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April 23rd 2016, 07:51 AM
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I agree. However, they are weighted in a million different ways, and for any particular task or occupation, the weights are canceling each other out. It's random noise, and there is no reason any gender is better at the job.

It's not random noise if the effects differ based on gender. For some occupations, they would cancel each other out. For others, there would be a net positive or negative bias.

Yes, lots of people still teach that. After living in the US for a few years, I can say that everything we discuss here is much worse on this side of the ocean: there is more discrimination towards all groups we talked about than what I'm used to in Europe.

I didn't mean *literally* no one - I was talking about the general majority of people like you and me. There's so much wrong with what deeply religious people teach to their children that focusing just on women's rights with them seems like it would be missing the point.

In Europe, these groups are pretty marginal. (Although still more significant than I'd like; such as the fact they have political parties and elected representatives in the goverment.) Religion is a big problem, in part due to the sexism practised in them. Yet I don't see women's rights activists bashing Muslims, fundamentalist catholics, and Jehovah's witnesses. If they did, that would be very refreshing. Then I could at least agree they're tackling real problems. 8-)

What percentage do you expect? Below which limit do you agree that there must be unfair discrimination at play? If you look at the world parliaments, the US is #95 at 19.4%. Every country from western Europe except Ireland(#111, 16.3%) scores higher. And aside from Greece (#93, 19.7%) not a little higher: it ranges from Sweden (#5, 43.6%) to France (#58, 26.2%).

That's an interesting question. I'd say it depends on how competitive the position is; the more competition, the less women I'd expect to see. (Because men are more competitive than women.) Ranging between 20% and 50% doesn't seem unreasonable.

You say women are not discriminated? Then why do they earn less money for doing the same job as men?

For doing the same job, women don't earn a lot less. It's something like 5%. That brings me again to the problem of competitiveness - your pay is to some extent up to yourself. How much you ask for when you apply for the job, and how often you demand a raise.

As a programmer, I encountered this: Women Can Code – as Long as No One Knows They're Women

Less than 10% difference, and only when the requests were made to outsiders. When the requests were made to insiders, MEN were discriminated against. Funny how the text completely neglected to mention that. (Figure 5)

Also, BREAKING NEWS: Horrible discrimination towards men in the field of programming! Because supposedly women are better at it. =]

And here's a list of articles about gender discrimination, almost all in favor of men. That's not selected that way; it's simply all news about gender discrimination (from a US news organization).

For this to be important, we'd need to assume that problems faced by men receive as much attention as problems faced by women. I don't think that's the case, since feminism is a hugely powerful and vocal movement that's been bringing attention to women's problems for many decades, while there's nothing similar for men. (Men's rights activism is starting to become a real thing, I guess, but it's still very young in its shoes.)

And before anyone claims that Feminism is about equality, no you're wrong: It's a movement that advocates women's rights.

Perhaps it has gotten better, but realize that last year, Missouri decided to take the confederate flag down from the state parliament.

Eh, the civil war is a pretty big part of American history. A state can ackowledge the fact the confederation existed without the implicit suggestion that they support slavery, I think?

Have you heard about "Black Lives Matter"? It's a protest movement, which does peaceful protests to try to stop the police from killing (mostly unarmed) black people. Because they do that all the time, everywhere. Look it up, this is not history, it's happening right now.

Yes, I don't think anyone thinks very highly of the American police these days. Not just for racism, but they generally seem to be all too shooty and happy to ignore basic rights.

This is much worse here than what I've seen in Europe. But I'm pretty sure that there is a lot of discrimination in Europe as well. For example, I would be surprised if a person named Mohammed has as much chance of getting a job as a person named John.

Sure, but only because that name is associated with terrorism, which is a very hot potato right now.

Don't forget: this isn't "one colleague is annoying sometimes". This is "almost every colleague implies every day that I don't deserve to be there".

Oh? In what universe does this happen? Everyone at a workplace treating women like they're the scum of the earth would be starkly in contrast with societal values at large. From my understanding, most instances of harrassment are singular incidents.

Not to say it can never happen (just like workplace bullying happens, where everyone may turn to treat one person poorly due to their low social standing in that particular group (because pack animals are spineless conforming cowards sometimes)), but I highly doubt that's the usual case.

Here in the US, I'm pretty sure there is such a cabal. Their PR department is called "Fox News" and they do a lot of pushing. But even if there isn't a cabal, the system can still be rigged. If one group has more opportunities for whatever reason, that's unfair. Fixing that is a good thing.

"Rigged" implies it's engineered to be that way. The system can be unfair, I agree with that. A football match where every kid on one team comes from a family that plays football every day, while every kid on the other team comes from a family that never plays football, can be unfair. But the game is only rigged if the referee gives red cards to one team for minor offences, and doesn't give them to the other team for the same offences.

But I think that's our main disagreement, i.e. how much favouritism is going on based on race. I don't think it's hugely significant, and most differences in socio-economic status are due to the socio-economic status of the parents. Culture also affects it. For instance, black culture might glorify a gangsta-lifestyle and shun academics. Genetics might affect it, but probably not very much.

"Of course it's racist. There's nothing wrong with that." - Shevek, 2016.

J/k. If you were a politician, that's how I would choose to see it as your running opponent.

Blacks are underrepresented in some well paying sector. Whites tend to stick together, so when they hire new people, they most likely hire more white people. That means that the fraction of blacks isn't going to increase by itself. (In fact, it's likely to decrease.)

Why would whites hire only whites, unless they were racists to begin with? The younger generations have specifically been taught not to think like that. I think what "positive" discrimination does is reinforce that kind of us vs them mentality. Giving the majority good reasons to resent minorities can't possibly be a good thing.

That is unjust. It is because of the race, and so to fix it, we must differentiate people based on race. That is racist. But discrimination is only bad if it hurts people unjustly. And taking away privilege in order to achieve equality may hurt, but it certainly isn't unjust. Quite the contrary.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?