Continuums

"most things that we think of as categorical are really continuous"

That's a line in this post, What Is a Woman? at Statistical Modeling.  A lot of what they post is over my head, but enough isn't to make for rewarding reading.  The phrase captures a belief I've had. It goes along with believing that most generalizations could be rephrased statistically, as in "Americans believe..." There's a statistical phrasing for "Americans"--is it "the average American", "the young American", "white Americans", "living Americans" etc. etc.  And what they believe can also be rephrased.

Critical Patriarchal Theory

 Of course, it's "critical race theory" but what if we applied the same sort of thinking to the "patriarchy", defining the term as the belief that men and women are different and must be treated differently in some or all components of society, and that history shows and ratifies such treatment. 

To me it seems that critical patriarchal theory describes reality, at least some of it.

What Are Socially Disadvantaged Farmers?

 CRS has an explanation which should cause every reader to shed a tear for the poor FSA personnel who have to deal with the different definitions.

Here's a table showing the numbers:

A Sad Photo of Joyous Wedding

The Post had a picture of a wedding today, which I can't find online.  It was illustrating a Lisa Bonos story on a convergence of BLM and the wedding in Philadelphia.  All very joyous and feel-good, except when you look closely at the one photo of the wedding celebrants.

If I counted correctly there were 18 women and 7 men in the party.  I can make assumptions about the cause of the apparent gender imbalance, but whatever the reasons IMHO it casts a shadow on the event.

Satisfaction With 911 Calls

What's surprising in this survey is the uniformity in responses across ethnic and gender lines.  Though  that's good, what isn't the percent saying the police improved the situation.  (Might be because the situation had dissolved by the time the police got there, at least in part.)

College Life as It Used To Be II

Posted the other day on college life in the 17th century.  Now I'll mention an aspect of it in the 20th century--specifically panty raids. 

I was reminded of that 1950's fad by a short mention in the media re: Kavanagh--apparently Yale men raided women's rooms for their lingerie.  That seems to differ from what men were doing in the early 1950's, which was gather under the women's dorms and beg for panties.  I suppose the big difference is the fact we had women's dorms then; today there's no similar concentration of women to exploit.  The underlying motivations were likely the same.

Comparative Advantage in People

The economists have an ancient law which they call "comparative advantage".  Essentially it says a country should do whatever it does best at, even if its best is poor, poorer than other countries.  If countries follow the rule, they'll end up trading goods at the lowest possible price.  For example, American workers are good at assembling stuff, but they're also good at creating Disney films.  Chinese workers are pretty fair at assembling stuff, but they aren't not good at creating Disney films.  So the answer is obvious.

The NYTimes has an op-ed today which (mis)applies, without saying so, the theory to people.  Barbara Oakey notes that academically girls are good at reading and writing, better than boys.  But tests show that girls and boys have roughly equal aptitudes for math.  She argues that girls, finding that they do better than boys at reading/writing will think they're less good at math and so choose to focus on reading/writing and slight their math.  Her answer is to resist this, and to push girls to study math more.

Now Prof. Oakey is more focused on choices before college, not the ultimate choice of occupation. But drawing on the comparative advantage idea, she may be pushing a rock up the hill.  She ignores the psychology on the other side: boys will find themselves outclassed at reading and writing by the girls, so will tend to focus on math. 

[Caveats: all this is very general, phrased in ideal types, not real people.]

Race, Gender and Ethnicity Data Collection

USDA has its request for comment on its collection of data on its customers race, gender and ethnicity published here.  Deadline is September 21.  So far there have been no comments.  As an exercise in willpower I'm withholding comment on that.

From the notice, an explanation of why:

Summary of Collection: Section 14006 and 14007 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, 7 U.S.C. 8701 (referred to as the 2008 Farm Bill) establishes a requirement for the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to annually compile application and participation rate data regarding socially disadvantaged farmers or ranchers by computing for each program of the USDA that serves agriculture producers and landowners (a) raw numbers of applicants and participants by race, ethnicity, and gender, subject to appropriate privacy protection, as determined by the Secretary; and (b) the application and participation rate, by race, ethnicity and gender as a percentage of the total participation rate of all agricultural producers and landowners for each county and State in the United States.

Vilsack Undermining Rural Values

This has gotten a lot of attention from the right, including giving Rush Limbaugh a lot of laughs (and showing he doesn't understand rural life very well).

Our neighborhood store was run by two middle-aged women, who lived behind the store (until it burned).  What was the nature of their relationship?  Who knew, certainly not I. Nor did we care.  I remember being astonished when a co-worker at my summer job (who'd had surgery for ulcers which didn't improve his disposition any) commented on them with a sneer.

Three Female Heads of Government?

This possibility was mentioned in a Washington Post piece on June 30. With Angela Merkel head of German government, Hillary Clinton currently favored to be elected president, and Theresa May the frontrunner for UK prime minister, we could see it happen.  Interesting to speculate on the impact on the dynamics of G-7, G-8, G-20, etc. etc. meetings which typically these days just have Merkel surrounded by business suits.

In this context I recall an article on Sen. Mikulski, who organized a weekly/monthly? luncheon for female senators which was credited with helping them to assume a greater role in the Senate. (IIRC she was an early, maybe the first elected female senator in the current era.  Just checked wikipedia--I thought maybe I was slighting Nancy Kassebaum (KS) and I was.  She and Hawkins were the female senators present when Mikulski was elected.)

Assuming it happens, I predict there will be multiple articles on the issue of how a common gender has affected the dynamics of the group.

[Corrected: Paula Hawkins served only one term, ending on the day Mikulski was sworn in.  So it was a bipartisan club of two from 1987 to 1992.]

Bad Weekend and Throwing Like Girls

DC area had a bad sports Sunday (Nats, Skins) and a bad zoo Sunday (panda cub).  But James Fallows has had an interesting sequence of posts on the subject of gender differences in how people throw.  A good deal of evidence for culture/training, which makes sense to me.

Kevin Drum Misses the Best Info

Kevin links to a study of SAT scores.  Which major had the highest math score?  Which major had the highest reading score?  But he didn't highlight this from the conclusions:

2. Overachievers exist in most majors, with low SAT scores but very high GPAs. These
overachievers are disproportionately female.
3. Underachievers exist in all majors, with high SAT scores but very low GPAs. These
underachievers are disproportionately male.

I'm sure we're all surprised by these results, but maybe it explains why women are in a majority on college campuses these days.

Creeping Pollyannaism

I've a tendency to be optimistic which can lead me into errors. There's enough good news in the world that I can become Pollyanna.  In this respect, I want to link to a post on Barking Up the Wrong Tree which summarizes several different studies on various aspects of discrimination, leading off with a reminder that it still exists, based on using job applicants matched as to characteristics, except for race.

USDA Data Collections--EEO Data

From a USDA submission to OMB for information collection:

Data will be collected through a questionnaire to determine the race, ethnicity and gender of farmers and ranchers who apply for and who participate in USDA programs and services. The data is also necessary to provide USDA and its agencies with sound data on the demographics of its constituents. The data will enable USDA to (a) develop a baseline on its applicants and participants, (b) assist in planning for and implementing appropriate responses to the needs of its constituents, and (c) in the conduct of oversight and evaluation of civil rights compliance. The information will be used by the Office of Advocacy and Outreach and the agencies' outreach offices to determine if socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers are being equitably served by USDA programs. Failure to collect this information will have a negative impact on USDA's outreach activities and could result in an inability of the agencies to equitably deliver programs and services to applicant and producers.

 Comments will follow.

Gender Differences

John Tierney reports in today's NYTimes science section that research seems to show gender differences are more evident in modern, progressive societies, and less evident in more "traditional" societies. If you're into the subject, it's a must read.

As for me, I'm not surprised (of course, how often does a supercilious blogger ever admit to surprise). A good part of the thing about modern society is there's more space for the individual, more room to "find oneself", to "self-actualize", or whatever other phrase is now current. That should mean there's more differences along all dimensions, not just the gender one.

Of course, that undermines the theory from the 1960's that a male-dominated society was responsible for creating the differences. Which may be why a semi-conservative like Tierney is open to these reports.

Maintenance

From a Post article today:

In 2003, the FBI used a $25 million grant to give bomb squads across the nation state-of-the-art computer kits, enabling them to instantly share information about suspected explosives, including weapons of mass destruction.

Four years later, half of the Washington area's squads can't communicate via the $12,000 kits, meant to be taken to the scene of potential catastrophes, because they didn't pick up the monthly wireless bills and maintenance costs initially paid by the FBI. Other squads across the country also have given up using them.

Given my tendency to generalize, I'd say there's a general rule at work here--called NIH, or "not invented here". This sounds as if it was a great idea, at least in 2003. But you give a kit to someone, it may not be used. That's particularly true if suspected WMD's don't show up very often. (I'd guess there's a strong correlation between the number of suspicious packages discovered in an area and whether the jurisdiction paid the maintenance/upgrade costs.) It's one reason for cost-sharing as a governmental/bureaucratic strategy--if someone gets excited enough about an idea to kick in some of their own money, they may stay excited enough to maintain the idea over the long run.

NIH is a problem with foreign aid, domestic aid, and probably children ("probably" since I don't have any). I remember playing more with stuff that I could create games (mostly war games) with than with the fancier toys I got. I wonder whether NIH is also more of a male thing?