Tag Archives: Gender

Stop Stale Eggs, Jobs?

By Robin Hanson · March 17, 2010 9:15 am · Comments (37)

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. Shaw

The average woman is born with around 300,000 eggs … 12 percent of those eggs remaining at the age of 30, and only 3 percent left by 40. … From the mid-30s on, the decline in fertility is much steeper with each passing year. … Female undergraduates significantly overestimated their fertility prospects at all ages. … The biological reality that female fertility peaks in the teens and early 20s can be difficult for many American women to swallow, as they delay childbirth further every year. … The older you get, the more difficult it is to get pregnant and the higher the chance of miscarriage, pregnancy problems such as gestational diabetes and hypertension, and chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. … The risk of autism increases with a mother’s age.

More here.  Also, Andrew Leigh:

We estimate the relationship between maternal age and child … learning outcomes and social outcomes. … Children of older mothers have better outcomes. … When we control for other socioeconomic characteristics, such as family income, parental education and single parenthood, the coefficients on maternal age become small and statistically insignificant.

Today high status women stay long in school, start careers, and take long to match up with a man before having kids.  They are often too late, their kids have more defects, and the interruption hurts their career.  Low status women more often have an accidental early kid out of wedlock.

Imagine a different equilibrium, where females pick a male at 15, then school more slowly to have kids till some standard age (20? 25? 30?), when females return to full-time school and uninterrupted careers.

While it is not entirely clear if this new equilibrium would be better or worse, it certainly has some positive features.  Kids and moms would be healthier, kids more numerous and less accidental, moms more energetic, older folk would enjoy more grand kids etc., and career interruptions wouldn’t make female employees suspect.

Early parenting would have to be paid for by grandparents or via loans (or perhaps income shares), presumably in trade for some loss of autonomy.  While childhood does seem to be lengthening, it is not clear if this autonomy loss could be accepted.

For the male pattern, there are two obvious variations: males switch life-plans along with females, or males stay on the current plan.  Having males also switch would keep mates at similar ages, promote healthier kids and more energetic dads, and reduce opportunities for gender discrimination.

Randomness in kid timing and number would make it a bit harder to estimate student quality based on student performance – could we find ways to correct for this?  And the fact that low status moms now have kids early makes it harder to coordinate a switch to this new equilibrium.  But still, it seems an interesting thing that never was, about which to ask: why not?

From a conversation with Rob Wiblin, Katja Grace.

Tagged as: , ,

Swinger Trends

By Robin Hanson · January 29, 2010 11:00 pm · Comments (25)

Swinging has switched from a male to a female focus:

Apart from the numeric growth of the phenomenon, swinger behaviour has also greatly changed over the last 25 years. Both in Italy and in the rest of the world. Twenty-five years ago couples sought almost exclusively other couples or single females; now a days couples seek other couples, single males and groups of males. The phenomenon has thus evolved from situations in which the centre of sexual intercourse was the male component of the couple to “harder” situations in which the centre of sexual intercourse is the female component and the male takes his pleasure from sharing his companion with other men. … Now a days an increasing number of single males seek swingers rather than prostitutes, since swinger women are considered more participative than prostitutes.

A swinger party price list:

Couples: $90, MFF Trios: $120, MMF Trios: $170, Single Females $25

Some patterns:

  • Swingers tend to have at least one person per couple with a college degree.
  • The typical rule is that it must be couples, no singles allowed.
  • You must first present a negative STD test, and agree to be routinely tested.
  • Many have restrictions on outside sex … you [may not] “cheat on the group.”
  • [First talk] on the internet for a long … time before anyone will approach you.
  • [Then] several “dates” where they meet the new potential couple.
  • Groups also sort themselves according to their preferences for activity types.

I’m not sure I’ve got the right picture here – not even sure these are the same kind of swingers.  When many men are on one women, the other women are just sitting around being ignored?  Back in the day when men were the focus, were several women on one man while other men were being ignored?

My guess on the focus switch is that women less fear seeming slutty today.  Whereas once swinging women might have been with several men in one night, they drew the line at being seen doing many men at once.  Now that line has moved.

Added 9a: Apparently, men in couples mostly initiate the move to swinging, but some women become very enthusiastic converts, and become the female centers.  In the past such women were less visibly slutty, with one man at a time.  Many men are overconfident, and learn they attract few women at such events.

Tagged as: ,

Prefer Fem Babes?

By Robin Hanson · January 27, 2010 1:00 pm · Comments (32)

People often talk as if they are extremely concerned about health, and would give up a great deal of everything else to get just a bit more health.  “When you’ve got your health, you’ve got just about everything.” This sort of justification is often offered for spending vast sums on apparently ineffective end-of-life medicine.

So I think it important to ponder our strong disinterest in big ways we could improve health.  For example, women very consistently live longer than men.  In the US, Australia, Japan, Spain, etc. they live 4-7 years longer; studies that control for many other factors typically find males dying about twice as often.

Yet we see almost no interest in preferring female children on the basis that they will live longer.  We see parents prefer to gender balance their kids, and in some cultures parents prefer males.  Do parents not care how long their kids live, do they think male lives are worth more per year, to compensate for fewer years, or what?

See also Bryan on gender imbalances less harmful than supposed.

Tagged as: ,

Married Sex

By Robin Hanson · December 6, 2009 4:40 pm · Comments (145)

“Oh, my God! You’re actually getting married in a few hours! I mean, everything’s gonna be all different. Carla, you never have to have sex again except for when you actually want to.”  Elliot from Scrubs.

Husbands often complain about too little sex:

One in five couples, he says, have a sexless marriage (having sex 10 or fewer times per year) and that if they want to get out of this painful rut, they’ll have to work together. … “The man says ‘Why don’t we have more sex?’ And the woman says ‘Why don’t we have more intimacy?’ ” he explains. … Most often, he says, the problem is much more mundane: “The sexual charge no longer is there.”

Well the charge must be there for him, or he wouldn’t ask.  So the charge isn’t there for her; what does she want?   The authors of Why Women Have Sex:

Women’s sexual attraction tends to be far more nuanced. It’s affected by … how a man smells … sense of humor and confidence, social status … other women’s judgments of how attractive he is … in addition to the visual cues. … Some women reported having sex to give someone else an S.T.D. or to extract revenge on someone who had wronged them. … Young women today … had sex just for the pleasure of it, … they wanted to be sexually experienced and add “another notch on their belt”; they had sex because they were competitive with other women—they wanted to win; and they were curious—they had sex just to see what it was like with men of different ages, ethnicities, careers, and penis sizes. …

I’m personally betting on the “Mr. Right Hypothesis,” which suggests that women use sexual orgasm, in part, as a mate selection device. Men who are attentive to the woman, sexually unselfish, take the time to learn what turns her on, etc., tend to make good partners and possibly good dads. … Some women came to the conclusion, after being with one partner for several years, that they were just not very sexual creatures. Then when they switched to a different partner, all of a sudden they started to blossom sexually. … Women are all different in their sexual needs. Don’t assume that what worked in the last relationship will be as effective in the next.

This complexity allows women to be honestly confused about what they want, but it can also hide motivated differences between what women say or think they want, and what really drives their choices.  For example, reduced sex might come from wives respecting husbands less than before, from seeing overly willing wives as lower in status, or from withholding sex to gain bargaining power on other issues.

The most emailed NYT article today is Elizabeth Weil’s account of trying to improve her marriage: Continue Reading "Married Sex" »

Tagged as: , ,

Do Men Hurt More?

By Robin Hanson · November 24, 2009 3:10 pm · Comments (157)

I wrote:

Biologically, cuckoldry is a bigger reproductive harm than rape, so we should expect a similar intensity of inherited emotions about it.  If 2+% of women were raped and we had a reliable cheap way to identify the guilty party, don’t you think we’d require that?

Many were offended at my suggesting cuckolding hurts a man remotely as much as rape hurts a woman.  Reasons I heard:

  • what the cuckold doesn’t know can’t hurt him
  • lots of men don’t mind raising genetically unrelated kids
  • rape victims are more socially disapproved of
  • rape has direct physical effects, while cuckoldry does not
  • rape victims are more often diagnosed “post traumatic stress”
  • rape victims they know seem more expressively upset

Let’s consider these last two arguments.  We all know that women tend to be more expressive about their complaints – you can’t beat ‘em for wailing and gnashing of teeth.  But the fact that men act more stoic and complain less doesn’t mean they hurt less.  To economists, the relevant standard is willingness to pay, and by this standard new results suggest men hurt more from most harms:

What’s a marriage worth? To an Aussie male, about $32,000. That’s the lump sum Professor Paul Frijters says the man would need to receive out of the blue to make him as happy as his marriage will over his lifetime. An Aussie woman would need much less, about $16,000.  But when it comes to divorce, the Aussie male will be so devastated it would be as if he had lost $110,000. An Aussie woman would be less traumatised, feeling as if she had lost only $9000. …  The lifetime boost to happiness that flows from a birth – for the mother around $8700, for the father $32,600. …  The death of a spouse or child causes a woman $130,900 worth of grief. … It costs a man $627,300.

HT to Katja Grace.  I’d bet that male willingness to pay to avoid cuckoldry is not much less than female willingness to pay to avoid rape.

Added 10:30p: I’d prefer to be raped rather than cuckolded; any other men have a preference?

Added 6:30p: Here is data on men being more stoic.

Added 3Dec: Roissy did a poll of his male readers; over 3/4 prefer rape to cuckoldry.

Tagged as: ,

Require Baby Paternity Test

By Robin Hanson · November 22, 2009 11:35 pm · Comments (151)

The most extensive and authoritative report … concluded that 2 percent of men with “high paternity confidence” — married men who had every reason to believe they were their children’s father — were, in fact, not biological parents. Several studies indicate that the rate appears to be far higher among unmarried fathers. …

At a federally convened symposium on the increase in paternity questions, a roomful of child-welfare researchers, legal experts, academics and government administrators agreed that much pain could be avoided if paternity was accurately established in a baby’s first days. Several suggested that DNA paternity tests should be routine at birth, or at least before every paternity acknowledgment is signed and every default order entered.  …

The same care that hospitals take ensuring that the right mother is connected to the right newborn — footprints, matching ID bands, guarded nurseries, surveillance cameras — should be taken to verify that the right man is deemed father.

More here, and HT to Roissy, who supports mandatory paternity testing at birth, as do I. After all:

Most states … have their own mandatory newborn screening programs … Almost all states now screen for more than 30 disorders.

Most of those disorders are much rarer than 2%, and we have a far stronger reason to expect market failure for paternity testing than for the other required tests.  Men are clearly reluctant to request a paternity test at birth because doing so sends a bad signal: Continue Reading "Require Baby Paternity Test" »

Tagged as: , ,

Power Beats Happiness

By Robin Hanson · October 18, 2009 8:00 pm · Comments (23)

From Time’s new cover:   TimeCover1

If women had known that more power would be bundled with less happiness, would they have knowingly chosen this bundle?  Seems to me the obvious answer is: yes, if they had made the choice incrementally and in private, and hence in near mode.   But perhaps no, if they had made the choice visibly together all at once for a distant future, in far mode.   People seem to choose other things over happiness all the time, but this is somewhat at odds with their ideal self-conception.  Ideally people say they want happiness, but really they choose power.   Which choice reflects their “real” preference?

The new data showing women are less happy is from Wolfers and Stevenson – more here.

Tagged as: , ,

Explaining Unequal Inequality Aversion

By Robin Hanson · September 27, 2009 10:30 am · Comments (79)

My post Thursday on Men’s Rights has spawned 119 comments so far, suggesting I could be clearer on my position.  So here goes.

My interests starts mainly from being puzzled by what kinds of inequality bother people, and what kinds do not.  In much of social science, gender, race/ethnicity, and class are such overwhelming issues that someone like the political scientist blogger Paul Gowder states his positions on his about page.  And most discussion of these “sensitive” categories is about various associated unequal and presumed unfair outcomes.  Policy discussions are often overwhelmed by concern for how policies may differentially effect sensitive categories.  And intellectuals face enormous social retribution should they ever be seen as speaking generally and negatively about a presumed unfairly maligned sensitive group.

Yet other “insensitive” categories are associated with huge inequalities, which few folks seem interested in talking about, much less considering how policy might influence.  There is no social pressure whatsoever against maligning these groups.  Especially striking are inequalities in attractiveness as a friend, lover, etc. not mediated by sensitive categories.  These factors include physical appearance, vigor, charisma, personality, height, etc.  Folks are well aware such inequalities exist, but have little concern about them, and no interest in policies to reduce them.

An especially striking example is inequality among men in their ability to attract women as lovers.  If you don’t like “alpha/beta” labels, then call it what you will, but there are consistent correlations among men in this regard, which are consistently correlated with insensitive categories.  While this inequality has large consequences for utility and happiness, there is no interest in reducing it, and people feel quite comfortable insulting these type of “losers”.

This is the phenomena I was struggling with in my post on Thursday.  I suggested a partial explanation:

By sympathizing with creatures who suffer in ways that kids might suffer, people signal their parental nurturing instincts.  And beta men look better by acting altruistic toward creatures that women feel sympathy for. .. But women who sympathized with sex-deprived beta males actually might give them sex, which would not exactly impress the men these women prefer.  So since women are built to have little sympathy for sex-starved betas, betas don’t gain by showing sympathy to other betas.  And since alphas gain little from showing altruism, literally no one cares.

But I’m way way open to other theories.  Got any?

Tagged as: , ,

Thursday on Men’s Rights

By Robin Hanson · September 24, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (132)

The Man Who is Thursday has Roissy’s insight, but without the swagger.  Read Thursday on who won the sex revolution, how to find a virgin, how social conservatives got it wrong, and why church guys do fine. Here is Thursday on men’s rights:

Men’s rights will never take off for the following reasons:

  1. It is hard for men to play the victim card without looking weak and therefore loserish. Most men would rather just suffer in silence than admit their weakness. … (You just can’t admit that, while your future wife was out shagging a couple alphas, you yourself could barely get laid.)
  2. There are all sorts of men who will chivalrously jump to a women’s defense. …
  3. Alpha males run everything … hence feminists … [can] point out how “men” are the big winners in our society. …
  4. The most talented and articulate men have little incentive to speak out … lends a further loserish cast to the proceedings.
  5. Most beta males are actually pretty happy … a lot … really do prefer XBox 360 to sex. …

Nothing will happen to reform our truly corrupt Western societies until something goes seriously, overwhelmingly wrong. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better, if it ever does.

He’s largely on target, but I think Thursday misses the main factor: no one gains by showing they care about sex-deprived beta males. By sympathizing with creatures who suffer in ways that kids might suffer, people signal their parental nurturing instincts.  And beta men look better by acting altruistic toward creatures that women feel sympathy for:

Men reported to indulge in selfless behaviours were found more attractive to women as both potential long-term partners and, to a lesser extent, for “flings”.  “Selflessness makes men of otherwise low to moderate attractiveness sexier, but not men who were already considered very attractive,” she said.

But women who sympathized with sex-deprived beta males actually might give them sex, which would not exactly impress the men these women prefer.  So since women are built to have little sympathy for sex-starved betas, betas don’t gain by showing sympathy to other betas.  And since alphas gain little from showing altruism, literally no one cares.

Hat tip to Rob Wiblin.  And for the record, I will make the hard admission of Thursday’s point 1.

Added 5:30p: I don’t really believe in “rights”; I take rights talk to really be complaints by a group about their roles and how they are treated.  Many other groups have complained successfully, gaining revised treatment.  Father complaints about custody treatment, beta male complains about sex-starvation, and many other male complaints all seem to me legitimate candidates for group complaints.  This isn’t to say that such complaints will succeed, however, nor that they should.

Added 27Sept: Today’s post elaborates my position.

Tagged as: , ,

Men Can Empathize, But Don’t

By Robin Hanson · August 25, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (7)

On an empathic accuracy task (inferring the thoughts and feelings of a target person) … women’s advantage held only when women were given a task assessing their feelings of sympathy toward the target prior to performing the empathic accuracy task. … Payments in exchange for accuracy improved the performance of both men and women and wiped out any difference between men’s and women’s performances. Together, the results suggest that gender differences in empathic accuracy performance are the result of motivational differences and are not due to simple differences of ability between men and women.

More here.  This isn’t exactly good news for men.  Women who think men can’t empathize probably demand less empathy than women who realize men are fully capable of empathy.  Hat tip to Robert Wiblin.

Tagged as: ,