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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#111

Post by bakuninsbart »

DuskStar wrote: post #58
nervousvarun wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily disagreeing or commenting on your point, but doesn't medicine typically fall under STEM?

Not that I'm aware - Science Technology Engineering Math is the definition of STEM I see most frequently. I'd consider Medicine to be heavily STEM adjacent , particularly in the US where most doctors get a bachelors in a STEM field before heading to med school, but not a part of it. Googling around seems that it's contentious, and that a lot of people consider nurses, physicians etc to be STEM careers under the 'scie…

Honestly, the definition of STEM can go in a lot of directions. CS is basically a field of engineering with a heavy slant of maths. Medicine shares a lot of characteristics with engineering, as it is very practical and result-focused, and it shares a lot of the methodology with the Sciences. I think it is quite firmly in the STEM spectrum.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#112

Post by edmundsauto »

blunte wrote: post #88
malandrew wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _without artificial restraints_ What constitutes an artificial restraint? For classical liberals, that means being free from the constraint imposed by other individuals. Today the definition of "restraints" is being expanded beyond the artificial to the point where everything is being declared a "human right" without any consideration for the fact that some of those things can only be provided by taking from someon…

An artificial constraint is one that exists outside of your personal capability. If you are capable of solving the toughest scientific or technical challenges, but you are prevented from doing so because of some attribute of your circumstance (your color, your gender, your age, your wealth level, your current job title, etc.), then you are being artificially restrained. If you can solve the toughest challenge, but yo…

Under this definition, how would you classify geography? Many people could contribute to America's top level countries but are not able to because of immigration policies.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#113

Post by jakelazaroff »

allovernow wrote: post #43
calibas wrote: post #18

Gender equality means you can enter into whatever profession you choose and not be discriminated against. It's about equal rights, equal treatment, it does not mean that men and women are the same, it's not a mathematical equality. Seems to me people are confusing conformity with social/political equality.

>It's about equal rights, equal treatment, it does not mean that men and women are the same, it's not a mathematical equality. Sure, perhaps in theory. In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women are immediately blamed on discrimination and the like. There is an implicit assumption that men and women a…

You're not actually supporting your claims, just asking us to share your assumption that "psychological and physiological differences" makes more sense than "discrimination". Look: all you have to do is swap the two explanations and it functions just as strongly as an argument against.

> In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by [discrimination] are immediately blamed on [psychological and physiological differences between men and women]. There is an implicit assumption that men and women are [inherently different], which leads to the conflation of equality of opportunity with [disparity of outcome], exaggerating the effects of [inherent differences] and leading to poor allocation of resources in an attempt to correct a "problem" without consideration for part of all of the actual cause.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#114

Post by throwaway8548 »

oerpli wrote: post #103
throwaway8548 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women That's a bit of circular reasoning though. - Look how men and women behave differently! - But why do they behave differently? - Because they're different. - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently. It's not logically consistent and doesn't answer anythin…

And how would you argue the other side? - Women and men are equal! - But they behave differently - Because women are discriminated against - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently. What now?

- Because women are discriminated against

- How do you know that?

- Because women told us!!

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#115

Post by mindslight »

DuskStar wrote: post #44
pj_mukh wrote: post #35

Coming from one of these countries to America, the answer seems obvious. STEM jobs have a HUGE differential in stability and status in those countries, so women put up up with much more patriarchal BS at the workplace to hold on to them. My sister was a STEM worker in India. When she moved to America, she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job and switched out immediately. Yes, women in Am…

The problem I always have with this argument is "Why not medicine? Why not Law?" Why is it that two professions that you'd naively expect to be just as sexist, if not far more sexist than STEM (Higher status, more of an "old boys club", established hierarchy that has positions like nurses for women, etc) have achieved gender parity, while STEM hasn't?

You're talking right past the comment you're replying to. "Why not medicine? Why not Law?" is straightforwardly explained by the original theory (higher status/stability), yet you're bringing them up as if they're counter examples.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#116

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

It's good that the article mentions poverty and interest in STEM, but they plotted the participation in STEM against Gender Equality instead of say, affordability to survive on minimum wage. They are literally quoting a study on the effects of basically poverty of a country, and then decide to plot against gender gap? Seems like they are trying to sell a narrative instead of understanding the issue fully.

It also seems odd the amount of information they glance over to create their narrative.

In the article, there's a video that mentions a ton of facts.

Among the facts: Women make up 18% of CS engineers. 1:4 computing jobs are held by women. I'm no math genius, but this actually seems to dispel the myth of women just aren't hired in tech. I mean, if they are 18% of CS engineering graduates, you'd expect them to hold slightly < 1:5 computing jobs, not 1:4.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#117

Post by bakuninsbart »

cortesoft wrote: post #106
DuskStar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm aware - Science Technology Engineering Math is the definition of STEM I see most frequently. I'd consider Medicine to be heavily STEM adjacent , particularly in the US where most doctors get a bachelors in a STEM field before heading to med school, but not a part of it. Googling around seems that it's contentious, and that a lot of people consider nurses, physicians etc to be STEM careers under the 'scie…

Engineering and Math are the only two of those letters that have an actual college major with the same name..... you can't major in 'science', you major in one of the subfields of science. In fact, medicine isn't even an undergraduate major (although some universities will offer a 'pre-med' major, but not many). Many people who go on to go to medical school will major in a STEM subject in undergrad (like biology or s…

> In fact, medicine isn't even an undergraduate major (although some universities will offer a 'pre-med' major, but not many).

This is a US-centric view - most people do in fact study medicine right out of school. It is interesting though that the definition of what constitutes a field vary quite greaty around the globe.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#118

Post by throwaway8548 »

calibas wrote: post #79
throwaway8548 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women That's a bit of circular reasoning though. - Look how men and women behave differently! - But why do they behave differently? - Because they're different. - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently. It's not logically consistent and doesn't answer anythin…

Are observable differences not the basis of empirical science?

Nobody is denying the statistics.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#119

Post by rayiner »

masteranza wrote: post #89
rayiner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal profession is far ahead of STEM in addressing sexism. Many law firms have adopted the Mansfield Rule, which requires the pools of promotion candidates to comprise 30-50% women or other underrepresented groups: https://www.law.com/dailyreportonline/2019/09/06/more-firms-... . Major clients are imposing diversity criteria on outside counsel hired for their matters. Many major firms have 20% or more women in t…

From quite long time ago women are accepted to universities. Yet to prove your point about "law being fixed long time ago" you refer to news from few months ago.

I didn’t say law was “fixed.” (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.)

What I said was that recent progress is the result of work that started decades ago. Harvard law graduated its first women in 1953. But back then top women law graduates were still getting offers to be secretaries. (Justice Ginsberg’s story was not at all atypical for her cohort.) That, along with the prospect of joining a 90%+ male class in and of itself dissuaded women from pursing law. Law schools fixed that by making 50-50 classes an express goal, and then achieving that goal. Then law firms made 50-50 classes of incoming associates an express goal, and achieved that goal. Gender parity was achieved not simply by accepting women to law schools, but by actively seeking to admit gender balanced classes. But once that happened, the new ratio became self-perpetuating. When being a woman lawyer no longer meant being part of a tiny minority in law school, a firm, etc., women self-selected into it when previously they had opted out.

I strongly suspect the same factors are in play in STEM: women who would be good programmers self-select out of the field because they don’t want to be the 1-2 women in a class of 20 men, or the 1-2 women programmers on a team of 20 men.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#120

Post by Doingmything123 »

zarkov99 wrote: post #85
pj_mukh wrote: post #35

Coming from one of these countries to America, the answer seems obvious. STEM jobs have a HUGE differential in stability and status in those countries, so women put up up with much more patriarchal BS at the workplace to hold on to them. My sister was a STEM worker in India. When she moved to America, she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job and switched out immediately. Yes, women in Am…

Here is a theory, perhaps you could comment on how if fits your experience: Women are less inclined than men to choose STEM Fields, for biological reasons, that is they tend to be more interested in people than things. Because of this STEM fields are dominated by men, who, because of sheer numbers alone, end up shaping the culture to be more masculine. This makes STEM even less appealing for the relatively rare women…

Robert Martin talks about how in the 60's and 70's women made up a large amount of the worlds programmers. It would seem somewhere along the way we found ways to significantly reduce the number of women entering the profession. I would argue that any biological reasons have little to no influence compared to social factors. If we accept this alternative theory, then the solution is to change the social culture around STEM to not be so exclusionary.
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