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Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

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Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#21

Post by psyc »

js8 wrote: post #12

"If governments want to increase women’s participation in STEM, a more effective strategy might be to target the girls who are clearly being lost from the STEM pathway – those for whom science and maths are their best subjects and who enjoy it but still don’t choose it" I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do.

The next sentence is: "If we can understand their motivations, then interventions can be designed to help them change their minds." I imagine there is a non-coercive way to try to understand the reasons, and use that to inform counseling of students.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#22

Post by friendly_chap »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #5

> Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions studied. So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).

I think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation (obv. not the only one though).

The downvoters should explain themselves.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#24

Post by sannee »

bluewave wrote: post #15

The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers…

> If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today.

"Studying computer science" and "using a computer" are worlds apart. And the distance seems to be increasing even further.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#25

Post by trendia »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #2

Never forget: causation does not necessarily imply correlation

Totally irrelevant to this article, but you are technically correct.

Let X = "angle"

Let Y = sin(X)

Then X has a causal relationship with Y, but Corr(X, Y) = 0.

I doubt that's what you're saying, though!

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#26

Post by BirdieNZ »

bluewave wrote: post #15

The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers…

If women do actually naturally prefer non-STEM fields on average then is the science on the subject being sexist? I am more interested in the truth than in making the numbers between men and women be exactly 50/50 in everything.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#27

Post by geofft »

nicolashahn wrote: post #9

I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing criteria for choosing careers, and artificially forcing the distributions towards the middle might do more harm than good.

I think it's certainly possible that different career preferences is true and that the current distribution in practice is still skewed. That is, perhaps the "right" distribution is something like 60/40 men/women, in which case both 50/50 men/women and 90/10 men/women would be skewed and pushing people out of careers they'd be happy with.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#28

Post by orbifold »

bluewave wrote: post #15

The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers…

I'm not so sure, CS is essentially a new blue collar job. There need to be lots of computer programmers, but they don't actually need a university education in most cases, so in countries with working vocational education tons of people get programming jobs without a university degree.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#29

Post by TomMarius »

friendly_chap wrote: post #22
Mikeb85 wrote: post #5

> Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions studied. So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).

I think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation (obv. not the only one though). The downvoters should explain themselves.

Lately it's the fashion to just downvote.

Re: Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

#30

Post by yesenadam »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #5

> Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions studied. So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).

That sounds right to me. Anecdatally I've talked with a lot of latin American girls e.g. Colombians, who are studying engineering, (and busy with exams on maths and science subjects) who don't seem at all the type. I think it's an in-demand job with good prospects, where maybe there aren't so many competing career choices.

(Interesting psychological study, why you're being downvoted for saying that. Maybe that people are nowadays conditioned to assume any talk of gender differences is sexism, I've noticed.)

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