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Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

nature.com

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Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#91

Post by roenxi »

thomasmeeks wrote: post #72
therealforsen wrote: post #10

I have yet to be told why it is important for there to be as many women in STEM as men apart from statements that I'm sexist for not knowing

The answer is a quick Google search away, diversity increases innovation: https://www.google.com/search?q=diversity+increases+innovati... If you don't agree with that, I'd love to hear why, and why the related studies are false. Can start with this one, which is the first result: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685... There's quite the bibliography to pour through there, though, if you really…

The study you linked has nothing to do with gender or diversity w.r.t. minorities. It's subject is economic geography.

We can be pretty confident that if 50% of the population are women then 50% of the best candidates for a given job, by natural aptitude, are women. The same logic applies to minorities as well, so we can be confident that any process calibrated to finding the best person for the job is going to turn up a diverse workforce.

However, once policies designed to enforce diversity come in to play, that correlation will be broken and you just have a sexist/racist/whatever hiring system.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#92

Post by com2kid »

_ta23 wrote: post #48
com2kid wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say we live in a world (or small town) where there are only 16 software developers, 8 men, 8 women. 4 of the women are amazing top notch engineers, and so are 4 of the men. The other 4 men and 4 women are pretty good, but not nearly as good as the top developers. If a company needs to hire 10 people, and they hire men, they will not be able to fill their entire hiring need. Obviously a silly policy, and it leav…

Given the assumptions the example is obviously correct. What if there are 8 amazing men and 2 amazing women but quotas dictate to hire 50/50? The other thing is that the labor pool is already too large, lies from the industry notwithstanding.

> Given the assumptions the example is obviously correct. What if there are 8 amazing men and 2 amazing women but quotas dictate to hire 50/50?

Discussions about quotas are separate from discussions about how discriminatory practices limit hiring pools, and how discriminatory workplace environments decrease the overall level of talent at an organization.

(For what it is worth, the same reasoning being discussed here is why professional sports teams figured out long ago that racism was bad for business.)

Mathematically, if there is a labor shortage, then cutting out part of the hiring pool based on criteria that are not correlated with the qualifications of candidates, will always result in worse hiring decisions being made.

If there is a surplus of talented labor then whoever is doing the hiring can be pretty much as nasty as they want to be and still form a team of pretty good caliber.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#93

Post by jriot »

I was accepted to a PhD in both economics and math, yet I had to turn them down due to being a parent of two small children. My wife stays at home with them, thus reducing my salary to a TA wasn't feasible for 4 - 6 years.

Is there a problem with the system when men have to give up opportunities due to having children?

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#94

Post by buttcoinslol »

jriot wrote: post #93

I was accepted to a PhD in both economics and math, yet I had to turn them down due to being a parent of two small children. My wife stays at home with them, thus reducing my salary to a TA wasn't feasible for 4 - 6 years. Is there a problem with the system when men have to give up opportunities due to having children?

Somebody is going to point out that you and your wife made the decision to have children as well as having your wife stay at home with them instead of working, so it might as well be me. You made conscious decisions that excluded you from opportunities, sorry.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#95

Post by belorn »

kevincrane wrote: post #35
ancorevard wrote: post #12

Life is short, few things are more meaningful and rewarding than raising human beings.

Then why don't men leave their fields in the same numbers as women after they have a kid?

How do society treat men who leave?

How do society treat men who stay?

How do society treat women who leave?

How do society treat men who stay?

Society in this case mean social status, divorce rates, size of social networks, number of children, and other measurable factors. Answer all four and we likely have a clear answer why men don't leave at the same rate as women after they have a child.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#96

Post by everdev »

40acres wrote: post #88
everdev wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equality of outcome is a fool's errand and a quick path to authoritarianism. What we need is equality of opportunity. We don't need to even strive for a 50/50 M/F split in STEM, parenting, dance, healthcare, martial arts, etc. for everything we do in society. The majority of men and women might have very different interests and we want people doing what they're interested in and what gives them joy, not pushing them…

Equality of opportunity over equality of outcome is such a contrived argument. Equality of opportunity is arguably harder as it implies a just society. What are you willing to give for equality of opportunity? Higher taxes? More liberal zoning? Desegregated busing? Affirmative Action?

Equality of outcome means an external force like the government will step in to correct a situation such that person A gets the same results as person B. That can be income, job opportunities, taxes, etc. and it quickly disincentivizes hard work because the desired outcome has already been decided before you start.

For a less sensitive example, imagine how hard football teams would practice if the NFL wanted the equality of outcome with each team winning the Super Bowl every 32 years. The worse my team is the harder the league has to try to make my team win which is great for me but bad for competition. And if I just won, I have no reason to try because the league doesn't want me to keep winning and will do whatever it takes to stop me from hogging all the trophies.

Equality of opportunity means an external force will step in to correct a situation to ensure that person A and person B are playing by the same rules.

Back to the OC, we should be obsessed with a level playing field in STEM but not obsessed with a 50/50 ratio.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#97

Post by bitL »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #42
qaq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think a stay home dad with equal employment gap would have an easier time rejoining a workforce ?

I have no idea. But I'm willing to guess he faces lower odds of being asked for a date by senior personnel in the better-paid department he would like to work in, thereby de facto closing doors in my face.

That's super disgusting if that happened to you :( Maybe at some point we need to stop interacting in person completely and instead use gender-less avatars with their own voices so that we can bypass both sexual harassment as well as trying to land better positions by our own physical attractiveness.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#98

Post by jhanschoo »

It's disappointing to see just how much articles like these inspire some frequenters here to come out with their pet sexist theories on why this is expected and why such studies are not warranted.

To address one aspect of criticism, studies like these are not necessarily with an interest toward equal representation for its own sake, nor something that is best dealt with by resigning to the status quo that people are free to make choices and they deal with the consequences of it. There is talent lost in the field when stuff like this happens, and this is a first step to understanding if there are more efficient ways to address a need among families that is not currently being adequately addressed. If these can be addressed efficiently, then people will make different choices, and the consequences of those different decisions may be a net benefit to everyone.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#99

Post by jriot »

buttcoinslol wrote: post #94
jriot wrote: post #93

I was accepted to a PhD in both economics and math, yet I had to turn them down due to being a parent of two small children. My wife stays at home with them, thus reducing my salary to a TA wasn't feasible for 4 - 6 years. Is there a problem with the system when men have to give up opportunities due to having children?

Somebody is going to point out that you and your wife made the decision to have children as well as having your wife stay at home with them instead of working, so it might as well be me. You made conscious decisions that excluded you from opportunities, sorry.

Seems to be the same for women here. It was their choice to have children thus leaving their field.

Why do we care that not everyone is offered the same opportunities? Life isn't fair.

Until I see women fighting to take on all the roles men have taken in life, Alaskan commercial fishermen, roughneck oil rig workers, loggers etc... and just not 1 or 2, equal representation throughout I am not concerned with unequal representation in STEM, tech or any of the fashionable areas to be concerned with.

Re: Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child

#100

Post by jhanschoo »

reader5000 wrote: post #5

Members of a sexually reproducing species find that their instinctual genetic imperative is more fulfilling than current-epoch cultural fads.

Unstated assumption in this claim: this instinctual genetic imperative has a dimension that causes people to leave their jobs, and this dimension disproportionately affects women more than men.
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