The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[Undertoad]

How do you replace someone with all those capabilities and specialized knowledge if you have to deploy an SF team; but, one of them has an ACL tear?

SHIT SHIT SHIT WE DIDN'T THINK OF THAT! "MAN DOWN" OR WHATEVER THEY SAY

ABORT MISSION!! AH SHIT SHIT DON'T SAY ABORT

Did you all realize how terribly FRAGILE the SF are? Fuck, they can't even plan their way out of simple personnel issues that are understood and can be planned (it's 2015 and they have pills and devices to prevent pregnancy now!) and known about for MONTHS in advance! WHAT TOTAL PUSSIES! One of 'em goes down for 6 months and it's like, ah, mission cancelled I guess. Beginning to understand why it took a decade to get bin Laden.*

Do we really need these people or can they be replaced with drones already. Could have bombed that site in Allottabad just as easily. Might have not risked guys and expensive elite copters to do it.





*i know that was the seals, point remains

[infinite monkey]

So, special forces are, like, soccer players?????

[sexobon]

I see UT is on the rag. I'm tempted to do a Lamplighter and twist UT's words, "(it's 2015 and they have pills and devices to prevent pregnancy now!)", into his inferring the military should impose birth control on female soldiers. Sorry these changes didn't come about early enough for you to get into SF UT. You would've made a fine PUSSIES OF ONE.

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

So, special forces are, like, soccer players?????

More like world championship playoff game soccer players only if you lose, you die. These teams can be required to operate at the limits of human performance. Take a member off the team when there's insufficient time to fully integrate a replacement and they're not world champions anymore; although, they can still play soccer. Question is, with lives at stake, who wants to be on that team when it goes to the playoff? Who wants to send it there in the first place? It doesn't matter why a member was taken off the team (e.g. torn ACL or pregnancy), the affects are the same.

When something like that happens in the military, the team gets an uninitiated replacement and assigned to lesser missions; or, it goes into a training cycle. The individual who couldn't perform may be put into individual training commensurate with their capabilities (e.g. sitting on their keister in language school); or, given a desk job depending on how much advance notice the command has and what options are available at the time. Males who are repeatedly non-deployable due to injuries resulting from their choices in personal activities can be reassigned to other units. Will they do the same with females who want to have several children? Individuals who are going to be out for more than 6 months can be reassigned out of high priority units. Will they do the same with females having post partum complications? All those who are going to be out for more than a year can already be medically discharged from the military.

Neither those who volunteer for high priority units nor their chains of command aspire to be held back by anyone. The military will now have to give equal treatment to non-deployable males that it will be giving to non-deployable females. It forces them to lower standards; or, create redundancies that taxpayers will pay for. We the people ... have chosen the latter. The military will be getting more creative about assignments within high priority units until the taxpayers pony up.

[xoxoxoBruce]

We the people ... have chosen the latter.

We the people have no say in the matter. The few who own the politicians decide how much to give the Pentagon, and they decide how many high priority special forces units, how many bombs, and how many golf courses.

There's no difference between a soldier who shoots himself in the foot and a soldier who is pregnant. It's a choice that would keep them from doing their job... your fired.

[classicman]

you're fired.

[sexobon]

You're fired.

(U r fired)

[Clodfobble]

Is the sudden, unexpected pregnancy of current female soldiers an issue? Is the rate of female soldier pregnancy higher or lower than the current rate of unexpected injury among male soldiers?

In my experience most female military members are A.) lesbians and B.) no longer menstruating anyway because of the intense physical training they have to maintain.

[sexobon]

The military doesn't issue pregnancies, they have to bring their own.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The same with self inflicted wounds. The soldier owns it, and must suffer the consequences of it preventing them to do the job.

[Undertoad]

I have a feeling the chicks who would go in for SF would be like the women of a century ago who pooted out the kid in the middle of the rice paddy or wheat field, sat out for a while, had some water and then went on about their job harvesting

[xoxoxoBruce]

True, but that 6 months beforehand would slow them up.

[sexobon]

Won't someone think of the critters. What will happen to them if soldiers have to start carrying field delivered babies in their packs?



More warm fuzzy feeling photos

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yana Gallen, at Northwestern University, has written a paper summing up a study of gender gap in Danish employment. They found women are paid 16% less and are 12% less productive, but have unable to pin down the other 4% other than bias.

One important point, at least to me, was childless women were equally productive with men. I doubt that productivity loss stemmed from showing cow orkers pictures of their kids. Even in a family friendly utopia like Denmark, it's more likely exhaustion and stress, ongoing and accumulative. Days off and holidays bring no respite, just additional pressures, expected duties, and self-recrimination for not living up to the June Cleaver model.

Abstract: Using Danish matched employer-employee data, this paper estimates the relative productivity of men and women and finds that the gender “productivity gap” is 12 percent–seventy five percent of the 16 percent residual pay gap can be accounted for by productivity differences between men and women. I measure the productivity gap by estimating the efficiency units lost in a firm-level production function if a laborer is female, holding other explanatory covariates such as age, education, experience, and hours worked constant.

To study the mechanisms behind the 4 percent gap in pay that is unexplained by productivity, I use data on parenthood and age. Mothers are paid much lower wages than men, but their estimated productivity gap completely explains their pay gap. In contrast, women without children are estimated to be as productive as men but they are not compensated at the same rate as men.

The decoupling of pay and productivity for women without children happens during their prime-child bearing years. I provide estimates of the productivity gap in the cross-section and estimates that account for endogenous sorting of women into less productive firms using a control-function approach inspired by Olley-Pakes.

This paper also provides estimates of the gender productivity gap across industries and occupations. Though the results do vary across industries and occupations, the overall estimate of the productivity gap is fairly robust to the specification of the production function.

The paper can be downloaded as a pdf at the link above.

[DanaC]

Interesting, thanks Bruce.

[DanaC]

Sometimes, organisations really try to do something positive but trip themselves up by not truly understanding the nature of the problem. IBM has been trying to encourage greater female participation in STEM fields. They came up with this gem of a campaign. It's laudable that they are trying, but they clearly are missing huge chunks of the point. I read the article and I was just trying to imagine the strategy meetings for this campaign. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of this stuff.

IBM has discontinued a campaign encouraging women to get into technology by asking them to “hack a hairdryer” after widespread criticism from women in the industry.

The company admitted the campaign “missed the mark for some” and apologised.

The campaign, which dated back to October and was part of a wider effort by the company to promote STEM careers, called on women in science and technology to “reengineer what matters in science”.

A video posted on IBM’s YouTube account showed a number of experiments involving hairdryers as a voiceover encourages women to take part:



You, a windblaster and an idea, repurposed for a larger purpose, to support those who believe that it’s not what covers your cranium that counts, but what’s in it. So hack heat, re-reoute airflow, reinvent sound, and imagine a future where the most brilliant minds are solving the world’s biggest problems regardless of your gender.

Yep - because obviously, in order to make science and engineering attractive to women, it must first be translated into something they can relate to: haircare and beauty. On the same spectrum as the makers of science kits for kids who market kits to boys that have them creating model volcanoes and kits to girls that have them exploring the science of perfumes and bubblebath.


Women already in STEM fields were not impressed and took to Twitter. Some of the tweets are great.

@reubenacciano tweeted:

Hey @IBM - Margaret Hamilton was too busy writing code to get us to the moon to f*ck w/ a hairdryer. #HackAHairDryer

@Stephevs43 says:

That's ok @IBM, I'd rather build satellites instead, but good luck with that whole #HackAHairDryer thing.

These two made me laugh:

@minxdragon:

Sorry @IBM i’m too busy working on lipstick chemistry and writing down formulae with little hearts over the i s to #HackAHairDryer

@joalabastar posted a picture of a folded towel with this comment:

Here, @IBM. My lady brain came up with this for #HackAHairDryer. Kuhn would declare it paradigm shifting, surely

But my favourite came from the London Fire Brigade. It's nice to know they're keeping an eye on things:

We're staying out of the sexism debate, however we'd suggest that it's generally a bad idea, & possibly a bit dangerous to #HackAHairDryer

Read the rest here:

http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...aimed-at-women

Good on IBM for trying. Good on them for their swift response. Please do better next time - it does matter. Stop focusing on changing the content to make it relatable for women and start making tech fields more welcoming of women in a way that doesn't make them feel like someone on an exchange trip from Venus.