Breaking the Bias – Lessons from Bayesian Statistical Perspective

Equitable and fair institutions are the foundation of modern democracies. Bias, as referring to “inclination or prejudice against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair” is naturally anathema to such ideals. Unfortunately, efforts to reduce impact of bias have been slow and difficult. This is because it is scientifically acknowledged that humans are innately inclined to bias. A significant share of those biases isn’t even known to persons who are supposed to hold them: hence called ‘unconscious bias’. It is also established in many scientific studies that members of a group which was supposed to be biased against also hold the same biases towards their own group (e.g., women being biased against women). So why is bias so inherent part of our biology?

Consider the early man in Savannah. He is suspicious of – as in, biased against – people who don’t look like him, bcause people who don’t look like him are usually from different tribes and people from different tribes are usually at war with his tribe. It’s s survival heuristic his brain has evolved. This is no different from other heuristics we are still encumbered with in the modern world which have roots in the early environment, such as ‘fat is tasty’, ‘sweet s edible’, etc. One way we can model bias is by borrowing from one of the canonical formulae in statistics: Bayes’ Law.

In English, and in the context of this discussion, this means that my magnitude of bias against a certain group, after observing an incident related to that group, is the output of multiplication of two numbers: what’s the magnitude of bias I held against that group before the incident (“prior”), and how directionally aligned that incident was to direction of bias (“evidence”). This change in magnitude of bias is called Bayesian update. In other words, if I was highly biased against the group, but recently observed an incident where a person/group behaved in the way opposite of what bias would have expected, then my bias against that group will reduce.

How can we leverage this Bayesian perspective to understand our fight against bias? One way focuses not on reducing bias, but on reducing the impact of bias: by reducing reliance on human decision making by better use of data; and by tracking the impact of bias on outcomes, and aiming for equity in outcomes by giving preferential treatments to protected groups. However, the majority of sociological and psychological methods of reducing bias typically focus on making people aware of biases, reiterating the need for reducing bias, and counting on the moral compass for people to behave differently (first two articles on the Google search). In Bayesian formulation, these efforts focus on reducing prior and are valid means to combat bias. Yet, prior is often formed in early childhood and adolescent experiences, and is heavily influenced by family, upbringing, and peer group. Hence, changing the prior when the employee joins the corporate workforce may be a tad too late.

However, little effort is done on exposing more favourable evidence. Occasionally there is a conversation to have biased people interact with people from the protected groups so that they realize that their biases are not fair. This largely occurs in a context where people are not just biased but actively antagonist to each other, but rarely in a corporate context. Nevertheless, the value of this in reducing bias cannot be underemphasized. Some ways evidence can be introduced in the workplace setting to counteract against prior is by designing teams and interactions which forces different people to interact with each other. Multiple repeated interactions will help move prior sufficiently to reduce bias over time. Reshuffling teams or seating to make them mix-gendered teams, for an instance, could achieve this outcome.

There is a different Bayes’ Law in mind of each person holding bias for each of the protected groups. While we talked about affecting prior and evidence, we shouldn’t forget the concept of ‘group’. Workplace efforts to reduce biases are competing from Bayesian update of bias from evidence/incidents from the external world as well, which makes this a challenging task. Hence reframing the group into smaller groups actively can also reduce bias, at least in the workplace setting. For instance, group of “women” can be reframed as group of “working women”. Generating positive evidence for working women can be easier in business settings – and will have less competition from the external world – and so will help in reducing bias faster, even as we may not be able to reduce bias against all women”. How to do that in practice? We will have to modify our language, word choices, and reframe the context. While this is not ideal – none of this really is – but we are working with what we can manage effectively, and hopefully eventually reach the ideal outcome in long term.

In the end, we must remember that tendency to be biased was a useful primordial heuristic, thus innate in human nature, and can only be reduced to the extent of the world we live in, but continuous focus on bettering prior, positive evidence, reduced level of human involvement in decision making, and reframing the group context will surely make a dent. It already has.

Gazillion Pillows

Room I was staying in Holiday Inn in London had to undergo renovation. So I was upgraded — so I was told — to better room. This room was exactly same as the one before, except that now I had eight pillows on my double bed rather than two. When I went to sleep, I just threw down seven of them on the floor. Why would anyone need so many of them was perplexing. I was reminded of this the other day when reading this article:

One might think that beds are made for sleeping in, but they’d be wrong. Apparently, unbeknownst to men everywhere, beds are in fact made to hold as many pillows as possible. Only a fraction of the pillows present are actually functional at any given point in time, while the rest are there for some unstated purpose. Sleeping on the bed requires several minutes of relocating pillows to suitable locations, which of course will be designated by the woman who placed them to begin with.

I can imagine need for second pillow for those who like to cuddle with pillow when sleeping or need an extra prop support when sitting. My creativity runs out when envisaging need for third pillow or more.

Brain, Beauty, Availability, etc.

A well know equation describes feminine disposition as:
Beauty X Brain = 0
A more generous version of the same propositions that:
Beauty X Brain X Availability = 0
where ‘beauty’, ‘brain’ and ‘availability’ are binary variables.

This equations implies that a girl cannot be beautiful, brainy and unattached at any point of time simultaneously. Among numerous corollaries of this equation, two complementary ones are common fodder of dismay among young men: all beautiful and intelligent girls are taken and those who are available are n/either beautiful n/or intelligent but not both. I take umbrage at such implication.

First, by definition, it is a fact that those who are unavailable now must be available prior some point in time, for one can make available unavailable and not unavailable unavailable¹. It must, then, necessarily be true that among those who are beautiful and intelligent there must a time, if only a fraction of instant, where above equation fails to hold and when girl is simultaneously available, beautiful and intelligent. One could argue that such infinitesimal point is discontinuity in the function which is valid elsewhere.

If such anomaly is not acceptable, then for equation to be valid it must be true that girl becomes intelligent and/or beautiful as soon as she gets a boyfriend, which, while possibly being true in long term², cannot possibly be true instantaneously. Thus, one must either accept frailty of this equation or believe that equation must hold only on long term average basis. Second of this appears more palatable. This, therefore, suggests that above equation is asymptotically true as population size and time horizon grow longer. Of course, this weakens the case for disappointed men who excuse their inability behind this universal law.

1. Assuming simple case of one boyfriend at a time.
2. Glow of love or diffusion of external wisdom from new person may be reason behind.

Right of abortion

At the very beginning of this blog, I had raised a question which I deferred dealing with so far. Question was about role of father in abortion of child. Surprisingly, this matter receives much less attention than feminine version of the same question.

I had agreed, and do now as well, that parents of child are best people on Earth to decide fate of unborn foetus. No one (calling themselves pro-choice, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-life, …) has any business interfering in couple’s decision to whether to bring out the person they will be totally responsible for in the world and who will change their lives irrevocably. However, decision to abort or not remains exclusive maternal prerogative in most parts of the world, including India and United States. Unfair part in this process is whether someone can be punished for not doing what he cannot do. If father cannot bear a child, does he not have any say in whether he wants the child or not?

First case is when father wants a child but mother doesn’t: currently, he cannot stop mother from aborting the baby. If father is willing to bear responsibility of raising the child, what right mother has of depriving man of his child? Trauma for man in such cases cannot be understated in line of argument that only mothers love their children more than fathers ever could. Emotional investment and love of fathers towards their offspring is question which requires mere perfunctory glance at the world around us to answer. Can mother be required to go through whole pregnancy and pain of childbirth unwillingly? Unfortunately, she has too, for there is no alternative. Whose pain and loss is more: a father deprived of his baby or a mother bearing pain for nine months? I don’t have an answer but I feel it’s former. Of course, it goes without saying that this should not apply in pregnancy out of non-consensual sex and father must bear all the cost and financial loss to mother in giving him his child.

Second case is when father doesn’t want a child but mother does: currently, he cannot force mother to abort the baby. Which seems right until we note that he will still be legally responsible for providing child support and financial help. This, naturally, isn’t fair on father again. Excepting forced assault, consensual relationship is entered in by both partner knowing fully well consequences of the same. A mother cannot demand support from unwilling father if such unwillingness is expressed prior to birth and during the period when mother can undergo safe abortion. Then mother will be free to decide to continue with the pregnancy on her own or terminate it.

Law, as it stands, gives all the responsibilities to father without him having any say at all in reproductive rights over his unborn baby. Let alone giving father his due right, a small step such as spousal notification by mother about her decision to abort itself is hotly protested against even though there seems be slight majority support for it.

Female!

My train of thoughts comes to a screeching halt as soon as I hear someone using word “female(s)” when referring to fair-sex of human species. Sample these:

“Four females were walking by.”

“His friend was a female.”

“One day one female goes to market….”

I just find ‘woman/lady/girl’ a far better substitute of ‘female’. Only one person, so far, who seemed to think like me is one of my lady professor. I can understand use of titled epithet when referring to nursing gender in mammalian species or in context where clinical and scientific language is more appropriate. I cannot understand, and find it ostensibly offensive, to use ‘female’ when referring to woman in social or regular context. I think that six-letter nomenclature robs them of their humanity. And both men and women are equally guilty of this use, so my flinching is not discomforting because of feminist or chauvinist implications. Obviously, I find use of ‘male’ to refer to ‘man’ also unacceptable but that doesn’t happen a lot, I wonder why?

Clearly, if large segment of ladies (and gentlemen) themselves find it acceptable then who am I to cringe? On the one hand, I wonder if my sense of gender fairness is stronger than what women themselves desire (See: Of men and women, and preference thereof, Behan Ji)? On the other hand, readers of this blog are aware my aversion to one-sided feminism which applies dual standards (See: Getting rid of him and her, To Sons and Daughters, Harassed by Wife?). Actually I am not easily trusting of dual standards by anyone (See: Colour as indicator of beauty, Need for coherent compensation structure, Holier than thou Mumbai, Who can take life?).

Electioneering

Election campaigns for institute's student governing counsel at our college are lots of fun. We are peaceful democratic institution so there isn’t any sloganeering or rallying but there is one public address opportunity — used by seniors to make fun of and ask awkward questions to candidate — and many door to door dorm to dorm campaigning. There is some regionalism, I suspect, but not much. Need to blindly support, or at least prefer, member of one’s ethnicity is evil of Indian nationhood that lurks here too, though in intensity insignificant to that in real elections. There is some sexism too, and while it’s low it’s perhaps sufficient enough to affect election results. It’s difficult to know this for sure because such information is not easy to obtain and it’s difficult to ascertain whether men think that women can’t handle a particular job or women think that men will think so and hence don’t contend. This, if any, is primarily for post of member of student council and not at all for other positions lower in governing hierarchy.

Election campaigns at dorms are what brings most fun. A candidate is made to dance, sing, mimic or joke, apart from delivering his manifesto or speech. Constituents use this opportunity to enjoy the torment of their peers since listening to manifesto is often an boring activity. And that happens at lot more in women’s dorms, who, perhaps, on finding that man on their fingertips for few days, practice for their post-wedding adventures! What students can come up is only limited by their imagination, and includes from special funny rules that pitching candidate must follow, to bargaining for all votes of dorm under certain circumstances including leaving them in peace and not bother with pitching.

And even when rest of India has gone electronic, we still follow paper ballots. Grrr.

Drab dresses

Here is was YouTube link (Edit: video removed) of A. R. Rahman winning Oscars Golden Globes and all those people who despised Oscar for its bias in selection will suddenly forget and rejoice because Indian film (if it can be called that) won. We are quick to lap up to anyone or anything with slightest of Indian connection be it Kalpana Chawala or Sanjay Gupta.

These are the awards where who dresses how is big talk and all I could think of looking at these is that a small poor Indian wedding is more colourful and lovely dressed than these millionaires in their boring blacks and whites. What a drab.

On related note, what on earth led to convention (in Britain prominently, but also in USA) that men must dress in similar looking black tuxedos while women dress in wide variety of gowns, skirts and dresses in all lovely colours (particularly noted in movie Titanic[imdb: 7.2/10]). And why the hell Indians are blindly copying West in discarding pink as colour not for men or holding hands as something men can't do? Even stricter compartmentalization among genders and stereotyping is supposed to strengthen what? A simple gestures of friends men touching each other is being frowned upon.

As I’ve always feared, seems like India can’t move forward and be progressive without avoiding the problems that come with it even when there are example to learn from in developed countries of the world.

Harassed by Wife?

That India's heavily biased Anti-Dowry laws and recently introduced Domestic Violence laws are used against men by some women in no news. Unfortunate as it is, most of women empowerment has only empowered educated city women where misuse is very high while laws themselves were made keeping in mind vast majority of rural, poor, non-empowered women. Those who really need them don't even know that these laws exists, or if the know, rarely use them because of social conditioning or consequence of repercussions due to poor law and order. In a non-violent respectable middle or upper class household, both man and woman suffer risks in entering a matrimony due to potential misuse or abuse. Here is one man cell trying to help such people. Issues such as these cannot even be openly discussed due to vehement opposition from feminists and fear of being labelled as MCP. As any astute observer of polity will note, it’s not majority which counts in democracy, but a vocal minority.

That the law is misused is no reason to ignore the usefulness of the law, for every law is misused to an extent. Question is, how much misuse is prevalent. I think it’s less than 10% while my mom thinks it’s way higher, to the extent of 50% in above mentioned demography. Both of these non-scientific hunches merely. In any case, framing a law to cover both genders is first step since it will cover fairer sex anyway. It’s no question that I am aware of the extent of female-mistreatment meted in this country, and recognize need for stringent rules to curb harassment, violence and unfairness but it’s worthwhile sometimes to pause and see who gets benefited.

11/01/2009 Edit: Vikas Gupta talked to the man manning the man-cell and came up with the website http://mencell.weebly.com/. See his post for more details.

Behan Ji

If you want to address a stranger of about your own age as grown up in India, you would mostly call him Bhai Sahab and call her Behan Ji. At least, you could, till few years ago.

Indians are very fond and proud of iconic speech by Swami Vivekananda in Parliament of World’s Religions in late nineteenth century in Chicago where he represented Hinduism and shocked the western civilization by addressing his audience as “brothers and sisters” against the prevailing “ladies and gentlemen”. Notion that people around you can be treated as family members was, and still is, unfamiliar to occidental world. In Hindu philosophy notion of world as large family is evident in Vasudhev Kutumbkam shloka of early scriptures. Students in schools are still made to pledge that India is our country and all Indians are our brothers and sisters. “Except one”, students would mostly add under the breath, to maintain possibility of their potential matrimony.

As is customary with all good Indian things in India, we discarded address of ‘brothers and sisters’ and adopted ‘ladies and gentlemen’, unless, of course, western world adopts it, in which case we will be eager to adopt again and happy to claim our heritage, as we did in case of Yog. Tendency to delegates things Indian to things inferior made Bhai Sahab and Behan Ji a sign of illiterate buffoonery. These were replaced by Sir and Madam, in line with our British historical precedent.

For some reason, I am not sure why, but I blame umbrella term “modernization”, Bhai Sahab didn’t suffer as much as Behan Ji did. If you are a man, you would typically not call a man Bhai Sahab, but it would still be okay if you did. If you are woman, you will mostly call a man Bhai Sahab. It’s our way of forewarning and drawing boundaries by relationship association. Whether you are man or woman, you definitely would not call a woman Behan Ji unless you really want to loathed by her. Who knows who was to start this but somehow such term of gentility, purity and respect has come to mean traditional, conservative, un-cool, unbeautiful, and non-modern woman and is matter of laughing stock in urban youth.

Deepti Naval (youtube link) in Angoor (1982) is one good example of what is considered Behan Ji these days. What a grace and what demeanor she had! We always seem to abandon wrong part of our culture.

Financial crisis

It must be it, for what other reasons do poor girls have to not been able to afford skirts longer than knee length for interview dress for summer internship placements at IIMA?

It’s that time of year in business schools of India when first year students vie apprehensively to gain an internship opportunity in world’s top finance, consulting and marketing firms. It’s also that time of year when being girl suddenly becomes way more useful. I am not sure though if that’s a good thing for ladies themselves because if they are given lucrative opportunity because of what gender they belong to, their use still remains age old and conventional, though masked. Of course, use be damned if job can be secured in this economy, is still not a bad objective. Of course, all this assuming big IF holds.

Colour as indicator of beauty

There is a increasing perception in media and among educated urban elite in India that use of fairness as indicator of beauty is wrong. That perception is manifested in opposition to depiction of unfair woman in Fair & Lovely adverts as not being able to attract suitable mate, not being able to get a job, or being perennially dissatisfied with her life. Resistance was raised again when Fair & Handsome was launched for men. It is not untrue that people of India do equate fairness with beauty, and reasons can be as recent as white colonial rule to as old as primitive human evolution. It is also agreeable that to judge one by standards of beauty beyond one’s control is unfair to the least, and downright mean in most cases.

What gets my goat though is the fact that society continues to accept other measures as standards of beauty while isolating fairness as something mean. If you believe in individual liberty then there is no reason you should have objection to anyone’s standards of beauty and anyone else's attempts to measure up to those standards by any means they choose, including use of fairness creams. While both parties have choice in principle, second party doesn’t have a choice in practice. If all men think that fair woman is beautiful, then has a woman choice not to try to be fair without suffering rejection as consequence of her choice? But then, if all men think that obese woman is unattractive, then has a woman choice not to try to be slim?

This happens in nearly all parameters of beauty and in many other spheres of life. Tall build, dark skin tone, wide shoulders, glistening row of teeth, full dark smooth hair, no paunch, sturdy long legs, muscular arms, chiseled face, firm handshake etc. are few among many standards of male beauty. Men try to measure up to them by working out, taking care of themselves, consuming healthy diet, seeking medical care, and so on. Similarly for women. Why does nobody objects to association of beauty with soft skin, long flowing silky hair, long thin legs, slender waist, absence of spectacles, etc. for women? Why raise objection to association of beauty with fairness only? At the end of the day, can you really force me to see beauty where I don't see? Isn't it in eye of beholder anyway.

I don’t see how one is not acceptable, and I agree it is not, but others are. Of course, any attempt at making everything unacceptable is going to snowball into destroying whole standards of civilization. Life is full of unfairness, and I think cribbing about it just not going to help anybody, one has to deal with handicaps given in life or work to overcome them. If I am not intelligent and don't earn as much as you do, will you consider that unfair, since my intelligence is beyond my control?

On legalizing live-in relationships

On recent move by Maharashtra government in response to this post:

I think that people enter into live-in relationship because they want flexibility and want to avoid hassles of marriage. Now getting benefits without getting responsibilities of marriage is clearly not fair. I accept law which can permit live-in relationships to be certified so coupled can book hotel room or rent a house and fight domestic abuse which is simply law against violence, but maintenance law for live-in relationship is like “chit bhi meri pat bhi meri” (heads I win, tails you lose) for ‘other’ woman. And in such cases we seem to forget that ‘other’ woman has choice, and entered into live-in relationship and avoided marriage knowing what it means and what it doesn’t.

To put simply, I don’t agree.

To Sons and Daughters

Male-female inequality in Indian society is not up for debate. Within framework of marriage, rituals of dowry, forced marriage, and child marriage largely work to detriment to Indian women. These were some of the thoughts I was contemplating on when listening to this melancholic song (charkha chalati maa) from movie Pinjar. In one of the stanza heroine addressing to her mother says something like “to sons you give palaces and residences (inheritance) and to daughters you give banishment from home”. Heroine rues unequal treatment of man and woman in institution of marriage and laments inherent discrimination in the practice.

At this point my mother made an insightful comment, which is this post about. She is product of same society and is very traditional in many ways. Yet, she is also open to new ideas and is a regular participants in debates with me on my new world feminist views. I find her views particularly interesting because as experienced educated open minded women she have access to both sides of debate, knows the practicality of issue and is not bound by extremism of modern feminism.

She said that it’s true that sons get inheritance and daughters get separation, but sons also get any debt too. In Indian context, it is very possible that father passes negative net wealth and it’s sons who bear the burden of clearing the debt, and not daughters. In, now illegal but still prevalent practice of forced labour tied to high interest loan some ancestor in family took long ago (Bandhua Majdoori), it’s the sons who work to payoff paternal debt. So daughters don’t get inheritance but they don’t get debts too. They lose upside but downside too. It does sound something simple but it is profound too because nowhere have I come across this angle of discrimination, not in any of internet debates, not in blogs, or not in my mind itself.

Getting rid of him and her

Over time, due to Western exposure, being in touch with liberal media, and understanding of gender roles, I've come to ingrain the use of gender neutral third person usage in my speech and writings. Instinctively I write 's/he', 'his/her', 'him/her' for any reference to unknown third person, or I rephrase my sentence to use neutral reference 'you' or 'one'. In fact, such is change in my perception that I quickly notice and flinch whenever someone else too mentions 'he' alone in any context where 'he or she' should be used. English language fails miserably in this new empowered world and hence some people have started using 'they' to refer to third person singular instead of writing cumbersome 's/he'.

I do, of course, realize that when someone uses only single gender pronoun to refer to both genders, they are not being sexist. Some may argue that mental perception with single gender usage reinforces gender stereotype but I don't subscribe to such view. Most probably user is unaware of more polite use or is pragmatic and prefers convenience.

To couple this gender bias is the fact that it is not one sided. In India, and perhaps most countries, default gender is 'he', commonly used in business, news, law, textbooks, etc. However, in United States (and perhaps other countries I am not aware of), I don't know why but I suspect due to feminist movement, default gender is 'she'. Irony of the world is that later is not considered offensive to men unlike former is to women, no doubt brought by same forces which make rule of law extremely favorable to fair sex throughout the world.

Noting this, for sake of convenience, from now onwards, this blog will write 'he' for 'he or she', 'his' for 'his or her', 'him' for 'him or her' and so on. This will also remove that awkwardly pause of meaningless discomfort that derails the meaning of sentence when reading a sentence riddled with 'he or she's. Now that I have said that I request whoever is reading this blog to understand that s/he is not being segregated for historical doings of his/her gender, in no way I undermine his/her contribution to the world, and my thoughts are equally applicable to him/her, unless context suggests otherwise.

Observations from the loo

One of the common point of contention between males and females of western household is position of toilet seat - or so I am led to believe from movies, sitcoms and magazine articles. That the women of the house want seat down and men of the house want seat up is at the root of the problem. From first glance, problem is balanced since each party prefers position opposite of another. However, since women typically rule the households, default position is supposed to be seat down, and it's man's job to raise the seat, do the needful, and put it down again, failing which argument ensues. Inherent female bias in this is not hidden, but alas, not questioned either, reasons of which are related to how to deal with women and discussing these is detrimental to my potential relationships with them!

What I would like to propose is to show by simple mathematics that the best strategy for each is to leave toilet seat 'as is' after his/her work rather than leaving the seat in default position. Let's start with simple household with one man and one woman. Chances that last person to toilet was either, and next person to toilet will be either, are assumed to be fifty-fifty for simplicity. Computations can be worked out similarly for n men and m women with unequal probability of going to loo.

If no default position is set then expected workload per visit to loo is half unit. A man may either find it up, and do no work, or down, and have to raise it. He will leave is raised after use. Ditto for woman (no work for down position and one unit work for up position). Average work is half per visit with both working equally.

If either of default position (seat up or down) is set, then there is expected workload of one unit per visit. Consider seat down as default. When woman visits, there is no work required. When man visits there is two unit of work (raising, putting down) required. With half probability each, expected workload per person is one unit. However all of this is done by man.

Hence optimal rule is to leave as is after use, however generally used rule of seat down makes men do all the work. See the bias? But then, you know.

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For western style toilet, I've felt the need for smaller mini-flush for urinal purposes so as not to waste as much water as is currently used.

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And what's with vomiting/crying in bowls as they show in Hollywood movies? How can one even look into that water and bowl? Never really got my head around it. Why not use wash basins like we do here in India?

Preference for boy over girl, or vice versa

Whether parents prefer boy over girl is not as obvious as it seems. Answer depends on whom you ask. Parents all over the world do prefer boys as their biological offsprings, though the extent differs from place to place. Extreme preference for boys in India and China is well documented but girls are relatively less preferred in United States too. This article (Do daughters cause divorce?) demonstrates by examples the gender bias in US.

1. Divorced women with girls are substantially less likely to remarry than divorced women with boys, suggesting that daughters are a liability in the market for a husband.
2. Parents of girls are quite a bit more likely to try for another child than parents of boys.
3. Unmarried couples expecting child are more likely to get married if the child is a boy.

Authors also find striking evidence suggesting that "boys hold marriages together, and girls break them up."

In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it's wider still. In Vietnam, it's huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.

Explanation seems to lie in the fact that parents (men?) prefer boys more than they do girls, and hence more likely to stick together even in failed marriage when there are male offsprings.

However, parents prefer girls over boys when it comes to adoption. Data in US shows that among adopted children, there are 100 girls per 56 boys. Adoption preference is observed in numbers registered with adoption agencies too. What is going on here?

Possible explanations, as outlined in this piece (Why do adoptive parents prefer girls?), are:

1. Parents feel that a girl is easier to understand and to rear.
2. When taking the somewhat risky step of bringing a foreign element into their family, parents might perceive little boys to be inheritors of their homes' uneasy fortunes, whereas little girls can more readily seem to be hapless victims of circumstance.
3. Boys will tend to be put up for adoption when there's something seriously wrong with them, but many girls will be put up for adoption simply for being girls.
4. Men are largely silent partners in most adoptions, indicating that men's preferences with regard to their children's gender are simply not as strong when patrimony is not an issue.

In developing country like India, people who opt for adoption are likely to be more open minded and hence prefer girls knowing that girls are more rejected and vulnerable to exploitation otherwise. In case of US, there is no consensus on which is correct explanation, but things seem to indicate that when parents have choice – which they soon will given genetic engineering and trend towards designed babies – then biases are going to raise serious ethical questions.

Why didn't Raj run?

During a discussion on movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge on BollyWhat? - which is a excellent Bollywood discussion forum aimed at non-Indian fans of Bollywood - someone made an interesting observation. When Raj (Shah Rukh Khan) returned from London for Simran (Kajol), in their meeting in mustard fields, why did he just stood with his arms stretched and it was she who had to run all the length between them? Didn't he love her as well? Observer was disconcerted by anti-feminist implication of the scene which suggested that woman need to run to their lover and man can haughtily stand with smirk on their face with "you-know-you-want-me" expression.

My reaction, at first, was amazement and surprise at sharp eyes of the commenter and depth of the issue that she to chose to look at scene with. By the way, discussions on this forum are as deep on many Bollywood aspects, which I don't really participate in, but are always refreshing look on Bollywood from Occidental fandom. My second reaction was drastic realization of how true love is perceived in India and in West. Here I mean true love in truest sense, pure genuine love, and not in ironical sense.

Other members quickly pointed that it was Raj who had come all the way from London for her, surely he was not as chauvinists as he is made out to be in this scene? I noted that, and I quote myself

I just saw Pardes ... recently. And this comment, and general comments on this board, and my perception of western world, all merges together in that dialogue of Pardes. It goes something like...''in west, love is give and take; in India, love is just give, give and give more.'' Of course, that does sound like ... preaching, but if you reflect you'd find some truth there.

In context of this movie, why should it matter that Shah Rukh is not running towards her and she is running. She knows she wants him, and he knows she wants him, and that's it, that should be enough for her to run towards him. Where is there a place for even doubt to appear whether his attitude is smug or not? Where is value judgment coming there? Why should you even expect something in return, if you love. I am not saying that all love is like that, but I think true love, from Indian definition should be like that, and we can assume that, this being a movie, their love is pure one. I may not be able to express my views here but I think, THAT is major difference expressed in that dialogue of Pardes.

Original member accepted that her expectation from true love is give-and-take. I can understand that these are expectations of an Indian couple too in real life, and are desirable in long-term relationship, yet we have plenty of example where real true love doesn't bother about reciprocation.

Of men and women, and preference thereof

Today our college kicked off talent-night, an event to showcase talent for incoming batch and to have fun booing them for senior batch. In a horrendously noisy environment where air is reverberating with tempo shouts of performing students and booing noises of audiences, only one thing typically works in calming audience. Bring on ladies. In college where men-women ratio is disproportionately against fairer sex, only beauties on stage can make people pause and listen. I can admit that women may get more than fair representation in any such performance because typically women tend to be good at dance stuff or because any duet song requires performance of both genders. But what ends up having is something akin to mujra where audience whistle and ladies on stage dance to popular item numbers. To my mind this very sexist and I find this disconcerting. But what perplexes me more is that women in audience too enjoy that and women at stage are willing to go to any extent in displaying their seduction. Perhaps my sense of gender fairness is stronger than what even women prefer, or may be it's wrongly applied here and I have conceptual misunderstanding.

On a related note, I find signals that women convey when they expect men to treat them like human beings and not just sex-objects very mixed up. I am sure I am generalizing it a lot but somehow I feel that their civilized sophistication (which warrants non-sexual treatment) is at odds with their biological wiring (which warrants wooing partner with baser of instincts). I remember reading somewhere that our society is progressing faster than what our biology can cope with.