Sauce for the goose; sauce for the gander. If women want to invade male domains, then they cannot complain when men (dressed as women) invade theirs. I note the clamour about sex discrimination in traditionally male dominated work areas - such as engineering, business management, science, and an enthusiasm for affirmative action to increase female participation in these areas, but a tangible silence for more women working on bin lorries, scouring out the sewers or diving off North Sea oil rigs to inspect the supports. The men can keep their dirty, low paid and/or hazardous jobs, it’s just the high status, well paid jobs where nice ladies won’t get their nail varnish chipped that qualify for balance in the workplace. Pass the humbugs mother.
The feminization of healthcare will soon reach a tipping point (more female doctors than male doctors, and more female physician administrators). Enormous changes are already underway to reshape healthcare institutions around women caregivers' emotional needs. If you thought the rivalry between the largely male physician cohort and the largely female nursing cohort was fierce, wait until both nurses and doctors and administrators are mostly women. It's going to get intense.
Not saying that there aren't these dynamics you're alluding to, but... It's *also* possible that many of the key functions used to be performed by (predominantly) female nurses that were paid relatively little; they had few other work options. Similarly, many very smart and capable women became school teachers for small paychecks, relative to their cognitive and production abilities, because there were relatively few jobs available to them.
In the 1950s and 1960s you could get excellent service at Department Stores like May Co., Macys, Rich's, because many of the workers were housewives with excellent educations and competence. They were working retail part-time, because there weren't a lot of high-status, high pay jobs available to them.
"there were relatively few jobs available to them". Quite true. So in order to expand the workforce, corporations found they could use pay to induce the best and brightest females to aspire the corporate rat race. In the process we downgraded teachers into jobs few wanted since they were paid less and the pipeline filled with less qualified people. Teaching has always been a labor of love and inspiration - nurture. It once was a highly respected occupation on the level of pastors, doctors, military - not for money but for the work. Money now rules in terms of social status. Perhaps to the detriment of society itself. And women at the corporate top often means less risk taking and lower profit - also not always best for society.
One thing to note is that the sectors that we traditionally associate with above inflation price growth over the last several decade are all traditionally or increasingly female (healthcare, education, etc). Nurses and teachers are VERY good at making sure these sectors continue to grow and will resist any kind of reform that shrinks the pie.
The primary reasons health care and education outpace inflation are that they are labor intensive (unit cost) and they are demanded in greater quantities as wealth grows (# of units). While it's possible that is related female influence, I'd need better evidence than your opinion.
50%, of Drs. at least, is in no way the tipping point. Because men are more likely to put in the most hours, they are still more likely to be in the positions of power.
First, some comments with regards to your recommendation for men to lose the 'singles-bar mindset' and the 'locker-room language.' On the first point, you write as if women don't have any agency here. As they say, it takes two to tango. If young women regret hookups, they should decide for themselves to refrain from such conduct (and the sex ratio is no excuse). On the second point, you write as if women keep their thoughts about men's bodies to themselves. Not true, though arguably they are more discrete. I assume you are trying to bend over backwards to be even-handed here, but it probably isn't worth the effort.
As I have noted before on this topic, the problems highlighted in your essay (and Warby's analysis) are not the inevitable result of women's participation in formerly male-dominated institutions. In the Soviet-type economies, women were to a great extent drawn into the labor force much earlier than their Western counterparts (possibly as a systemic feature of shortage economies), and this carried through into the post-socialist transition to market economies, but my impression (based on my experience in the 1990s) is that Russian women assimilated into the dominant male culture, rather than the other way around. The promotion of Russian women to high levels is arguably more merit-based compared to their Western counterparts (for example, compare the head of Russia's central bank with, say, Janet Yellen, or the former head of the IMF and now the ECB). I could be mistaken about this difference, of course, but assuming for the sake of argument that there is a difference, the question is why. One rebuttal might be that Russia remains essentially sexist, and men still dominate the upper echelons of economic and political institutions, with women playing a vital supporting role. But it could also be the result of a cultural difference independent of the problem of sexism. As far as I know, Russia women dominate in elementary education, as they do here in the US, but Russian elementary education, and the culture surrounding the raising of children more generally, remains oriented towards achievement (and discipline), and still dispenses differential rewards based on merit and competence.
Quoth: "Russian elementary education, and the culture surrounding the raising of children more generally, remains oriented towards achievement (and discipline), and still dispenses differential rewards based on merit and competence."
Well, I've some excellent knowledge of that system and culture, and I can tell you that there is a whole lot of bribery and "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" type of stuff going on. I know people very well that were top-of-class in terms of grades and test scores, and still couldn't get into the good college majors without bribing people in charge of admissions. And as for quotas – there were plenty of those – so many from the villages, so many with a sports certification, etc., etc. These attitudes and practices pervaded and continue to pervade all spheres of life, education, and work in Russia. If you speak in any decent depth with a person who came up through that system, they'll tell you in no uncertain terms that it was far from merit-based. It's also a big part of why the country is in the sh*tter economically, politically, and almost all other dimensions, and why so many bright, motivated, and capable people want to leave. Finland it is not!
Speaking of Russian brain drain, Soviet-born USC chemistry professor Anna Krylov, who earned her undergraduate degree in quantum chemistry at Moscow State University and is a proponent of merit-based science, wrote an interesting article (The Perils of Politicizing Science) comparing the ongoing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship in the West to similar campaigns in Soviet science. It must be disconcerting for those Russian scientists and scholars who managed to escape their country of birth for the 'freedom' of the West to find themselves reliving the same nightmare twice in their lifetimes.
There is a generational aspect here as well. I remember reading a paper years ago about group integration. When numbers of outgroup entrants were below about 20%, new entrants assimilated to the existing norms. Above that, the outgroup constituency is large enough to start demanding and enacting changes to group norms. Working in a historically male field (which now is at parity), the work culture divide between older and very young women seems larger than the work culture values of the young men and young women.
Studies have shown that women tend to self-censor at the application stage: "I don't meet all of the criteria, so I won't apply. Men: "I fit some of the criteria, so sure, I'll apply." Also, women have traditionally been scored more based on accomplishments, while men have been scored more on potential. At least in top academic jobs, but I believe studies also extended to other spheres.
Another area of difference has been that, once hired, the same statements and behaviors by women and men are perceived and reacted to differently. What is perceived as "assertiveness" by a male colleague is often perceived as "bitchiness" or "bossiness" from a female colleague. The amount of smiling expected from a female differs from male. Female professors are rated differently (usually lower) than male professors by students.
In their early days, most Ivies took in kids predominantly from monied families. Then somehow the idea of merit came. Well, first it was too many Jewish kids getting in on merit. So then the idea of "interviews" and "extracurriculars" came to rebalance. Then the Asian kids came, with all the grades, test scores, AND extracurriculars. Time to change again... Harvard started taking in more dark-skinned students. From where?.. turns out the majority of them are children of rich African elites – got your demographics boost, and they pay full ride... win / win!
Ya move the goal posts, but people will recalibrate. In the end, the Ivies want to stay profitable, and parents want to maximize near-term safety and long-term opportunities for their kids. Solve for the equilibrium.
There are two habits in female bosses that I take issue with.
1) An over willingness to take on meaningless or unnecessary work because someone asked for it (or even hinted at it).
2) A reluctance to say no to someone when they are wrong, especially a superior.
Woman talk a lot about work/life balance, but everywhere I see them taking on burdens that they don't need to take on and that don't really do the company much good (which often splashes over to their co-workers and subordinates). I think this "bring your whole self to work" thing resonates a lot more with them, whereas I want to generate as much value as quickly as possible so I can get back to my real life. The concept of people at work being a second family is alien to me.
I'm afraid nature has sent down its own verdict on feminism, and does not support it, however morally superior we believe it to be to give women lots of career options other than child-rearing. The result of feminism in the west is that other demographics, mostly outside the west but wanting in, which don't practice feminism are out-breeding us badly, and it's probably too late to stop them from replacing us. At which point the whole subject is moot.
Men were forced to lose those "harmful cultural attitudes" in the workplace because of the threat of lawsuits, not because the magically saw the light. Big heavy hammers called "sexual harassment law" under the color of Civil Rights came from the lawyer class, smoting down from on high all but the most male-dominated fields. In most male Dom fields, rnough women had been hired or were interested in being hired that such behaviors couldn't no longer be tolerated as they opened a company up to litigation.
There are no big heavy hammers demanding merit in the workplace, nor compelling liberty over conformity, and the lawsuits continue to favor safetyism over achievement. There is a sliver of a chance of the defense of free speech remaining, but to date, the lawyers have clobbered that.
So there is nothing to compel women to change their behaviors in the workplace and plenty of lawsuit-ready lawyers able to sustain or promote it.
An otherwise fine assessment of institutional dynamics as their gender composition shifts that’s brought down by false dichotomies and hand-ringing. The characterization of cancellation is spot on, though.
This belief that “competence” somehow trades off with “safety” and that these both map onto gender has to go. What evidence is there that anything of the “feminine” results in lower productivity? Firms are more profitable than ever, and we’re enjoying a time of unprecedented technological advancement, largely due to the work of very smart, gender-diverse teams.
Cultural “feminization” might matter to the Twitter commentariat, who measure their lives in likes and engagement with strangers, but those of us who hire professionals and work with professionals know that an ambitious young graduate from a top school want opportunity, mentorship and influence just as much as we did at their age— regardless of gender.
By the way, a panel survey of 20 year-olds at university does not a broad trend make. We all mature How many of the opinions you held as an undergraduate do you hold today?
I would levy the following criticism of institutions at institutions and not individual people: Institutions are largely unequipped for (and often not trying to prevent) the kinds of things that women do more commonly than men that might upend a workplace, or at least cause some friction.
Consider "what gets reported to HR?" This question should catch the intersection of "What is blatantly unprofessional in the workplace", "What do employees think the company will attempt to prevent" and "What are other coworkers (in this case men) reasonably expected to handle on their own?"
For instance - woman making unwanted sexual advances on man at work. Is this getting reported to HR? At a certain threshold, absolutely, I'd imagine it would. But the threshold is probably unequal between cases. There are obvious reasons of physical strength that this makes sense, but there are other reasons as well.
Perhaps more common is "criticism by empathy", specifically on personal issues outside of work. I've felt personally victimized by Regina George, etc. etc. It's funny as a joke, even HR might laugh! But it sucks in real life. At this point I would like to remind readers this is NOT all women, that men can do this too, etc. etc.
The standard responses in this case are something along the lines of "What are you, some kind of bitch who needs HR to step in for you?" and "It is a shame that men don't feel comfortable stepping forward and talking to HR to prevent this from happening." My point is that, in my cherry-picked case, there is a company-wide push for coworkers to police one another with support of the firm, for the good of a productive work environment, and this push obviously does not apply in various "grey areas" that are obviously not grey in the letter of the law.
I am highly sympathetic to arguments for individual agency, and that calling HR for every quotidian faux pas is bad for you. On the other hand, I would point out that HR departments are roughly two-thirds women according to a Google search, and many of the same things that are supposedly discouraging from women speaking out, likely also work against men. Corporate culture of "keep your head down and get work done" could cut both ways.
Perhaps the fact of the matter is that, with women in a greater percentage of university spots, jobs in management, and involvement in a variety of previously male-dominated fields, we are just witnessing the new culture, in which both the virtues and vices of more people are added to an increasingly diverse culture. Perhaps the gender theorists simply need to do the snarky economist thing, and hire more men in their HR departments and capture the profits lost to discrimination. I seem to recall the thermostat in the office being a gendered "twitter topic" for a while, maybe the men are just losing the vote these days.
However, I end up finding myself in a very stereotypically male conclusion when I think about this. I end up thinking "Well, we are going to have relish this difficulty, embrace being the underdogs, and over-perform anyway. The stories will be fun later. If it gets too bad, I will need a new job that's better suited to me." Most of the female empowerment literature seems to say the same, and it seems to be working...
We are a cognitively dimorphic species. In terms of the 15 personality traits* that aggregate into the Big Five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism), 70 per cent of each sex has a specific pattern of personality traits that no member of the other sex has. This is because the distribution of various traits tend to have different median points in each sex, with the male distributions being “flatter” (meaning longer “tails”). You only have to have one trait that is outside the distribution of the other sex to be cognitively distinct.
Aggregating that together (because each sex has all the congruence but only half the non-congruence), over 80 per cent of us has a specific pattern of personality traits that does not occur in the other sex.
This is an extreme claim that isn't backed up by any evidence. I'm baffled why you would just accept it as a given. In reality, mean scores for men and women across various personality measures are at most half a standard deviation apart. I'm not even sure what it could mean to "fall outside the distribution" of a gender -- for both genders there are going to be rare individuals with a max or min score on any measure.
Your point is often phrased as "more variation within than between", and you're right as far as the individual factors go. The picture can change dramatically when moving to higher dimensions, though, as Lorenzo alludes to with the use of the term 'specific pattern of various traits'.
My interpretation of what Lorenzo means is that, if you consider the set of values in the 15-dimensional trait space that are actually achieved (do a kde or w/e idc) by members of each gender, 70% of the members of each sex fall outside of the set of values obtained by the other sex.
I'm not going to do the math for you, but you could also see this by considering the extent to which you can separate two multivariate normal random variables with marginal distribution means separated by your half a standard deviation (assume independence of marginal distributions and identity covariance matrices... or take it as an exercise..)
This is a general feature of these sorts of comparisons in higher dimensions -- it's easier to separate sets of points in higher than in lower dimensions. cf the last decade in ML.
Do I believe the specific claim made about 70%? Eh, I'd have to actually look at the calculation he does to know what number to believe. But the general point is correct that you can discern man from woman pretty reliably if you look at the whole personality profile.
(I agree that the phrasing is a bit awkward, though)
Men were forced to lose those "harmful cultural attitudes" in the workplace because of the threat of lawsuits, not because the magically saw the light. Big heavy hammers called "sexual harassment law" under the color of Civil Rights came from the lawyer class, smoting down from on high all but the most male-dominated fields. In most male Dom fields, rnough women had been hired or were interested in being hired that such behaviors couldn't no longer be tolerated as they opened a company up to litigation.
There are no big heavy hammers demanding merit in the workplace, nor compelling liberty over conformity, and the lawsuits continue to favor safetyism over achievement. There is a sliver of a chance of the defense of free speech remaining, but to date, the lawyers have clobbered that.
So there is nothing to compel women to change their behaviors in the workplace and plenty of lawsuit-ready lawyers able to sustain or promote it.
It is true I am very nearsighted so maybe I don't notice any emotion in my wide circle of women administrators. Perhaps I don't even notice that they are women! Or understand what 'exempt' means!
Perhaps you, or the hiring committee, noticed they were women while hiring them. It is universally known - tho denied by those for whom denial is expedient - that universities engage in systematic hiring discrimination against men. Often they do so openly & proudly, with no fear of the Law actually being enforced.
Yes I am suggesting that I do not notice, that some kinds of categorical thinking are bad for one's intelligence over time and gender is one of those too-blurry categories to be helpful, when you're an organization in pursuit of excellence.
Unfortunately, most people lack the self-discipline to avail themselves of the immense amount of free and near-free, excellent educational content available today. Some people I know are self-driven autodidacts, other people prefer to be coached / taught.
Likewise, most people (in the US, at least) lack the self-control with regard to eating junk food and avoiding exercise. In the latter situation, they expect the medical system to solve their problems down the road (insulin for Type II, statins, etc.), and/or they *pay* for a gym membership or a trainer to create a commitment device to stick to the difficult regimen.
I should hope that you have no problem with an unfit person paying for a trainer to help put them on a suitable fitness program, and then choosing a male or female trainer based on their preference. And, by the same token, I should hope that you don't have a problem with a student and their parent paying an educator for training their mind and spirit, according to a program, and according to the customer's preferences.
Universities are gyms for people's brains, with trainers. Some people seem to be OK with "tough-guy" or even abusive trainers, while others respond better to gentle and encouraging approaches. If you allow that genders segregate according to personality traits (whether by nature or by nurture or both), why not allow that personality difference among students / gym-goers might - and should - also create demand for different training styles?
I can't think of any basis for saying emotion is worse than not or that masculine wisdom is better than feminine. I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that.
"So, yes, feminisation can be a marker for the corrosion of institutions and consequent social decay."
Sure, that can happen. But women tend to have better social skills so it is probably more likely feminisation will improve society. It certainly has some likelihood of decreasing physical violence.
"The older culture was oriented toward achievement. The newer culture is oriented toward safety. "
An increased focus on safety comes in part from an increase in wealth and living standards. One can't worry much about safety if they don't have food, water, and shelter. That doesn't mean it can't also be due to an increased influence of women but that's not what I'd bet is the biggest factor.
A false assumption made by feminists and other toxic Progressive extremists is that the productive institutions - that provide the standard of living that enables their luxury beliefs - will remain productive even after being colonized by feminist zealots.
It appears this is true only to the extent that institutional inertia carries them forward. Feminization severely reduces an organization's productive capacity. So when the inertia runs out, production efficiency collapses.
Having been colonized by feminism, an once-productive organization is transformed into a blood sucking parasite, a drag on society.
I suppose if you mean the worst aspects of Feminization, maybe so, but I see no evidence that taken as a whole it is bad.
Anecdotal to be sure but there are plenty of male dominated societies with atrocious outcomes and one could argue that Scandinavian societies are both the most successful and the most feminized.
Have you ever spoken with a _working class_ Scandinavian? Those with whom I've spoken - especially Swedes - seem to think their countries are in a state of collapse. Standard of living dropping hard, freedom disappeared, violent crime out of control, cultural genocide proceeding apace.
Unsurprisingly, Scandinavians who are members of the professional managerial class and who are ideologically committed to Progressive Globalism, think all of that is just swell. 'Cuz it seems that progs are more than happy to throw the working class under the bus, if that means a cushy job for them as a commissar.
I don't know how to evaluate that anecdotal evidence, especially in the face of seemingly stronger contrary evidence.
First, three of four largest Scandinavian countries are in the top ten in the world for median income. But maybe some Swedes are feeling the pain of the krona dropping about 10% vs the Euro in the last year or two?
As for not being happy, all four of the largest Scandinavian countries are at the top in surveys of happiness.
"I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that."
I'd be curious to see where the men with feminine personality traits end up being employed. If they are proportionately represented among "male" institutions, there is a good chance that the barriers to women entering those institutions come down to sexism. If men with feminine personality traits are disproportionately absent from "male" institutions, there's a case to be made that those institutions are not engaging in sexism but are merely selecting for personality traits that are uncommon in women.
That is possible. It also seems just as likely that men with feminine traits in male dominated jobs would be discriminated against in many of the same ways as women.
That said, I think Damore hit on the main issue, which isn't far from what you say. Blau and Kahn's work on wage differences would seem to add credence to that view.
"I can't think of any basis for saying emotion is worse than not or that masculine wisdom is better than feminine. I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that."
I think the point is that, these days, most everyone seems to have the attitude that feminine wisdom is better than masculine wisdom. Masculine traits are considered "toxic". Is that really reasonable?
Sauce for the goose; sauce for the gander. If women want to invade male domains, then they cannot complain when men (dressed as women) invade theirs. I note the clamour about sex discrimination in traditionally male dominated work areas - such as engineering, business management, science, and an enthusiasm for affirmative action to increase female participation in these areas, but a tangible silence for more women working on bin lorries, scouring out the sewers or diving off North Sea oil rigs to inspect the supports. The men can keep their dirty, low paid and/or hazardous jobs, it’s just the high status, well paid jobs where nice ladies won’t get their nail varnish chipped that qualify for balance in the workplace. Pass the humbugs mother.
LOL!
The feminization of healthcare will soon reach a tipping point (more female doctors than male doctors, and more female physician administrators). Enormous changes are already underway to reshape healthcare institutions around women caregivers' emotional needs. If you thought the rivalry between the largely male physician cohort and the largely female nursing cohort was fierce, wait until both nurses and doctors and administrators are mostly women. It's going to get intense.
Not saying that there aren't these dynamics you're alluding to, but... It's *also* possible that many of the key functions used to be performed by (predominantly) female nurses that were paid relatively little; they had few other work options. Similarly, many very smart and capable women became school teachers for small paychecks, relative to their cognitive and production abilities, because there were relatively few jobs available to them.
In the 1950s and 1960s you could get excellent service at Department Stores like May Co., Macys, Rich's, because many of the workers were housewives with excellent educations and competence. They were working retail part-time, because there weren't a lot of high-status, high pay jobs available to them.
"there were relatively few jobs available to them". Quite true. So in order to expand the workforce, corporations found they could use pay to induce the best and brightest females to aspire the corporate rat race. In the process we downgraded teachers into jobs few wanted since they were paid less and the pipeline filled with less qualified people. Teaching has always been a labor of love and inspiration - nurture. It once was a highly respected occupation on the level of pastors, doctors, military - not for money but for the work. Money now rules in terms of social status. Perhaps to the detriment of society itself. And women at the corporate top often means less risk taking and lower profit - also not always best for society.
One thing to note is that the sectors that we traditionally associate with above inflation price growth over the last several decade are all traditionally or increasingly female (healthcare, education, etc). Nurses and teachers are VERY good at making sure these sectors continue to grow and will resist any kind of reform that shrinks the pie.
The healthcare and education sectors, despite their parasitically huge budgets, are both failing hard at their primary mission.
Their primary mission is a jobs program for middle class women (votes) and a get rich quick scheme for a few clever administrators.
The primary reasons health care and education outpace inflation are that they are labor intensive (unit cost) and they are demanded in greater quantities as wealth grows (# of units). While it's possible that is related female influence, I'd need better evidence than your opinion.
50%, of Drs. at least, is in no way the tipping point. Because men are more likely to put in the most hours, they are still more likely to be in the positions of power.
First, some comments with regards to your recommendation for men to lose the 'singles-bar mindset' and the 'locker-room language.' On the first point, you write as if women don't have any agency here. As they say, it takes two to tango. If young women regret hookups, they should decide for themselves to refrain from such conduct (and the sex ratio is no excuse). On the second point, you write as if women keep their thoughts about men's bodies to themselves. Not true, though arguably they are more discrete. I assume you are trying to bend over backwards to be even-handed here, but it probably isn't worth the effort.
As I have noted before on this topic, the problems highlighted in your essay (and Warby's analysis) are not the inevitable result of women's participation in formerly male-dominated institutions. In the Soviet-type economies, women were to a great extent drawn into the labor force much earlier than their Western counterparts (possibly as a systemic feature of shortage economies), and this carried through into the post-socialist transition to market economies, but my impression (based on my experience in the 1990s) is that Russian women assimilated into the dominant male culture, rather than the other way around. The promotion of Russian women to high levels is arguably more merit-based compared to their Western counterparts (for example, compare the head of Russia's central bank with, say, Janet Yellen, or the former head of the IMF and now the ECB). I could be mistaken about this difference, of course, but assuming for the sake of argument that there is a difference, the question is why. One rebuttal might be that Russia remains essentially sexist, and men still dominate the upper echelons of economic and political institutions, with women playing a vital supporting role. But it could also be the result of a cultural difference independent of the problem of sexism. As far as I know, Russia women dominate in elementary education, as they do here in the US, but Russian elementary education, and the culture surrounding the raising of children more generally, remains oriented towards achievement (and discipline), and still dispenses differential rewards based on merit and competence.
Quoth: "Russian elementary education, and the culture surrounding the raising of children more generally, remains oriented towards achievement (and discipline), and still dispenses differential rewards based on merit and competence."
Well, I've some excellent knowledge of that system and culture, and I can tell you that there is a whole lot of bribery and "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" type of stuff going on. I know people very well that were top-of-class in terms of grades and test scores, and still couldn't get into the good college majors without bribing people in charge of admissions. And as for quotas – there were plenty of those – so many from the villages, so many with a sports certification, etc., etc. These attitudes and practices pervaded and continue to pervade all spheres of life, education, and work in Russia. If you speak in any decent depth with a person who came up through that system, they'll tell you in no uncertain terms that it was far from merit-based. It's also a big part of why the country is in the sh*tter economically, politically, and almost all other dimensions, and why so many bright, motivated, and capable people want to leave. Finland it is not!
Speaking of Russian brain drain, Soviet-born USC chemistry professor Anna Krylov, who earned her undergraduate degree in quantum chemistry at Moscow State University and is a proponent of merit-based science, wrote an interesting article (The Perils of Politicizing Science) comparing the ongoing attempts to subject science and education to ideological control and censorship in the West to similar campaigns in Soviet science. It must be disconcerting for those Russian scientists and scholars who managed to escape their country of birth for the 'freedom' of the West to find themselves reliving the same nightmare twice in their lifetimes.
There is a generational aspect here as well. I remember reading a paper years ago about group integration. When numbers of outgroup entrants were below about 20%, new entrants assimilated to the existing norms. Above that, the outgroup constituency is large enough to start demanding and enacting changes to group norms. Working in a historically male field (which now is at parity), the work culture divide between older and very young women seems larger than the work culture values of the young men and young women.
Studies have shown that women tend to self-censor at the application stage: "I don't meet all of the criteria, so I won't apply. Men: "I fit some of the criteria, so sure, I'll apply." Also, women have traditionally been scored more based on accomplishments, while men have been scored more on potential. At least in top academic jobs, but I believe studies also extended to other spheres.
Another area of difference has been that, once hired, the same statements and behaviors by women and men are perceived and reacted to differently. What is perceived as "assertiveness" by a male colleague is often perceived as "bitchiness" or "bossiness" from a female colleague. The amount of smiling expected from a female differs from male. Female professors are rated differently (usually lower) than male professors by students.
I don't know. These are the kinds of things women complained about years ago, but I find it hard to believe that they are still an issue today.
This is also a big reason why there is an unofficial 20% "Asian Cap" at Ivies and many other elite institutions.
In their early days, most Ivies took in kids predominantly from monied families. Then somehow the idea of merit came. Well, first it was too many Jewish kids getting in on merit. So then the idea of "interviews" and "extracurriculars" came to rebalance. Then the Asian kids came, with all the grades, test scores, AND extracurriculars. Time to change again... Harvard started taking in more dark-skinned students. From where?.. turns out the majority of them are children of rich African elites – got your demographics boost, and they pay full ride... win / win!
Ya move the goal posts, but people will recalibrate. In the end, the Ivies want to stay profitable, and parents want to maximize near-term safety and long-term opportunities for their kids. Solve for the equilibrium.
There are two habits in female bosses that I take issue with.
1) An over willingness to take on meaningless or unnecessary work because someone asked for it (or even hinted at it).
2) A reluctance to say no to someone when they are wrong, especially a superior.
Woman talk a lot about work/life balance, but everywhere I see them taking on burdens that they don't need to take on and that don't really do the company much good (which often splashes over to their co-workers and subordinates). I think this "bring your whole self to work" thing resonates a lot more with them, whereas I want to generate as much value as quickly as possible so I can get back to my real life. The concept of people at work being a second family is alien to me.
Thank you once again for thoughtfully interacting with my essays. And yes, some level of mutual accomodation is going to be required.
I'm afraid nature has sent down its own verdict on feminism, and does not support it, however morally superior we believe it to be to give women lots of career options other than child-rearing. The result of feminism in the west is that other demographics, mostly outside the west but wanting in, which don't practice feminism are out-breeding us badly, and it's probably too late to stop them from replacing us. At which point the whole subject is moot.
Men were forced to lose those "harmful cultural attitudes" in the workplace because of the threat of lawsuits, not because the magically saw the light. Big heavy hammers called "sexual harassment law" under the color of Civil Rights came from the lawyer class, smoting down from on high all but the most male-dominated fields. In most male Dom fields, rnough women had been hired or were interested in being hired that such behaviors couldn't no longer be tolerated as they opened a company up to litigation.
There are no big heavy hammers demanding merit in the workplace, nor compelling liberty over conformity, and the lawsuits continue to favor safetyism over achievement. There is a sliver of a chance of the defense of free speech remaining, but to date, the lawyers have clobbered that.
So there is nothing to compel women to change their behaviors in the workplace and plenty of lawsuit-ready lawyers able to sustain or promote it.
An otherwise fine assessment of institutional dynamics as their gender composition shifts that’s brought down by false dichotomies and hand-ringing. The characterization of cancellation is spot on, though.
This belief that “competence” somehow trades off with “safety” and that these both map onto gender has to go. What evidence is there that anything of the “feminine” results in lower productivity? Firms are more profitable than ever, and we’re enjoying a time of unprecedented technological advancement, largely due to the work of very smart, gender-diverse teams.
Cultural “feminization” might matter to the Twitter commentariat, who measure their lives in likes and engagement with strangers, but those of us who hire professionals and work with professionals know that an ambitious young graduate from a top school want opportunity, mentorship and influence just as much as we did at their age— regardless of gender.
By the way, a panel survey of 20 year-olds at university does not a broad trend make. We all mature How many of the opinions you held as an undergraduate do you hold today?
ESG as the feminization of investing?
I would levy the following criticism of institutions at institutions and not individual people: Institutions are largely unequipped for (and often not trying to prevent) the kinds of things that women do more commonly than men that might upend a workplace, or at least cause some friction.
Consider "what gets reported to HR?" This question should catch the intersection of "What is blatantly unprofessional in the workplace", "What do employees think the company will attempt to prevent" and "What are other coworkers (in this case men) reasonably expected to handle on their own?"
For instance - woman making unwanted sexual advances on man at work. Is this getting reported to HR? At a certain threshold, absolutely, I'd imagine it would. But the threshold is probably unequal between cases. There are obvious reasons of physical strength that this makes sense, but there are other reasons as well.
Perhaps more common is "criticism by empathy", specifically on personal issues outside of work. I've felt personally victimized by Regina George, etc. etc. It's funny as a joke, even HR might laugh! But it sucks in real life. At this point I would like to remind readers this is NOT all women, that men can do this too, etc. etc.
The standard responses in this case are something along the lines of "What are you, some kind of bitch who needs HR to step in for you?" and "It is a shame that men don't feel comfortable stepping forward and talking to HR to prevent this from happening." My point is that, in my cherry-picked case, there is a company-wide push for coworkers to police one another with support of the firm, for the good of a productive work environment, and this push obviously does not apply in various "grey areas" that are obviously not grey in the letter of the law.
I am highly sympathetic to arguments for individual agency, and that calling HR for every quotidian faux pas is bad for you. On the other hand, I would point out that HR departments are roughly two-thirds women according to a Google search, and many of the same things that are supposedly discouraging from women speaking out, likely also work against men. Corporate culture of "keep your head down and get work done" could cut both ways.
Perhaps the fact of the matter is that, with women in a greater percentage of university spots, jobs in management, and involvement in a variety of previously male-dominated fields, we are just witnessing the new culture, in which both the virtues and vices of more people are added to an increasingly diverse culture. Perhaps the gender theorists simply need to do the snarky economist thing, and hire more men in their HR departments and capture the profits lost to discrimination. I seem to recall the thermostat in the office being a gendered "twitter topic" for a while, maybe the men are just losing the vote these days.
However, I end up finding myself in a very stereotypically male conclusion when I think about this. I end up thinking "Well, we are going to have relish this difficulty, embrace being the underdogs, and over-perform anyway. The stories will be fun later. If it gets too bad, I will need a new job that's better suited to me." Most of the female empowerment literature seems to say the same, and it seems to be working...
We are a cognitively dimorphic species. In terms of the 15 personality traits* that aggregate into the Big Five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism), 70 per cent of each sex has a specific pattern of personality traits that no member of the other sex has. This is because the distribution of various traits tend to have different median points in each sex, with the male distributions being “flatter” (meaning longer “tails”). You only have to have one trait that is outside the distribution of the other sex to be cognitively distinct.
Aggregating that together (because each sex has all the congruence but only half the non-congruence), over 80 per cent of us has a specific pattern of personality traits that does not occur in the other sex.
This is an extreme claim that isn't backed up by any evidence. I'm baffled why you would just accept it as a given. In reality, mean scores for men and women across various personality measures are at most half a standard deviation apart. I'm not even sure what it could mean to "fall outside the distribution" of a gender -- for both genders there are going to be rare individuals with a max or min score on any measure.
Your point is often phrased as "more variation within than between", and you're right as far as the individual factors go. The picture can change dramatically when moving to higher dimensions, though, as Lorenzo alludes to with the use of the term 'specific pattern of various traits'.
My interpretation of what Lorenzo means is that, if you consider the set of values in the 15-dimensional trait space that are actually achieved (do a kde or w/e idc) by members of each gender, 70% of the members of each sex fall outside of the set of values obtained by the other sex.
I'm not going to do the math for you, but you could also see this by considering the extent to which you can separate two multivariate normal random variables with marginal distribution means separated by your half a standard deviation (assume independence of marginal distributions and identity covariance matrices... or take it as an exercise..)
This is a general feature of these sorts of comparisons in higher dimensions -- it's easier to separate sets of points in higher than in lower dimensions. cf the last decade in ML.
Do I believe the specific claim made about 70%? Eh, I'd have to actually look at the calculation he does to know what number to believe. But the general point is correct that you can discern man from woman pretty reliably if you look at the whole personality profile.
(I agree that the phrasing is a bit awkward, though)
Men were forced to lose those "harmful cultural attitudes" in the workplace because of the threat of lawsuits, not because the magically saw the light. Big heavy hammers called "sexual harassment law" under the color of Civil Rights came from the lawyer class, smoting down from on high all but the most male-dominated fields. In most male Dom fields, rnough women had been hired or were interested in being hired that such behaviors couldn't no longer be tolerated as they opened a company up to litigation.
There are no big heavy hammers demanding merit in the workplace, nor compelling liberty over conformity, and the lawsuits continue to favor safetyism over achievement. There is a sliver of a chance of the defense of free speech remaining, but to date, the lawyers have clobbered that.
So there is nothing to compel women to change their behaviors in the workplace and plenty of lawsuit-ready lawyers able to sustain or promote it.
Very interesting. Thank you for posting.
Goodness changing from what to what? As a woman in university leadership I don't understand the stereotype I seem to belong to!
It is true I am very nearsighted so maybe I don't notice any emotion in my wide circle of women administrators. Perhaps I don't even notice that they are women! Or understand what 'exempt' means!
Perhaps you, or the hiring committee, noticed they were women while hiring them. It is universally known - tho denied by those for whom denial is expedient - that universities engage in systematic hiring discrimination against men. Often they do so openly & proudly, with no fear of the Law actually being enforced.
"Perhaps I don't even notice that they are some! Or understand what 'exempt' means"
Feel no shame! Many of your colleagues in Education Administration are equally ignorant.
Yes I am suggesting that I do not notice, that some kinds of categorical thinking are bad for one's intelligence over time and gender is one of those too-blurry categories to be helpful, when you're an organization in pursuit of excellence.
Unfortunately, most people lack the self-discipline to avail themselves of the immense amount of free and near-free, excellent educational content available today. Some people I know are self-driven autodidacts, other people prefer to be coached / taught.
Likewise, most people (in the US, at least) lack the self-control with regard to eating junk food and avoiding exercise. In the latter situation, they expect the medical system to solve their problems down the road (insulin for Type II, statins, etc.), and/or they *pay* for a gym membership or a trainer to create a commitment device to stick to the difficult regimen.
I should hope that you have no problem with an unfit person paying for a trainer to help put them on a suitable fitness program, and then choosing a male or female trainer based on their preference. And, by the same token, I should hope that you don't have a problem with a student and their parent paying an educator for training their mind and spirit, according to a program, and according to the customer's preferences.
Universities are gyms for people's brains, with trainers. Some people seem to be OK with "tough-guy" or even abusive trainers, while others respond better to gentle and encouraging approaches. If you allow that genders segregate according to personality traits (whether by nature or by nurture or both), why not allow that personality difference among students / gym-goers might - and should - also create demand for different training styles?
"sit on their emotions" and "masculine wisdom"
I can't think of any basis for saying emotion is worse than not or that masculine wisdom is better than feminine. I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that.
"So, yes, feminisation can be a marker for the corrosion of institutions and consequent social decay."
Sure, that can happen. But women tend to have better social skills so it is probably more likely feminisation will improve society. It certainly has some likelihood of decreasing physical violence.
"The older culture was oriented toward achievement. The newer culture is oriented toward safety. "
An increased focus on safety comes in part from an increase in wealth and living standards. One can't worry much about safety if they don't have food, water, and shelter. That doesn't mean it can't also be due to an increased influence of women but that's not what I'd bet is the biggest factor.
A false assumption made by feminists and other toxic Progressive extremists is that the productive institutions - that provide the standard of living that enables their luxury beliefs - will remain productive even after being colonized by feminist zealots.
It appears this is true only to the extent that institutional inertia carries them forward. Feminization severely reduces an organization's productive capacity. So when the inertia runs out, production efficiency collapses.
Having been colonized by feminism, an once-productive organization is transformed into a blood sucking parasite, a drag on society.
I suppose if you mean the worst aspects of Feminization, maybe so, but I see no evidence that taken as a whole it is bad.
Anecdotal to be sure but there are plenty of male dominated societies with atrocious outcomes and one could argue that Scandinavian societies are both the most successful and the most feminized.
Have you ever spoken with a _working class_ Scandinavian? Those with whom I've spoken - especially Swedes - seem to think their countries are in a state of collapse. Standard of living dropping hard, freedom disappeared, violent crime out of control, cultural genocide proceeding apace.
Unsurprisingly, Scandinavians who are members of the professional managerial class and who are ideologically committed to Progressive Globalism, think all of that is just swell. 'Cuz it seems that progs are more than happy to throw the working class under the bus, if that means a cushy job for them as a commissar.
I don't know how to evaluate that anecdotal evidence, especially in the face of seemingly stronger contrary evidence.
First, three of four largest Scandinavian countries are in the top ten in the world for median income. But maybe some Swedes are feeling the pain of the krona dropping about 10% vs the Euro in the last year or two?
As for not being happy, all four of the largest Scandinavian countries are at the top in surveys of happiness.
I am much less impressed with surveys than I once was. There are too many ways to bias them.
Sometimes capitalism sucks too but both are still way better than any alternative I know of.
"I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that."
I'd be curious to see where the men with feminine personality traits end up being employed. If they are proportionately represented among "male" institutions, there is a good chance that the barriers to women entering those institutions come down to sexism. If men with feminine personality traits are disproportionately absent from "male" institutions, there's a case to be made that those institutions are not engaging in sexism but are merely selecting for personality traits that are uncommon in women.
That is possible. It also seems just as likely that men with feminine traits in male dominated jobs would be discriminated against in many of the same ways as women.
That said, I think Damore hit on the main issue, which isn't far from what you say. Blau and Kahn's work on wage differences would seem to add credence to that view.
"I can't think of any basis for saying emotion is worse than not or that masculine wisdom is better than feminine. I'm even more skeptical that Warby or anyone else can offer something akin to proof of that."
I think the point is that, these days, most everyone seems to have the attitude that feminine wisdom is better than masculine wisdom. Masculine traits are considered "toxic". Is that really reasonable?
Doesn't seem reasonable to me. I agree with the your point.
That said, the quote of Warby doesn't seem to be saying that.