Ninja Edit: So we sort of moved on, but I spent like 20 minutes typing up this response about what I think are the main causes of thread degeneration into personal insults. I still feel it's valid in what we can do to change our way of speaking to avoid problems like this happening again (despite the fact that we pretty much saved ourselves from this particular outbreak), so I'm still going to post it.
Personally, I've noticed a couple of people in this thread (on both sides) that could serve to make their arguments a bit less "attack-y", which I think would go a long way towards helping to stop the thread from degrading into a thing that needs the attention of the Great Toad. Honestly I think the biggest problems are when someone uses the words "you", "all men" (or "men" with the all implied), and "all women" (or "women" with the all implied), because they almost always come across as an attack. Heck, you can even notice it with some small changes to this first part of this very post! Compare:
1) Honestly I think the biggest problems are when someone uses the words "you", "men", and "women", because they almost always come across as an attack.
2) Honestly I think the biggest problems are when you use the words "you", "men", and "women", because they always come across as an attack.
3) Honestly I think the biggest problems are when men use the words "you", "men", and "women", because they always come across as an attack.
4) Honestly I think the biggest problems are when women use the words "you", "men", and "women", because they always come across as an attack.
#1 comes across as decidedly less hostile, yeah? To fix this problem all people need to do is to avoid the use of the word "you" in regards to attacking, and to always make sure there is a bit of leeway in your statements. Say "most men", "many men", "men were more likely to", "in general men were" instead of just "men" (which automatically implies "all men"). Use phrases like "a couple of people", or "someone" instead of naming names and using the word "you". Doing this allows for others who don't necessarily that general trend (of which there are many in these types of threads) to place themselves in that leeway and feel like the statement is not a personal attack. For example I know that I'm trying as much as possible to not discriminate, so a statement such as "men cause discrimination" could very easily be seen as a personal attack. On the other hand a phrase like "many men cause discrimination", while still not necessarily something I agree with, now allows me to fit myself into that give room and no longer see the statement as personally being an attack on me.
Since you asked, Reelya, in general I haven't seen any of your posts in this thread really cross the line, (though a few have approached it), since your numbers are coming from studies as such they very rarely include that absolution that makes things seem like an attack. Probably the closest that I've seen in this thread was this particular statement from one of the early pages:
And the hours required for the job don't change. In fact, being under-qualified in a demanding job sounds like Hell on Earth. Women want flexible jobs so they can spend time with their family, and high executive roles don't allow that. Here's a good article on the topic. Even a high-executive woman, with the husband taking over childcare duties 5 days a week, wasn't happy with the work/life balance:
Which could be coached much less attack-y like this:
And the hours required for the job don't change. In fact, being under-qualified in a demanding job sounds like Hell on Earth. In general/Many/Most, women want flexible jobs so they can spend time with their family, and high executive roles don't allow that. Here's a good article on the topic. Even a high-executive woman, with the husband taking over childcare duties 5 days a week, wasn't happy with the work/life balance:
That said there have been several posts in this thread so far that I've seen come extremely close or have crossed that line where they could definitely be regarded as a personal attack due to a lack of wiggle room in their statements. If people avoid absolutisms then we shouldn't have a problem with it anymore, I think. At an absolute least effort case where people are stating a lot of things that would be greatly shortened through the use of the words "men" or "women", simply adding a note to the top of their posts (that way people see it early on, first impressions and all that jazz) stating that they are simply talking about generalities instead of absolutes in their post with those words will go a long way to cutting down on the amount of personal attacks.
As an example of a "good" post for wiggle room I'm going to be a hair arrogant and take one of my previous posts from this thread and underline all of the wiggle words I've put in for easy viewing, and to show that it's totally possible to make statements and an argument while still allowing for plenty of wiggle room to make your statements not seem like a personal attack.
I know just a few months ago I saw this excellent 50min or so long video that was a discussion panel between two ivy league professors (one male one female) on the exact topic of the wage gap and how it related value-wise to potential discrimination as a cause. It was definitely a very relevant discussion by two people who know way more about this topic than us; I'm trying to track it down.
That said here were a few of the nifty relevant points:
1) Both agreed that what was acting was a combination of some discrimination, some cultural influences and some biological tendencies. For part of this they looked at some studies that looked at cultures that had very different values than the typical European one, and found that, at least in part, women tended to seek out much of the same jobs, and tended to have a lower pay, despite the different culture and discrimination things.
2) In general (note, I'm not saying they said this applied to 100% of women! This was a very broad generality, and if I'm able to track down the discussion I'll be able to tell you exactly how broad) the studies looked at values and found that much more often men tend to be more interested in "object-driven" jobs, such as scientists, engineers, etc., while women tend to be much more interested in "people-driven" jobs such as nursing or jobs that interact with clients. Part of our culture, however, tends to value "object-driven" jobs such as engineering higher than many "people-drive" jobs, and thus places a higher wage on them. One notable exception in the other direction they brought up is the field of nursing, which is a "people-driven" job and in which case many of the wages for women were just as high as those in the engineering fields.
3) Nursing was brought up as a relevant point several times, in that it's a field that essentially functions as the opposite of a STEM field gender-wise, and pays almost as well. It was somewhat discussed if the fact that we had some 9 women to every 1 male in the nursing field meant that we were not putting enough effort into drawing in male nurses, and how that example related.
4) Both professors agreed that at this point we simply do not have enough data to actually be able to draw a line in how much of the wage gap is related to discrimination/cultural stereotypes and how much could be related to a larger amount of biological predispositions. They both agreed that at this point much of the data is showing that the dominoes could fall either way, and until we have more data the opinion largely comes down to the individual opinions of the person or professor; there simply isn't enough data out there yet to clarify exactly how much of the wage gap is being contributed by each source.
I'll continue looking for that video. For now I'd like to remind everyone here that I don't think there are any of us here who would be willing to say that there is no discrimination in the workplace period (be that in either direction). We're all at least somewhat on the same side, so please remember to stay civil to each other and try not to get too hung up on the little details, since we pretty much all agree that there is somewhat of a problem, the only question is exactly how big it is (which, as noted by the professors in the video I'm searching for, is something we really just don't have enough data to nail down yet).
In most cases you probably don't need quite this many wiggle-room words (since part of it was covering my own backside in the case I remembered things wrong), but having at least a few in there will go a very long way to avoiding thread degeneration.
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Topic: Gender quotas (Read 37600 times)