As has been noted many times, EA is currently about 70% male, whilst environmentalism/animal advocacy is majority women. I would be fairly confident that a more balanced gender ratio would mean less misogyny towards women.
My guess is that EA is currently male because aggressively quantifying and measuring charitable giving is an activity that appeals primarily to men. As long as that remains true, and Effective Altruism remains Effective Altruism in that way, my prediction is that the gender ratio will remain the same, just as most hobbies and social groups maintain similar gender ratios over time even when people work really hard to change them. If this form of harassment is inherent to male-dominated activities then that would be pretty sad.
Some EAs have a kind of “anti-woke” sentiment to the point where I actually think it could be fairly damaging e.g. it causes people to think issues related to race, gender, nationality etc aren’t important at all. I think it would be pretty valuable if everyone read a few core texts on things like racism, sexism, ableism, etc. to actually understand the every-day experiences of people facing various forms of discrimination and bigotry.
I’m pretty sure the standard left-American take on everyday harrassment is straightforwardly compatible with believing it’s not very important in a world with existential risk and malaria and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and that this is a sensible position for EAs to hold even when they’re not explicitly “anti-woke”.
I strong disagreed (but did not downvote) this comment for a few reasons:
(1) I don’t think there’s any evidence that EA is an inherently and immutably male activity, and we shouldn’t assume such. EA is currently male-skewed, yes, but I was involved in a college “venture philanthropy” group that involved explicit rankings of non-profit organizations (quite similar to EA in many ways) and it was female-skewed, and I’ve observed this in my broader experiences with venture philanthropy (though don’t have statistics to confirm). There’s a lot of ways EA can end up male-skewed (or venture philanthropy can end up female-skewed) without it being an inherently and immutably male or an inherently and immutably female activity.
(2) Even if EA is an inherently and immutably male-leaning activity in general (which I don’t necessarily agree with per above), there’s a lot of value in finding ways to involve the remaining ~50% of the population, so surely we’d want to find ways to make it less male-leaning on the margin. Thus writing off the idea of being more inclusive to men seems needlessly dismissive and reductive and leaves a lot of impact and opportunity on the table.
(3) If you care about achieving impact on existential risk, malaria, and even the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, it would be very helpful to have a healthy, robust, and impactful community to work on these problems. Being more inclusive to non-men would improve EA on all three of these axes and thus paying attention to at least some claims currently referred to as “woke” or “leftist” would improve on all three axes. (To be clear, I don’t consider myself “leftist” but I still take many of these kinds of concern very seriously.)
(1) I don’t think there’s any evidence that EA is an inherently male activity, and we shouldn’t assume such.
There’s at least some evidence, in that it’s a tradition that is currently mostly participated in by men. I don’t know exactly what you mean by “inherently” or what brand of evidence you’re looking for, but it’s not really relevant to the discussion that the cause for the difference in interest be biological or social or whatever. These sorts of gender ratios seem hard to “correct” when it comes to C.S. departments and Magic the Gathering tournaments, and my guess is that with EA it will be similar. If someone wants to prove me wrong then I’d welcome the attempt.
(2) Even if EA is a male-leaning activity (which I don’t necessarily agree with per above), there’s a lot of value in finding ways to involve the remaining ~50% of the population, so surely we’d want to find ways to make it less male-leaning on the margin.
Well, that depends, doesn’t it? If “making EA less male-leaning on the margin” means coming up with fewer WELLBYs, then plausibly “making EA less male” means making EA less able to accomplish its goals.
Often what I’ve seen academic departments do to attract women into STEM is to exaggerate the interpersonal aspects of a given profession and downplay the nerdy stuff. This ends up being only moderately harmful because the women take the intro classes, decide they’re not interested for reasons completely divorced from social expectations, and then choose something different. But when it comes to a charitable organization, downplaying the male-coded activities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: You succeed in attracting women (and men) who think weaponizing autism into producing good animal suffering metrics is a waste of time, and soon “Effective Altruists” stop thinking animal suffering metrics are worth funding. That sounds pretty bad to me.
(2) …Thus writing off the idea of being more inclusive to [wo]men seems needlessly dismissive and reductive and leaves a lot of impact and opportunity on the table.
I certainly didn’t write off the idea of being more inclusive. There are obviously more ways to reduce the incidence of sexual harassment besides modifying the gender ratios of an org. But if gender ratios were a significant part of why the person I replied to saw more sexual harassment that would be discouraging for all of the reasons I have outlined thus far.
(3) If you care about achieving impact on existential risk, malaria, and even the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, it would be very helpful to have a healthy, robust, and impactful community to work on these problems. Being more inclusive to non-men would improve EA on all three of these axes and thus paying attention to at least some claims currently referred to as “woke” or “leftist” would improve on all three axes.
I agree with this (what Peter said) and also have a couple stuff to add:
Just so you know, in the Philippines, generally women are considered more charitable, and this somewhat manifests in EA Philippines, where we are mostly women. This might not account for the quality of who is more likely to “quantify charity” but definitely gender is not binary, and I think it’s limiting to say “men more likely; that’s why this community is made up like this.”
Maybe what you say is because there are more men in the movement, but I don’t think it’s simply because men “quantify charity more;” I think that statement is very limiting. There are a ton of factors as to why predominantly white men are those who are into EA, and I think even just the idea that they generally can afford to be philanthropic is one of them (not that this is negative since it’s good they help and presumably wanna help effectively).
I think saying sexual harrassment doesn’t matter if there XYZ other stuff happening might be in utilitarian cases kinda true, but this belief gives leeway to damaging the movement longer-term. Let’s say 1000 years from now we theoretically obliterated x-risk but knowingly or unknowingly allowed sexual harrassment to occur in the manner stated in the article… I think we can do better than that.
And I don’t think it’s right to sacrifice good values and good community dynamics if we’re fighting for a future where this community exists; I’d be very sad to see lots of discrimination/harassment continue to occur 5000 years from now.
My guess is that EA is currently male because aggressively quantifying and measuring charitable giving is an activity that appeals primarily to men. As long as that remains true, and Effective Altruism remains Effective Altruism in that way, my prediction is that the gender ratio will remain the same, just as most hobbies and social groups maintain similar gender ratios over time even when people work really hard to change them. If this form of harassment is inherent to male-dominated activities then that would be pretty sad.
I’m pretty sure the standard left-American take on everyday harrassment is straightforwardly compatible with believing it’s not very important in a world with existential risk and malaria and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and that this is a sensible position for EAs to hold even when they’re not explicitly “anti-woke”.
I strong disagreed (but did not downvote) this comment for a few reasons:
(1) I don’t think there’s any evidence that EA is an inherently and immutably male activity, and we shouldn’t assume such. EA is currently male-skewed, yes, but I was involved in a college “venture philanthropy” group that involved explicit rankings of non-profit organizations (quite similar to EA in many ways) and it was female-skewed, and I’ve observed this in my broader experiences with venture philanthropy (though don’t have statistics to confirm). There’s a lot of ways EA can end up male-skewed (or venture philanthropy can end up female-skewed) without it being an inherently and immutably male or an inherently and immutably female activity.
(2) Even if EA is an inherently and immutably male-leaning activity in general (which I don’t necessarily agree with per above), there’s a lot of value in finding ways to involve the remaining ~50% of the population, so surely we’d want to find ways to make it less male-leaning on the margin. Thus writing off the idea of being more inclusive to men seems needlessly dismissive and reductive and leaves a lot of impact and opportunity on the table.
(3) If you care about achieving impact on existential risk, malaria, and even the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, it would be very helpful to have a healthy, robust, and impactful community to work on these problems. Being more inclusive to non-men would improve EA on all three of these axes and thus paying attention to at least some claims currently referred to as “woke” or “leftist” would improve on all three axes. (To be clear, I don’t consider myself “leftist” but I still take many of these kinds of concern very seriously.)
There’s at least some evidence, in that it’s a tradition that is currently mostly participated in by men. I don’t know exactly what you mean by “inherently” or what brand of evidence you’re looking for, but it’s not really relevant to the discussion that the cause for the difference in interest be biological or social or whatever. These sorts of gender ratios seem hard to “correct” when it comes to C.S. departments and Magic the Gathering tournaments, and my guess is that with EA it will be similar. If someone wants to prove me wrong then I’d welcome the attempt.
Well, that depends, doesn’t it? If “making EA less male-leaning on the margin” means coming up with fewer WELLBYs, then plausibly “making EA less male” means making EA less able to accomplish its goals.
Often what I’ve seen academic departments do to attract women into STEM is to exaggerate the interpersonal aspects of a given profession and downplay the nerdy stuff. This ends up being only moderately harmful because the women take the intro classes, decide they’re not interested for reasons completely divorced from social expectations, and then choose something different. But when it comes to a charitable organization, downplaying the male-coded activities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: You succeed in attracting women (and men) who think weaponizing autism into producing good animal suffering metrics is a waste of time, and soon “Effective Altruists” stop thinking animal suffering metrics are worth funding. That sounds pretty bad to me.
I certainly didn’t write off the idea of being more inclusive. There are obviously more ways to reduce the incidence of sexual harassment besides modifying the gender ratios of an org. But if gender ratios were a significant part of why the person I replied to saw more sexual harassment that would be discouraging for all of the reasons I have outlined thus far.
Again I agree.
I agree with this (what Peter said) and also have a couple stuff to add:
Just so you know, in the Philippines, generally women are considered more charitable, and this somewhat manifests in EA Philippines, where we are mostly women. This might not account for the quality of who is more likely to “quantify charity” but definitely gender is not binary, and I think it’s limiting to say “men more likely; that’s why this community is made up like this.”
Maybe what you say is because there are more men in the movement, but I don’t think it’s simply because men “quantify charity more;” I think that statement is very limiting. There are a ton of factors as to why predominantly white men are those who are into EA, and I think even just the idea that they generally can afford to be philanthropic is one of them (not that this is negative since it’s good they help and presumably wanna help effectively).
I think saying sexual harrassment doesn’t matter if there XYZ other stuff happening might be in utilitarian cases kinda true, but this belief gives leeway to damaging the movement longer-term. Let’s say 1000 years from now we theoretically obliterated x-risk but knowingly or unknowingly allowed sexual harrassment to occur in the manner stated in the article… I think we can do better than that. And I don’t think it’s right to sacrifice good values and good community dynamics if we’re fighting for a future where this community exists; I’d be very sad to see lots of discrimination/harassment continue to occur 5000 years from now.