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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

#81

Post by bitL »

sannee wrote: post #36
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.

> I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do. If they didn't choose to do a subject because, for example, they had their high school teacher(s) tell them that he "does not expect female students to do as well as male students" (I have seen that happen few years back when I was still in high school), then it surely is an undertaking worth considering.

I have observed a female student, super talented in math/programming (IMO/ICPC), to choose finances instead, as a teacher (male) was once saying to her that programming/math don't pay well and have low prestige and finances give easier, secure life. I can't say I had much sympathies to her choice after that, experiencing first time typical female stereotypes about mostly caring about money.

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

#82

Post by geofft »

lulmerchant wrote: post #64
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…

This data entirely negates that claim. In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces, they simply self-select not to participate in certain fields (on average). If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.

> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces

The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/mea... , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.

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

#83

Post by InTheArena »

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.

James! You are fired!

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

#84

Post by bluewave »

cazum wrote: post #50
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…

>Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist While I agree with the entirety of your comment, I don't see how this is the case. If the physical differences between human groups cause one to prefer something over the other, how is it disparaging to attempt to validate this hypothesis?

Because it's false if you consider the entire human population. You can argue that women in US & Europe prefer non-STEM fields but generalizing to all of women is logically false because of numbers in China and other developing countries with large populations.

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

#85

Post by jacobsheehy »

lulmerchant wrote: post #64
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…

This data entirely negates that claim. In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces, they simply self-select not to participate in certain fields (on average). If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.

I think you may have misread the article. It does not present the data you think it does.

> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces

That is absolutely not what a high level of gender equality means. Countries that have "higher levels of gender equality" do not guarantee or even suggest any likelihood of not having these negative forces in a girl or woman's life. (I would privately posit that it may be the opposite, in fact - that perhaps those countries would find that in private home lives, those forces are as strong or stronger than elsewhere. But I don't know this, I'm speculating on that point.)

Often the forces in a person's life are from close friends or their family - these are not measured in this article and certainly have an impact on how people choose their careers and interests in life.

You also made up the idea that they are "self-selecting" to not be a part of the system. The article does not make that claim - you did, out of thin air.

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

#86

Post by akvadrako »

omginternets wrote: post #47

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797617741719 Wonderful. Yet another publicly-funded research project with implications for public policy that is behind a paywall. I guess I'll never know the details of how "gender equality" was operationalized, and therefore never have an informed interpretation of these data. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

http://sci-hub.tw

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

#87

Post by aspaceman »

joelthelion wrote: post #70
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…

> Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point. OP did not draw that conclusion.

The OP did not draw any conclusion besides claiming that what we are doing is bad. I assumed this meant we should not do anything, because doing something is "artificial".

If they don't feel that way, they are free to correct my assumption.

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

#89

Post by mc32 »

Even if we do conclusively find that women on average prefer non STEM careers, I think for the good of our society, we should still make an effort to entice more women into STEM who otherwise would not. Not for dime immediate social justice reason, but because the advancement and progress of our own society needs more STEM grads, if we don't produce our own, we'll have to import them, which we should not have to, if we could develop policies of encouragement.

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

#90

Post by ejstronge »

Idontknowmyuser wrote: post #54
mikejb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

what did he say worse than that?

His argument proposed that women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks[1]. I could find more questionable positions but have attached a copy of the memo below.

Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).

More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

Another point he raised was that Google's hiring initiatives 'lower the bar' for their targeted groups.

Google has created several discriminatory practices: [...] Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170809220001/https://diversity...

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