I am reminded of my chemistry professor's lament. "I can't count how many students I've failed for not knowing things that were later proven to be untrue"
I can understand the spirit and frustration of the lament, but it presents the hazard of the unhelpful and fallacious interpretation that "I might as well not teach them any of this in the first place since some of it might end up just being wrong!"
Science is not about always being right. It is about knowing and building upon the best knowledge available, while maintaining the intellectual humility and curiosity to continually challenge the best available knowledge and revise it towards a measurably better state. That is how the mountain is climbed.
You state that the education system taught you lies, and then generalize that all public schools teach lies. Did you attend every public school in the nation?
The real problem is that public education for the last few decades has been focused on the college-bound student. If your background, family financial status, or academic record indicate that you are not going to college, you are a non-entity (possible exception if you are athletically gifted).
If you are not college-bound you get no real attention or guidance. You are not taught about entrepreneurship, trades, or other options that might be good for you. You are not taught about managing money, personal finance, the traps of high-interest credit debt, or anything else practical. It's assumed you'll put in your time and "graduate" (or simply drop out), get some menial job, and that's your life. Nobody spares ten seconds of thought on you if you are not college-bound.
Paying attention is something that some students frequently have doing because their home life is so terrible and "teaching it" is already a problem. Students in many underserved communities come to school having trouble sleeping or eating, and this destroys performance in school. Most teachers overwhelmed with behavioral problems while trying to teach completely nonsensical curriculums established by non-educators simply punish these students with in school suspension or detention which further ostracizes these students that are oftentimes already picked on by peers.
Blaming schools entirely for root causes sometimes stemming from students coming from bad home lives is nonsensical just as much as it is to remove blame from students for their individual performance. Our most often cited statistics simply don't do a good job of decoupling social factors of aggregate academic achievement from the variables schools themselves do control.
Badly. Education processes are not built around learning, nor around meta-learning (learning how to learn new information). Education is still built largely around _retaining_, testing, and hoarding knowledge, without interest in discovery or the processes that created knowledge. This medieval mindset holds back much of the education system.
I don't think undereducation is correct here. You could spend 50 years re-experiencing K-12 education in America and that will not earn you skills that are simply not taught there.
Yeah, but then the premise is just a tautology: education that doesn't teach you what we consider important is a bad education. I mean, it's a lot of energy to spend thinking about a such a poorly-conceived essay. Or is it badly conceived?
I do think it's badly, particularly if you are not a college-bound student. If you're not going to college, you are a write-off in today's public education system.
I believe the staff of The Economist is sourced primarily from Great Britain, and since they refuse to add bylines, it's impossible to know where this author is actually from.
Yeah, it's very disappointing to see a stalwart like The Economist descend into publishing this type of drivel. It starts at the conclusions it wishes to make and works backwards. I don't think this passes the quality muster to cross the threshold of HN's political relevance/interest barrier.
I work with a dude who is 50 from Michigan. It's amazing to hear stories of what an American lifestyle in the 70's and 80's was like. With 40,000 income he could buy a house, a vacation house in northern Michigan, a boat and two great vacations a year.
Its hard to admit standards of living are decreasing. There is def a lot of blame to go around. I agree one should not be disdainful of people who are different.
This red team vs blue team logic is getting us no where.
This article is NOT "the red team vs blue team logic", it's data driven, dispassionate reporting, which gp is projecting partisan bias because they just don't like the conclusions it's finding.
That was before inflation. Using https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL , it looks like the CPI was 78 in January 1980, and 244.456 in February 2017 (the most recent data currently available). Meaning that $1 from 1980 would buy as much as $3.13 last February, and $40,000 in 1980 would be equivalent to $125,362 in February. Perhaps not enough for two homes and a boat, but pretty good income in most of the US.
Then again, there are plenty of caveats: the CPI overstates inflation, there are things on the market today that no amount of money could have bought in 1980, etc.
accounting for inflation, the buying power of $40k in 1980 is the equivalent of $118k today... enough to buy a house, a vacation house, a boat, and multiple vacations year in most regions. Maybe the percentage of the population making this amount has decreased, I'm not sure, but the buying power is roughly the same.
And if you're going back to 1970: $40k in 1970 dollars could buy you $250k of stuff today.
I'm not seeing the disdain, admittedly I'm only halfway through this ~10,000 word essay (impressive how fast you and sibs read it and fact checked its numerous data points and determined that it lacked insight/integrity btw).
Can you cite some specific examples of the authors disdainful attitude?
I find the topic interesting, but the article looks to be doing a lot of guessing causation from results. I.e. In low-skilled jobs that are projected to have growth, women are more represented than men.
It then wanders around different topics - effects on heterosexual relationship when "eligible" members of one sex are in low supply, etc. But I was most interested in that initial argument, and it wasn't given much support.
" Everywhere you look in Tallulah there are women working: in the motels that cater to passing truckers, in the restaurants that serve all-you-can-eat catfish buffets, in shops, clinics and local government offices. But though unskilled men might do some of those jobs, they are unlikely to want them or to be picked for them."
In my mind, there's a big difference between "not wanting" and "wanting but not getting", but the article lumps those together.
All in all, a great article for raising some theories, and the facts offered point out some questions we might not have had, but precious little evidence of any particular answers, just evidence to shoot down a few theories (and those disproven theories aren't covered).
Not to say I think the article's suggestions are WRONG...I just don't have any reasons from the article to think they are right.
I largely agree. It lost me greatly when it stated,
> Few women in rich countries now need a man’s support to raise a family. (They might want it, but they don’t need it.)
I'm a man, and my wife is back to work after giving birth to our child. Raising a family seems to be a massively two person job. I have absolutely no idea how anyone can manage it alone and keep their sanity and not neglect their job and child.
Blanket statements such as this (instead of asking if single family homes might be resulting in worse outcomes for children) are where the article appeared to have an agenda.
Neither I nor my wife would qualify for any sort of government assistance as single parents. And neither of us has any idea how we'd manage to raise children alone. Money is not the issue.
Clickbait or should I say hatebait article. Its sad how the economist has become just another garbage clickbait site staffed by incompetent writers more focused on social division then actual economics.
"Although there is no reason in theory why men could not become nurses or care-home assistants, few do."
This is true, but why is it that the shortage of women in technology fields is attributed to them not being accepted or even forced out? Maybe this isn't the general attitude, but I have certainly heard people say that woman aren't in tech as much because they feel unwelcome, whereas when talking about men in those other fields, it's because "they don't want to."
I mean, we have this conversation thread like every third day. I'm not sure that there's anything left to be said that hasn't been beaten into the ground, over, and over, and over. Nobody is convincing anybody, we'll just yell at each other for a while. Maybe that makes some people happy.
I mean, we have this conversation thread like every third day.
Which means many here find it interesting.
I'm not sure that there's anything left to be said that hasn't been beaten into the ground, over, and over, and over.
Not true IMO. The fact that you still don't see any nuance here should tell us that this is still an important discussion.
Many of us men has experienced being systematically and officially discriminated against during school.
Note: I am not saying girls aren't discriminated against. I actually think they have it worse (I have seen some of it and it was ugly). I'm just saying this discussion really lacks nuance.
There is indeed a reason, that is women are naturally/biologically caretakers and nurturers. Women are more trusted and accepted as nurses and caregivers than men. Many women would be uncomfortable or refuse to have a male caregiver help bathe or dress them.
This "naturally/biologically" is the crux of the issue really, where does nature stop and society begin?
And even if nature biases one way or an other, does it explain the measured discrepancy completely? Am I to believe that there's basically a shortage of "nurturing" men, as there is a shortage of technically inclined women?
We also see that the proportions vary very significantly between countries, so clearly there's a societal factor at play, one way or an other.
So I don't really like these types of shortcuts, because clearly the most nurturing man is probably more so than the less nurturing woman. We should judge people on their own merit, not their gender, race or other factors.
Well you were saying that the only answer was of a biological nature, I was pointing out that while it probably factors one way or an other it's a bit presumptuous to say that it's the only reason.
In particular your example: "Many women would be uncomfortable or refuse to have a male caregiver help bathe or dress them." I think there's a massive cultural component to this, rather than some innate behavior. And the fact that there are many male gynecologists show that many women aren't that picky with their intimacy...
I'm not sure so much as a naturalistic fallacy of "women are naturally X" or "men are naturally X" should be a basis of argument as much as aggression is highly correlated with testosterone levels, and aggression is not something that is compatible with most interpersonal customer service jobs especially in healthcare and education. Those that achieve higher academic success also tend to score higher in traits such as delayed gratification and emotional expression control, and a lack of these traits thereby limits upward mobility. I can't find the recent article submitted to HN discussing these problems from the perspective of someone quite successful raised in rural Tennessee asserting that luck does play a larger role than anything else for upward mobility rather than hard work in America now.
I think it's a double-standard. When women underachieve in any area, we assume discrimination is the culprit, or we at least say there is some system that is failing them. When men underachieve, it's because they're "not able to adapt" or we blame it on "toxic masculinity" (for example, when boys do worse in school, we make negative implications, but years after graduation when women receive a lower salary, we assume discrimination even in the presence of strong contradictory evidence).
This isn't meant to be read as defensive; just a social observation.
It's because of the direction of the power inequality. Women are pushed out of tech by misogyny, both unconscious bias and conscious hate. This does not apply in reverse to men in female dominated fields. What does apply is fragile masculinity.
In addition, fields with high female participation are systematically devalued and underpaid, and men may be leaving them for greener pastures.
It's possible that men feel unwelcome in female-dominated areas for the same reason women may in male-dominated areas: it can be intimidating to enter a group of people of the opposite sex, with their own norms and microaggressions and who feel entitled and encouraged to be there, when you have received numerous social signals that's weird for you to be there or even want to be there. Unless those people and institutions specifically welcome you in.
It's not about getting offended or not. It's the small assumptions that, when repeated ad infinitum, build up social beliefs and structures that make it harder for certain people to succeed or fit in. The fact that folks on HN or Reddit constantly refer to their anonymous peers with male pronouns might make a female programmer a little less welcome. It may offend her, it may not, but it certainly doesn't help.
"they don't want to" can be expanded into a number of causal cultural factors:
- teachers, parents, advisors all too often say tech is not for women
- daughters are rarely given personal computers at the same as sons
- video games, an important gateway into programming, are primarily marketed at boys
- we have very few living role models of expert women programmers
Many of these same arguments apply to men and nursing. The primary reason we don't talk much about it in terms of access to opportunity is that comparatively, nursing is yet another underpaid pink collar job. If nursing was a comparable opportunity to tech, there'd probably be more grousing about the cultural barriers of masculinity that inhibit fuller participation.
where did you get these facts from exactly? because they're all made up.
> teachers, parents, advisors all too often say tech is not for women.
let us know who does this so we can shame them. btw, some parents might be doing this but they're terrible parents. but no teacher or advisor would ever do this. please don't sully these hardworking people.
> daughters are rarely given a computer at the same as sons
rarely? I would dispute that.
...
> nursing is yet another underpaid pink collar job
maybe they're underpaid (I think devs are underpaid too) but it is a very good paying job that doesn't need a 4-year degree and $100k in student loans. and to top it all off they're unionized, have benefits that would make you drool, and many can retire at a young age with full benefits. it's a well sought after job and a way for many people to move up economically.
I wonder how many people making these statements and doing these analysis have spent any significant amount of time with kids. Girls, in general, prefer social interaction, helping people, working as a group, etc... Boys, in general, prefer physical activity, constructing things, and admiring the fruits of their labor from afar.
This might not be the best characterization, but you get the point. I see this in very very young kids. It's innate. Again, these are generalities, but most who work with a lot of young kids understand these things. It's no surprise to me that as boys and girls become men and women we see these traits dominate employment trends. Girls tend to gravitate to fields that tie success (either academically or professionally) with social interaction, while boys gravitate to ones that rely more on demonstration of individual impact.
Sure, there's an element of group dynamics, xenophobia, etc... that influences this stuff, but I've never held the belief that this stuff is the root cause. Why are more men chefs/cooks? Because, they like making food/seeing what they've made. Why are more women waitresses? Because they like serving/interracting with people. It's not that complicated.
"102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin."
The only profession I know that men aren't welcome has been teaching. At least in the US, any man that wants to work with young children is viewed as a potential pedophile. In middle and high school they are subject to calls of sexual predication.
RNs and CNAs don't have this problem. Male nurses aren't seen as sexual predators, some simply don't want to do it. And most don't have any visibility into the field to see it as a potential career.
No, the stigma just changes, slightly. Members of my family who are teachers keep a literal open door policy when it comes to pre/after school meetings and tutoring. Even the accusation of impropriety between teacher and student is a career ender. Some of the teenage girls they teach are extremely manipulative. Some come from broken homes and use the sexual assault accusations as a quick pay day.
> Badly educated men have not adapted well to trade, technology or feminism
Surprise! "Education" is the tool to adapt us descendants of egalitarian (gender and otherwise), fraternalistic, communal, polygamous, nomadic ice-age hunters to settled agricultural civilization, aka "trade, technology, feminism"
No, because the same complaints are equally applicable to the highly literate MA holders that serve coffee and fast food.
The "uneducated men" in this article have the advantage of not being saddled with 50k in debt, and they probably end up getting paid more with jobs like groundskeeper and forklift operator.
Making college free would remove that advantage and loop it back onto the group that is already positioned to get themselves into college.
What an awful article. It says in one breath that women are already better adapted to the modern world than men are, and in the next, says that "things still need to be done".
You can't have it both ways. Pick one thesis and stay with it. I also like how women are still portrayed as victims in this article, even though they have better jobs and better careers than men do. Like I said, pick one.
This system of educational one-upmanship where someone will try to discredit others due to their formal education rather than logical fallacies in their argument just comes off as inaccurate and pretentious to me.
"Some 95% of Fortune 500 CEOs are male, as are 98% of the self-made billionaires on the Forbes rich list and 93% of the world’s heads of government..." It CAN'T be related to women's desires or choices: men and women are IDENTICAL! again,
"And those old stereotypes are deeply ingrained in the minds of the men they marginalise; they no more see jobs centred on serving or caring as their sort of thing than society does..." It CAN'T be related to men's desires or choices: men and women are IDENTICAL!
Are we ready yet to consider that men and women, while EQUAL, may not be IDENTICAL?????
A lot of research seems to be going towards what men do wrong. Doing the same "research" on women and generalizing it similarly would of course be considered deeply sexist and misogynist.
It's a little unclear in the article why unemployment should lead to this family structure of single mothers having kids with three different fathers (US family law strongly favors motherly custodyy), until this:
"For many men in Tallulah, the greatest obstacle to finding a job is that they have already fallen foul of the law. ...And here the falling fortunes of working-class men do further damage. In 1960, among never-married American adults aged 25-34, there were 139 men with jobs for every 100 women, with or without jobs. ...By 2012 there were only 91 employed men for every 100 women in this group. ...Even a small imbalance can have big effects. Imagine a simplified “mating market” consisting of ten men and ten women, all heterosexual. Everyone pairs up. Now take one man away. One woman is doomed to be single, so she may opt to poach another woman’s partner. A chain reaction ensues: all the women are suddenly less secure in their relationships. Some of the men, by contrast, become tempted to play the field rather than settle down. In most rich countries the supply of eligible blue-collar men does not match demand. Among black Americans, thanks to mass incarceration, it does not come close. For every 100 African-American women aged 25-54 who are not behind bars, there are only 83 men of the same age at liberty."
> It is inevitable that more men will earn less
> than their female partners in years to come.
> To pull their weight, they will have to do
> more at home.
Will this actually work though?
Anecdotally, women seem less interested in partnering with men who make less money than them no matter what other benefits they provide.
I rarely hear of men breaking up with women because they weren't "ambitious enough" or weren't "their equals" however I hear this fairly frequently from women.
Hopefully as more women become the economic winners of their families they will fully accept the position of being the bread-winner instead of continuing to search for men that will 'be their equal' or outperform them. Until that happens men are going to continue to feel pressure to live up to outdated patriarchal ideals, with both winners and losers.
an answer to this would be nice. I could imagine some valid reasons but considering where we are (a place generally sensistive to things that could be considered "male-bashing") one does wonder.
Why did various individuals flag it? You'll have to ask them on an individual basis, but it's clear based on the comments that some view the article as inflammatory. I'd bet there are also quite a few that flag anything explicitly discussing gender or politics if it doesn't involve a tech company.
it is really interesting the automatic assumption of people in this thread, considering i'm guessing most didn't read past the first story about low-income men not finding work.
perhaps the use of the word feminism enforces an opinion right away regardless of what the article says.
War.
These are the men who are missing out on the great civilized purge of useless, direction-less, education-less, baby dads.
Not practicable anymore. There is no great enemy, the military services don't want these problem children.
Our direction is unsustainable but nobody likes this particular historical necessity.
> In “The End of Men”, a good book with a somewhat excessive title, Hanna Rosin notes that of the 30 occupations expected to grow fastest in America in the coming years, women dominate 20, including nursing, accounting, child care and food preparation.
What would happen if accounting falls prey to automation in the coming years? Would many former female accountants be willing to become nurses or to prepare food for a living?
Well, we don't know. I just find it toxic to look at this topic at the men vs women level even though many of the men described in the article probably are idiots. Who gets labeled what highly depends on circumstances a single actor can not really influence.
These problems are structural and they only exist because society as a whole fails to make sure that every human being finds a productive place in it. Take the guy mentioned in the article who sold small amounts of Marijuana, for instance. In the state he's living, it's illegal and thus he gets labeled a criminal. In another state he could work at a legal Marijuana shop just like others work in food preparation. In one state selling Marijuana makes you a dumb criminal, in a different state you get congratulated for your ability to adapt because you've picked a fast growing occupation.
Easiest game of "one of these things is not like the other" ever! I also love the ham-fisted implication that "feminism" is a positive thing that "educated" men should aspire to.
I'm sure all the well read people on here who don't brainlessly follow herd mentality and question the status quo will think for themselves. I'm sure the HN "community" isn't a bunch of back patting glorified redditors.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 40.9 ms ] threadBadly educated would indicate that the education is based on incorrect facts or processes.
Poorly educated would indicate that there may not be enough education, etc.
The American education system fed me lie after lie after lie.
All public schools teach lies, some even don't even pretend and teach creationism.
No English teacher would write that sentence.
Science is not about always being right. It is about knowing and building upon the best knowledge available, while maintaining the intellectual humility and curiosity to continually challenge the best available knowledge and revise it towards a measurably better state. That is how the mountain is climbed.
Some of them had good intentions with their lies (Creationists), but they're still lies.
Regardless, it was overflowing with lies. Especially history.
I hate to challenge you on that, but really, where is this actually done in the US?
If you are not college-bound you get no real attention or guidance. You are not taught about entrepreneurship, trades, or other options that might be good for you. You are not taught about managing money, personal finance, the traps of high-interest credit debt, or anything else practical. It's assumed you'll put in your time and "graduate" (or simply drop out), get some menial job, and that's your life. Nobody spares ten seconds of thought on you if you are not college-bound.
Blaming schools entirely for root causes sometimes stemming from students coming from bad home lives is nonsensical just as much as it is to remove blame from students for their individual performance. Our most often cited statistics simply don't do a good job of decoupling social factors of aggregate academic achievement from the variables schools themselves do control.
A larger essay on many of the problems and sources of these problems: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-...
Nothing like leading the argument...
Its hard to admit standards of living are decreasing. There is def a lot of blame to go around. I agree one should not be disdainful of people who are different.
This red team vs blue team logic is getting us no where.
Then again, there are plenty of caveats: the CPI overstates inflation, there are things on the market today that no amount of money could have bought in 1980, etc.
And if you're going back to 1970: $40k in 1970 dollars could buy you $250k of stuff today.
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
Median household income in 1980 was $16,671 [0] so someone making $40,000 was a high earner. In 2014 it was $53,013.
[0] http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php
Can you cite some specific examples of the authors disdainful attitude?
It then wanders around different topics - effects on heterosexual relationship when "eligible" members of one sex are in low supply, etc. But I was most interested in that initial argument, and it wasn't given much support.
" Everywhere you look in Tallulah there are women working: in the motels that cater to passing truckers, in the restaurants that serve all-you-can-eat catfish buffets, in shops, clinics and local government offices. But though unskilled men might do some of those jobs, they are unlikely to want them or to be picked for them."
In my mind, there's a big difference between "not wanting" and "wanting but not getting", but the article lumps those together.
All in all, a great article for raising some theories, and the facts offered point out some questions we might not have had, but precious little evidence of any particular answers, just evidence to shoot down a few theories (and those disproven theories aren't covered).
Not to say I think the article's suggestions are WRONG...I just don't have any reasons from the article to think they are right.
> Few women in rich countries now need a man’s support to raise a family. (They might want it, but they don’t need it.)
I'm a man, and my wife is back to work after giving birth to our child. Raising a family seems to be a massively two person job. I have absolutely no idea how anyone can manage it alone and keep their sanity and not neglect their job and child.
Blanket statements such as this (instead of asking if single family homes might be resulting in worse outcomes for children) are where the article appeared to have an agenda.
Not alone. The State (so, everyone paying taxes) is always here to help single parents.
It would be nice if that were noted somewhere on the page (maybe it is on the desktop site — I'm on mobile).
This is true, but why is it that the shortage of women in technology fields is attributed to them not being accepted or even forced out? Maybe this isn't the general attitude, but I have certainly heard people say that woman aren't in tech as much because they feel unwelcome, whereas when talking about men in those other fields, it's because "they don't want to."
Which means many here find it interesting.
I'm not sure that there's anything left to be said that hasn't been beaten into the ground, over, and over, and over.
Not true IMO. The fact that you still don't see any nuance here should tell us that this is still an important discussion.
Many of us men has experienced being systematically and officially discriminated against during school.
Note: I am not saying girls aren't discriminated against. I actually think they have it worse (I have seen some of it and it was ugly). I'm just saying this discussion really lacks nuance.
And even if nature biases one way or an other, does it explain the measured discrepancy completely? Am I to believe that there's basically a shortage of "nurturing" men, as there is a shortage of technically inclined women?
We also see that the proportions vary very significantly between countries, so clearly there's a societal factor at play, one way or an other.
So I don't really like these types of shortcuts, because clearly the most nurturing man is probably more so than the less nurturing woman. We should judge people on their own merit, not their gender, race or other factors.
I was addressing the larger question of why not many men become nurses. Not saying that those who do are not nurturing and good at what they do.
In particular your example: "Many women would be uncomfortable or refuse to have a male caregiver help bathe or dress them." I think there's a massive cultural component to this, rather than some innate behavior. And the fact that there are many male gynecologists show that many women aren't that picky with their intimacy...
This isn't meant to be read as defensive; just a social observation.
In addition, fields with high female participation are systematically devalued and underpaid, and men may be leaving them for greener pastures.
You mean someone saying something completely normal with no ill intention and someone else, for whatever reason, getting offended?
- teachers, parents, advisors all too often say tech is not for women - daughters are rarely given personal computers at the same as sons - video games, an important gateway into programming, are primarily marketed at boys - we have very few living role models of expert women programmers
Many of these same arguments apply to men and nursing. The primary reason we don't talk much about it in terms of access to opportunity is that comparatively, nursing is yet another underpaid pink collar job. If nursing was a comparable opportunity to tech, there'd probably be more grousing about the cultural barriers of masculinity that inhibit fuller participation.
> teachers, parents, advisors all too often say tech is not for women.
let us know who does this so we can shame them. btw, some parents might be doing this but they're terrible parents. but no teacher or advisor would ever do this. please don't sully these hardworking people.
> daughters are rarely given a computer at the same as sons
rarely? I would dispute that.
...
> nursing is yet another underpaid pink collar job
maybe they're underpaid (I think devs are underpaid too) but it is a very good paying job that doesn't need a 4-year degree and $100k in student loans. and to top it all off they're unionized, have benefits that would make you drool, and many can retire at a young age with full benefits. it's a well sought after job and a way for many people to move up economically.
This might not be the best characterization, but you get the point. I see this in very very young kids. It's innate. Again, these are generalities, but most who work with a lot of young kids understand these things. It's no surprise to me that as boys and girls become men and women we see these traits dominate employment trends. Girls tend to gravitate to fields that tie success (either academically or professionally) with social interaction, while boys gravitate to ones that rely more on demonstration of individual impact.
Sure, there's an element of group dynamics, xenophobia, etc... that influences this stuff, but I've never held the belief that this stuff is the root cause. Why are more men chefs/cooks? Because, they like making food/seeing what they've made. Why are more women waitresses? Because they like serving/interracting with people. It's not that complicated.
"102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin."
Neonate means newborn child.
RNs and CNAs don't have this problem. Male nurses aren't seen as sexual predators, some simply don't want to do it. And most don't have any visibility into the field to see it as a potential career.
Surprise! "Education" is the tool to adapt us descendants of egalitarian (gender and otherwise), fraternalistic, communal, polygamous, nomadic ice-age hunters to settled agricultural civilization, aka "trade, technology, feminism"
The "uneducated men" in this article have the advantage of not being saddled with 50k in debt, and they probably end up getting paid more with jobs like groundskeeper and forklift operator.
Making college free would remove that advantage and loop it back onto the group that is already positioned to get themselves into college.
You can't have it both ways. Pick one thesis and stay with it. I also like how women are still portrayed as victims in this article, even though they have better jobs and better careers than men do. Like I said, pick one.
Are we ready yet to consider that men and women, while EQUAL, may not be IDENTICAL?????
"For many men in Tallulah, the greatest obstacle to finding a job is that they have already fallen foul of the law. ...And here the falling fortunes of working-class men do further damage. In 1960, among never-married American adults aged 25-34, there were 139 men with jobs for every 100 women, with or without jobs. ...By 2012 there were only 91 employed men for every 100 women in this group. ...Even a small imbalance can have big effects. Imagine a simplified “mating market” consisting of ten men and ten women, all heterosexual. Everyone pairs up. Now take one man away. One woman is doomed to be single, so she may opt to poach another woman’s partner. A chain reaction ensues: all the women are suddenly less secure in their relationships. Some of the men, by contrast, become tempted to play the field rather than settle down. In most rich countries the supply of eligible blue-collar men does not match demand. Among black Americans, thanks to mass incarceration, it does not come close. For every 100 African-American women aged 25-54 who are not behind bars, there are only 83 men of the same age at liberty."
Even more reason for "ban the box" https://www.vox.com/2015/11/2/9660282/obama-ban-the-box
Anecdotally, women seem less interested in partnering with men who make less money than them no matter what other benefits they provide.
I rarely hear of men breaking up with women because they weren't "ambitious enough" or weren't "their equals" however I hear this fairly frequently from women.
Hopefully as more women become the economic winners of their families they will fully accept the position of being the bread-winner instead of continuing to search for men that will 'be their equal' or outperform them. Until that happens men are going to continue to feel pressure to live up to outdated patriarchal ideals, with both winners and losers.
Why did various individuals flag it? You'll have to ask them on an individual basis, but it's clear based on the comments that some view the article as inflammatory. I'd bet there are also quite a few that flag anything explicitly discussing gender or politics if it doesn't involve a tech company.
perhaps the use of the word feminism enforces an opinion right away regardless of what the article says.
> men like those of Tallulah [...] lack the resources of training, of imagination and of opportunity to adapt to the new demands
> poorly educated men are often much worse at things such as showing up on time and being pleasant to customers
> criminality, alas, remains an option for men of all skill sets
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallulah,_Louisiana
Our direction is unsustainable but nobody likes this particular historical necessity.
What would happen if accounting falls prey to automation in the coming years? Would many former female accountants be willing to become nurses or to prepare food for a living?
Well, we don't know. I just find it toxic to look at this topic at the men vs women level even though many of the men described in the article probably are idiots. Who gets labeled what highly depends on circumstances a single actor can not really influence.
These problems are structural and they only exist because society as a whole fails to make sure that every human being finds a productive place in it. Take the guy mentioned in the article who sold small amounts of Marijuana, for instance. In the state he's living, it's illegal and thus he gets labeled a criminal. In another state he could work at a legal Marijuana shop just like others work in food preparation. In one state selling Marijuana makes you a dumb criminal, in a different state you get congratulated for your ability to adapt because you've picked a fast growing occupation.
Easiest game of "one of these things is not like the other" ever! I also love the ham-fisted implication that "feminism" is a positive thing that "educated" men should aspire to.
I'm sure all the well read people on here who don't brainlessly follow herd mentality and question the status quo will think for themselves. I'm sure the HN "community" isn't a bunch of back patting glorified redditors.
Downvote away you point slaves.