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Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

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Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#21

Post by NotAnEconomist »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #18
NotAnEconomist wrote: post #7

> I find it alarming that a scientific organization has rules that restrict free speech using such vague, subjective language. Feminism has always been a sexist power movement, and the natural outcome of that is always authoritarian social policy. At it's core, feminism is about the sole focus on accruing benefits and status for one sex (or gender, depending on who you ask). Feminism fights for women's rights, but no…

> If you're part of feminism in an academic context, you're part of a majority power movement, which routinely denigrates and attacks the minority gender in blatant violation of Title IX. Are you saying men are "the minority gender"? What planet do you live on? People who are academics are still part of the general population.

Men are the minority gender on US university campuses, yes.

> The male-female ratio in higher education has been steadily moved in favor of the females ever since the 1970s. Total enrollment figures show that females outnumbered their male counterparts for the first time in the late 1970s, and they have steadily increased their numerical advantage ever since. The superiority first came in public universities, but soon private universities saw female enrollment surpass male enrollment.

University feminism has been a majority power movement for an entire generation.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female...

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#22

Post by jchw »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #8

Women are just as smart as men, i don't think anyone can debate this. Are women just as interested in the same things men are? This is highly debatable. There are biological differences between men and women.

Just saying "biological differences" is too handwave-y I think. I'm a programmer and not a scientist of any kind but I would guess we go against our biology in many, many ways in modern day-to-day life, and without better justification it feels a bit silly to run with this reasoning for a clearly complicated issue. If it were a truly unsolvable problem, then I assume we would never make any progress, but that's not the case.

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#23

Post by rexpop »

Ygg2 wrote: post #11
lm28469 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feminism fights for women's rights, but not men's I mean, that's the whole purpose. I don't have a crystallised opinion on 3rd wave feminism but the 1st and 2nd were clearly necessary. It's like saying the black panthers were bad because they were not fighting for white people's rights.

As far as I know, women aren't a minority. They have longer lifespans than men. But overall I do agree, they needed some extra rights. However, the feminist movement now feels extraneous, as most of their rights have been achieved. Like any good bureaucracy, IMO the organization exists to further promote its existence, goals be damned.

It's odd to me that you circumscribe justice to only "minorities".

On the left, we don't use the word "minority" any longer, because the number of people in the group is largely immaterial in its marginalization.

Instead, we talk about "marginalized" groups which, regardless of their size, face systemic disadvantages peculiar to themselves. I consider the American white masses to be marginalized in ways made clear to me by Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash"[1], despite our numerical predominance (and complementary privileges).

So when one seeks to falsify Feminism, it doesn't strike me as remotely relevant to discuss the overall ratio of women:men. Women's marginalization is no less significant because it's widespread. To falsify Feminism, instead, one must adopt immutable definitions of "women" "men", I think.

I haven't personally teased apart my own socialized gender ontologies, however.

1. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27209433-white-trash

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#24

Post by basetop »

This is an example of where a topics based news aggregation and discussion would be better rather than article based aggregation and discussion. Instead of getting one side's story (one article), how great would it be if we had a "CERN gender topic" and a list of articles about that topic that encompasses all sides ( and possibly different regions ). Beyond one side or the another, wouldn't it be interesting to see what indians, chinese, south americans, africans, etc think of it too? I'm sure this topic is a lot more nuanced and complex than either side lets on and I feel these issues lend themselves to topic based aggregation and discussion. Just an opinion.

But whatever side you are on, I think the real issue here is the personal and professional attacks this academic got for providing an honest opinion ( backed by stats and sources ). The viciousness displayed by his fellow phycists and CERN as an organization is really disappointing as is their attempt to silence him. One of the basis of academia is the idea of "devil's advocacy". Where you or someone takes the other's side in order to getting a fuller understanding of any topic. How is any discussion possible when the opposing side is silenced?

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#25

Post by 0815test »

projectramo wrote: post #10
NotAnEconomist wrote: post #7

> I find it alarming that a scientific organization has rules that restrict free speech using such vague, subjective language. Feminism has always been a sexist power movement, and the natural outcome of that is always authoritarian social policy. At it's core, feminism is about the sole focus on accruing benefits and status for one sex (or gender, depending on who you ask). Feminism fights for women's rights, but no…

I think this argument would carry more weight if, you know, the numbers had changed. If the top spots in the highest paid fields (finance, medicine, management, research, technology, media, government) were actually reasonably close to parity, you might say the movement has run its course. But since we are still far off from that, and women are still expected to do more than half the work around the house and so on,…

The top-paying subfields in finance, medicine, sci/tech, are all heavily affected by the "people vs. things" distinction that the article talks about, in being highly skewed towards "things". (Business management actually has similar problems as managers are heavily selected for being risk-loving and it's well-known in the social-science literature that women tend to be more careful than men at assessing risk.) There might be more hope wrt. the people-focused part, and we do see women having quite a bit of success there, even more so in parts of the world like East Asia where contemporary feminist ideology, with its pandering to wishful thinking and populism while neglecting the facts on the ground (as described by OP) is not really a major focus compared with the West.

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#27

Post by Pigo »

NoblePublius wrote: post #4

[flagged]

I'm pretty amazed as well, honestly. I think people get too emotional when you even discuss this topic. I may disagree, I may even be offended, but so what. Downvoting to oblivion, blocking, banning dissenting opinions is literal censorship. If you disagree with me, write a response that shows how dumb I am and then move on with your life.

That said, any hints I see at trying to force an equality of outcome at the expense of other groups is authoritarian, and should be stopped.

Re: Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

#28

Post by basetop »

ahelwer wrote: post #5

Remember a week ago when this site scoured a public GitHub repo to ensure a woman physicist wasn't getting more credit than she was due? Imagine having to conduct yourself in your professional life as though you were under persistent threat of audit by some know-nothings if you stuck your head up too high. I would go insane.

She wasn't a physicist, she was a computer scientist. Harrassing her was wrong, but so is what happened to this physicist. Stop trying use her to push divisions. If you truly cared about harrassment, you'd be just as offended at what happened to this guy as much as you are about her. Also, people like you do far more to push women and minorities out of STEM than anything. You are constantly telling women and minorities what a terrible racist and misogynist place academia is.
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