Hi,
Sorry, I feel really stupid asking this, but I'm trying to figure out how to discuss certain gender inequalities with DD8, who needs help understanding social issues and with whom we are constantly working on social skills (so maybe this should be in 2e? but it's a more general issue). So we've been watching Malcolm in the Middle with her and got to the episode where the Krelboyne (geek) group starts as freshmen in high school, and Malcolm fares badly because his mother embarrases him by trying to clean a stain off the front of his pants in front of a bunch of older kids. They nickname him "stain." Later in the episode, Cynthia attempts to help Malcolm regain social status by saying something about how if he doesn't do something (sorry, forget what), she'll "never have sex with him again." So DD is asking about this this morning in the car and I'm trying to explain how Cynthia was trying to raise Malcolm's social status by indicating that they had had sex and that that was very generous of her because at least in the past, having sex generally raised the social status of boys but lowered that of girls. (So question 1 is, is this still generally true among kids, or does it vary by school?) Question 2 is, why was this the case? She totally didn't believe me and said why and I had to say that I didn't really understand it myself, except that possibly there was a risk that the girl might get pregnant which could be a huge huge problem and mess up her future. So of course she said, well if they used birth control it wouldn't be a problem at all. So then I was discussing how kids should 'wait until they're ready' and have self respect and ideally wait until marriage, but I think I was less than convincing. So is there a (better/ good) reason specifically for why there was this double standard about reputations? (as well as any rationale that might be more convincing re why one should not??) Sorry I'm so ignorant about these things--I did read Queen Bees and Wannabees and some other books, but I have to admit when I think about this it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Also, I apologize if anyone is offended by the subject--I try to answer DD's questions matter-of-factly when they come up, partly because of her weaknesses in social skills--I want to have time to have her understand these things before she has to deal with them herself.

I would relate this double-standard back to Victorian morality and explain how most of the educated world has moved on from it.

In my grandmothers generation women couldn't work (although I know an 83 yr old single mom who did, it wasn't common). I've heard or read stuff like "women stay home during pregnancy, maternity leave, their monthly visit from aunt flo". Ok I guess that last one was irony. Well, since, as every body well knows, your true value matches the exact size of your bank account that did call for the women's rights movement.

Also there's this website called tv tropes that is a wikipedia by and for screenwriters and enthusiasts that describes "tropes" which is not stereotypes, but fairly close. It's believed that there's only so many stories in the world so all our literature, movies, songs, and thoughts rehash the same ol same old. Here's tv tropes + guy stud, girl slut. It has links to similar trains of ideas.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyGirlIsNotASlut

If only this were true. I know that in certain areas of the country (I am thinking the evangelical South) the slut/whore thing is alive and well even among educated young adults. Just had a conversation about this last night in fact. I don't know how I would have explained it to dd11 at 8 yrs. old. She didn't know the details yet regardless. It has certainly come up with her recently when reading Jane Austen.

LOL. I think its ingrained into human nature and for good reason. It is present in all societies across time.

And its due to the fact that only women get pregnant. And that it also takes a lot of effort to raise a child. And women have to bear this more often than not. And that this has real costs that have large inescapable burdens.


I read an article recently about ivy league women doing the same thing. The author was pretty upset that "feminism" had paved the way for women to dress up just to attract men. Meow.

Some responses are hardwired in human beings. We cannot control what we want, only how we respond.

You didn't think I included the evangelical South in the phrase "educated world," did you?

This is an important reason for "double standards". Another reason is that men can be tricked by women into raising other men's children as their own, while this happens much less often to women, for obvious reasons. Philosopher David Hume discussed this in the 1700s http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v23n2/levey/levey-v23n2.pdf .

The same logic explains why maternal grandparents are more involved with their grandchildren than paternal ones, on average.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071218122412.htm
Family Ties That Bind: Maternal Grandparents Are More Involved In The Lives Of Their Grandchildren

The fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology shed light on the questions raised by the OP.

Have either of you heard of contraceptives?

I think this is how I would handle it. There are so many examples of how our behaviour is driven by our "survival wiring." Males need to distribute their sperm and females need to focus on keeping the young alive and healthy. As a result, it's optimal for males to um, "share" more often, and for females to refrain, once they're pregnant and responsible for young. Therefor when males want to have sex they're praised but when females want to have sex they're thought of as being less "maternal." Since everything we do boils down to species propagation in some way or another, the less maternal females have lower status.

I like to be frank with my kids too (DS8 & DD9). I find this easier if I talk about it in terms of science & nature - then it makes sense and it's not strange or too personal.

While this is an overrated risk in general when talking to teenagers, it's worth pointing out here that no form of birth control is 100% effective.

Be aware, also, that this sort of discussion can quite easily morph into larger issues of gender inequality and even into discussions about the reasons for affirmative action-- and it's dark side.

15,000 years of evolution (which cares about absolutely nothing except making babies) vs. 50 years of relatively-reliable contraception.

So, perhaps we should frame it in terms of gender distinctions instead of gender inequalities.

I think we're looking for the biological/evolutionary psychology answers to the OP's questions.

Maybe, but that isn't always the direction that kids go in with this kind of thing.

My statement was just a head's up that this can turn into a discussion which asks some really challenging things about income disparity along gender lines, and how much bias/stereotype is somewhat permissible in some contexts.

Because biology really doesn't care about humanitarian ideals or higher-order thinking. It's our civilized construct that forces us to consider others and live as though we were all equals. Underneath that construct, we are still animals, in spite of our idealism. Sometimes the two things are not good roommates, to say the least. Makes for interesting rationalizations to listen to a hard-core misogynist explain why women SHOULD be paid less than men.

Bottom line-- gender distinctions at the very least inform/rationalize stereotype-driven biases.

Maybe it's just that my kid in particular goes after the ethically sticky, social-justice stuff like a truffle-sniffing dog. Could be that's it.

(She's the one that concluded, as a very serious 4yo, that the answer to rule-breakers who were endangering her with their behavior needed... improved adult literacy efforts-- or pictograph signage-- since naturally nobody would be ignoring a rule unless... um.. they were reading-impaired for one reason or another... )

Did anyone on this forum ever say that? Has any prominent politician said that in recent times? What I have said is that in a free market, almost all of the observed pay differentials between men and women are likely to result from factors other than discrimination.

No personal jab intended. Though now I feel compelled to now tease you about self-identifying as a "hard core misogynist" voluntarily.

I've personally had to listen to colleagues speculate that a woman is 'worth' less because she'll eventually want to have maternity leave, and therefore that it is perfectly legitimate to ask candidates deeply personal questions about their desire for children, and to use gender as a sort of unofficial 'preferred qualification' in screening applicants. Oh, sure-- they knew it was technically illegal to do that. They just didn't think that it was "wrong" for them personally to do so, so they figured what HR didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

(No, not kidding.)

I'm also aware that some disparity in some disciplines/fields can be explained by other factors, but this is not necessarily so in all fields or professions.

Point being-- this entire line of thought makes for some interesting thought problems.

Hey, everyone,
Thanks for the thoughts and discussion. It's been very helpful, although (I guess I should have expected this) I'm still not sure what might come up with DD in the future. And I honestly didn't mean to start something that might tick anybody off, although I guess that's pretty much inevitable given the subject. However, I bet that there are other kids who are like DD who are going to think through these things themselves, so it is good to be prepared!! Or at least try to be.
Here are the 'talking points' I think I have:
1) There are gender inequalities in part because we are mammals, and still in some parts of our brains are driven to act like animals in the wild (or Victorians, who were in some ways strikingly similar, but with manners ). Thus we as a society are concerned with (for women) fostering maternal behavior and (for men) ensuring that the children whom we treat as our own actually are genetically our own, lest we waste effort on the progeny of another man. (Caveat--because I bet it will come up--the latter does not apply to adoption! But that's because it's knowingly taken on as a labor of love, rather than a deception)
2) OTOH, given the availability in the present time of presumptively reliable birth control and paternity tests (pardon--assuming for the sake of this discussion that birth control is 'perfect', because the alternative is not the point here), and the fact that women can now work and earn as much as or more than men in many jobs, why can't we as thinking humans reason through these things and overcome our 'base' animal instincts to behave rationally? (i.e., aren't the perceived risks of unmarried, protected sex due to some artefact of evolution or social constructs that are now obsolete, rather than being a rational concern??)
3) On the [third] hand, this gets me back to the original question because if one accepts (2) above then the reason for teens not to have sex is because 'I told you not to', right?? (DD and I have not gotten all the way to this point yet, but were on that path this AM and I imagine I will be faced with it soon). This does NOT work to convince DD in almost every context. And I am old enough that I still share some of the biases against girls (or boys, for that matter) having sex when they are not 'ready', whatever that might mean. But I am still stuck without an answer that I can really get behind philosophically, because 'I told you not to' doesn't cut it for me, either.
4) Re gender inequalities, a) there are studies that show average pay for women is less than for men, but OTOH I think usually there is an argument that at least many of those studies are comparing apples and oranges (like different level jobs, or part time versus full time), but then again it can be very hard for working moms or dads to find jobs that allow them the flexibility to care for their kids, and how is that good for society?? and b) (sorry--new to the thread, but has been raised by DD before) no, you are a girl so you can't go topless (except in certain places like some beaches usually outside the US) whereas boys and men can because...(generally see (1), NOT that I am arguing in favor of this, just--how does one distinguish in a principled manner between requiring women to wear some kind of top (even a bikini top or sports bra) versus having to wear a head scarf or body covering in other societies)?
I should probably just shut up, because I'm not trying to start or encourage a political or philosophical argument, it's just that the more I think about DD's questions (and likely future questions) the more I am wondering, do these rules really make sense, and if not, why can't we as a society think through them and change them at least going forward?? Maybe that is already happening and I just don't realize it because we are pretty 'mature' parents and really only know DD. So hopefully all will work out for the best.
Thanks very much for all the thoughtful comments,
Dbat

Far before the Victorian era, a woman /girl was valued for her virginity above all other things. I believe there is a deeply rooted cultural and biological component to this. Did society first impose this bias or did the it first arise from instinct? We are not so far removed from our primitive beginnings.

Practically speaking, I would tell you DD that kids start to experiment sexually (even if just by rumor) because they have sexual feelings, because they want to act older, because it is forbiddden, because they think that is how you show love....and because they think it's cool.

I would let her argue against going topless. I wouldn't let her do it because breaking the law is a fine or jail time. I would encourage her to argue against it because I thi k it's A few cities that women have fought this law and got it changed.

http://www.google.com/search?q=citi...ss&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari

I've heard that its legal in NYC and Boulder Co, this google search says Washington DC too.

Thanks, LaTexican!!
I'll use that next time it comes up--much better to have DD fighting
'the establishment' than me!!
Best wishes,
Dbat

I think there are absolutely excellent reasons for teenagers to delay having sex aside from potential pregnancy and STDs. I think in general it is emotionally healthier to wait. And given, at least for many girls I knew in high school and college, and that at least in some places this hasn't changed, the shame/stigma for the girl who chooses to have sex with someone she doesn't intend to marry, keeps girls in bad relationships that they wouldn't otherwise stay in. I think it can be beautiful and healthy in a committed relationship with 2 mature people, but I just don't think most high school kids are mature enough to choose wisely.
edited to add this link that I thought was relevant when talking to daughers:
http://rosalindwiseman.com/2010/03/02/is-hooking-up-good-for-girls/

Uh, you have to be married to avoid the criminal code in some states. Well, unless you aren't living together.

Behold, I give you NC General Statue Section 14-184:

"If any man and woman, not being married to each other, shall lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together, they shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor: Provided, that the admissions or confessions of one shall not be received in evidence against the other."

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=14-184

Last attempted enforcement?

2006.

"As reported earlier, the case arose when the Sheriff of Pender County hired an unmarried woman, Deborah Lynn Hobbs, as a police dispatcher. About two weeks after she was hired, the Sheriff learned that Ms. Hobbs was unmarried and had lived with her boyfriend for nine years. Charged with enforcing the laws of the State of North Carolina, Sheriff Carson Smith informed Ms. Hobbs that she was living in violation of North Carolina’s cohabitation law and that she must marry her partner, move out of their common home, or leave the employment of the Sheriff’s office. Sheriff Smith did not bring charges, nor did he threaten to do so, under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-184. Ms. Hobbs chose to leave her job and then filed suit seeking both declaratory and injunctive relief from North Carolina’s cohabitation law."

http://www.ncfamily.org/stories/060914s1.html

IMHO, you don't. There are plenty of places where topless women are equally acceptable (or unacceptable) as topless men. A hundred years ago, a topless man would have been considered obscene.

Certainly there's no principled (or even logic-based) argument for not letting a prepubescent 8yo go topless. Whereas I can think of many aesthetic arguments for requiring overweight men to keep a shirt on whenever an adult woman would be expected to wear one. *shudder*

As sick as it is...there are men/boys who would probably find a topless prepubescent girl sexually arousing. Not that they wouldn't be much more phased by a bathing-suited girl...but it's a makes me shiver to consider.

At first I saw only the first part "how to discuss gender" and thought LGBT.  I have close family who are (in another state) and while they are a few token ones here they're treated like a spectical and the backwards thinking on it here is embarrassing to me and I'm going to have to talk to my kids about this as soon as they notice.  Here's something about that from the  AARP website.  http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/rights/info-07-2010/defense_of_marriage_act.html.   

ATM my oldest is still on, "how do girls pee if they don't have a pee-pee.". I've showed him the picture about plumbing in "It's not the Stork".  I've tried to tell him it's like a butt, but, obviously, we have butt cheeks, so, awkward.  Yeah, by butt I must mean butt cheeks and girls don't have two sets of those. I guess that's why he keeps asking along those lines even though I answered honestly and got the book to show him.  He did tell me after the episode of Sid the Science Kid about water systems that "my pee-pee's like a pipe".  I have tried to tell him that every sentence can't lead back to "butt" "pee-pee" and "fart".  He's got a talent.

Rule 34: if it exists, there's porn about it.

If my kid wanted to go topless, and I was concerned that some man might be uncontrollably overcome with lust at the sight of a topless prepubescent girl, I'd suggest she wear swim trunks. Plenty of long haired topless little boys running around the pool. No one would ever be attracted to a topless prepubescent boy, right? (And if someone would, why is that boy topless?)

I wouldn't use this argument myself. I think it could apear to rationalize the behavior far too much. The nuance may be lost.

I'd also ask if anyone would use this same argument about racism or other -isms. I doubt it.

Well, it doesn't work for racism because racism is directed toward a cosmetic aspect of the human mammal rather than a core biological function of life.

I'm sure someone could easily make an argument that we are genetically predisposed to discriminate/war against the Other, however you define that.

I disagree. A race can be thought of as a very extended family, and it is natural to for people to be slightly better disposed to be people they are slightly related to, just as they are much better disposed to people they are closely related to.

Didn't take long.

During the course of this thread I read my son a Curious George Haloween Party book. In one picture Betty was dressed up as an astronaut. Wyatt said Billy should have been the astronaut because, "girls can't be astronauts, only boys can be astronauts". I said some girls have been astronauts. He said then why haven't I ever seen them? Granted i've only taught him skills not content so he's talking about whatever he's seen in his four years of pop culture.

No, it did not. And whether or not we find one of these "Well, you see, it's very natural...biologically based...but we need to rise above it" arguments more or less valid than the other, I find them both a risky place to start from when talking to children about inequality. I'm not a fan of sociobiological explanations for human behavior, in case you can't tell. As I like to say to my husband, mammals also eat their young, but nobody goes around justifying THAT.

Socio-evolutionary explanations often come off as ad hoc rationalizations anyway. Where's the causal link? Isn't adaptability supposed to be a key strength of the human species?

Useful and practical information and devices for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy dates back at least to 1850 BC (Kahun Papyrus), but here in the US dissemination of such information was considered obscenity and punishable by law as recently as the 20th century, and distributing prophylactics to unwed couples was a crime as recently as the 1970s... all because of a Victorian style moral code, which traces its roots to a medieval Europe suffering catastrophic population loss. The top layer of society adapted by hunting down midwives (the keepers and distributors of knowledge relating to pregnancy prevention) as witches, though they did keep such knowledge for themselves in the elite (just ask Casanova).

Many significant cultures recognized the sexes as equals, and had relaxed views about sexuality, even to the point of incorporating sex into their religious observances. But history is written by the victors, and that's not the information the Texas school board wants you to see.

"Gender inequalities" mostly result from differing interests and aptitudes of males and females, and imposing quotas to get equal representation is both unfair to males and bad for society, because it means selecting people on a non-merit basis. A recent article discusses the harm of crusades against "gender inequalities":

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2012/07/when_college_women_studyscienc.html
Science Quotas for Women--A White House Goal
by Charlotte Allen
Minding the Campus
July 9, 2012

When college women study science, they tend to gravitate toward biology--about 58 percent of all bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in biology go to women. In contrast, women earn some 17 percent of bachelor's degrees in engineering and computer science and just over 40 percent of bachelor's degrees in physical sciences and mathematics. The likely reason for this, found in the study The Mathematics of Sex" (2009) by Cornell psychologists Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, is that women tend to be drawn to "organic" fields involving people and living things, whereas men are more interested in the objects and abstractions that are the focus of STEM majors. Aversion to math plays a role too: a University of Bristol study finds that biologists tend not to pay attention to scholarly articles in their field that are packed with mathematical equations.

Yet the Obama administration sticks closely to the hard-line feminist argument that the problem is bias: women are somehow being denied access to STEM courses. On June 20 the White House announced that it would issue guidelines expanding the scope of Title IX to cover science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

When college women study science, they tend to gravitate toward biology--about 58 percent of all bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in biology go to women. In contrast, women earn some 17 percent of bachelor's degrees in engineering and computer science and just over 40 percent of bachelor's degrees in physical sciences and mathematics. The likely reason for this, found in the study The Mathematics of Sex" (2009) by Cornell psychologists Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, is that women tend to be drawn to "organic" fields involving people and living things, whereas men are more interested in the objects and abstractions that are the focus of STEM majors. Aversion to math plays a role too: a University of Bristol study finds that biologists tend not to pay attention to scholarly articles in their field that are packed with mathematical equations.

Yet the Obama administration sticks closely to the hard-line feminist argument that the problem is bias: women are somehow being denied access to STEM courses. On June 20 the White House announced that it would issue guidelines expanding the scope of Title IX to cover science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

...

So right NOW, at this moment, would you say we're at the point where ALL differences in apparent male/female "interests and aptitudes" are 100% biologically based? Why is NOW that moment? Why weren't we at that moment, say, 20 years ago, when that "58 percent of all bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in biology going to women" you cite below was a MUCH lower number?

This is such a silly argument. No offense, Bostonian, but it's just silly. I love how we keep moving the goalposts, too. Oh...er...it looks like a lot of women are majoring in biology now! Well, um, I guess we might need to retire that whole "The womenz, they cannot do the scienz" trope. Wait, wait! "Teh womenz, they cannot do teh ENGINEERINZ!"

It seems that Charlotte Allen is unaware that biology is a science.

LOL. I saw this time and time again when I pre-reviewed bio papers and PHD theses. Back then most of the authors were male.


This will lead to colleges being disintermediated by private merit-based assessment teaching and increase colleges' irrelevance in society. IMHO this is a good thing in the long run.

I see a large number of problems with your post. First of all, you misrepresent what Bostonian has stated as something easier for you to argue against. You substitute "100% biological" for "mostly the result of differing interests and aptitudes".

Secondly, you don't in any way address how much of the discrepancy you believe could be explained by biology, although you seem certain that it's less than 100%, and thus your straw-man of Bostonian's position must be wrong. Are you open to the idea that bias explains less than 100% of the discrepancy? If not, why?

Then you go on to mock Bostonian's position (or rather, your straw-man of it, I suppose) and deride some unspecified group of people for their failure to extrapolate a more equal aptitude between the sexes in engineering from the increased number of women studying biology. Maybe that extrapolation is right, maybe it's not, but it doesn't logically follow, as engineering is not biology.

Still, there is, I believe, a certain amount of wisdom in your post. The question of how we know when society as a whole is operating without bias is a good one. For some people the answer is as easy as looking at the statistics. If certain groups of people are over or under represented in a field or position, then that constitutes direct evidence of bias. For others, the question is much more complicated.

Perhaps levels of interest and aptitude differ between groups, but the differences have been exaggerated by bias. Perhaps bias is being applied to counter natural differences. Unless we can estimate what the bias-free results should be, either belief is equally silly, right?

But what if estimating bias-free results is simply too complicated? Where does that leave us? Are we to jump to the conclusion that that bias-free results would be equality, and anything differing from that ought to be criminal? Or do we criminalize only acts of discrimination for which we have evidence outside of mere statistics?

And what do we tell our children? I suppose many people will make their own estimates for what they believe the bias-free results would be (with differing amounts of supporting data), and work from there. Some of these people will accuse those starting with a different estimate as operating with a nefarious bias.

They only know what they've seen. Of course they become biased. DD has never seen a female US president and is adamant that the highest office a woman can attain is the first lady's. This especially makes sense when you visualize the setup of one of her favorite museums. In one grand exhibit, great men like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand tall surrounded by their artifacts of great power. In the next room over are the dresses worn by the first ladies.

Actually, they can be tested just like any other hypotheses. There are many examples of species changing behavior and even progenys' physical attributes in response to social stimuli. One of the best known is the change in locusts from sedentary individuals to mass migrating clouds.


Infanticide and war/executions were the two main means of birth control throughout history. Birth control is one of those "socio-evolutionary" practices that has deep roots in "survival." You can starve and die or you can kill some or all of your kids - or kill your neighbors and take their stuff. The use of infanticide among the Innuit, for example, is well documented. Scarcity in tribal societies almost always led to organized total war - and the evidence of "genocide" is deep in the paleo-archeological record across all societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide


Medieval Europe was nearly destroyed by a series of political crises, followed by famine due to the start of the little ice age, and then the plague. This did completely destroy the social fabric and almost wiped out the Church. "Morals" went out the window.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages


Which "significant" cultures are those? I can't think of any. Rearing kids imposes huge costs and task specialization is required to ensure survival.

Everyone likes to talk about relaxed views about sex until a 300 lb jealous husband is sitting on you doing the ground and pound. Or you get a disease. Or feelings get hurt. Or a jealous wife expels another woman from the group or a "homebreaker" does the reverse - causing great discord. Or the kids get hurt.

There is extensive, quantitative research on "socio-biology" and human social organization.

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/sear/pdfs/who%20keeps.pdf

Obviously a bias-free result would be representation by equal proportion. That's simple mathematics. In a world where 52% of the population is female, any results less than 52% female involves bias of some sort.

One bias in play is that men feel threatened by women who make more money, which encourages women to seek lower-paying jobs. STEM jobs are seen as quite lucrative.

Another bias in play is that boys are encouraged to build, tinker, and fix things at early ages. Girls are encouraged to play with dolls.

Another bias in play, as has been mentioned earlier, is the lack of gender role models for STEM fields. Little girls can be inspired by Jane Goodall to pursue biology. Where's the female Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds? Where were the women in the Apollo program?

It was mentioned that girls have an aversion to math. Guess what? It's not biological, it's social: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-differences-caused-attitudes-women.html

Bias, bias, everywhere.

Don't throw up your hands -- show them more. Explain that Hilary Clinton came very close to being the 2008 Democratic nominee and likely would have won the general election if nominated. I think she lost not because she was a woman but because some primary voters were turned off by her initial support of the war in Iraq and enthused about a different kind of "first". The "fragile flower" theory that women rule out careers because of mistaken beliefs they held as small children underestimates their rationality.

That's an absurd argument, but if we accept it, does the fact that 57% of college students are female (citation below) prove that the educational system is biased against men? Is it biased in favor of Asians, who make up less than 5% of the population but are "over-represented" at elite colleges?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html
The New Math on Campus
By ALEX WILLIAMS
New York Times
February 5, 2010

Yes, I'm open to it. But I truly do not think we're at the point yet where we can say, well, hey, we've absolutely done ALL we can, nothing is changing anymore, and now we can pronounce that any remaning differences are biological. Girls' and women's performance on math and science measures is in RAPID flux and is NOT by any means internationally consistent (look at the study Dude posted above), as we might expect if we were looking at a biologically constant issue. Their educational choices WRT the degrees they choose to pursue are also changing rapidly. There have been HUGE changes in 20 years. 20 years!! That is NOTHING. Absolutely and completely meaningless in evolutionary time.

Look at how fast our society is evolving. It's incredible. Our own parents would likely have laughed their heads off at the idea of a serious female contender for president. Let's continue to give it time and to give our young girls opportunity. The good news is that I think they're going to take it anyway, regardless of people who are still wandering around telling them they aren't interested in engineering due to their vaginas. (My own DD won the "build the tallest thing out of these materials in X amount of time" contest at her school's engineering night last year.)

Whoah, fallacy barrage.


Poor analogy.


Red herring. The topic is family planning.

Here's this might help you get back on topic: http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/13_2%20Birth%20Control%20in%20Antiquity.htm


And this would explain why I didn't call them medieval morals, I called them Victorian morals, so straw man.


Argument from ignorance.

Just off the top of my head, the Five Nations have been thoroughly trashed by US history, so I doubt you'd consider them significant (and any qualified historian would strongly disagree), so how about Rome?

http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/legal%20status%20of%20women%20in%20ancient%20rome.htm

And here is some basic information about the historic links between sex and religion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_prostitutes


Argument by assertion, and one which clearly holds no water in our society at that.


Red herring again. I offered no argument about current Western culture's attitudes towards sex.


Red herring. Research on how modern societies organize themselves tells us nothing of past societies, especially given the significant amount of homogeneity in the modern world.

No. It shows that biases exist, but it doesn't show that the educational system is necessarily at fault.

For instance, we know that Asians are "over-represented" because they place a premium on advanced education that other cultural groups do not, so they are self-selecting for college. Also, US colleges are taking on a large number of non-resident Asian students, so those numbers need to be considered apart from those drawn from the resident population.

Boys have attractive options for advancement outside of college, most significantly in the armed forces, where strong biases exist to attract boys and repel girls.

Both of these examples of bias influence college numbers without implicating colleges in any way.

All we "can" do and all we "should" do are two entirely different questions, and depending on your perspective, neither necessarily has anything to do with biological differences. Assuming there is a natural difference in mean or variance of mathematical ability between the sexes, can we apply bias to lessen those differences? Sure. Should we? That's opinion.



Just because there is flux, doesn't necessarily mean we are approaching the natural, unbiased result. We may be have been moving away from it the whole time, or we may have started out moving toward it, but overshot it. Also, international consistency doesn't necessarily tell us anything about biology. I can think of numerous genetic traits that vary both in mean and variance across populations. Is anyone going to argue that eye pigmentation is not biological, since it varies in mean and variance internationally?

I read the study that was the basis of the link Dude provided. I found it less than a convincing debunking of higher male variance in mathematical ability. They actually go so far as to plot a histogram of international gender Variance Ratios (VR) that peaks at 1.16, with an inter-country variance of only 0.0054 (I calculated myself from the data. The authors claim a "large" variance without actually stating it.), and go on to argue that the natural variance ratio is 1.0, and the explanation for anything else is bias. The amusing thing is that they implicate bias in exaggerating the natural variance ratio in just about every country tested, and refuse to accept that bias could possibly diminish this ratio in the handful of countries that show a smaller ratio (which could also be caused by sampling error). Of course, they also discount the idea that different countries with different populations could have different biological variance ratios. In effect, they assume that many groups of humans are genetically similar in order to (attempt to) disprove that 2 groups of humans are genetically different.

Additionally, the study was based on knowledge tests rather than ability tests like IQ, and they make the annoyingly ubiquitous mistake of portraying correlation as causation:


I'm not denying it as a possibility... but I can think of numerous other possible explanations that have not been controlled for.



No argument here.



Is anyone arguing that we not give young girls opportunities? I hope we are giving all of our children opportunities to learn and perform, regardless of gender.



Congratulations to your DD. My DD is only three, but if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she'll answer either an engineer, or a teddy bear, depending on her mood. As far as I can tell, she has the aptitude for it (engineering, not being a teddy bear... if teddy bears are expected to hug strangers or family members who only visit on occasion then she has little aptitude for that).

If you calculated your inter-country variance based on the information from Table 2, your data set is incomplete. The purpose of Table 2 is to demonstrate whether consistency exists among different tests given at different times within the same country. If a country did not participate in enough different testing cycles to shed any light on this, its data was left out of Table 2.

When the authors then comment on the "large variance" you're taking issue with, they do so like this (with figure 1A being the histogram in question):


We can look at the 2007 TIMSS 8th-grade column on Table 2 and find Tunisia on the low end with 0.91. We cannot find a high of 1.52... the highest figure provided is 1.31 for Taiwan. The study states that 8th graders in 52 countries participated in the 2007 TIMSS, yet exactly half of those results are reported in Table 2.

I'd agree with the statement that 0.91 to 1.31 is a wide variance, and 0.91 to 1.52 even more so.


Since the study is out to determine how mathematical performance differs among the sexes amid different cultures, that was the right choice.

Some more interesting data which came from other studies and were mentioned in the intro to this one:



So, what biological revolution occurred in the US between the sexes from the 70s to today that can explain these results? Answer: none. What social revolution can explain them? Answer: feminism.

*looks around for the "like" button*

Omg lol. I told the hubby about what Wyatt said about "girls can't be astronauts" but then when we watched superman he said "the girl is probably a secret superhero too because she has gloves and girl superheroes wear gloves". The hubby said, "so girls can be sidekicks!"

The reference is "Sky High" a superhero movie where kids go to superhero school and are divided into hero class and sidekick class depending on how cool their powers are. Of course all four of us, counting the baby, call each other "sidekick" since the movie. Of course I'm really the superhero with three sidekicks even though these other three say the same thing.

Table 2 is restricted to information from countries in which 3 separate measurements had been made. By averaging these samples, the result should be more reliable than those from countries in which fewer measurements were taken. The selection process had nothing to do with their statistical consistency, so any bias is unintentional. If you would like to compute a mean and variance for all the inter-country VR measurements available, please be my guest.


My point is that it's sloppy (or misleading) when you are presenting a statistical analysis to quote the range of variation as being large without calculating and stating the variance. The range is largely meaningless, while the variance is telling.



The authors take their performance data and use it to comment on biology. Their tests are not well suited for this purpose.



When you realize that we agree on this you'll be one step closer to understanding my position.

Similarly, this

is a complete misrepresentation of the natural greater male variance explanation, based on the assumption that this explanation excludes the possibility of any non-biological effect on performance, as well as the assumption that if the explanation were true for any group it must be true for all groups around the globe. I don't agree with these assumptions.

In this way, the authors essentially argue that the evidence they have purportedly demonstrated in support of a nurturing effect absolutely contradicts any natural discrepancy. However, it only contradicts a nature-ONLY discrepancy. Just because nurture is effective, doesn't mean biology plays no part.

In order to determine what the natural VR ratio should be, we have to try and strip away or control for the other contributing factors to that measurement. This study did not do that. The authors demonstrated that VR varied across populations, and jumped to the conclusion that the natural VR simply must be 1.0. Maybe it is, but that has not been demonstrated by the study. To do that is a much more ambitious undertaking, with difficulties I alluded to in earlier posts.

Then just say that, instead of substituting the missing value with a sloppy and misleading calculation of your own. There were only 52 values to start with, and you can't non-randomly reject half of the sample size and pretend that the result has any meaning.

The study did cite their source, with the expectation that anyone wishing to check their work would use that, rather than Table 2.


I understand your position, thanks anyway.


The authors say nothing about what a natural VR should be, other than to say that if the greater male variance hypothesis is true, then it should be demonstrable throughout wide cross-sections of the human genome... and national cross-sections will do very nicely, because they encapsulate a vast enough sample size that any individual nurturing/opportunity gaps should cancel out, leaving us a data set that is normed for the cultural and biological group.

Then they go on to observe that under improved gender equality conditions, VR approaches 1. This says when cultural conditions are equal, so are performance results. If there were a biological component involved, this should not be true... some inequality in results should remain despite equal opportunity. Therefore, the greater male variance hypothesis is false.

I do agree that their statement about VR being "similar in value" across nations does take things too far, and does argue for a "biology only" position. Some fluctuations due to social influences should be present. But if gender equality means that VR approaches unity, then that is a powerful "not biology at all" argument. And that's what the data shows.

I take this to mean that the barriers to including all the values are too great for you to bother with as well. Also, you absolutely can throw out values that may be less reliable for those that are believed to be more reliable. The result is meaningful. If you want a different calculation for comparison, go make it.


What section are you referring to here?


Seriously, are you just making that up or is my copy of the study missing pages?

The countries the authors call out as having nearly equal VRs include the Czech Republic (GGI=0.6718), Indonesia (GGI=0.6550), Morocco (GGI=0.5676), Tunisia (GGI=0.6283), and the Netherlands (GGI=0.7383). Outside of the Netherlands, those are low GGIs (sometimes very low). I think that's why they specifically stated


rather than stating as you have implied that countries with more gender equality are the ones with VRs closer to 1.

You don't have any reason to believe those values may be less reliable. The same testing method has already proven itself to provide consistent, reproducible results among 26 other nations.


That was a read-fail on my part. I retract it. I read examples like this and interpreted "gender gap" as GGI, where what they meant was a gap in performance:

"For example, they were essentially coincident in some
countries, such as the Czech Republic, where VR
and gender gap were near unity and zero, respectively
(Figure 2A)."

So then, will you agree that this study constitutes less than a thorough debunking of the greater male variance hypothesis, despite the authors lofty claims?

I guess it's your turn again for a read-fail, because the authors make no such claim.

There is no support in their study for the idea that greater male variability is "largely an artifact of sociocultural factors". For all we know, it's largely a result of biology, with sociocultural factors (along with sampling problems) causing the tails of the VR distribution to vary from a mean that is greater than 1.0. As you have stated, the author's did not estimate what a natural VR would be. They did not perform any regression analysis to determine what factors were at play in the VR measurements they obtained. They simply skipped all that and labeled this as "largely an artifact of sociocultural factors". It's an unsupported assertion. Thus my "lofty" claims objection.

And yet somehow, there are well-educated-- and even gifted-- families here in the South. Even on this board, imagine that.