"Blacks are humans just like we whites are, not some inferior race that's OK to be exploited".
I'm a policy maker. I put an end to slavery.
No prediction involved.
"X prevents women from getting into IT".
I'm a policy maker. I take steps to help women get into IT.
No prediction involved.
Conditions in prisons are bad because so and so.
I'm a policy maker. Let's change the conditions.
No prediction involved.
Sometimes the prediction is obvious and implied (removing X will allow more women to get into IT), other times it's not needed at all (when the change is about doing what's right, like with slavery, not about doing something that we predict will turn things in some specific way).
Your first example is based on moral philosophy, not sociology.
Your other two examples - as you note - are based on an explicit prediction. Now the question arises - are sociological predictions any good?
You can't simultaneously claim sociology is descriptive, and therefore can't be judged on it's predictions, and then turn around and use it's predictions to describe it as useful.
>Your first example is based on moral philosophy, not sociology.
Sociology is inherently tied with "moral philosophy" and normative ideas about society, and has always been, and it's something sociologists, at least here in Europe, have been perfectly open about (e.g. Foucault Bourdieu, Pierre Bourdieu, Henri Lefebvre and tons of others) It's not, for example, just a positivistic gathering of statistics and a supposedly "neutral" construction of prediction models.
>Your other two examples - as you note - are based on an explicit prediction
No, they are based on observation of existing conditions. No explicit prediction involved, as noted. At best there's an implicit prediction that's an obvious conclusion from the observations (e.g. "if we reduce macho culture, more women will get into IT").
