.

Quote:

Good luck with your marriage, then. I hope for her sake that you don't change your mind about her one day and leave her destitute -- and that she doesn't live in fear that you may do so.

Statements like, "This situation is bad because you, personally, might do something awful with the power it grants you," tend to get on people's nerves, due to the implicit assumption that the person being spoken to may be untrustworthy. Technically they might be - for all you know, Harehunter might be a really bad fellow. But putting it that way makes it read like a statement of suspicion at best, and a personal attack at worst.

Better might be something like: "You should realize that, while your marriage has worked out so far, relationships like that have huge potential to turn out badly for the woman." Or maybe more specific: "What would happen to your wife if you became unable to work for some reason?"

I realize I probably come off as incredibly patronizing here, in all senses of the word... But I think this is one of the things wrong with how some feminists promulgate their message. "You are a potential abuser." "You are a potential rapist." "You are part of the problem." This kind of language deeply offends people.

(Or rather, deeply offends most people. A few will really take it to heart. I could tell you a story about that.)

But yeah. My point is, nobody likes to hear it assumed that they might commit evil, even if there's no basis for assuming they won't.

(And that was way long-winded, and hopefully not a prime example of mansplaining. Yeah.)

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Miramor

and hopefully not a prime example of mansplaining.

It's tone policing, not mansplaining.

And Lilith did start off by being polite and reasonable, but Harehunter pointedly and deliberately dodged her questions and then started giving her a bunch of condescending crap about her relationship status, so at this point he deserves no mercy.

Dikiyoba.

[Prince of Kitties]

Sorry, I wasn't really following Harehunter. Lilith's "you might betray your wife" thing just kind of leaped out at me as an example of the guilt thing I mentioned earlier.

 

Lilith: apologies, I think I jumped the gun on that.

 

/goes back to read over Harehunter's posts

 

Edit: I see... Just a sec, will make another post.

[Lilith]

I think sometimes it can be useful to shock people awake a bit. Yeah, of course it sucks to be seen as a potential rapist or abuser. You know what sucks even more? That no matter how good your intentions, your previous behaviour or your relationship with a woman is, the state of our world is such that it's rational for her to consider you as a potential threat.

[Prince of Kitties]

Originally Posted By: "Lilith"

I think sometimes it can be useful to shock people awake a bit.

If you say so. Me, I never quite recovered from the shock. There are many days when I wish I hadn't woken up.

But, as the feminists are fond of saying, "It's not about you."

Quote:

Yeah, of course it sucks to be seen as a potential rapist or abuser. You know what sucks even more? That no matter how good your intentions, your previous behaviour or your relationship with a woman is, the state of our world is such that it's rational for her to consider you as a potential threat.

I know the sidelong glances that young women give me when I walk past them. That's fear; they're afraid of me, and logically they should be. I'm not offended by that, just disgusted that it's necessary.

It does get to you after a while. But men do much, much worse things to women, so I don't doubt it's justified. I just wish it weren't.

[Lilith]

Not knowing what the world is like doesn't change it, and if you want the world to change then knowing what it's like is a good place to start. It's better to do what you can to help, within the limits of your physical, mental and emotional capabilities, than to wallow in guilt for not being able to do more. Even if all you can do is call attention to sexist behaviour when you see it, that's more than most people manage.

[ShieTar]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

I think sometimes it can be useful to shock people awake a bit. Yeah, of course it sucks to be seen as a potential rapist or abuser. You know what sucks even more? That no matter how good your intentions, your previous behaviour or your relationship with a woman is, the state of our world is such that it's rational for her to consider you as a potential threat.

Wow. Really, just wow.
That right there is a prime example of sexism at work. Go ahead, just adapt your statement slightly and think about what you have just stated:

Quote:

If you are a black person, no matter how good your intentions or your previous behaviour towards white people were, the state of our world is such that it's rational for a white person to consider you as a potential murderer.

Surely you will not agree with this statement?

Still, you feel feel it is justified to socially discriminate against any male person, based solely on the fact that the minority of men who commit rape or sexual abuse is larger than the minority of women who do so by a factor of 3 or 4?

I feel sorry for you if you do live in a society where these crimes are sufficiently commonplace that you need to consider it as a criterium for your own social interactions, I truly am.

But the statement you made up there was not an acceptable contribution to a discussion on gender roles, it was a highly sexist insult to all male readers.

[Prince of Kitties]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

You know what sucks even more? That no matter how good your intentions, your previous behaviour or your relationship with a woman is, the state of our world is such that it's rational for her to consider you as a potential threat.

Okay, I'm going back to this because the bolded portion kind of rubs me the wrong way. How do you judge if a person is safe, if not based on their prior behavior? There is always the chance that someone will behave decently because they're waiting to take advantage of you, but it doesn't seem rational to me to assume that by default; even in this very ugly world, and even if the person in question is a man.

Or am I misreading your use of the word "potential?" e.g. with a spouse, are we talking about conditional trust, or are we talking about complete distrust?

[Kelandon]

Applying generalizations about demographic categories (even statistically valid ones) to individual persons is the very definition of prejudice.

 

The fact that men commit violent crimes more often than women does not lead to the inference that any given man should be viewed as a violent criminal (even a potential one), any more than any given women should be. ShieTar has graphically depicted the logical consequences of such a view above.

 

This did not start there. It started with the point that if someone earns more money than someone else, that person might in principle be allowed to take that money and run. This is a statement about our divorce laws. I haven't studied family law (and hope never to), but my impression is that a male breadwinner can't simply leave behind a wife penniless and unable to care for herself. Thus, even that point might not be valid, depending on jurisdiction and the details of the law.

[Prince of Kitties]

Originally Posted By: ShieTar

Wow. Really, just wow.
That right there is a prime example of sexism at work.

Don't quote me on this, but I don't think it's sexism. IIRC sexism refers to an institutional bias, and there is no society on Earth that has an institutional bias against men.

Quote:

...

But the statement you made up there was not an acceptable contribution to a discussion on gender roles, it was a highly sexist insult to all male readers.

Insult, schminsult. We luxuriate in grotesque privilege all the time, we can put up with a few "insults."

BTW, did you notice some of the stuff Harehunter said?

Originally Posted By: "Harehunter"

I wish that someday you can find a relationship as strong as the one I am blessed with. Perhaps you already are, but your stance on independence indicates that you are not yet ready for such. May you find happiness without measure.

"A women can't be in a truly happy relationship without giving up some of her independence." Now that's what I call sexist.