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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

#231

Post by Double_a_92 »

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…

From what I've seen in my department (Engineering) there are about 3 women. Exactly 3 women. It was a smaller Uni with maybe ~150 Students.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#232

Post by naasking »

lawlessone wrote: post #202
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…

>Whatever is holding women's participation in our field at or below twenty percent is artificial, and a travesty. CS is often toxic in my opinion. I can recall one instance were a lecturer harped on about why "men are better than women" . Wish i spoke up, but the guy ruled the place.

So one douche bag makes a whole field toxic? Come on.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#233

Post by kirillkh »

rayiner wrote: post #140
Pyxl101 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That claim in Damore's memo shouldn't be controvertial. Here's what Deborah Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience) had to say about it: > Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is…

You (and she) are focusing on the wrong part of the chain of reasoning. The issue is not whether there are gender differences in preferences, but why we have any reason to believe that programming is a “masculine” profession. The fact that men and women sometimes prefer different things due to biological factors does not mean that if you observe men and women preferring different things, that can be explained by biol…

Addressing your main points.

> why we have any reason to believe that programming is a “masculine” profession

By exclusion: we have checked everything else we could think of and found no other logical explanation for the disparity of sexes in STEM. That doesn't mean women's preference is the true underlying reason, but then, we don't have a better explanation, or even any other explanation consistent with facts. Still, AFAIK, Damore never claimed it was THE reason, he just raised it as a possible and the likeliest explanation - given no other explanation seems to work.

> But in India, the vast majority of teachers are men.

I don't think India is a valid example here, because there is still a lot of inequality in that society. Let's talk about countries on the higher end of the equality spectrum, like Finland or Sweden.

> Also, the truck analogy has been debunked

[Source missing]

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#234

Post by yorwba »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #153

> Let’s start with the magnitude of stereotype threat on girls’ and women’s mathematics achievement. [...] It should be noted, though, that the largest study to date included nearly 1000 children (9-14 years old) and found no effects. This latter study is of particular interest, because it included adolescents, whereas most other stereotype threat studies were carried out with university students. Well, what was actu…

The abstract ( https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1050056 ) says:

Stereotype threat has been proposed as 1 potential explanation for the gender difference in standardized mathematics test performance among high-performing students. At present, it is not entirely clear how susceptibility to stereotype threat develops, as empirical evidence for stereotype threat effects across the school years is inconsistent. In a series of 3 studies, with a total sample of 931 students, we investigated stereotype threat effects during childhood and adolescence. Three activation methods were used, ranging from implicit to explicit. Across studies, we found no evidence that the mathematics performance of school-age girls was impacted by stereotype threat. In 2 of the studies, there were gender differences on the mathematics assessment regardless of whether stereotype threat was activated. Potential reasons for these findings are discussed, including the possibility that stereotype threat effects only occur in very specific circumstances or that they are in fact occurring all the time. We also address the possibility that the literature regarding stereotype threat in children is subject to publication bias.

Did you read a different paper, or do you disagree with the author's own abstract?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#235

Post by megaman22 »

aws_ls wrote: post #222
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…

>most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways Not commenting on other points, but may be you are looking at it from an angle of an expert who has mastered it, so everything looks trivial. As, clearly its much more than that. It is like building extension for machines - the brains and the controls and also pure information management. That's why projects run into millions of lines of cod…

Seriously. I regret that I only have one upvote to give. Things that we here take for granted are nigh impossible, or look like magic to 90% of the population. Even among the subset of people that are employed as software engineers, it can be sobering to realize how many of them struggle and flail at "just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways."

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#236

Post by signal11 »

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…

Is there any regional variation? e.g. are there more women in CS depts and industry in Asia than in the US? How about Europe?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#237

Post by blub »

arkh wrote: post #195
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…

Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS. What those two have in common are shitty working conditions. Yes, coding is done sitting in climate controlled offices. But it is mostly shit: shit doc, shit managers, shit clients, shit hours, shit tools. Only dumbfucks who don't mind shit conditions for more money would do it. I'm sure if you…

We like to tell ourselves how awesome our jobs are: generally good salaries, decent office conditions, flexible work hours, no dress code, etc.

There's a big "but": SW dev requires a certain mentality to be able to stick at it for a long time, without becoming bored out of your mind or going crazy about all the inefficiencies, dysfunction and utter meaninglessness of it all.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#238

Post by lfischer »

arkh wrote: post #195
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…

Garbage disposal is not what people usually call a cognitively demanding field. The gender imbalance is still worse than CS. What those two have in common are shitty working conditions. Yes, coding is done sitting in climate controlled offices. But it is mostly shit: shit doc, shit managers, shit clients, shit hours, shit tools. Only dumbfucks who don't mind shit conditions for more money would do it. I'm sure if you…

Assuming you’re right about programming being so horrible, how is programming any worse than other clerical jobs?

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#239

Post by weberc2 »

awinder wrote: post #110
psyc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lest we forget, it isn't only charismatically-challenged unfortunates like Damore who get thrown under a tank for daring to speak 'out of turn' wrt the social justice narrative. Just two hours ago, I happened to re-read the various vicious hit pieces written about Paul Graham several years ago, after he had the gall to speak his mind about representation. These are the times. Everywhere I look online, it's men vs. wo…

This “war” has been going on for centuries. The difference is that white men were totally dominating it until recent times, and a lot of them really don’t like that they may need to adapt behavior. African Americans had a right side of the street to walk on within the last 2 generations, for risk of being lynched. You better believe they’ve been parsing every word out of their mouths, not for fear of being labeled a…

What's the point here? We should be content with anti-white discrimination now because anti-black racism used to be really, really bad? Is it justice to punish innocent people with pale skin because other, mostly dead pale skinned people unjustly punished dark skinned people? Or perhaps that there is some threshold of suffering that one's most recent ancestors endured before they're permitted to complain about discrimination? I'm not following.

Re: Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies

#240

Post by acdha »

kirillkh wrote: post #184
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…

Not sure how from > those fields are cognitively more demanding than commercial software development or, for that matter, undergraduate computer science ... you arrive at > No cognitive ability or innate affinity explains the degree of disparity in computer science as practiced in industry. Even if software development is "cognitively less demanding" in every sense (though I'm not convinced there is just one universa…

> it may still be that women do not possess the "innate affinity" for it - namely, they do not like working in it, preferring other fields instead. To my understanding, there is nothing to contradict this explanation, and it makes perfect sense.

There's no evidence supporting the supposition that there is an innate ability gap. Social explanations are supported by the evidence and that's why people are trying to change the field to be more welcoming.

One of the key things to remember is that this isn't some fixed quantity – any argument for innate characteristics would have to explain why the rates started going down in the 1980s despite the field becoming increasingly popular and lucrative over the same decades and not seeing a similar trend in comparable fields such as math:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

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