European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 868

On May 23 2017 01:27 Plansix wrote:

They do. There are stories of women trying to enter those fields and being harassed. They are mostly smaller stories that don’t reach the global narrative on the subject. And fields like teaching elementary school are dominated by women. Not because of coworker based sexism, but because of sexist parents. The totally unfounded panic about male teachers sexually assaulting students is very real.

It is hard to be the outsider breaking into the field. It is hard to be the minority group in a field too. Both of those statements and findings shouldn’t surprise anyone. But those are problems that can be address. Women in tech will face sexism in male dominated companies. The problem arises when the companies either ignore or deny the sexism is happening. Or claim that women don’t want the jobs to justify why their field is dominated by men.

On May 23 2017 01:59 Liquid`Drone wrote:


I really don't think elementary schools being dominated by women has much if anything to do with sexist parents. The statistics are, to my knowledge, fairly similar in Norway, but I've never heard of anyone citing 'fear of being accused of sexual assault' as a reason for not wanting to teach elementary school. Fact is, I've talked to so many teacher students that it almost constitutes a representative group for a study, and that guys are more enthusiastic about teaching older kids is absolutely true. I think you have a much better case for a 'guys from a young age are influenced to think that care-taking is a feminine activity' and elementary school is more about taking care of the kids than about academic or scholarly pursuits type of argument.

Care-taking / parenting is one of the areas where the nature vs nurture argument is most relevant, anyway.

On May 23 2017 01:49 Velr wrote:
Yeah, but somehow women seem to aim for these "safe" jobs... Go figure?

On May 23 2017 02:22 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Wow really Plansix? Here in UK, a degree in Primary Education is hotly contested though admittedly over-represented by women to the extent that the government wants to attract male teachers. To be suspected of sexual assault is just unbelievable as a matter of course. The pay is the same as secondary school and to essentially have a white collar job surrounded by women is viewed as an envious position.

On May 23 2017 02:29 Plansix wrote:

I was in college almost 2 decades ago, so things may have changed. The US is also a weird country local governments have a lot of power of schools, so it might be more pronounced over here.

Drone: Agreed. I'm firmly in the cultural camp for men not wanting to teach young kids. Because you see plenty of men teaching young children in other areas where it is deemed culturally acceptable to do so.

On May 23 2017 01:06 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Meh. There are indigenous tribes and smaller communities where gender roles are reversed, where women hunt, men cook. I accept your argument though, I think there certainly are differences between the genders. I also subscribe to the thought that if you examine all human societies and find commonalities between them all, then this is a good indicator that something about that particular behavioral trait is 'natural'.

That said, I kinda feel like you're also jousting at windmills a bit. There really aren't all that many people who want equality in every way across the board. What most people want is equal opportunity in every way across the board. And then we think that if only 5% of car mechanics are women, then that's the type of gender imbalance hinders women who actually really would like to be car mechanics. It can make it hard for them to be open about their desire to be car mechanics (this is probably just as bad for guys in masculine societies who want 'feminine' jobs though), etc. The goal of equal representation has been considered a necessity for the goal of equal opportunity, even if that might seem a little backwards.

Harald Eia isn't necessarily saying that biology is the dominant factor. He's saying it's a factor. The thing is, mostly everybody agrees with this. My dad is a fairly radical children's pedagogue who most certainly believes that cultural factors are by far most significant in determining gender roles. But I've had these discussions with him on many occasions, and he by no means discounts biology. Sure, there are more radical people than him, but they're hardly influential. I kinda feel like Harald Eia's argument, because he somewhat misconstrues the opinions of some gender researchers to make it sound like their opinions are weird enough to warrant ridicule (this didn't come out in the translation, but he's arguably Norway's funniest man person), ends up creating a discussion that was hardly there. Because in reality, while people find themselves located on various places of the 'nature vs nurture being more important in determining gender roles'-scale, virtually nobody actually argues that biological or cultural factors are non-factors. People on the cultural side will argue that there's no way of accurately determining how significant the biological factors are (certainly true based on current knowledge), people on the biological side will argue that biology is still a factor (also certainly seems true, even if one doesn't accept that there are gender differences between brains then it's still hard to argue against 'physically strong people will find heavy construction work easier than what the case is for physically weak people').

Like, affirmative action has never been supposed to be a permanent thing. It's supposed to be a temporary measure to reverse some of the cultural factors that make men (or white people) dominant within a particular profession. In Norway, where gender equality has gotten so far that women are more successful than men in many ways, we've started discussing pro-male affirmative action. I also think it's something that can't be fully evaluated before it has been in place for at least a generation (or two), cultural factors don't necessarily change any faster than that. But I'm also fine with trying affirmative action, trying various policies that promote gender equality/diversity, and if seeing that these policies didn't actually change anything, concluding that hey, maybe cultural factors weren't most important in this particular instance. But I'm not fine with seeing 90% of CEO's are men, and concluding that women just don't care about leadership roles, which is self-evident when examining virtually every society that has ever existed because they've all been led by men.

I also think this discussion, while not specifically relevant to the european politics and economics thread, is relevant to mostly all political discussions everywhere (the nature vs nurture debate is one of the central debates, up there with free will), and Hjernevask is actually a good point of departure for a discussion. But people need to realize that Harald Eia does have an agenda of making biological factors more important than mainstream norwegian academics focusing on gender studies (and other aspects of sociology) think it is, and some of this is expressed through the editing of statements by those academics to make them sound less nuanced and more ridiculous than what was the case.

On May 23 2017 02:26 Nyxisto wrote:
I am cautiously optimistic that the French election ended the right-wing populism in Europe or at least will lead to its splintering and decline. If our government is smart enough to make meaningful concessions to the French and other governments in exchange for deeper EU integration (and Merkel isn't stupid she knows that something needs to change during the next five years), then I think that things might be looking upward.

Also, all your base are belong to us

On May 23 2017 02:34 Shield wrote:
I'm not sure EU army is a good idea when there is NATO. It depends how dominated it is by US, but on the other hand, Nazi Germany wasn't too long ago... Germany has changed, but I don't trust Germany in terms of military yet. No problem with economy though.

On May 23 2017 03:06 Shield wrote:
Germany's military was a threat not too long time ago as I said. Given good economy, you can rebuild it quickly if necessary. I just don't think Germany should be a leader of EU army for the time being. I'm usually on Team Germany when it comes to UK vs Germany, especially Brexit, but not this time.

On May 23 2017 03:12 Shield wrote:
And the point of EU army is? You already have NATO. If your concern is American influence, say it. Justify existence of EU army. At first sight, I just don't want EU army unless America goes nuts.

On May 23 2017 03:12 Shield wrote:
And the point of EU army is? You already have NATO. If your concern is American influence, say it. Justify existence of EU army. At first sight, I just don't want EU army unless America goes nuts.