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.
I don’t think the 70⁄30 gender ratio causes misogyny. I think it amplifies experiences of it among women because they are the minority here. Imagine a group of 100 EAs, 70 men and 30 women, and a group of 100 environmentalists, 30 men and 70 women. Suppose 10% of all men do something misogynistic towards a random woman in their group. Then 23% of EA women experience misogyny compared to only 4% of environmentalist women, even though each individual man in each group is equally likely to have behaved misogynistically.
(Prior to seeing this post, I’d have conjectured that men in EA are less likely than men elsewhere to behave misogynistically, and maybe that’s still true, but these reports are really alarming.)
Suppose 10% of all men do something misogynistic towards a random woman in their group.
If instead you model it as X% of all men do something misogynistic toward women they encounter instead of as toward a random woman in the group you end up with something much less skewed.
I think that both modeling choices would make sense depending on which specific type of misogyny is the concern. For example, interruptions would seem likely to fit your model better, while asking a woman out in an inappropriate manner might be fit by the random group member model better.
Although I think that the group size is realistically going to be smaller than 100 in almost all cases, often far smaller, which would also lead to less skew.
Edit: although if instead of considering how many women experience >0 instances of (significant) misogyny, and instead consider how much misogyny on average each woman experiences, then it would go back to being heavily skewed by the proportion of genders in each group.
I don’t think the 70⁄30 gender ratio causes misogyny. I think it amplifies experiences of it among women because they are the minority here. Imagine a group of 100 EAs, 70 men and 30 women, and a group of 100 environmentalists, 30 men and 70 women. Suppose 10% of all men do something misogynistic towards a random woman in their group. Then 23% of EA women experience misogyny compared to only 4% of environmentalist women, even though each individual man in each group is equally likely to have behaved misogynistically.
(Prior to seeing this post, I’d have conjectured that men in EA are less likely than men elsewhere to behave misogynistically, and maybe that’s still true, but these reports are really alarming.)
This idea has been called the Petrie multiplier. I agree that this probably makes things worse for women in EA.
If instead you model it as X% of all men do something misogynistic toward women they encounter instead of as toward a random woman in the group you end up with something much less skewed.
I think that both modeling choices would make sense depending on which specific type of misogyny is the concern. For example, interruptions would seem likely to fit your model better, while asking a woman out in an inappropriate manner might be fit by the random group member model better.
Although I think that the group size is realistically going to be smaller than 100 in almost all cases, often far smaller, which would also lead to less skew.
Edit: although if instead of considering how many women experience >0 instances of (significant) misogyny, and instead consider how much misogyny on average each woman experiences, then it would go back to being heavily skewed by the proportion of genders in each group.