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Evidence of Implicit Gender Bias

 
 
 
lpetrich

lpetrich

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I had earlier posted on Adam Lee's research on Evidence of Implicit Racial and Ethnic Stereotyping, and he has returned with A Reading List on Implicit Bias: Gender I'll summarize what he notes in it:
Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters
Professors Are Prejudiced, Too
The ‘Feminized Society’ Myth
How Not to Pick Judges
Women Get Interrupted More — Even By Other Women
Lean Out: The Dangers for Women Who Negotiate
The abrasiveness trap: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews
The Motherhood Penalty vs. the Fatherhood Bonus
Is the Professor Bossy or Brilliant? Much Depends on Gender
How Elementary School Teachers’ Biases Can Discourage Girls From Math and Science
Is Medicine’s Gender Bias Killing Young Women?
Proof That Women Get Less Credit for Teamwork
Are U.S. Millennial Men Just as Sexist as Their Dads?
Is Blind Hiring the Best Hiring?
Female coders are rated more highly than men – except when people know they’re women
The kind of boss who doesn’t like to promote women
A Good Woman (or Minority) Chemist Is Apparently Hard to Find
Women and Minorities Are Penalized for Promoting Diversity
Women Held To Higher Ethical Standard Than Men, Study Shows
When tech firms judge on skills alone, women land more job interviews
Why are female doctors introduced by first name while men are called ‘Doctor’?
Male writers still dominate book reviews and critic jobs, Vida study finds
Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination
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That last one notes:
Remarkably, perceiving one’s judgments as objective and free of bias predicted greater gender bias.
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Seems like the Dunning-Kruger effect -- greatly overestimating one's competence at something if one is not very competent in it. Along with underestimating one's competence if one is very competent.
 
The discussion might recap a lot of the discussion in Some more aspects of the Google dudebro's memo, I must concede.

But I've found more evidence. Occupational Feminization and Pay: Assessing Causal Dynamics Using 1950–2000 U.S. Census Data | Social Forces | Oxford Academic Abstract:
Occupations with a greater share of females pay less than those with a lower share, controlling for education and skill. This association is explained by two dominant views: devaluation and queuing. The former views the pay offered in an occupation to affect its female proportion, due to employers' preference for men—a gendered labor queue. The latter argues that the proportion of females in an occupation affects pay, owing to devaluation of work done by women. Only a few past studies used longitudinal data, which is needed to test the theories. We use fixed-effects models, thus controlling for stable characteristics of occupations, and U.S. Census data from 1950 through 2000. We find substantial evidence for the devaluation view, but only scant evidence for the queuing view.
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A copy is online here: 88.2.levanon.pdf

Patriarchy’s Magic Trick: How Anything Perceived As Women’s Work Immediately Sheds Its Value | Crates and Ribbons. About arguments that the gender gap is a myth,
but in this post, I will focus only on the assertion that the wage gap exists partly because women choose to go into industries that just happen — what a coincidence! — to be lower paid.

So here’s how the argument usually goes. Women, they say, gravitate towards lower-paid industries such as nursing, cleaning, teaching, social work, childcare, customer service or administrative work, while men choose to work in politics, business, science, and other manly, well-paid industries. Those who propagate this idea usually aren’t interested in a solution, since they see no problem, but if asked to provide one, they might suggest that women behave more like men, one aspect of this being to take up careers in male-dominated industries that are more well-paid (and respected, but they seldom say this out loud).
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In Western nations, doctors are highly-paid and well-respected -- and mostly male. While in Russia, doctors are mostly female -- and by comparison, low-paid.
 
Stereotypes are a mental short-cut, a way of quickly responding to a member of a group without engaging the brain. Once these assumptions about a group develop they kind of acquire a lack of inertia. Easier to just type-cast a person as a part of the average than build a model of them as a unique person.

This makes socializing easier and more fluid for people, but it's obviously an imperfect way of understanding how to act in the world. Those who are able to make the mental leap from stereotype, to a more intricate understanding of human nature, are inevitably going to be in better harmony with other people.
 
So here’s how the argument usually goes. Women, they say, gravitate towards lower-paid industries such as nursing, cleaning, teaching, social work, childcare, customer service or administrative work
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I think this is mostly because women are largely raised as children onward to be more "naturally" suited for these kinds of positions.
 
Easy anecdotal evidence for (benign) gender bias. Dining out at restaurants, often I order a salad and my fiance (female) orders a burger. Ten times out of ten the server offers my fiance the salad.

The funny thing is.. when servers do this, 9 times out of 10 they're probably right in offering the woman the salad. So is it really about efficiency in calculation? If I rely on averages to understand people, over time I may make the correct choice more often than I make the incorrect one, leading to better propagation of my genes. So uh.. maybe some implications there..

Just throwing out some thoughts here..
 
rousseau said:
Easy anecdotal evidence for (benign) gender bias. Dining out at restaurants, often I order a salad and my fiance (female) orders a burger. Ten times out of ten the server offers my fiance the salad.

The funny thing is.. when servers do this, 9 times out of 10 they're probably right in offering the woman the salad. So is it really about efficiency in calculation? If I rely on averages to understand people, over time I may make the correct choice more often than I make the incorrect one, leading to better propagation of my genes. So uh.. maybe some implications there..

Just throwing out some thoughts here..
Click to expand...

This shares my thoughts on the "value of bias"... cause, well, it works most of the time. I use this example in describing prejudice...

It is 2AM and you hear a knock on your door. You call through the locked door, "who is it". An unfamiliar, gruff voice comes back, "girl scout cookies". You peek though a peep hole and see a large figure wearing a ski mask.

Only someone with no prejustice would open the door expecting to likely be offered girl scout cookies... and that is why absence of prejudice does not exist... their practitioners have all been murdered.

You are prejudice against people in ski masks knocking on your door at 2AM
You are prejudice against any large man claiming to be a girl scout

You wouldn;t give this person the benefit of the doubt... because you are prejudice... and it is what keeps us all alive day by day.
 
Malintent said:
rousseau said:
Easy anecdotal evidence for (benign) gender bias. Dining out at restaurants, often I order a salad and my fiance (female) orders a burger. Ten times out of ten the server offers my fiance the salad.

The funny thing is.. when servers do this, 9 times out of 10 they're probably right in offering the woman the salad. So is it really about efficiency in calculation? If I rely on averages to understand people, over time I may make the correct choice more often than I make the incorrect one, leading to better propagation of my genes. So uh.. maybe some implications there..

Just throwing out some thoughts here..
Click to expand...

This shares my thoughts on the "value of bias"... cause, well, it works most of the time. I use this example in describing prejudice...

It is 2AM and you hear a knock on your door. You call through the locked door, "who is it". An unfamiliar, gruff voice comes back, "girl scout cookies". You peek though a peep hole and see a large figure wearing a ski mask.

Only someone with no prejustice would open the door expecting to likely be offered girl scout cookies... and that is why absence of prejudice does not exist... their practitioners have all been murdered.

You are prejudice against people in ski masks knocking on your door at 2AM
You are prejudice against any large man claiming to be a girl scout

You wouldn;t give this person the benefit of the doubt... because you are prejudice... and it is what keeps us all alive day by day.
Click to expand...

Yes.

On the one hand I understand that biology sets the framework for society and it's problems, and social change needs to be pushed in the environmental sphere for lack of anywhere else to do it, but at the same time time I think most people miss essential points about gender, race, bias, stereotyping. That's not to say having unchecked bias is optimal.. I would argue that it's not, but I think people's understanding would be better served if they thought about what's actually happening, rather than what they wished would happen. People are better served if we can have honest conversations about who we are as a species.

But then, I have absolutely no faith that we'll ever have honest conversations about who we are as a species, so there's that. Knowledge is essentially political.
 
Malintent said:
rousseau said:
Easy anecdotal evidence for (benign) gender bias. Dining out at restaurants, often I order a salad and my fiance (female) orders a burger. Ten times out of ten the server offers my fiance the salad.

The funny thing is.. when servers do this, 9 times out of 10 they're probably right in offering the woman the salad. So is it really about efficiency in calculation? If I rely on averages to understand people, over time I may make the correct choice more often than I make the incorrect one, leading to better propagation of my genes. So uh.. maybe some implications there..

Just throwing out some thoughts here..
Click to expand...

This shares my thoughts on the "value of bias"... cause, well, it works most of the time. I use this example in describing prejudice...

It is 2AM and you hear a knock on your door. You call through the locked door, "who is it". An unfamiliar, gruff voice comes back, "girl scout cookies". You peek though a peep hole and see a large figure wearing a ski mask.

Only someone with no prejustice would open the door expecting to likely be offered girl scout cookies... and that is why absence of prejudice does not exist... their practitioners have all been murdered.

You are prejudice against people in ski masks knocking on your door at 2AM
You are prejudice against any large man claiming to be a girl scout

You wouldn;t give this person the benefit of the doubt... because you are prejudice... and it is what keeps us all alive day by day.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't open the door to a unicorn (whether masked or not) offering me Girl Scout cookies in the wee hours of the morning. But that scenario never will happen--so the "prejudice" is ephemeral.
Please come up with a real-life situation that most people have experienced more than once to boost your allegation about prejudice being an evolutionary advantage.
 
jab said:
Malintent said:
This shares my thoughts on the "value of bias"... cause, well, it works most of the time. I use this example in describing prejudice...

It is 2AM and you hear a knock on your door. You call through the locked door, "who is it". An unfamiliar, gruff voice comes back, "girl scout cookies". You peek though a peep hole and see a large figure wearing a ski mask.

Only someone with no prejustice would open the door expecting to likely be offered girl scout cookies... and that is why absence of prejudice does not exist... their practitioners have all been murdered.

You are prejudice against people in ski masks knocking on your door at 2AM
You are prejudice against any large man claiming to be a girl scout

You wouldn;t give this person the benefit of the doubt... because you are prejudice... and it is what keeps us all alive day by day.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't open the door to a unicorn (whether masked or not) offering me Girl Scout cookies in the wee hours of the morning. But that scenario never will happen--so the "prejudice" is ephemeral.
Please come up with a real-life situation that most people have experienced more than once to boost your allegation about prejudice being an evolutionary advantage.
Click to expand...

The mechanism is implied in my posts above. The benefit to prejudice is quick thinking. Our neurophysiology, which was largely developed in pre-historic Africa, had to discriminate between real and ever present threats to ones life. You couldn't sit there pondering over whether or not to run from a lion. The mind had to be able to quickly make the connection that lion = bad, and then react.

That is the 'why' of prejudice (why it exists). Whether it has as much survival value today as it did in pre-history might be less clear, but I think it'd be absurd to claim that it has no value.

That's not to say it's always right or even smart to be prejudiced, and again.. I would argue that in many cases it's sub-optimal, but the ability to generalize certainly has survival value for many people.

Another simple example: if I go to a small town with lots of drug violence, and hang out at a bar late on a Saturday night, I'm more likely to run into violence. If I avoid that bar, my survival chances increase. Doing this is a calculation I make about reality to choose my behavior. Knowing what drug gangs are 'usually' like, I can just say 'yea, this is probably a bad idea'.

When it comes to gender bias and someone is doing something like hiring, they are probably better off ignoring their own biases, because the average doesn't necessarily reflect the person and they might miss out on a good candidate. Two different situations.
 
rousseau said:
Easy anecdotal evidence for (benign) gender bias. Dining out at restaurants, often I order a salad and my fiance (female) orders a burger. Ten times out of ten the server offers my fiance the salad.

The funny thing is.. when servers do this, 9 times out of 10 they're probably right in offering the woman the salad. So is it really about efficiency in calculation? If I rely on averages to understand people, over time I may make the correct choice more often than I make the incorrect one, leading to better propagation of my genes. So uh.. maybe some implications there..

Just throwing out some thoughts here..
Click to expand...

Exactly. There are trends and you'll be right considerably more often than not if you go with them. This isn't a problem, though--the problem comes when you assume the trends are absolute. If you see a woman in a normally-male position figure that she's an outlier, not that she's incompetent.
 
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