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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

#71

Post by psyc »

mikejb wrote: post #49
psyc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall a certain young engineer who wondered about this publicly not long ago, without concealing his identity. It impacted his career.

He said worse than that, IIRC. But his lawsuit will maybe bring more clarity on what he really thinks vs. what might have been mis-written or mis-read in various versions of 'the memo'.

There is a tragic ambiguity in the memo. There is a line that says women may not be suitable for all tech jobs. There is another that clearly says it's tech that isn't suitable to women, and can change to accommodate them. His opponents are sure he meant the former, and his supporters are sure he meant the latter. Still others believe that any hint of biological essentialism whatsoever must not be tolerated. So it is quite difficult to determine to anyone's satisfaction whether what he wrote was 'worse'.

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

#72

Post by mrchicity »

seaknoll wrote: post #41

I wonder how much of this is related to parental leave policy versus generic social safety net. Countries with a strong safety net also have generous maternity leave but are behind on paternity. I imagine that at a large scale this does make many companies slightly less likely to hire women, and families much more likely to have the mother take time away from her job. The ultimate effect, albeit in a warm and fuzzy w…

Possibly has to do with wealth? When you have little, you have to prioritize finding a job that pays as much as you can possibly make. STEM jobs top that list easily. If you have a lot, pursuing a more leisurely or personally rewarding job is possible.

My family came to the US as fairly poor immigrants from Portugal. My mother worked at the time, went to college at night to earn more, which was unusual then. She didn't this out of some sense of pride or feminism, but because she simply had to. The area where I lived had other poor immigrants from Romania, Armenia, Soviet Union, etc. and many of the mothers worked very hard outside the home as well.

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

#74

Post by interfixus »

mikejb wrote: post #49
psyc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall a certain young engineer who wondered about this publicly not long ago, without concealing his identity. It impacted his career.

He said worse than that, IIRC. But his lawsuit will maybe bring more clarity on what he really thinks vs. what might have been mis-written or mis-read in various versions of 'the memo'.

So now lawsuits concern themselves with what a man really thinks?

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

#75

Post by lvh »

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.

How does that explain the difference between countries with more vs less gender equality?

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

#76

Post by tajen »

aspaceman wrote: post #56
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.

As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this argument. It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand. Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they a…

Men have massive school problems and the one field we’re focusing on is STEM. Please everyone, look at the chart of men/female ratio at university since 1980 (hint: men are a minority at uni, hitting 1/3 in the nect years) and explain me why, for $1 spent on females in STEM, we don’t spend $10 on males at university?

Men are systematically forgotten in every single « equality » program. Case in point :

> Women in STEM complain that...

Have we EVER interviewed men in STEM in this whole story ? How do they feel abour the recognition of their skills and hard work ? Oh, yeah, the last one who « talked » was James Damore.

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes. I totally feel men are going to be listened to, I totally feel we’re on an equal basis with how women’s problems are equal to men’s problems. Men can go fuck themselves in this society, that’s all I witness.

Oh is that a surprise that mens commit suicide at 4x the pace of women? Sure that can’t be because we tell them to fuck off?

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

#77

Post by gaius »

walshemj wrote: post #17
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.

well making Engineering and Science careers as well rewarded and give them the same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help. Those young women with triple A's beloved of headline writers come exam time are making a rational decision not to go into a field where they are badly paid.

the same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help

Don’t forget the impact of offshoring/outsourcing. Male or female, I couldn’t in good faith recommend tech as a career choice for any young person right now. Go into something that has to be delivered in person and/or is protected by regulators. If I were young now I’d be looking at a skilled trade - a good tradesman or woman makes as much or more than most programmers, esp if they become a foreperson or other supervisory role.

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

#78

Post by aspaceman »

pacala wrote: post #63
aspaceman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this argument. It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand. Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they a…

> as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM I missed when the voting took place. You mean a group of activist women (and men) assumed to talk on behalf of all women in the field?

Yes. If you feel differently, and you are a woman then I highly encourage you to become more involved with activism because that is the only way to make your voice and opinions heard.

It is not fair that all womens' positions have been decided by activists, and many women in tech have specifically noted this issue. However, activism is available for any individual interested in it.

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

#79

Post by ghostcluster »

geofft wrote: post #27
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.

As to distribution, there are some fundamental biological differences that explain the skew that have been discovered. The largest pertinent difference being aptitude for mechanical reasoning in the general population.

> 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population

> For the young adolescents, the observed difference in Mechanical Reasoning is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents.

> Beyond the observed small average sex difference in the general factor of intelligence (g), the boys' large advantage in mechanical reasoning (MR) must be strongly underscored. This sex difference is not explained by g, and therefore the probable contributions of what is measured by relevant subtests such as abstract reasoning (AR) or spatial relations (SR) can be excluded. The MR difference is still present with almost the same magnitude when the general factor of intelligence (g) is removed. It is also noteworthy that, for the old adolescents, more than half of the variance associated with numerical reasoning (NR) cannot be attributed to g. Thus, we suggest that mental processes captured by these psychological measures are behind the documented male advantage in STEM disciplines

http://atavisionary.com/study-index/intelligence-psychometri...

This means that, at the average point in the distribution, the average everday man has a one standard deviation edge in measurements of mechanical reasoning over the average everyday woman. This explains why you would see such a large skew in the field of engineering.

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

#80

Post by mpweiher »

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…

> Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage

How so?

> is a major geopolitical risk

How so?

> Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous

How so?

> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.

Why? People should do what they want to do, not what you think they should be doing.

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