Young women are starting to leave men behind

32 pointsposted a year ago
by johntfella
(ft.com)

58 Comments

TacticalCoder

a year ago

Random anecdata: when I was dating a doctor back in the days, 71% of her class were women too (Belgium, city of Brussels, a good university [the one were FOSDEM takes place yearly btw]). Nowadays most of my doctors are women (another country but my GP, dermatologist, urologist [!], etc. are all women).

On the other hand there are some types of work for which women seems to have very little interest in: for example I have never seen a documentary showing a saturation diver / underwater welder fixing pipelines where the person was a woman (nor a woman identifying as a man FWIW). There may be some but I take it it's 99%+ men. Reality check.

readthenotes1

a year ago

There are more mid-student women than men as well in the United States

schmorptron

a year ago

I think any interpretation of this phenomenon that doesn't include the phrase "it depends" is doing it injustice.

We're now in the first time where the implicit (and explicit) bias against women in education, especially in STEM, is decreasing (but not gone!) and the way girls are socialized compared to boys (and maybe even some developmental differences and movement requirements?) in general seems to make them better prepared for proper studying and learning at schools.

There's a discussion to be had if schools and universities are failing boys and men, and I think that might be part of it. If there are innate gender differences, and that I'm not sure of, the solution cannot be adjusting the schools to boys' needs again if it is at the expense of girls' results again.

I think the most important takeaway in this has to be: What do boys and men need in order to get to that same level, and how can we best provide it? This might be one of the things that can actually be accurately blamed on old-age patriarchial norms and their second and third-order effects.

As a man who's currently in uni, this has sometimes been a hard truth, because knowing that I might've had it easier than others makes it pretty hard to feel accomplished, and makes it feel even worse when you fail at something or courses even though you should have the "preferred" profile for it, and that is something that feels like patriarchial (in the powerful-man instead of all men way) thinking being perpetuated and subconciously being harmful.

There are lots of female empowerment programs nowadays, and while they might seem exclusionary, especially when there doesn't exist an all-gender pendant, I still see them as a net positive, simply because there is still too much social stigma towards women in STEM (that we in our bubble might not even notice) that that clear messaging of "YOU are wanted here" is incredibly helpful.

I like the ending thought in the article that this doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

Is anyone here more well versed in the topic? I feel like I skipped some steps in my reasoning and can't articulate why

benterix

a year ago

> There's a discussion to be had if schools and universities are failing boys and men

"If"??? That phenomenon started a long time ago and the society as a whole is suffering because of that.

> how the current education system places boys at a disadvantage; why boys raised in poverty are less likely than girls to escape it; the fact that female students are twice as likely to study abroad and serve in the Peace Corps as their male peers; Reeves’s policy proposal to have boys start school a year later than girls[0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

lurking15

a year ago

> there is still too much social stigma towards women in STEM

honestly I've seen nothing of this as someone who's been through the whole pipeline, it's been relentless pro-woman and every other non-white non-male identity cheerleading and it's only gotten more extreme in the corporate & startup workplace over time

schmorptron

a year ago

When I only look at what I can see myself, it sometimes looks like this as well. But when talking to (female) friends at uni or colleagues, most of them have had bad experiences that made my jaw drop. Some of the misogynists within the institutions are pretty good at hiding it to those not within their in-group.

fasa99

a year ago

Of course a person can write a book on all the unfairness of this system many ways.

The long and short of all of this is we are giving person A an advantage over person B because person C did something bad to person D, and it just so happens persons B & C have some matching demographic factor.

Putting it that way, I think the racism / sexism of diversity is laid clear. I don't call it reverse racism because racism can go in any direction it's not a unidirectional graph pointed away from white people. An innocent person is catching the short end of the stick as a dark twisted way to right some wrong that this innocent person had nothing to do with, other than skin color. The sick joke of it is that the ameliorative steps to fix racism are also racist.

schmorptron

a year ago

I get where you're coming from, and im some instances I feel the same way.

At the same time, both can be true and it's not the same in every situation.

It is possible for there to be situations where these types of programs are required and useful for lack of alternatives, and at the same time have unfairly negative effects on the out-group.

I don't know if anything can and will be done to remove the "you're tolerated, but we'd rather have literally anyone else" undertones.

illiac786

a year ago

I agree, as a man that has been identified as “not able to understand it”, with “it” being a lot of unacceptable behaviours toward women (and the same is true with racism btw), you become blissfully unaware of it because the behaviour never is exhibited when you’re around, strangely.

But sometimes there are slippages and that’s when the jaw dropping moments start to roll. I seriously revised the view I had of my people skills when it comes to believing to know people and what they are capable of or not. I have been proven seriously wrong, I clearly wasn’t as good at judging people as I thought. It was for me double jaw dropping in a sense: the behaviour itself and the person exhibiting the behaviour, which I would have sworn up and down was unable of something like this.

lurking15

a year ago

Sure I see your point, I'm not sure I accept it, but it just seems to me like the idea that there's "stigma" is flat wrong. At best the argument is that there's some sort of sleeper-cells like you're saying. But this angle completely ignores the fact that there are bad women too, who like any large social group will weaponize and profit off the egregiously favorable policies for women (and every other supposedly "marginalized" identity) in place.

close04

a year ago

I tried to look for an explanation for this phenomenon in the article but couldn't find a clear one.

What's the reason for this? Are women working so much harder? Are they intrinsically smarter more capable? Is this overcompensation from society trying to fix the pervasive discrimination from the past and forgetting the boys and young men, leaving them behind? Are men trying to "ride the wave" of advantages some may have had in the past without realizing there's no wave?

The result is easy to guess. It's what tends to happen to groups who feel ignored, forgotten, that their needs are not addressed in any way while others' needs are. The disillusioned flock to populist and extremist groups with the reasoning/hope that if the current power forgot about them, the opposite of the current power will help them. Or they will resort to violence against the ones they think are getting the unfair attention. For whoever didn't learn from history, extremism of any kind ruins the cake for everyone.

28304283409234

a year ago

So many theories. I tend to think it has something to do with the decades of men shunning educational professions. All the teachers are women, hence the teaching methods and school organizations are unwittingly gender-biased towards what works for women. As well as just the simple fact that the authority and rolemodel in front of the classroom is a woman, so girls get to look up to those and identify with authority, smarts, learning, teaching. While boys, well... Brawl Stars. So, yeah, that. And internet porn.

atmavatar

a year ago

It doesn't help that there's a strong social stigma that males attempting to interact with young children in any fashion must be pedophiles, and teaching is not exempt from this.

OutOfHere

a year ago

In the US, "on average", a certain group of adult women are significantly more aggressive than adult men, and this really ruins the show. I don't mean merely assertive which is fine. Looking back at all the women I have dated, the few non-aggressive ones were gems. No men would want a relationship with the aggressive women with their egregious levels of hate. I do think that the system of education is to blame for putting society out of balance.

Fire-Dragon-DoL

a year ago

Somebody has answered this below, but it makes sense. Every role model for children is usually a woman,to the point that young girls have troubles where a sport instructor is male rather than female (observed this happening to various children friends with my daughter). Terribly sad.

The other, and this is purely based on my unique and personal anecdote, but it applies to myself and my child, the learning style for women is different (talking about percentages and not absolutes, for EVERY statement in this post). Young girls seems to be open to listen, while young boys seem to want to "do on their own", but school does not seem to allow a structure that accomodates young boys for this approach. This is very limited by my narrow view (young children), things do change after high school, but that's still 18 years of our life.

meiraleal

a year ago

> For whoever didn't learn from history, extremism of any kind ruins the cake for everyone.

I introduce you the law system. Lock the extremists up, integration of women into previously men-only environment isn't against the law but being extremist against it is.

close04

a year ago

> I introduce you the law system

When the answer to such complex problems sounds so easy, it's probably wrong. Superficially, legal systems are more "after the fact", education is more proactive and could be much closer to the real answer. Everyone has a legal system so if that was the answer in practice, we'd all live in a utopia.

Instead I'll rephrase that as "democracy". Democracy really is the dictatorship of the majority. All it takes is a majority to easily redefine what's extremism and what's legal or acceptable.

If it doesn't look like the world is starting to polarize towards the extremes then the window of reference can be widened by looking at history. The theory is easy but all too often it fails to stop the practice of extremism from unfolding the same way again and again.

bankcust08385

a year ago

This zombie trope gets temporarily beaten to death in the media as a wedge issue every few months. Schools are sucking more and more selectively by demographic and generally for average Western pupils. Most people who read HN likely had or have access to private and excellent public college-prep schools. If not, then perhaps we need to steal ideas of French and Finnish schools, pay teachers more, and perhaps get boys to play outside, exercise, and socialize more.

082349872349872

a year ago

The "Simpsons Go Calypso" predicted this in 1991? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93COkUCwqSw

Terr_

a year ago

Nah, they're voicing a real song from the 1930s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Smart_(Woman_Smarter)

user

a year ago

[deleted]

smegsicle

a year ago

sentiment from 1905: "it pleases the bohemians to say that women are equal to men, but infuriates them to say that men are equal to women"

though a hundred years later the bohemian has begun to relax on the latter point

082349872349872

a year ago

I haven't quickly found more recent numbers, but switzerland had a good experience from 2010-2020, and the following article claims the apprenticeship system helps:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sci-tech/why-is-the-drop-out-ra...

> “The decrease in NEET is most visible among women, whose NEET rate decreases from 9.6% to 5.9% [during this time], while it remains stable among men (2010: 6.7%; 2020: 6.6%),”

> Among the reasons why Switzerland fares so well compared to other European countries is its good public education system, and excellent vocational training – its dual track apprenticeships (which combine training and vocational school) are chosen by two thirds of young people.

> A look at the table also confirms low NEET rates in other countries with strong apprenticeship systems like Austria and Germany.

082349872349872

a year ago

might FT have picked this country set to confirm the title?

according to https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/topic/neets :

> The NEETs rate for young women aged 15–29 in the EU stood at 15.5% in 2020 and remains higher at 12.5% in 2023 than the rate of 10.1% for young men. The share is higher for young women in almost all Member States.

and globally, https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/number-youth-not-employmen... :

> ...the global youth NEET rate of young women doubled that of young men (at 28.1 per cent and 13.1 per cent, respectively) in 2023.

gradschoolfail

a year ago

For some time niow, been noticing that FT are trying harder to subvert the guys who own the country harder than the guys who think they ought to run the country (grauniad) themselves?

(In another thread. seem to be selectively highlighting VC data from china to fit their agenda)

Btw, Acemoglu et al seem to be cited by the CI Jones review of Romer.

And here is what im trying to steer towards a specification of designori: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13529578

(P21-3)

P23: >[the founder] starts hiring [capital/managing upwards] today

>Disclaimer: This paper should not be reported as representing the views of the European Central Bank

(But should it be interpreted likeso?)

My understanding of AirBnB may be dated to last decade when they hired some of my classmates as interns.. afai understand it, there might have been a slight chance of them getting indigestion from Design_thinking#Applications stanfordian d.school sophistry (the place where stans foorth)

Exercise: where are the engineers in the AAPL diag you linked?

(Think RAND & Systems Thinking updated for the age of quasi-Aquarius, it relatedly amusing how systems engineers are lowest status in CS depts.. below graphics!! human capital destruction yo)

Edit: perhaps you can try to explain to me how RAND has been conflated in my mind with Stanford :)

Olivier Nomellini senior fellow lol

082349872349872

a year ago

P23: > Since the [founder] chose not to distinguish carefully between increases in current productivity and increases in future productivity, the [founder] starts hiring already today.

If time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once, interest rates are an economy's way of keeping everything from happening at once (and effectively zero real interest rates make it difficult indeed to distinguish between current and future productivity).

[unlike classical logic, is intuitionistic logic a theoretician's way of keeping all isomorphisms from being identified at once?]

Rational inattention is close to my mental model of design thinking; I'd say a product has a purpose, and teleologically ought therefore to be designed such that tradeoffs are made in favour of quality for the essentials and economy for the accidents. (others would say a product has a market, and teleologically ought therefore to be designed such that tradeoffs are made in favour of shiny for the visible and economy for the invisible?) Perfect information as the enemy of the good?

pretty sure ECB Disclaimer means no more than "we let our anoraks publish what they will"?

Answer: outer ring, just like in the "mothership"?

RAND/Stanford: from an eastern seaboard perspective: both are californian (like granola: what ain't fruits and nuts is flakes). However, when at Stanford one says "101"; at RAND, "the 101".

> Olivier Nomellini senior fellow lol

McFaul got way more respect from russians than either his predecessors or his successors (probably due to having had much more understanding; despite apparently not catching the reference to «Вот скажи мне, американец, в чём сила?» he even appeared on Evening Urgant and —I thought— acquitted himself well)

gradschoolfail

a year ago

Ilya Prigogine (1980) has identified situations in which systems far from equilibrium can exhibit stable behavior;[40] once a Lyapunov function has been identified, future and past can be distinguished, and scientific activity can begin

[39]: 212–213

Designer-driven eutykhopoiesis!

082349872349872

a year ago

> Designer-driven eutykhopoiesis!

compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons#History

"riding herd" in STEM-speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control-Lyapunov_function#Cons...

gradschoolfail

a year ago

https://lml.org.uk/2015/10/13/science-on-screen-stalker-with...

082349872349872

a year ago

have they perhaps misunderstood the quest

> "A man's retch should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaving for?" —not RB

> "Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve." —AJP

  故坚强者死之徒，
    柔弱者生之徒。

defrost

a year ago

Oh no he isn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsLb5y5tcYk

082349872349872

a year ago

Prigogine 212-213 explicitly mentions groups vs. semigroups! (and here, too, JvN has left footprints. Et in arcadia is.)

The difference, of course, being that in semigroups we can "fall" inescapably from one J-class to another, but in groups every* element is in the same eggbox (compare transitivity with Boethius and the Wheel of Fortune).

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yvpRvd44s4&t=90s

* different identities are but a conjugation away?

gradschoolfail

a year ago

Of course! Even we in neoEdwardia, there is peterpan

https://archive.is/ldQy4

>https://archive.is/t3wUW

(Shouldnt Pan the Smith be asleep here?)

082349872349872

a year ago

Simplicitas = Smith + alpaca haircut?

(Galileo would have added Sagredo, somehow playing host to both Londoners and Arcadians?)

Interesting that these toga-clad truth-loving Arcadians predate Wonder Woman?

Lagniappe: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/51b3dc8ee4b051...

BTW, I messed up with the conjugation: of course conjugating an identity yields itself, but even if I don't recall it properly there is some way to get a torsor from a group by messing with "phase".

gradschoolfail

a year ago

According to JCB?

you might be more interested in torsion, though..

Ps: i think edwardian eras are a transitional period where, to stand apart from the previous era fetishizing wisdom (& the payment of dues), intellectuals began to focus their attention on the (often full of youth & signaling sprezzatura) acolytes of truth (& no taxes)

082349872349872

a year ago

Yes.

(and I'm interested in torsion, specifically how to hook together torsion groups via co-cycles, but haven't made much progress here over decades)

In principle there's a galois connection between wisdom and truth but in practice the adjoints are not easy to compute.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

readthenotes1

a year ago

Boys: Bart and Homer Simpson. Girls: Lisa and Marge

There are a lot of young men these days you seem to be sucked into the dopamine of video games that doesn't seem to attract young women as much

bankcust08385

a year ago

See also: Man, Interrupted and Man (Dis)conneted by Philip Zimbardo. Also, a TED talk on the subject.

486sx33

a year ago

My wife has significantly more education in academia than me. I make a lot more money. Should education be tied to financial compensation? In a free market, no. In communism? Probably.

Not everyone who is intelligent excels at academia.

Which is better? Arguments either way. Which makes a stronger country? A free market.

mattlondon

a year ago

There are A LOT of female-only (or identifies as female) things (free STEM classes/camps, apprenticeships/internships, talks, events at museums, trips etc etc) for girls/young-women in the UK. Even at work there are female-only networking and career development and placement and mentorship things. Boys/men are not invited and are explicitly not welcome to attend.

Is it any wonder that all of this is leading to more opportunities and more success for women? Not sure why people are surprised that positive discrimination is having the intended effect

I am not saying it is wrong, but it was obvious that consistently giving special treatment and opportunities to one group while actively blocking access for another group would lead to outcomes that the other group would not benefit from when this all started a decade or two ago.

I know "equality" is now a banned word and is on the naughty list, but whatever happened to equity for young school-age boys and men? It is not the fault of a 5 year old that historically men have had things better, yet they are now being actively sidelined and actively denied opportunities due to the sins of the historical patriarchy. Somehow I doubt we'll see "boys only" extra-classes and events etc at schools any time soon though.

happytoexplain

a year ago

One nitpick: It is not the fault of anybody that any of their intrinsic member groups (e.g. race, gender) have historically been advantaged, regardless of age (until they decide to explicitly fight for that bias).

I not only agree that doing this kind of social bias correction based on symptom addressal has eventual negative effects on others, I think holistically it's a net negative. Human nature makes this an almost impossible argument to present, but I really think it's just as damaging to actively disadvantage individuals for their intrinsic membership in a historically advantaged group as it is to passively disadvantage individuals for their intrinsic membership in a historically disadvantaged group.

AnimalMuppet

a year ago

I mostly agree with you. And yet...

Let's say you have one group that is being left behind because of lack of social capital. (I think that's a decent term to describe the issue.) You don't want to discriminate against the other group, because that's unjust and has negative effects. But if you don't do something to boost the "under" group, they're going to continue to be the under group, the group without adequate social capital.

You say "don't reverse discriminate", and I think I agree. But then... what? What should we do?

atmavatar

a year ago

> But if you don't do something to boost the "under" group, they're going to continue to be the under group, the group without adequate social capital.

The point of the article is that women are no longer the "under" group. In the 80s and 90s, sure - the ratio of college graduates was something like 60:40 men to women, but now, it's the reverse. We should have started gradually taking the thumb off the scale as they approached parity, and we definitely should start taking the thumb off the scale now that the ratio is at least as lop-sided in favor of women as it was in the past for men.

Of course, that's a bit overly-simplistic, as there are certainly fields where we should probably maintain advocacy programs for women (e.g., CS), but perhaps there's a need to start up advocacy programs for men in other fields to balance things out.

schmorptron

a year ago

Yes, I feel like this hits the nail on the head. It's completely understandable that something had to be done. This might not be the ideal solution, but it's extremely good that it happened and is happening to stop women from being the under group.

If the alternative is doing nothing, this is definitely the preferable outcome.

The solution might be to transition into more programs that explicitly tell everyone they are welcome, but that is probably easier said than done.

mattlondon

a year ago

> The solution might be to transition into more programs that explicitly tell everyone they are welcome, but that is probably easier said than done.

Yeah I think this is part of the problem. Young boys have been given the message (implicitly, but also at times explicitly) that academic pursuits and achievement and learning are not for them. "Sorry you're a boy - this is not for you. Only girls get the support and encouragement and guidance and opportunities to achieve. Run a long and go play in the dirt or whatever it is boys do. You'll be fine on your own without any help."

We've raised a generation or two of men who have been taught to not strive or aim high, and we're reaping what we've sown in that regard, with what was noted in the article of economically inactive males.

schmorptron

a year ago

I've definitely felt this. I don't know how much of this feeling is legitimate and how much is just me seeking excuses externally, but the sentiment you mentioned is definitely felt and demotivating. Still, this isn't the women's fault who are engaging with and benefiting from these programs, so the solution isn't to go bash them for it. (not that I think you implied that)

It's gotta be something different, uplifting. The most helpful sentiment might be "It's super cool that you're finally getting the opportunities that you deserved for years, and the support and coaching networks that have sprung up out of it are great. I'd like that as well."

user

a year ago

[deleted]

user

a year ago

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user

a year ago

[deleted]

ackermavilla

a year ago

It is evolutionary. Who wants to put children in this world? It is not only the high cost of everything and relative job insecurity, it is also environmental issues and risks of war, etc., that makes many women not to want children. Then the next step is, not to want to be too associated with men. Then the next step is, to remain amongst themselves. It's the evolution, stupid.

user

a year ago

[deleted]