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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

#211

Post by traverseda »

tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

Nursing pays quite well and has a similar gender ratio, in the opposite direction.

It's unlikely that's due to two completely different mechanisms, so I'd put more stock in theories that explain both situations.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#212

Post by throwaway8075 »

BlackFly wrote: post #113
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> starting from the assumption that men are disproportionately represented among the upper levels of spatial and mathematical abstraction skills, there'd be an uproar I’ve mentioned it repeatedly on HN and have never so much as gotten a rise out of anyone. (I should also point out that the SAT folks publish a detailed report on SAT gender differences each year and nobody blinks an eye.) The problem is that it doesn’t…

> Men outrepresent women about 2:1 among perfect SAT Math scores. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this represents a real difference in mathematical ability. Even if programming ability were 100% correlated with mathematical ability, you’d expect a much higher ratio than you see in practice. That doesn't follow for reasons explained in the article. Choice of whether to go into sciences over humanities isn't…

All this also assumes that SAT scores map well to interests and not aptness.

You might do well enough for a PhD in maths and in sociology and still decide try to become carpenter because you love working with wood more than sitting in an office, no matter if you're arguing math or social contexts.

For a woman that might be the hardest career of all these, too (2% of carpenters are women).

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#213

Post by bloak »

skywhopper wrote: post #151

This is a very poor article, masquerading as a scientific paper, but published in a political publication. The authors pick a few jargon-heavy effects, claim there's no evidence for those effects, and dismiss the entire argument, and fall back on the lazy "boys like things, girls like people" explanation, and is laced throughout with accusations of politically based dishonesty in opposing views. In other words, it's…

It explicitly calls itself an "essay".

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#214

Post by Antimachides »

notlob wrote: post #181
tptacek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an essay that knocks down two extrinsic causes for gender disparity in STEM and then suggests, using Finland as an example, that the cause of disparity is probably intrinsic. It may be the case that some intrinsic difference between men an women keeps the field of chemical engineering at 40-60 women/men, or mathematics at 35-65. But those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software developm…

What does “cognitively more demanding“ mean?

Probably means you have to be smarter to do them.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#215

Post by ghostwriter »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #94

I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked…

The difference in preferences is consistent across nations (and their cultures) - https://youtu.be/p5LRdW8xw70?t=15m36s

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#216

Post by jabot »

edna314 wrote: post #196
jabot wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, from a probabilistic point of view, wouldn't equal chances mean that for large numbers of trials (people) the outcome would also be equal? Only if human properties are statistically independent. If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over. This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal tria…

> If they are not, then a policy that depends on equality of outcome will screw someone over. It means that someone would get less outcome than he or she would have gotten without the policy, true. > This has happened before, e.g. in medicinal research. Turns out, generalizing to the general population from a medicinal trial that consists only of men results in worse treatment for women. Wages or positions in compani…

> Wages or positions in companies are fundamentally different to medicine. We can decide how our companies look like. We can't decide how our body works.

Well, for the most part, our power over our workplaces is also rather limited. True, you can leave, and go to a "different" company...

> It's fine if you disagree with that, but I will have a hard time continuing the discussion. In hindsight this assumption although already implies that properties must be "statistically independent". Thanks for pointing that out I think I've learned something.

I... think that statistical independence of human properties is a valid basic assumption.

However i think that it is worthwhile to question that assumption from time to time. Especially when, as mentioned in the article, more free societies like sweden or finland have more unequal outcomes than societies like iran (which iirc instituted a male quota for some STEM fields a few years ago).

This is a difficult topic...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#217

Post by Caveman_Coder »

scarmig wrote: post #26

This reminds me of something I was thinking about earlier today. It's well known that men generally are stagnating economically, while women are catching up. In many metro areas, single women out earn single men. And so I came across this paper[0], which had some interesting research about that. And what struck me was this: there's an explicit assumption that men have worse socio-emotional skills than women, and that…

It reminds me of the master-slave morality that Nietzsche wrote about. Unable to compete by the current rules of the game (master morality), minorities/women have adopted a new set of rules by which they judge people (slave morality), and that is seen by the weird "Oppression Olympics" we see playing out right now by the "oppressed" groups on the left [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#218

Post by [deleted] »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #94

I'm a PhD student at a UK university. From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women for every 5 men, both in staff and students, a not unreasonable ratio. However, I struggle to remember more than a couple of women who are British or from an English-speaking country. The majority come from India, China, the rest of Europe, the Middle East etc. I've also seen this in the six years I worked…

[deleted]

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#219

Post by dragonwriter »

traverseda wrote: post #211
tptacek wrote: post #152

Once again: compared to other STEM fields, women participate less in CS than any other field except physics. By double digits percentage more in mathematics PhDs. Statistics is almost 50/50. Several rigorous earth sciences fields --- chem and biochem, for instance --- have 50% or greater female participation. One thing all these fields have in common is that they are more intellectually rigorous and harder to succeed…

Nursing pays quite well and has a similar gender ratio, in the opposite direction. It's unlikely that's due to two completely different mechanisms, so I'd put more stock in theories that explain both situations.

Per BLS, registered nurses have a $68,450 median salary. [0]

Software developers have a $102,280 median salary. [1]

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses....

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#220

Post by moduspol »

pc86 wrote: post #210
moduspol wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he insulted about 30% of his co-workers He didn't insult anyone, although some amount of his coworkers did feel insulted. The difference between these two things is significant.

I don't think he intended to insult anyone, but I also don't think it's unreasonable to believe that people could be insulted based on what he said. That's the gray area your binary distillation completely ignores. It's a little more nuanced than "he hurt my feelings!"

I think what he wrote should be judged on the merits of what it said and not how others choose to misinterpret it.

Put differently: We are going down a dark road when someone simply being offended by pretty mainstream views mean those views are the problem.

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