“some people have argued that the relatively small number of women in EA arise from women being innately or culturally less likely to hold these views.”
On this I was interested to find out that there is no gender difference in responses to the original trolly problem (would you divert the trolley from a track with five people on it to a track with one person). There was however a gender difference in enthusiasm for a different question which involved more conspicuously doing harm (would you push a fat man off a bridge to stop the train). Whether this is picking up differences in utilitarian attitudes as suggested in the paper, or rather just that men are actually less morally concerned, or physically stronger—and so have fewer reservations about the idea of pushing someone off a bridge—is an open question. There was a recent paper finding that both utilitarians and people with generally low moral concern gave superficially ‘utilitarian’ answers to trolley problems, but only the former would go on to accept personal sacrifices to help others.
In any case, as the vast majority of things effective altruists do only require the attitude in the first question—willingness to prioritise benefits, rather than willingness to harm a specific person—this seems like a point in favour of the idea we could get close to an even gender balance without softening the core idea of prioritisation.
It is weak evidence that men might be more willing to do things they regard as directly harmful (for example, some people view working in finance as immoral in itself) for a greater good. But that only covers a small fraction of all the paths we suggest.
“some people have argued that the relatively small number of women in EA arise from women being innately or culturally less likely to hold these views.”
On this I was interested to find out that there is no gender difference in responses to the original trolly problem (would you divert the trolley from a track with five people on it to a track with one person). There was however a gender difference in enthusiasm for a different question which involved more conspicuously doing harm (would you push a fat man off a bridge to stop the train). Whether this is picking up differences in utilitarian attitudes as suggested in the paper, or rather just that men are actually less morally concerned, or physically stronger—and so have fewer reservations about the idea of pushing someone off a bridge—is an open question. There was a recent paper finding that both utilitarians and people with generally low moral concern gave superficially ‘utilitarian’ answers to trolley problems, but only the former would go on to accept personal sacrifices to help others.
In any case, as the vast majority of things effective altruists do only require the attitude in the first question—willingness to prioritise benefits, rather than willingness to harm a specific person—this seems like a point in favour of the idea we could get close to an even gender balance without softening the core idea of prioritisation.
It is weak evidence that men might be more willing to do things they regard as directly harmful (for example, some people view working in finance as immoral in itself) for a greater good. But that only covers a small fraction of all the paths we suggest.
Source: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/26787145_Gender-related_differences_in_moral_judgments