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[Reelya]

Well I was looking at your article that says 41% of berkeley and 44% of Caltech students are Asian-American. Since they only make up 5% of the population, that's a massive over-representation.

And later in the article they say that some highly regarded Asian businessmen said:

High-flying Asian-Americans, like the three authors of the Ascend report, suggest that cultural patterns may contribute to the group’s under-representation at the top. “There’s something in the upbringing that makes Asians shy,” says Mr Gee. “Engineers are nerds, but within that self-selected group of nerds, Asians are even more nerdy.” “We’re brought up to be humble,” says Ms Wong. “My parents didn’t want to rock the boat. It’s about being quiet, not making waves, being part of the team. In corporate life, you have to learn to toot your horn.” “There’s a natural order of human relationships in Confucianism,” says Ms Peck. “You don’t argue, you don’t contradict authority.” Asian-Americans are a large, diverse group exposed to a range of influences, but those who do reflect such patterns may be less likely to bid for leadership, even if they are highly qualified. The comparative prominence of South Asians, who are less likely to be told not to “rock the boat”—for instance, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Ajay Banga at MasterCard—is cited as anecdotal evidence.

So in other words they're saying Asian cultural norms aren't aggressive enough to make it in the cut-throat world of getting to the top in American business, whereas Indians, they come from a much louder and competitive culture, so you see more of those than East Asians busting through and becoming CEOs and even into high levels of government now.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

The label "minority" attached to women never made a whole lot of sense to start with. It was intended for races, because those races were in fact smaller than 50% of the population. In fact, it's going to cease being useful pretty soon, as they're predicting that the non-hispanic white population will drop below 50% by the middle of this century, meaning white people are strictly speaking a minority of the population as well.

Majority and minority have pretty well defined meanings and attempts to redefine "minority" to include women (who make up 51% of the population) based on "privilege" is in fact just poisonous to the language itself in the long run. As the cognitive dissonance over a group who are less of the population being called a "minority" shows. There are less men that women in total.

Women are in fact the majority of the US population. So women are both the majority and a minority. What does that make men then? They're neither the majority and we're not allowed to call them a minority, so we have no label for them in that system.

Oh, I totally agree. We need a word for "oppressed group" or "group without privilege" that isn't mathematically inaccurate. The MRA I paraphrased is abusing the weird terminology and conflating "statistical minority" and "oppressed minority."

[Reelya]

Although if things continue like they are with women getting 60% of the degrees over a generation or two, that might become more of a valid observation.

Let me describe some stats about women's vs men's wages and show the double standard about preponderence of evidence:

Women without kids under 30 outearn similarly aged single men by a full 8%.

One retort to this (an actual one I observed) was that this isn't "everywhere" so it's bullshit. Sure, it's "merely" in the largest 147 out of 150 cities in the USA. Right? So it's not exactly everywhere so at least one feminist commentor dismissed it. What you have there is a clear closed mind to new information that might upset a worldview. Which is way more conservative than liberal in actual thought patterns. It's like arguing with a creationist.

Another retort was that when you adjust for level of education, and job sector etc, then the 8% bonus to women goes away. So it's actually completely fair. But think about it, the female wage gap people usually get angry when commentators do those exact same "adjustments" to show that the female wage gap is much smaller than the headline stats suggest. And they would get angry if someone was to point out that, and say "see, men earning more is fair". In other words, you can use an argument but you have to be willing to apply it with universality, it can never be a double-standard. Either we take the raw wage figures to compare group vs group or we allow all the same adjustments on each side, not one and the other.

But that is also posited on it being fair that women get more degrees than men. When men were getting more degrees, this was taken as proof itself that the system was biased, therefore any benefits earned by men were not really earned. But as soon as women get an overwhelmingly larger share of the pie, they want to point to hard work, and that they earned it, and it's completely fair. Again, you can't have that both ways. If there's a systemic bias then it's either rigged or not rigged, you can't only claim it's rigged when your team is losing.

Another example is IQ testing. Now that women have 0.5 IQ point lead on men they want to say it's biological, but when men were ahead they wanted to say it was social. Jesus, either stick with one or the other, don't flip-flop on nature/nurture depending on who's "team" is ahead. And of course if someone said "blacks low IQ is genetic" then that would be a killing offense, but if you said ... "black women have better genes for IQ than black men" then of course, you're the new hero of the cause. My view is that the new-found female lead in IQ is purely due to the little extra schooling they are getting on average - the Flynn Effect, and no need to assumed gendered IQ genes whatsoever.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Although if things continue like they are with women getting 60% of the degrees over a generation or two, that might become more of a valid observation.

Let me describe some stats about women's vs men's wages and show the double standard about preponderence of evidence:

Women without kids under 30 outearn similarly aged single men by a full 8%.

One retort to this (an actual one I observed) was that this isn't "everywhere" so it's bullshit. Sure, it's "merely" in the largest 147 out of 150 cities in the USA. Right? So it's not exactly everywhere so at least one feminist commentor dismissed it. What you have there is a clear closed mind to new information that might upset a worldview. Which is way more conservative than liberal in actual thought patterns. It's like arguing with a creationist.

Another retort was that when you adjust for level of education, and job sector etc, then the 8% bonus to women goes away. So it's actually completely fair. But think about it, the female wage gap people usually get angry when commentators do those exact same "adjustments" to show that the female wage gap is much smaller than the headline stats suggest. And they would get angry if someone was to point out that, and say "see, men earning more is fair". In other words, you can use an argument but you have to be willing to apply it with universality, it can never be a double-standard. Either we take the raw wage figures to compare group vs group or we allow all the same adjustments on each side, not one and the other.

But that is also posited on it being fair that women get more degrees than men. When men were getting more degrees, this was taken as proof itself that the system was biased, therefore any benefits earned by men were not really earned. But as soon as women get an overwhelmingly larger share of the pie, they want to point to hard work, and that they earned it, and it's completely fair. Again, you can't have that both ways. If there's a systemic bias then it's either rigged or not rigged, you can't only claim it's rigged when your team is losing.

Another example is IQ testing. Now that women have 0.5 IQ point lead on men they want to say it's biological, but when men were ahead they wanted to say it was social. Jesus, either stick with one or the other, don't flip-flop on nature/nurture depending on who's "team" is ahead. And of course if someone said "blacks low IQ is genetic" then that would be a killing offense, but if you said ... "black women have better genes for IQ than black men" then of course, you're the new hero of the cause. My view is that the new-found female lead in IQ is purely due to the little extra schooling they are getting on average - the Flynn Effect, and no need to assumed gendered IQ genes whatsoever.

I have a problem with the non-egalitarian feminists, too. As well as the tribal feminists, but that ought to go without saying. And yes, there are problems that men face more than women, and feminism can sometimes minimize those problems. (It doesn't help that "men have problems too" was a staple anti-feminist retort, trying to assert the equivalency of the two, when I just want both problems fixed.)

I might be a little biased, but IMO it's usually nurture.

you can't only claim it's rigged when your team is losing

Reminds me of Trump. Actually, it reminds me of pretty much every single person. Do we even have a word for this? Does the fish have a word for the water?

[Reelya]

Yeah we do have a term for that - confirmation bias.

One TED talk I saw summed this up. If someone does or wants to believe something they ask "can I believe this". Therefore they find that one study that says what they want and stop looking. If someone doesn't want to believe something they ask "must I believe this", and they go and find the one study that says the opposite, and present that as proof.

It's like argument by anecdote but in the most self-serving way imaginable. And lots of people do it. Nobody is perfect, but I always try and do synthesis of multiple sources, so my model of things needs to account for the pro and con sides of any debate. Basically I find any position untenable if there are examples it doesn't account for. You shouldn't be picking between alternate theories if there are any examples that neither can account for - you need a better model.

That's why I'm mostly partial to the pre-natal effects model over the "innate gender (X vs Y chromosome)" model or "blank slate + socialization" model. If socialization is as all-powerful as claimed at shaping our very identity then it can't really explain why some children "go against the trend" on e.g. gender identity so strongly from a young age. And being born male/female clearly doesn't explain a whole lot either. But stuff like pre-natal hormones has actually evidence for it's effect on gender-correlated traits, and it's merely correlated with both socialization and XY chromosome, so it explains outliers too that the older nature/nuture argument couldn't explain.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Yeah we do have a term for that - confirmation bias.

Doesn't quite seem to cover it. It's more like, "when stuff is going bad for me, it's not natural, it's someone else's fault."

[Reelya]

I'd say it is confirmation bias as the mechanism but it's driven by ingroup/outgroup dynamics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups

[misko27]

Yeah we do have a term for that - confirmation bias.

Doesn't quite seem to cover it. It's more like, "when stuff is going bad for me, it's not natural, it's someone else's fault."

Blameshifting is the word my mother uses; my father gives her plenty of opportunities to use it. Scapegoating is Wikipedia's recommendation.

[Rolepgeek]

Well I was looking at your article that says 41% of berkeley and 44% of Caltech students are Asian-American. Since they only make up 5% of the population, that's a massive over-representation.

And later in the article they say that some highly regarded Asian businessmen said:

High-flying Asian-Americans, like the three authors of the Ascend report, suggest that cultural patterns may contribute to the group’s under-representation at the top. “There’s something in the upbringing that makes Asians shy,” says Mr Gee. “Engineers are nerds, but within that self-selected group of nerds, Asians are even more nerdy.” “We’re brought up to be humble,” says Ms Wong. “My parents didn’t want to rock the boat. It’s about being quiet, not making waves, being part of the team. In corporate life, you have to learn to toot your horn.” “There’s a natural order of human relationships in Confucianism,” says Ms Peck. “You don’t argue, you don’t contradict authority.” Asian-Americans are a large, diverse group exposed to a range of influences, but those who do reflect such patterns may be less likely to bid for leadership, even if they are highly qualified. The comparative prominence of South Asians, who are less likely to be told not to “rock the boat”—for instance, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Ajay Banga at MasterCard—is cited as anecdotal evidence.

So in other words they're saying Asian cultural norms aren't aggressive enough to make it in the cut-throat world of getting to the top in American business, whereas Indians, they come from a much louder and competitive culture, so you see more of those than East Asians busting through and becoming CEOs and even into high levels of government now.

If you look at what CalTech and Berkeley admit people on, and look at who national merit scholarships are given out to, and how that stands relative to Ivy League admission rates, you might notice that Asian Americans get about 40% of NMS Awards as well. Which is purely based on grades and academic ability, as is Caltech. And then Ivy League schools discriminate against them because they aren't considered 'deserving' minorities. To the point where it's becoming significantly more common for half-Asian teenagers to put down their ethnicity as white on college applications.

[Tiruin]

I'd say it is confirmation bias as the mechanism but it's driven by ingroup/outgroup dynamics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups

Do note--for cognitive mechanisms and all, that's just a tiny part of the influence There is MUCH MUCH more to driving these observations we all see here.
But I lack the time to post about it due to studies >_>

[Gentlefish]

The label "minority" attached to women never made a whole lot of sense to start with. It was intended for races, because those races were in fact smaller than 50% of the population. In fact, it's going to cease being useful pretty soon, as they're predicting that the non-hispanic white population will drop below 50% by the middle of this century, meaning white people are strictly speaking a minority of the population as well.

Majority and minority have pretty well defined meanings and attempts to redefine "minority" to include women (who make up 51% of the population) based on "privilege" is in fact just poisonous to the language itself in the long run. As the cognitive dissonance over a group who are less of the population being called a "minority" shows. There are less men that women in total.

Women are in fact the majority of the US population. So women are both the majority and a minority. What does that make men then? They're neither the majority and we're not allowed to call them a minority, so we have no label for them in that system.

I think in this case majority/minority refers to who wields power. By and large, governmentally and privately, men wield disproportionately more power than women, and thus have a majority of power, in that regard.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

The label "minority" attached to women never made a whole lot of sense to start with. It was intended for races, because those races were in fact smaller than 50% of the population. In fact, it's going to cease being useful pretty soon, as they're predicting that the non-hispanic white population will drop below 50% by the middle of this century, meaning white people are strictly speaking a minority of the population as well.

Majority and minority have pretty well defined meanings and attempts to redefine "minority" to include women (who make up 51% of the population) based on "privilege" is in fact just poisonous to the language itself in the long run. As the cognitive dissonance over a group who are less of the population being called a "minority" shows. There are less men that women in total.

Women are in fact the majority of the US population. So women are both the majority and a minority. What does that make men then? They're neither the majority and we're not allowed to call them a minority, so we have no label for them in that system.

I think in this case majority/minority refers to who wields power. By and large, governmentally and privately, men wield disproportionately more power than women, and thus have a majority of power, in that regard.

Yes, but that's not what the word "majority" means. If 10% of the population owned the rest as slaves, the slaves would be a majority.

[Neonivek]

The reason why we sometimes refer to women as a minority has a lot less to do with the fact that they are factually a minority (they are not)

But rather that many of the mechanisms that affect minorities affect women to the extent where it is often functionally a minority.

It isn't about "How much power" women have.

Which may I add if there is one thing I sort of hate about the victimization/infantilization of women which women studies and even feminism is often INCREDIBLY SUPER DUPER guilty of is that they treat women like that are completely separate from society with no real word, opinion, or power whatsoever... often to the point where they must think women are ghosts or mythological or something.

[Gentlefish]

I mean, sure it is. White Hetero men are disproportionately represented in the government compared to the population, creating representative minorities.

[Edmus]

Well here's an on topic news story of diversity rules cutting both ways. Scholarships for rural remote males to get into veterinary courses at the uni in order to promote diversity in the 80% female field. This has rustled a lot of jimmies. As someone from regional/remote Australia, suggesting that these blokes aren't disadvantaged pisses me off something fierce. It's only a preference, though it makes me wonder, what's the point of trying to balance fields where one gender is just flat out less interested? Doesn't that just cut off a good number of talented and ambitious folk in order to balance the scales to a 50/50?
Like, I mean, if you run with the assumption that both genders are equally capable, which I think is the popular opinion of people advocating gender quotas(and myself), wouldn't you end up with something like this?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Though I have heard a big part of it is getting to a fairly decent threshold of like, 30-40% representation, so that you don't feel as though you are penetrating a gendered culture. That I can certainly understand, especially for politics, or jobs with an equal draw.