Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

pnas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 116 posts

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#21

Post by kentrado »

linkmotif wrote: post #18
cristianpascu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered things that men have to deal with and are not being able to put them in terms of 'being male in the X industry/community/field"? This is not to minimize anything a woman has to go through, but let's, at least, not compare as if it's on equal terms. If we're able to talk about women issues at all, isn't that because women and men are different? Why compare it so easily and uni-dimensionally? B…

A man worries a woman won’t like him. A woman worries a man will kill her.

Geez, men are a bunch killers. Why can they be more like women?

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#22

Post by progressivebaka »

linkmotif wrote: post #18
cristianpascu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever considered things that men have to deal with and are not being able to put them in terms of 'being male in the X industry/community/field"? This is not to minimize anything a woman has to go through, but let's, at least, not compare as if it's on equal terms. If we're able to talk about women issues at all, isn't that because women and men are different? Why compare it so easily and uni-dimensionally? B…

A man worries a woman won’t like him. A woman worries a man will kill her.

Well statically a man should worry whether both a man or a woman would kill him. Because as a whole, men kill men in a higher rate than they kill women. And, women kill men more than they kill women.

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#23

Post by seanmcdirmid »

billfruit wrote: post #13

Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.

China has similar, if not worse problems, as the USA. The lab I worked for in Beijing made lots of effort to attract female researchers, and it was still very lopsided.

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#24

Post by gaius »

forestdev wrote: post #14
IshKebab wrote: post #10

Very interesting. I presume this isn't a blind test though, so could there be a "ooo they're testing for sexism, better pick the women!" factor? Or did they account for that somehow? Edit: Skimmed it and they did go to significant lengths to disguise their hypothesis. Details on page 2 of the PDF.

Without this being a double-blind experiment, than it is highly questionable. People over-compensate for bias if you tell them you're testing their bias. The fact that the abstract makes no mention of this is highly suspect.

Blind recruiting had some unintended consequences http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#25

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

billfruit wrote: post #13

Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.

It is. In countries where women have the freedom of choice due to political and economical circumstances, the gender imbalance is more pronounced.

Basically, most women choose to not pursue engineering if they don't have to (unfortunately, I'm glad we have some women at the office).

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#26

Post by ikeyany »

vim_wannabe wrote: post #15
majos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I think the everyday experience for female academics still lags behind that of male academics. If you're an undergrad in an unfamiliar hard class it can be tricky to approach a male fellow student without risking misinterpretation of romantic interest; if you're applying to grad school, letter writers are conditioned to talk about women in different ways ("diligent", not "brilliant", maybe); if you'…

>romantic interest Heh, I don't know about other STEM fields but I remember a lady attending a computer science freshman social event once. There were very few women there as the majority of women in CS are in HTI. After a while she said to my friend, "Why is everyone such a nerd." She left the field, men were at fault.

I'm not sure she's blaming men as much as she's confirming the existence of the culture around tech that non-traditional students (women or blacks/Latinos) feel very alienated from. That doesn't mean she thinks anyone is "to blame".

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#27

Post by linkmotif »

megaman22 wrote: post #20
linkmotif wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man worries a woman won’t like him. A woman worries a man will kill her.

The chances of that happening with your typical Dilbertian white male software engineer are vanishingly small.

And then there is reality: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides..., etc.

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#28

Post by Tehnix »

billfruit wrote: post #13

Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.

In Denmark for example, which by all accounts is a first world country, the majority of educated people are actually women[2], and there is absolutely nothing that prevents anyone from any social class or gender to take an education (it's free, heck even payed for), yet we still see women leaning more towards the humanities, social sciences and professions such as lawyer[0], than men. Men predominantly lean towards STEM, but even then it varies.

Take for example the first source[0], which only has a difference of 962 women to 1082 men accepted into the scientific faculty. At DTU[1] it varies more, although anything with Bio, Environment or Medicin in the name will be skewed more towards women.

I guess my point is: why do we insist there is some inherent bias against someone in society, if there is not a 50/50 split (which would in itself be weird)? If given completely free choice, perhaps some people are just disposed to being in interested in different things.

Disclaimer: I should probably say that the above of course only applies to Denmark, and I cannot talk on behalf of the situation in the US.

[0]: http://studier.ku.dk/bachelor/ansoegning-og-optagelse/optage...

[1]: https://www.google.dk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

[2]: https://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/emner/levevilkaar/ligestilli...

EDIT: Added source on first claim about more women being educated.

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#29

Post by programmertote »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #23
billfruit wrote: post #13

Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.

China has similar, if not worse problems, as the USA. The lab I worked for in Beijing made lots of effort to attract female researchers, and it was still very lopsided.

From my graduate CS classes in the US, most women are from foreign countries. I notice the same in other US grad schools as well. From that, I am led to believe that women from developing nations (which kind of includes China) still choose STEM careers (most likely for practical purpose of making money).

Re: Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

#30

Post by [deleted] »

linkmotif wrote: post #27
megaman22 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chances of that happening with your typical Dilbertian white male software engineer are vanishingly small.

And then there is reality: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides... , etc.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN