First thing when you go on field-work is to find a decent place to stay. Last time in Paris I was living in Saint-Germain de Prés area: almost perfect had it not been for all those cockroaches in my flat.
This time I am in London (yes, I try to avoid places that are not glamorous and posh). Before going further, a short introduction about myself.
I am positivist, a libertarian and a neorealist (in IR theory). In other words, the worst of the scum according to European enlightened (?), tolerant (??) and pluralist (???) social scientists.
Why am I saying this? This has to do with my room-search in London town.
While room-hunting this time, I found it interesting that most people discriminate against men: women are generally preferred for flatsharing. I think there are good reasons, by the way. Women are more tidy and clean (my experience: I know, the sample is truncated, limited and biased). They are more precise and — just to say all truth — are also less likely to rape you middle of the room (you never know: analytical logic). If you are a woman, I think you may consider also this detail.
Feminists would say all this has to do with the social construction of genders in post-modernity (???). To me, the fact that women are more tidy and clean across countries, cultures, classes and professions suggest that there is something more (eventually, they are just better in this, exactly like I am better in cooking than my brother…?).
In fact, if I were a girl, I would probably also prefer sharing my flat with women. Actually, already now I prefer women as flatmates: first, they can introduce me to other girls (so far, never happened: but it’s worth trying). Second, the house is likely to have a higher level of hygiene (I don’t really like tuberculosis). Finally, if I don’t do the cleaning, I know somebody else will do it (free-riding).
Anyway, if we take the feminist/critical stand point, what I witnessed is discrimination — period. Men are discriminated. Discrimination is bad and should be banned: right? As a libertarian, I think most of the times, market forces solve everything on their own. I know, you have injustice, but you have efficiency. In fact, I think this is what happens: men will pay higher prices (don’t they have higher salaries?) or will end up in the worst places. In contrast, women will find an accommodations at faster rates, cheaper prices and, probably, in better shapes. During my search, this is precisely what I witnessed.
In any case, I don’t think there is anything inherently bad in all this. It’s life. Like it’s life that some people are better-looking than me and some others are not, or that some people are more intelligent. However, I would like to hear what feminists have to say about this: should we have regulations that ban these discriminatory practices? Should we educate women (and men) that men are not different in flat-sharing? Who monitors? Who enforces? Who pays for the economic and social costs (think how fun is to be compelled to take a man as flatmate and then your place turns into a disaster). How moral/legitimate is it to compel people to do of their own things that they don’t want? Finally, are we really sure to get a better outcome?
If you remained serious till this point, let me know… I am really curious to listen to compelling (?) arguments supporting feminist theories (??).
P.S. I really felt discriminated when this 5 Australian girls-house did not want me in just because I was a man. I felt so powerless against this overarching structure of discriminatory practices and norms.
Andrea Gilli is a PhD student in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, EUI. He holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in Politics and Economics from the University of Turin. At the EUI Andrea works on armaments procurement and coöperation in Europe.
Dear Andrea,
I would, on the first point, agree with Milla. In most cases the deliberate aggressive presentation — or the mythification – of the self, which you tend to cultivate, more often tends to distance people than the fact that you are perceived as a man.
That there are, in fact, often more open doors to you if you are a women, does not have to do with the fact that women are cleaner — an assumption I would question – but might reflect, in the case you are being rejected by women, an uncertainty which women, apparently, still feel about having men they do not know, in their everyday privacy. That would interest me more and if you are honestly curious about the fact that you get rejected and not only as a offense to your tender ego, why don’t you just ask them.
Maria
This might of some help…they are all women but I am sure they will welcome you and you won’t feel discriminated:
http://www.eui.eu/ServicesAndAdmin/AcademicService/PracticalInformation/CounsellingService/Index.aspx
Dear (?) Andrea,
I’ve read your article (?). First, I was angry, then frustrated, then angry again… then confused… is he kidding? (???),
trying to be ironic? (???), should I reply? (???), should I just let go? (???)
But I can’t. Call me frustrated, call me clean, call me woman. But I have to write something.
So you couldn’t find a decent flat in London. Welcome to life, it happens to the best of us. So they didn’t want you.
So you think it’s because you are a man.
It might be. I don’t say it is not the case…
And if it was, it surely be unfair. But after reading your article, I can tell you something: there might be other reasons.
Just think about it.
Best of luck with the search,
Eunate
PS: what is with the (?) ??? (???) ?
Andrea,
As a man, what I have to say is that your house-hunting problems were not because of being a man…
Just because of being stupid.
Dear Andrea,
smart shot, very italian, berlusconian, I’d dare to say…
Maybe those frigid Australian feminists do not appreciate your fine sense of humor, poor girls…
Sure they do not know the subtle difference between liberalism, libertarianism and liberism. This is probably the reason of their discriminatory behaviour.
Be patient, and remember that even in the most glamouros and poshest places it is possible to come across brains which should actually be drained.
Indeed, you should feel lucky for not being compelled to share your flat with some obsessively hygienist females.
And if you really do not like to do the cleaning and are afraid of tubercolosis from cockroaches… well, don’t worry, since the efficient market offers a lot of cheap foreign domestic workers who certainly will do the dirty job without discriminate you, as long as you share your salary with them…
A salary which will certainly be very high when those careless and authoritarian European social scientists will notice your fresh perspective on the lib-lab debate. You seriously found the solution to face the growing economic and social costs of the welfare state. They will probably place you side by side with scientists as enlightened as Herbert Spencer, a profound connoiseur of the processes of life on this planet.
You have all my solidarity and respect
Dear Andrea,
My solidarity. Good news is: there is a way to dodge such awful anti-men gender discrimination in housing… be gay!!! And so take advantage of the enlightened, tolerant and pluralistic Europe. C’mon, which Australian girl will resist to share her life and flat with a positivist, libertarian, neorealist handosme Italian gay, knowing that both share the same view regarding clean environments and germs? And then, just imagine: You spent your days happy in your flat, sharing all emotions and experiences with the girls, safe from being sexually arrased by any male idiot, and most important, feeling that no one there is discriminating you in any way. Will you accept ANY man to come and put an end to that piece of heaven?
While Luis and Sabrina replied with wit and sarcasm, most of other comments give a good hint of what academic pluralism and personal respect is. Congratulations.
In any case, in London, most of ads for houses explicitly say “for women only”. This is discrimination, to me. I wanted to hear your “enlightened comments” on this point. So far, nobody really replied.
I think this says a lot about who has an argument and who wants just to make arguments.
aa
ps: while the stupidity of my comment is self-evident, I would like to point out the appropriateness of Elena’s. In order to debunk my argument you rely on a discriminatory comment that vilify those suffering from psychological and neurological disorders. Congratulations: this tells a lot about your moral standards. I want to vomit.
The comments to this post speaks loud about how tolerant Europeans are…
Since not only we are intolerant, but also terribly pedantic, I’d like to point out that “comments” (plural) “speak” (plural), rather than “speaks” (singular).
PS: Andrea, I thought that you would appreciate Elena’s dark sense of humour.
Dear Andrea,
I’ll strive to be more serious now and unfold what appears self-evident, at least to me, but probably to the others as well. That won’t be fun, also because my english is very out of practice, sorry.
If you want to start a seriuos debate about policy issues in an academic context, first of all you should not use aggressive, sarcastic and provocative language nor denigrate peculiar categories of people. If you wish do that, you should choose other audiences. If you do that, you can’t expect respect, tolerance, appropriateness, morality. At best, you’ll obtain some annoyed attention from the few people who still believe in participation only. Consider yourself lucky for that, since indifference is much worse. It could seem a victory, insted it leads to isolation and so far to weakness.
About your argument, well, to me you made some considerable errors.
You stated that there is a discrimination against men on the ground of your personal search for a room in London. You did not bother to explain your methodology, except a vague hint to preferences expressed in most ads for places to rent, which is easily exceptionable since, e.g., you did not clarify what kind of advertisement you took into account, and why. Nor you adduced hard data about population, sample, and so on.
Then you addressed some possible reasons for that assumed discrimination, mainly referring to assumed facts, to common sense, or to your personal experiences and preferences, moreover admitting that “the sample is truncated, limited, and biased”. This looks chaotic and contradictory. And to me a little bit funny also, since you admitted that those “facts” are actually a product of bias and then criticized the feminist theory about social construction of genders, which is precisely the production and replication of gender stereotypes. You probably meant to be pedagogical, suggesting that feminist methodology is weak. Well, do you seriously want to equate an individual search for a room to rent with a collective and decennial research on, e.g., employment rates or wage inequalities, to mention few? Naïve, at best. And since you present yourself as a young cultured Italian, quite disturbing.
Then you affirmed that this assumed facts you witnessed would be defined as discrimination by feminist scientists. Well, maybe. You should actually sit down and examine your work with a feminist scientist. And this is probably what you are looking for, but let me tell you that doing the baggart using some word games presented as analytic logic doesn’t help.
Then you noted that from the feminist/critical stand point discrimination is considered negatively and should be banned. Grossly right. Although let me object that feminists share this point with other egalitarian schools of thought.
Finally you revealed your goal. That is, you do not agree with feminist egalitarianism, since you are a libertarian and then you believe that market forces solve efficiently all problems, although with some injustice, which is not a problem since “it’s life”.
Honestly I find your argument dated and simplistic. Unfortunately I have to be brief, so I’ll write down just some remarks.
Firstly, libertarianism (politics) is not a synonymous of liberism (economics). That is, libertarianism is not about the elimination of norms at all, but it is about the maintenance of decision-making process within the group which will have to comply with those norms. And of course it is about avoiding the institutionalization of power relations in decision-making, since insitutionalization reduces the effectiveness of norms.
Secondly, injustice could be efficient, i.e. could work, but solely until the injust system is stable. Which is quite unlikely, given human history. Moreover, injustice could be efficent but it’s unlikely to be effective, i.e. it does not work well, given human nature.
Thirdly, life in the broadest sense of the word, has much more to do with change than to stasis. Let me try a little word game: life is not, but becomes.
About your final questions, I point out that omnis comparatio claudicat, and that they are far too simplistic again. Anyway, my short answers are:
Yes, regulations about gender discrimination are necessary at least in the economical scope.
Yes, we should educate people to reject gender stereotypes when they choose their behaviour.
The monitoring process will happen exactly like in other scopes, with all the well-known fortunes related to it.
So the enforcement, or, better, the implementation.
The economic cost will be paid by the rebalancing of the system itself, and so the social ones.
It is both moral and legitimate to ask people to respect widely approved social norms, since humans can live in a society only, obviously depending on the means used to foster the coöperation and letting everyone choose about the possibility to quit that particular social group.
You will never be sure about the outcome of a policy, or an individual action as well. You see problems, you try solutions, obviously as wisely as you can, given your experience. That’s all.
I’d like my answers to be widen by more experienced feminist scientists, so please find some, I’m sure you are sorrounded by many
Best wishes
Would you mind giving a definition of “injustice”? A definition, not examples. I have a hard time understanding what you mean with “injustice could be efficient, i.e. could work, but solely until the injust system is stable. […] Moreover, injustice could be efficent but it’s unlikely to be effective, i.e. it does not work well, given human nature.“
Thanks.
Dear Martin,
what I wrote concerns the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.
Something is efficient when it simply works, but it is effective when it works well.
A perceived injustice could work for a while, but history shows that humans tend to revolt against injustice and to establish a more desirable set-up.
Injustice to me is a perceived iniquity or unfairness.
Sabrina, thanks, but you didn’t answer my question. Injustice is a “perceived inequity” or “unfairness”. I guess I should ask now what is inequity, what is unfairness.
*iniquity, sorry.
Intolerant European has proven that all Americans are dumb and ignorant. This is how the story goes around there, right?
OMG… this thread is getting more and more pathetic. “Dark humor”? What are you talking about? In any civil society, using a disadvantaged group in order to deride someone else would be considered offensive.
That none of you was troubled by Elena’s reference, and that some even stepped up to defend her is just shocking. Yes, people with psychological or neurological problems are a disadvantaged group. I assume none of you noticed, you tolerant Europeans…
So, let me use Elena’s “dark humor”, with a different disadvantaged group. Maybe you’ll get it. Elena, you should go here, they will be able to take care of your problems:
http://www.nads.org/pages_new/adsc.html
Please try to refrain from personally insulting each other as much as we can, guys. There’s no need to launch personal attacks on others like this. Andrea is free to express his (academic and/or personal) view, and so are visitors.
J.
Dear Antonio,
your reaction is really interesting. Both, Andrea and you talked about “psychological and neurological disorders/problems”. Now, counselling has nothing to do with that. Neurological disorders leading to psychological unbalances are treated by psychiatrists/neurologists/psycholigists , whereas patients with psychological disorders are usually treated or should be treated by psychologists/psychiatrists. Counselling is something else. It is defined as a professional activity which aims at re-orienting, supporting persons in order to help them in developing their potentials, stimulating their capacity to make decisions, and promoting positive attitudes. Counselling deals with non-specific problems related to restricted ‘contexts’ (family, work, relationships). It’s more about problem-solving in particularly difficult (or perceived as such) situations than about neurological and psychological disorders…
Sociologically, your association between counselling and mental/neurological disorders tells a lot about the meanings ans symbolic nuances which are attached to the idea of turning to someone in order to solve problems.
You know…the logical consequence of your statements would be that persons who consult EUI counsellors are to be defined as neurologically and psychologically ill…which would made the EUI a sort of huge psychiatric centre…
All this just to say that, according to me, Andrea’s tones and aggressiveness needed a bit of contextually restricted, non-specific reorientation…
Anyway…I totally agree with Sabrina’s points…
Uh sorry Antonio for the mistake…I was actually replying to American leader (wow…very nice nickname…)
Elena, from your first comment I realized you were a miserable person. You just proved me right. Your inner racism against people with (yes) psychological and neurological problems makes me angry, horrified, disgusted… you want to defend minorities, right? but then you feel the right to use some minorities as target of your non-funny jokes, and to deride others. You really suck.
Your words-game about psychologic and neurological problems tells a lot about how naïve you are. In every developed country, counseling is a service offered by professional psychologists. Not by yoga-trainers or by philosophers. Why? Because you don’t know what problems a student might have and you need someone who is at least able to identify them, and — in the case — suggest that the patient go visit a specialist. So, the first part of your comment was bullshit. Hopefully you realized that while writing it.
But what stroke me the most is this passage:
“the logical consequence of your statements would be that persons who consult EUI counsellors are to be defined as neurologically and psychologically ill…which would made the EUI a sort of huge psychiatric centre…”
Nash had psychiatric problems, does it make a freak? Does it make less genius than he was? Would EUI ask him to leave because otherwise EUI would be a psychiatric center?
WHat you wrote is just disgusting, and you should really feel ashamed of it. According to you, people with some psychological, neurological and or psychiatric disorders would give EUI a bad name. I assume you have not read any of Kay Redfield Jaminson’s works, and especially not the one on “enthusiasm”. Apparently, you don’t know that the very people with these disorders are the most creative. That it’s their childish enthusiasm that has often led human race forward…
I know this is a lost battle. There are closed-minded people. Those who discriminate against minorities. You cannot do much to change them. You believe that people with different types of mental illnesses are freaks who deserve to be made fun of. That they are some sort of sub-humans who would make EUI a bad place. You know what? I just feel pity for you. I hope you’ll never realize one day.
Dear ‘American leader’, this is your second and final warning. Using a disrespectful tone like this is not acceptable and you will be blocked from commenting in the future if your personal attacks persist. If you can refrain from this, your contributions are very welcome.
J.
PS: you would have done yourself and us a better service by apologizing for your non-appropriate comment, and for its derisive tone of a disadvantaged group.
Dear American leader,
I am not going into this. You don’t know me, you don’t know my history and I do not accept to be insulted in that way. Believe me, I couldn’t care less of eui’s bad name…I remember well the time in which it appeared that the EUI’s ‘good name’ was more important than anything else, especially more important than the tragic consequences to which psychological problems may lead. I remember well how it was like and I don’t take any lesson from a person who can’t do better than insulting.
I have the impression that most of the audience didn’t get the point.
Andrea is using an example to make a point about the (non-)scientific methodology of many social scientists.
Andrea is saying: there is a systematic bias in the renting market, which consists of preferring to rent a flat to a woman than to a man. I should add, this is common in many countries, I know for sure it is the case in Italy and in Spain.
Now, if you are a social SCIENTIST, the question is: why? There are two kind of answers. The standard answer that I hear from many sociologists and political scientists is, there is discrimination. This discrimination is social-driven, in the sense that the society tends to built in people some ideological construction that bias them in their choice. Hence, the government should step in in order to help the discriminated category, in this case males looking for a flat share, and oblige landlords to rent to males.
Now, Andrea (and myself) clearly don’t subscribe to this non-scientific way of reasoning. If there is a clear bias, there must be something there, it cannot be just that landlords are crazy or racist and hate men because the society (what’s that? no definition…) is putting words in their mouth. Andrea suggests there are good reasons why a landlord might prefer women: they are cleaner and take care of the house, while men tend to be less careful. It is an empirical evidence, I would say, if we look at data. Hence, there is nothing discriminatory about what is happening in the UK renting market: just it is better to rent to women. There is margin for government intervention? no, there is not, why should we subsidize lazy men that do not want to clean, and get them an apartment anyway?
Now, if you just reconsider a lot of literature on discrimination, you will find plenty of cases in which discrimination is not an issue. I have a colleague that did the following research: they call renting ads taken from newspapers. They give a racially biased name (Shaquil or James or Jose’, for example) and look how many appointments they can get. What they find is that landlords prefer to give appointments to white names. They call racial discrimination. Well, that’s not true!!! or at least they don’t have any element to say that. There are simpler explanations: for example, race is a proxy for income, so blacks are usually poorer than whites and more prone to unemployment, meaning that they can get easily in troubles in paying the rent. If you don’t have any other information about the rent-seeker and getting more information is costly for you, of course as a landlord you’ll give appointments only to white names.
That’s the point Andrea was making, it’s a methodological point for social scientists. You should listen to him. If you listen, you will avoid a lot of comments from other disciplines about how non-scientific and ideologically-driven is research in social sciences. Your choice.
Dear Antonio,
we all get the point, but we did not accept the style.
Andrea wrote about gender bias and feminists, not social scientists in general. And the style was sarcastic, certainly not scientific.
And you both wrote not only about methodology but about politics as well, criticizing government policies against discrimination.
Anyway, your version tries to be more reasonable.
So I’ll follow your reasoning.
OK, let’s suppose that there is a widespread gender bias in the rentals market.
By the way, I’d like to read the literature about that.
“Hence, the government should step in in order to help the discriminated category, in this case males looking for a flat share, and oblige landlords to rent to males.“
Not exactly. If organized groups of men looking for a flat to share complain about the discrimination, the government should consider to help them, not necessarily obliging landlords to rent to men. There are other means.
“If there is a clear bias, there must be something there, it cannot be just that landlords are crazy or racist and hate men because the society (what’s that? no definition…) is putting words in their mouth.“
Well, do you mean that behind a bias there is always some truth? Maybe. Sure when scientists believed that the sun was rotating around the earth they were right, if you consider the available means of observation.
By the way, I do not think that a landlord who does not rent to men is crazy or knowingly sexist. He may have had bad experiences with male tenants. Or a friend’s of him may have had one, and told him about that. Which is precisely the case of a socially driven bias, i.e. the social discourse.
“Andrea suggests there are good reasons why a landlord might prefer women: they are cleaner and take care of the house, while men tend to be less careful. It is an empirical evidence, I would say, if we look at data.“
Please show me these data! If it is so easy for any landlord to access them, it will be much more easier for a scientist.
“There is margin for government intervention? no, there is not, why should we subsidize lazy men that do not want to clean, and get them an apartment anyway?.“
I already answered. By the way, what makes you thinking that the only means available to a government is obligation or subsidizing? Never heard about school or media, to mention few?
“What they find is that landlords prefer to give appointments to white names. They call racial discrimination. Well, that’s not true!!! or at least they don’t have any element to say that. There are simpler explanations: for example, race is a proxy for income, so blacks are usually poorer than whites and more prone to unemployment, meaning that they can get easily in troubles in paying the rent.“
Right. But if you are a scientist the question is: why blacks are usually poorer than whites and more prone to unemployement?
The fact that behind discrimination there is almost always a willingness to economic exploitation does not deny the fact that discrimination is produced and reproduced through the social discourse. In analytic logic there are final causes and efficient causes. Both important to cope with a phenomenon.
Let me try an example. If a lion wants to eat you, it is more important to know that he is hungry or what his hunting techniques are?
To end, society is anything regarding human relations, so social sciences are complex and need to be interdisciplinary. Luckily, since divide et impera.
Best wishes to both
Two solutions:
couch-surfing or sex-change.
Comment: your “?” key seems to be stuck.
Dear Sabrina,
I am sorry, but I think that you didn’t get Andrea’s point. Sorry to be so upfront, but this is evident from your reply to Antonio. While I am appreciative of your attempt to address the issue, rather than indulging in personal offense as others did, I cannot fail to notice that your reply is weak, sloppy and problematic. I’ll be a bit lengthy, but possibly I’ll settle the discussion.
You often refer to methodology, social science, academic literature and so forth. I don’t know what your idea of social science is. I’ll tell you what mine is. Social science is about naming bullshit what is bullshit, and naming chocolate what is chocolate. So, it should help us distinguish between the two. A prerequisite is that scholars rely on clear statements, and not vague sentences whose meaning is up to subjective interpretations. With this goal in mind, let’s look at the most problematic of your points.
First you write:
—If organized groups of men looking for a flat to share complain about the discrimination, the government should consider to help them, not necessarily obliging landlords to rent to men. There are other means.—
And what if they don’t complain? It’s not discrimination? Here we have the first problem: what is discrimination? Is it what the non-discriminated see as such? If so, as Elena’s offensive comments show, discriminated people (such as those with mental illnesses) risks being ignored because they are not vocal (few people with these problems go public). However, if discrimination is what supposedly-discriminated people consider as such, then, we reach the paradoxical situation that one needs to complain in order to belong to the “discriminated groups” – even though there might not be sound reasons for. If short people started to complain, they would become a “discriminated group” from the NBA…
Then you claim:
—-I do not think that a landlord who does not rent to men is crazy or knowingly sexist. He may have had bad experiences with male tenants. Or a friend’s of him may have had one, and told him about that. Which is precisely the case of a socially driven bias, i.e. the social discourse.—
No, you are wrong. Bad personal experiences are not “social discourse”. They are bad personal experiences. Period. Social discourse is something different. It’s when people are racist because “society” has created some unfounded beliefs about some racial groups through discourse. Personal experience is, indeed, personal.
You conclude by saying that:
—The fact that behind discrimination there is almost always a willingness to economic exploitation does not deny the fact that discrimination is produced and reproduced through the social discourse… [continue]—-
I will not go over the term “economic exploitation”. Let me just say that economic exploitation, by definition, does not exist, unless in the case of captive labor and imperial trade preferences. People buy and sell because it is convenient for them to do so. Otherwise they wouldn’t. Somebody might gain relatively more and somebody might gain relatively less, but – again – this is not economic exploitation. Sorry for pointing this out, but when I read non-sense I cannot refrain to call it out.
But let’s focus on our discussion.You essentially claim that both “economic exploitation” and “social discourse” might be the causes, and we just cannot disentangle the two, therefore, both must have a causal effect. According to you, that “economic exploitation” is present does not deny that
– discrimination is produced and reproduced through the social discourse. —
Actually, it does. If two explanations are consistent with the same outcome, a social scientist should come up with a research design that allow him or her to identify testable implications of both and test them against the null hypothesis that they do not matter. In this way, he or she will be able to derive which explanation is correct and which is not. Saying that “social discourse” matter does not prove that it does.
How can you we proceed? In the following way. We should ask whether race is a proxy for other variables, and whether some racial groups are treated differently from others. So: are black people on average poorer than white? Are they more prone to unemployment? Also, is it more difficult for black people to find an apartment than for white people? We have four possible outcomes:
1) On average, black people are not poorer than white, and landlords ignore race as a factor.
2) On average, black people are not poorer than white, and landlords consider race when renting out their apartments.
3) On average, black people are poorer than white, and landlords ignore race as a factor.
4) On average, black people are poorer than white, and landlords consider race when renting out their apartment.
These are testable implications that allow us to discern between the two explanations. If data proved that either 1 or 3 are representative of reality, then we would be sure that there is no discrimination as landlords ignore race. Conversely, if data suggested that 2 represents reality, then we would have strong evidence that there is discrimination, and that economic factors do not matter. The “social discourse” argument would be indirectly supported. If data suggested that 4 represents reality, then we would have no discrimination, just actors making economic choices and “economizing” on information..
Antonio’s friend showed that data fits the latter category. Black people tend to have lower incomes and are more prone to unemployment. Landlords use race as a proxy for other variables (income levels). This is not consistent with your “social discourse” argument.
You possibly anticipated this point by asking:
— But if you are a scientist the question is: why blacks are usually poorer than whites and more prone to unemployment? —
Wrong question. Serious social scientific works are preoccupied with only one dependent variable at a time, unless there are serious problem of endogeneity. If I want to know the effect of market liberalization on economic performance, I don’t ask what are the causes of market liberalization. So, if you want to know whether there is racial discrimination in the housing market, you just ask this question, you don’t enquire about the origin of the species. But let’s address your point. I don’t know the answer to your question. But let’s assume that black people are poorer and more prone to unemployment than white because of “social discourse”. Would this prove that there is discrimination also in the housing market? Of course only if you rely on a sloppy understanding of causality. If you are serious about understanding social phenomena you would recognize that, while social discourse concur in explaining income differences among groups, it does not necessarily explain differences in the housing markets. Stress is on “not necessarily”. It might; but until you have demonstrated that it does, you cannot infer causality.
We were speaking about discrimination against men in the housing market. So, let’s go back to that point. Why do young women prefer to live with young men? For a variety of reasons. They feel more comfortable, they have similar taste (no toilet seat up; no bear hair in the sink; etc.), and possibly they have converging expectations (about how clean the house should be and so forth). Now, are these views produced and re-produced by social discourse? Of course they are not. The reaction of your friends above is the most compelling proof. But if you have evidence to prove me wrong please go ahead, I’ll be happy to hear. What you have agreed with is that it is mostly social experiences: girls come to know that guys are pigs in high school and in college, and after college they often prefer to avoid living with a guy. Are all men the same? No. Men are not all the same. But information is scarce and possibly unreliable (which means: it is costly and difficult to gather). So, while I am sure that many girls would love to live with a nice guy like me, they also know that their life will be easier by considering only female applicants, as selection would be much easier.
This is the end of the discussion.
Frederique, what’s actually happening is that women are discriminating men in the housing market, and hence men discriminate women in the labor market as a form of compensation for this. After all, how could men pay higher rents if they didn’t earn more? Right?
Of course not. How can you say that women are discriminated in the labor market? Is it because they have lower wages on average? Or given observable characteristics? What about selection? Comparative advantage? Human capital investment over the life cycle? Unobserved ability?
The point is exactly this, I really don’t understand why some people around here can’t see it yet. Andrea is using a pretty standard argument just reversing the labels, to show that it’s totally senseless.
Dear Frederique,
thank you for your reply.
So, in order: the salary/wage difference between men and women in the labour market is not at all evidence of discrimination. This is exactly the reason I mentioned a bunch of different reasons why average wages can be different.
Second, I reversed the direction of your argument to show that they are both useless. Following down this road, we give ourselves the freedom to say that every time there is some difference in some average outcome, this is evidence of discrimination, and then we look for other differences in other averages to say they are equitable. This is just a distraction from the true important question (see Antonio’s comment): WHY are wages different?
And sure, I used the “men discriminate women” improperly, but it doesn’t matter to my point. However, you are offering a very simple example that illustrates the confusion we run into if we do not have a measurable definition of the concepts we talk about: Why, if andrea prefers a woman to a man, then this is (soft) discrimination? If andrea preferred a man to a woman, would this be discrimination against women? What is, exactly, discrimination?
Thanks,
Martin
Dear Martin,
I appreciate your cut-the-crap style. For this reason, I will try to be brief and to the point.
Suppose we are in an ideal world in which you can measure all possible individual characteristics. In this ideal world, you observe a positive male-female wage differential, together with a positive human capital differential. There is no differential in other variables. Would you conclude that there is no discrimination?
Well done Nichie. That’s an almost perfect question. To be perfect, you should explain what you mean by discrimination. You might want to think about what we are assuming on the preferences of the employers. Are the preferences such that employers get satisfaction (utility in economics jargon) by employing men rather than women, all else equal?
well, my question was intended to understand your definition of discrimination, to be honest.
But if you want to know mine…Let me think for a moment at preferences. Ok, I thought about preferences.
So, one can speak of discrimination if, once all other possible characteristics are empirically accounted for, there still persist a difference in outcomes between two well identified grous, say blacks-whites.
(for the owner of the site: I wrongly placed my reply to Martin above)
Dear Nichie,
thank you for your reply. I think what you are suggesting is not yet a definition of discrimination, but an empirical implication of it.
To give you a very simple (and old, and by no means unique) definition, you can assume that there are two groups of employers, and one of these groups has preferences such that he/she would prefer to hire a man rather than a woman, keeping all the other attributes equal.
Note that I’m not advocating this particular view. I’m not an expert of the literature in discrimination. For example, a friend of mine suggests Coate and Loury (1993), “Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?”, if you are interested.
However, I think I made my point abundantly clear — partially thanks to our exchange. Once we force ourselves to be precise, it’s much easier to have a discussion about the substance of things.
Thank you!
Seriously guys: whenever a scientist talks about ideology and ethics referring to research, I feel embarassed for him/her. If you are interested about ethics and/or ideology, you are activists, not scientists , and we don#‘t have anything to share. Your methodology is not a scientific one. You have a normative agenda that you want to pursue, you will never consider changing your mind if data prove you wrong, you take a stand in a policy question and later you try to justify it by a pretty arbitrary use of words and data… and I could keep going… This is unbelievable. Then my follow up question is: why my taxpayer money is going to fund activists that do not do proper research? I want my money back. If I think activists like Sabrina or Elena should be funded for their activism (don’t worry, I don’t), I’ll do it from my pocket, however I would be happy to be disproven that your own normative agenda does bring just harm to social SCIENCES.
Dear Antonio,
well…I have never believed in the ideological/ethical neutrality of social sciences. Good researches are those which prove internal coherence, which match theoretical assumptions with the most adapt methodological techniques to investigate/verify them, which are based on transparency in the way in which results are gathered and conclusions are drawn. But…well…in the very moment you choose a topic instead of another you’re filled with opinions/feelings/personal orientations that mirror normative assumptions and personal beliefs…
When you carry on a statistical analysis and you choose some variables over others , if you ‘see’ some issues and not others, you do so because you’re biased by what you believe is a variable or by what you believe is a problem…
Good science to me, is not pretending that ideologies, beliefs, ethics and opinions do not exist and do not affect our work…doing good science is about being aware of their existence and coherently/transparently justifying research designs…
After all, when you accuse me or Sabrina to be dirty activists not deserving to get any fund to carry on researches, to me, you’re just pursuing a normative agenda…that of excluding approaches that are not yours from universities and research…and this at the expenses of scientific pluralism.
In other words, when you state that there should be just one, ‘pure’ science which should be cleansed from opinions, norms and ethics, you are being an activist, you’re being scientifically normative and very aggressive too…but i still hope you’re gonna get funds…because that’s what knowledge is/should be…an open question…not a firm answer. good luck with your research…
Dear Elena,
good science is proposing a conjecture that is refutable. When people here talk about “social discourse”, “injustice” or other terms that they cannot make operational, this is not science. The only thing one can answer is, please define it, please tell me what you are talking about.
You say: “when you carry on a statistical analysis and you choose some variables over others , if you ‘see’ some issues and not others, you do so because you’re biased by what you believe is a variable or by what you believe is a problem…”
Well, so what? The point is exactly that you make a conjecture; among all possible causal explanations, you try one. If you can’t falsify it, that’s a good paper. If you can falsify somebody else’s conjecture (maybe that conjecture was developed starting from a “biased” — what does that mean, by the way? — point of view), that’s another good paper.
What you really advocate is not scientific pluralism. Pluralism is being allowed to make a conjecture (even if it’s politically incorrect, by the way) without being attacked on the grounds of the conclusions that might be reached. You are just saying you want to keep the freedom to use smoky concepts as long as they allow you to defend what you wanted defend in the first place. This may be pluralistic, but is definitely not science.
I just noticed that Fredrerique deleted all her comments… Since I’m an optimist, I guess it’s because she realized she was wrong and she had been proven wrong by Martin. Point taken, Fredrerique, I appreciate you can change your mind if facts and logic prove you wrong.
Dear Elena, with all due respect: scientific pluralism is untouched here, what I’m saying is that you (or Sabrina or others that participate in this debate) lack the “scientific” bit in your definitions, in your way to look at data, in particular when you use vague concepts like “social discourse”, “injustice”, etc.
You see, I’m an economist, and we are used to give precise definitions, ask very precise questions, be as rigorous as possible in collecting data, concerned about statistical problems in our analysis. I have the impression that this is not true in other so called social sciences, and this debate convinced me even more that I am right.
In particular, economists would be even more aggressive and intolerant than myself if I come out with a study that shows that social discourse drives everything. What is it? How do you measure social discourse? How social discourse is different from cheap talk in the game theory literature? How it is different from revelation of private information from standard contract theory? Why social discourse evolves in some ways in a particular society and in a different way in other societies? These are very precise questions that can be answered only with hard data and a coherent theory. If the theory is disproven, a better theory must be provided to explain that phenomenon. Referring to Andrea’s initial example: a theory that explains the discrimination of male seekers with information costs is much more in line with data and common sense than a theory that uses social discourse (whatever that means).
It’s not a matter of me having a normative agenda, it’s a matter of scientific methodology. I cannot believe we are having this debate to be honest, it resemble very much the creationists vs biologists debate: there is just one side which is right, the other side IS NOT DOING SCIENCE. I’m not saying I would like your methodology to be banned, I’m just saying THAT IS NOT SCIENCE.
Dear Antonio,
I’ll let it go…the funniest thing to me is that there are plenty of economists around the world pretending to hold the key to good, pure science…stating that economics is about scientific rigor, about the capacity of controlling every possible variable…and yet, very few seem to be have been able to foresee the economic crisis and, especially, to have decent answers and solutions…there’s one thing I miss in your answer: reality.
Yes, we should close the debate speaking about funny things, since we clearly can’t get answers on serious questions.
For example, there are a few funny things in Elena’s reply, like not really being about Antonio’s — or mine, for that matters — points, or having few non-sequitur, etc.
Anyway, Antonio, if you are interested, the funniest thing to me is that there is plenty of social “scientists” saying that if science can’t predict, then it’s not really useful, and that’s why we need scientific pluralism.
It’s almost as saying that since you can’t say head or tail, then probabilities aren’t really useful; we better conclude that 50% is a just, non-discriminatory outcome.
Yes, I’ll also let it go.
well, my question was intended to understand your definition of discrimination, to be honest.
But if you want to know mine…Let me think for a moment at preferences. Ok, I thought about preferences.
So, one can speak of discrimination if, once all other possible characteristics are empirically accounted for, there still persist a difference in outcomes between two well identified grous, say blacks-whites.
Dear all,
It is not because we cannot measure something (yet) that it does not exist. Social science is not natural sciences and never will be. Good social science is about proposing causal explanations but also about describing accurately phenomena (many other things could be added to this definition)… Quantitative methods are good. But so are qualitative. Are you sure that if you can confirm the causal link between X and Y you can 1) tell exactly what is X; 2) provide a better definition of Y “than Y is caused by X”?
(And yes, vague notions such as social discourse are being investigated in a scientific way…)
Regarding Elena’s comment about researchers’ neutrality, well… don’t forget we are human being before being scientists. And no matter how hard we try, it will still be the case. We need to be aware of that.
The main problem with this debate is that there is little dialogue and attempt to understand opposite points of view that do not fit with one’s own perspective. This is not debating with arguments, this is only about (weak) rhetoric.
With regards to my own experience with the blog: Martin, that seemed to disagree with me, kept asking legitimate questions that were constructive and were forcing me to think further my argument and make it more solid. That is what makes this kind of discussion meaningful in my opinion. However, Antonio’s attitude was very different. The reasons why I decided to opt out are not related to what he said*, but I just did not see the point of pursuing this debate. Also, what Antonio did by writing this particular comment on me is a lack of respect. He cannot pretend or assume in public the reasons why I decided to opt out and speak publically in my name, be it right or wrong in substance.
I can only encourage you to be more constructive and do not reject something on the only ground that it does not fit with your preconceptions of what is true or wrong.
Best,
Frédérique (and not Fredrerique as Antonio would spell it…)
PS: While everybody is free to express his own views, remember that the way you say things might have some further implications for all of us with regards to academia’s reputation (or our universities)… since this site is public. ABE!
*I just noticed that Fredrerique deleted all her com¬ments… Since I’m an optimist, I guess it’s because she real¬ized she was wrong and she had been proven wrong by Martin. Point taken, Fredrerique, I appreciate you can change your mind if facts and logic prove you wrong.
Dear Frederique,
I’m sorry I misspelled your name. When I make a mistake, I apologize and stand corrected.
This also applies to my own theory about why you left the the discussion. I used scientific method there: I made a hypothesis about your behaviour, making some behavioural assumptions about your possible choices (when proved wrong, you retreat). This theory doesn’t stand the empirical evidence, so I stand corrected. Now I have to formulate a new theory about why you left the discussion, however I have a new fact to explain: you came back ranting about pluralism and constructive critiques, while screaming outrage for my aggressive behaviour.
I have an alternative theory that can explain the old facts and the new evidence. You retreated from the discussion because, as many studies in psychology show, women typically are scared away when under pressure/under attack. Then you came back because Martin was using a more accomodating tone, and you felt more at ease with his tone. My theory explains pretty well the evidence. Give me a better theory, if you want use qualitative methods (whatever that means, the only “qualitative” I have ever heard in science is qualitative variables that in a logit regression are categorized with dummies), the only thing I’m asking is that your theory must be able to prove available evidence. We can then compare theories and see which one is better for predictions outside the sample (i.e., if it will be able to predict the future). However, notice that you have a big methodological problem: you are both the object of research and the researcher. In order to be convincing, you will have to come out with a research strategy that deals with this problem (I don’t need to do it, clearly), otherwise you will be in the position of influencing the predictive power of your theory. THIS IS SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
Now about aggressiveness: if you don’t accept critiques, either expressed in an aggressive manner or in a cordial oxfordian way, are you sure this is the job for you? Aggressiveness doesn’t show lack of respect, it shows passion for my job, loss of patience for sloppy arguments, and the commitment to a point of view unless proven convincingly that I am wrong. In your profession, believe me, you will be criticized more aggressively that I did, someone will tell you your work is bullshit or worthless, and you will have to convince them they are wrong. That’s your job if you do research. During the 70s, in economics there was the so called rational expectations revolution. People were literally fighting about it in conferences (I mean, wrestling). Now it is an accepted concept and we have elaborated a lot about it. So my recommendation for you is: if you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Otherwise, please, convince me I’m wrong.
However, let me take care myself of my reputation and the reputation of my institution.