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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

#191

Post by aspaceman »

neaanopri wrote: post #183
joelthelion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

OP's scenario: 1. There are a minority of women in tech. 2. Trying to correct (1) will do more harm than good. aspaceman's scenario: 1. There are a minority of women in tech, because on the whole, more men like tech jobs than women. NOT that NO women would do tech jobs, but in the "absence of discrimination", maybe gender ratios would be 60-40 men or something. 2. Because women are in the minority, male co-workers ta…

I completely agree with this description of my point, and would only add that this sentence

"the root of this problem is men not taking women seriously"

is what I find to be the most important takeaway. As a person in STEM, you need to take women seriously when they talk about this stuff. Ask yourself why you're so quick to dismiss the "minority of women" and "activists'" experiences.

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

#192

Post by walterstucco »

madez wrote: post #20
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.

Imagine a subject only sociopaths are willing to take. I see good reasons why the society might want to change the framework so that even non-sociopaths take that subject. Now, neither men nor women are sociopaths, but they are different. They have different behaviour towards risks, on average , among other things. That gives reasons for the society to work on having both genders in every subject.

So a solution could be having less men in STEM

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

#193

Post by neaanopri »

aspaceman wrote: post #170
coldtea wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is al…

> it's the wrong way to achieve that if more women don't really want to go into STEM This is a good point, which is why my argument rests on the claim that more women will want to go into STEM if they are going to feel more comfortable in those positions. In my view, it all comes down to why you think women aren't in STEM. Is it because they don't want to do STEM work, or is it because they don't want to be in these…

If STEM would "naturally" be 60% men, 40% women, and sexism makes it 80% men, 20% women, it's important to fight sexism so that the 20% of women can get their career back.

It's just insane that people make the leap from "STEM might not have equal interest between men and women" to "Diversity-promoting programs are harmful".

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

#194

Post by Aaron1011 »

lulmerchant wrote: post #185
geofft wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries. Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a much deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being restricted to men, of only men having political representa…

I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point and trump references, and redirect you back to the data. The Nordic countries always lead in these stats. These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life. The data shows that under these…

> I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point

Which part of the parent comment was a "marxist talking point"?

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

#195

Post by briandear »

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…

> Women are interested. Women want to do the work.

Perhaps this article might shed some light on things:

http://neurosciencenews.com/women-in-neuroscience-4548/

(Why are females underrespresented in neuroscience)

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

#196

Post by neaanopri »

ghostcluster wrote: post #79
geofft wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 increas…

Sure, one standard deviation makes the ratio like 63% to 37%? That's not what we see in tech job ratios, it's worse than that. Everything past that is unjust and deserves effort to rectify

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

#197

Post by hyperdunc »

aspaceman wrote: post #99
lulmerchant wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article never claims that areas of high gender equality do not have these negative forces. In fact, my main issue with this article is how it defines "gender equality". > 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 never made any such claim - you have twisted my words in order to make me appear irrational and prejudiced. I claim t…

If a woman is going to be put off participating in tech because she feels unwelcome then she probably isn't that interested in tech to begin with.

If people do what they love they will be driven to overcome barriers, perceived and real.

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

#198

Post by platz »

kenning wrote: post #177
platz wrote: 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 fe…

> you're confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often

so, all those high-power, highly-paid, female lawyers are likely to have just breezed right though?

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

#199

Post by dang »

InTheArena wrote: post #83
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!

Please don't do this here.

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

#200

Post by jwilk »

tptacek wrote: post #141

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…

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