
Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf] - snake117
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/09/15/1502567112.full.pdf
======
danso
So can this be used as an argument against the idea that women hold fewer
positions of power (and in context of HN, fewer tech positions) not because of
institutional/societal sexism, but because they just don't desire them?

I don't think many of the there-needs-to-be-more-diversity crowd disagree with
that. Their position is more nuanced than that, and of course, to be fair, the
we-can't-make-things-have-diversity crowd is unfairly pigeonholed as being
shut-up-women.

But in my reading of the paper's conclusion, women have less desire for
promotions and power, but it's because they see those things as causing them
strife. The we-need-more-diversity crowd believes that having more women in
power is one way of alleviating a positive feedback loop.

To put it another way, here's another study that could be done: Women view
walking alone at night equally attainable, but less desirable.

edit: corrected mistake of "negative feedback loop" to "positive" via
lexcorvus:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10272694)

~~~
rayiner
As someone in the "we need more diversity crowd" I think the article is
consistent with that position. At the end of the day, even if you can make it
in an environment where you don't fit in, there is a level of pain and
frustration that comes with that.

Anecdote: My wife and I have similar careers in the same field. We're not the
world's most involved parents, but I go through life with people telling me
I'm an awesome dad because I change diapers and my wife goes through life with
nursery school teachers wondering why she didn't dress our daughter up as a
pirate when they gave us notice it was pirate day two whole days in advance.
Every time a grandparent notes that it's a shame she comes home so late (while
never mentioning how late I come home) is another drop in the "is it even
fucking worth it?" bucket.

But it would be erroneous to conclude that she "just wants it less" than I do.
Rather, the social cost of her getting it is higher than it is for me.

~~~
dominotw
Stop seeking social approval so much and do what you think is the best for you
and your kids.

You are living a good life if your only problem is "someone wondering why you
are bad parent". Seems a little narcissistic to think that people are
analyzing/judging you so much. People are self obsessed, you can almost always
be sure that they are thinking about themselves.

Also, interesting that people invent strange/vague/meaningless phrases like
"social cost" to justify imagined slights against them.

You are product of society, you are "the society". Your thoughts/actions make
up society. You cannot be in conflict with it. There is no evil society out
there judging and analyzing you every move.

~~~
jrock08
You know it's pretty childish to dismiss someone's experience right? He didn't
say he was seeking approval, he said that when he does the most minor
childcare thing he gets praise, while when neither he nor his wife do some
completely asinine thing (dressing their daughter as a pirate) his wife (not
him) catches flack from the teachers for not being "more involved". Dismissing
this as "narcissistic" is completely misreading his comment.

~~~
dominotw
>He didn't say he was seeking approval

>>is another drop in the "is it even fucking worth it?" bucket

I read that as seeking approval. Is it not?

What does "social cost getting higher" mean to someone not seeking approval?

He even invented a term for it. "social cost[1]" goes higher when someone
judges you negatively and goes lower when someone commends your actions, like
a carefully managed bank account.

1.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cost)

~~~
harryh
When it's not happening to you it's very easy to tell someone else that
getting told every day they are a bad parent is no big deal and they should
ignore it.

But when it is happening to you, no matter how hard you try, it eventually
gets to you. At least a little bit.

People aren't robots. It's hard work to ignore these things. And, in the case
under discussion, it's work that falls more heavily on moms than dads.

------
6stringmerc
Not sure where my Dad appropriated / paraphrased this saying before passing it
along to me, but I think it relates to the "attitude" component with respect
to career success and priorities in life:

"The C students run the world because the A students don't want the hassle."

------
gwern
Reminds me of the SMPY results: even extremely capable women don't desire
professional advancement as much as their male counterparts but value other
things like a work-life balance [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-
differences-in-p...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-
in-preferences.html)

------
lapecc
To me the most interesting part of this study is the equality of potential
advancement. I cannot imagine that 10 years ago that would have been the case
and goes to show some serious progress. Also, I appreciate the fact that this
study approaches the discussion from an opportunity perspective. Taking a end-
result perspective when discussing equality generally leads to false theses
and confusion.

------
plg
Bigger, better, faster, more!

Some men also are not so motivated by this either.

I suppose it's slightly interesting that slightly more women than men say
this. Maybe not though.

~~~
cwbrandsma
All of these come down to 200M anecdotes really, partially because we are
talking about preferences and comfort levels.

In talking with the women around me, most don't really like working with men
in the first place, they are more comfortable working with other women. I have
male friends that are nurses, they miss working with other men, and kind of
avoid working with women. In talk with my wife and her married friends, most
of the wives would prefer their husbands not work with other women (and these
women trust their husbands).

Now throw in the rest of the work and society. I just got done with sexual
harassment training. To be fair, most of the stuff is pretty obvious and
straight forward. But the undertone is "everything will be used against you
when dealing with the opposite sex"; best bet is to avoid them as best you
can, don't speak, don't look them in the eye, and no matter what, don't be
alone with them.

TL:DR: In western society, I just don't think we are comfortable with the
sexes working together, and I don't know how to fix it. I'm hoping I'm wrong
on this.

~~~
Thriptic
I work in a lab which has approximately a 50/50 gender split. I personally
have never felt uncomfortable with or been confused about working with people
of the opposite sex, and I haven't heard any negative stories regarding inter-
sex conflict or awkwardness from colleagues. As long as everyone acts like a
professional, which isn't really that difficult, then I don't foresee many
problems arising in a mixed gender workplace.

------
kazinator
Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which
determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning.

I think that playing with dolls is attainable (I could just go out and get me
some), but undesirable for me. It has nothing to do with sex role stereotyping
from a young age, honest. It's just a strictly personal preference, nothing
more.

~~~
asgard1024
> Even so, it can still be the result of life-long social conditioning, which
> determines what you want, part of which is gender role conditioning.

So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological,
gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want? Why should the
society be defined by some other metric than preference of its individuals?
AFAICT, the article tries to measure the preference, as precisely as possible.

It strikes to me as unfair to the people expressing those preferences to say
"your preferences are influenced by culture and therefore less valid". (If
they are not less valid, what is the problem?)

~~~
kazinator
> _So what? Why is it important to know what force (cultural, biological,
> gravitational..) in the universe determines what you want?_

Because, for instance, you're a social sciences researcher and it's your job
to figure it out and stick it in a paper.

We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans
naturally lack ambition, and that's why they are under-represented in the top
echelons of organizations".

The authors of the paper touch on this in the Discussion:

> _Identifying the origin of the differences between men’s and women’s
> professional aspirations is beyond the scope of the current research. Our
> findings may be the result of biological gender differences, learned
> preferences that have developed in response to cultural norms and gender-
> based discrimination, or both._

~~~
asgard1024
Maybe I misunderstand you, but:

> We also want to avoid jumping to some bad conclusions like "female humans
> naturally lack ambition"

Why is it a bad conclusion? Maybe it's the truth (for arguably narrow
definition of ambition). You don't want to get _wrong_ conclusions from the
research (whether you jump to them or not), but you cannot pick in advance
which conclusion is morally good or bad. Preferences simply are somehow.

I actually think we should consider psychological research into group
differences to be unscientific, unless it is firmly based on biology. Ideally,
these studies should be based on DNA rather than gender or race or religion or
ethnicity.

You can research preferences of people if you need to know them, but you
shouldn't correlate them to some social group. I don't think society needs
that kind of results apart from dinner conversations, because these results
cannot inform the policy, which should be to respect everybody's preferences
equally.

------
ajmurmann
This might be a chicken/egg problem, where society doesn't expect women to
gain high professional positions and so they feel less driven to achieve it.

~~~
thenerdfiles
No. It's for the fact that in order to climb the corporate ladder, one must
sacrifice "empathy-potential" because one becomes conditioned to
hypercompetitive behavior. Think of this as "learned winning"; it's cheaper to
win because one is in "win-mode" than to actually always win through
exhaustion of relevant skill (so, too, winning by "luck" or succeeding through
luck, is better than succeeding through hard work — so being conditioned to a
hypercompetitive attitude is like being on "luck mode" because others who are
not in that attitudinal predisposition will essentially fail to maximize their
relevant skills whereas someone in "win-mode" will already be in a conditioned
skill-optimal (total maximalization) state.). The asymmetry here is that if
you stress yourself out well before your menopausal stage, now you've risked
it all only to sacrifice yourself — and you lose out on having a healthy body
to support childbirth physiologically and psychologically.

Men do not have the opportunity to give birth, so they can weigh in more
heavily on self-sacrifice without the contingency that their body could be
used as a medium for life-production.

Basically, men are more like prototypal inheritance whereas women are more
like classical inheritance, or at least we like to think that men are more
"existential" while women are conservative in their "recreate the self".

Most men advance in careers that are inherently lethal; so naturally women are
going to be less driven to advance themselves in careers that compromise their
total contract not only as financial agents but as well as genetic agents.

~~~
aianus
Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes
either.

In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a child
and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like
successful men do.

~~~
crpatino
> Not sure I follow. If I die in war at 18 as a male, I can't pass on my genes
> either.

Men, specially young men, are genetically programmed to not think about that.
A typical 18 year old that goes to war does not think he's going to die. He
thinks he's going to come back as a war hero and enjoy the... shall we say
"admiration" of all his dead comrades' girlfriends.

> In addition, there's nothing stopping a successful female from having a
> child and handing it over to a team of nannies immediately upon birth like
> successful men do.

Successful men can sire offspring in 15 minutes (or less, but there's already
a pill for that) and delegate. Successful women have to fight their body for
at least six months in order to hold on to their position during pregnancy.
Then comes the postpartum depression and a whole other array of nasties.

So, not the same thing.

------
EGreg
[http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm)

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-
blaming-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/)

The gender equality and feminism movement has been hijacked by corporate
interests! The question is if ANYONE of any gender should bust their butt for
someone else's company.

And if you really want to achieve gender equality at all costs, start with
making the primary care provider for kids 50/50 men/women. Right now women are
the ones expected to care for children which is where most of the salary
inequality comes from!

------
miramardesign
When will people understand that traditional gender roles were a part of human
evolution? e.g. societies and people that didn't adopt them simply went
extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't compete.
The fact that we are in a transition from them because of modern tech
shouldn't let us be ignorant of the past and what the past shaped us into our
humanity.

~~~
jegutman
The costs and benefits of things change over time and hence the stable
outcomes can change a lot over time. It's only in the last few 100 years that
anything resembling a "job" where you sit at a desk all day existed. 1000s of
year so of human evolution is people moving around, people who didn't "simply
went extinct under the stress to survive and reproduce that they couldn't
compete". Obviously the claim that this means we can't modify this at all is
completely ridiculous.

------
idibidiart
So much better than the title of an article in a recent Time magazine issue:
"Ambition is not working for women" Lame.

------
notliketherest
tl;dr women are different than men.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN.

~~~
Tsagadai
I cannot vote this up enough. There is no real evidence of significant
differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger.
Numerous studies have debunked garbage science about brain differences and
whatnot because they are cultural not biological. Culturally, women are
treated, raised and nurtured differently. Culture can, and does, change though
so it cannot be really considered a persistent 'difference' when during my own
brief lifetime things have changed dramatically in gender relations.

~~~
douche
> There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other
> than men are often physically bigger

That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your
ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect.

There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due
to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre
and post-op transsexuals that support this.

One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks:
[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-
the-...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-
rift-sexist.html)

------
swagswag
Evaluate the veracity:

Poor people view professional advancement as unequally attainable, but more
desirable.

------
t2015_08_25
Fascinating results, I would only caution people before taking this article's
results to apply to "all" women. IME, approximately 10% of women desire
employment success way more than the others.

~~~
t2015_08_25
So what on Earth is objectionable in my comment? I speak from a moderate
viewpoint, to take the study seriously, but not apply it blindly, apply my own
small amount of experience, and get downvoted to -4?

Did this offend anyone? Please explain how. Otherwise I would perceive the
downvotes to be the work of trolls.

~~~
buckbova
Might be this:

> IME, approximately 10% . . .

How is this substantive?

~~~
t2015_08_25
Ah you're right. Thanks. That was driving me crazy. I should have learned by
reading substantive comments found elsewhere. This one below, for example,
struck me as exceptionally substantive and now I can see why it hasn't been
voted below zero:

"I don't want to show up to work sweaty. And I want the utility of a vehicle
if my plans change. So I'll drive regardless."

~~~
buckbova
I didn't downvote you. You asked.

Don't be so worried about internet points.

BTW, that comment netted several magical internet points for whatever reason.

