Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action.
On May 21 2017 05:33 bardtown wrote: It's not a problem. As such, it doesn't need a solution. Karis, why not try the video I posted if you want to hear scientific responses to what you're saying?
I don't really trust videos that much unless I know where it's from. I'm not saying if it is a problem or not I'm just saying there's a lot of studies about gender and schools.
Just google it. It's from the main Norwegian state TV channel, and they absolutely cannot be accused of any discriminatory or right wing bias. It has a 9/10 rating on IMDB and the scientists he speaks to are from respectable institutions.
On May 21 2017 05:10 Shield wrote: Looking for perfect gender equality is waste of time. Some men and some women have different interests. If you check a typical Computer Science course, you might find that 80% or more are male. It's not about sexism, there aren't that many women that want technical stuff.
This is a bad example because there's actually good evidence to trace this back to cultural attitudes, especially marketing of home computers towards men.
On May 21 2017 05:33 bardtown wrote: It's not a problem. As such, it doesn't need a solution. Karis, why not try the video I posted if you want to hear scientific responses to what you're saying?
I don't really trust videos that much unless I know where it's from. I'm not saying if it is a problem or not I'm just saying there's a lot of studies about gender and schools.
Just google it. It's from the main Norwegian state TV channel, and they absolutely cannot be accused of any discriminatory or right wing bias. It has a 9/10 rating on IMDB and the scientists he speaks to are from respectable institutions.
Okay I'll take a look at it if I get a chance. but just coming from the US education system there's tons of evidence about how genders are treated differently in school (subconsciously). I find it hard to believe that that has 0 effect on it.
If we look at and address those things and the percentage is still the same then I'll have no problem with it.
On May 21 2017 05:10 Shield wrote: Looking for perfect gender equality is waste of time. Some men and some women have different interests. If you check a typical Computer Science course, you might find that 80% or more are male. It's not about sexism, there aren't that many women that want technical stuff.
This is a bad example because there's actually good evidence to trace this back to cultural attitudes, especially marketing of home computers towards men.
That explains why the proportion of women in computer sciences is shooting up now that everyone has a computer. Wait - it isn't? Women got offered grants of £5000 to study my master's course, and we still had 80% males.
On May 21 2017 05:33 bardtown wrote: It's not a problem. As such, it doesn't need a solution. Karis, why not try the video I posted if you want to hear scientific responses to what you're saying?
I don't really trust videos that much unless I know where it's from. I'm not saying if it is a problem or not I'm just saying there's a lot of studies about gender and schools.
Just google it. It's from the main Norwegian state TV channel, and they absolutely cannot be accused of any discriminatory or right wing bias. It has a 9/10 rating on IMDB and the scientists he speaks to are from respectable institutions.
Okay I'll take a look at it if I get a chance. but just coming from the US education system there's tons of evidence about how genders are treated differently in school (subconsciously). I find it hard to believe that that has 0 effect on it.
If we look at and address those things and the percentage is still the same then I'll have no problem with it.
Nobody's suggesting it has no impact at all. Norway is a good case to study, though, because they have taken all sorts of active measures to try to reduce gender segregation, and they didn't work. It seems odd that culture can influence people in one direction and not the other.
well it might reverse, the institutional effort to make these disciplines more diverse is quite young, it really only has taken of over the last few years and reversing such a trend will take some time.
I don't think just handing out 5000 bucks will reverse a cultural trend so easily.
Even if it was a cultural trend, why is it desirable to reverse it? Are women unhappy that they don't make up 50% of computer scientists? Not the women I know, at least, and that includes computer scientists. Are men upset that they don't make up 50% of nurses? I'm not. Why is equal representation in every discipline so inherently desirable?
Probably relevant to point out in the light of that documentary that Norway was the happiest country in the world this year, and with all that terrible segregation too.
diversity in general increases the performance of companies, which should not be surprising if you assume that women and men are equally talented. We're practically missing out of having half the workforce participating in a field that needs all the talent it can gather.
If women and men have the same aptitude gender should not show up as a discriminator, all other things being equal. I want people taking a job on merit, not on gender. I generally don't think that personal preference should be the basis of policy making anyway.
So do I. That's what I was telling you about capitalism. Businesses that fish from the entire pool of talent will outcompete those that don't. That doesn't make a 50/50 split desirable, nor does it mandate any kind of quota.
Hjernevask is mostly good. It sparked a lot of controversy when it was released, a couple scientists claimed that their statements had been taken out of context or misrepresented, but it's mostly good. In particular the interview with Jørgen Lorentzen (starts after 8:30 in the video bardtown linked) was accused of heavy editing and misconstruction. But overall, it's still good, and Harald Eia, the narrator, is a brilliant guy with a very good understanding of science. For a youtube video, this is probably one of the most reliable posted in this entire thread.
This is actually an issue I pay a lot of attention to. My company develops tech activities and educational kits for kids - from electronics to programming, mechanics as well as 3d modeling, stop motion animation and so on. Usually our male to female ratio is 70-30. We don't find much of a difference in satisfaction between boys and girls, in fact girls usually score the activities slightly higher than boys do. There's certainly no difference in ability. What differences we've found are in thematic preferences - boys tend to like cars and robots, girls tend to prefer... uhm... pretty things. We therefore try to develop our activities in a way that doesn't tend to either side.
I don't have a definitive answer for this yet, but we're hoping we find out more as we grow and reach more and more kids. I do think that the parents' cultural perspective is still influenced by traditional gender stereotypes - for some reason some parents prefer signing their daughters to ballet or piano classes rather than an electronics/robotics activity. On the other hand, girls tend to be very motivated by social factors and if all their friends are doing ballet and all the boys are already doing robotics, they're never going to sign up for that robotics activity.
I do think that more equality in each profession is socially desirable but there's really a lot wet don't yet know about where cultural influence stops and 'natural' preferences begin.
I think leftists should stop paying so much attention to gender equality. If the majority of girls don't want to do IT/robotics/technical stuff, guess what, that's FINE. It's their choice. Why force them to do something they don't enjoy? I'm a software engineer and 100% of our tech staff is male at the moment. At the end of the day, we should do the job that we like because that's happiness (for most of us at least).
On the other hand, if you want to research why the majority of women don't want to pursue such careers, that's also fine. I find it interesting but that's all. Let's not force people to pick technical fields for the sake of artificial 50/50 balance. Do what you like and that's all as long as your gender isn't discriminated.
On May 21 2017 06:06 Nyxisto wrote: diversity in general increases the performance of companies, which should not be surprising if you assume that women and men are equally talented. We're practically missing out of having half the workforce participating in a field that needs all the talent it can gather.
If women and men have the same aptitude gender should not show up as a discriminator, all other things being equal. I want people taking a job on merit, not on gender. I generally don't think that personal preference should be the basis of policy making anyway.
I would be careful in generalizing these mckinsey findings. What they do is relatively simple: they point out that in their sample of companies, profitability is correlated with their measure of diversity and generalize this fact. While they themselves admit correlation doesn't imply causation, they make no effort to sort this out (I could make the claim, for example, that more profitable companies can and do afford more inclusive policies). Also, how their sample is formed is not at all clear (they say nothing of how their database was made and how these companies were chosen), and I'm 99% sure there are clustering problems in their statistical analisis (as in, companies in the same industries are likely to have both similar diversity and profitability, so treating them as independent when calculating their statistical significance is bonkers).
On May 21 2017 09:11 Shield wrote: I think leftists should stop paying so much attention to gender equality. If the majority of girls don't want to do IT/robotics/technical stuff, guess what, that's FINE. It's their choice. Why force them to do something they don't enjoy? I'm a software engineer and 100% of our tech staff is male at the moment. At the end of the day, we should do the job that we like because that's happiness (for most of us at least).
On the other hand, if you want to research why the majority of women don't want to pursue such careers, that's also fine. I find it interesting but that's all. Let's not force people to pick technical fields for the sake of artificial 50/50 balance. Do what you like and that's all as long as your gender isn't discriminated.
The problem arises when people talk about resistance entering a specific field, like institutionalized sexism, and are dismissed because think that means hiring ratios. The two attorneys I work for are women and most all the thing you hear form the tech industry is what people said in the legal field 15-20 year ago. Women are not interested in a combative field like like. They are not interested in a rational, reason based profession. They don't want to be lawyers and that is why there are so few. But the reality was that a lot of attorneys are assholes and when exposed to women, they were sexist assholes. The more women that entered the field, became judges and partners, the less that argument was used. It will be the same with other professions.
On May 21 2017 16:24 OtherWorld wrote: All these discussion look a little weird when you're in a field where institutions are actively trying to get less women.
Healthcare in the US is trying to figure out how to get more men to apply because that's where all the jobs are. I do think though that we put a little too much focus on just math and science at the expense of other jobs.
On May 21 2017 09:11 Shield wrote: I think leftists should stop paying so much attention to gender equality. If the majority of girls don't want to do IT/robotics/technical stuff, guess what, that's FINE. It's their choice. Why force them to do something they don't enjoy? I'm a software engineer and 100% of our tech staff is male at the moment. At the end of the day, we should do the job that we like because that's happiness (for most of us at least).
On the other hand, if you want to research why the majority of women don't want to pursue such careers, that's also fine. I find it interesting but that's all. Let's not force people to pick technical fields for the sake of artificial 50/50 balance. Do what you like and that's all as long as your gender isn't discriminated.
The problem arises when people talk about resistance entering a specific field, like institutionalized sexism, and are dismissed because think that means hiring ratios. The two attorneys I work for are women and most all the thing you hear form the tech industry is what people said in the legal field 15-20 year ago. Women are not interested in a combative field like like. They are not interested in a rational, reason based profession. They don't want to be lawyers and that is why there are so few. But the reality was that a lot of attorneys are assholes and when exposed to women, they were sexist assholes. The more women that entered the field, became judges and partners, the less that argument was used. It will be the same with other professions.
You could try to invite more women to tech fields as long as there is no 'positive' sexism (hiring ratio) or you reward women more than men (e.g. bardtown said that women studying Computer Science get quite a big grant). I think the same rules should apply to men. Once you try to make it more rewarding for women, you are starting to discriminate even if your cause is 'good'.
On May 21 2017 06:06 Nyxisto wrote: diversity in general increases the performance of companies, which should not be surprising if you assume that women and men are equally talented. We're practically missing out of having half the workforce participating in a field that needs all the talent it can gather.
If women and men have the same aptitude gender should not show up as a discriminator, all other things being equal. I want people taking a job on merit, not on gender. I generally don't think that personal preference should be the basis of policy making anyway.
I would be careful in generalizing these mckinsey findings. What they do is relatively simple: they point out that in their sample of companies, profitability is correlated with their measure of diversity and generalize this fact. While they themselves admit correlation doesn't imply causation, they make no effort to sort this out (I could make the claim, for example, that more profitable companies can and do afford more inclusive policies). Also, how their sample is formed is not at all clear (they say nothing of how their database was made and how these companies were chosen), and I'm 99% sure there are clustering problems in their statistical analisis (as in, companies in the same industries are likely to have both similar diversity and profitability, so treating them as independent when calculating their statistical significance is bonkers).
The McKinsey study also claims that homosexual couples have household incomes almost 80% higher than the average, which various studies show to be not true.
On May 21 2017 01:14 bardtown wrote: Edit: I'll just put this here. I recommend it to all interested.
Ah, that documentary once again makes a return on TL. I addressed it at length in a post three years ago. I'll quote myself (TL;DR below):
Now, let's take a look at the documentary you posted. I watched it entirely. To sum it up, it defends the idea that both cultural and biological factors play a role in determining the career paths and choices of men and women, and that in an "equal" society like Norway differences in the career paths of women and men (for example, engineers tend to be men and nurses tend to be women) can be explained by the fact that men and women are free to follow their natural (understand: biological) inclinations. This is demonstrated by what appears to be a candid journalist/investigator going to speak with various experts in order to understand the issue better, and reaching what looks like a logical conclusion given the evidence that he has been presented with.
I could start by pointing out to you that this very documentary that you cited as evidence of your claim in fact contradicts it since it supports the idea that culture does play a role next to biology.
Let's go a bit further than that, however (I am in debt to Odile Fillod's excellent rebuttal of the documentary), and look at how its message pertaining to the role of biology holds up under increased scrutiny. First, let's point out that the "journalist/investigator" whom we follow in the "documentary", Harald Eia, is not actually trying to "inform himself" (and he's not a journalist) - he is an active proponent of the theory that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women, including in terms of career paths. He has, in fact, published a book defending these views (EIA, Harald, IHLE, Ole-Martin (2010), Født sånn eller blitt sånn?). He has confirmed in an interview that he held these views prior to making the "documentary", and that they came to him notably after reading authors like Steven Pinker and David Buss (see his interview here). So let's keep in mind that, contrary to what is being shown on screen, this guy is absolutely not genuinely trying to get a better idea of the issue and weighing what different experts are telling him - he had already made up his mind and the entire documentary is constructed to convince the audience of the validity of the views he holds. That is why he ends the documentary by showing the expert in gender studies seemingly unable to answer what is put forward by the experts in psychology and human evolution he carefully selected.
This being said, what is the validity of the "expert opinions" he relies on to assert that biology leads to men and women essentially having different brains? One of the cornerstones of his demonstration is the opinion of Simon Baron-Cohen, which he goes into great length to present as a legitimate scientific authority (shots of the University of Cambridge where he works, etc.), and Baron-Cohen's study on what he says are 24 hrs-old male and female babies. 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).
I explored the detail of this specific part of the documentary, but similar comments can be made with regards to the other testimonies defending the existence of a biological determinism separating male and female brains in a way that leads to differences in interests and even career paths. The social scientist interviewed at the beginning which says that there is no actual scientific evidence of such biological determinism is actually perfectly right. They were not very articulate at the end (I suspect that there might have been a bias in the selection of footage to show for their answers at the end, but oh well), but the fact is simply that the scientific research done so far does NOT establish the existence of such biological determinism. There have been articles claiming to establish such differences, such as Baron-Cohen's, but they do not resist scrutiny and are systematically characterized by methodological biases/flaws and interpretation problems. In fact, if you want a very extensive look at the literature on the topic, I suggest you read Rebecca M. Jordan-Young's book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (2010), it's extremely exhaustive and well-documented. Her conclusions include that we are not blank slates (predispositions are not completely identical in individuals) but that the binary system of gender does not accurately capture these initial differences (see also WITELSON, S. F. (1991), "Neural Sexual Mosaicism: Sexual Differentiation of the Human Temporo-Parietal Region for Functional Asymmetry". Psychoneuroendocrinology, 16 (1-3): pp. 131-153). Clearly, cultural factors are a driving force behind differences in career paths between men and women, and social construction of gender roles is a fundamental object of study for whomever is interested in more equality between sexes.
TL;DR: The author of the "documentary" held the prior view that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women and pretended to be a neutral investigator while in reality constructing the entire piece to convince uninformed viewers of the validity of his views. He tries to portray social scientists as naïve on the issue and as contradicted by the research done in the natural sciences, while the truth is that he cherry-picked a few natural scientists that share his positions and that do not represent in any way a consensus in their field (sometimes the opposite). It's a cleverly crafted piece, which can persuade people who are not familiar with the subject matter (especially those who hold a priori views similar to the author's), but it's pure garbage when it comes to wanting to take a look at the actual state of the scientific research (natural and social sciences) on the topic. If you're actually interested in learning more about it, in addition to the Jordan-Young reference I mention at the end of my post, I suggest reading Janet Shibley Hyde's Half the Human Experience: The Psychology of Women (8th edition, 2012) and Cordelia Fine's Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (2017). Again, while we're not blank states and there can be some initial statistical differences in brain formation between men and women, the groups largely overlap, the binary division between men and women does not accurately reflect this initial reality, and most importantly neuroplasticity plays such a role that initial differences are unimportant in comparison to the development that occurs throughout our lives. This leads cultural variables ("nurture") to be at the core of the differences in career paths between men and women -- not biology.
Now, let's take a look at the documentary you posted. I watched it entirely. To sum it up, it defends the idea that both cultural and biological factors play a role in determining the career paths and choices of men and women, and that in an "equal" society like Norway differences in the career paths of women and men (for example, engineers tend to be men and nurses tend to be women) can be explained by the fact that men and women are free to follow their natural (understand: biological) inclinations. This is demonstrated by what appears to be a candid journalist/investigator going to speak with various experts in order to understand the issue better, and reaching what looks like a logical conclusion given the evidence that he has been presented with.
I could start by pointing out to you that this very documentary that you cited as evidence of your claim in fact contradicts it since it supports the idea that culture does play a role next to biology.
Let's go a bit further than that, however (I am in debt to Odile Fillod's excellent rebuttal of the documentary), and look at how its message pertaining to the role of biology holds up under increased scrutiny. First, let's point out that the "journalist/investigator" whom we follow in the "documentary", Harald Eia, is not actually trying to "inform himself" (and he's not a journalist) - he is an active proponent of the theory that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women, including in terms of career paths. He has, in fact, published a book defending these views (EIA, Harald, IHLE, Ole-Martin (2010), Født sånn eller blitt sånn?). He has confirmed in an interview that he held these views prior to making the "documentary", and that they came to him notably after reading authors like Steven Pinker and David Buss (see his interview here). So let's keep in mind that, contrary to what is being shown on screen, this guy is absolutely not genuinely trying to get a better idea of the issue and weighing what different experts are telling him - he had already made up his mind and the entire documentary is constructed to convince the audience of the validity of the views he holds. That is why he ends the documentary by showing the expert in gender studies seemingly unable to answer what is put forward by the experts in psychology and human evolution he carefully selected.
This being said, what is the validity of the "expert opinions" he relies on to assert that biology leads to men and women essentially having different brains? One of the cornerstones of his demonstration is the opinion of Simon Baron-Cohen, which he goes into great length to present as a legitimate scientific authority (shots of the University of Cambridge where he works, etc.), and Baron-Cohen's study on what he says are 24 hrs-old male and female babies. 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).
I explored the detail of this specific part of the documentary, but similar comments can be made with regards to the other testimonies defending the existence of a biological determinism separating male and female brains in a way that leads to differences in interests and even career paths. The social scientist interviewed at the beginning which says that there is no actual scientific evidence of such biological determinism is actually perfectly right. They were not very articulate at the end (I suspect that there might have been a bias in the selection of footage to show for their answers at the end, but oh well), but the fact is simply that the scientific research done so far does NOT establish the existence of such biological determinism. There have been articles claiming to establish such differences, such as Baron-Cohen's, but they do not resist scrutiny and are systematically characterized by methodological biases/flaws and interpretation problems. In fact, if you want a very extensive look at the literature on the topic, I suggest you read Rebecca M. Jordan-Young's book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (2010), it's extremely exhaustive and well-documented. Her conclusions include that we are not blank slates (predispositions are not completely identical in individuals) but that the binary system of gender does not accurately capture these initial differences (see also WITELSON, S. F. (1991), "Neural Sexual Mosaicism: Sexual Differentiation of the Human Temporo-Parietal Region for Functional Asymmetry". Psychoneuroendocrinology, 16 (1-3): pp. 131-153). Clearly, cultural factors are a driving force behind differences in career paths between men and women, and social construction of gender roles is a fundamental object of study for whomever is interested in more equality between sexes.
TL;DR: The author of the "documentary" held the prior view that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women and pretended to be a neutral investigator while in reality constructing the entire piece to convince uninformed viewers of the validity of his views. He tries to portray social scientists as naïve on the issue and as contradicted by the research done in the natural sciences, while the truth is that he cherry-picked a few natural scientists that share his positions and that do not represent in any way a consensus in their field (sometimes the opposite). It's a cleverly crafted piece, which can persuade people who are not familiar with the subject matter (especially those who hold a priori views similar to the author's), but it's pure garbage when it comes to wanting to take a look at the actual state of the scientific research (natural and social sciences) on the topic. If you're actually interested in learning more about it, in addition to the Jordan-Young reference I mention at the end of my post, I suggest reading Janet Shibley Hyde's Half the Human Experience: The Psychology of Women (8th edition, 2012) and Cordelia Fine's Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (2017). Again, while we're not blank states and there can be some initial statistical differences in brain formation between men and women, the groups largely overlap, the binary division between men and women does not accurately reflect this initial reality, and most importantly neuroplasticity plays such a role that initial differences are unimportant in comparison to the development that occurs throughout our lives. This leads cultural variables ("nurture") to be at the core of the differences in career paths between men and women -- not biology.
You're trying to present yourself as an objective observer, and yet I can't help but suspect you are at least as inclined to the opposite position as Harald was to favouring biological factors. To suggest that the belief that there are biological differences between male and female brains is not mainstream in the sciences is beyond absurd. I'm always curious about something in these cases. Do you live in the countryside or the city?
I don't know if you watched the 'entire' documentary in the sense of watching all the episodes, but you may find the parental effect episode interesting. Then again, you might just ignore all the evidence and look for some little detail to pick on.
Ah, that documentary once again makes a return on TL. I addressed it at length in a post three years ago. I'll quote myself (TL;DR below):
Now, let's take a look at the documentary you posted. I watched it entirely. To sum it up, it defends the idea that both cultural and biological factors play a role in determining the career paths and choices of men and women, and that in an "equal" society like Norway differences in the career paths of women and men (for example, engineers tend to be men and nurses tend to be women) can be explained by the fact that men and women are free to follow their natural (understand: biological) inclinations. This is demonstrated by what appears to be a candid journalist/investigator going to speak with various experts in order to understand the issue better, and reaching what looks like a logical conclusion given the evidence that he has been presented with.
I could start by pointing out to you that this very documentary that you cited as evidence of your claim in fact contradicts it since it supports the idea that culture does play a role next to biology.
Let's go a bit further than that, however (I am in debt to Odile Fillod's excellent rebuttal of the documentary), and look at how its message pertaining to the role of biology holds up under increased scrutiny. First, let's point out that the "journalist/investigator" whom we follow in the "documentary", Harald Eia, is not actually trying to "inform himself" (and he's not a journalist) - he is an active proponent of the theory that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women, including in terms of career paths. He has, in fact, published a book defending these views (EIA, Harald, IHLE, Ole-Martin (2010), Født sånn eller blitt sånn?). He has confirmed in an interview that he held these views prior to making the "documentary", and that they came to him notably after reading authors like Steven Pinker and David Buss (see his interview here). So let's keep in mind that, contrary to what is being shown on screen, this guy is absolutely not genuinely trying to get a better idea of the issue and weighing what different experts are telling him - he had already made up his mind and the entire documentary is constructed to convince the audience of the validity of the views he holds. That is why he ends the documentary by showing the expert in gender studies seemingly unable to answer what is put forward by the experts in psychology and human evolution he carefully selected.
This being said, what is the validity of the "expert opinions" he relies on to assert that biology leads to men and women essentially having different brains? One of the cornerstones of his demonstration is the opinion of Simon Baron-Cohen, which he goes into great length to present as a legitimate scientific authority (shots of the University of Cambridge where he works, etc.), and Baron-Cohen's study on what he says are 24 hrs-old male and female babies. 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).
I explored the detail of this specific part of the documentary, but similar comments can be made with regards to the other testimonies defending the existence of a biological determinism separating male and female brains in a way that leads to differences in interests and even career paths. The social scientist interviewed at the beginning which says that there is no actual scientific evidence of such biological determinism is actually perfectly right. They were not very articulate at the end (I suspect that there might have been a bias in the selection of footage to show for their answers at the end, but oh well), but the fact is simply that the scientific research done so far does NOT establish the existence of such biological determinism. There have been articles claiming to establish such differences, such as Baron-Cohen's, but they do not resist scrutiny and are systematically characterized by methodological biases/flaws and interpretation problems. In fact, if you want a very extensive look at the literature on the topic, I suggest you read Rebecca M. Jordan-Young's book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (2010), it's extremely exhaustive and well-documented. Her conclusions include that we are not blank slates (predispositions are not completely identical in individuals) but that the binary system of gender does not accurately capture these initial differences (see also WITELSON, S. F. (1991), "Neural Sexual Mosaicism: Sexual Differentiation of the Human Temporo-Parietal Region for Functional Asymmetry". Psychoneuroendocrinology, 16 (1-3): pp. 131-153). Clearly, cultural factors are a driving force behind differences in career paths between men and women, and social construction of gender roles is a fundamental object of study for whomever is interested in more equality between sexes.
TL;DR: The author of the "documentary" held the prior view that biology leads to differences in behavior and interests between men and women and pretended to be a neutral investigator while in reality constructing the entire piece to convince uninformed viewers of the validity of his views. He tries to portray social scientists as naïve on the issue and as contradicted by the research done in the natural sciences, while the truth is that he cherry-picked a few natural scientists that share his positions and that do not represent in any way a consensus in their field (sometimes the opposite). It's a cleverly crafted piece, which can persuade people who are not familiar with the subject matter (especially those who hold a priori views similar to the author's), but it's pure garbage when it comes to wanting to take a look at the actual state of the scientific research (natural and social sciences) on the topic. If you're actually interested in learning more about it, in addition to the Jordan-Young reference I mention at the end of my post, I suggest reading Janet Shibley Hyde's Half the Human Experience: The Psychology of Women (8th edition, 2012) and Cordelia Fine's Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (2017). Again, while we're not blank states and there can be some initial statistical differences in brain formation between men and women, the groups largely overlap, the binary division between men and women does not accurately reflect this initial reality, and most importantly neuroplasticity plays such a role that initial differences are unimportant in comparison to the development that occurs throughout our lives. This leads cultural variables ("nurture") to be at the core of the differences in career paths between men and women -- not biology.
You're trying to present yourself as an objective observer, and yet I can't help but suspect you are at least as inclined to the opposite position as Harald was to favouring biological factors. To suggest that the belief that there are biological differences between male and female brains is not mainstream in the sciences is beyond absurd. I'm always curious about something in these cases. Do you live in the countryside or the city?
I don't know if you watched the 'entire' documentary in the sense of watching all the episodes, but you may find the parental effect episode interesting. Then again, you might just ignore all the evidence and look for some little detail to pick on.
Can you cite evidence for you claim that the belief in biological differences in male and female brains is "mainstream" in science? You statement that the opposite is " beyond absurd" is quite strong.
EPT
