European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 310

On September 29 2015 08:14 Plansix wrote:
It tough to argue with the "don't kick them when they are moving around" point. And please return in 2020 holy shit. At least Germany know what is up.

On September 29 2015 13:46 LegalLord wrote:
Knee-jerk emotional reactions don't make for good public policy. Logical and viable solutions beat a poorly considered "we must help omfgz" reaction as some advocate.

On September 29 2015 14:34 Incognoto wrote:


There are many reasons that this is a humanitarian crisis, blatantly ignoring that it's a problem is absolutely silly.

There is no golden fix to these situations either, no silver bandage. Each European country has a limited capacity to accommodate refugees in the right conditions, don't ignore that. Don't ignore either that there are a number of people who are not legitimate refugees.

It's easy to be snarky but it's much harder to come up with real solutions and have a stance which makes realistic sense. That's what LegalLord was saying, as poorly worded as it was.

On September 29 2015 18:14 Faust852 wrote:
and the factually untrue about the difference in earning between sexes.

There are many reasons that this is a humanitarian crisis

There is no golden fix to these situations either, no silver bandage.

it's much harder to come up with real solutions

For instance, the STEM representation of women is laughtable.

On September 29 2015 18:44 Faust852 wrote:

Women tends to work less hours, and job that pay less. For instance, the STEM representation of women is laughtable.
Anyway a bit of research should be enough, if you want some ask again because I don't have much time right now, so the only thing I'll say is that if women were trully paid 23% less for the same job, why companies keep recruting male and not female ? Especially seeing how greedy they are.

On September 29 2015 18:51 xM(Z wrote:
@Faust852 don't start it with kwizach, imo.
that guy should go extinct. evolution should happen and he should just go extinct by virtue of his own value.

It's just that women in general don't want to work with job related to math and science

On September 29 2015 19:13 kwizach wrote:

Yeah, those are the usual fallacious arguments of the inequality deniers that do not actually take into account the reality of the differences in earnings between the sexes. First of all, studies have shown that overall there remains a pay gap between men and women for the same jobs, even taking into account various factors like the number of hours worked, the qualifications, etc. (see for example the Invest in women, invest in America - A Comprehensive Review of Women In the U.S. Economy report by the U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee). It's not at 23%, but a difference remains, some of which is attributable to gender discrimination (for example in the hiring process). And since you mention STEM jobs, here's another study which shows gender pay disparity in STEM jobs even after controlling for hours, age, experience, education, etc.
Second, mentioning the statistical differences in occupations between men and women is not at all an argument against the idea that there are differences in earnings between the two that need to be addressed. The point is precisely that social norms and representations about both genders still permeate our societies and contribute to the choices made by individuals with regards to their studies and careers. The pay gap is therefore very real, and it needs to be addressed by targeting both gender discrimination at (and to access) work and the cultural factors that play a role in the professional trajectories of men and women.
This is pretty off-topic, though, so if you'd like to know more about these issues and discuss them further you can send me a PM.


Yeah, I'm not too surprised that the guy who wanted to restrict abortion rights for women because they might collectively jeopardize the future of the human race by refusing to have babies is not too concerned about pay equality.

On September 29 2015 19:18 Silvanel wrote:
There is also this research which shows that in countries with more "pro women" policies actualy fewer women chooses STEM studies than in "misogynistic" countries. Sweden and Iran as an example. Forgot the author.

Edit:
Didnt find the study i mentioned above yet, but find nice article on similiar subject.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/truth-women-stem-careers/

According to Baron-Cohen, his study shows that babies with virtually no amount of socialization through culture still act differently based on their sex: male babies will tend to be more interested by the movement of a mechanical object and female babies by a human face. Let's start by pointing out that the "mechanical object" referred to here is actually a ball on which were pasted bits of a photograph of a human face - not exactly the type of "mechanical object" that some argue boys are naturally more interested in than girls. Second, the babies were not actually a day old but, on average, 36,7 hrs old - we do not know more from the information given in the study, but the difference is far from being negligible in terms of child development, and culture can already have started to have an impact at that point.

More importantly, however, the study does not, in fact, show statistically significant differences between the sexes in terms of interest in the human face, and does not show a statistically significant preference among boys in favor of the mobile object. There were 58 girls and 44 boys selected for the study, and the numbers in terms of time spent watching each stimulus are simply too close in both cases. Looking at confidence intervals clearly shows that the differences are not statistically significant. To mention the numbers themselves, boys spent around 51-52 seconds looking at the mobile object and around 46 seconds looking at the face. Girls spent barely more time than the boys looking at the face: just below 50 seconds. From a scientific point of view, these differences are non-existent because they are, again, not statistically significant.

If you look at the numbers even further, you'll notice that, beyond the averages put forward by the authors (Baron-Cohen was not alone in writing the study), 64% of the girls did not manifest a preference for the face, and 57% of the boys did not manifest a preference for the mobile object (these percentages include those who manifested a preference for the other stimulus and those who manifested no preference for either). I'll let that sink in. In the documentary (and, in fact, in the article itself), Baron-Cohen deliberately chose to look at the results which seemed to go this way (for example, girls did spend on average more time watching the mobile stimulus than the face - even though the difference was less than 10 seconds between the two), and presented interpretations that went way beyond, and were actually contradicted by, the very results of his experience. An assertion of the type that "girls preferred the face" and "boys preferred the mobile" is actually false for a majority of both groups. In addition to these problems with the interpretation of the results, several methodological biases and problems have been pointed out with regards to the study, including actual mistakes in the statistical analysis of the results - see NASH, Alison Nash, GROSSI, Giordana (2007), "Picking Barbie’s brain: inherent sex differences in scientific ability?".

Beyond these numbers, which do not support what is said in the documentary, it's also worth mentioning that the authors apparently did not keep the actual data (or at least they're unwilling to share it), and the results they cherry-pick to support their idea that biology plays a major role have never been reproduced. In fact, they've been contradicted by other studies - see SPELKE, Elizabeth (2005), "Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics - A critical review", American Psychologist, 60(9), pp. 950-958.

To put Baron-Cohen's opinion back into context as well, he did not - contrary to what Harald Eia asserts in the documentary - happen to coincidentally discover what he presents as a difference between sexes in his study. In fact, Baron-Cohen formulated several years prior to the study his personal theory of autism as an extreme form of the natural cerebral masculinity which he posits the existence of. His theory notably included some of what is mentioned in the "documentary" in terms of a link between testosterone levels and differences in cognitive dispositions with regards to the spatial and the social among males and females. In his following research, therefore, he tried to prove this theory of his, and the study referred to here is part of that effort. He had a prior interest in presenting certain specific results and not simply an interest in discovering what results he could find. In the scientific field on autism, his theory on "essential" differences between female and male brains is absolutely not consensual (and, in fact, rather unpopular if we look at citations).