I don’t think anybody is claiming to be particularly courageous here.
The bit about courage is my attempt at figuring out some of the mental processes that lead people to behave that way. I could of course be wrong.
I’m not sure why equality is being treated as a terminal goal
I don’t think it really is. It’s just a convenient shorthand. I can’t speak for ArisC, but I would certainly not welcome (e.g.) equalizing incarceration rates of men and women by framing a lot of women for crimes they never committed and throwing them in jail, or equalizing how often men and women are victims of rape by raping lots of men.
So what’s an example? Preferably one that’s not justified by psychological differences.
Women are much more often victims of rape and other sexual assault than men.
There is good evidence that in many contexts women are viewed as less competent than men simply on account of being female. (E.g., you take a job application, make two versions of it differing only in the forename, and send it off, and consistently you find that the “male” version is regarded more favourably than the “female”.) Now, if in fact women are less competent than men on average in the fields where this sort of experiment has been done, some effect of this kind could be justified on rational grounds; but the size of the effect seems to be too large to be credibly explained by any plausible size of actual ability difference.
but the size of the effect seems to be too large to be credibly explained by any plausible size of actual ability difference.
From the employer’s point of view the problem is that women are usually less committed to their career. Specifically, they tend to get pregnant, have kids, and then decide that racing other rats for the position of the senior assistant to the junior manager isn’t really worth it. Men are much more reliable in that respect :-/
That could affect willingness to hire, but it shouldn’t affect estimates of competence. Some of those studies that found that female names made otherwise-identical candidates less likely to get hired also looked at hirers’ estimates of how competent they were likely to be, and found that female names meant lowered estimated competence.
Nope.
The bit about courage is my attempt at figuring out some of the mental processes that lead people to behave that way. I could of course be wrong.
I don’t think it really is. It’s just a convenient shorthand. I can’t speak for ArisC, but I would certainly not welcome (e.g.) equalizing incarceration rates of men and women by framing a lot of women for crimes they never committed and throwing them in jail, or equalizing how often men and women are victims of rape by raping lots of men.
Women are much more often victims of rape and other sexual assault than men.
There is good evidence that in many contexts women are viewed as less competent than men simply on account of being female. (E.g., you take a job application, make two versions of it differing only in the forename, and send it off, and consistently you find that the “male” version is regarded more favourably than the “female”.) Now, if in fact women are less competent than men on average in the fields where this sort of experiment has been done, some effect of this kind could be justified on rational grounds; but the size of the effect seems to be too large to be credibly explained by any plausible size of actual ability difference.
From the employer’s point of view the problem is that women are usually less committed to their career. Specifically, they tend to get pregnant, have kids, and then decide that racing other rats for the position of the senior assistant to the junior manager isn’t really worth it. Men are much more reliable in that respect :-/
That could affect willingness to hire, but it shouldn’t affect estimates of competence. Some of those studies that found that female names made otherwise-identical candidates less likely to get hired also looked at hirers’ estimates of how competent they were likely to be, and found that female names meant lowered estimated competence.