Gender gaps and pay disparity in the game industry.

[Hatta]

It's an easy experiment to do. Perform a sex change at birth, apply the appropriate hormones at the appropriate times, and raise the kid as the assigned sex instead of the natural sex. Observe.

And this has been done. Botched circumscisions have led to sex changes, and the results are never happy. Males with their testicles removed, gynogenic hormones given, and raised with dresses and dolls reject their assigned gender identity and play with guns instead.

That's really all you need to know to know that brains are not intersex.

[dsheinem]

It's an easy experiment to do. Perform a sex change at birth, apply the appropriate hormones at the appropriate times, and raise the kid as the assigned sex instead of the natural sex. Observe.

And this has been done. Botched circumscisions have led to sex changes, and the results are never happy. Males with their testicles removed, gynogenic hormones given, and raised with dresses and dolls reject their assigned gender identity and play with guns instead.

That's really all you need to know to know that brains are not intersex.

cool story bro, it adds a lot to this discussion.

[Key-Glyph]

I just want to chime in and add that the influence and control that parents are assumed to have over their own children, by both society and themselves, is greatly exaggerated. I am not saying that parents do not have a great deal of responsibility toward their kids, nor that the way a kid turns out bears no correlation to how their parents raised them. I simply mean that there is a lot more chaos in the equation than is generally admitted. In addition to their own internal input, kids have friends, go to school, watch television, read books, and so on, and are basically bombarded with outside messages and feedback that they puzzle out and assign values to on their own, consciously and unconsciously, without a parent having any active part in it. If those messages overwhelmingly lean a certain way, individuals will be more likely to be shaped by them -- and to a potentially more dramatic degree. Parents may be big voices in their kids' lives, but they are only one or two sources against a zillion. Society is the elephant in the room.

Because of this I sometimes wonder how many girls wind up on study paths into subjects like the humanities because of subtle, consistent, ubiquitous encouragement they get to do so, or who conversely don't follow science and math because of subtle, consistent, ubiquitous discouragement against it (or just an absence of any positive feedback). The same thing happens to boys, who are just working under a different set of expectations. Not every individual is swayed away from (or propelled into) their interests or strengths in this fashion, but the inertia is there. That's precisely why we need more varied or more mixed gender messages in our culture: to lessen the strength that the established patterns of "gendered" behavior can have over individuals who are striving for a different authenticity.

[Ivo]

I'm sorry for throwing some more potential source of controversy here, but I think it would be a good place to get some (hopefully civilized) discussion on this talk:
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

The transcript has some issues with words being glued together, but I found it legible. There is also a link to a .doc of the transcript that hopefully is formatted properly (I did not check).

[o.pwuaioc]

No strawman was constructed. Was just pointing out how you dramatically minimize the role biology plays on real life outcomes.

If you're going to make up my position for me, at least be consistent.

The problem with your line of reasoning is that it seems you have taken an extreme anti-evolutionary position on the issue, to the point that it looks like you are denying that sexual dimorphism exhibits any significance at all in humans.

And I wouldn't say nobody agrees with me. Here are a few articles about the importance and reality of sex differences. And besides, these differences will continue to exist despite what's written about them.

I already acknowledged differences. In fact, as I now repeat myself for the third time, "I think there are real biological differences between men and women." How hard is it for you to acknowledge that I said this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11324860
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10527068
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19889648
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17644146
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19318467
http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/PDF/Brun2009_Sex.pdf
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toan ... OANATJ.pdf

Which of these studies suggest that men are more suited to programming than women? Oops.

[saturnfan]

I acknowledged what you said, but posited that you don't think they have real world, observable outcomes in job preference. Do you dispute this? I don't want to put words into your mouth.

Second, you haven't shown me anything conclusive to lead me to believe that women would be better than or equal to men in the programing field. The computer sciences favor visuospatial ability over verbal reasoning. There's plenty of literature to support that men have an advantage in visuospatial skills. I'm sorry you were unable to extract that point from my last post. I should have spelled it out for you.

Based on this difference, the field should be lopsided to some degree, favoring men. Perhaps the degree of lopsidedness can be assuaged through addressing the societal factors that might be swaying women away from the field. But I would not expect parity in the field.

[o.pwuaioc]

Second, you haven't shown me anything conclusive to lead me to believe that women would be better than or equal to men in the programing field.

Wow, just wow. I have to prove that you're not right? Something fishy about that logic, there.

The computer sciences favor visuospatial ability over verbal reasoning.

Which of the studies showed this?

Based on this difference, the field should be lopsided to some degree, favoring men. Perhaps the degree of lopsidedness can be assuaged through addressing the societal factors that might be swaying women away from the field. But I would not expect parity in the field.

Funny how you still haven't dealt with the wealth of evidence from the real world indicating that women are far better represented in computer sciences in other countries.

[saturnfan]

Yes, if you are going to make claims, surprisingly enough, you need to back them up.

If you were referring to that article you posted a few pages back, about women in the sciences, you must not have read it. Not once did it list a country in which women earn more degrees in computer science than men. Here is the only paragraph devoted to that subject:

But even when fields are defined more precisely, countries differ in some unexpected ways. A case in point is computer science in Malaysia and the U.S. While American computer scientists are depicted as male hackers and geeks, computer science in Malaysia is deemed well-suited for women because it’s seen as theoretical (not physical) and it takes place almost exclusively in offices (thought to be woman-friendly spaces). In interviews with sociologist Vivian Lagesen, female computer science students in Malaysia reported taking up computing because they like computers and because they and their parents think the field has good job prospects. The students also referenced government efforts to promote economic development by training workers, both male and female, for the expanding information technology field. About half of Malaysian computer science degrees go to women.

Is about half, more or less than 50%? And Malaysia was the only country listed specifically about computer science. This equates to women being far more represented in the computer sciences across the globe? It's not even clear if the one country listed is even over 50%. The other countries listed had to do with the sciences in general. The sciences are a large field, and the economic realities of the countries listed are all different. What you would need to look at is the percentage of men and women in the top positions. The disparity may be caused by women filling a lot of low to mid skilled positions based on an economic need.

Here is a good journal article corroborating what I've been saying, that men have a visouspacial advantage and that equates into real world outcomes. The article also points out that societal factors probably contribute to the under representation of women in these fields.

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/8/1/1.abstract

Here is also an article about computer science specifically, it's a little older though.

http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/c ... 1:300321,1

[o.pwuaioc]

Yes, if you are going to make claims, surprisingly enough, you need to back them up.

I'm sorry, but the original claim is yours. You claimed that women are underrepresented because men are better suited to it. That is your claim.

Is about half, more or less than 50%? And Malaysia was the only country listed specifically about computer science. This equates to women being far more represented in the computer sciences across the globe?

Seriously. If you cannot at least argue with what I actually say, why bother at all?

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/8/1/1.abstract

Thank you for an excellent piece of shoddy science.

I quote:

Males outperform females on most measures of visuospatial abilities, which have been implicated as contributing to sex differences on standardized exams in mathematics and science.

If this were absolutely true, then why aren't men outperforming women on standardized math exams anymore?

Our analysis shows that, for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer
shows a gender difference in math skills, consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis (19). There is evidence of slightly greater male variability in scores, although the causes remain unexplained. Gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some STEM fields. An unexpected finding was that state assessments designed to meet NCLB requirements fail to test complex problem-solving of the kind needed for success in STEM careers, a lacuna that should be fixed.

Hyde et al. (2008) "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance" Science.

Current research published in a premiere academic journal.

You might wonder about post-secondary education tests?

Proponents of what has been termed the Gender Similarities Hypothesis (GSH) have typically relied on meta-analyses as well as the generation of nonsignificant tests of mean differences to support their argument that the genders are more similar than they are different. In the present article, we argue that alternative statistical methodologies, such as tests of equivalence, can provide more accurate (yet equally rigorous) tests of these hypotheses and therefore might serve to complement, challenge, and/or extend findings from meta-analyses. To demonstrate and test the usefulness of such procedures, we examined Scholastic Aptitude Test–Math (SAT-M) data to determine the degree of similarity between genders in the historically gender-stereotyped field of mathematics. Consistent with previous findings, our results suggest that men and women performed similarly on the SAT-M for every year that we examined (1996–2009). Importantly, our statistical approach provides a greater opportunity to open a dialogue on theoretical issues surrounding what does and what should constitute a meaningful difference in intelligence and achievement. As we note in the discussion, it remains important to consider whether even very small but consistent gender differences in mean test performance could reflect stereotype threat in the testing environment and/or gender biases in the test itself that would be important to address.

Ball et al. (2013) "Beyond Gender Differences Using Tests of Equivalence to Evaluate Gender Similarities." Psychology of Women Quarterly.

And one more on national differences:

Abstract:

About 70% of more than half a million Implicit Association Tests completed by citizens of 34 countries revealed expected implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. We discovered that nation-level implicit stereotypes predicted nation-level sex differences in 8th-grade science and mathematics achievement. Self-reported stereotypes did not provide additional predictive validity of the achievement gap. We suggest that implicit stereotypes and sex differences in science participation and performance are mutually reinforcing, contributing to the persistent gender gap in science engagement.

Discussion:

We found that a national indicator of implicit gender–science stereotyping was related to nations’ sex differences in science and math achievement...The mean level of implicit stereotyping among national citizens, regardless of age or gender, predicted the sex differences in TIMSS performance among the 8th graders of that nation from 2003 and 1999...Rather, a more likely cause of the relation is that both the 8th grade test takers and the diverse IAT participants of a given country are influenced by the same socio-cultural context. That social context embodies the reciprocal influence of stereotyped science
= male associations and sex differences in engagement in science and mathematics. This significant relationship persisted even after accounting for a general indicator of societal gender inequality, the GGI. Thus, the relation between implicit gender–science stereotypes and science and math achievement gaps is specific to science and math domains, and not simply a consequence of generalized national gender inequality.

Nosek et al. (2009). "National differences in gender–science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement." PNAS.

I don't see how anyone can have that level of faith in that article. I imagine that line of inquiry won't last.

[saturnfan]

Funny how you still haven't dealt with the wealth of evidence from the real world indicating that women are far better represented in computer sciences in other countries.

You said it just a few posts ago. It wasn't true, at least not in anything you provided. And you did never say that women make more, nor did I address that phantom statement. I was talking about over representation.

If you are just going to change what you say or deny statements, then I'll take your advice and stop bothering to argue, it's far too annoying. But thankfully, the empirical evidence will continue to vindicate me. I'll concede to the point that the field could become over represented with women, but not unless there's some economic need that undermines job preference.