Gender Issue Needs Addressing
I read with horror that the Economics Profession Has a ‘Race Problem’
Quite shocking.
But I am pleased to report a success story.
Ms. Francis, who now teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston, ultimately completed a doctorate in public policy and economics at Duke University. She thrived there, she said, in part because of mentorship from Sandy Darity, a professor who has gained prominence for his research arguing for reparations for blacks descended from American slaves.
Yes indeed.
What could possibly be more beneficial than studies on reparations for slaves based on events of hundreds of years ago?
I can only come up with one thing.
If Einstein had been a black or female, his theories would have had more meaning.
My inescapable conclusion is that we need more female theorists.
Questions Abound
- Why don’t we have a serious discussion about the Einstein Gender Gap?
- What about diversity in math? Surely it matters more if a woman says 1+1=2 than if a man does. Or do we need to promote 1+1=3? One never knows these days.
- What about diversity at the Fed?
Q. If former Fed Chair Janet Yellen was black, would that have changed anything?
A: No. You have to think like the rest of the Fed to get in the group. Gender is irrelevant.
Diversity at the Fed Needed
Instead of more women or blacks on the Fed, I suggest we try actual diversity of economic opinion and not gender for gender’s sake.
What’s most needed on the Fed is an Austrian economist who proposes dissolving it. That would be diversity.
Instead, expect more group think nonsense about race and the Phillips Curve.
Good Ole Boy Network
To become a Fed president you have to think, believe, and act like a good ole boy.
Janet Yellen is best not thought of as a woman, but rather a good ole boy.
Adversity Scores to the Rescue
Meanwhile, please consider Adversity Scores: The Latest Dumbing Down of US Education.
1+1=3 is bound to get some votes in the name of diversity soon enough.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Allegedly there is a gender gap?
You’re data guy Mish. What does the data say?
I’m wondering if there will be a post saying allegedly there is climate change.
Turning this into a discussion on schools of thought is an entirely different discussion. So instead of ensuring that blacks, women, hispanics aren’t discriinated against or discourage from a professiona you’d rather see quotas on the number of monetarists, mmt advocates, keynsians, austrians etc? That’s not diversity at all. Nothing against looking at different points of view but that’s not divesity, its something else.
Ok then, let’s see a show of hands for those willing to volunteer for sex reassignment surgery.
The women most admired by their peers in my office refuse to take manager or leadership positions because they don’t want to compromise their ethics. The least qualified women are too eager to take the management path.
Since Einstein did not live during this ‘enlightened’ age of now, he did not get to pick his gender. Hence, we cannot discriminate against his theories.
For what it’s worth, the best economics professor I ever had was black. He taught a course on the economics of social problems, which delved into the economic impact of things like minimum wage, farm subsidies, water rights, and pollution. We covered how higher minimum wages create unemployment, how farm subsidies are designed to create food surpluses, and how pollution should be taxed rather than regulated, since the free market is the most efficient method of allocating resources, but taxes are needed to force the free market to factor in the cost to society of pollution.
No reasonable person would think a black person couldn’t become a great economics professor
The problem that I see, as an educator, is that we are literally dumbing down the system in the name of social justice and diversity. We’ve lowered standards for teacher certification to promote diversity. We’ve lowered standards for students to promote diversity. Now we are starting to grade people by the color of their skin and not the content of their academic character.
Also the whole double standards. If white males dominate a field we must speak of diversity. If a field is dominated by nonwhite males it isn’t an issue.
I agree. My professor was great because he was great, and that is all there is to it. He explained the material, he was funny, and he was perceptive, plus he was not afraid to rattle people’s ways of thinking by presenting social concepts in purely economic terms. We need more great teachers and professors. Whether they are black and great, white and great, women and great, or male and great is irrelevant.
A typical racist and sexist article written by a white male. What’s worse, you have completely missed the importance of pansexual disabled Chicano trans-women of size!
Must see:
https://youtu.be/Zh3Yz3PiXZw
Enjoy
Change 2+2=22 for school prayer and you are closer to reality. The real nuts are the religious folk who want to force their religion into state schools. Nobody is fighting for 2+2=22, this is asinine.
I grew up for a while in a country with a state religion and we were marched to the local church several times a year. Talk about a training program for atheism. I always remember it raining and the 1700’s era church had no heating. The Jewish kids had to bring a letter, and the Catholic kids had their own state funded school system. The system perpetuated multi-generational sectarianism – the Protestant kids all hated the Catholic kids and vice versa. My grandmother took me to church every Sunday and I went to Sunday School and was about the only kid in my elementary year there. The funny thing was the kids who didn’t go to church like I did were enthusiastic members of the Boys Brigade – a militaristic Protestant version of the Boy Scouts – I still meet with a group of them and they still hate Catholics to this day.
For Pete’s sake don’t be swayed by this dreadful piece of propaganda.
“As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
Einstein
I notice that the Democratic Party primary is running out of diversity.
The NBA has a diversity issue. No women, few Asians, few Hispanics, etc… perhaps the NBA should have a diversity score where if an underrepresented person makes a basket it is worth 10 points for a two and 15 for a 3.
How about chess? GO? Bridge? Concert pianists?
A lot of professions are also wanting women: soldiers; fishermen; lumber jacks; rednecks; cleaners for holds and tanks of ships (pays well, exciting/dangerous, very dirty). Swap some of those guys with kindergarten teachers, help the pay gap.
This is coming. You know that, right?
Mish, read:
Based on reality, not opinion. Also, catch Sam Harris’ podcast with Charles Murray (yes, that Charles Murray – if you haven’t listened you may have a few surprises, but read Range first for more recent scientific context), and also focus some attention on the Flynn effect.
Lots of interesting stuff in there if you have an open mind and are smart.
Oh, and avoid publicity clowns like Malcolm Gladwell and Jordan Peterson – a couple of Canada’s worse exports.
What’s wrong with Peterson? He’s telling young men they’re not horrible people and to face life’s difficulties with courage.
Peterson is just another banal self-help guru with a “poor me” angle for horny teenagers (who are most often young men) or their 20-to-30-something equivalents. He wraps some standard cant in “professor” speak that usually annoys the right wing, but suddenly they can’t get enough of it.
I’ve been surprised that Peterson, a self confessed “a classic British liberal” who supports socialized healthcare, has been so successful in right wing circles in America, especially as his heroes include Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn.
Are you sure we’re talking about the same person? I don’t see anything banal about telling young men they’re not detritus. Many of these men grew up in homes without fathers, thanks to feminism. They need the guidance they never got growing up. If he’s banal for that reason then I’m all for banality.
While he is solidly pro healthcare, he has some great ideas. He’s not a philosopher and he has never claimed to be. Many of his ideas became political when he annoyed the politically correct leftist crowd. That doesn’t make him a right-winger… nor does it make him a big lefty. He’s Jordan Peterson.
Hi NBBS: If people find comfort and a positive outcome from listening to Peterson, then good for them, I’m all for it. But intertwining personal development and affirmative action in the way he is doing it is a recipe for bigotry.
Also, according to Rich Karlgaard, many Fortune 500 companies love people with curiosity.
The problem with the love of generalists and curious people is that those people never get hired. I know many generalists and well-rounded people working jobs well below their abilities simply because they weren’t proficient in a very narrow field.
Atomistic thinking vs. holistic thinking is old news. In a world where the only ‘serious research’ is by the scientific method using quantitative methods, atomistic thinking dominates. The cost of not thinking holistically: a lack of creativity in research, oversimplified solutions, and a lot of unrelated and irrelevant research.
Try getting holistic, non-quantitative behavioral research published.
A solution in search of a problem.
One of many…
The Road to Idiocracy.
More like a symptom of having arrived at the destination.
All outcomes arbitrarily determined by the totalitarian state, none by individual merit, is all progressivism is about. We’re a progressive society by now. And will, by the looks of it, remain one, until we are liberated by the Caliph.
95% of midwives and 90% of nurses and 85% or primary teachers being female never seems to be a issue tho
California law now requires that any corporation doing business in the state have a certain number of women on its Board of Directors. The law does not require that the board have any men. An all-female board is acceptable, while an all-male board is not. Somehow, in a manner I am unable to determine, this law is not discriminatory.
The law is even more insidious BSD….
“The governor signed the corporate board gender diversity bill into law Sept. 30, 2018. … Further, beginning July 2021, the bill requires a minimum of two women directors on boards with five directors and at least three women on boards with six or more directors,” according to the California Legislative Women’s Caucus.”
Notice the obvious answer here? Expand the board to 15 people and the law will still only require 3 of them to be female.
As to the claim that economics has some sort of structural racism built in I warn you now to look out. They said the same thing about Hollywood acting roles back in the 90’s, now casting parts in movies REQUIRES a nearly 50% non white racial makeup no matter how jarring that might be to the audience which has to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy a film. And many films are in a genre called blaxploitation that are all African American and intentionally include whites (males at least) only so far as they serve as a stereotype that is actually very insulting to Caucasians who still lap it up because they think they deserve to be punished for the vile treatment of people of color in past centuries.
I am willing to get along with almost any reasonable adult without boundaries based upon race, gender, orientation, political affiliations, net worth, or other superficial metrics, but, one of the conditions they have to meet is that they give me the same consideration. And one thing I will not stand for is a forced association with persons I do not want to associate with. It is my right as one of the most fundamental in life that I have freedom of association. It is not even up to others to judge that in any form. It simply is not their business.
This all bears an implied accusation against all white males that we operate in some elite exclusive Caucasian male country club that is actively and intentionally diminishing the contributions of females and racial minorities, when in fact they cite historic control by white males during a time when white males were in fact the majority. Women say they want equal pay for equal work and they want equal rights in society? I say I want equal rights to females in return. They claim to want all of the benefits that they claim we have, but they want none of the negatives that we have had to live with all along, such as the man being the sole breadwinner no matter how he feels or what he wants. How many males have toiled to an early death in mills and factories and farms while their women stayed at home enjoying their offspring and being warm indoors, controlling the family finances and ruling the roost? Then bitching that they are unpaid labor and demanding equality, shit they already have a house, family, security, power, and all they have to do is keep their male slave on the straight and narrow going to work and bringing home the paychecks. I think they will rue the day they demanded yet more power because they already are causing a nuclear family meltdown. A household China Syndrome. And when they find they have not the physical ability to keep up with males they whine and say standards are too high.
If someone attempts to paint me with a stereotype and behaves in a manner that is confrontive they are going to be very disappointed in my response because unlike “progressives” it will not be to sit in a corner with eyes downcast and body shaking, possibly leaking urine in fear, and a total commitment to agreeing that all the unfairness of the world in written history is my personal fault. Reparations? Sure, okay, but they come with a one way ticket to any nation of your choosing. I hear Venezuela is great again.
Hollywood hasn’t produced a decent film in the past decade or more because the film Director is no longer the most important person in the mix – the Casting Director is. The latest Star Wars series is a classic case in point – social engineering and virtue signaling is the aim, not entertainment.
Tell me about it, I was surfing my Roku the other day and realized they had remade the series Lost In Space so I checked it out. Well the Robinson family had the oldest girl Penny played by a black actress and it was just unsettling to have the older sister being of a different rce than her parents and siblings. Sure you can hypothesize that for some reason this couple decided to adopt a child of African American decent prior to having their own kids, but knowing that is theoretically possible does nothing to restore suspension of disbelief. Like the last time I went to the Oregon Shakespearian Theater to see Macbeth. They had a 20 something black man playing the lead. Because I am sure that the thanes of the Scottish highlands were a mix of all sorts of races, I am just surprised they did not cast an Asian woman as Lady Macbeth. I left feeling ripped off and have never bothered going back, that was 2008.
Do they discriminate against transwomen?
HAL, I was just thinking about that, 2 of 5 board members must be female, but who is going to get the job in Sacramento looking up their skirts for penises? And for that matter does pre op count or does it have to be post op? Would a simple X chromosome be good enough because all males have one. What about XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) where a male is born with an extra X chromosome? They have the two X chromosomes of a female but also the Y of males. Are they to be so blatantly discriminated against? It is a slippery slope, there will always be some person or group that claims it is not fairly and equally represented somewhere somehow. People who will not assimilate into society because they are somehow “unique.”