[HN Gopher] Sex Differences in Adolescents' Occupational Aspirat...
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       Sex Differences in Adolescents' Occupational Aspirations
        
       Author : Bostonian
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2021-10-29 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (psyarxiv.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (psyarxiv.com)
        
       | Bostonian wrote:
       | The preprint was cited by Alex Tabarrok in the Marginal
       | Revolution blog:
       | https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/10/se...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | exporectomy wrote:
       | 100 years later, we're rediscovering what we already knew. Common
       | story in social sciences. Coming up next, Jews are smarter than
       | blacks. Oh no, not yet! It's still taboo to even think that! But
       | maybe in a few decades, the overton window will shift and
       | researchers will allow themselves to study that honestly.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We already asked you to stop posting flamewar comments, and
         | this is an extreme case, so I've banned this account. You've
         | also been using HN primarily for ideological battle and that's
         | not allowed here, regardless of what you're battling for.
         | Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
       | rubidium wrote:
       | This just in: men and women are biologically different (at the
       | statistical, population level). Shouldn't affect individual level
       | policy. But any metric of equal outcome is misguided.
        
         | john_moscow wrote:
         | We just ended up with a rather perverse definition of equal
         | outcome. What you may intuitively want to do as a society is
         | maximize everyone's happiness. Which is hard to quantify, so
         | you go and try to eliminate things that typically make people
         | unhappy. Being denied the things you want because of the
         | factors you don't control is surely a big depression maker. Not
         | "go study better and you'll pass the exam", but "fuck off, I
         | don't like your face", pardon my French.
         | 
         | So how did we solve it? We made a faceless inappealable
         | uncriticizable statistics-driven system designed to tell the
         | majority of people to shut up and cull their ambition.
         | 
         | And you know how we ended up here? Every society has a certain
         | amount of people with ambition to power. They want to tell
         | others what to do. They want to make decisions affecting
         | others. That's fine, that's human psychology. That's why the
         | previous generations started companies, studied hard
         | disciplines, took risks, and found their place in the society
         | with the perfect effort/power balance just for them. Except,
         | this doesn't work anymore with the "economies of scale" where
         | there's a bunch of CEOs and investors, but everyone else is a
         | replaceable drone.
         | 
         | So there's an incredible power vacuum in the Western society.
         | People are desperate for roles in life that will give them
         | meaning and power - ability to make decisions affecting other
         | people. The corporations have PR departments and centrally
         | owned media companies that steer this force clear of colliding
         | with their financial interests. So, it effectively turned into
         | a cold civil war. Want to change something in the society? Go
         | get a 5-figure loan on a social justice degree, and then
         | exercise your power by telling majority of the people to hate
         | themselves, and enjoy no retaliation.
         | 
         | Kinda like every war. On both sides of a conflict there are
         | regular people with friends, children, families, hobbies. But
         | they are too busy demonizing the other side, and eager to be
         | foot soldiers in someone else's game. Someone whos mansion is
         | located far from the front line and whos kids will sit at the
         | board of a munitions manufacturer, rather than in a trench on a
         | battlefield. I don't know how we're gonna get out of this mess.
        
         | godelski wrote:
         | I think that is a very difficult conclusion to draw. There are
         | a lot of factors in there that are impossible to control. We
         | can't really isolate cultural and historical trends. Yes, we
         | can measure a difference that significantly correlates with
         | sex, but it is a bit naive to draw causal conclusions.
         | 
         | But I still agree that equal outcome metrics are misguided. It
         | is too lazy of a metric and statistics will mess it up very
         | quickly with such things as Simpson's or Berkson's paradoxes.
         | These are far too easy to fall prone to. Besides that, the
         | question seems to be more about if the reason for these
         | differences are due to biology or society (rather, which one is
         | more significant), not that the differences don't exist (i.e.
         | causal). But coming up with good metrics to determine what is
         | going on is difficult. I do not think a metric should become a
         | target though, and we have to be more careful in nuanced in our
         | approach.
        
         | ryanwhitney wrote:
         | "Despite the long-term and widespread study of the sex
         | differences in interest in people-oriented as compared to
         | things-oriented occupations, there is no consensus on the
         | sources of these differences."
        
         | baron816 wrote:
         | Seems like more research is still needed, but it's not hard to
         | imagine policy makers or regulators developing quotas and
         | mandates around tech companies hiring women. _If_ women are
         | indeed statistically less interested in working as engineers,
         | governments shouldn't, for example, require companies match
         | hiring of women to the proportion of their population (not that
         | anyone is actually considering this).
        
         | vhgbh87 wrote:
         | I believe you are making a conclusion that neither the article
         | nor science in general makes. The differences in preference are
         | exhibited, but whether they have a biological root (and what
         | outcomes we should target) do not have strong evidence.
        
           | Out_of_Characte wrote:
           | Male and females constitute the largest difference you could
           | have in a species. This preprint affirms what all previous
           | work in this space has found; if you try to minimise the
           | cultural/enviromental differences between men and women, you
           | maximise their biological differences.
           | 
           | "These sex differences were larger in countries with a higher
           | level of women's empowerment."
           | 
           | "We explain this counter-intuitive finding through the
           | indirect effect of wealth. Women's empowerment is associated
           | with relatively high levels of national wealth and this
           | wealth allows more students to aspire to occupations they are
           | intrinsically interested in"
           | 
           | Though I think the preprint's reasoning about the influence
           | of wealth is just bad. Especially if you try to reason that
           | wealth and better education is causing alot of women to
           | become nurses instead of doctors.
        
             | tylerhou wrote:
             | > "These sex differences were larger in countries with a
             | higher level of women's empowerment."
             | 
             | There are confounding factors here, though -- it's not like
             | the only variable being changed between two countries is a
             | woman's empowerment.
             | 
             | See also, Simpson's paradox.
        
             | exporectomy wrote:
             | I suspect a 2nd factor is competitive vs well-defined. CEO
             | for example is people-oriented but 70% male. Maybe because
             | it's also competitive.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | My brother and I are also biologically different. It says
         | nothing about expected outcomes that we are _distinct._ When
         | you say that an expectation of equal outcome is misguided, you
         | 're sneaking in a conclusion about the nature of those
         | biological differences.
         | 
         | If the biological difference were a large facial birthmark that
         | caused people to treat us differently (although we're otherwise
         | identical twins), would you accept a statistically equal
         | outcome between groups of people with and without facial
         | birthmarks as a sign of a lack of discrimination against people
         | with facial birthmarks?
        
           | xupybd wrote:
           | You can only make claims at a population level. So if you
           | picked 1000 women at random and a 1000 men at random you
           | would probably find more women have a preference for x and
           | more men have a preference for y.
           | 
           | I don't know what x and y are but if being passionate about
           | either led to higher paying career choices you'd see a
           | difference in average wage between the groups. At the
           | population level.
        
             | mcguire wrote:
             | You do have to wonder what makes for a higher paying
             | career, though.
        
           | fossuser wrote:
           | My hypothesis is that the nature of sexual selective
           | pressures is what is more likely to create differences
           | between the groups. This wouldn't really apply in the
           | birthmark case (unless it was some sort of secondary sexual
           | characteristic).
           | 
           | Either way, society should allow for equal opportunity even
           | if there are differences in average interest between groups
           | since the variation within a group is larger anyway. It just
           | means not seeing the same outcome doesn't necessarily mean
           | something has gone wrong.
        
             | mcguire wrote:
             | Out of curiosity, what outcome _would_ mean something has
             | gone wrong? 75%? 90%?
        
         | xnyan wrote:
         | That's kind of the opposite of the conclusion of the article.
         | Now, the conclusions of the article (cultural, social and
         | political differences have a huge impact on what what men and
         | women do) may be incorrect, and you may be more correct, but
         | it's a little incongruent to say (I'm paraphrasing here)
         | "Biological differences explain the differences in career
         | outcomes between men and women."
         | 
         | Outside of some very specific situations (aka muscle mass
         | dependent jobs like carrying heavy loads on your back) I'm not
         | aware of any scientific evidence that supports a biological
         | cause of career outcome divergence in women vs men, but if you
         | have some literature or other information I'm always willing to
         | admit that I'm wrong in light of new information.
         | 
         | On the other hand, there is an ocean of scientific data that
         | cultural, social and political conditions have a huge impact on
         | what jobs men and women do.
         | 
         | EDIT: there is actually one argument for biological differences
         | explaining divergent outcomes that I find convincing: for the
         | vast majority of human history, the state's monopoly on the use
         | of violence has been either nonexistent or far weaker as
         | compared to today. Men have had an advantage on the use of
         | violence due to average muscle mass and bone density being
         | higher than women. Technology (firearms, surveillance, etc) has
         | made this disparity of power in capacity for violence less and
         | less relevant.
        
           | artificialLimbs wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge.
           | ..
           | 
           | These have been shown to directly affect statistical
           | likelihood of career choice.
        
             | xnyan wrote:
             | From your link:
             | 
             | "men in highly developed world regions were less neurotic,
             | less extraverted, less conscientious and less agreeable
             | compared to men in less developed world regions"
             | 
             | If these personality traits are influenced by what country
             | you are born it, would it not support the the non-
             | biological argument?
        
         | s1artibartfast wrote:
         | It should be considered in setting or reviewing individual
         | level policy if said policy assumes no difference
        
         | clusterfish wrote:
         | Even without getting hung up on the "biological" qualifier,
         | that's groundbreaking news to some people, you know. The people
         | who insist that not having 50% females in any occupation is
         | them being underrepresented because they're repressed and
         | discriminated against. (Never heard that female dominated
         | occupations are discriminatory though, I wonder why)
         | 
         | Then this translates into laws, policies and scholarships that
         | effectively discriminate against men.
         | 
         | Don't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but a lot
         | of policy needs to change.
        
           | mcguire wrote:
           | " _Don 't know what you mean by "individual level" policy but
           | a lot of policy needs to change._"
           | 
           | The long-standing beliefs, policies, laws, and scholarships
           | that assume a woman in a male-dominated profession is an
           | abomination and represents a loss of a good job to a
           | deserving man.
        
             | clusterfish wrote:
             | These are either non-individual laws/policies, or personal
             | beliefs/biases, but not both "individual level" and
             | "policies" at the same time.
        
           | john_moscow wrote:
           | There's a very very very obvious dollar value attached to
           | these policies. By discouraging the workforce from having
           | families and kids (let alone single-income households) you
           | effectively eliminate their main long-term expenses and
           | reduce the pressure on the wages. You then start substituting
           | the declining population with immigrants from countries with
           | lower standard of living, and you've hit the jackpot. Your
           | profits go up, your stock goes up, your salary expenses stay
           | the same.
           | 
           | This wouldn't fly 60 years ago when the economy was much more
           | decentralized. There was no single large entity (or related
           | group of entities) that would benefit from such policies. If
           | you run a small business and personally know every employee,
           | you wouldn't think of such a thing. This bodes well in the
           | current model where every child-free worker is an extra $50K
           | lifetime value for their employer, translating into 5 extra
           | cents per share.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | The supposed paradoxical increase of this effect with increasing
       | wealth has been replicated fairly often with the only real
       | opposition I've noticed being that sociocultural incentives
       | dominate.
       | 
       | That is, if you aren't going to starve, the most important thing
       | is what other people think. The closer to starving you get the
       | less important that becomes.
       | 
       | Anyway, that's the hypothesis explaining the difference. What
       | research out there explores that hypothesis? Otherwise, this
       | seems like just more of the same revealing that there are
       | differences in participation.
        
         | noptd wrote:
         | >That is, if you aren't going to starve, the most important
         | thing is what other people think.
         | 
         | This seems like too strong of a claim to make without any
         | supporting evidence.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | The study authors draw a conclusion that wealth allows people
           | to choose work that more reflects their intrinsic interest.
           | To my mind, that's a claim at least as worthy of skepticism
           | as the claim that wealthy people choose social-status-
           | enhancing work (which differs based on gender due to cultural
           | norms).
        
         | snek_case wrote:
         | >That is, if you aren't going to starve, the most important
         | thing is what other people think.
         | 
         | IMO that hypothesis is politically biased. It implies that
         | men/women in wealthier societies are trying harder to conform
         | to gender norms. Blames societal norms for the difference.
         | 
         | The simpler and less dehumanizing alternative is that people in
         | wealthier countries are more free to live life however they
         | want. There are less constraints.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | > The simpler and less dehumanizing alternative
           | 
           | Occam's razor is great, but it's probably not a reasonable
           | assumption to make on a system as fundamentally complicated
           | as human behavior.
           | 
           | How _would_ we control for the possibility that as wealth
           | increases, the dominant effect in a person 's life _isn 't_
           | social status (which could be enhanced by gender-norm
           | conformity)?
        
           | renewiltord wrote:
           | Well, then, that's on me for misrepresenting it. Let's try
           | again.
           | 
           | You can see desire to comply with gender norms as a constant
           | X and starvation risk Y as a variable. Appropriately scale
           | each and measure X-Y. That can go positive or negative
           | depending on Y without X varying at all.
           | 
           | I want to eliminate this explanation as significantly
           | causative. Where would I find evidence for that?
        
             | jjk166 wrote:
             | You're still making the assumption that the thing competing
             | with starvation is compliance with gender norms (or to be
             | more general, social norms).
             | 
             | As a thought experiment, consider being trapped on a desert
             | island where the only thing edible were termites. My
             | starvation risk is high, so I will eat the termites.
             | Eventually I get back to civilization and my starvation
             | risk is much lower, and I no longer choose to eat termites.
             | Is this because A) the social norms which dictate that I
             | shouldn't eat termites are now more important to me, or B)
             | I prefer other foods to termites?
             | 
             | It is perfectly reasonable that under differing
             | circumstances the weights we will give different factors in
             | decision making vary, but that does not on its own tell us
             | what those factors actually are.
        
               | renewiltord wrote:
               | I think I must be misspeaking quite a bit because I am
               | not making any claims here.
               | 
               | I am constructing a hypothesis and I want it falsified.
               | The fact that it is falsifiable is a feature not a bug.
               | 
               | The possibility of this not being the cause isn't
               | interesting. That is by construction. I want to see
               | evidence of what is actually the case.
               | 
               | I want to know what the factors are. And by what weight
               | in aggregate. I am not alleging that they have any
               | specific value.
        
       | Gunax wrote:
       | Results are on page19.
       | 
       | > As expected, the percentages of students aspiring to sex-
       | typical occupations were higher in countries with higher levels
       | of women's empowerment, r(68)=.350, p=.003. The percentages of
       | students aspiring to sex-atypical occupations ranged from
       | 7%[6.2%-7.8%] in Lithuania to 23%[21.2%- 24.3%] in Lebanon
       | (international median of 12%). This variation correlated
       | negatively with women's empowerment, r(68)=-.500, p<.001.
       | 
       | I do not like weighing into these sorts of things too much
       | because I think people tend to find whatever they are looking
       | for. All it really shows is that gender preferenes are formed
       | before adolescence. Whether that innate or learned is not clear.
        
         | daveevad wrote:
         | Can anyone track down the list of `sex-typical occupations` ?
         | 
         | The thickest thread I've found is a reference to a PISA 2018
         | dataset.
         | 
         | > We investigated sex differences in 473,260 adolescents'
         | aspirations to work in thingsoriented (e.g., mechanic), people-
         | oriented (e.g., nurse), and STEM (e.g., mathematician) careers
         | across 80 countries and economic regions using the 2018
         | Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | > Whether that innate or learned is not clear.
         | 
         | Unless you also consider nationality innate, it certainly
         | suggests that it is learned.
        
           | mcguire wrote:
           | Are you suggesting there are no biological differences
           | between Lebanese and Lithuanians?
           | 
           | /s (although I've seen that argument here before)
        
       | fredliu wrote:
       | If you ask elementary kids today, a large portion of them would
       | have the same career aspiration: to be a "youtuber".
        
         | john_moscow wrote:
         | Yep, and most of them will end up stocking shelves at Walmart
         | to make living.
        
         | myhf wrote:
         | I hope for their sake that somebody manages to subcategorize
         | some types of "youtuber" as people-oriented and others as
         | things-oriented.
        
       | lostdog wrote:
       | I mean you could be sitting around in the '70s making up reasons
       | that women aren't interested in being doctors or lawyers, and boy
       | would you turn out wrong:
       | https://twitter.com/familyunequal/status/1164246285953748993
       | 
       | I think it's too early to tell right now if there's some type of
       | things-interest/people-interest split among the genders. We're
       | still so close to the time when women weren't allowed to have
       | checking accounts, that the cultural inertia hasn't had time to
       | wear off yet. I am very suspicious of researchers who claim to
       | have the answer right now.
        
       | sbelskie wrote:
       | " We found that the latter correlations are mostly due to an
       | increase in boys' aspirations to enter things-oriented blue-
       | collar careers and a decrease in boys' aspirations to enter
       | people-oriented careers in countries with greater women's
       | empowerment. In contrast, the percentages of girls aspiring to
       | things-oriented jobs or people-oriented jobs did not
       | systematically vary with national-levels of girls' and women's
       | empowerment."
        
       | vhgbh87 wrote:
       | It's probably not worth putting much stock in a preprint unless
       | you are trained in evaluating this particular type of whitepaper.
       | 
       | Even peer review is not a stamp of quality, but it at least
       | signals "some set of folks have broadly reviewed this and
       | consider it well constructed."
       | 
       | Whether it's sociology or fusion or battery tech -- we shouldn't
       | put _much_ value on preprint articles.
        
         | somedude895 wrote:
         | To be fair, in sociology this sort of thing might not make it
         | out of preprint for certain reasons:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
        
         | nottorp wrote:
         | Isn't a preprint a way to make your article available outside
         | Elsevier's paywall these days?
        
         | cronix wrote:
         | You seem knowledgeable on the subject. Have there been any
         | studies that have been peer reviewed, and replicated, that have
         | come to roughly the same conclusions? Or is this preprint the
         | first time the subject has been studied?
        
           | s1artibartfast wrote:
           | Not an expert, but I believe this is a widely studied area
           | with a large body of literature. I say this because I've seen
           | articles with similar conclusions going back decades. You can
           | probably find many by searching Google Scholar For
           | Occupational sex differences or selection
        
         | xor99 wrote:
         | *any articles
        
       | sbelskie wrote:
       | Interesting thread by Matt Darling of Niskansen that is pretty
       | critical of the study design and data quality of this and other
       | similar papers.
       | 
       | https://mobile.twitter.com/besttrousers/status/1454150695196...
        
         | crateless wrote:
         | > Here's an model explaining the "Gender Equality Paradox" that
         | doesn't rely on the crutch of assuming different preferences.
         | Women pay some fixed cost for being in the labor market, in
         | general. Perhaps due to discrimination, perhaps to something
         | else. As such less likely to pursue a costly STEM education in
         | college. However, they become more likely to pursue a STEM
         | education as the returns increase. Women respond to incentives.
         | The bigger the non-service sector of the economy, the more
         | income there is to gain from a STEM education. As it gets
         | higher (which tends to be the case in less developed countries)
         | more women enter STEM programs. In developed countries the STEM
         | premium is lower (Someone in a service job like a lawyer or
         | accountant will do just fine).
         | 
         | This fits the data we have available, doesn't require that we
         | assume our conclusion (we just assume women respond to
         | incentives), and is able to help explain other phemonena. It's
         | got a lot of features we want in a good model!
         | 
         | - Matt Darling
         | 
         | Edit: It seems like he assumes some "fixed cost" in order to
         | counter the finding that women are less likely to pursue STEM
         | education.
         | 
         | Is there something I am missing?
        
           | clusterfish wrote:
           | Is there any study to back his claim? Just assuming your
           | conclusion doesn't cut it.
        
           | jjk166 wrote:
           | "women will pursue STEM careers if they paid sufficiently
           | more than other jobs, but when the pay is the same they
           | choose service jobs" is not really any different from saying
           | "women prefer service jobs"
           | 
           | Anything that influences a decision can be reframed as a cost
           | or incentive, but without actually identifying the cost
           | nothing is being explained.
        
           | sbelskie wrote:
           | I'm not sure he assuming some "fixed cost" so much as
           | pointing out (or at least arguing) that such a model explains
           | the data as well the "just so" conclusion. Additionally, he
           | is suggesting that such a model, in which agents respond to
           | incentives rather than just have "true" preferences is
           | stronger.
        
           | nottorp wrote:
           | > As such less likely to pursue a _costly_ STEM education in
           | college. However, they become more likely to pursue a STEM
           | education as the returns increase.
           | 
           | Is Matt Darling aware that in most European countries
           | university education is (financially speaking) free or
           | extremely low cost? And said cost is about the same no matter
           | what you study?
           | 
           | Edit to make it more clear: As far as I know crushing student
           | debt is an US and UK thing. Not continental Europe. I have no
           | idea how things go outside US/Europe though.
        
             | mcguire wrote:
             | Are you assuming that all costs are financial?
             | 
             | (As a possible example, the only European countries with
             | higher percentages of tertiary education than the US in the
             | 25-34 age group are Norway, Ireland, Luxembourg, Lithuania,
             | and Russia. I suppose that only 28% of Germans are
             | interested in tertiary education, as opposed to 49% in
             | Norway and Ireland. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_
             | countries_by_tertiary_...)
        
               | nottorp wrote:
               | > Are you assuming that all costs are financial?
               | 
               | I'm assuming he's assuming that... :)
        
             | Nasrudith wrote:
             | I think the more "developing" or "relatively recenylu
             | developed" nations who have university infastructure are
             | more likely to go with the more European "paid to be a
             | student if you can pass the gatekeeping exams".
             | 
             | It has less to do with any ideology and more a combination
             | of mathematics and pragmatism. Namely an insufficient
             | number of people who could afford even free college from
             | the opportunity cost of not working full time. Even if the
             | economy advanced enough that they could technically go to a
             | more American model.
             | 
             | This is meant to be broad brush "first principles
             | reasoning" and includes many disparate nations and
             | situations. Some may also have a sufficient percentage from
             | traditionally priveledged strata who could afford it. Often
             | families who were traditional bureaucratic, military, or
             | priestly occupations.
        
               | nottorp wrote:
               | > the more European "paid to be a student if you can pass
               | the gatekeeping exams".
               | 
               | I don't think it goes up to "paid to be a student" most
               | of the time. If you're not lucky enough to have local
               | universities on your chosen subject you still have to pay
               | for (possibly cheap student) lodging. Said gatekeeping
               | exams may also be an extra cost if you need to pay
               | someone to prepare for them.
               | 
               | However, the financial burden overall is much smaller.
        
       | tzs wrote:
       | I remember seeing a study using PISA data (I think...) that found
       | an interesting difference between boys and girls, which could
       | explain much about career choices.
       | 
       | Boys who scored very high in STEM tended to have that as the only
       | area where they were at the top. In other areas they might be
       | good but usually not outstanding like they were in STEM.
       | 
       | Girls who scored very high in STEM tended were much more likely
       | to have at least one other area in which they also scored very
       | high.
       | 
       | People have a tendency to choose an occupation that fits with
       | something they are good at. If the aforementioned study is
       | correct, we'd expect to see boys who are good at STEM subjects to
       | be more likely to go into a STEM career than girls who are good
       | at STEM subjects, because for the girls it is more likely that
       | they also have a non-STEM subject that they are as good or better
       | in than their STEM subjects.
        
       | lordnacho wrote:
       | What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-oriented? Is a
       | software developer who makes a dating app doing one or the other?
       | What about the designer?
       | 
       | Is being a doctor one or the other? You need to be able to say
       | difficult things to people, and a lot of doctors will tell you
       | they're doing it to help people. But doing surgery is presumably
       | technical in nature.
       | 
       | Is there an acknowledged way these categories are determined?
        
         | 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
         | I think categories need to be more granular.
         | 
         | 'doctors'
         | 
         | A quick LinkedIn search for Surgeon shows that about 70% of
         | surgeons in the SFBA are male.
         | 
         | 80% of pediatricians are female.
         | 
         | 'engineers'
         | 
         | Prior searches showed that 90% of electrical engineers were
         | male.
         | 
         | 50% of SQE were female.
        
         | stickfigure wrote:
         | Sure, the grey zones might be hard to pick out but it does seem
         | like there are some clear extremes. "Locomotive engineers and
         | operators" is 92% male yet "Registered nurses" is 87% female.
         | If you look at all the male-dominant and female-dominant
         | occupations, there does seem to be some sort of pattern which
         | (for lack of more precise terminology) seems to be well-
         | described as "people-oriented" and "thing-oriented".
         | 
         | Go through the list, look at the entries which are either <20%
         | female or >80% female, and tell me if you don't see the same
         | pattern:
         | 
         | https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm
        
           | exporectomy wrote:
           | Though it does seem obvious, it's pretty dangerous to go
           | looking for patterns in the data. More scientific to define
           | the criteria before knowing the results so you can have a
           | hypothesis to test, not just an observation to make.
        
             | piva00 wrote:
             | Dangerous? That's how science... Works? You look for
             | patterns, you get some data, you find more patterns, you
             | create a hypothesis and you test it.
             | 
             | What is dangerous about analysing data?
             | 
             | Or do you mean it's dangerous to form absolute conclusions
             | just on a subset of available data?
        
               | shadowgovt wrote:
               | The danger is that you will come to a conclusion that is
               | objectively wrong.
               | 
               | P-hacking is a known issue in many scientific fields. So
               | is drawing conclusions from over collection of data
               | without repetition of the study... As the number of data
               | points you collect approaches infinity, the chance of
               | finding at least one meaningful-seeming correlation
               | approaches 100% because having an unlimited number of
               | data points to bash against each other makes you more
               | likely to observe an improbable correlation.
        
             | dbsmith83 wrote:
             | No, looking at the data is observation or analysis by
             | definition...whether or not you make a prediction about it.
             | Experimentation is when you make a hypothesis first (after
             | observation) and then test it. Looking at data is not a
             | test--it's either observation or analysis.
        
         | Alex3917 wrote:
         | > Is a software developer who makes a dating app doing one or
         | the other? What about the designer?
         | 
         | Both are thing oriented because you're doing work for people as
         | an abstraction, not individual people.
         | 
         | User stories might be based on actual people, but they're
         | ultimately meant as archetypes.
        
         | exporectomy wrote:
         | From TFA: "the people vs things dimension is a continuous
         | scale, but in our analyses we only used categories that are
         | predominantly one or the other. All things-oriented jobs have a
         | clear technical component, ranging from locomotive engine
         | driver to astronomer and all people-oriented jobs have a clear
         | component of providing help to individuals."
         | 
         | It also identified "face to face interactions" as a requirement
         | for being people-oriented. So dating app developer is clearly
         | not included.
        
         | dec0dedab0de wrote:
         | _What makes an occupation people-oriented vs things-
         | oriented?... Is being a doctor one or the other?_
         | 
         | I speant most of the last 18 months in and out of the hospital,
         | and I noticed that doctors are more things oriented, and nurse
         | practitioners are more people oriented. Even though they do the
         | same job.
         | 
         | I want the nurse practitioner when I'm feeling awful, I want
         | the doctor to explain their thought process in technical
         | detail. Even if it's over my head.
         | 
         | And to be clear, I didn't read the article, but I had doctors
         | and nurse practitioners of different sexes.
        
         | tomp wrote:
         | It comes down to how much you talk on the job. Probably to
         | people (as opposed to, screens).
        
       | ffggvv wrote:
       | NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! its sexism! they are exactly the same!!
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7RIWh-Vo0Y
        
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