
Gender Imbalances Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes - mpweiher
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/
======
woodruffw
"I hope you share my intuition that utilitiarianism is an unusually thing-
oriented and systematizing moral system, and that this gestures at the same
large but hard-to-explain difference as the other two results."

I do not. Utilitarianism, at its core, is the _exact opposite_ of "thing-
oriented" \- it treats rightness of action as a function of the action's good,
rather than as a _property_ of actions. In the (act) utilitarian view,
something is not good or bad in and of itself - it is only good or bad with
respect to its consequences. As such, an act utilitarian should give no mind
to "things" themselves, but only to the actions that produce the best
outcomes.

Edit:

I enjoy reading SSC, but I think Scott Alexander (and the normal rash of new
utilitarians) consistently make the same mistakes that their positivist
progenitors made in the 1940s. I wish we (academia, and society as a whole)
would stop treating science and human concerns as prickles and goo[1].

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU)

------
CurryMath
This piece tries to argue that women are less interested in libertarianism
because they are "less rationalizing-systemizing" and therefore don't "get"
libertarianism, but many underlying assumptions are very weak.

For example:

    
    
       > A less-empathizing/more-systematizing personality would make people more interested in the politics of effective institutions than in the politics of provisioning social welfare.
    
    
    

Could it not be that more women consider "the politics of provisioning social
welfare" an _effective institution_ than men? Or more generally, could it be
that people who rely on welfare programs [0] have a different view of them? If
you think poor people are not only poor because they deserve to be, some form
of welfare is going to be part of your idea of "effective institutions".

Producing Children poses a significantly larger economic burden for women than
for men (the primary cause for women receiving more welfare is their higher
likelihood of being a single parent), so it is very unsurprising that they
view welfare programs differently.

Alexander also implies that people who think offensive / sexist people are
lowering participation of women by hurting their feelings, not by ignoring or
dismissing issues that disproportionally affect women, which I find a bit odd.
If libertarianism is about personal freedom there is plenty of space for
issues that affect women (like abortion, freedom to wear certain types of
clothing without being harassed, ...), yet I see very few libertarian talking
about those issues.

I find the idea that women dislike a certain thing because of some pseudo-
scientific evo-psych goop rather than economic reasons a bit absurd.

[0] [https://www.libraryindex.com/pages/901/Who-Receives-
Benefits...](https://www.libraryindex.com/pages/901/Who-Receives-Benefits-AN-
OVERVIEW-WELFARE-PROGRAM-PARTICIPATION.html)

------
rectang
> If women in these communities feel harassed more often, it’s more likely to
> be a result of gender balance than a cause of it.

Rather than speculate, you could also ask those women why they feel harassed.
But then you might not get the answer you're looking for!

~~~
mpweiher
How does asking why someone _feels_ harassed help?

Let's assume for the sake of argument that women and men are equally likely to
"harass" someone, and let's say that likelihood is 10%.

When there is a 50:50 gender split, you get equal harassment. You'll have five
harassers and five victims, so everyone has a 1:10 chance of being harassed.

Now let's have a 90:10 gender split. With still the same equal 1:10 chance, a
woman now has a 90% chance of being harassed, whereas a man's chance is 1%.
Due to this being an n^2 problem, a 10:1 gender ratio leads to a 100:1
"harassment ratio".

These are simply numerical calculations. How does how someone "feels" about
them impact them?

~~~
gdudeman
"Let's assume for the sake of argument that women and men are equally likely
to "harass" someone, and let's say that likelihood is 10%."

You've done good math (I think?) on a false premise.

People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages
it. That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.

People aren't compelled to harass or not in a pre-programmed way and they
don't do it evenly no matter what surrounds them. They respond to incentives
and their surroundings.

~~~
mpweiher
Hmmm, "let's assume for the sake of argument" is usually used to introduce a
premise that the author does not (necessarily) believe to be true, and this is
exactly what happened here. Otherwise we wouldn't have to "assume" it "for the
sake of argument".

Introducing a premise you believe to be true is done differently, for example:
"it happens to be the case..."

So anyway, the point of the little mathematical exercise was to show that even
highly skewed outcomes in "harassment" don't allow you to conclude that there
is an environment that is open or encouraging, at least not if you have an
unequally distributed population, because in such skewed populations, you get
highly skewed outcomes even if the propensity is equal (which it most likely
isn't).

> People harass other people when the environment is open to it or encourages
> it.

> That seems to happen in a lot of male-dominated environments.

Evidence that this is at all causative? Especially given the numbers I
provided.

Anyway, another big factor is that in humans, the male is very much required
to initiate, and that something like 70% of relationships happen on the job
(and yes the drive to reproduce is one of our most powerful motivators,
otherwise we'd be extinct as a species). Couple that with socially awkward
nerds and the weird expansion of the definition of "harassment", particularly
in the US, and I think you've got it covered.

Oh, and add companies like Uber where breaking laws, rules and norms is
company policy.

------
s_m_t
Anecdotally, by far the raunchiest place I've ever worked was a catering job
that had a pretty even male/female split (not sure if it was exactly 50/50)
with women overseeing the operation. That place was a lot of fun.

~~~
AstralStorm
See, being raunchy is not harassing someone or being dismissive due to
someone's gender. Unwanted _threatening_ sexual advances are different as
well.

