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

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

#41

Post by eutectic »

xienze wrote: post #31
Tehnix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

> If given completely free choice, perhaps some people are just disposed to being in interested in different things. Because that would require people to acknowledge that the theory that everyone is a blank slate with equal capabilities and that any differences in outcome are as a result of some sort of systemic oppression might not be entirely correct.

Equal capabilities and interests.

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

#42

Post by fouc »

annabellish wrote: post #34
Tehnix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

The danger there is in trying to explain a complicated social phenomenon with "it's free, so why wouldn't they do it?" There's very little suggestion that the reason there aren't more women in tech is because they can't afford it. In reality, it's a thousand tiny factors from a thousand people, none/few of them actively trying to do harm. As an offhand, personal example, my sister isn't in tech because she was told C…

I think a great many folks in software development would still have ended up with a software development job even if they were told that CS "wouldn't be their thing"

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

#43

Post by Tehnix »

annabellish wrote: post #34
Tehnix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

The danger there is in trying to explain a complicated social phenomenon with "it's free, so why wouldn't they do it?" There's very little suggestion that the reason there aren't more women in tech is because they can't afford it. In reality, it's a thousand tiny factors from a thousand people, none/few of them actively trying to do harm. As an offhand, personal example, my sister isn't in tech because she was told C…

Then that would more be a aspect of social expectations, no? Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias", as if people were actively working against someone doing the particular thing there is bias against, where it is more a result of social expectations on what is "proper" for each gender.

Again, only speaking from my Danish perspective, but I've never met anyone thinking STEM of all things would not be fit for females, but you probably would get that reaction if you were to say, as a female, that you wanted to become a plumber or similar hands-on jobs.

---

Slightly going off-topic: Personally, I think the disparity we see, currently, in STEM et al, is for historical reasons, as younger boys used e.g. computers as an escape from socialising, and thereby grew interested in that particular field. I also think this is why it is sometimes met with a bit of a scuff from some in the tech community, because what was previously viewed as a something nerdy, uncool and with a lot of negative stereotypes attached to it, is all of the sudden the new cool thing, and people that suffered through bullying for being "nerdy" and generally not having the time of their life in younger school life, are now being touted as if they were privileged all along, which very much undermines the struggles they had during their upbringing.

This is mostly guesswork from intuition, since I personally did not have any trouble fitting in, yet even I got the "nerd" remark if I would tell people my interests, so I don't feel I was particularly encouraged or anything into this—in fact, most are probably here despite that.

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

#44

Post by monksy »

annabellish wrote: post #34
Tehnix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

The danger there is in trying to explain a complicated social phenomenon with "it's free, so why wouldn't they do it?" There's very little suggestion that the reason there aren't more women in tech is because they can't afford it. In reality, it's a thousand tiny factors from a thousand people, none/few of them actively trying to do harm. As an offhand, personal example, my sister isn't in tech because she was told C…

> "wouldn't be her thing"

If that is the case, are you asserting that all of these displaced women are choosing fields of studies that they're not a good fit for?

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

#45

Post by wskinner »

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.

If you had read the paper, you would have found that they tested and rejected the idea that reviewers were overcompensating due to guessing what was being tested. In Experiment 5, they sent single resumes to reviewers and asked them to rate on a 1-10 scale. Female candidates still scored significantly higher.

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

#46

Post by savanaly »

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.

I've heard a theory for explaining that that goes like this:

1. choosing a career path you're not interested in can be considered a luxury

2. women tend to be less interested in computer science

3. people in the "first world" tend to have more luxuries of all sorts since they are wealthier

4. thus, percentage of women in STEM anti-correlates with GDP-per-capita

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

#47

Post by juicyfroot »

romanovcode wrote: post #11
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'…

People like you are given gold and they will whine it's too heavy. The graph clearly shows that women are prefered in STEM, what more proof do you need?

This

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

#48

Post by juicyfroot »

majos wrote: post #19
romanovcode wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like you are given gold and they will whine it's too heavy. The graph clearly shows that women are prefered in STEM, what more proof do you need?

Imagine that you and your friend go to work for company X. You are put in a windowless room with an uncomfortable chair where every half hour a co-worker comes by to ask a brief technical question. Your friend gets a quiet, sunny office and is only interrupted by the meetings he organizes himself. However, management assures you that in light of your less amenable office situation, you will receive an extra 10 points…

This is retarded. No one is forcing you to work there

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

#49

Post by marchenko »

The simulation of an academic job search used in this study is not very much like a real academic job search. This study was well designed, but it is harder to do a faithful blind replication of the hiring process in academia vs the public or private sector because job searches are much rarer, and most of the applicants are known - at least by reputation - by most of the evaluation committee - their future coworkers.

The researchers made a strong effort to obscure the goal of the study, but if you are an academic participating in an artificial candidate search, you are likely to suspect that one of the variables being tested is either sex, race, or both. The experiment where evaluators rated a single candidate addresses this somewhat, but even in that case the participants are almost certain to have known that there was no job search in progress, and very likely to have realized that there was a socially desirable response possible to be given at no cost. By no cost, I mean that this person is not going to show up and take space and resources that could go to your preferred candidate/collaborator.

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