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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

theatlantic.com

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#31

Post by mamon »

nukeop wrote: post #26
ekianjo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic criteria whatsoever.

I don't think the myth of a theoretical "free" market holds any water and can be applied sensibly to any real world scenario. In the actual free market a giant megacorp would swoop all promising hires and suppress all competition by selling at a loss until nobody else dares to enter the field.

In actual free market selling at loss is a very short-sighted strategy: you may cause the bankruptcy of your current competitors, but bariers to entry are low, so once you raise your prices back to profitable levels the new competition arises. You would have to sell at loss most of the time which would eventually bankrupt your megacorp. That’s why monopolies can only exist in regulated markets.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#32

Post by ekianjo »

nukeop wrote: post #26
ekianjo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic criteria whatsoever.

I don't think the myth of a theoretical "free" market holds any water and can be applied sensibly to any real world scenario. In the actual free market a giant megacorp would swoop all promising hires and suppress all competition by selling at a loss until nobody else dares to enter the field.

How do you swoop all promising new hires if you have a free market? its not like all of them want to work in the same place and the same culture. Even right now we have tons of startups despite the existence of Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#33

Post by rdiddly »

dvt wrote: post #2

Equality of opportunity does not necessarily imply equality of outcome . This isn't a paradox. Why are still people still confused about this? (Actually, people aren't confused about this, but it makes for great clickbait articles and ad revenue because it fans the flames of both sides of the argument.)

They're confused because they're starting from the end (the outcome) and working backward.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#34

Post by dingo_bat »

cgearhart wrote: post #8
tomcam wrote: post #4

It’s almost like... men and women are different.

The article addresses that idea. > The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason...to argue we should forget trying to recruit more women into the stem fields. But...that’s not quite what’s happening here. > In wealthy nations, [women] believe that they have the freedom to pursue [other] alternatives and not worry so much tha…

> That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects.

I didn't glean it from the article but if you have can you tell if they suggested a reason for this? What is this "something" that’s nudging women away from math and science?

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#35

Post by lliamander »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal or better at STEM than men (and also being better at non-STEM stuff), but actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options. Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication. The data appears to be saying you (we) suck, but that's a win if you think the data was going to sho…

> Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication.

An amusing and insightful observation.

I would say it's baffling until you realize that the alternative is that the whole the gap in female STEM employment continues to be attributed solely to male sexism. It's better to be perceived as stupid than evil.

Also, are we all now in agreement that there are likely cognitive differences between men and women, and that it is beneficial to explore those differences scientifically? Honest question.

edit: missing word

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#36

Post by psyc »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal or better at STEM than men (and also being better at non-STEM stuff), but actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options. Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication. The data appears to be saying you (we) suck, but that's a win if you think the data was going to sho…

Perhaps they are celebrating the possibility that certain people will ease up on the angle that we're all complicit in perpetuating a culture of misogyny and harassment that drives women out of tech.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#37

Post by pedrosorio »

cgearhart wrote: post #8
tomcam wrote: post #4

It’s almost like... men and women are different.

The article addresses that idea. > The findings will likely seem controversial, since the idea that men and women have different inherent abilities is often used as a reason...to argue we should forget trying to recruit more women into the stem fields. But...that’s not quite what’s happening here. > In wealthy nations, [women] believe that they have the freedom to pursue [other] alternatives and not worry so much tha…

> But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading

> And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject.

The research seems pretty clear.

> ...the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with stem degrees.

This quote is not related to whether there are interest differences or not. They may be equally good in science/math and something else and decide they want to do the other thing without that automatically implying "society is causing this preference" (and by the way, medicine is not "STEM" for some reason, but no one is becoming a doctor without strong aptitude for math/science).

If the research results I quoted above are to be believed, regarding aptitude, someone may excel in A (say girls in these countries get "very good" scores in math at the same rate as boys) and be much better in B (they excel in reading/other skills at a higher rate than boys) and it would be natural for this person to pursue B in that case, no?

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#39

Post by tanilama »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal or better at STEM than men (and also being better at non-STEM stuff), but actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options. Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication. The data appears to be saying you (we) suck, but that's a win if you think the data was going to sho…

This article simply means when equal opportunity is offered, there are still fewer women choose to take STEM as their career.

Vindictive? No really. The research seems to suggest woman prefers STEM more, when there is no other viable economic opportunity, which makes such choice a conscious calculation, and do render the past accusation that there is an systematic oppression in the society to keep women away from taking the initiative, groundless.

This at least speaks some volume, the current diversity program is incapable to achieve its own goal, thus further enforcing such agenda might not be fruitful.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#40

Post by dingo_bat »

ekianjo wrote: post #13
afroboy wrote: post #9

I just discovered that where i work (Algeria) there is hidden rule in hiring new devs that wasn't known publicly it's simply no women, seriously i work with 20 men for more than two years and i just discovered that our head of recruitment doesn't hire woman at all no matter how she's talented because of so many reason most of them are racist but kind are hard to argue with him like if woman get married she will stop…

In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic criteria whatsoever.

I disagree. With a large enough pool of applicants, you tend to get adequately talented people. If there were only 10 people who are capable to do what I am hiring for, I'd be at a disadvantage if I discriminated against men/women. But if there are 10 million such people, I can discriminate all I want and I'll still get acceptable results.
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