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Countries with more gender equality have fewer female STEM grads

thejournal.ie

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because... How do you conclude "women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks " from merely that sentence?

It's not sufficient to Control-F to understand an argument. I encourage you to read his article and would look forward to your analysis once you have done this.

> It's not sufficient to Control-F to understand an argument. I encourage you to read his article and would look forward to your analysis once you have done this.

Indeed, I have read the article in its entirely before. And I didn't remember such a passage (my memory isn't great), so I went back and Ctrl-F'd to try to find it and still didn't find it. Then I read on in each instance and saw that, just as I remembered, he was talking about preferences everywhere I found. So, yeah, I've already done everything you're saying, and that's why I think your claim is baseless, but I acknowledge maybe I'm still missing something. So instead of telling me to RTFA, it would behoove you to just spend 5 seconds pasting the full passage you are concluding this from. It isn't any harder to copy-paste the relevant portion of the passage than to comment about why you're refusing to do so when it actually exists. It's only harder when it doesn't exist.

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

#172

This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women make up something like 20% of the workforce. The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM throughout the western world for greater male participation than female, computer science is uniquely low ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for ge…

> Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial

Sure, insofar as gender-aligned interests have some cultural basis, it’s definitely “artificial”. Do you think it’s something more than that? If so, why?

> We don't need to keep re-litigating this on the front page of the site

I notice that people who use this objection regularly are very selective about when they choose to raise it. I haven’t noticed anyone on this site raising this objection consistently - only when they feel they can get in the last word.

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

#173

I'll probably face wrath, and hell's fury for this, but maybe, men and women are different. Has forcing STEM upon the female population, driven any more of them towards the discipline? Taking the sampling size of every woman I've ever went on a date with in my 37 years, none of them were interested in anything related. The vast majority were teachers, psychologists, and nurses. Occupations based around nurturing othe…

Is it possible that your dating pool is subject to sampling bias? Empirically speaking, about 1/4 of people in STEM are women, so if you've met 0 women interested in STEM, it seems like your experience simply aren't an accurate reflection of reality. [0] I think it's incredibly ironic that you're highlighting your own relative interest in STEM while failing to apply any degree of scientific rigor to your own thinking…

Oh brother, there's always that one guy on HN. None of this was supposed to "scientific", so relax. I'm giving you my 37 years of experience dating at least a couple hundred women, that's it.

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

#175

How do you define which countries have “more gender equality?” It seems like begging the question. My family immigrated from Bangladesh to America. In most ways, obviously, America is a lot more equal. But my mom and her sisters have STEM degrees, and that wasn’t all that unusual for a wealthy Bangladeshi family at the time. Bangladeshis perceive STEM as important, and encourage both girls and boys to pursue it (even…

There is a so called Gender Inequality Index by the UN which highlights different criteria http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII

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

#176

Has anyone ever looked at it from the network effect angle? I’m a software dev because I didn’t like being a CPA and my friend was a tech guy who got me into it. My wife went into the medical field because her sister turned her onto this speciality that was easy to get into and paid quite well. I tried to teach my smart wife to program and failed miserably because that’s not how our relationship works. Most people in…

Yeah this is absolutely a large chunk of it. Especially when you consider how many jobs are filled through referrals [0]. At my last company, I only worked with male engineers, and so when I got a new job, I could only think of male engineers to refer to open positions.

I think this is also why inertia is so hard to offset here, we have a strong self-reinforcing cycle that's going to take a lot of external force to break out of.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-job...

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

#177
post #16

However you feel about Jordan Peterson, he brings up this fact all the time, esp w/ regards to Scandinavia, would define this phenomenon as the difference between equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome, and that the genders, when provided the option, tend towards different preferences (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses), and that environment factors can skew these natural preferences in either direction. raises the…

> (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses)

How about doctors vs nurses? I think this is a much more relevant comparison. In the united states (sorry) male doctors outnumber female by about 2:1 [1], while female nurses outnumber male nurses by more than 10:1 [2]. Comparing these two professions it's a lot easier to make the argument that women are implicitly encouraged to set their expectations lower than men, who actually may feel emasculated as a nurse.

STEM jobs are seen as more difficult to train for and to achieve than non-STEM jobs, similar to the job of a doctor compared to the job of a nurse. If you're confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often, I hope this line of thinking is convincing...

[1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gend... [2] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-pr...

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

#178

This is on the front page of Hacker News because people here believe it bolsters arguments about the underlying fairness of our field, in which women make up something like 20% of the workforce. The article does not accomplish that. Despite an overall trend in STEM throughout the western world for greater male participation than female, computer science is uniquely low ; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for ge…

> uniquely low; it is rivaled only by physics and MechE for gender disparity.

So it is not, in fact, "uniquely" low. It is about the same as other engineering. Hmm...maybe because it is like other engineering?

> Whatever is keeping women to 20% of our field is artificial, and a travesty.

You claim without a shred of evidence, while poo-pooing the actual evidence to the contrary.

It is a simple fact that most people regardless of gender aren't interested in computer science, girls just even less than boys.

See for example: https://erzaehlmirnix.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/unterschie...

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

#179
post #125

Countries with more gender equality are richer. Countries with less gender equality are poorer. In poorer countries, you are more inclined to choose careers based on paycheck, less on personal preference. In richer countries you are more inclined to choose careers based on your personal preferences and less on for the paycheck. It's pretty easy. EDIT: A good counter example to this correlation could be Japan. Low gen…

The study showed that adjusting for interest in STEM women were 10% less likely to chose that career than a male in gender equal countries, so personal preference (which you’d expect to match with interest) doesn’t entirely explain it.

I don’t think the article cites anything that would support your Japan hypothesis.

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