Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why presentation of gender matters

*sigh* No, there is not a general trend of discrimination against women in the workplace anymore, it has been made largely illegal. Yes you can find an anecdotal example of someone discriminating against your mother, and I can throw anecdotes right back abut the reverse.

Lets touch on this women in IT for a moment shall we, because not only are women not being barred from entering these fields, they are actually prefered for hire over men because there is such pressure from certain *ahem* groups to "get women into STEM"

I will however not be trying to spin an emotional argument based on some anecdote, lets instead look at some statistics.

From: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

"For decades, sexism in higher education has been blamed for blocking women from landing academic positions in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.
But a new study by Cornell psychologists suggests that era has ended, finding in experiments with professors from 371 colleges and universities across the United States that science and engineering faculty preferred women two-to-one over identically qualified male candidates for assistant professor positions."

The question is, now that I can direct you to solid evidence that the situation in STEM is actually the reverse of what you were trying to argue based on some anecdotes, are you equally upset over reading about the reverse?
If we were to start extrapolating what kind of anecdotes of one gender being passed up for promotions based on specifically gender over merit, does the situation in reverse make you equally upset or do you take a neutral or even positive attitude towards it? I ask you this question more for you to honestly ask it of yourself than to present me with an answer, because if your spontaneous reaction to reading about preferential treatment of women in STEM was anything but an equal amount of disapproval you showed previouisly, why should anyone take your hypocritical indignation seriously?

Another relevant point when opting to explain the gender disparity in STEM fields as caused by sexism is the implications of this explanation. If the reason we find fewer women in these fields in the west, then what is the explanation for women earing a majority of science degrees in the following countries:

Iran
Oman
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Romania
Algeria
Bulgaria
Malaysia
Kyrgyzstan
Italy
Uzbekistan
Georgia (the country, not the state)
Panama
Lebanon
Argentina
Jordan
Palestinian Authority
Mongolia
Azerbaijan

Are we going to conclude that this list of countries is less sexist than a list of western countries? Is the explanation that Sweden has one of the most gender segregated workforces in the world that Sweden is simply more sexist than this long list topped by middle eastern countries?

http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/mariacharles/documents/WhatGenderisScience.pdf

One might think that the sexism drum should start wearing out at some point considering how hard people are beating it over anything and everything.
But if Saudi Arabia is doing a much better job at curbing sexism in education, perhaps we should start taking cues from them as how to best eliminate the persistence of sexism here in the west? What do you say?

member

Registered: 09/16/16
Posts: 112
Ah, so the sexism only starts for professorships? I see. I guess we better make that call to Saudi Arabia and ask them to help us with this sexism problem. No.... actually lets look at some more possible causative factors before we continue mindlessly banging the sexism drum.

From:
Gender differences at critical transitions in the careers of science, engineering and mathematics faculty
https://www.nap.edu/read/12062/chapter/1

Page 153
"The surveys of academic departments and faculty have yielded interesting and sometimes surprising findings. For the most part, male and female faculty in science, engineering, and mathematics have enjoyed comparable opportunities within the university, and gender does not appear to have been a factor in a number of important career transitions and outcomes."

Page 154
"Women accounted for about 17 percent of applications for both tenure-track and tenured positions in the departments surveyed. There was wide variation by field and by department in the number and percentage of female applicants for faculty positions. In general, the higher the percentage of women in the Ph.D. pool, the higher the percentage of women applying for each position in that field, although the fields with lower percentages of women in the Ph.D. pool had a higher propensity for those women to apply. The percentage of applicant pools that included at least one woman was substantially higher than would be expected by chance. However, there were no female applicants (only men applied) for 32 (6 percent) of the available tenure-track positions and 16 (16.5 percent) of the tenured positions."

Tell me, why would we expect gender pairity in these positions if women simply do not apply for them?
People and governments are bending over backwards to try to accomodate womens entry into various STEM fields, but they just don't apply in equal numbers. Could it possibly be that a full time academic career is simply less appealing to many women? No it has to somehow be sexism doesn't it?

Well then if the one true explanation for women becoming tenured professors because this just has to be something happening by design, lets have a look at the lower rungs of society. Lets tear our gaze from the top levels of academic positions and look at all the dirty and unpleasant jobs. Who works on deep sea fishing boats, oil rigs, in mines, with garbage disposal, heavy construction, and so on?
Oh whats that? Is it once more a category of job mainly held by men? Lets have a look at another gender disparity in the workplace. The work place fatality gap.

Fatal occupational injuries by worker characteristics and event or exposure, all United States, 2013
http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0283.pdf

Apparantly there were a total of 4585 fatal work place injuries in the US 2013.
4265 of them were men and 319 were women. So 92.5% men and 7.5% women.
If the explanation for the number of women becoming professors in STEM fields is because this is what society wants and not the collective result of millions of peoples individual choises, does this means society want women to not be professors and wants men to die?

Shall we go have a look at the statistics for homelessness and suicide next and start drawing conclusions on how this is some sort of inentional agenda society has towards men?

How about you just put the identity politics stick down, stop mindlessly beating the sexism drum with it and stop trying to push god damn gender politics into every aspect of art and culture?

No no no, lets go back to that post and read it again:

"We have a saying "Any man is a king of his own house." What it probably means to you - Any man is free to do whatever he wants with his woman. What it really means - The man is responsible for everyone living under his roof, first of all the safety, physical mental and moral."

As I understood, I may be incorrect, that you were raised without a father figure?
Can we assume if this is true that your thought on this matter lack the (how should I say that) "a man responsible for his family and his woman" kinda vision? And overall mans vision on the issue of equality of man and woman.
If you were raised without a man to guide you to the meaning of being a "man" we will not understand each other at all. And everything I write will turn Arabic when you'll read it.
Being born a male doesn't necessarily makes one a mature man thus some understanding of what is right and what is wrong about this topic can be incorrect. I guess this, cause I wrote that very clear - about "being king of your household" but you apparently took it in a wrong way.
And I'm telling this not to offend anyone, especially you, God forbid, I'm just letting people see some other perspective on the issue. On the whole topic of being a man and a woman.
To give you some thoughts : try not to think about right now and what is right for the time we are living in, cause a lot of things that are accepted now is so wrong and was forced on us through decades. Try to think what is the natural way of things? What is the nature of man and a woman.
Someone said that man is meant to be a stupid warriors and die a lot and woman are suppose to be intelligent housekeepers.
Well one of the greatest warriors of our culture is a woman. There are a lot of great woman warriors throughout the history.
And its ok! There are no apparent stone written rules on the roles of woman in the society but there are some general differences. A woman can be anything and anyone she wants as any other human being. But lets go back to the q "what is the natural way of things". Warrior woman - is she happy being a warrior? What does she do when she comes to her tent after some battle. Is it not true that despite the circumstances that made her take arms and lead forces in her heart she wants to be a woman, she wants to care for her family in peace, shake all that responsibility from her shoulders and be loved and love? Tomorrow she can be a fierce warrior again (and even love the thrill of battle) because that's the role she took but what is her deep desires when things calm down.

As for man being a warrior for example is natural. Now keep a man at home and give him 3 babies to take care of them alone. That will be frustrating experience to a man. I mean on a deep level. Ask a man what does his child wants when he cries and he would not be able to explain, but woman senses those things, she knows exactly why the child is crying (he wants food, he wants to sleep, his stomach hearts, that kind of things). Have you ever felt frustrated when your woman will not stop asking you about what you feel or what you are thinking. They have this. They need to know whats going on in your head. They know when something is wrong, they kinda feel the air of the relationship. Man will never be able to do that.
Now that shows me (therefore its my opinion) that the whole this movements of man and woman being ABSOLUTLY the same is like some man are just looking for an excuse to not have any responsibility for a woman. An excuse to keep abusing and using a woman (sex sells).
Whereas I'm telling it again, woman should be protected, helped and cared for.