Gender Bias in Character Creation

[Joven]

I agree with most of what you said, but I think it's odd to suggest that STEM isn't work that women actually like to do. I seriously doubt there's anything hard-wired into women's minds that disincline them toward math and engineering and such - at least no more than for humans in general. I find it far more likely that the lack of women in these fields is because it's traditionally "men's territory", and women, even if inclined to partake, feel out of place (or are MADE to feel out of place by close-minded men).

The recent push to try to get women into STEM is not to try to make them "like men", but to eliminate the ridiculous notion that STEM is a "men" thing in the first place.

I don't think she meant that women aren't interested in STEM just that there are people trying to FORCE more women into the field to try and fill an imaginary gender ratio. Women are more than welcome in any field so long as it's their choice to be there.

As to the main topic: everybody loves boobs, men and women both. Bulges not so much.

[Emstidor]

As to the main topic: everybody loves boobs, men and women both. Bulges not so much.

The internet (and Balmung) has taught me that some men love bulges on women just fine.

[Joven]

The internet (and Balmung) has taught me that some men love bulges on women just fine.

LMAO! Hadn't thought of that.

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't think it's odd at all. Apparently, if you arrange countries based on how equal men and women are, the more equal the society the more differences there are in occupational choices between men and women. Women go into STEM less in countries with more equality.

Either there is somehow the most social obstacles to doing "men's work" in the most equal places on Earth (which I seriously doubt), or women on average prefer to do different work from men when social security and other systems in place allow more freedom to choose one's occupation. The latter seems more likely to me, but that doesn't mean there are huge differences between the way men and women think. Some small differences just show up when you look for them in large scale statistics.

Part of the issue is that certain countries have better social services. It costs more for childcare in the US than it does to rent an apartment. In Canada or Japan, you're not punished for having a child (anymore), as there are options to keep the child and keep working. However cultural norms in Japan are different from Canada, and in Japan the career is favored over having a family. When you live in a city and the cost of living is prohibitive, you don't want to have a child, because that destroys your quality of life because you can't take your kid to work, and childcare can cost more than what you make, so you may as well just withdraw from the job market and sit on welfare until the kid is old enough to go to school.

The existing situation in places like NYC New York, San Francisco California, Vancouver BC and Toronto Ontario, is that "tech" has disrupted everything, so that there is no affordable housing in the very cities that are tech hubs. So if you can't afford to live there, you certainly can't afford to have a family. The consequences for STEM is that "young single men only" becomes the norm, as women might start the career, have all the training invested, and then drop out of the career the second they decide to have a family. To counter that, STEM jobs need to have on-site child care facilities, and without the government telling them to, they will not, because it costs them money.

Women have just as much interest in the same jobs Men do, and vice versa. Not every job is welcoming for all genders, and that change has to come from within. If an unofficial hiring policy is to throw womens resumes in the trash unread, then that status quo doesn't change.

[Reinha]

Part of the issue is that certain countries have better social services. It costs more for childcare in the US than it does to rent an apartment. In Canada or Japan, you're not punished for having a child (anymore), as there are options to keep the child and keep working. However cultural norms in Japan are different from Canada, and in Japan the career is favored over having a family. When you live in a city and the cost of living is prohibitive, you don't want to have a child, because that destroys your quality of life because you can't take your kid to work, and childcare can cost more than what you make, so you may as well just withdraw from the job market and sit on welfare until the kid is old enough to go to school.

The existing situation in places like NYC New York, San Francisco California, Vancouver BC and Toronto Ontario, is that "tech" has disrupted everything, so that there is no affordable housing in the very cities that are tech hubs. So if you can't afford to live there, you certainly can't afford to have a family. The consequences for STEM is that "young single men only" becomes the norm, as women might start the career, have all the training invested, and then drop out of the career the second they decide to have a family. To counter that, STEM jobs need to have on-site child care facilities, and without the government telling them to, they will not, because it costs them money.

Women have just as much interest in the same jobs Men do, and vice versa. Not every job is welcoming for all genders, and that change has to come from within. If an unofficial hiring policy is to throw womens resumes in the trash unread, then that status quo doesn't change.

That doesn't explain why women graduate in STEM fields less in countries where child care is affordable, maternity leave is longer, paternity leave is a thing and tech hasn't created men-only hubs. Take Finland for example. There are no tuition fees, no huge social stigma or other things inhibiting women from applying to study STEM in universities and there are even child care options on campus. So if "women have just as much interest in the same jobs men do" you would expect around a 50/50 division of applicants for every field, right? Yet women and men still choose to apply to different fields of study (which in the end affects graduation rates and workforce statistics). Why is this?

Could it be that our work preferences and the things we enjoy doing are some of the many sex differences in humans?

[KisaiTenshi]

Could it be that our work preferences and the things we enjoy doing are some of the many sex differences in humans?

I assure you, access, cultural taboos and the crappy behavior of people who don't want to see the status-quo change has a lot to do with it. Look at the gender makeup of the shop classes in a high school. Metal shop? 100% boys. Wood Shop? 100% boys. Auto Shop? 100% boys. Cooking class? Mostly girls. Textiles? 100% girls. Stagecraft, mostly girls. Acting, about evenly split.

The teachers get to decide who is in their class. That's why the status quo persists. A school can not afford to have one teacher per STEM field, especially if there's only 2 kids who pick it. So you largely get dealt losing hands unless your interest aligns with the teachers the school already has.

[RiyahArp]

Sorry about being unable to respond, busy day.

Actually i should have been a little more expansive. A better example is that women are already in STEM, lots of them! Women have parity in the life sciences, especially biology and microbiology. However, STEM as described is too often TE, mostly technology and engineering, along with more theoretical sciences like physics. It's just the whole argument gets framed around TE, especially if you also filter out science teaching.

It's just too often that people focus on parity in things like that, and ignore that women do like STEM, but in fields closer to their interests. Those get subtly devalued or ignored, because the goal tends to be trying to get into the male-dominated fields. The male ones tend to be heavily symbolic and analytical, which I guess a lot of women just do't find attractive. I don't like hard biological explanations for that, because a decent amount of men don't do well in those fields either, even though they trend male a lot. It's just though you can't just flip the inverse and expect it to work, because there are differences.

The interest stuff...idk. A lot of STEM interest isn't just putting people in front of it. Increasingly the people who do STEM as a career have to specialize in it at a very early age, to the point of knowing stuff well before the formally learn in post-secondary school. You can put people in front of a chess board, but master-level play goes so beyond that, that few bother to continue. I mean a basic appreciation anyone can do, but professional level stuff is hard. Like if you want to be a physical therapist, no one expects you to self-learn physical therapy well before you enter college.

[Reinha]

I assure you, access, cultural taboos and the crappy behavior of people who don't want to see the status-quo change has a lot to do with it. Look at the gender makeup of the shop classes in a high school. Metal shop? 100% boys. Wood Shop? 100% boys. Auto Shop? 100% boys. Cooking class? Mostly girls. Textiles? 100% girls. Stagecraft, mostly girls. Acting, about evenly split.

The teachers get to decide who is in their class. That's why the status quo persists. A school can not afford to have one teacher per STEM field, especially if there's only 2 kids who pick it. So you largely get dealt losing hands unless your interest aligns with the teachers the school already has.

I can agree that those things have some to do with it. But lack of access, taboos and social pressures don't fully explain the differences between men and women's choices, because when those obstacles are removed there is still a divide of interests. I'm literally witnessing it in my country.

As for side classes, those are picked by pupils here and if there is enough demand and resources for a subject class to make it happen then the teachers don't get to pick who can participate. Yet the divide remains. Lack of school resources affects both girls and boys so it doesn't explain the gender division of interests and occupations.

I just don't agree with the idea that if we give people complete freedom in choosing their fields of study and work, then we end up with a 50/50 gender ratio for everything. Because that is not the reality I'm observing.

Here's my main point. If the core problem is that the work done by a majority of women is not valued equally to the work done by a majority of men, and trying to fix it by getting an equal gender ratio is not going to work because of misaligned interests, then the way to solve the issue is by beginning to value female-dominated fields more. I agree with Riyah on that point. But you brought up an important issue of parenthood not being properly accounted for in some fields, and that should be addressed because it disproportionately affects women due to biological factors.

[RiyahArp]

Look at the gender makeup of the shop classes in a high school. Metal shop? 100% boys. Wood Shop? 100% boys. Auto Shop? 100% boys. Cooking class? Mostly girls. Textiles? 100% girls. Stagecraft, mostly girls. Acting, about evenly split. .

Umm..i have experience with this XD

In a vocational high school, they actually rotate everyone throughout every single trade for the first year of shop classes (it was split half academics, half shop.) That means men did hairdressing and women welding before everyone decided on a tech "major." The women generally sorted out into hairdressing, graphic design/printmaking, and machine drafting, with some as outliers in other fields. The men did all but hairdressing. it was 75-25% or less men/women, mostly because most women went to the normal high school which prepped you for college.

The issue is that, well, people talk about interests in trades, but few people have actually tried them. They don't offer shop in many schools any more, because of liability reasons, and because owning lathes were expensive before they introduced a lot of mechanical c and c to it. Women get sorted out of trades more because of the massive physical burden of the jobs. The ones they chose were generally the ones with the least physical burden, save for electronics. It's not really gender bias for construction or carpentry for example, it's more that you find out the job desctiption involves constant lifting of 100 pound boxes of roofing tile, per se. Or welding sounds romantic...rosie the riveter, right? But having hte heavy mask on and dealing with the raw heat and sparks for 8 hours is yuck. And dangerous! I still have a scar from molten solder on my wrist.

I mean, its less about being excluded and more about how painful they are and who can endure them, some times.

[MoroMurasaki]

Women have just as much interest in the same jobs Men do, and vice versa. Not every job is welcoming for all genders, and that change has to come from within. If an unofficial hiring policy is to throw womens resumes in the trash unread, then that status quo doesn't change.

If this were true how do you explain the complete domination of women in certain fields like nursing and early childhood education? Where are the programs to get men more involved in those fields to achieve gender parity?

There's also something to be said for things like trash collection, construction and oil work - all almost entirely male.

Do you think people are just tossing out resumes in those fields, is that how you would explain the gaps?

Men amd women have different strengths and interests.