Of course, for Equality of Chance to be properly implemented you need to do away with as many barriers to it as possible but you should be willing to accept that no matter what you do, there won't be a perfect 50/50.
From all evidence we have, there is strong evidence that male and female humans grow up differently independent of their social surroundings, for example, we found that the brains of newborns can be easily distinguished into female and male as little as 1 month after birth, before any social factors have had much chance to get deep into development.
From that I find it easier to believe that there will be some statistical biases in one direction or another (like how will have, on average, a bit more height) outside of the purely physical domain.
I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind.
More desirable to whom? To the one with the worse outcome equality of outcome will always be more desirable than equality of chance. Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal?
> I would rather see some evidence that despite all the physical, hormonal and developmental differences in male and female humans, there is absolutely no statistically significant difference in the brain and/or mind.
You cannot even properly define what you mean by "brain and/or mind", which is why it's impossible to convince you that there actually is injustice if your opinion relies on that. But, for the moment suppose there is some convincing theory which explains naturally why less women are in STEM. Then why would we have to adjust our society to it, as it would benefit from less social tensions if there was equal outcome? Your point has to be much stronger to justify the inequality, as in everything would go downhill super fast if we had equal outcome. Otherwise there will always be social tensions and you have to learn to live with the "feminists".
Yes. For most people those two options would be the same, which is why the difference between those two options matter.
Equality of Chance merely means that everyone gets a shot at becoming, for example, a Math PhD. You still have to put in as much elbow grease as everyone else and work just as hard as everyone else. If female and male humans are equivalent mentally then the end result should be a 50/50 distribution.
If there are mental differences then the distribution would be skewed but it would be fine since everyone has gotten the same chance as everyone else. It's the approach with the highest game-theoretic fairness; the chance of winning the game is directly related to the skill you bring to the table.
>You cannot even properly define what you mean by "brain and/or mind",
With brain I mean just that, I don't know why it lacks definition. I mean the raw organ of thought in the human skull. There are notable differences, as mentioned, found at early stages in the brain that are sufficient for a computer or human to identify the gender or sex of an individual with a higher-than-chance probability.
With mind I was refering to the mental capacity and properties of an individual, ie how good they are at math, their social skills, IQ score, pain tolerance, etc (these are just example categories, not necessarily categories in which a significant difference exists).
>which is why it's impossible to convince you that there actually is injustice if your opinion relies on that
It is certainly possible to convine me of the opposite, I have clearly formulated which evidence would be sufficient.
>Then why would we have to adjust our society to it, as it would benefit from less social tensions if there was equal outcome?
That question feels slightly loaded since it proposes that an equal outcome leads to less tension. Current movements concerned with an inequality of outcome do only so because it is unfairly inequal.
Not a lot of people complain when the outcome of the game is inequal but fair (for example, nobody minds that someone with low strength will be unable to participate in olympic weight lifting, there is an unequal chance of participation and outcome, but it's a fair process)
The resolution to the problem of "do we have to adjust society" is another question "is the reason we are suggesting to change due to a fair or unfair process?".
[footnote]: Fair and unfair are defined as the ability of a player to apply their skills and get an equal amount of reward to other players with the same skill level (or with neglible difference)
Only if human properties are statistically independent.
If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over.
This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women.
It seems to me that you argue from a POV that basic human properties are statistically independent. Now... Why do you think that is so?
It means that someone would get less outcome than he or she would have gotten without the policy, true.
> This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women.
Wages or positions in companies are fundamentally different to medicine. We can decide how our companies look like. We can't decide how our body works.
> It seems to me that you argue from a POV that basic human properties are statistically independent. Now... Why do you think that is so?
I think you got me wrong here. I tried to argue from a POV of a reasonable being. I assumed that this is independent from any basic physical properties or even being "human". It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.
Well, for the most part, our power over our workplaces is also rather limited. True, you can leave, and go to a "different" company...
> It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.
I... think that statistical independence of human properties is a valid basic assumption.
However i think that it is worthwhile to question that assumption from time to time. Especially when, as mentioned in the article, more free societies like sweden or finland have more unequal outcomes than societies like iran (which iirc instituted a male quota for some STEM fields a few years ago).
This is a difficult topic...
If I understood correctly in your original argument you tried to point out that you need this "brain/mind" to be good in STEM. I would argue that anything which has certain mental capabilities (which I'm not able to define) can be good at STEM whether or not it has a brain or even is human or not, would you agree to that? If so, to keep your argument valid you would have to define these properties which are necessary for being good at STEM. In the previous comment I was just doubting that you can do that, as these properties are not bound to a certain physical form under that assumption.
> That question feels slightly loaded since it proposes that an equal outcome leads to less tension.
I agree to that. So, it seems like both equal outcome and equal chances create social tension. Or are you claiming once this hypothetical convincing theory is out "feminists" will be gone?
> (for example, nobody minds that someone with low strength will be unable to participate in olympic weight lifting, there is an unequal chance of participation and outcome, but it's a fair process)
Yet people are concerned about doping. It's the athletes decision to risk his life for better outcome. Why does that make the competition unfair then?
> Not a lot of people complain when the outcome of the game is inequal but fair.
I would claim in real life situations it is almost impossible for me to objectively tell whether the game is rigged or I just performed very well/bad. But I can tell that the larger the differences in outcome averaged over many people, the more I'm suspicious.
Hopefully not. Without opposition my hypotehtical theory would have no way of being refined further through discussion.
>I would argue that anything which has certain mental capabilities (which I'm not able to define) can be good at STEM whether or not it has a brain or even is human or not, would you agree to that?
I would agree to that in a limited capacity. These mental capabilities are more like capacities, the efficiency and speed of them is dependant on an individual. I propose that some of them may depend on which chromosome the human individual got at birth. In other physical forms this (potential) difference could be less pronounced or more pronounced.
>Yet people are concerned about doping. It's the athletes decision to risk his life for better outcome. Why does that make the competition unfair then?
Doping affects the added definition of fairness, other players who did not dope with the same skill level are outperformed; if two identically strong players were to participate, one doping, one not, then the doping one would have an unfair advantage that the not-doping player will have to compensate with a lot of hard work.
>But I can tell that the larger the differences in outcome averaged over many people, the more I'm suspicious.
That's usually a pretty terrible approach. Simply averaging the outcome is an easy way to trip over every statistical quirk there is.
The only way to be sure that the game is fair is to get a decent sample out of the population and perform a thorough statistical analysis that accounts for all variables possible. And I would suggest that the data crunching would be performed by people of differing political orientations, as much as possible, including hard right and hard left, to ensure that there is as little ideological bias as possible.
That's not true. Yes, equality of outcome would give disadvantaged people more money to buy bread. The mistake is assuming that the price of bread would stay the same.
This only shows that the measures that are taken might be inappropriate to fulfill their purpose of establishing gender equality and is unrelated to the mentioned assumption.