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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)

#51

Post by rdtsc »

> Research on actual hiring shows female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, but if they do apply, they are more likely to be hired, sometimes by a 2:1 ratio.

I think the society and culture needs to work a bit harder to promote the idea of a girl as a professor, scientist, hacker, math wiz etc. Not just lip service but change the stories, the cartoons, movies, games etc. For too long in popular culture, starting early on girls are just princesses, then then later just a romantic interest side-kick. I noticed with my own daughter, she really wants identify with bad guys in the cartoons because even though they are naughty they have the coolest toys, rule the world and tell their minions what to do. But she finds it hard because the majority of the "cool" roles are taken by boys.

Yes by the time it comes to apply for tenure track positions, girls have already been told verbally and non-verbally many times -- "this is not for you, probably".

I remember in Eastern Europe in primary education, girls and women were more interested in math than boys. I was getting help with calculus homework from them. My high school CS teacher was a professional programmer before and she was an inspiration many girls and to boys alike, including me. She had a large book on Pascal and if we were good we could stay after school and do exercises from it. So I have seen it work in practice -- it is possible to have a culture and attitude where girls see math, science and CS as appealing disciplines.

On the other hand, I think it is worth to acknowledge that maybe there is also an element were women just don't want to do CS or math. Even if they had positive role models. I know we all think tech is super awesome, getting paid to do what we love, implement and develop cool algorithms, etc. But what if sitting in a cubicle inverting binary trees all day, mostly in isolation, doesn't appeal to others, and maybe those other are more likely to be women. Is that controversial to say? I imagine it might be soul crushing for some even if they were promised to get RSUs, options and a large salary.

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

#52

Post by ravenstine »

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…

The problem is that the more you whittle down bigger arguments to "a thousand tiny factors", the less tangible and less useful arguments around gender inequality become. Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line.

Frankly, there are far more reasons why a man would want to enter STEM than a woman. A man can put of devoting time to a family because he doesn't have the biological clock a woman has; STEM is a demanding set of fields that require a lot of thought and time, which becomes a challenge for an intelligent woman who also wants time to find a man she can not only relate to but is at least at the same class level as she is. Being in STEM also means being around a lot of unattractive, perhaps creepy men. STEM is competitive, and men and women compete in different ways, so a woman will likely always have to compete on the playing field of men.

If I was a woman, I probably wouldn't bother, not because someone told me I couldn't do it, but because it makes no sense from a perspective of happiness and reproduction. There's a slim chance the kind of man I would want would also be attracted to me as a person, and I might not even meet such a man if I'm spending most of my time in a lab or behind a computer.

As a man, there is a lot of incentive to go into STEM, probably more than ever. Actually, there's incentive to do just about anything so long as it provides a channel to move into the level of class one aspires to. Good luck attracting an intelligent woman who's going places if you're a cashier or a taxi driver. It's not to say that's impossible, but you put yourself at a huge disadvantage as a man when you don't work towards bigger things. Flip the sexes, and it's totally different; successful, intelligent men are far less likely to negatively judge a potential partner based on her career choice. Because of the tech revolution, working with technology can lead to greater levels of prestige than what used to be attainable. Men perceive prestige as a way of opening doors to the mating pool. For women, too much prestige can close doors because they appear more unattainable. (granted, both can experience levels of unattainableness, but it's all about perception at the end of the day)

I would love for society to expose more girls to science and technology, and encourage them to explore those ideas, but we also need to accept that men and women aren't the same and they are going to have different motivations and perceptions on aggregate. Believing that women can and should behave more like men is fundamentally sexist.

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

#53

Post by godelski »

Tehnix wrote: post #28
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 S…

I think the idea of a (near) 50/50 split is that if there were absolutely no biases or differences then you would see approximately this distribution.

But we don't. We do know there are social biases, and thus these are being scrutinized much more. Certainly there can biological biases, but is is absurd to believe that is the only factor involved. My guess is that there is a whole complicated mess of problems and not an easy one (or even dozens) answer that accounts for these differences.

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

#54

Post by heavenlyblue »

linkmotif wrote: post #17
lumberjack wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that stuff is because of bias though. That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.

Sentence 1: > None of that stuff is because of bias though. Sentence 2: > That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.

He's speaking about the boundary conditions, you're just parrotting something you have clearly misunderstood.

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

#55

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

hamax wrote: post #38
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This is often repeated but the data is way more noisy than this comment implies. For example this chart for Asian countries does have Iran on one side and Japan on the other, but it also have Korea way higher than Japan and Cambodia way lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_STEM_fields#/media/Fi... In europe Norway has the fewest women in stem and Croatia the highest, but there are a lot of cases where the co…

Thanks for adding details.

Heres some more studies I found interesting. I'm sorry if this list looks biased, its just what I could find. If anyone knows of (statistically sound) contradicting studies, please share!

"Practically all psychological differences between men and women were LARGER in cultures with more gender egalitarianism." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijop.12265/full

"Women tend to shy away from career opportunities that explicitly make "brilliance" a condition." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103117...

"Women prefer less risk and less competition, appear to prioritize equality over efficiency and report a greater willingness to share wealth." https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0713.html

"Personality had greater impact on variance in income than sex, narcissistic men earning more, neurotic women less." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917...

"Women saw typical engineers & computer scientists as more extreme & stereotype-consistent, sabotaging themselves" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0763-x

"The wage gap between men and women vanishes after controlling for so-called "reservation wages"." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117...

"Women underestimate, while men overestimate their labor market prospects, leading to greater female job satisfaction" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268117...

"Women with managerial careers are significantly less satisfied with their life than their male counterparts." https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9832-z

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

#56

Post by dominotw »

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…

> she was told CS "wouldn't be her thing"

Curious who told her that. Career counsellors?

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

#57

Post by annabellish »

Tehnix wrote: post #43
annabellish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Perhaps I've read to much malice into the word "systemic bias"

Bingo. There's no active malice there, which is why it's such a difficult problem to solve. There's no one force to fight against and no "enemy", just a lot of well meaning people who average out to a crummy result.

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

#58

Post by annabellish »

peoplewindow wrote: post #35
annabellish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because of that, and similar discouragement, she ended up not going into tech whereas she otherwise _might_ have I realise it's your sister, but do you know that for sure? Or is that more like a hope you have yourself, based on your own beliefs about women in tech? It's quite possible that the person who told her CS "wouldn't be your thing" was giving genuine advice based on actually knowing her and her preferences,…

She _might_ have. She was into it at the time. She may well not have anyway, hence the might, but it's still additional discouragement the boys didn't get.

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

#59

Post by annabellish »

ravenstine wrote: post #52
annabellish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that the more you whittle down bigger arguments to "a thousand tiny factors", the less tangible and less useful arguments around gender inequality become. Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line. Frankly, there are far more reasons why a man would want to enter STEM than a woman. A man can put of devoting time to a family because…

>Your argument seems to be that girls are so suggestible that any discouragement easily bounces them back in line.

They're _children_. Girls or boys, having an authority figure saying "you don't want to do this" will mean most won't do it. It isn't about that girls are any more suggestible than boys, it's that in this area girls get more discouragement than boys do.

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

#60

Post by always_good »

Tehnix wrote: post #43
annabellish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Speaking of sisters, I'm a triplet with two sisters and I spent a lot of time on the computer as a teen mostly out of social destitution. But that's what got me into tech and programming.

My sisters never had time to play video games with me, although they periodically enjoyed them and even bought a couple games, because they were always meeting up with friends. People were always inviting them out.

I look at my tech-minded friends as a kid and there's a similar pattern of social deprivation. I wonder how much that plays a role in general.

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