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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

#231

Post by naasking »

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 in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their position.

Which is definitely a problem. But there seems to be an implicit assumption that it happens at a higher rate than discrimination in every other field, and thus STEM deserves this criticism. Is this actually true? The only data I've seen keeps harping on gender parity as if parity is its own end, rather than a means to an end as you've suggested.

> 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.

Did they? Was there a group meeting and they all voted? Where is the evidence that gender parity would actually yield this result? If so, where is the evidence that the gender parity measures being taken would actually lead to parity? This seems to rest on a lot of suppositions.

Also, from what I've seen, women in STEM largely aren't driving this movement, contrary to what you seem to believe.

> Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.

There are two problems being conflated here: the gender parity "problem", and the sexism/discrimination problem.

Articles like this are attacking the arguments that gender parity is a) actually a problem, and b) one that can be solved by simplistic measures like quotas, marketing directed at women, etc. If women truly are less interested in CS and similar fields, then none of these measures are likely to work. And so far they haven't made a dent.

I'm also skeptical the discrimination problem will be solved by these measures either. I'd prefer something far more direct.

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

#232

Post by naasking »

geofft wrote: post #82
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.

> 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 disres…

This trend hold in even the most progressive countries. Do you seriously think that "STEM across the world in multiple different cultures are prejudiced against women in precisely the same ways so as to produce the same gender disparities in the same fields" is a more reasonable explanation than there being some other factor, like some kind of inherent disinterest in these subjects?

Don't take my word for it though, there are actually plenty of studies showing that the "people vs. things" theory far better explains these gender disparities.

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

#233

Post by walshemj »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #227
walshemj wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Traders do have this barrow boy image medicine or law has a much higher "social" status in the UK and I bet the USA also

Why do you suppose women dominate primary school teaching? Is it because it’s too high status and too well paid?

It is a pink ghetto and traditionally pre compulsory education was performed by women and was on the very few profession open to women pre 20th century

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

#234

Post by depressedpanda »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #163
depressedpanda wrote: post #69

Given a choice, more women than men will go for non-STEM careers, so in rich countries you will find way more STEM-proficient men than women. This has been known for quite some time. But take care not to mention this at workplaces where they use diversity hiring practices to try to artificially and unfairly inflate their percentage of women compared to the field as a whole. It will get you fired.

This argument would be more interesting if we weren't seeing heavy female attrition due sexual harassment unrelated to work content.

Is there female attrition?

Is there female attrition due to sexual harassment?

You're making a bold claim, which I am personally not seeing at all.

Care to back it up with any references?

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

platz wrote: post #198
kenning wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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?

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by depressedpanda »

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…

Let's take a country that's mentioned in TFA, and ranks higher on the gender equality scale: Sweden.

Here, just as in the US, we have way more female nurses. However, we are also going towards way more female than male doctors; more women than men are admitted to medical school.

What we are not seeing however, are more women in science (biology is a bit of an outlier, though) and technology.

Outside of managerial roles, IT in particular is as bereft of women as it has always been.

As we have more women in medicine and law I have a hard time believing they are setting their expectations lower. I think it's as the article claims: for whatever reason they just aren't interested in STEM (in average).

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

#238

Post by geofft »

mpweiher wrote: post #203
geofft wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, give me a research lab and some funding. I don't know that there have been many rigorous studies across all of STEM that measure this effect and give an answer one way or another. For tech in particular, see the Kapor Center's report: https://www.kaporcenter.org/tech-leavers/ (which, it should be noted, reports on people who have left tech: the percentages in that report should not be read as the fraction of pe…

For studies like these, it actually helps to look at the data rather than just skim the headlines/talkimg points, which tend to cherry pick to support the narrative. For example, when "left due to unfair treatment" is unpacked by group, white women are the lowest percentage! (28% vs. 38% for white/asian men).

Yes, that's true. Again this is the percentage thing I mentioned—the study is not claiming that more white and Asian men leave because of unfair treatment than women, it's claiming that of those who leave, more white and Asian men report unfair treatment as a motivation than women do.

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

#239

Post by BirdieNZ »

bluewave wrote: post #58
BirdieNZ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Women don't prefer non-STEM fields on average, this is an artifact of Western countries. There's no disparity in many developing countries including China. It's not about 50/50, it's about 100% of the population being literate with respect to complexities of modern economy.

Developing countries have different influences on job choice than wealthier/Western countries. Countries in Scandinavia typically have high gender disparity between the sexes in most occupations, because they are wealthy enough that men and women can choose what kind of jobs they take rather than doing whatever earns the most money. Developing countries are biased towards survival-jobs, as it were, rather than enjoyment-jobs. If this is correct then we can expect the developing countries to slowly increase in disparity as they become wealthier.

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

#240

Post by vilmosi »

rtz12 wrote: 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…

>>> In richer countries you are more inclined to choose careers based on your personal preferences and less on for the paycheck

The same is true for men though.

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