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Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

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Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#11

Post by akvadrako »

jabot wrote: post #10
cousin_it wrote: post #3

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be politi…

As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you…

> People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences.

Nearly all beliefs are of this type. I believe the Earth orbits the Sun because it's helps me predict the seasons.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#12

Post by kirillkh »

xt00 wrote: post #6

I think people will always be scared of losing their job or their way of life changing.. so coming up with reasons why somebody who is different from you is somehow not as good at what you do, is a comforting path to go down for many people. It will be a battle between people that don't want things to change and the people who want to see things change. I do think that when anybody says "hey ya know you should just b…

Not sure what all of this has to do with the linked article, which discusses purely the scientific merit of claims of bias in STEM.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#13

Post by jankotek »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #7
jankotek wrote: post #2

From my experience location dependence is the greatest obstacle for women to join high earning STEM jobs. With paygap women find it more difficult to live in expensive cities. Also remote work allows more life balance for care givers (who are mostly women). It should be seen as sexism, if company does not offer remote jobs.

Your first two sentences seem like a circular argument. Women can't get the high paying jobs because they don't live in the right places, they can't live in the right places because they can't get the high paying jobs.

Not really. If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work.

Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). Big cities are unaffordable even at the same salary.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#14

Post by jabot »

akvadrako wrote: post #11
jabot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter-point: People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Simple example: "all people are created equal". This is a belief that is (probably) frequently held because it has assumed beneficial consequences for society. So if people choose to believe in something because that has certain consequences - then a belief can be political. EDIT: To expand on this a little... It seems to me that you…

> People can hold beliefs because they have certain consequences. Nearly all beliefs are of this type. I believe the Earth orbits the Sun because it's helps me predict the seasons.

In a narrow sense you are probably right.

In a more general sense, consider the "laws of physics". People believe in them not because of their consequences, but because they explain reality (and quite well). So people believe in gravity because it has worked for them in the past, and because it has been verified.

Also... _not_ believing in gravity will not make much of a difference for your life (as long as you don't start jumping off cliffs of course).

EDIT: I forgot about religion. AFAIK, most people believe in religion because they have been taught/indoctrinated/raised to believe in it, and _not_ because they have (deeply) thought about the social consequences of their particular religion.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#15

Post by SidiousL »

natch wrote: post #9

it’s fine and valid to research whether people encounter improper bias in their careers, which is clearly often the case. But their discussion is incomplete without at least recognition of another possible partial cause of gender disparity in tech, the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon. These cues are delivered by parents, te…

> the fact that many sexist anti-STEM cues are given to children at a much earlier stage, way before careers are even on the horizon

It doesn't look like you read the article. It clearly stated that in countries like Finland and Sweden, where such cues are less likely to be given, there is a larger inequality in STEM. Meanwhile, in Iran there are more women in STEM. Do you think that in Iran young girls are more or less likely to be subjected to "harmful gender stereotypes" than in Sweden or Finland?

> Cues can be as subtle as a wide-eyed look while reacting ...

This was precisely addressed in the article. It goes by the name of micro-aggression. Go back and read about it.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#16

Post by gambiting »

jankotek wrote: post #13
OscarCunningham wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first two sentences seem like a circular argument. Women can't get the high paying jobs because they don't live in the right places, they can't live in the right places because they can't get the high paying jobs.

Not really. If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work. Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...). Big cities are unaffordable even at the same salary.

>>Also women have more expenses than men (ping tax, daycare...).

What's ping tax?

How is daycare more expensive for women? Surely, a man raising a child on their own will pay exactly the same amount of money for daycare? In a normal case, where partners raise children together, they surely pay for daycare from a shared budget, not just from the woman's salary(that would be just bizarre).

>> If woman gets high paying job, she makes less money for the same work.

The counter argument to this is that if this was true, companies would only hire women, since apparently they do the same work for less money!

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#17

Post by imartin2k »

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate).

However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing.”

This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender imbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields (an example: the recent study about facial recognition being less accurate on female faces). Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: In other words: no matter where one stands in the debate about the reasons for gender imbalance in STEM, it is totally reasonable not to be too concerned about imbalances among plumbers or car mechanics, because this imbalance does have less consequences. It doesn’t matter for any other aspect in life whether a woman or man fixes the car, but it matters who creates the algorithms that control everyone’s lives.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#18

Post by hnhg »

cousin_it wrote: post #3

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be politi…

Many arguments are both partially rational and partially political, but lay claim to being only rational.

You might be implying that but it's worth stating as a particular case.

I'd say this article probably fits that category, and is why the flamewar will emerge :)

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#19

Post by meheleventyone »

cousin_it wrote: post #3

This is a "culture war" topic, let's prepare for the shitshow in the comments. I'd like to offer some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly. There's a widespread view that all beliefs are political, you can't be apolitical, and anyone arguing for a belief opposing yours must be an enemy. To me, that view is pretty much a type error. Beliefs are value-neutral. Only arguments for or against beliefs can be politi…

It's the is-ought problem really. We can take a position on what is but very often pop off to talk about what ought to be. Further because people have differing levels of knowledge, understanding and acceptance of evidence of varying degrees of accuracy the rational positions on what is can be quite wide. Politics to me is not the opposite of rationality but where we take our is and extrapolate. As long as this extrapolation is reasonable to the evidence presented this is still rational since it's relative to the understanding of that individual. So I'm not sure that separating arguments into rational and political is that helpful except in dismissing others points of view.

For example there is plentiful evidence that women are less represented in certain STEM fields. But is that because they are ill-suited to them or the fields themselves are ill-suited to women. Do we accept this lack of representation as an inevitable consequence? It is this way and it ought to be so. Or do we broaden the possibilities and consider what these fields might be like and may accomplish otherwise if they were more female friendly.

I'd take a wild stab in the dark that prior political world view is probably a greater predictor than most for which of those options seems the more appealing.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#20

Post by shard972 »

imartin2k wrote: post #17

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about…

> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics?

Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?

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