I was perusing our local woke lefty national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, and came across a really, really dumb article in a series of really, really dumb articles.
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| Locked Out Of The Ivory Tower |
It was written by these two:
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| Chen Wang |
Robyn Doolittle |
Chen seems to be an earnest intern of sorts. Robyn is an experienced award-winning investigative journalist.
Their premise is that while more and more women are being hired into academia (administrative, professorial, and teaching positions), they are supposedly "locked out of" the higher echelons.
Using only employees from the Ontario "Sunshine List" (people making over $100,000 in 1999, and then inflation adjusted up to $147,537 in 2019), they show how at one point, in 1999, when women only made up 12% of the workforce, they on average made the same money as men. This was because they were evenly balanced throughout the pay grades. However, as more and more women were hired, they tended to concentrate into the lower-level positions and pay grades, and thus the average compensation of all women was 5% less than all men.
The article posits without proof that this is because there are barriers to women achieving the higher ranks based entirely on their gender, and not at all on other factors that may be different between men and women (e.g., hard work, dedication, talent, interest, IQ, job choice, ...)
I call bullshit.
This is how you spot the "fake news". Look for any complex issue that involves tons of variables, and if you see it reported as being only a single variable, without any proof of that, or consideration of other potential factors, you know you're being lied to.
I can think of many other potential reasons. Another explanation could be that back in 1999 there was still true equality of opportunity, and women of equal quality to men were hired, and they were hence compensated the same. But in 2019, there are so many forced "diversity hires" that these people do less well, and are thus less well-payed. Another one could be that there have been more and more "gender and race studies" professors hired, of which applicants are a dime a dozen and the bar is low, so thus pay is low, and those are filled by women? Here are some other potential factors (by no means an exhaustive list).
- Women choose to work fewer hours, valuing family and free time more heavily than men do.
- Women are not as aggressive in asking for raises as men.
- Women take time off their careers for childbirth and childcare, and so are slower to advance.
- Women concentrate more into artsy fields (women studies, sociology,
ehtnic studies, ...) that pay less well than fields such as engineering
or computer science.
- At the very top end of the IQ range, women are less well-represented than men.
We'll look at these last two in more detail. I know that last one is the most controversial, so let me dig into that one first.
The results of IQ tests are on agglomeration of many different talents and abilities, innate and learned. They all try to get at an elusive "g" factor that is the "innate intelligence" driver.
I think we all intuitively recognize "g" when we see it: in a young child, or a genius high-schooler who gets 100% in all their math subjects, or the brilliant computer programmer, or the chess master. Yes, environment has played a role, but there is also a certain innate intelligence spark in some individuals that cannot be denied (and the opposite in some others, though they may be absolutely delightful people!).
Psychometrists try to design the tests to get as close a true representation of "g" as they can (though never perfectly). Often an important part of IQ tests are sequences such as this one:
You're expected to answer "E", another triangle. 70% of people who took this online test got that answer. To my mind, the most dominant pattern was that the decrease in the number of sides from top row to middle row was the same as from middle row to bottom row, and "D" was stupid, so "E".
If you're good at answering dumb questions like this, you're good at seeing patterns in things, and you are therefore likely to have a high "g".
Having high "g" means you will likely do well at academics, get a decent job, and make more money. It's no guarantee either way, but that's how it sort of lines up. Obviously does not apply to sports and arts, just to the more academic stuff, such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, accountants, and University professors for sure.
There have been many studies comparing men and women IQ scores. My reading of the literature seems to indicate there are biological sex-based differences. IQ is measured on a Bell Curve with an average score of 100 by definition.
Men are about 4-6 points higher than women on average, and with a more spread out distribution. There is controversy around this and much gnashing at teeth that goes beyond the scientific, but the data looks to be pretty solid to me.
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H. Nyborg Department of Psychology, Research Unit for Differential Psychology, University of Aarhus, Personality and Individual Differences 39 (2005) 497–509 |
We see adult males shifted to the right and with a broader/flatter distribution. This leads, at the extreme right to a sizable discrepancy in the expected number of males and females at a high IQ level. At a "g"=3 corresponding to an IQ of 145 ("profoundly gifted") there is an 8:1 ratio of males to females. And "profoundly gifted" is where we want our University Professors to be on the IQ range.
Why is this at all important? Why raise it at all? Isn't this one of those "hate facts" about men and women?
I don't think any facts like this should be used for policy making. If you make a policy, e.g., that there's no sense in training or hiring women to top IQ jobs, it would be terribly unfair to those very special women that are way up there. And if what we are striving for is a meritocracy anyways, then the good ones will float to the top. It is the very essence of the policy of "equality of opportunity" to allow for all folks to be equally well educated and trained and to compete for these jobs.
A different policy might be if you were, say, the Russians building a world-class chess capability. They might determine that there are only so many slots for training young talent, and given an IQ analysis like the one above, reserve all the slots for boys in order to best use scarce resources. That is emphatically NOT a policy of "equality of opportunity", and I would therefore never endorse such a thing, despite the fact that it would use scarce resources better. I think fairness in opportunity is way more important.
So if using these facts is not important for making policy, why bring it up at all?
The reason it is important is because there are vast and increasing number of people who value "equality of outcome". Unless women make up 50% of the academic ranks and are paid exactly the same as men, "equality" has not yet been achieved.
In the Globe&Mail article they say,In 2000, the federal government created the Canada Research Chairs Program to stop a feared brain drain to the United States. The goal was to create 2,000 new research positions and dole out hundreds of millions in funding. But three years later, eight women scholars took the CRCP to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal alleging discrimination. Only 15 per cent of the chair positions had gone to women, even though women accounted for 26 per cent of professors. In a landmark settlement in 2006, the CRCP agreed to set targets to ensure that women, Indigenous people, other visible minorities and people with disabilities were being properly represented.
But little changed.
In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Commission took the extraordinary step of asking the Federal Court to enforce the settlement, as most universities were still missing the targets. (In the CRCP system, schools nominate candidates, which the program then evaluates.) Earlier this year, universities were warned that if they fail to hit equity targets by December, 2029, they’ll lose some research chair positions. (A spokesperson for the CRCP said that as of May, 2021, 85 per cent of institutions were meeting equity targets.)
So the way I read this is that the government successfully forced the Universities to hand out research dollars to women less qualified than men. So we all lose.
This is specifically NOT "equality of opportunity". This is the men
being shafted. Equality of outcome can only be achieved by sacrificing
equality of opportunity. So don't aim for it!
My point is that gender bias is not the only reason there was a difference in the granting of these chairs. It likely played a part, but innate IQ difference could have played a sufficiently large role as to be able to completely explain the unequal outcome all by itself, even with perfect equality of opportunity.
Another factor that can explain pay gap differences is the choice of career. Some careers are simply more valued than others in today's world, and thus pay more. This is the law of supply and demand, not some patriarchy imposing it. If there is a lot of work for plumbers, and few plumbers, the wages for plumbers will go up.
In the case of academics, a STEM-field professor makes a lot more money than a women's studies professor. It is because the STEM-fields are in higher demand in the workforce than women's studies are. They command a higher wage, and Universities must keep up with that or lose all their talent to industry.
But why do women avoid STEM fields? Why do men avoid nursing? There are innate sex differences where boys and men value things more, and girls and women value people more. And this is not cultural. In cultures that are the most gender equal, where girls and boys are most brought up to believe they can be and do anything, where there are the fewest barriers to girls and young women going into STEM, you see the difference maximized.
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| G. Stoet, University of Essex, D.C. Geary, University of Missouri Psychological Science - February 2018, pp.581-593 The Gender-Equality Paradox in STEM Education |
The vertical axis is the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) which assess the extent to which economic, educational, health, and political opportunities are equal for women and men. Higher means more equal. We see countries such as Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden right up near the top, as you would expect, and countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Algeria, UAE, Qatar, down near the bottom.
Chart A on the left correlates this with the gap in STEM scores relative to reading scores for men over women (it does not speak to raw scores in STEM). The gap was largest in the most equal countries. In other words, in Finland the boys do way better in STEM than in reading. And while girls may do well in STEM (as well as the boys), they do better in reading than they do in STEM. Because of this intra-personal talent difference, it is posited that more boys choose STEM than girls.
When correlated with % women amongst STEM graduates, chart B on the right, we see the lowest percentages in those most equal countries such as Finland, and the highest percentage in the least equal, such as UAE, because of this "interest gap", it is posited.
When you allow men and women to choose for themselves, without cultural bias, men choose STEM and women don't.
Both these effects, interest in STEM, and inherent differences in IQ, can well explain any disparity in numbers and pay, something this shoddy Globe & Mail article completely fails to mention, because they are pushing a "social justice" point, and damned any result other than the one they are after.
We will return to our regularly scheduled spanking content next post!
Good points, MS SJ. There are folks on the lunatic fringe on the left - as there are on the right.
ReplyDeleteI only ask that you don't associate all of us who lean left with folks like these women. (Personally I spend a lot of time trying to tell folks on the left to be reasonable so they don't push moderates away.)
I look forward to returning to the regularly scheduled program, but never mind thoughtful political discussion. By the way, I highly recommend the MARTIN SADDLERY ROPE QUIRT at teskeys.com.
https://teskeys.com/collections/tack-whips-crops-quirts/products/martin-saddlery-rope-quirt
Best,
Rosco
I engage with folks issue by issue, and am happy we agree on this one, Rosco.
DeleteThe quirt looks... scary! 😧 Yumm.
My first comment after years of reading...
ReplyDeleteBut this important enough to share it, although I assume only a tiny minority of the readers can understand the language of the book, German. It is a book written by an old female Professor of Psychology who got the German Psychology Award 2003 and is quite thorough in the discussion of the biology differences without judging. If I recall correctly, one of her Daughters married a Canadian lawyer, so she has a faint connection. The book is called something like "different by natur" but only available in German as far as I know.
Unfortunately a great book like this is highly unlikely to be translated into English in times like this. You might be able to look at the index on her homepage though with a translator.
https://www.bischof.com/doris_von_natur_aus_anders.html
The book is worth it, a gem of knowledge and scientific excellence in a very political topic. And the lady is old and senior enough not to care about outcries..
M.
Thank you. Looks great. I wish I could read it.
DeleteJoe 2 here, My wife was the valicvtorian of her high school, the valedictorian of her college and graduated with honors for her masters degree. She was a fast mover in her profession. When she got pregnant, she told me that that the the most important thing that she could do was raise the children.
ReplyDeleteShe told me that I was in-charge of making the living and she would make life worth living. Our vacations consist of visiting relatives. Our cars are not new and we don't have the newest electronic devices.
We were at a party where a lady (deep in her cups) told my wife that she was squandering her life. My wife went was lady-like (polite but iron firm) and told her that she was in charge of the future- money is today- children are tomorrow.
We are in a "light FLR. She emphasizes her guidance and I ensure that we don't hit the ditch. I works for us.
Your wife sounds like a smart cookie!
DeleteDoes she spank?
Joe2 here,
DeleteWow, I just reread what I submitted earlier. It looks like an eighth grader typed it with his toes. Sorry about that.
In answer to your question- does your wife spank you? Yes, my wife does spank me, but not as punishment. To paraphrase her, “You like being spanked, so how would that be a punishment?”
My wife spanks me to relieve my stress. I work long hours and have hard deadlines. When the stress gets too high, I cannot sleep and become short tempered. By receiving a good hard spanking, I go into sub-space and the “stress spring” unwinds.
I like the thoughts of spanking, before and after, but the spanking itself can be bad! So "like" needs a bit of a modifier in my case.
DeleteMy husband likes it when I spank him for pretend real reasons. I mean, a real reason, exaggerated. So from the outside it looks like I'm spanking him for cause.
Well, I think you hit a topic here which we can pretty much agree on Julie.
ReplyDeleteHurray!
DeleteI don't bother reading newspapers these days though I have at times n the past read byoth the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Nowadays I get my news mostly from independent journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, and from sites like the Off-Guardian. The standard of corporate journalism now is such that it's no surprise that they are losing more and more credibility and readership. - Frank
ReplyDeleteEveryone is finding common ground on "mainstream journalism now sux"
DeleteYou mean to say that men and women are DIFFERENT?! Blasphemy!
ReplyDeleteSome of these lefty women are all about equality of outcome until they learn they'd be maneuvered out of their preferred career in veterinary science or journalism or counseling or nursing and placed into a career in garbage collection or mining to fill their mandated gender quotas. Which is the giveaway that this isn't about equality, but rather misandry. Certain career paths are primarily male, and they are therefore inherently evil and must be forcibly altered.
The great error of modern feminism is that it has gone from "Men and women should be equal before the law" to "Men and women are the same and can be switched interchangeably, but they also must despise and back bite each other at every turn".
Finally, "journalists" are the biggest cancer infecting the societal discourse.
Julie, your reactionary posts never cease to surprise me. But then what should I expect from a Trump fan?
ReplyDeleteAccording to your post, as a man I am, statistically, smarter that you are. So let me mansplain a few things.
Because child rearing and care rests disproportionately on women, women are forced to make a choice between career and family. Men are often not forced to make this choice, since the mother of their children will bear much of the child raising burden. This means that women will spend more hours on child care and other domestic chores while men can spend more hours at work. Sure this is a choice. But a decent society should not force such a stark choice between family and career. Especially if the society would like to encourage families to counter the declining birth rate.
There are now penalties for overt discrimination and racist and sexist comments. Discrimination is often silent but shows up in salaries and promotion. This is one reason that women continue to make less than men, while performing the same jobs with the same hours.
I work at a large multi-disciplinary (no, not that kind of discipline) research lab. Historically there has been discrimination against women at the Lab. Over the years the management has, sometimes reluctantly, worked to counter this. At one time the entire management chain above me was women. I also have had many brilliant female colleagues with world class math and science skills.
I do not believe that there is a strong gender difference in STEM skills. I do think that girls and boys are encouraged to focus on different things. I have always believed that there is more difference within a gender than there is between the genders. About the only thing that men can lay unique claim to is aggression and violence. It should go without saying that this is not something that is a credit to the male gender.
Your reading comprehension skills need improving.
DeleteYou seem to fail to grasp the concept of a probability distribution for a group, and how a slight difference in averages across massive groups bears very little on comparing individuals.
Men can care equally for children. If anything, there is discrimination against men who choose to. But it is a choice for women, and it means they do not have the same time-in-job as men and thus don't measure up as well on average re. experience.
You say gender discrimination is a major problem, and yet you offer no proof of it. Disparity of outcome, as I covered extensively in my post, can be adequately explained without resorting to gender discrimination (which does exist, though you have not at all proven it is a significant contributor - you stated it, but offered no evidence, whereas I have offered evidence that other things are more than enough to explain it).
Your "belief" re differentiated interest in STEM by cultural conditioning is contradicted by the study I covered that shows the opposite.
You should start reading about parental investment and its impact on gender bimorphism..
DeleteAnd about the impact of a higher variance, that might arise e.g. due to more recessive alleles surfacing on the gonosome for males. This has nothing to do with individuals, nor with the main part of the distribution, but a heavy impact on the outliers at both tails.
There is so much real science already out there, but no one really bothers to read it; biology is way ahead of the social sciences at this topic.
I consider myself lucky to be part of the old world, and not the new one.
Best,
M.
Yes, M, as you imply, it's not as simple as genes determining characteristics directly. Genes can determine societal/parental behaviors that lead to sexual differences as well. The false dichotomy between nature vs nurture. Nurture is to a large extent governed by nature.
DeleteRegrettably, in the "woke" culture it is not politically correct to discuss certain science for fear it may offend one group or another.
Good for you for sticking to the old world!
Hi Julie. I apologize upfront about the length of this response but there's a lot to unpack.
ReplyDeleteLet me say upfront that I agree the article's methodology and analysis is problemartic. That said, the conclusion is still generally right.
There are two main issues with the analysis in the article. First, one you have pointed out, it fails to account for any differences in academic fields. That is clearly important but I won't belabor the point since we agree there.
Second, one not mentioned in your response, is the pipeline issue. Anytime a field experiences increases in the number of a minority group joining (in this case women), there will be a period of time in which that group is disproportionately new to the field and thus lower paid. The cross-sectional analysis in the article fails to account for the fact that since more women are hired more recently, the women tend to be disproportionately early in their career and will have lower salaries.
That said, there are plenty of studies that take into account both of these factors, as well as others. In fact, one such study was linked in the article itself - one at McMaster University that adjusted for the pipeline affect and academic discipline. But for a more comprehensive study on Canadian universities, you can find an example here:
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cjhe/2019-v49-n1-cjhe04663/1060821ar/
While percentage differences may vary due to methodology, type of university, and so forth, there is a general pattern that female faculty are paid less than male faculty of similar rank and in similar disciplines (i.e. STEM, Business, Law, Social Science, Humanities). Thus, the article's conclusions are generally right, though its own analysis is inadequate.
There are also concerns with your response. The whole IQ part is non-sensical. Putting aside the questions about what IQ tests actually measure and whether IQ should even be related to income in this case, the whole thing is logically flawed. The good news is your fallacy is common enough to have a name - the ecological fallacy. In this case you ascribing characteristics of the population - women have lower IQs on average - to a group about which you have no data - women university faculty. Even if the population characteristic is true, something I'd otherwise reject but don't have space for, it does not follow that female faculty also have lower IQs. They are a small subset of the female population and have been selected to progress in their fields because of their 'intelligence.'
In addition, your reliance on 'innate' differences vastly simplifies a complex issue. Disentangling culture from any innate differences is particularly challenging and ascribing causal links from that to observed differences in pay even more so. For example, what part of "women focus on people and men on things" explains why women are less aggressive in salary negotiations? I am sure a theory can described but separating that from cultural pressures on women to accomodate others makes it difficult, if not impossible, to really know what's driving what.
I think there are reasonable discussions to be had over why such gaps exist and how best to respond to them. You might not like McMaster's approach of a blanket raise for female faculty. That's fine, it was a radical approach. But there is ample evidence it is a real problem not fully explained by the pipeline or discipline or race or rank or experience.
I agree with a lot of what you say.
DeleteI think you are wrong on the IQ issue, though. If we assume there exists such group IQ differences, then it would predict large tail discrepancies in IQ between the groups. Since IQ is a good predictor of all sorts of academic success, it would account for lower numbers (or lesser pay if the numbers are forced higher).
So it then remains whether or not the IQ difference is real. Certainly there is academic debate possible on that issue, but the preponderance of evidence (much of which is referenced in the paper I referenced) indicates it is real.
There are other sex differences than things/people. Another common dimension is disagreeableness (part of the Big Five personality traits often referenced) for which men score higher than women, and that can account for the discrepancy in salary negotiation. I only chose two to dive into in my blog post, but that is a good third worthy of diving into.
I don't think there is "ample evidence" that gender discrimination is an important factor in the wage gap, despite your heartfelt statement that there is. Please provide said evidence in the presence of a multi-variate analysis of the issue. I predict you will be unable to do so.
Oh, and I meant to add that the study I referenced that shows that where the cultural forces steering the sexes are minimized, the difference in interest in STEM maximizes, is a pretty darned good indicator that a good portion of it is innate.
DeleteI didn't challenge whether choice of field is innate. I noted that choice of field is irrelevant because it's easily controlled for and wage differences remain. It does not matter (to this particular discssion) if women are less represented in STEM fields if the disparities exist across and within each field. Which they do.
DeleteAs for the IQ point, I am sorry, but your logic is wrong. First, 4-6 points is not large. Second, even if true, you cannot assume this group shares the same underlying distribution. In fact, your comment about IQ predicting academic success contradicts your point. If that's the case, then the underlying distribution of IQ for men and women with PhDs is going to skew heavily to the right. It will not be normally distributed and you cannot generalize from the population as a whole to a specific subset. You are stuck in an ecological fallacy. Your argument *might* work applied to the wage gap across the entire population (but even there you have differences in who choses to work) but you cannot say that because men tend to smarter than women therefore male faculty are smarter than female faculty.
In response to this quote of yours:
"Please provide said evidence in the presence of a multi-variate analysis of the issue. I predict you will be unable to do so."
You didn't read the prior link which does exactly that and then predict I can't? Really? Well, I can only lead you to it but I can't make you read it.
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/cjhe/2019-v49-n1-cjhe04663/1060821ar/
Or the McMaster internal study that led them to give all women faculty a raise
https://www.mcmaster.ca/vpacademic/documents/MUFA%20Gender%20Salary%20Gap%20Analysis_May%202015.pdf
Or this one
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11162-006-9043-2
There are more, but honestly they tend to be fairly old because the field has pretty much accepted the reality of the wage gap and most research is about why it exists and how to fix it. For example, there is some evidence the women tend to get lower student evaluations than men, which could reduce the number earning tenure. There is also some research that women get assigned more non-research duties, which could reduce their productivity and promotions. For example, this article.
http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/index.php/genderandset/article/view/656
But at this point I am not taking a position on a given cause or even solution. The point is, there's good evidence the gap exists even beyond factors like involvement in STEM fields or recency of hire.
I would think that enthousiasm for field is still relevant even after a choice of field was made.
Delete4-6 points is the difference in the mean. At the tail of the distribution, at IQ=145, as the chart shows, there are 8x as many men as women at that IQ level (g=3). THAT is large. Really, really important distinction that tiny shifts in means and variance can make huge relative differences at the tails when dealing with Normal distributions. Crucial point, that.
I still don;t think your IQ argument is correct. It WOULD be correct if if a pure equal opportunity meritocracy existed (as I surmise was the case in 1999 with no wage gap). However when you force towards an equality of outcome you will force in lower IQ women to make up for the numbers.
And no, none of those papers do a proper full multi-factor analysis. Yes the one paper corrects for the pipeline effect, but for nothing else that I mentioned.
The McMaster paper you provided has a titillating paragraph:
"Literature suggests that there are several factors that could potentially explain the difference in salary between male and female faculty. Firstly, men in general are more likely to negotiate for a higher starting salary than women. Second, studies on the marriage patterns of faculty members suggest that men in academia are less likely than women to be in a dual-career relationship (Baker, 2012). Consequently, male faculty may be more mobile, giving them an edge over their less mobile female colleagues when negotiating salary increases. Third, women are more likely to take pregnancy or parental leave and often assume primary responsibility for childcare, which can lead to lower merit pay increases during the first years of parenthood."
But then it proceeds to LITERALLY IGNORE all of those factors!!!!
A true multi-factor analysis would take all of those, and more, into account quantitatively, and that is what is required to determine how significant is any residual gender discrimination.
If you call all the free choice stuff I listed above as some kind of "systemic discrimination", then you are just playing a semantics game. Those are freely made choices, NOT discrimination as it is usually defined.
"Really, really important distinction that tiny shifts in means and variance can make huge relative differences at the tails when dealing with Normal distributions. Crucial point, that."
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not. You are not dealing with a normal distribution for the small subset that is PHD level faculty. Or, more realistically, you might be, but the mean is way higher and the variance is much smaller. You keep trying to generalize from the population to sample. It just does not work that way. Kind of like saying Candidate A won the state, therefore Candidate A also won county X. More precisely, Candidate A won more votes from men than women in the state therefore more men in county X voted for Candidate A. That literally does not follow. Clearly the county need not have the same distribution of voters as the state. Nor is there any reason to expect faculty to have the same IQ distribution as the normal population. I guess I can't convince you of your error but mathematically you are flat wrong.
Nor do you have any actual evidence that the women who have become faculty are in some way less qualified and less intelligent. That they have less "merit." That's just bias showing through. It'd be just as logical to argue they probably are even more intelligent than the men because they had greater obstacles to overcome.
And of course, it all begs the question of whether IQ is even meaningful in this specific contextm, itself a highly questionable premise.
The field has moved on becuase, within the realm of that which is measurable and available, consistent results have been found. Outside experiments, it is not possible to account for every possible factor. Moreover, I and those I cited, don't claim gender bias is the only reason. It just happens to be one that remains after taking into account everything we can and testing it multiple ways in multple contexts over a period of years. The result is, as they say, robust.
It also happens to have far more quantitative support than your contention that the differences would disappear if only the right analysis was conducted.
Just the fact that part of your argument was that 4-6 is a small shift means you're not getting the point at all. You're pretending to be mathematically sophisticated, but if you don't understand the impact at the tails...
DeleteWe're talking about the population FROM WHICH the faculty is drawn, which is everybody. After they're selected is then a different matter I am not discussing, just positing that in order to force the numbers to where they are via affirmative action you needed to go down to lower IQ women to make it up. Seems straightforward.
I have no direct evidence that women faculty are not as smart. Indirect evidence is that they're not making as much money as the men, but you're using that as evidence that there is definitely gender discrimination. It is evidence for neither of those two things. We are trying to figure out what factors contribute, and to what extent. I do not pretend to know the answer as you and the journalist do, I only offered several other factors where it's plausible that they have sufficient explanatory factor by themselves.
Your assertion that every other possible thing has been measured and discounted leaving only gender discrimination is absurd on its face. It is noted that YOU HAVE NOT shown me a study that takes all the proposed likely factors into account and apportions a contribution to each. You CANNOT conclude it is only the one thing.
I started a long reply but I doubht it's worth the effort. Let's try a test. The fourth of your five bullets is that women pick arsty fields and not STEM fields. That may well be true. But all three studies I shared controlled for that explicitly and still found a wage gap. Are you willing to accept that that argument does not explain the gap and so can be dismissed as long as a study controls for it?
DeleteDon't get snarky, I've allowed your voice and countered all your points effectively. You're a guest on my platform, and I'm happy you are here providing an alternative point of view for our readers. You may not convince me, as I've thought it through, but we do this for others who are undecided.
DeleteThe most germane, the Springer one is behind a paywall, but from the abstract it says even after that factor is removed there is still a gap. Of course there would be, as there are multiple factors at play. It does not conclude that the STEM choice factor has nothing to do with it.
My assertion is that there are many factors at play, and none of these papers take into account all the most obvious ones I listed, so your and the journalist's position that gender discrimination is the key factor is an unjustified conclusion.
If you were to apply that standard of evidence to your own claim, which provides no direct analyis, just questions, it would fail your criteria. Instead, consider the alternative. Even though you disagree with the conclusion you could acknowledge that while there are still uncertainties, the best available research consistently finds a wage gap even when various factors are controlled for. Perhaps there are other missing factors but absent proof they matter, accept the evidence that does exist. If you can't do that, then apply your own standards to your own argument and then best you could conclude is that you have no idea if the wage gap exists or not. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.
DeleteI am making no claims, I am debunking the claim of the journalist. That was the entire point of the blog post.
DeleteThere is no proof offered that gender discrimination is a significant factor, much less the prime factor in the wage gap. Only sloppy thinking that accounts for one or two other factors, when 10 are at play, and then say whatever is left over must be this invisible gender discrimination. You think with all this rampant gender discrimination one would find some concrete provable examples of it (e.g. the smoking gun email or overheard conversation of men conspiring to keep women out). But that patriarchy can be sneaky!
I have no idea if aliens from another planet exist on earth either, but I'm not willing to base policy off the fact they do when it is entirely unproven and seems unlikely.
fwiw, I totally agree with ASH. You shut down people who show something you say to be incorrect, but you often do so without evidence. (Of course there are lame counter-arguments to what you are presenting; I am not talking about those. I am talking about well-reasoned arguments against a position of yours, like those of ASH.)
DeleteI have yet to see you ever change your opinion on anything, despite strong evidence against your position in some issues. (Not all, of course, just some.)
A truly reasonable person changes their mind when faced with evidence. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way forward if you want to be rational.
I expect you to insult me now. Fine: it's your blog. But just know that you aren't convincing lots of smart people with your style of argumentation.
There is no "shutting down". Just the opposite. I respond thoughtfully to all thoughtful comments.
DeleteOf course my commenters are unlikely to change my mind, as I've done my research and arrived at my conclusions and already considered the points offered. Just as I am unlikely to sway ASH for the same reasons. The discussion is more to give the spectators a fair view of both sides.
I present as much if not more evidence than anybody. My blog post itself referenced two scientific papers that in turn referenced many more besides.
I found the evidence produced by ASH to be unconvincing. He claimed the papers he presented lead to his conclusion, but when I read them it turned out they did not, and I explained how.
I am very willing to have my mind swayed by a great argument or a great piece of evidence of which I was unaware. If you can concretely point out what piece of evidence in ASH's comments that you think I passed over, I am happy to have a second look.
Mostly what happens is ASH says something, I counter what he says effectively, and then rather then continuing to engage along that line, he shifts to a totally different line. It's like playing whack-a-mole!
And I should elaborate on "You shut down people who show something you say to be incorrect, but you often do so without evidence."
DeleteIn some posts I make a claim and back it up with evidence that folks are free to argue.
For this post the journalist (and ASH) are making a claim (that women are held back because of gender prejudice). I argue that they have presented no evidence that is true. I presented other possible explanations that have not been eliminated, and demonstrate that they have sufficient explanatory power themselves. So those need to be eliminated before you can fallback to gender prejudice.
Even the very concept that we have eliminated all possible other reasons, so it must be gender prejudice, is a silly form of argument. There may be other things we have not thought of that explain it. This "proof by elimination" is very weak sauce (FYI... it's also how you "prove" humans cause global warming).
So, in my estimation, if they are the ones making a claim, they need to prove it. All I'm saying is that it is not proven. I DO NOT offer my own explanation, just dispute theirs.
fwiw, I am a researcher in a closely related field, in a good university, and you definitely do not do this field justice. You cherry-pick papers that support your view, and rely on the ignorance of others. Yes, I could respond, but I have a day job.
Delete(I am very impressed with the volume you come up with here btw. Not the content, but the volume (sorry).)
This feels very similar to your bizarre stance on climate science. If you want to know about these topics, consult someone on the faculty at the University of Toronto . There are very good people right there who could help you out, if you cared, in either intelligence research or climatology.
My guess is that you are trying to undermine confidence in science, for reasons I don't understand (but similar to your idol Trump)
Sorry, I don't have time to debate this stuff in such a strange forum. In case you allow this through, others should know that the scientific method allows better answers to your puzzles here. It takes some work to get at intelligence; climatology is pretty easy to get good takes on these days (given its importance to all of us)
best wishes to you,
I hope you get whatever it is you seek, but I hope you don't cause more trouble than you are worth
You keep bringing up the tails (or outliers) as if they are statistically relevant. The top 2%, let alone the top .01% (per the standard deviation) are already exceptional. You cannot expect their distribution across dimensions to follow a distinct pattern.
DeleteFurthermore, you assert that university professors should ideally fall into the “gifted” IQ range, yet present no proof of such that they actually do. To imply it is relevant is disingenuous at best. Unless your study of university instructors making >$100k also has their IQ listed as a data point there is no correlation.
IQ on its own, however, is largely irrelevant. You can be average and put in the hard work to end up with a PHD or MD. You can have a genius level IQ and lack the social skills to navigate the corporate ladder. It’s possible to “read the law” in the state of California to become a lawyer without going to law school. IQ can be a contributing factor to success, but is far from determinant.
Anecdotally, there is an example of this below from another commenter.
Also:
“Mostly what happens is ASH says something, I counter what he says effectively, and then rather then continuing to engage along that line, he shifts to a totally different line. It's like playing whack-a-mole!”
Strong disagree. You formulate an opinion based on the outcome of a study, rather than presenting the outcome as your base argument. ASH (or other commenters in other blog posts) respond with the actual findings of studies (rather than their opinionated interpretation), you ignore it and instead move the goalposts. Rather than defer to the multiple multidimensional studies presented, you fall back on the one or two you interpreted.
It seems, rather than being willing to change your mind, you are more interested in pushing a narrative.
There have been studies in the average IQ of Ph.D. candidates which put it at or above 120, which is still rarefied territory.
DeleteYou thinking there is such a thing as "the actual findings" as opposed to the reader's interpretation of the findings is cute. Go have a lollipop.
And to the earlier anonymous, I can tell by your thought process you are no scientist, And the tell is always "I'm much too busy to possibly take the time to destroy your arguments!" 😂😂😂
DeleteI used the Statology Normal Distribution Dataset Generator to compare groups with the same designated mean IQ (100) but different standard deviations; 14.1 for girls, 14.9 for boys. The SDs were taken from an analysis of 80,000 Scottish 11 yr olds in 1932. My groups were 10,000 in size and the simulations were run 3 times. I looked at what percentage of each group had IQs of 130 or more, and what the mean IQs of those high scorers were.
DeleteResults were:
Girls: 1.70%, 1.64%, 1.86% in high scoring group
Boys: 2.23%, 2.35%, 2.15% in high scoring group
So about 29% more boys at this level.
Mean IQs of high scoring groups were:
Girls: 134.9, 135.2, 134.6
Boys:135.0, 135.5, 135.5
No real difference there. At further extremes the differences would widen.
If the data from 1932 are any guide, this exercise gives a rough idea of the magnitudes of sex IQ differences at the 130 or more range.
There's also a 4-6 point mean difference. I imagine (hope?) 130 is on the low end of STEM field professors. And 30% more males to choose from than females sounds fairly significant. And that's just from one of the many missing factors that can account for the "wage gap".
DeleteA 4-6 point mean difference is irrelevant if your point of comparison is already skewed by assuming your candidate pool is of exceptionally high IQ.
DeleteNo. Look at the picture. If you shift the middle it amplifies the discrepancy at the tail. There will be a larger talent pool of high IQ men, which might suggest a natural wage gap.
DeleteIn the study from which I took my standard deviations mean IQs were 100.64 for girls and 100.48 for boys. This difference of 0.16 (95% CI = 0.037 to 0.367) was nonsignificant, despite the massive numbers tested. The paper can be seen for free here: https://saravanan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/10.1.1.180.2251.pdf
DeleteFor my exercise I fixed all my means at 100 in order to focus entirely on the effects of differing variances. I was surprised there wasn't a noticeable difference between the IQs of the high scoring subsets, but I have to go with the numbers.
As I noted before, sex differences would become more pronounced at the more extreme ends of IQ distributions. This could go some way to explaining why just 37 of 1600 international chess grandmasters are women, and why >90% of Nobel laureates are men.
Discussion of and research into gender IQ variances is being actively suppressed.
Harvard President and economist Larry Summers was sacked in 2006 for being “sexist” when he said:
"It does appear that on many, many different human attributes- height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability – there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means – which can be debated – there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population."
That paper measures IQ at age 11. Because girls tend to develop faster than boys, the IQ is roughly the same at that age. As they age into young adults, the IQ gap in the mean develops.
DeleteOnce you've pre-selected for over 130, you would expect to see comparable averages, as the tails really thin out. The real effect I was noting was if you're looking for somebody with a high IQ, you will see progressively more men than women as you go to the extremes.
And I agree with your well-worded statement "this would go some way to...". As you imply, there are multiple factors at play, and IQ differences clearly play some part, and equally clearly not the whole part. I object to people who insist that only gender prejudice is the main contributor without offering any proof beyond lazy attempts to show some other single factor (eg "pipeline effect") is not significant, and then immediately retreat to, "so it must be the patriarchy!"
Yes, the Summers sacking was peak insanity from the progressive left.
"That paper measures IQ at age 11. Because girls tend to develop faster than boys, the IQ is roughly the same at that age. As they age into young adults, the IQ gap in the mean develops."
DeleteCan you cite evidence on differences in development that would be specifically relevant for IQ tests (rather than merely physical and sexual development)? An alternative hypothesis is that IQ tests do not merely measure innate ability but are contaminated by social/cultural norms, where boys and girls are, on average, encouraged to focus on different skills and rewarded for different behaviors, leading to IQ differences that are imperceptible in early childhood, grow in later childhood, and stabilize into statistically significant differences in adulthood. The fact that measured IQ test performance differences increase with age is a potential red flag against the usefulness of IQ tests for measuring gender differences in "innate" intelligence.
(Incidentally, funny to see you complain about others not considering alternative factors in the same post as... yourself not considering alternative factors while stating your own preferred interpretation!)
I've already stated IQ test scores are a result of many factors, one of which is assumed to be "g", the innate part. We can't measure g directly.
DeleteEnd of the day, IQ correlates with academic and life success, however acquired.
You misunderstand the nature of my argument. I am not explaining the wage gap, I am saying that those who explain it by saying it is primarily due to gender prejudice have not provided evidence. I offer multiple other hypotheses that have not been eliminated, one of which is innate IQ difference that has absolutely not been eliminated.
Your "gotcha" is empty.
I think you misunderstood my comment. (Or at least I hope it was a misunderstanding and not a deliberate circumvention.)
DeleteThe empirical fact for which you have failed to consider alternative explanations is the increase in the IQ gap with age. You simply posit that this is due to girls "developing" faster than boys, use this to dismiss criss's reference, and do not consider the natural alternative that the widening gap is due to non-"g" factors. Of course, the reason you do this is because the alternative would suggest that the most "correct" IQ gap measures for capturing "g" are those taken at younger ages, making criss's reference more relevant than yours.
My opinion is that you need to revise the range of the estimated mean difference in your blog post from 4-6 to 0-6, given that a reader pointed you to a study that documents a mean difference of 0.16. You have not convincingly discredited this study, and throwing it out the way you did simply because it does not agree with your personal priors is intellectually dishonest.
Girls do develop faster, so hence differences in children are to be expected. And it's basic IQ science that you do better on the same type of test with advancing development up to adult age. The more likely seems to be my explanation.
DeleteI don't at all dispute that the mean for kids is more equal. Don't understand how that minor point speaks to the journalist making their case that wage gap is primarily due to gender prejudice.
There may be other explanations for the measured IQ gap (eg interest in things over people?), but it hardly proves wage gap is due to gender discrimination.
Again, I don't see a single reference, just a condescending "it's basic science". That looks a whole lot like "masks because science" and "lockdown because science".
DeleteI am not arguing against the two journalists in the Globe & Mail article being un-intellectual. That much appears to be uncontested among most of your more educated readers. But I find it even more off-putting when someone starts out critiquing others for making blanket statements and dismissing alternatives and then goes on to do exactly that, throwing out inconvenient empirical studies "because basic science". This is why some of the previous commentors ultimately feel that it's pointless debating with you, just like it's probably pointless debating with the woke journalists.
Not worth my time to dig up references far basic things like that. If you think I am wrong, please go ahead and do the work and reference it.
DeleteYou are confusing not being open to alternative arguments with being open, understanding them, and correctly saying "but what does that have to do with my original point?" If you think you have a great point that proves that gender prejudice is a significant factor in the wage gap, please produce the evidence.
Do the work? What's the point? I chimed in as a third party observer on this sub-threat (one of the target audience, as you point out elsewhere). And from my vantage point, the only person who DID do the work here is criss. He/she provided you with a reference, and you dismissed it with hand waving worthy of modern wokesters. That's all I tried to get across to you with my own comments. criss him/herself appears to be long gone, as indeed there does not seem to be any point to "doing the work" of bringing alternative references to your attention.
DeleteBy the way, note the contrast between your frivolous "it's basic science, not worth my time" dismissal of criss's reference and the EXCELLENT, detailed, and thought through dismissal of one of your references by Anonymous from 14 June 2021 10:24 in a sub-threat below. I am sure that other (quieter) third party observers are able to see whose argumentation is more convincing. :-)
You're a bit of a "peacock". You want people to see how "smart" you are by pursuing an odd sub-thread that has very little to do with my point, to the extent where I don't even understand what point it is you're trying to make. You may go away now, peacock.
DeleteWhile I generally dislike unions, they did set up the perfect laboratory for these kinds of questions - https://fee.org/articles/harvard-study-gender-pay-gap-explained-entirely-by-work-choices-of-men-and-women/
DeleteAnd I assume you're familiar with the various studies that show a 2-1 advantage for women in STEM hiring.
VERY interesting article. Very on-point:
Delete"They find that male train and bus drivers worked about 83 percent more overtime than their female colleagues and were twice as likely to accept an overtime shift—which pays time-and-a-half—on short notice and that around twice as many women as men never took overtime. The male workers took 48 percent fewer unpaid hours off under the Family Medical Leave Act each year. Female workers were more likely to take less desirable routes if it meant working fewer nights, weekends, and holidays. Parenthood turns out to be an important factor. Fathers were more likely than childless men to want the extra cash from overtime, and mothers were more likely to want time off than childless women."
If anybody call those sorts of free choice things "gender prejudice" or "patriarchy" or "sexism", then we have very, very different definitions of the term, we likely agree, and the argument has just devolved into a word game.
Unionized bus drivers were the perfect "Petri dish" for this experiment, since it's almost impossible to be sexist in that environment, given the strict union rules.
How does this apply to academics? Well, I think it likely the same forces apply (likely to a lesser extent, and of course not for every individual - there will be plenty of counter-examples, but on balance).
With the bus drivers, the analysis was complete and self-contained and quite hard to refute, and demonstrated that when you actually examine the causes, there are things other than sexism that can easily account for the gap.
While I DO NOT know what explains the gap for academics, I am not prepared to accept, without evidence, that it is gender discrimination.
And yes, well aware that women and minorities are in extremely high demand in STEM jobs as they are underrepresented and a sort of soft "affirmative action" is taking place that is particularly discriminatory to white males.
A quick addendum. What you propose is something I encounter often - paralysis by analysis - don't do anything without a perfect analysis. In business speak it's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are always flaws in any analysis. There are always limitations. Few things in social science are definitive. But decisions must be made with the best available evidence, even if imperfect. To do otherwise would be to do nothing. I get that conservatives often prefer that for social issues but it is actually worse policy to wait indefinitely for uncontrovertable results that will never come because complete certainty is impossible in many contexts.
ReplyDeleteRash action in the form of pushing an equality of outcome agenda which, as discussed, totally destroys any sense of equality of opportunity, to cure a "problem" that may not exist, is what needs to be avoided.
DeleteIt's like the Surgeon removing your appendix when you're perfectly healthy, based on shitty misinterpreted data.
"DO SOMETHING!" is a chicken-little cry to the sky is falling.
It's not "paralysis by analysis", it's "avoiding harm before we know there is a problem or even what the right solution is if there is one".
As much as I enjoy your "normal" topic and would enjoy being under your control for a day or two I do enjoy your off topic discussions.
ReplyDeleteIn fact you appear quite capable of being in charge in those discussions as well
So... I have to be careful here. While I'm fine with using my real first name, obviously "Brown" is not my real surname. I have a reputation to my name and it would be disastrous if my sex life became public knowledge somehow. However, if I'm careful I can say just enough in order to keep my anonymity, but also to add my two cents to this topic. Here goes.
ReplyDeleteI work in academia, at an Australian University, with a PhD related to something in the STEM field. My name is attached to around a half dozen research papers as well as my own published thesis, so one could quite happily say I sit in a privileged position. As such, I believe I can talk from a position of experience.
What is true is that there is a dire lack of women in STEM, but I do not believe there are any barriers to women being in STEM. Were there additional challenges? Absolutely, yes. I was questioned more than my male peers, I was challenged harder on my thesis than my male peers, and I always found myself on the outside of social groupings within STEM.
These are not barriers though, and I would personally say that I believe I'm better in my field than my male peers for the additional challenges I went through. If everyone had to go through the metaphoric baptism of fire I went through in order to get their PhD, you would get much better academics out there.
But, aforementioned challenges to women in STEM come quite late in ones continued education in the field. So, the question is, why do women not even attempt a Bachelor of Engineering/Science/etc in the first place? To that end, I wholeheartedly agree with you Julie, it's just not an appealing field for women in our culture. Women much prefer to get into Education, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Sociology, Nursing etc. I don't see articles on news websites saying men are locked out of those fields despite them having far lesser numbers there.
Tis what it is. I'd like to see more women in STEM, but until we find a way to make the field more appealing to women, which would take a major cultural shakeup, that's simply not going to happen. That doesn't mean we're locked out of it though.
-Kasey
Great attitude, Kasey. Everybody has barriers to overcome. Some people focus on their barriers, allow them to stop them, and become resentful. Others, like you, leap right over them and keep going. It's always been my approach as well.
DeleteIt all comes down to what motivates you. I'm by no means gifted or anything, I passed Highschool with a grade of 26/45, not stellar stuff. What motivated me, funnily enough, was anger. Anger at those gifted people, who could go to one lecture a semester and still pass with High Distinctions. Their mere existence infuriated me and fueled me to take the first train in the morning into the city (and my Uni) at 5am, and the second to last train out at 11pm and to spend all day every day, even weekends, studying my ass off to do better than them. Eventually it became a habit, the anger wore off but the work ethic continued and it just snowballed.
Delete-Kasey
You clearly are intellectually gifted, I can tell by your comments. You must just have been a late bloomer! But there's only so far any gift can take you. To maximize, you must also put in the work (and ideally enjoy the bulk of it).
DeleteWhen I finally got serious about undergrad I did the same type of thing. I treated school like a job and would spend all my time on campus and any hours not in class in the library actually reading the assigned work and starting the assignments and essays when they were handed out instead of day before due. I made it a 9-5 job and had my evenings free, and wound up putting in a lot more time and being much better prepared than my classmates.
I don't think the IQ differences are real. The skew between sexes isn't that big and can be accounted for by cultural bias in the questions. An IQ test assumes a certain level of common knowledge. Some of it is related to academic learning. Some, so-called common sense or experiential knowledge. Males and females differ in this area. I think the differences aren't large enough to support any assumptions about academic or work success.
ReplyDeleteMy first child is a girl. From birth we provided her with "boy" and "girl" toys. She had trucks, blocks, and dolls. She ignored the blocks and trucks. Maybe there is an innate sexual difference in likes and dislikes. I was very surprised at my daughter's choices.
When it comes to the workplace, at least here in the United States, there is a real pay gap between men and women. A woman doing the same job as a man will earn about 85% of what he is paid.
I'm sure there are a lot of rationalization about why this gap exists. It does, even in one company. My (former?) employer strives to provide equal treatment for all. They are successful within a particular job title, but tend to pay less for jobs primarily done by women. Go figure!
All that aside, I firmly believe that we have innate roles we are programmed to play. Here's where I will get into trouble: Men and women have a genetic bias toward mating behavior. I'm convinced that the sort of marriage I have fits closely to the primal programming my wife and I have.
My role is to lead and protect. Her role isn't just to follow. She follows when she agrees with our direction. When she doesn't, she veto's my choice. In our household, her veto power is enforced with spanking.
We don't have a femdom FLR. I am the leader as long as my leadership is agreeable to Mrs. Lion. I believe that the stunningly high divorce rate is caused by loss of this veto power. (ducking behind a rock)
The researchers do an awful lot to try to get cultural bias out of it, and then multi-dimensional tests to try to back out the g-factor. They are not naive about that, and they persistently measure an innate sexual difference. Yes it's a small difference in both mean and variance, but statistically significant, and very testable at the tails where it makes a much larger difference. See my first reference.
Delete"Pay gap" is understood differently by different people. It's illegal to discriminate based on gender, so you won't find many instances of the exact same job, being performed to the exact same level, paid differently. So I dispute women are paid 85% for "the same job", maybe 85% for different jobs (as your next bit seems to indicate?). I think personal choice and what is valued by supply and demand lined up with male/female interests is way more important than any gender-based discrimination (unless you define that term as the outcome, which is just playing with words).
And I sort of agree on innate sexual differences. Although I would say we all have male and female within us, and biological females tend to have a bit more of the female on average, but there are many cases where it may be reversed.
I just had an amusing realization: the way Julie thinks of female/male (as some kind of innate characteristics of submissiveness/dominance, mixed in each person) is akin to how the real crazies on the left think of whiteness (some kind of innate characteristic of evil, potentially present in each person). Julie, you might get along splendidly with the author of this piece of brilliance: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00030651211008507?journalCode=apaa.
DeleteJulie: "we all have male and female within us, and biological females tend to have a bit more" + this gem from October 30: "we are all built with a mix of Yin and Yang, Male and Female, and we are expressing our Female parts when we get turned on by our spankings"
Crazy woke guy: "Whiteness is a condition [...] to which “white” people have a particular susceptibility"
The rest of what the woke guy says is much crazier than anything Julie said, but there is enough of a parallel to put me off. As a white (dominant) female, I dislike having either my race defined as evil/psychotic or my gender defined as the submissive side of yin and yang.
Yin and Yang is an ancient distinction associated with sex. There are many biological women who are Yang dominant, as there are many men Yin dominant. Reading too much into it is just a game of semantics.
DeleteAnyone surprised that hiring preferences for women produced lower quality employees isn't qualified to be taken seriously. Twenty years ago, women were apparently measured by the same standards that men were when applying for academic positions. As a result, those that were hired were as productive as males who achieved employment. Now, women are hired for not being white men. That they're terrible at their jobs is probably a feature for the people institutionalizing discrimination. At least their not airline pilots crashing planes, but American Airlines has a plan that should have people selling their airport-adjacent properties. The rest of us should just try to get right with God.
ReplyDeleteI think "terrible at their jobs" is a bit hyperbolic, but I agree that any organization that forces hiring to quotas is a discriminatory practice that leads to lower average skill.
Delete
ReplyDeleteJulie, Excellent work as always.
Affirmative action has existed since the 70's and to some extent has cheapened the wins of those gender/race successes because there is always the doubt that it was really earned or how it was earned. And just because you let someone into a program does not mean they will be as successful as you want them to be.
As an actual example, my graduate school program made an intentional effort to get a 50/50 male/female student population. Which resulted in them relaxing their objective criteria such as test scores, GPA minimums etc. to let more women applicants into a normally very competitive program.
When this "affirmative action" group took its national boards later that year the School was very surprised the overall test results of these students was significantly lower than the historical average of the School's previous classes. Go figure?
A common sense result. Regrettably, common sense seems to be in short supply.
DeleteWC here
ReplyDeleteWTF are you guys arguing about???
My advice is: Stick to sex. It’s what you do best:)
Your fan WC
Myeh. I think I'm pretty good at other things too, and I get a lot of great engagement on these other topics, so I'm encouraged to keep it up. You are free to skip these sorts of things, WC.
DeleteDid and David stop spanking each other? You have been writing political posts, social posts, stories you got by email but no more of your own spanking stories.
ReplyDeleteNo, we still play, though maybe not as much as before. And we are still in "lockdown" in Ontario (idiots!) so can't get out and about to play. I think as a result our spankings are getting a bit repetitive. We still enjoy, but it would just be a repeat of stuff I've written about several times already...
DeleteHave you done any slipper spanking?
DeleteDid you get the vaccine?
DeleteNot lately.
DeleteYes, first dose so far. I don't think at my age and in my generally good health it will help me at all, but the risks of taking it are small (though Ontario did at first say the AZ vaccine was perfectly safe, and then completely banned its use a few weeks later saying it was unsafe!). On the other hand there are already situations around here where you need to provide proof of vax, so I'm going along from a pragmatic point of view.
>We will return to our regularly scheduled spanking content next post!
ReplyDeleteI was going to say I bet david is loving not having to dress in any sissy attire, diapers or being spanked for a while. Hopefully the new trainer search is progressing
Emily
No new trainer :-(
DeleteStill "locked down" here.
Though his weight is really, really good (looking hot!)
I took a look at the authors and thought they are too damn young to have much to say. Yeah, that is biased.
ReplyDeleteMeasured IQ aside, I find most women out think men with little effort.
As to quirts, they are lethal, but I don't think at $40 they will last very long. And quality stock whips can not be had at less than $200.
Bogey
Do you and david keep trackmof all spanking bith botten during lockdown
ReplyDeleteNot by a long shot! Many spanks.
DeleteYou can tell you're dealing with someone on the extreme right when they refer to the Globe and Mail as a "lefty" newspaper. This is a newspaper that endorsed Stephen Harper's Conservatives in four consecutive national elections. Bleeding heart liberals for sure!!
ReplyDeleteYou're living in the past. Globe has gone full lefty, as has the CPC. Their policies seem indistinguishable from the libs. In Canada the PPC is the new center conservative and the National Post is closest to Center conservative.
DeleteI know you extreme right-wingers think everyone has moved to the left, but the only people in motion are you folks on the right. You've moved into this Ayn Rand headspace that is so delusional, it's hard for the rest of us to understand.
DeleteNow you're just fooling yourself. Well-documented that the left has moved wayyyy left. Delusional.
DeleteHere's a summary interpretation of data from Pew research (with the raw research linked): https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-center-study-shows-that-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/
DeleteJulie, the extreme-left does not exist as a political force in the United States. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would feel at home in any centre-left political party in any other country in the industrialized world.
DeleteUniversal health care is not an extreme position. Faith in diplomacy rather than military might is not an extreme position. The belief that corporations and the rich are not currently paying their fair share is not an extreme position.
They've moved on from "class" in the days of Marx to "intersectional identity" nowadays. The common theme is there must always be an oppressor and an oppressed. BLM characterizes itself as a Marxist organization. Do you support BLM? Then you support Marxism.
DeleteJulie, Black Lives Matter is a protest movement that hopes to stop the needless killing of unarmed black people by the police. It is very loosely organized, and there is no central political philosophy. You can try to attach whatever adjectives you want to this movement, but doing so says more about you that it does them.
DeleteIt was literally on their What we Believe page before they hid it. Fortunately, wayback archive has it.
DeleteIndeed re the anons. It gets confusing sorting them out, they could at least sign a nickname or something.
DeleteI like the "but Julie, BLM is just a protest movement that wants to stop the needless killing of blacks by police". Is there anybody on the other side of that argument? "Hell's yeah, I for one am for the needless killing of blacks by police. Highly in favour!" Idiots.
First of all, should be phrased as "against the needless killing of people by police". Else it's racist as stated, and in fact more whites are killed by cops than blacks as indexed by police encounters or violent crime stats.
Secondly, literally nobody opposes that and you don't need a "movement". You need to decently fund and train cops, and not in intersectional politics, but in BJJ!
My wife is from another country, many of her relatives visit my country and as my house is relatively big in the suburbs with a backyard, some of them stay with us for 1-3 weeks visits.
ReplyDeleteI am into spanking and feet, my wife knows about the spanking but not the feet issue, she spanks me a part of sex with a ruler or wooden spoon but refused to spank with a slipper because she has concerns on its cleanness being in contact with the ground, I was about to solve this issue by buying her new slippers just for spanking not wearing, but her cousin came to visit, she had gorgeous feet and a large collection of footwear (she brought 3 home slippers, 4 outdoor slippers, 5 flat sandals, 3 trainers, 4 flat shoes, 3 high heels during her 10 days stay). They went together a lot to visit the tourists areas and shops. I was at home, so I locked the house door, and went right into the guests room and dipped into her shoes, sandals and slippers sniffing, kissing and licking them.
Then I tried spanking my self with them, to my surprise they were all stingy except the high heels.
I kept on like that, but the 5th day, I felt my ass really sore, I checked it in the mirror to see that it was bruised from my self spanking, it seems I got too excited sniffing her trainer that she wore all day while spanking myself with her wooden scholls that my ass got bruised. That night was the last day of the week i.e. Sex night, of course I got worried that my wife sees my bruised ass.
I pretended to be exhausted and just did some kissing, my wife was horny, she won't let it go, she offered to spank me, but I told her the guest will her the sound of the spanking, what shall we tell her?
She said lie on your back as she straddled me and we did sex till she came and I waited till she slept to have my shower.
I enjoyed the guest footwear till she left and till now I enjoy all guests footwear, most of them gave nice feet.
I was once lucky having three ladies visiting at the same time, it was a feet festival when we all watched TV, I also enjoyed their footwear when they all went out.
You are easy to please :-)
DeleteYeah, just rub your feet in my face and I will be in a high mood.
DeleteOr remove your slipper and spank me.
Better, foot fuck my ass with your foot.
Julie isn't into feet or slipper spanking
DeleteNot not into it either
DeleteI dont believe in IQ tests at all. I have taken many IQ tests and I always score anywhere between 132 and 145 that puts me in the above average to genius category. But take me to a jungle in Africa or somewhere else am pretty sure I'll be dead by day 2, while people who have lived in those jungles continue to thrive - despite the fact that they most likely will flunk these IQ tests. These are just standardized tests focusing on Math and Verbals. I have seen smart and intelligent people equally in both genders.
ReplyDeleteAs for gender bias - well am certain gender alone is not a limiting factor for success. But it is also true that people are less accepting of female authority, success, expertise etc., These biases will most definitely affect your success because a lot of promotions, hikes, opportunities at work is based not just on your skill level, but based on who you know, who likes you, how you have built your network and how comfortable someone is working with you. So I totally believe that in a male dominated workplace, women may face barriers because of their gender. My opinion is also based on my own experience that the reverse is true as well - I currently work for a client where all of the senior management folks from the CEO down to directors are women - and myself and the other men on my team find it difficult to work with them because they favor women - of course they dont say that out loud, but its difficult getting your ideas accepted - so we usually let the women in our team do the presentations etc., haha.
IQ tests predict success at jobs depending on being selected and doing well in schools. Thus IQ gap can explain pay gap is all I'm saying, not that one would do better in the jungle.
DeleteAnd a lot of what is described as gender bias is just bias for doing things a certain way, and exists regardless of gender as well.
My jungle example was a bit of a hyperbole. But IQ gap is probably the least reliable indicator of pay differences in my opinion.
DeleteNot so. There seems to be a quite high correlation. It's about r=0.98 if you group into big buckets, and r=0.5 (still pretty decent) if you look at individuals. Good synthesis here:
Deletehttps://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the-incredible-correlation-between-iq-income/
I.e. if you think an IQ 100 person is as likely to get rich as an IQ 120+, you're dreaming.
Of course, I'm talking about general trends which is appropriate if you are looking at a general issue such as wage gap. With particular individuals, there's a lot more that comes into play. There is no doubt that the tendency/trend is real.
DeleteHi Julie
DeleteI read through the article from PumpkinPerson. I teach workshops on how to review research articles and I must say it's really bad. It has multiple flaws, from its basic rationale to it's 'methods.'
Let's start wtih the author's own acknowledgement:
"In several cases, the data is somewhat anecdotal, and speculative statistical inferences are sometimes made."
Even that is being generous. The data are pretty much made up, he/she makes inferences that are completely unsupportable, and then the 'analysis' itself is wrong. I won't bore you with all of the flaws but here are some highlights.
"It’s common knowledge in psychometric circles that reading comprehension tests are statistically equivalent to IQ tests..."
Umm, no, its not. It is in fact common knowledge that IQ varies significantly based on the test used, particularly the domain tested. Just read Nyborg's own summary of that in the artcile at the top of your page.
"By definition, the median American is at the 50th percentile cognitively"
True, but the author then simply assigns the median income the median IQ. Sure, that helps the theory but is not valid from a data perspective. Consider, for just one example, that this median income group contains about 60% of the US population since its includes everybody above welfare recipients who is not a "self-made millioniare." That group he gives an IQof 97.5.
Everything above the median just gets sillier as the author tries to infer IQs based on things like Bill Gates' SAT scores.
Finally, the analysis itself is a correlation of the estimated means of this group. That's just not how to calculate a correlation among two variables. You actually need individual scores for each variable for each person in the analysis. Here you have scores for large groups. Running a correlation on these ignores the underlying distributions of groups and treats each unit as equal in weight. It is simply poor research. Here is a slightly more detailed answer:
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/116713/correlation-on-mean-values
"Note, this near-perfect correlation between median financial success and mean IQ should not be confused with the correlation between individual IQ and individual financial success. The former is known as as an “ecological” correlation commonly used in epidemiological research, and tends to be higher because individual level variation cancels outs. However because the Z scores are based on the normalized distributions of individuals, the slope of the regression line (+0.49) will equal the individual level correlation......But note that in both the the ecological scatter plot, and the individual scatter plot, the slope should be the same because the line of best fit can be thought of as a line connecting the average Y of a given X, so graphing average Ys instead of individual Ys, does not change the line of best fit, it simply eliminates almost all the scatter around it."
I see where the author tried to avoid an ecological inference proplem. It does not work that way. The slope will not necessarily match at both levels. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the simplest is that his/her 7 data point model reflects groups of vastly different sizes and ignores the standard deviations *within* those groups. This skews the whole thing.
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/157077/is-it-possible-to-compute-a-correlation-between-two-variables-from-just-means-s
Finally, the article itself notes that when this question has been studied more systematically the results are correlations around .25-.35. Perhaps the author should leave it to trained researchers who know their own field.
There's more but hopefully this is sufficient. The underlying data is highly problematic, being based on questionable assumptions and inferences, the methodology is unsound, and the findings are way out of line with anything prior research has shown. All of that makes it more than dubious.
I will defer to you on that one, you read it more closely than I.
DeleteBut in fact IQ does correlate well with income. Studies that find a lower correlation are the ones that say, "well you have adjust for years in school, divorce, time in prison, ..., and once all that has been taken into account you only get a 0.3 correlation out the end". Yes BUT.
A lot of those things, in my opinion are caused by low IQ in the first place, so I take it part and parcel.
Here's another article that started with your point of view and does a lot of what I reference above, and then at the bottom he gets schooled by someone who knows the field better http://www.nicholaswolfinger.com/blog/2019/03/06/no-iq-isnt-the-magic-variable-that-explains-everything/
My favorite bit was in the addendum:
"Lee pointed out with a correlation coefficient of .46 (the square root of the r squared I initially reported, .21), the effect of intelligence on earnings rivals the largest observed effects in all of social psychology (which is Lee’s field). This is an entirely reasonable observation. In retrospect, I oversold the underselling of IQ: my intention was not to aver that it predicts nothing, but to show that it doesn’t predict everything. Most reasonable people would have agreed all along, of course."
Here here.
I think you maybe right from an academic standpoint. As in many opportunities for success back in the day relied on academic success. Not the case today. I think that may also be a reason for why these trends lean a certain way. After all the data set skews towards a time where academic success was very much necessary to even secure a job. Not the case today though.
DeleteI'm saying intelligence correlates with financial success, especially the types of jobs that have traditionally been learning heavy, such as computer coding, lawyering, doctoring, accounting, engineering, and so on. Of course you can get a job, but that has little to do with it.
DeleteThis discussion will end quickly if you do it with anonymous over your knee and a hair brush in your hand. He will be convinced in a couple of minutes.
ReplyDeleteIf only!
DeletePlease write a spanking post Julie
ReplyDeleteYes! Dying to... working too hard :-(
DeleteHi Ms Julie thanks for an interesting blog.
ReplyDeleteI had a look at this and to be honest I’m I’m not seeing the same results on biological sex differences in IQ tests as you. What I’m seeing in the literature and journals is that after lagging behind in IQ scores for decades by about 5 points - women may have now caught up to men and it’s about even now.
Apparently there’s a fellow called James Flynn in NZ who’s written about this. He looked at results on a standard IQ test called the Raven test, compiled results from 500 men and 500 women and the women came out 0.5% higher.
If he’s right about that - then I wonder why women have suddenly caught up? Interesting.
Flynn's result was looking at 14-18 year olds, not full on adults. But at any rate, many others have observed that as well. The reference I gave, which is quite modern, addresses why other research shows it to be the same (basically if you look only at raw IQ score and don't attempt to break out the principle "g" component.
DeleteI don't know which view is correct, but I observe many more chess grandmasters, mathematicians, theoretical physicists, are men rather than women, and think it can be accounted for by those tail differences, but am not certain.
I don't think we can rule out a "g" gap as a potential cause for the wage gap discussed.
Viva Frei is one of my favourites. Good head on his shoulders with the legal training. Yes, Canukistan is pretty bad right now, not the Covid, it's fine, the damned cowardly politicians.
DeleteMs Julie you should take Chen and Robyn over your knee. Silly little girls shouldn’t write such nonsense.
ReplyDeleteLift their skirts and peel their flimsy panties down. I bet you’ll find a pair of taut buttocks that will arch up provocatively for your attention.
Give them a series of hard, authoritarian spanks alternating between their wobbling cheeks. Right, left, right, left. That’ll bring out a nice red flush on their soft, liberal skin.
The little sluts will probably moan and try to grind their hips on your thighs. Place your fingers at the entrance to their slick, wet, shaved pussies and these woke sluts will push back and impale themselves for a long and juicy four finger fucking.
They should have red bottoms and sore pussies for a week as a reminder not to write woke nonsense.
I was struck by their cuteness but thought it would have been sexist to point that out. Oh wait, I'm a girl myself, I literally can't be sexist!
DeleteSome of these argumentative anons need a good spanking. Why are do-gooders so dull? It doesn’t help their cause. I admire your patience in painstakingly replying to them Ms Julie. I wouldn’t be so polite.
ReplyDeleteYes, some get quite wrapped up trying to prove how close-minded I am by pursuing some tiny little backwater argument. I don't get it either. Maybe peacock syndrome?
DeleteEducation has a role julie, at my time the was a lot of discipline and motivation at school (teachers' wooden ruler and headmistress cane) and at home (mom's slipper and grand mom's hose).
ReplyDeleteYes, teaches you to either be disciplined in your thoughts or shut up when your betters are talking ;-)
DeleteSpeaking of betters, how's Mr. Stevens?
DeleteHe needs to find a good excuse to get away for a few hours. Ha ha!
DeleteI debated whether it was worth creating an account to respond to this but here we are. Surprisingly for one of your non-spanking related pieces, I actually agree with almost everything you've written, particularly about the majority of the gender pay gap being down to different priorities rather than anything malignant.
ReplyDeleteAnother good argument using basic economics that supports this is that if women were systematically being paid less for the same work (30% or whatever the ridiculous number that gets bandied about is) then an astute company could simply hire these women and gain a massive competitive edge.
One thing I think you fail to take into account is the limitations of IQ as a metric. IQ is very good as a measure of disability i.e. someone with a very low IQ is likely to have low mental capacity but turns out to be a terrible metric for high ability due to the fact it's only measuring for a very narrow set of attributes.
By looking solely at IQ you are probably selling women at the edges of the bell curve short whilst over-valuing men at the edge of the distribution.
I'm flattered that you went to the trouble. Thank you (though if you submit as "anonymous" I legit don't know who you are).
DeleteIQ has been shown to correlate well with scholastic and material success across a broad range, though I don't know if it extends to differences amongst university profs.
My point was more that one would think very high IQ is a requirement for a university professor, and any group differences at the tails would create a disproportion in the size of the group candidate pools?