So why do women do worse in certain fields of work? It turns out you can in fact do a direct A/B comparison on workplace gender discrimination: ask a transgender person. Formerly respected scientist Barbara Barres, now inexplicably-more-respected scientist Ben Barres. Actual quote: “Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.”
Saying it’s a direct A/B comparison is seriously overstating it. Transitioning is itself a huge confounder, and if it were true that time before/after were exactly comparable, that would debunk one of the main justifications for allowing sex-changes in the first place!
Of course, the sample size is small here. And there’s no perfect agreement on cause-and-effect. Chris Edwards, a trans advertising executive, says that post-transition, he was given greater levels of responsibility—but he thinks it’s because the testosterone he took changed his behavior. He became less timid and more outspoken—and was seen, at work, as more of a leader. Indeed, some suggest that transmen might experience these workplace benefits partly because, post-transition, they are happier and more comfortable, and that this confidence leads to greater workplace success. But if that’s the case, one would expect that transwomen, armed with this same newfound confidence, would see benefits. The opposite seems to be true.
Note the willful incomprehension of the author about the possible effects of things like testosterone. ‘Opposite seems to be true’ my ass. But I suppose materialism and individual differences should never be allowed to get in the way of a good story about endemic sexism and racism...
(Sadly, this is only the second most infuriating statistical argument I’ve seen today. The first is a linear regression in the Washington Post about whippings vs productivity for slaves, in which they claim it shows whipping works. Aside from the usual correlation!=causality problem, their scatterplot clearly shows that there is not such a small positive correlation: their model does not fit the data because most slaves were never whipped so it’s not Gaussian but more like a zero-inflated model, and in the population that was whipped a non-zero number of times, more whippings correlate dramatically with decreased cotton production. At a guess, male slaves were much more likely to act out or run away or get into fights or refuse to produce, and would be whipped for it. It borders on malpractice to present this graph baldly without including sex as a covariate or better yet doing a mixture model—certainly any model diagnostics would flag this regression as bogus. The author’s bio says he’s a professor at Columbia who “studies the roots of poverty and violence in developing countries, especially Africa”; all I can think is that if that’s what passes for analysis for him, then no wonder Africa remains poor and violent.)
This is pretty disconcerting. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is specific to some areas of the US. I’ve worked with women in various companies at various technical positions, and I’d heard plenty of “glass ceiling” complaints, where women were basically never promoted to the executive level (except for one exceptionally capable becoming a CFO), possibly because the head office was in the South East and the board being an old boys club. But I do not recall any mention of casual or subconscious sexism described in the link.
It’s possible that women only complain to you about glass ceilings because the effects are visible and they don’t trust you to believe incidents as in that link. Next time you get a complaint about glass ceilings, ask about casual sexism.
Next time you get a complaint about glass ceilings, ask about casual sexism.
I did. They were pretty clear that they did not have any issues at the team- or project-lead levels, except maybe when a visiting executive was present at some meeting and behaved in a casually sexist way.
Saying it’s a direct A/B comparison is seriously overstating it. Transitioning is itself a huge confounder, and if it were true that time before/after were exactly comparable, that would debunk one of the main justifications for allowing sex-changes in the first place!
Also, confirmation bias on the subjects (if you assume that workplace sexism is a thing, then you are probably more likely to notice people doubting your competence and register it as “sexism” when you are a woman rather than when you are a man), confirmation bias/publication bias on the authors of these “studies” (would a book about how trans-people experience no changes in workplace interactions get published? Would it get a review on New Republic?), smal sample, likely sampling bias (how were the subjects selected?), no attempts to falsify the hypothesis, and in general all the ills of arguing from anecdotal evidence.
Note the willful incomprehension of the author about the possible effects of things like testosterone. ‘Opposite seems to be true’ my ass. But I suppose materialism and individual differences should never be allowed to get in the way of a good story about endemic sexism and racism...
I think you’re misreading the author here. In that paragraph she’s discussing two different hypotheses. The first is that increased testosterone makes post-transition trans men more confident, and the second is that the process of transitioning itself makes them more confident (because now they no longer suffer from anxiety and depression associated with gender dysphoria). The comparison with trans women is only intended to be a counterpoint to the second hypothesis, not the first, so there is no “willful incomprehension” here.
No, I’m not misreading her. The first hypothesis, shifts in testosterone+estrogen levels, subsumes the second and also addresses the criticism she offers of it. She’s not seriously thinking about it.
The first hypothesis doesn’t subsume the second. The second hypothesis is that the increased confidence comes from increased psychological well-being due to no longer inhabiting a body you don’t identify with. If that was the sole (or primary) reason for increased confidence among post-transition trans men, then we should expect the effect to be symmetric, and for post-transition trans women to exhibit increased confidence too. The fact that they don’t suggests that we should look for a different explanation, one that distinguishes between trans men and women. The testosterone hypothesis is one plausible possibility. Institutional sexism is another.
If there are differential perceived benefits in social prestige/power from transitioning based on direction, this is consistent with there being only one factor (sexism) conditional on direction but also consistent with there being unconditional benefits plus the pushmi-pullu effect of swapping testosterone & other androgens for estrogen etc in which the net effect for the mtf is indeterminate. I am willing to take their word on transitioning being good for them, which accounts for the first factor, I prefer experimentally demonstrated effects from powerful mind-altering hormones to unprovable spooks like institutional sexism, and so the hormone model seems to me to fit much better.
Transition is a confounder but this is still interesting information even if it’s something like “a transitioned person gets taken more seriously due to greater confidence in themselves” or whatever hypothesis instead of proving stuff about gender.
You’re seriously raising the notion of testosterone as magical competence juice as an explanation worth taking seriously? This would make teenage males the most competent and convincing people on the planet.
I took the claim to be something different: testosterone is magical confidence juice, and at reasonable levels of competence more confidence leads to greater career success.
I know of at least one male-to-female transgendered person who has made the exact opposite claim, viz. that women are treated better by society. (Not going to dig up a link.)
I would prefer not to see gender politics on LW, especially when the connection to rationality is tenuous.
how the hell is a discussion about people biases in regards to someone’s perceived gender when they are pretty much the same person with the same expertise not OBVIOUSLY connected to rationality? Tenuous my ass.
Re: “women are treated better” I don’t know if you’re straw manning the person you’re talking about but different genders are treated differently in different contexts. It’s pretty interesting to see what kind of effects people see when they transition in different areas of life, and I don’t think that really counts as “gender politics”.
As to #1, though I know someone who has gone male-to-female and decidedly does not make that claim, I would not find it terribly unlikely that someone who goes through a transition in either direction will be somewhat more likely to find their new status superior to their old status.
Posts about biases that are fairly common and often unconscious/unintentional are not just tenuously connected to rationality. And since we’re discussing preferences, I would prefer not to see any discussion of gender inequities immediately get labeled “politics”, given all the connotations that label carries.
So why do women do worse in certain fields of work? It turns out you can in fact do a direct A/B comparison on workplace gender discrimination: ask a transgender person. Formerly respected scientist Barbara Barres, now inexplicably-more-respected scientist Ben Barres. Actual quote: “Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.”
Saying it’s a direct A/B comparison is seriously overstating it. Transitioning is itself a huge confounder, and if it were true that time before/after were exactly comparable, that would debunk one of the main justifications for allowing sex-changes in the first place!
Note the willful incomprehension of the author about the possible effects of things like testosterone. ‘Opposite seems to be true’ my ass. But I suppose materialism and individual differences should never be allowed to get in the way of a good story about endemic sexism and racism...
(Sadly, this is only the second most infuriating statistical argument I’ve seen today. The first is a linear regression in the Washington Post about whippings vs productivity for slaves, in which they claim it shows whipping works. Aside from the usual correlation!=causality problem, their scatterplot clearly shows that there is not such a small positive correlation: their model does not fit the data because most slaves were never whipped so it’s not Gaussian but more like a zero-inflated model, and in the population that was whipped a non-zero number of times, more whippings correlate dramatically with decreased cotton production. At a guess, male slaves were much more likely to act out or run away or get into fights or refuse to produce, and would be whipped for it. It borders on malpractice to present this graph baldly without including sex as a covariate or better yet doing a mixture model—certainly any model diagnostics would flag this regression as bogus. The author’s bio says he’s a professor at Columbia who “studies the roots of poverty and violence in developing countries, especially Africa”; all I can think is that if that’s what passes for analysis for him, then no wonder Africa remains poor and violent.)
This one from someone going MTF was interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8279058 She found the sexism ridiculously more blatant than transphobia.
This is pretty disconcerting. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is specific to some areas of the US. I’ve worked with women in various companies at various technical positions, and I’d heard plenty of “glass ceiling” complaints, where women were basically never promoted to the executive level (except for one exceptionally capable becoming a CFO), possibly because the head office was in the South East and the board being an old boys club. But I do not recall any mention of casual or subconscious sexism described in the link.
It’s possible that women only complain to you about glass ceilings because the effects are visible and they don’t trust you to believe incidents as in that link. Next time you get a complaint about glass ceilings, ask about casual sexism.
I did. They were pretty clear that they did not have any issues at the team- or project-lead levels, except maybe when a visiting executive was present at some meeting and behaved in a casually sexist way.
Also, confirmation bias on the subjects (if you assume that workplace sexism is a thing, then you are probably more likely to notice people doubting your competence and register it as “sexism” when you are a woman rather than when you are a man), confirmation bias/publication bias on the authors of these “studies” (would a book about how trans-people experience no changes in workplace interactions get published? Would it get a review on New Republic?), smal sample, likely sampling bias (how were the subjects selected?), no attempts to falsify the hypothesis, and in general all the ills of arguing from anecdotal evidence.
I think you’re misreading the author here. In that paragraph she’s discussing two different hypotheses. The first is that increased testosterone makes post-transition trans men more confident, and the second is that the process of transitioning itself makes them more confident (because now they no longer suffer from anxiety and depression associated with gender dysphoria). The comparison with trans women is only intended to be a counterpoint to the second hypothesis, not the first, so there is no “willful incomprehension” here.
No, I’m not misreading her. The first hypothesis, shifts in testosterone+estrogen levels, subsumes the second and also addresses the criticism she offers of it. She’s not seriously thinking about it.
The first hypothesis doesn’t subsume the second. The second hypothesis is that the increased confidence comes from increased psychological well-being due to no longer inhabiting a body you don’t identify with. If that was the sole (or primary) reason for increased confidence among post-transition trans men, then we should expect the effect to be symmetric, and for post-transition trans women to exhibit increased confidence too. The fact that they don’t suggests that we should look for a different explanation, one that distinguishes between trans men and women. The testosterone hypothesis is one plausible possibility. Institutional sexism is another.
If there are differential perceived benefits in social prestige/power from transitioning based on direction, this is consistent with there being only one factor (sexism) conditional on direction but also consistent with there being unconditional benefits plus the pushmi-pullu effect of swapping testosterone & other androgens for estrogen etc in which the net effect for the mtf is indeterminate. I am willing to take their word on transitioning being good for them, which accounts for the first factor, I prefer experimentally demonstrated effects from powerful mind-altering hormones to unprovable spooks like institutional sexism, and so the hormone model seems to me to fit much better.
Transition is a confounder but this is still interesting information even if it’s something like “a transitioned person gets taken more seriously due to greater confidence in themselves” or whatever hypothesis instead of proving stuff about gender.
You’re seriously raising the notion of testosterone as magical competence juice as an explanation worth taking seriously? This would make teenage males the most competent and convincing people on the planet.
I took the claim to be something different: testosterone is magical confidence juice, and at reasonable levels of competence more confidence leads to greater career success.
Indeed, that is the sane reading of gwern’s comment.
I agree this is a very real issue. For example:
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/violence-women-hurts-men-20-things-men-can-hesaid/
I know of at least one male-to-female transgendered person who has made the exact opposite claim, viz. that women are treated better by society. (Not going to dig up a link.)
I would prefer not to see gender politics on LW, especially when the connection to rationality is tenuous.
how the hell is a discussion about people biases in regards to someone’s perceived gender when they are pretty much the same person with the same expertise not OBVIOUSLY connected to rationality? Tenuous my ass.
Re: “women are treated better” I don’t know if you’re straw manning the person you’re talking about but different genders are treated differently in different contexts. It’s pretty interesting to see what kind of effects people see when they transition in different areas of life, and I don’t think that really counts as “gender politics”.
As to #1, though I know someone who has gone male-to-female and decidedly does not make that claim, I would not find it terribly unlikely that someone who goes through a transition in either direction will be somewhat more likely to find their new status superior to their old status.
Posts about biases that are fairly common and often unconscious/unintentional are not just tenuously connected to rationality. And since we’re discussing preferences, I would prefer not to see any discussion of gender inequities immediately get labeled “politics”, given all the connotations that label carries.
Agreed.