Traditional vs modern family values and gender roles

[Runge]

Instead of trying to prove that females and males are inherently different or inherently the same by whatever metric you choose, how about everyone just ACCEPT that EVERYONE is different in their own right on an individual level. There will always be exceptions to norms, and you will always find an individual who does not meet whatever mold you have in your head.

Accept each and every person for who they are, and meet them where they are in life. Who cares whether or not there's a low percentage of females in one industry or another? What really matters in the relationships each and every one of us have with one another, and that includes people you like, don't like, or are indifferent about. Treat everyone person around you with respect, and allow them to contribute their own personal strengths.

I care because that means that I and other women like myself are subtly discriminated against when we attempt to succeed in that industry.  When a male boss asks if I think I can succeed as a grad student being a mom, yet I accomplished my Master's as a mom (so he has evidence that I can), he never asked my coworker the same question even though my coworker is also a parent (male though) and my husband was never ask such a question, there is a problem.  And my boss honestly does not believe he is discriminatory so won't do the steps needed to avoid it.  He was happy to invite me into his lab based on my publish research yet hesitant that I could do the job once he found out I had a child, WTF?  Or the fact that the same application with a female name will have a lower chance of funding than a male's which means a woman is less likely to get tenure track.  So basically, the overt evidence of discrimination is not something to ignore.

I understand, and I agree that discrimination isn't right. But I don't think that a lower percentage of a certain demographic in a certain field is the root cause or directly points to discrimination. The real issue is that the person discriminating likely isn't seeing the other person for who they are, as in what their true strengths and weaknesses are. Person A has a preconceived notion and is tailoring their response and actions to that preconceived notion. I think it's a natural response, but we also must be careful too.

Meeting that person where they are, as in their strenths , weaknesses, and personality, helps both sides eliminate discrimination and wrongly accused discrimination. More often than not, I've personally experienced that individual circumstances of discrimination are ultimately a result of miscommunication and lack of understanding.

In your example/experience that you shared, was he truely wrong to be hesitant of your abilities? I only ask this to try and shed light on his view. In his personal experiences, maybe he's seen many mothers struggle to perform in your situation, and he's just making sure that he has the best individual available to him. He's looking out for his lab's best interest and his experience has tailored his mind to be cautious in regards to certain situations. I don't know the whole story or who either of you really are, so I can't say that this is an issue either way, but was it really discriminatory of him to ask if you up to the task? Or was it simply a misunderstanding of his concerns?

[PloddingInsight]

I've only witnessed one case of out and out sexual harassment in my career, in my first year on the job, and the perpetrator was not the brightest individual.  He was pretty low class, actually, and he left shortly afterward.  Everyone I work with now is polite and fair-minded as far as I can tell.  It seems really strange to me to think that there might be sexism occurring all around me and I can't see it.  But I can't disregard your personal experience either.  I really don't know what to make of it.  Maybe I've been very lucky to be surrounded by good people.

This is more about street/bar harassment, but I think it applies: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html

Whether it's your environment or their secrecy our your not recognizing it...You should know it does still happen. All the time. These stories (of overt harrassment or subtle discouragement in the workplace) are not uncommon.

This is interesting.  It's not actually saying men don't recognize it.  It's saying that harassers avoid misbehaving when other men are around.  That is more than plausible.  It especially makes sense if you believe that the vast majority of men don't approve of such behavior.

As you probably recognize, people that are skeptical of widespread discrimination in the workplace are not going to be moved by tales of drunk guys inappropriately hitting on girls at parties.  We already know about that.

Side-point:  since we're on the topic of innate characteristics, it's likely that women's fear reaction to those guys is probably more evolution-driven than they themselves realize.  Getting hit on by Thog the Caveman is probably a lot more dangerous than drunk Bob at a party in 2014.  Men walk a very fine line when hitting on women.  It's generally acknowledged that confidence and a sense of humor are important, but it's very easy to creep women out.  It's a combination of 1) you don't know that woman very well, so you can't calibrate your advance to her personality and 2) her level of attraction to you colors her reception.

[Gin1984]

I should have said:  I'm well aware of the research that people have unconscious biases.  (If you grade papers or projects, you need a detailed rubric!!)  What I get confused about is the accounts of blatant, conscious sexism on the part of successful, professional people.  When I have heard something sexist or racist, it's coming from somebody in the approximate bottom 1/5 of society who basically has nothing to lose and holds power over no one.  Or somebody doing a comedy routine, deliberately trying to make us uncomfortable.

It's certainly possible that I just don't notice.  But 50 years ago, most biology undergrads were male.  Today that's not the case.  I find it hard to believe that male domination in STEM is strictly a bias issue.  As I explained before, I don't find it implausible that men and women naturally have different interests, on average, so I don't see under-representation as necessarily evidence of widespread discrimination and acculturation.  I'm not denying that discrimination happens.  But as society becomes more and more egalitarian, my gut feeling for what % of the explanation is due to gender differences grows accordingly.

It does not have to be conscious to be harmful to other.  And as a side note, the professor in my example did have a rubric, women were still graded lower.
Here is abstract that may make it clearer:
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science. 

[PloddingInsight]

Highly Recommended Reading

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Did anybody take the plunge?  I really like this piece.  It's so full of interesting ideas.

[Gin1984]

Highly Recommended Reading

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Did anybody take the plunge?  I really like this piece.  It's so full of interesting ideas.

I find the piece to be extremely hard to get through because I keep rolling my eyes.  Even the title is idiotic, of course there is good in men, just as there is good in women.  It seems as though the author is making up something to argue against.  "When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?”"  Given that feminists have been saying for years that patriarchy hurts both genders, I had to stop and check when this was published.    Honestly one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read and that includes other things I have read on the internet.  I am ashamed to say that I belonged to American Psychological Association during that time period.

[PloddingInsight]

Highly Recommended Reading

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Did anybody take the plunge?  I really like this piece.  It's so full of interesting ideas.

I find the piece to be extremely hard to get through because I keep rolling my eyes.  Even the title is idiotic, of course there is good in men, just as there is good in women.  It seems as though the author is making up something to argue against.  "When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?”"  Given that feminists have been saying for years that patriarchy hurts both genders, I had to stop and check when this was published.    Honestly one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read and that includes other things I have read on the internet.  I am ashamed to say that I belonged to American Psychological Association during that time period.

Ok, keep in mind that it was a live presentation.  I think he's being just a tiny bit over-the-top to keep his audience engaged.

[PloddingInsight]

I should have said:  I'm well aware of the research that people have unconscious biases.  (If you grade papers or projects, you need a detailed rubric!!)  What I get confused about is the accounts of blatant, conscious sexism on the part of successful, professional people.  When I have heard something sexist or racist, it's coming from somebody in the approximate bottom 1/5 of society who basically has nothing to lose and holds power over no one.  Or somebody doing a comedy routine, deliberately trying to make us uncomfortable.

It's certainly possible that I just don't notice.  But 50 years ago, most biology undergrads were male.  Today that's not the case.  I find it hard to believe that male domination in STEM is strictly a bias issue.  As I explained before, I don't find it implausible that men and women naturally have different interests, on average, so I don't see under-representation as necessarily evidence of widespread discrimination and acculturation.  I'm not denying that discrimination happens.  But as society becomes more and more egalitarian, my gut feeling for what % of the explanation is due to gender differences grows accordingly.

It does not have to be conscious to be harmful to other.  And as a side note, the professor in my example did have a rubric, women were still graded lower.
Here is abstract that may make it clearer:
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.

No disagreement with the presence of unconscious bias.  That's just the way human brains work.  It's sad.  Most of the people in the study probably have the best of intentions, and even that is not enough.  I believe the same thing is true with race.  It would be a wonderful idea to have applications and tests evaluated with just an identifier # that the grader can't connect to an identity.  Although with college admissions that would probably lead to unacceptable outcomes, since the current system involves deliberately balancing the demographics to a desired level of representation.

Another good thing to do when grading is to grade all the exams one question at a time.  That can protect students from even random inconsistencies in the way points are awarded.  And the teacher can do their best to avoid looking at the names at the top each time.

[Gin1984]

I should have said:  I'm well aware of the research that people have unconscious biases.  (If you grade papers or projects, you need a detailed rubric!!)  What I get confused about is the accounts of blatant, conscious sexism on the part of successful, professional people.  When I have heard something sexist or racist, it's coming from somebody in the approximate bottom 1/5 of society who basically has nothing to lose and holds power over no one.  Or somebody doing a comedy routine, deliberately trying to make us uncomfortable.

It's certainly possible that I just don't notice.  But 50 years ago, most biology undergrads were male.  Today that's not the case.  I find it hard to believe that male domination in STEM is strictly a bias issue.  As I explained before, I don't find it implausible that men and women naturally have different interests, on average, so I don't see under-representation as necessarily evidence of widespread discrimination and acculturation.  I'm not denying that discrimination happens.  But as society becomes more and more egalitarian, my gut feeling for what % of the explanation is due to gender differences grows accordingly.

It does not have to be conscious to be harmful to other.  And as a side note, the professor in my example did have a rubric, women were still graded lower.
Here is abstract that may make it clearer:
Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student. These results suggest that interventions addressing faculty gender bias might advance the goal of increasing the participation of women in science.

No disagreement with the presence of unconscious bias.  That's just the way human brains work.  It's sad.  Most of the people in the study probably have the best of intentions, and even that is not enough.  I believe the same thing is true with race.  It would be a wonderful idea to have applications and tests evaluated with just an identifier # that the grader can't connect to an identity.  Although with college admissions that would probably lead to unacceptable outcomes, since the current system involves deliberately balancing the demographics to a desired level of representation.

Another good thing to do when grading is to grade all the exams one question at a time.  That can protect students from even random inconsistencies in the way points are awarded.  And the teacher can do their best to avoid looking at the names at the top each time.

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

[PloddingInsight]

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but: wow.  If I thought half the people I worked with were bigots, it would drive me crazy.

[Gin1984]

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but: wow.  If I thought half the people I worked with were bigots, it would drive me crazy.

How is it that you were fine with the fact that most people have implicit biases yet the acts based on those biases makes you say wow?  Just because people are educated does not mean they don't have biases.  And, just a side note, I am not blaming men here.  The professor I mentioned, was a woman.  We, as people, are culturally indoctrinated (the issue here) which causes behavior that is not good for individuals or society.  I am not saying people are bad, just that we all have biases to overcome.  One way, as a manager, is to look at the resume prior to seeing the name, if possible. I know my husband, when helping pick students for a program, looked at CVs without the names and it seemed to make a difference in the overall makeup of the group.  All I want is people not to say "well I don't see it, or I don't do it".  Even if perchance you are the 1 in 100 who does not, how does is harm you to account for it, just in case you are one of the 99 in 100. 

[galliver]

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but: wow.  If I thought half the people I worked with were bigots, it would drive me crazy.

Except we don't have a choice. Except to leave for a more feminine career/SAHM. Which would only prove them right. [Disclaimer: I've *personally* actually been fortunate to avoid misogyny for most of my career so far. Or to call my young colleagues on minor cases of it and/or laugh it off. But there are companies and departments that are very much "old boys' clubs" and I have friends who have encountered this.]

[PloddingInsight]

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but: wow.  If I thought half the people I worked with were bigots, it would drive me crazy.

How is it that you were fine with the fact that most people have implicit biases yet the acts based on those biases makes you say wow?  Just because people are educated does not mean they don't have biases.  And, just a side note, I am not blaming men here.  The professor I mentioned, was a woman.  We, as people, are culturally indoctrinated (the issue here) which causes behavior that is not good for individuals or society.  I am not saying people are bad, just that we all have biases to overcome.  One way, as a manager, is to look at the resume prior to seeing the name, if possible. I know my husband, when helping pick students for a program, looked at CVs without the names and it seemed to make a difference in the overall makeup of the group.  All I want is people not to say "well I don't see it, or I don't do it".  Even if perchance you are the 1 in 100 who does not, how does is harm you to account for it, just in case you are one of the 99 in 100.

Good point.  When I think of an unconscious bias, I'm not imagining something that is right out in the open that people can notice and put their finger on.  I guess your comment made me think of acts that are more explicit than what I had in mind previously.  Are you talking about things that are undeniably sexist?  If so, do you ever speak up?  Do you document it?  Could you document it?  "It's not intentional" only goes so far.  People need to be held accountable to actually be fair and professional in the workplace.

[Gin1984]

Except I work with many "these" men.  They insist they are not part of it, so they won't do one single thing to account for it.  Yet, I can list multiple times of sexist behavior for each of these men.  But it happens in front of men who honestly, like you, don't see it.  I know it is hard to show via a message board so why not ask some female friends what kind of sexual discrimination they get in professional or school environments.  I've never met a woman who has not, so maybe they can give you examples that you might have seen and not noticed or realized.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but: wow.  If I thought half the people I worked with were bigots, it would drive me crazy.

How is it that you were fine with the fact that most people have implicit biases yet the acts based on those biases makes you say wow?  Just because people are educated does not mean they don't have biases.  And, just a side note, I am not blaming men here.  The professor I mentioned, was a woman.  We, as people, are culturally indoctrinated (the issue here) which causes behavior that is not good for individuals or society.  I am not saying people are bad, just that we all have biases to overcome.  One way, as a manager, is to look at the resume prior to seeing the name, if possible. I know my husband, when helping pick students for a program, looked at CVs without the names and it seemed to make a difference in the overall makeup of the group.  All I want is people not to say "well I don't see it, or I don't do it".  Even if perchance you are the 1 in 100 who does not, how does is harm you to account for it, just in case you are one of the 99 in 100.

Good point.  When I think of an unconscious bias, I'm not imagining something that is right out in the open that people can notice and put their finger on.  I guess your comment made me think of acts that are more explicit than what I had in mind previously. Are you talking about things that are undeniably sexist? If so, do you ever speak up?  Do you document it?  Could you document it?  "It's not intentional" only goes so far.  People need to be held accountable to actually be fair and professional in the workplace.

Well yes, as I said, my whole class spoke up when the women and men were graded differently.  I did not however speak up when my boss asked me but not my male co-worker if I could do the job because guess what, that would cause me not to be hired.  I did mention the study on not looking at names when deciding on grants, but he told me he was NEVER sexist so he did not have to do it.  What can I do as a lower end employee when that happens?  Or when a PI says, well I did not put money aside to keep you in the lab because your husband was finishing before you and spouses should stay together.  I never thought you would stay (basically he never thought my husband would take a job around here so I could finish my degree).  PIs have the right to chose who they want in the lab, screwing up my career to complain won't do me or any other woman any good.  That is why we need you men to ask us, and then pay attention to the statements.  They are often made around men, but they don't notice.  When I complain, I am just a trouble-maker, but when men complain, they are listened to (this goes for complaints to women or men). 

[galliver]

Incidentally, discrimination against people for marital status, parental status, and other family responsibilities is legally prohibited. http://worklifelaw.org/pubs/IssueBriefFRD.pdf. But that can be hard to stand up for, or prove, or can damage your professional standing and relationships.

[TrulyStashin]

PloddingInsight:

1)  You are presenting this as a binary choice:  either women are dedicated mothers or they are not.  Perhaps you mean to say "solely mothers", meaning that they have no other profession.   Either way, this is a false dichotomy.   Our lives as workers runs over approximately 40 to 45 years -- less if you're Mustachian, but still long enough.  Few women, even religious ones, have more than 2 or 3 children which means that there is plenty of room to spend some time prioritizing motherhood and some time prioritizing professional life.    Now more than ever, our skills must be flexible and our reflexes nimble.  Your daughters need to be able to perceive themselves fulfilling a wide variety of roles because that might be what life demands of them.  If their self-image is limited to that of "mother" they may struggle if that role doesn't work out for them. 

2) Yes, society suffers when women do not participate widely in the public realm. Women's leadership is critical to balanced decision making whether in the halls of legislatures or the corporate board room.  Sexism is all around us, every day -- you're just not noticing.  And that's why women need to be at the table.  Women raise questions that don't even occur to men (and vice versa) because we've experienced the world in ways that are different from men.  If women are absent from the table, those questions don't get asked, the problem is never even identified, and thus, it isn't solved.   There are numerous studies that support the positive impact of women in leadership roles, including several that show that corporations with a critical mass of women on the board perform significantly better.   Without a robust pipeline of women participating in the public realm, there will not be many senior women leaders to call on.

3)  You are only "siding with the women" if it is true that all women want what you think we want.  That's not true, thus you're not siding with women.  You're constructing a narrow world and defending it.

4)  This is a forum about financial independence and empowerment.  In our capitalist system, a woman who stays home with children is dependent.  She does not have the level of empowerment to shape her life that a working woman has.  By way of one simple example:  if she's home and he's working and his job is relocated, then they're going regardless of what is good for her.   Of course, if she has an enlightened spouse she won't be as vulnerable to his financial decisions.  She'll have her own IRA's and her own money.  But in the traditional religious society that you're espousing, that is not the ethic -- in that world, the man is the natural leader of the home and the woman submits to him.  Under this framework, if she is married to the wrong man, she's in deep trouble.  That isn't good for her, her children, or society.  It certainly sounds an off-key note in a forum dedicated to self-empowerment and financial independence.

By emphasizing the importance of traditional female roles, you're stifling your daughters' ability to develop all aspects of their characters and to understand that they can be wonderful mothers and great lawyers (or whatever they want).  Your sons aren't limited to a binary choice; your daughters shouldn't be either.  You're squelching their right to self-determination in ways that you're not doing to your sons and that's insidious.

Like men, women deserve the right to determine the course of lives according to the dictates of their own conscience.  When I was younger, I stayed home for three years with my first baby and two with my second.  That was great.  Then I taught school.  Now, I'm a lawyer and I love what I do and the never-ending growth it brings.  I am also proud of all the considerable domestic skills that I have.  Don't limit my range of talents!  I bake amazing bread and negotiate business deals.  Next year, I'll have an empty nest and will ramp my career up to the next level.  None of that means I'm not fully invested in mothering (to the point of adopting a third child along the way).  It is ludicrous to take a snapshot of one phase of any person's life and extrapolate that as "the way things should be" for all time.

For heaven's sake, let your daughters be people first.

[galliver]

PloddingInsight:

1)  You are presenting this as a binary choice:  either women are dedicated mothers or they are not.  Perhaps you mean to say "solely mothers", meaning that they have no other profession.   Either way, this is a false dichotomy.   Our lives as workers runs over approximately 40 to 45 years -- less if you're Mustachian, but still long enough.  Few women, even religious ones, have more than 2 or 3 children which means that there is plenty of room to spend some time prioritizing motherhood and some time prioritizing professional life.    Now more than ever, our skills must be flexible and our reflexes nimble.  Your daughters need to be able to perceive themselves fulfilling a wide variety of roles because that might be what life demands of them.  If their self-image is limited to that of "mother" they may struggle if that role doesn't work out for them. 

2) Yes, society suffers when women do not participate widely in the public realm. Women's leadership is critical to balanced decision making whether in the halls of legislatures or the corporate board room.  Sexism is all around us, every day -- you're just not noticing.  And that's why women need to be at the table.  Women raise questions that don't even occur to men (and vice versa) because we've experienced the world in ways that are different from men.  If women are absent from the table, those questions don't get asked, the problem is never even identified, and thus, it isn't solved.   There are numerous studies that support the positive impact of women in leadership roles, including several that show that corporations with a critical mass of women on the board perform significantly better.   Without a robust pipeline of women participating in the public realm, there will not be many senior women leaders to call on.

3)  You are only "siding with the women" if it is true that all women want what you think we want.  That's not true, thus you're not siding with women.  You're constructing a narrow world and defending it.

4)  This is a forum about financial independence and empowerment.  In our capitalist system, a woman who stays home with children is dependent.  She does not have the level of empowerment to shape her life that a working woman has.  By way of one simple example:  if she's home and he's working and his job is relocated, then they're going regardless of what is good for her.   Of course, if she has an enlightened spouse she won't be as vulnerable to his financial decisions.  She'll have her own IRA's and her own money.  But in the traditional religious society that you're espousing, that is not the ethic -- in that world, the man is the natural leader of the home and the woman submits to him.  Under this framework, if she is married to the wrong man, she's in deep trouble.  That isn't good for her, her children, or society.  It certainly sounds an off-key note in a forum dedicated to self-empowerment and financial independence.

By emphasizing the importance of traditional female roles, you're stifling your daughters' ability to develop all aspects of their characters and to understand that they can be wonderful mothers and great lawyers (or whatever they want).  Your sons aren't limited to a binary choice; your daughters shouldn't be either.  You're squelching their right to self-determination in ways that you're not doing to your sons and that's insidious.

Like men, women deserve the right to determine the course of lives according to the dictates of their own conscience.  When I was younger, I stayed home for three years with my first baby and two with my second.  That was great.  Then I taught school.  Now, I'm a lawyer and I love what I do and the never-ending growth it brings.  I am also proud of all the considerable domestic skills that I have.  Don't limit my range of talents!  I bake amazing bread and negotiate business deals.  Next year, I'll have an empty nest and will ramp my career up to the next level.  None of that means I'm not fully invested in mothering (to the point of adopting a third child along the way).  It is ludicrous to take a snapshot of one phase of any person's life and extrapolate that as "the way things should be" for all time.

For heaven's sake, let your daughters be people first.

I'd like to bow down to your skill with the written word. And your profile picture. :D

[TrulyStashin]

I find it hard to believe that male domination in STEM is strictly a bias issue. 

You assume that we're getting more egalitarian.  That's not necessarily the case, especially for women.  Equality for women is often a two-steps forward, two-steps back situation.

And... if you find it hard to believe that male domination in STEM is due largely to bias, then you clearly didn't listen to the story provided to you earlier.  I'll give you the link again:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/17/356944145/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

[SisterX]

But I see a difference between discrimination, and simply preparing you daughter to be a good stay-at-home mom, with the expectation that she will probably choose that.

This one sentence embodies the entire problem everyone else is having with your arguments.  YOU are making an assumption about what your daughters SHOULD do and what they WILL choose.  YOU are biasing them toward one decision, whether you want to admit it or not.

[SisterX]

I should have said:  I'm well aware of the research that people have unconscious biases.  (If you grade papers or projects, you need a detailed rubric!!)  What I get confused about is the accounts of blatant, conscious sexism on the part of successful, professional people.  When I have heard something sexist or racist, it's coming from somebody in the approximate bottom 1/5 of society who basically has nothing to lose and holds power over no one.  Or somebody doing a comedy routine, deliberately trying to make us uncomfortable.

Oh my god, I get it now!  You're TRYING to be funny!  That is the only explanation I can come up with for why someone would be so obtuse as to miss the point while adding, "Yeah, I get what you're saying but here's why I still don't think it's right, even though I've just said I agree with your rightness."

For what it's worth: just this week my daughter's babysitter, who is a female engineering student, made a complaint about her engineering ethics class.  Why?  Because the professor actually said, "There are all kinds of rules of conduct and such but really, what it all comes down to is, just don't let the sexual harassment go too far, guys."  She filed a complaint with the dean and was told, "Oh.  Yeah.  This isn't the first time someone's complained about that.  Sorry."  THIS IS HOW FUCKING ETHICS ARE TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS.  My husband said, "The fact that they even need to have that class, which is basically all about how to not be a dick to female engineers in the first place, and then to have it be so poorly taught, speaks volumes about the whole engineering profession.  Wow."

PloddingInsight and others: I am not arguing against homemaking being a valid choice.  I think that focusing on the home and family is the best thing any of us can do, whether or not we're parents.  I do think it's terrible that you're trying to make it into a false dichotomy of feminism vs. the ability to be a homemaker.  (And I've read "Radical Homemakers", fantastic book.)  FWIW, my husband and I are working toward a time when I don't need to have a traditional corporate job, so that I can stay home with our kid/s.  I am what you would probably call a "rabid feminist" because it BURNS me so much that I still can't have equal rights to a man, that I still face institutional barriers which make the traditional workforce unappealing, which make schooling more difficult and just walking down the damn street more difficult.  The fact that I considered my paltry unpaid maternity leave a blessing because it wasn't my mom's "Yeah, you can have 3 days off for having the kid.  What, you had a c-section?  Ok, 5 days.  You can't be in the office after 5 days?  Then you're fired," is absolutely PATHETIC.  The fact that my husband would have gotten even less paternity leave had he been traditionally employed at the time, even more pathetic.  I want equal rights for both of us.  Feminism isn't an either/or, it's about giving all people greater choices. 

PloddingInsight, if you truly felt that men staying home was a valid and wonderful choice, you'd groom your sons to be homemakers just as ardently as you're training your daughters.  You've said nothing to indicate that that's what you're doing, therefore you are participating in the discriminatory culture you claim to revile.

[galliver]

For what it's worth: just this week my daughter's babysitter, who is a female engineering student, made a complaint about her engineering ethics class.  Why?  Because the professor actually said, "There are all kinds of rules of conduct and such but really, what it all comes down to is, just don't let the sexual harassment go too far, guys."  She filed a complaint with the dean and was told, "Oh.  Yeah.  This isn't the first time someone's complained about that.  Sorry."  THIS IS HOW FUCKING ETHICS ARE TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS.  My husband said, "The fact that they even need to have that class, which is basically all about how to not be a dick to female engineers in the first place, and then to have it be so poorly taught, speaks volumes about the whole engineering profession.  Wow."

Obviously, that guy has no business teaching ethics of any kind.  But I wanted to point out: there's a fair bit more to engineering ethics and I was surprised by how interesting I found it when we did a day on it in one of my classes. (Example situations considered: http://tbp.case.edu/resources/ethicscases.pdf)

Also reminded me of a story. A friend is currently taking a week off before starting a new job with a promotion and a 70% pay bump (!). She's a software developer and recently (past year or two) pursued lots of opportunities to improve her skills. She was the only woman on her team. Her boss would not let her use those skills, assigning that work to other team members, or attend a conference of interest to her (he sent someone else, who had specifically said he is not interested in going, and had gone before). She also routinely told of her ideas being dismissed for no given good reason, and of the boss making misogynistic jokes to the rest of the team (she was friendly with coworkers and they expressed being distinctly uncomfortable). But, says PloddingInsight, perhaps she was just not as capable as her coworkers, maybe it was for the good of the team. I think the circumstances of her job change argue against this. Anyhow, before resorting to that extreme (and/or for the greater good of all womankind), she documented everything, got statements from teammates, went to report her boss to HR. What they told her was that there was no way to say if this was gender discrimination or a personal issue because she was the only woman on the team. And they couldn't do anything about personal issues.

PloddingInsight and others: I am not arguing against homemaking being a valid choice.  I think that focusing on the home and family is the best thing any of us can do, whether or not we're parents.  I do think it's terrible that you're trying to make it into a false dichotomy of feminism vs. the ability to be a homemaker.  (And I've read "Radical Homemakers", fantastic book.)  FWIW, my husband and I are working toward a time when I don't need to have a traditional corporate job, so that I can stay home with our kid/s.  I am what you would probably call a "rabid feminist" because it BURNS me so much that I still can't have equal rights to a man, that I still face institutional barriers which make the traditional workforce unappealing, which make schooling more difficult and just walking down the damn street more difficult.  The fact that I considered my paltry unpaid maternity leave a blessing because it wasn't my mom's "Yeah, you can have 3 days off for having the kid.  What, you had a c-section?  Ok, 5 days.  You can't be in the office after 5 days?  Then you're fired," is absolutely PATHETIC.  The fact that my husband would have gotten even less paternity leave had he been traditionally employed at the time, even more pathetic.  I want equal rights for both of us.  Feminism isn't an either/or, it's about giving all people greater choices. 

PloddingInsight, if you truly felt that men staying home was a valid and wonderful choice, you'd groom your sons to be homemakers just as ardently as you're training your daughters.  You've said nothing to indicate that that's what you're doing, therefore you are participating in the discriminatory culture you claim to revile.

Well said. Especially the bolded parts. ESPECIALLY, the big part. :D

[SisterX]

For what it's worth: just this week my daughter's babysitter, who is a female engineering student, made a complaint about her engineering ethics class.  Why?  Because the professor actually said, "There are all kinds of rules of conduct and such but really, what it all comes down to is, just don't let the sexual harassment go too far, guys."  She filed a complaint with the dean and was told, "Oh.  Yeah.  This isn't the first time someone's complained about that.  Sorry."  THIS IS HOW FUCKING ETHICS ARE TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS.  My husband said, "The fact that they even need to have that class, which is basically all about how to not be a dick to female engineers in the first place, and then to have it be so poorly taught, speaks volumes about the whole engineering profession.  Wow."

Obviously, that guy has no business teaching ethics of any kind.  But I wanted to point out: there's a fair bit more to engineering ethics and I was surprised by how interesting I found it when we did a day on it in one of my classes. (Example situations considered: http://tbp.case.edu/resources/ethicscases.pdf)

He was referring to that particular ethics class, not all engineering ethics classes.  I agree that there's a lot more to the field than just sexual harassment.  However, this is Alaska, which has the worst track record in the nation when it comes to issues such as rape, and much of the state is stuck in a boys' club mentality, in the oddest ways.  Oh, the stories I could tell from women I know working in "male professions" or mostly male workplaces.
I also forgot the best part of this story: this happened less than two months after the requirement was set in place that all U employees, right down to student employees, had to take Title IX/sexual misconduct training.  Oh yeah.  Apparently the lessons have not sunk in yet.

[Gin1984]

For what it's worth: just this week my daughter's babysitter, who is a female engineering student, made a complaint about her engineering ethics class.  Why?  Because the professor actually said, "There are all kinds of rules of conduct and such but really, what it all comes down to is, just don't let the sexual harassment go too far, guys."  She filed a complaint with the dean and was told, "Oh.  Yeah.  This isn't the first time someone's complained about that.  Sorry."  THIS IS HOW FUCKING ETHICS ARE TAUGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS.  My husband said, "The fact that they even need to have that class, which is basically all about how to not be a dick to female engineers in the first place, and then to have it be so poorly taught, speaks volumes about the whole engineering profession.  Wow."

Obviously, that guy has no business teaching ethics of any kind.  But I wanted to point out: there's a fair bit more to engineering ethics and I was surprised by how interesting I found it when we did a day on it in one of my classes. (Example situations considered: http://tbp.case.edu/resources/ethicscases.pdf)

He was referring to that particular ethics class, not all engineering ethics classes.  I agree that there's a lot more to the field than just sexual harassment.  However, this is Alaska, which has the worst track record in the nation when it comes to issues such as rape, and much of the state is stuck in a boys' club mentality, in the oddest ways.  Oh, the stories I could tell from women I know working in "male professions" or mostly male workplaces.
I also forgot the best part of this story: this happened less than two months after the requirement was set in place that all U employees, right down to student employees, had to take Title IX/sexual misconduct training.  Oh yeah.  Apparently the lessons have not sunk in yet.

I just finished mine, but my school made it optional, unless your direct supervisor decided you had to.  My boss did make it required for the lab, and did it himself though I doubt it will change his behavior.

[PloddingInsight]

I was thinking about making some more comments, but I decided against it.  No need to dredge up last week's controversy.  So I just want to say thanks to everybody that commented civilly so that this thread didn't get locked like the one I started about climate change.  :)  My high esteem for the MMM forum has been restored.

[jka468]

PloddingInsight,

Don't let them get to you. I think you're doing your children a great service in the way you are raising them, which in turn will make them much more likely to be fulfilled and happy adults. Like you, I actually walk through the world with my eyes open and, as a whole, I understand that men and women tend to trend differently in wants, needs, emotions and aspirations. Obviously there is some overlap in the traits, no one would argue otherwise, but I find it absolutely debilitating how how the Social Justice Warriors of today want the sexes to be THE EXACT SAME, and everything has to be gender neutral and we all have the exact same brains and chemistry, except one person has a penis and the other has a vagina.

That's why initiatives like "push MORE and MORE women into Math and Engineering" haven't caught on and will never catch on, to the huge dismay of this progressive agenda. Personally, I went to one of the top ranked high schools and one of the top ranked universities in the US (where I studied ChE), and it's painfully obvious that many women simply are not interested in STEM type fields. There was no secret agenda to keep women out, but somehow in high school AP Calc and in my college eng classes there was a 3-4:1 male:female ratio. And remember, I was surrounded by intelligent women through both these schools, and for the most part they still chose non-STEM subjects.

Also, to your point about IQ variance in males (being more represented on both ends), it makes a ton of sense when it comes to STEM. It has been documented that certain STEM majors like ChE, Comp Sci, Physics, etc. have students with average IQs of about 130+, which is two standard deviations above the mean. So, logically speaking, it's futile to try to push more women into these fields, not because there is a secret boys only network, but rather because they are already adequately represented at around 25%, since at higher IQs (130+), it has been documented that men outnumber women anywhere from 2.25-3:1. If anyone is interested in a STEM subject, be it male, female or alien, them absolutely study it, but the last thing we need is inferior STEM majors who are being ushered through because of a perverse equality agenda.

Now, I'm probably going to get rebuttals such as "selection bias", "inherent sexism", "IQ test fallicy", etc., etc., but oh well; I've already learned that people are going to FEEL how they need to in order to conform to their world view, and that most people are not willing to look at the numbers and decide based on logic.

By emphasizing the importance of traditional female roles, you're stifling your daughters' ability to develop all aspects of their characters and to understand that they can be wonderful mothers and great lawyers (or whatever they want).  Your sons aren't limited to a binary choice; your daughters shouldn't be either.  You're squelching their right to self-determination in ways that you're not doing to your sons and that's insidious.

Like men, women deserve the right to determine the course of lives according to the dictates of their own conscience.  When I was younger, I stayed home for three years with my first baby and two with my second.  That was great.  Then I taught school.  Now, I'm a lawyer and I love what I do and the never-ending growth it brings.  I am also proud of all the considerable domestic skills that I have.  Don't limit my range of talents!  I bake amazing bread and negotiate business deals.  Next year, I'll have an empty nest and will ramp my career up to the next level.  None of that means I'm not fully invested in mothering (to the point of adopting a third child along the way).  It is ludicrous to take a snapshot of one phase of any person's life and extrapolate that as "the way things should be" for all time.

You are moving the goal posts, as it still isn't a binary choice, but rather PloddingInsight is being practical and rational in the guidance and advice that she gives her children, which I think is great. Putting no boundaries on people and proclaiming stardom for every single child is why the Boomers have created the most narcisstic generation in history (the Millenials), of which I am a part.

While I applaud YOUR personal gumption, ability to multitask and high achiever mentality, the sad reality is that MOST women have been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to this. I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers. Honestly, I have zero, zilch, nada, no problem whatsoever with women choosing any career path they desire, whether it be President of the U.S.A or homemaker, but this idea that all women can and should "have it all" is absurd, and I am at least finding that these days more and more women are starting to admit this (just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"). And hey, if you don't believe me then just look up stats for the past 30yrs surrounding declining female happiness, increased female depression, increased female prescription mood stabilizer drug use, etc. (women have always outnumbered men in the latter two categories and the situation has only been more skewed as men have stayed faily consistent in all these categories over this time period). I don't think that it's a coincidence that these all trend upwards starting at the same time that the "have it all" mentality was pushed on a generation. Do I have a study to back up that correlation, well no, but call it a hunch that it's part of the problem. And I also think they many many younger women are looking at their single moms of divorce, spinster aunts and workaholic older female coworkers, many of the three in self or outsourced therapy, and saying "nahhhh, this was stupid, what the hell were they doing when they decided that THIS was the way to go?"

Sorry, but life is about conflicting choices, which we as mustachians should understand, and for the past 25yrs women have been loathe to acknowledge this. Many don't, or won't, realize that if they want a family, then they will end up harming their career and/or family dynamic. This is the price you pay as a woman, and it has nothing to do about fairness or right/wrong; it just is what it is. Men certainly have many tough choices in their lives as well. And what really irks me is the idea that society should make concessions to women who feel entitled to have it all, and feel that the workplace/home life should cater to whatever needs they have, differences be damned. Rather than work around the system and figure out how to benefit, progressives want to change the system completely and force everyone else to work around them. Everyone has to make choices, all I'm saying is don't expect others to have to pay for yours.

[iris lily]

That's why initiatives like "push MORE and MORE women into Math and Engineering" haven't caught on and will never catch on, to the huge dismay of this progressive agenda. Personally, I went to one of the top ranked high schools and one of the top ranked universities in the US (where I studied ChE), and it's painfully obvious that many women simply are not interested in STEM type fields. There was no secret agenda to keep women out, but somehow in high school AP Calc and in my college eng classes there was a 3-4:1 male:female ratio. And remember, I was surrounded by intelligent women through both these schools, and for the most part they still chose non-STEM subjects.

...

And then, there are the women who WERE steered into STEM because hey, they could do the work, but their hearts were not in it. While it is anecdotal, I know a fair number of women who got science degrees and then abandoned those fields a few years later saying "that's never what I really wanted to do." Just last week my nephew's wife, a chemical engineer, dropped out of the workforce to stay home with child #1. There will be a child #2 coming at some point.

The steering of capable young women into STEM studies has been going on for decades. I have contemporaries in their 50's and 60's who experienced it. And that's ok, it's good that talents and aptitudes are recognized, but the larger social goal should not become the dictate for the specific.

[jka468]

That's why initiatives like "push MORE and MORE women into Math and Engineering" haven't caught on and will never catch on, to the huge dismay of this progressive agenda. Personally, I went to one of the top ranked high schools and one of the top ranked universities in the US (where I studied ChE), and it's painfully obvious that many women simply are not interested in STEM type fields. There was no secret agenda to keep women out, but somehow in high school AP Calc and in my college eng classes there was a 3-4:1 male:female ratio. And remember, I was surrounded by intelligent women through both these schools, and for the most part they still chose non-STEM subjects.

...

And then, there are the women who WERE steered into STEM because hey, they could do the work, but their hearts were not in it. While it is anecdotal, I know a fair number of women who got science degrees and then abandoned those fields a few years later saying "that's never what I really wanted to do." Just last week my nephew's wife, a chemical engineer, dropped out of the workforce to stay home with child #1. There will be a child #2 coming at some point.

The steering of capable young women into STEM studies has been going on for decades. I have contemporaries in their 50's and 60's who experienced it. And that's ok, it's good that talents and aptitudes are recognized, but the larger social goal should not become the dictate for the specific.

Yes, this is another solid point. I'm only three years out of school and I have already seen this three times with technical field females I work with. 1 dropped out because of family, 2 left basically because they didn't want to do this kind of job any more, and they weren't all that far into their careers.

As well, adding on to my last post, my corporation is great about equality, as I've met and spoke with 3 female VPs (all three have Eng degrees), all in their 40s or early 50s, but guess the catch...All three had no children, and two were single. Tradeoffs...

[plainjane]

Good point.  When I think of an unconscious bias, I'm not imagining something that is right out in the open that people can notice and put their finger on.  I guess your comment made me think of acts that are more explicit than what I had in mind previously.  Are you talking about things that are undeniably sexist?  If so, do you ever speak up?  Do you document it?  Could you document it?  "It's not intentional" only goes so far.  People need to be held accountable to actually be fair and professional in the workplace.

At a going away party, a male boss kisses a female subordinate on the forehead.  How do you document that without sounding like a harpy?  Why do you document it if that boss is the one who is leaving?  What does that do to the authority of the female subordinate (middle management) whose team saw it happen?  What if he was drunk, because it was his going away party?

I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers.

Just to be clear, is it possible for MOST men to be both do-it-all professionals and good fathers?  (Or is being a good mother harder and require more time and energy?  Or is that because she's required to take on more of the household stuff so the guy can "do it all"?)

I'd argue it's that nobody can actually DO IT ALL.  There are always trade-offs in how we spend our time.  Pretending that this only is the case for women is a fascinating argument. 

[rocksinmyhead]

Like you, I actually walk through the world with my eyes open and, as a whole, I understand that men and women tend to trend differently in wants, needs, emotions and aspirations. Obviously there is some overlap in the traits, no one would argue otherwise, but I find it absolutely debilitating how how the Social Justice Warriors of today want the sexes to be THE EXACT SAME, and everything has to be gender neutral and we all have the exact same brains and chemistry, except one person has a penis and the other has a vagina.

YOU are stating this as a binary--either we concern ourselves with the fact that "men and women tend to trend differently in wants, needs, emotions and aspirations," OR we think that both sexes are "THE EXACT SAME." How about this--I don't think that both sexes are "THE EXACT SAME," but when it comes to interacting with individual human beings, including my (hypothetical/future) children, why does it matter that men and women tend to "trend differently"? Can't you look at your kid's individual interests, strengths, talents, and go from there?

While I applaud YOUR personal gumption, ability to multitask and high achiever mentality, the sad reality is that MOST women have been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to this. I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers. Honestly, I have zero, zilch, nada, no problem whatsoever with women choosing any career path they desire, whether it be President of the U.S.A or homemaker, but this idea that all women can and should "have it all" is absurd, and I am at least finding that these days more and more women are starting to admit this (just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"). And hey, if you don't believe me then just look up stats for the past 30yrs surrounding declining female happiness, increased female depression, increased female prescription mood stabilizer drug use, etc. (women have always outnumbered men in the latter two categories and the situation has only been more skewed as men have stayed faily consistent in all these categories over this time period). I don't think that it's a coincidence that these all trend upwards starting at the same time that the "have it all" mentality was pushed on a generation. Do I have a study to back up that correlation, well no, but call it a hunch that it's part of the problem. And I also think they many many younger women are looking at their single moms of divorce, spinster aunts and workaholic older female coworkers, many of the three in self or outsourced therapy, and saying "nahhhh, this was stupid, what the hell were they doing when they decided to that THIS was the way to go?"

Has it occurred to you is that part of the problem is society telling men they don't have to help as much with housework and parenting, because that's the woman's primary responsibility? Check out the American Time Use Survey from 2013:

--On the days they worked, employed men worked 53 minutes more than employed women.
    This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time.
    However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per
    week), men worked longer than women--8.3 hours compared with 7.7 hours. (See
    table 4.)

...

--On an average day, 83 percent of women and 65 percent of men spent some time
    doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial
    and other household management. (See table 1.)

  --On the days they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours
    on such activities, while men spent 2.1 hours. (See table 1.)

Also, they don't have a good, quotable summary for this, but if you click through to Table 9 you'll see that on an average day, women spend 1.7 hours on childcare, while men spend 0.9 hours.

So in the average family with children under 18, men work 0.6 hours more per day than women, but women spend at least 1.3 more hours on household tasks and childcare (not even accounting for the fact that on any given day, 35% of men do no housework whereas only 17% of women can say the same).

To summarize, the average woman is burned out because the average man isn't fucking helping.

[rocksinmyhead]

I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers.

Just to be clear, is it possible for MOST men to be both do-it-all professionals and good fathers?  (Or is being a good mother harder and require more time and energy?  Or is that because she's required to take on more of the household stuff so the guy can "do it all"?)

I'd argue it's that nobody can actually DO IT ALL.  There are always trade-offs in how we spend our time.  Pretending that this only is the case for women is a fascinating argument.

Didn't see your post before I wrote mine, but yes. THIS.

As well, adding on to my last post, my corporation is great about equality, as I've met and spoke with 3 female VPs, all in their 40s or early 50s, but guess the catch...All three had no children, and two were single. Tradeoffs...

I am thisclose to literally banging my head on my desk because you can't see why this is the case for women but not for men. Why do men get to have families AND high-powered careers? Is it because we're all socialized to believe that women must do the majority of the housework and parenting, regardless of who is the primary breadwinner?

[jka468]

--On the days they worked, employed men worked 53 minutes more than employed women.
    This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time.
    However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per
    week), men worked longer than women--8.3 hours compared with 7.7 hours. (See
    table 4.)

...

--On an average day, 83 percent of women and 65 percent of men spent some time
    doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial
    and other household management. (See table 1.)

  --On the days they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours
    on such activities, while men spent 2.1 hours. (See table 1.)

Also, they don't have a good, quotable summary for this, but if you click through to Table 9 you'll see that on an average day, women spend 1.7 hours on childcare, while men spend 0.9 hours.

So in the average family with children under 18, men work 0.6 hours more per day than women, but women spend at least 1.3 more hours on household tasks and childcare (not even accounting for the fact that on any given day, 35% of men do no housework whereas only 17% of women can say the same).

To summarize, the average woman is burned out because the average man isn't fucking helping.

This is really simple and not accounted for in any survey...Most men, beyond basic cleanliness and order, don't give half as many shits about household tidiness as women do. Women put in more time because they WANT to put in more time, guys don't really care that much either way. It's a choice that many women make and then they get mad when their husbands don't want to live up to their own household duty expectations.

[rocksinmyhead]

--On the days they worked, employed men worked 53 minutes more than employed women.
    This difference partly reflects women's greater likelihood of working part time.
    However, even among full-time workers (those usually working 35 hours or more per
    week), men worked longer than women--8.3 hours compared with 7.7 hours. (See
    table 4.)

...

--On an average day, 83 percent of women and 65 percent of men spent some time
    doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial
    and other household management. (See table 1.)

  --On the days they did household activities, women spent an average of 2.6 hours
    on such activities, while men spent 2.1 hours. (See table 1.)

Also, they don't have a good, quotable summary for this, but if you click through to Table 9 you'll see that on an average day, women spend 1.7 hours on childcare, while men spend 0.9 hours.

So in the average family with children under 18, men work 0.6 hours more per day than women, but women spend at least 1.3 more hours on household tasks and childcare (not even accounting for the fact that on any given day, 35% of men do no housework whereas only 17% of women can say the same).

To summarize, the average woman is burned out because the average man isn't fucking helping.

This is really simple and not accounted for in any survey...Most men, beyond basic cleanliness and order, don't give half as many shits about household tidiness as women do. Women put in more time because they WANT to put in more time, guys don't really care that much either way. It's a choice that many women make and then they get mad when their husbands don't want to live up to their own household duty expectations.

I would argue that women are the ones who will be judged by outsiders if the family home is in shambles.

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

[jka468]

Good point.  When I think of an unconscious bias, I'm not imagining something that is right out in the open that people can notice and put their finger on.  I guess your comment made me think of acts that are more explicit than what I had in mind previously.  Are you talking about things that are undeniably sexist?  If so, do you ever speak up?  Do you document it?  Could you document it?  "It's not intentional" only goes so far.  People need to be held accountable to actually be fair and professional in the workplace.

At a going away party, a male boss kisses a female subordinate on the forehead.  How do you document that without sounding like a harpy?  Why do you document it if that boss is the one who is leaving?  What does that do to the authority of the female subordinate (middle management) whose team saw it happen?  What if he was drunk, because it was his going away party?

I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers.

Just to be clear, is it possible for MOST men to be both do-it-all professionals and good fathers?  (Or is being a good mother harder and require more time and energy?  Or is that because she's required to take on more of the household stuff so the guy can "do it all"?)

I'd argue it's that nobody can actually DO IT ALL.  There are always trade-offs in how we spend our time.  Pretending that this only is the case for women is a fascinating argument.

I'm a good looking younger, unmarried man (I have a lovely gf), and I've been touched by female coworkers at times on my lower back, hip and shoulders. Is this undeniably sexist? Should I make a big stink about it? Outside of work I can't even count the number of times I've been "assaulted" by females in a bar setting.

As for your point to me, I do agree that there are many working fathers who prioritize work too much, for whatever reason, and are not great fathers to their children. But, as I'll argue until the day that I die, children have different needs from their mothers and fathers, and yes, I think it is much easier for men to be solid professionals and good fathers than it is for women.

I would argue that women are the ones who will be judged by outsiders if the family home is in shambles.

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

First, no one said anything about shambles, but if these theoretical outsiders are judging so much, why is a man's responsiblity to appease his wife for the sake of outsiders? Many outsiders judge mustachians as cheap asses who don't know how to live. Aren't we supposed to not care about that?

As for childcare, men are working more, so that takes some of the discrepency, and yes, as a man, and talking to many men throughout my life, I think it's clear that in general women have a greater urge to to spend time with children, especially young children.

I've given this example to women before about men and children, and it really seems to blow many of their minds that guys think like this...If I had to guess, I would say that men wanting children is on a nice bellcurve. About 20% really want kids, 20% really don't want kids and 60% are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum with "well, if I got a girl/wife, she wants kids and it happens, then okay, I guess I'll go with it". I would argue that those percentages are much much different for women as a whole.

[Left]

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

he'd probably also say men are biologically wired to "labor" so he has no problems working 20/7 (4 hours sleep, aren't I kind?) to support his family.

I don't get the entire "Traditional" vs modern concept... people who whine about "traditional" values ironically travel the world to find it when traditionally they should just marry their childhood friend?

[jka468]

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

he'd probably also say men are biologically wired to "labor" so he has no problems working 20/7 (4 hours sleep, aren't I kind?) to support his family.

I don't get the entire "Traditional" vs modern concept... people who whine about "traditional" values ironically travel the world to find it when traditionally they should just marry their childhood friend?

The childcare difference was 0.8hrs. Math is hard huh?

[rocksinmyhead]

I would argue that women are the ones who will be judged by outsiders if the family home is in shambles.

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

First, no one said anything about shambles, but if these theoretical outsiders are judging so much, why is a man's responsiblity to appease his wife for the sake of outsiders? Many outsiders judge mustachians as cheap asses who don't know how to live. Aren't we supposed to not care about that?

I don't know about you, but I've seen how some bachelors live, and I think CPS/society in general would be skeptical that it is a sufficiently clean and healthy setting for children. And trust me, I'm not a germaphobe or a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination.

[jka468]

I would argue that women are the ones who will be judged by outsiders if the family home is in shambles.

Also, you haven't explained the discrepancy in hours of childcare, although I can guess in advance you'll say "women are biologically wired to prefer to spend more time on childcare"...

First, no one said anything about shambles, but if these theoretical outsiders are judging so much, why is a man's responsiblity to appease his wife for the sake of outsiders? Many outsiders judge mustachians as cheap asses who don't know how to live. Aren't we supposed to not care about that?

I don't know about you, but I've seen how some bachelors live, and I think CPS/society in general would be skeptical that it is a sufficiently clean and healthy setting for children. And trust me, I'm not a germaphobe or a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination.

And I've seen some female bachelorettes who live in apartments that look like a tornado just came through, tampons on the bathroom tiles and all. Stop basing an argument on the lowest common denominator, as a vast vast majority of guys would never choose to live in cess pools, but that doesn't mean that they have to live up to female standards.

Hey, I'll give you my situation. I've lived with male roomates and now live with my gf. When I lived with male roommates the place was never spotless, but it was still always presentable. I would clean certain areas (my bathroom, kitchen) and dust about once every 2 months, and I was perfectly happy with this. Now, living with my gf, who likes the place much neater, she likes to dust, clean (full scrubdowns), vaccum, do laundry, etc. about once a week. Of course, if we look at the numbers she is doing waaayyyyy more household chores than me, though I do cook and do dishes at times, but would those numbers really be fair just because she feels the need to live much neater than me? And for the record, my gf doesn't mind one bit, as she completely understood what she was getting into, and she gets that "I like the place much neater than he would generally have it, so I'll keep it that way".

[jka468]

I've only witnessed one case of out and out sexual harassment in my career, in my first year on the job, and the perpetrator was not the brightest individual.  He was pretty low class, actually, and he left shortly afterward.  Everyone I work with now is polite and fair-minded as far as I can tell.  It seems really strange to me to think that there might be sexism occurring all around me and I can't see it.  But I can't disregard your personal experience either.  I really don't know what to make of it.  Maybe I've been very lucky to be surrounded by good people.

This is more about street/bar harassment, but I think it applies: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html

Whether it's your environment or their secrecy our your not recognizing it...You should know it does still happen. All the time. These stories (of overt harrassment or subtle discouragement in the workplace) are not uncommon.

This is interesting.  It's not actually saying men don't recognize it.  It's saying that harassers avoid misbehaving when other men are around.  That is more than plausible.  It especially makes sense if you believe that the vast majority of men don't approve of such behavior.

As you probably recognize, people that are skeptical of widespread discrimination in the workplace are not going to be moved by tales of drunk guys inappropriately hitting on girls at parties.  We already know about that.

Side-point:  since we're on the topic of innate characteristics, it's likely that women's fear reaction to those guys is probably more evolution-driven than they themselves realize.  Getting hit on by Thog the Caveman is probably a lot more dangerous than drunk Bob at a party in 2014.  Men walk a very fine line when hitting on women.  It's generally acknowledged that confidence and a sense of humor are important, but it's very easy to creep women out.  It's a combination of 1) you don't know that woman very well, so you can't calibrate your advance to her personality and 2) her level of attraction to you colors her reception.

I seriously applaud you. I can tell that you seriously consider what life is like from a male's POV, which, as a man, I appreciate. I believe you have a son? If so, he is going to grow up to be a great young man with the confidence to navigate around the new sexual landscape.

I could make a million more points regarding your side-note, but you did the idea great justice, and it's refreshing. You have a great head on your shoulders.

Edit: Assumed you were a woman and that there was some hope in the world lol.

[rocksinmyhead]

I seriously applaud you. I can tell that you seriously consider what life is like from a male's POV, which, as a man, I appreciate. I believe you have a son? If so, he is going to grow up to be a great young man with the confidence to navigate around the new sexual landscape.

I could make a million more points regarding your side-note, but you did the idea great justice, and it's refreshing. You have a great head on your shoulders.

What the fuck are you talking about? PloddingInsight is a man. He said as much in the Overheard on Facebook thread. Of course he considers life from a man's POV, it's his POV! I wish you both could do the same for women. Oh well.

[jka468]

I seriously applaud you. I can tell that you seriously consider what life is like from a male's POV, which, as a man, I appreciate. I believe you have a son? If so, he is going to grow up to be a great young man with the confidence to navigate around the new sexual landscape.

I could make a million more points regarding your side-note, but you did the idea great justice, and it's refreshing. You have a great head on your shoulders.

What the fuck are you talking about? PloddingInsight is a man. He said as much in the Overheard on Facebook thread. Of course he considers life from a man's POV, it's his POV! I wish you both could do the same for women. Oh well.

I mistakenly assumed OP was a woman as I don't stalk all threads, but oh well, it makes sense now. Don't get so mad.

[galliver]

just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"

Oh I just love that you brought this up. Because the "campaign" is against such a MASSIVE straw man and reveals a complete ignorance of what feminism actually means.

[SisterX]

PloddingInsight,

Don't let them get to you. I think you're doing your children a great service in the way you are raising them, which in turn will make them much more likely to be fulfilled and happy adults. Like you, I actually walk through the world with my eyes open and, as a whole, I understand that men and women tend to trend differently in wants, needs, emotions and aspirations. Obviously there is some overlap in the traits, no one would argue otherwise, but I find it absolutely debilitating how how the Social Justice Warriors of today want the sexes to be THE EXACT SAME, and everything has to be gender neutral and we all have the exact same brains and chemistry, except one person has a penis and the other has a vagina.

That's why initiatives like "push MORE and MORE women into Math and Engineering" haven't caught on and will never catch on, to the huge dismay of this progressive agenda. Personally, I went to one of the top ranked high schools and one of the top ranked universities in the US (where I studied ChE), and it's painfully obvious that many women simply are not interested in STEM type fields. There was no secret agenda to keep women out, but somehow in high school AP Calc and in my college eng classes there was a 3-4:1 male:female ratio. And remember, I was surrounded by intelligent women through both these schools, and for the most part they still chose non-STEM subjects.

Also, to your point about IQ variance in males (being more represented on both ends), it makes a ton of sense when it comes to STEM. It has been documented that certain STEM majors like ChE, Comp Sci, Physics, etc. have students with average IQs of about 130+, which is two standard deviations above the mean. So, logically speaking, it's futile to try to push more women into these fields, not because there is a secret boys only network, but rather because they are already adequately represented at around 25%, since at higher IQs (130+), it has been documented that men outnumber women anywhere from 2.25-3:1. If anyone is interested in a STEM subject, be it male, female or alien, them absolutely study it, but the last thing we need is inferior STEM majors who are being ushered through because of a perverse equality agenda.

Now, I'm probably going to get rebuttals such as "selection bias", "inherent sexism", "IQ test fallicy", etc., etc., but oh well; I've already learned that people are going to FEEL how they need to in order to conform to their world view, and that most people are not willing to look at the numbers and decide based on logic.

By emphasizing the importance of traditional female roles, you're stifling your daughters' ability to develop all aspects of their characters and to understand that they can be wonderful mothers and great lawyers (or whatever they want).  Your sons aren't limited to a binary choice; your daughters shouldn't be either.  You're squelching their right to self-determination in ways that you're not doing to your sons and that's insidious.

Like men, women deserve the right to determine the course of lives according to the dictates of their own conscience.  When I was younger, I stayed home for three years with my first baby and two with my second.  That was great.  Then I taught school.  Now, I'm a lawyer and I love what I do and the never-ending growth it brings.  I am also proud of all the considerable domestic skills that I have.  Don't limit my range of talents!  I bake amazing bread and negotiate business deals.  Next year, I'll have an empty nest and will ramp my career up to the next level.  None of that means I'm not fully invested in mothering (to the point of adopting a third child along the way).  It is ludicrous to take a snapshot of one phase of any person's life and extrapolate that as "the way things should be" for all time.

You are moving the goal posts, as it still isn't a binary choice, but rather PloddingInsight is being practical and rational in the guidance and advice that she gives her children, which I think is great. Putting no boundaries on people and proclaiming stardom for every single child is why the Boomers have created the most narcisstic generation in history (the Millenials), of which I am a part.

While I applaud YOUR personal gumption, ability to multitask and high achiever mentality, the sad reality is that MOST women have been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to this. I know you are going to disagree with this, so I won't bother to argue in future posts, but because of biological sex differences I think that MOST women, unlike you, can't be both do-it-all professionals and good mothers. Honestly, I have zero, zilch, nada, no problem whatsoever with women choosing any career path they desire, whether it be President of the U.S.A or homemaker, but this idea that all women can and should "have it all" is absurd, and I am at least finding that these days more and more women are starting to admit this (just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"). And hey, if you don't believe me then just look up stats for the past 30yrs surrounding declining female happiness, increased female depression, increased female prescription mood stabilizer drug use, etc. (women have always outnumbered men in the latter two categories and the situation has only been more skewed as men have stayed faily consistent in all these categories over this time period). I don't think that it's a coincidence that these all trend upwards starting at the same time that the "have it all" mentality was pushed on a generation. Do I have a study to back up that correlation, well no, but call it a hunch that it's part of the problem. And I also think they many many younger women are looking at their single moms of divorce, spinster aunts and workaholic older female coworkers, many of the three in self or outsourced therapy, and saying "nahhhh, this was stupid, what the hell were they doing when they decided that THIS was the way to go?"

Sorry, but life is about conflicting choices, which we as mustachians should understand, and for the past 25yrs women have been loathe to acknowledge this. Many don't, or won't, realize that if they want a family, then they will end up harming their career and/or family dynamic. This is the price you pay as a woman, and it has nothing to do about fairness or right/wrong; it just is what it is. Men certainly have many tough choices in their lives as well. And what really irks me is the idea that society should make concessions to women who feel entitled to have it all, and feel that the workplace/home life should cater to whatever needs they have, differences be damned. Rather than work around the system and figure out how to benefit, progressives want to change the system completely and force everyone else to work around them. Everyone has to make choices, all I'm saying is don't expect others to have to pay for yours.

It's funny.  You say all this but, having a career and something other than just my daughter in my life makes me a waaaaaaaaay better parent.  When I get to spend time with her, I really want to spend that time with her, rather than spending it on my phone or Facebook or even the MMM forum.  I'd argue that she gets a lot more of my focused attention because it's much easier to tell myself, "No, I won't do X right now, that can wait until she's in bed."
Also, are you seriously arguing all of this from the idea that men are smarter?  Seriously?  That's just...so much part of the problem, that you would even think that.  Women are told from birth that we are not good at certain things, like science and math.  Then, we're taught in such a way that shows only men in those fields (yay Watson and Crick! ...who the hell is Rosalind Franklin?), and people are surprised that more men than women go into STEM fields?  You might not be able to understand all of this, because after all you're just a man (see?  we can talk down to you as well), but this sort of stuff is rampant.  This is why we need girl-friendly engineering toys and sites like A Mighty Girl, and yes, why we still need feminism.  Because people like you think that it's a women vs. men thing, rather than seeing people as people and trying to bring out all children's talents.  I won't push my daughter into a STEM field anymore than I would push a son.  At the very least, pushing STEM fields makes them seem like they're inherently "better".  I would disagree.  They might seem more employable because that's what we've been told, but English majors (like me!) are actually highly in demand and it's a very versatile field.  But, then again, liberal arts are usually viewed as women's majors, so of course they aren't prized as highly as STEM subjects, which are more manly and, thus, better.
There's been a lot of research recently into the whole idea of pink.  Little girls love pink but by elementary school they start to reject it.  Why?  Because it's girly, and even girls don't want to be associated with girly things because they have been told for their whole lives that girl things are bad and should be hated.  So little girls reject girly culture, thus continuing the myth that all which is male is better.  I see a lot of that in your arguments.  You prize women and say that we have more drive for homemaking than men, but at the same time are saying that women are inherently stupider and less ambitious.  Since you're so fond of dichotomies, here's your choice: you can either put women on a pedestal OR you can claim that we're somehow less than men.  You don't get it both ways.
For what it's worth, women tend to actually be much better multi-taskers simply because we've been conditioned to need to do multiple things at once constantly.  It takes a toll, however.

[rocksinmyhead]

I seriously applaud you. I can tell that you seriously consider what life is like from a male's POV, which, as a man, I appreciate. I believe you have a son? If so, he is going to grow up to be a great young man with the confidence to navigate around the new sexual landscape.

I could make a million more points regarding your side-note, but you did the idea great justice, and it's refreshing. You have a great head on your shoulders.

What the fuck are you talking about? PloddingInsight is a man. He said as much in the Overheard on Facebook thread. Of course he considers life from a man's POV, it's his POV! I wish you both could do the same for women. Oh well.

I mistakenly assumed OP was a woman as I don't stalk all threads, but oh well, it makes sense now. Don't get so mad.

Sorry, just seemed like you were being deliberately obtuse.

[galliver]

just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"

Oh I just love that you brought this up. Because the "campaign" is against such a MASSIVE straw man and reveals a complete ignorance of what feminism actually means.

Found someone who said it better:

Unabashed feminist author Catlin Moran lampooned women who did not identify as feminists in her book, How To Be a Woman. But in her criticism, she stressed that women who don’t identify as feminists don’t realize what feminism implies, nor all that feminism has secured for them:

What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?

From: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/24/you-don-t-hate-feminism-you-just-don-t-understand-it.html

[jka468]

just look at the viral campaign of "I don't need feminism"

Oh I just love that you brought this up. Because the "campaign" is against such a MASSIVE straw man and reveals a complete ignorance of what feminism actually means.

Found someone who said it better:

Unabashed feminist author Catlin Moran lampooned women who did not identify as feminists in her book, How To Be a Woman. But in her criticism, she stressed that women who don’t identify as feminists don’t realize what feminism implies, nor all that feminism has secured for them:

What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?

From: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/24/you-don-t-hate-feminism-you-just-don-t-understand-it.html

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what feminism is or isn't about in theory, all that matters is the message that vocal feminists shreak, which is what is heard by the masses, and lately much of that message has been about how oppressed women still are, how men are constantly sexaully assaulting everything that moves and are basically all neanderthals if they show any bit of traditional masculinity, how women (falsely) make 70 cents to every dollar a man makes (I've already debunked this myth on these boards, but when you hold constant family situation, i.e. kids vs. no kids, job level and career length, this imaginary paygap vanishes to nothing), how men constantly need to check their privilege, ad nauseum. A certain percentage of young women are waking up to this shitty, adversarial narrative and they're realizing that their "sisters" are spouting so much bullshit that the good parts of the message don't even matter any more. And there still are certain good points, I'll agree with that, but they are laughably drowned out now by babble and nonsense.

I also like how the article you posted purports to TELL other women that they are wrong, because what they are actually seeing and feeling in their daily lives, i.e. misandry disguised as "feminism", is NOT REALLY what is happening and they are just interpreting everything the wrong way because they just can't truly understand, unlike their enlightened REAL feminist counterparts. C'mon, people are only going to be lemmings so long until it the message gets absurd, which has happened.

Seriously, more gen X and Boomer women are in therapy, taking meds, single moms, divorced, workaholics, etc. than ever before in history, and I don't blame certain younger women for looking around now, realizing that all this so-called sexism and oppression is bullshit and that it's really not that bad if they find a good man to fall in love with, pop out a couple of kids and head back to more traditional gender roles. This isn't happening everywhere, certainly, but this idea has certainly been growing and women have started to be more vocal about it and the false bill of good that their older "sisters" sold them.

[jka468]

It's funny.  You say all this but, having a career and something other than just my daughter in my life makes me a waaaaaaaaay better parent.  When I get to spend time with her, I really want to spend that time with her, rather than spending it on my phone or Facebook or even the MMM forum.  I'd argue that she gets a lot more of my focused attention because it's much easier to tell myself, "No, I won't do X right now, that can wait until she's in bed."
Also, are you seriously arguing all of this from the idea that men are smarter?  Seriously?  That's just...so much part of the problem, that you would even think that.  Women are told from birth that we are not good at certain things, like science and math.  Then, we're taught in such a way that shows only men in those fields (yay Watson and Crick! ...who the hell is Rosalind Franklin?), and people are surprised that more men than women go into STEM fields?  You might not be able to understand all of this, because after all you're just a man (see?  we can talk down to you as well), but this sort of stuff is rampant.  This is why we need girl-friendly engineering toys and sites like A Mighty Girl, and yes, why we still need feminism.  Because people like you think that it's a women vs. men thing, rather than seeing people as people and trying to bring out all children's talents.  I won't push my daughter into a STEM field anymore than I would push a son.  At the very least, pushing STEM fields makes them seem like they're inherently "better".  I would disagree.  They might seem more employable because that's what we've been told, but English majors (like me!) are actually highly in demand and it's a very versatile field.  But, then again, liberal arts are usually viewed as women's majors, so of course they aren't prized as highly as STEM subjects, which are more manly and, thus, better.
There's been a lot of research recently into the whole idea of pink.  Little girls love pink but by elementary school they start to reject it.  Why?  Because it's girly, and even girls don't want to be associated with girly things because they have been told for their whole lives that girl things are bad and should be hated.  So little girls reject girly culture, thus continuing the myth that all which is male is better.  I see a lot of that in your arguments.  You prize women and say that we have more drive for homemaking than men, but at the same time are saying that women are inherently stupider and less ambitious.  Since you're so fond of dichotomies, here's your choice: you can either put women on a pedestal OR you can claim that we're somehow less than men.  You don't get it both ways.
For what it's worth, women tend to actually be much better multi-taskers simply because we've been conditioned to need to do multiple things at once constantly.  It takes a toll, however.

Yea, okay, IQ tests are just a scam of the patriachy to oppress women and "prove" that they should be homemakers.

Have you ever taken a stats course, honestly? Go wikipedia the terms "variance", read all about it and them come back and discuss with me, or else stop posting because you sound silly. On average, women and men are just as intelligent as one another, but men have a much higher variance when it comes to intelligence, meaning there are many more 75IQ men (special ed and verging on mentally handicapped) and 125+IQ men than the number of 75IQ women and 125+IQ women. Hell, my gf is a middle school special ed teacher who has now taught for 6 years, and all of her kids basically have IQs <100, with most in the 75-90 range. I asked her what her ratio of boys to girls was throughout the years, and she guessed about 4-5:1. It's not simply a coincidence, the rest of the school has a fairly even male:female distribution. When we take it further up the IQ chain, to superior intelligence (145+IQ) and genius (160+), men start outnumbering women something like 4-6:1.

Hopefully with this info you can then extrapolate the consequences of having many more men than women with low and high IQs. If you can't figure it out, then let me explain it to you...in fields where a high IQ is basically a prereq (engineering, comp sci, physics, stats) more men than women will populate these fields. It isn't a conspiracy, I never once got together with my AP calc bros in high school or engineering bros in college to figure out how we could further oppress women and keep them out of "our" field of study; it's just biology. In situations like violent crime and theft, where low IQ is a strong correlating factor (not necessarily a predicting factor) we then find more men than women who commit these crimes, and hence more men than women in jail. I don't see anyone arguing that we should put more women in jail or more women in special ed programs during school. Obviously this last point is laughable, just how arguing a bunch of nonsense on the other end of the spectrum is laughable. Hopefully this doesn't make too much sense and blow your mind.

And this isn't even taking into account my belief that many women, even the intelligent ones, tend to have less of an innate interest in these types of subjects than their equal counterpart men (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!). I mean fine, you can debate this topic and say it's social conditioning, and I'll basically scoff, but at least you can debate it. You can't debate my former point unless you really want to start grasping at straws.

[Gin1984]

It's funny.  You say all this but, having a career and something other than just my daughter in my life makes me a waaaaaaaaay better parent.  When I get to spend time with her, I really want to spend that time with her, rather than spending it on my phone or Facebook or even the MMM forum.  I'd argue that she gets a lot more of my focused attention because it's much easier to tell myself, "No, I won't do X right now, that can wait until she's in bed."
Also, are you seriously arguing all of this from the idea that men are smarter?  Seriously?  That's just...so much part of the problem, that you would even think that.  Women are told from birth that we are not good at certain things, like science and math.  Then, we're taught in such a way that shows only men in those fields (yay Watson and Crick! ...who the hell is Rosalind Franklin?), and people are surprised that more men than women go into STEM fields?  You might not be able to understand all of this, because after all you're just a man (see?  we can talk down to you as well), but this sort of stuff is rampant.  This is why we need girl-friendly engineering toys and sites like A Mighty Girl, and yes, why we still need feminism.  Because people like you think that it's a women vs. men thing, rather than seeing people as people and trying to bring out all children's talents.  I won't push my daughter into a STEM field anymore than I would push a son.  At the very least, pushing STEM fields makes them seem like they're inherently "better".  I would disagree.  They might seem more employable because that's what we've been told, but English majors (like me!) are actually highly in demand and it's a very versatile field.  But, then again, liberal arts are usually viewed as women's majors, so of course they aren't prized as highly as STEM subjects, which are more manly and, thus, better.
There's been a lot of research recently into the whole idea of pink.  Little girls love pink but by elementary school they start to reject it.  Why?  Because it's girly, and even girls don't want to be associated with girly things because they have been told for their whole lives that girl things are bad and should be hated.  So little girls reject girly culture, thus continuing the myth that all which is male is better.  I see a lot of that in your arguments.  You prize women and say that we have more drive for homemaking than men, but at the same time are saying that women are inherently stupider and less ambitious.  Since you're so fond of dichotomies, here's your choice: you can either put women on a pedestal OR you can claim that we're somehow less than men.  You don't get it both ways.
For what it's worth, women tend to actually be much better multi-taskers simply because we've been conditioned to need to do multiple things at once constantly.  It takes a toll, however.

Yea, okay, IQ tests are just a scam of the patriachy to oppress women and "prove" that they should be homemakers.

Have you ever taken a stats course, honestly? Go wikipedia the terms "variance", read all about it and them come back and discuss with me, or else stop posting because you sound silly. On average, women and men are just as intelligent as one another, but men have a much higher variance when it comes to intelligence, meaning there are many more 75IQ men (special ed and verging on mentally handicapped) and 125+IQ men than the number of 75IQ women and 125+IQ women. Hell, my gf is a middle school special ed teacher who has now taught for 6 years, and all of her kids basically have IQs <100, with most in the 75-90 range. I asked her what her ratio of boys to girls was throughout the years, and she guessed about 4-5:1. It's not simply a coincidence, the rest of the school has a fairly even male:female distribution. When we take it further up the IQ chain, to superior intelligence (145+IQ) and genius (160+), men start outnumbering women something like 4-6:1.

Hopefully with this info you can then extrapolate the consequences of having many more men than women with low and high IQs. If you can't figure it out, then let me explain it to you...in fields where a high IQ is basically a prereq (engineering, comp sci, physics, stats) more men than women will populate these fields. It isn't a conspiracy, I never once got together with my AP calc bros in high school or engineering bros in college to figure out how we could further oppress women and keep them out of "our" field of study; it's just biology. In situations like violent crime and theft, where low IQ is a strong correlating factor (not necessarily a predicting factor) we then find more men than women who commit these crimes, and hence more men than women in jail. I don't see anyone arguing that we should put more women in jail. Hopefully this doesn't make too much sense and blow your mind.

And this isn't even taking into account my belief that many women, even the intelligent ones, tend to have less of an innate interest in these types of subjects than their equal counterpart men (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!). I mean fine, you can debate this topic and say it's social conditioning, and I'll basically scoff, but at least you can debate it. You can't debate my former point unless you really want to start grasping at straws.

My undergrad required a lot of statistics and also how to build these tests.  IQ tests are tests of the dominant culture, and depending on how you structure the test you can get very different results.  The IQ test is considered an approximation, not an end point.  You can manipulate it with ease, with the proper training.  Therefore your point therefore is based on a flawed design and is not debatable because the base is not accurate. 

[jka468]

It's funny.  You say all this but, having a career and something other than just my daughter in my life makes me a waaaaaaaaay better parent.  When I get to spend time with her, I really want to spend that time with her, rather than spending it on my phone or Facebook or even the MMM forum.  I'd argue that she gets a lot more of my focused attention because it's much easier to tell myself, "No, I won't do X right now, that can wait until she's in bed."
Also, are you seriously arguing all of this from the idea that men are smarter?  Seriously?  That's just...so much part of the problem, that you would even think that.  Women are told from birth that we are not good at certain things, like science and math.  Then, we're taught in such a way that shows only men in those fields (yay Watson and Crick! ...who the hell is Rosalind Franklin?), and people are surprised that more men than women go into STEM fields?  You might not be able to understand all of this, because after all you're just a man (see?  we can talk down to you as well), but this sort of stuff is rampant.  This is why we need girl-friendly engineering toys and sites like A Mighty Girl, and yes, why we still need feminism.  Because people like you think that it's a women vs. men thing, rather than seeing people as people and trying to bring out all children's talents.  I won't push my daughter into a STEM field anymore than I would push a son.  At the very least, pushing STEM fields makes them seem like they're inherently "better".  I would disagree.  They might seem more employable because that's what we've been told, but English majors (like me!) are actually highly in demand and it's a very versatile field.  But, then again, liberal arts are usually viewed as women's majors, so of course they aren't prized as highly as STEM subjects, which are more manly and, thus, better.
There's been a lot of research recently into the whole idea of pink.  Little girls love pink but by elementary school they start to reject it.  Why?  Because it's girly, and even girls don't want to be associated with girly things because they have been told for their whole lives that girl things are bad and should be hated.  So little girls reject girly culture, thus continuing the myth that all which is male is better.  I see a lot of that in your arguments.  You prize women and say that we have more drive for homemaking than men, but at the same time are saying that women are inherently stupider and less ambitious.  Since you're so fond of dichotomies, here's your choice: you can either put women on a pedestal OR you can claim that we're somehow less than men.  You don't get it both ways.
For what it's worth, women tend to actually be much better multi-taskers simply because we've been conditioned to need to do multiple things at once constantly.  It takes a toll, however.

Yea, okay, IQ tests are just a scam of the patriachy to oppress women and "prove" that they should be homemakers.

Have you ever taken a stats course, honestly? Go wikipedia the terms "variance", read all about it and them come back and discuss with me, or else stop posting because you sound silly. On average, women and men are just as intelligent as one another, but men have a much higher variance when it comes to intelligence, meaning there are many more 75IQ men (special ed and verging on mentally handicapped) and 125+IQ men than the number of 75IQ women and 125+IQ women. Hell, my gf is a middle school special ed teacher who has now taught for 6 years, and all of her kids basically have IQs <100, with most in the 75-90 range. I asked her what her ratio of boys to girls was throughout the years, and she guessed about 4-5:1. It's not simply a coincidence, the rest of the school has a fairly even male:female distribution. When we take it further up the IQ chain, to superior intelligence (145+IQ) and genius (160+), men start outnumbering women something like 4-6:1.

Hopefully with this info you can then extrapolate the consequences of having many more men than women with low and high IQs. If you can't figure it out, then let me explain it to you...in fields where a high IQ is basically a prereq (engineering, comp sci, physics, stats) more men than women will populate these fields. It isn't a conspiracy, I never once got together with my AP calc bros in high school or engineering bros in college to figure out how we could further oppress women and keep them out of "our" field of study; it's just biology. In situations like violent crime and theft, where low IQ is a strong correlating factor (not necessarily a predicting factor) we then find more men than women who commit these crimes, and hence more men than women in jail. I don't see anyone arguing that we should put more women in jail. Hopefully this doesn't make too much sense and blow your mind.

And this isn't even taking into account my belief that many women, even the intelligent ones, tend to have less of an innate interest in these types of subjects than their equal counterpart men (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!). I mean fine, you can debate this topic and say it's social conditioning, and I'll basically scoff, but at least you can debate it. You can't debate my former point unless you really want to start grasping at straws.

My undergrad required a lot of statistics and also how to build these tests.  IQ tests are tests of the dominant culture, and depending on how you structure the test you can get very different results.  The IQ test is considered an approximation, not an end point.  You can manipulate it with ease, with the proper training.  Therefore your point therefore is based on a flawed design and is not debatable because the base is not accurate.

Lol, cool conspiracy theory. For the last 100 years, including today, IQs tests have shown very similar comparisons between males and females, even accounting for the Flynn effect, but yea, it's all been a massive scheme by the patriarchy to keep women down and not let them realize their "true" intelligence. Are we really getting this absurd now? There is literally no point in debate if you're just oging to gloss over this data and basically say "nahhh, this doesn't fit my narrative so I'm just gonna claim a mass, unconscious conspiracy and negate all the data so that my world view remains intact".

This is crazy.

[TrulyStashin]

It's time to close this thread.  Therefore, I suggest that all those who believe in the Mustachian principles of FI and self-empowerment abandon this Ship of Stupidity.  Don't post here anymore.

It is absurd to come to a forum dedicated to the principles of financial independence and self-empowerment and advocate for the idea that a particular class of adults are, by nature, happiest when dependent on other adults.   Take your last-century ideology to some other forum.

[jka468]

It is absurd to come to a forum dedicated to the principles of financial independence and self-empowerment and advocate for the idea that a particular class of adults are, by nature, happiest when dependent on other adults.   Take your last-century ideology to some other forum.

I don't recall reading this anywhere in the thread nor anyone advocating it.

Pretty funny how you advocate closing the thread and then feel the need to get a few unfounded jabs in before you go. Oh, the irony.

BTW, this is the off topic forum, hence the discussion that is OFF TOPIC from things like saving 10c on dish soap and how to cut gas costs. If you don't like it, then don't read it or open the thread, but don't try to censor other adults who are having an albeit heated, yet civil, discussion; that's truly egregious.

[Gin1984]

It's funny.  You say all this but, having a career and something other than just my daughter in my life makes me a waaaaaaaaay better parent.  When I get to spend time with her, I really want to spend that time with her, rather than spending it on my phone or Facebook or even the MMM forum.  I'd argue that she gets a lot more of my focused attention because it's much easier to tell myself, "No, I won't do X right now, that can wait until she's in bed."
Also, are you seriously arguing all of this from the idea that men are smarter?  Seriously?  That's just...so much part of the problem, that you would even think that.  Women are told from birth that we are not good at certain things, like science and math.  Then, we're taught in such a way that shows only men in those fields (yay Watson and Crick! ...who the hell is Rosalind Franklin?), and people are surprised that more men than women go into STEM fields?  You might not be able to understand all of this, because after all you're just a man (see?  we can talk down to you as well), but this sort of stuff is rampant.  This is why we need girl-friendly engineering toys and sites like A Mighty Girl, and yes, why we still need feminism.  Because people like you think that it's a women vs. men thing, rather than seeing people as people and trying to bring out all children's talents.  I won't push my daughter into a STEM field anymore than I would push a son.  At the very least, pushing STEM fields makes them seem like they're inherently "better".  I would disagree.  They might seem more employable because that's what we've been told, but English majors (like me!) are actually highly in demand and it's a very versatile field.  But, then again, liberal arts are usually viewed as women's majors, so of course they aren't prized as highly as STEM subjects, which are more manly and, thus, better.
There's been a lot of research recently into the whole idea of pink.  Little girls love pink but by elementary school they start to reject it.  Why?  Because it's girly, and even girls don't want to be associated with girly things because they have been told for their whole lives that girl things are bad and should be hated.  So little girls reject girly culture, thus continuing the myth that all which is male is better.  I see a lot of that in your arguments.  You prize women and say that we have more drive for homemaking than men, but at the same time are saying that women are inherently stupider and less ambitious.  Since you're so fond of dichotomies, here's your choice: you can either put women on a pedestal OR you can claim that we're somehow less than men.  You don't get it both ways.
For what it's worth, women tend to actually be much better multi-taskers simply because we've been conditioned to need to do multiple things at once constantly.  It takes a toll, however.

Yea, okay, IQ tests are just a scam of the patriachy to oppress women and "prove" that they should be homemakers.

Have you ever taken a stats course, honestly? Go wikipedia the terms "variance", read all about it and them come back and discuss with me, or else stop posting because you sound silly. On average, women and men are just as intelligent as one another, but men have a much higher variance when it comes to intelligence, meaning there are many more 75IQ men (special ed and verging on mentally handicapped) and 125+IQ men than the number of 75IQ women and 125+IQ women. Hell, my gf is a middle school special ed teacher who has now taught for 6 years, and all of her kids basically have IQs <100, with most in the 75-90 range. I asked her what her ratio of boys to girls was throughout the years, and she guessed about 4-5:1. It's not simply a coincidence, the rest of the school has a fairly even male:female distribution. When we take it further up the IQ chain, to superior intelligence (145+IQ) and genius (160+), men start outnumbering women something like 4-6:1.

Hopefully with this info you can then extrapolate the consequences of having many more men than women with low and high IQs. If you can't figure it out, then let me explain it to you...in fields where a high IQ is basically a prereq (engineering, comp sci, physics, stats) more men than women will populate these fields. It isn't a conspiracy, I never once got together with my AP calc bros in high school or engineering bros in college to figure out how we could further oppress women and keep them out of "our" field of study; it's just biology. In situations like violent crime and theft, where low IQ is a strong correlating factor (not necessarily a predicting factor) we then find more men than women who commit these crimes, and hence more men than women in jail. I don't see anyone arguing that we should put more women in jail. Hopefully this doesn't make too much sense and blow your mind.

And this isn't even taking into account my belief that many women, even the intelligent ones, tend to have less of an innate interest in these types of subjects than their equal counterpart men (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!). I mean fine, you can debate this topic and say it's social conditioning, and I'll basically scoff, but at least you can debate it. You can't debate my former point unless you really want to start grasping at straws.

My undergrad required a lot of statistics and also how to build these tests.  IQ tests are tests of the dominant culture, and depending on how you structure the test you can get very different results.  The IQ test is considered an approximation, not an end point.  You can manipulate it with ease, with the proper training.  Therefore your point therefore is based on a flawed design and is not debatable because the base is not accurate.

Lol, cool conspiracy theory. For the last 100 years, including today, IQs tests have shown very similar comparisons between males and females, even accounting for the Flynn effect, but yea, it's all been a massive scheme by the patriarchy to keep women down and not let them realize their "true" intelligence. Are we really getting this absurd now? There is literally no point in debate if you're just oging to gloss over this data and basically say "nahhh, this doesn't fit my narrative so I'm just gonna claim a mass, unconscious conspiracy and negate all the data so that my world view remains intact".

This is crazy.

It is crazy and I did not say that, have fun making up strawmen to argue with.  It is much easier for you to make up a crazy idea to argue with then actually look at the data.  So first you state "the larger variance" then you say "IQs tests have shown very similar comparisons between males and females", which is it?  And, would you like to show some peer review studies for this?  Yes, IQ is a concept to help identify people but again, it is an approximation and has little to do with gender effects on which higher education opportunities people go for.  If you look at the research into this field, done by men and women, your ideas don't match with any studied hypothesis that are actually considered possible in this day and age.