Regards why is IT male dominated? Article " Why are there so few women in tech? The truth behind the Google memo". In some countries it is not male dominated.
Why this forum is heavily IT? Factors probably include:
(1) higher propensity to spend time sitting in front of the internet
(2) correlation between working in IT and being articuate with numbers
(3) stock boom over past 10 years is driven by Tech companies and Crypto that geeks are passionate about. (Would so many of us be here if, say, Tesla and BTC didn’t exist and markets were booming due to oil companies and price of grain?)
Except that we have many more women than men graduating from every level of university and yet they rarely get to the C-suite, or the boards. What is going on there?
I know exactly what’s going on there. If you want to occupy the C-suite, or the top one-tenth of 1% in any organization, you have to be obsessively devoted to your career at the expense of everything else. And women look at that and they think, No. So you actually have to reverse the question. The question isn’t, Why aren’t more women in the C-suite? The question is, Why are there any men? Because it’s the men who are willing to be obsessive about their careers and work 80 hours a week like nonstop and hyper-efficiently. The hyper-productivity of a minority characterizes every domain where there’s creative production. And almost all of the hyper-productive people are men.
It’s just my opinion, but yes, I think that this is normal for Zurich and that while exceptions will exist they are precisely that: exceptions. We live in a pretty standard neighborhood, with standard daycare centers and public schools.
I suspect that discrimination within the education system against girls is increasingly impossible elsewhere, too. A teacher would risk their career if they’d systematically discriminated against girls. It’s different with discrimination against boys. People are less vigilant here and less eager to act.
Yeah that sounds great on paper, but do no forget that in most cases, this comes at the cost of one’s financial independance. After 5-10-15 years not working or working part-time (often for jobs where overqualified) then just try to find a job…
Not that the years as a stay-at-home parent are useless, but the competences developped through parenting are nowadays not valued on the job market.
So when you will be back on the job market, you will be competing with people who accumulated work experience during that time (or young people with the same years of experience as you, so cheaper), and potentially working parents who also developped these competences (patience, negotiation , multi-tasking, efficiency, focus etc)
As long as the marriage goes well, well that’s fine if one stops working. Do not want to sound pessimistic but life is not a quiet river and divorce, disease, job loss etc DO happen. So these 5-10-15 may look good, but I’ve seen friends (men & women) getting to shitty situations because they did not think about those aspects, especially in case of divorce.
And I definitely agree wit you and as many said on the forum, for men it is difficult to reduce working hours (and when they succeed, indeed they are heroes - sharing my personal experience here), the pressure is high and not everyone wants or has to become the next Elon Musk anyway.
Claiming that while ignoring that men are socialized from a young age to do that is disingenuous (e.g. boys are complimented on their skills, girls on their looks).
You also can’t ignore all the obstacles in front of women to reach the same level (see the experience shared up thread).
For a women reaching that stage means playing the game in extra hard mode (e.g. people questioning your competency, not because of what you’re doing but because of your gender).
That is most probably true. But depending on how the family is structured, where is coming from and the level of education, the boys and girls at schools may continously bring gender stereotype from back home. So the school maybe ok, but not all people raise their kids with gender equality in mind. I think education there and ethnic tradition may influence how the families treat gender equality.
the class of my daughter is 20 kids, from harmos 1 / harmos 2 (1H, 2H). She is the only swiss and as far as I could chat with the other parents, the only one with parents that went into the university. Every single kid, including my daughter, is bilingual.
I do recognize the usual jokes I was referring before (ie girls sucks at sports) as something that boys picks up either from their friends and them from their families. I think is not even related to ethnicity but to parents education and traditional values, ie lowly educated Swiss farmer are not much better (isn’t that true Appenzeller?). Is for sure bad upbringing, but is not something that is solved with “gender equality law” in the immediate. That’s why I think Jordan Peterson cannot simply imply that Sweden = Gender equality law, thus all discrimination is adressed. Has he ever been to the outskirt of Malmö, from where Ibrahimovic comes from? It’s for sure not the traditional image of sweden and neither there 90% of the parents have an university degree or liberal values.
It’s a long process. It will take generations until the effect of gender equality law would have a profound cultural impact.
Why is it desirable to have more female CEOs? Would changing society in ways that result in more female CEOs be a net win?
I think we don’t know the reasons why we have less female CEOs, we only have some plausible explanations. Also there is contradictory evidence:
So in my opinion we should first find out if and what changes in outcome would be desirable. Then we can discuss how it can be achieved. Maybe the measures needed would make it a net negative.
If I had a children (no matter the gender) I wouldn’t wish for them to “be obsessively devoted to their career at the expense of everything else”. Of course it would be their decision, but I wouldn’t encourage it.
Obviously not what I expected. I thought that, if you wanted, you could point to stuff like: "I think the variability hypothesis is bullshit and/or doesn't explain different outcomes in the distribution of extreme wealth."
Yes, I believe that aswell. I’m wondering if there even is anyone writing “BS statements” on here who doesn’t believe this.
You can believe that women face discrimination, that this discrimination leads to different occupational/income/wealth outcomes AND that discrimination doesn’t fully explain all of those outcomes. Knowing which non-discriminatory factors lead to undesirable outcomes is important, otherwise you might miss effective interventions.
If you still think that this is a BS-stance, then let’s discuss that. Otherwise we’re just discussing a strawman in which nobody actually believes.
To me this sounds plausible (but I don’t have a PhD or anything in these matters). I would however replace “discrimination” with “different treatment”. Or otherwise at least acknowledge that men also face discrimination (in different ways of course).
I don’t get how these discussions always only focus on women. Equality and discrimination affects any gender (and also race, religion, …). Jails are full of men, men have worse grades, there are less men at university, men have almost all workplace accidents, men die younger. Why is nobody talking about these things?
Sure we can talk about women and their problems. But we shouldn’t forget to also sometimes talk about the difficulties men face and see if there is something we should do about it. Talking about men’s problems, I can recommend the movie “The Mask You Live In”.
I do not think it is desirable to have more female CEO’s or top managers, it is desirable and in the interest of the society as a whole to let women access the position they want, without being discriminated by others and/or being prevented by their own bias.
just to share our experience as a couple, and how women need to litterally fight to get the job they are competent for:
father is a hero because working 80%
mother was told several times (straight in the eyes) to be a bad mum because working full-time + travelling for business
some acquaintances assume father is earning more by definition (no)
some others indeed do not understand why father does not want to advance his career in management positions and earn more money vs. dedicating time to his children
mother was recommended by most headhunters to put marital status and number of children on the CV (and sometimes to mention that childcare is in place). No or very few calls back. When the naive mother removed marital status and number of children from the CV, she suddenly got way more calls from companies/headhunters
during interviews, mother was asked if she has children. The question is illegal and FYI, lying is allowed (and she turned down every offer she got where she felt the environment was unfriendly to working mothers = a lot of them, dudes)
mother was most of the time one of the few women and definitely the only mother in the teams she worked
mother was HIDING she has kids to one of her employers to avoid bias/discrimination (how sad). For context she decided not to tell her new employer after her previous boss mobbed her out because of motherhood. Kids were small, wife was worried she will never get a job again. The new job she got was a 100% home office job with the boss being on another continent, so “easy” to hide. Now that the kids go to school and the employers assume she will not have another maternity leave, she’s seen considered as an asset
during interviews, mother was asked “how she will manage her work/life balance”. Are there any dads who were asked this question?
when meeting random people (during holidays or whatever), it happened that father is asked what type of job he has. The mother is immediately assumed to be a stay-at-home mum, is not even asked what she’s doing for a living (you should see her boil over )
Sandro, and to all: talking about the discrimination a certain group of people is facing does neither mean that there are no other issues on this planet, nor that we do not recognize them (see my points above as an example). It does also not mean that there are absolutely no advantages for women (eg part-time jobs*).
I really would like this message to be understood.
We are in a forum where we preach financial independance and somehow I have the feeling that some of us do not realize that the discrimination women face on the job market, or stereotypes, is a) real and b) make it harder for them to be financially independant and that sooner or later affects men as well
*gonna be sarcastic here but very often, reducing your pensum means less salary, less bonus but still working more than 80% because the work does not maggically disappear
I’m sorry but again Peterson (and maybe you?) do not recognize the bias here. Men can work 80 hours a week not only because they “are willing”, but because there is still too little social drawback and/or parental expectations from them.
Yes, maybe somebody would look at that and think “poor children, they never see their father I could not do that”, maybe somebody would even think that he is a bad father but how many would look at him straight in the eyes and tell him “you are a terrible father”? Very, very few.
A mother of three children working 80 hours? The social stigma would be unbearable.
Again we should as man recognize that we do have a position of privilege. Yes there is discrimination against male, yes is a problem, but in many thing we do are priviliged by the lack of social stigma associate with bad parenting behaviour.
Imagine an exemple at extrema. Imagine that working 80 hours and neglecting family (independently from gender and for both with equal weight) would have the social stigma of a child molester. Think how that would impact careers, promotion to CEO role etc.
I agree. I’d replace “women” with “people” however
Sounds bad to me. I think things are changing, but it takes time for society to change.
It’s our current reality. Normally the dad continues to work and the mother stays at home. So I understand the assumption. I’m not saying it should be this way.
It’s my perception that men’s problems don’t get enough attention. I’m not saying we should not look into and try to solve women’s problems.
Yes, I don’t understand, why fathers don’t reduce their hours if it is possible. I wouldn’t tell them, they were bad fathers, but I wouldn’t tell this a mother either. Who am I to judge them? If I had children I would not work more than 60%. Luckily I’m in the privileged position to have a good salary that would allow this. In the team I work (we develop software) there are three fathers, two of them work 100% and one works 90%. I can’t understand why they do this. I know exactly how much they earn, including bonuses (we have transparent salaries), they earn enough to work less. We also have two mothers, one works 80% and one works 50%.
Personally I don’t even have children and I still work 80% and want to reduce to 60% (probably only 70% will be allowed, if at all).
Really, I think social stigma might exist in villages or small towns, but I can’t image you would have that in Zurich? Anyway, I’m sure today it’s much different than it used to be. So we should see massive spike in the number of women in high positions as a result of that. Is there any data to back it? The example from Scandinavia tells a different story. It’s important that we don’t just trust our intuition. Because then it could go as follows:
Women are socially oppressed
We change social norms to make it easier for women to make career
No result
Answer: we need even more equality and fight social stereotypes more aggressively!
I do believe that women still face obstacles and that there are cases in which these can be decisive, which is completely wrong and should not be tolerated.
I do not believe that women face systematically more obstacles on a net basis than other groups, however. There are far too many support programs / networking groups / political and social pressure for that.
And there are many more reasons why people might face obstacles, height, weight, introversion, voice, accent, clothes, upbringing, wealth, skin color, sexual orientation, country of origin and probably many more. A tall, extroverted woman with a loud voice and from a wealthy family is likely to face less obstacles in life than a small, overweight, poor, shy man. In fact, he is likely to face more obstacles than a similar woman, since there is virtually no special support for men, but as written earlier many specialized support programs and networking groups for a woman to turn to.
It’s essential that we root out discrimination of women, but we are pretty advanced there now and there are other groups that basically get ignored.
How would this make our world better? Why isn’t it better if an employer just tries to find the best possible candidate? And if quotas regarding gender are desirable, what about quotas for small, overweight, poor, shy, religious, atheist, black, gay, you name it, … people?
Are there any explicit policy biases against women these days in Switzerland? Honest question if anyone knows of any.
For men I can think of:
Compulsory military service (or have to pay 3% military tax for 11 years which for me is >CHF50k while my girlfriend has no such obligation)
Can claim full pension at 64 as a woman but 65 as a man
Maternity leave of 14 weeks vs 10 days as a man (men and women pay same maternity contribution deduction from paychecks)
100% we should try and correct for cultural bias and call sexism out when we see it.
Just also not sure how these types of policies in Switzerland are acceptable if the priors are that men and women should have equal opportunity in the workforce and domestic duties.
You are proposing some dystopian nightmare. You would like to force private businesses to hire based on sex and not skills. Up next: Football clubs with at least 5 of each sex in starting 11. The same for military, mining, garbage collectors, sewage workers, security guards, nurses, models.
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, multi-tasking, efficiency, focus etc)
and neither there 90% of the parents have an university degree or liberal values.
mother removed marital status and number of children from the CV, she suddenly got way more calls from companies/headhunters
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