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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)

#141

Post by jelliclesfarm »

iamsb wrote: post #64
malandrew wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We would really like to find a non economic reason for some of these disparities I don't even know if we like to find a non-economic reason or if most people simply don't know economics well enough to reason through 2nd and 3rd order economic consequences. Since they can't reason through it they choose simple explanations despite it being wrong. This is the same reason why people used to believe that deities contro…

It is quite difficult to reason with people who would rather blame an invisible force. For example - most women did not work in factories until much later or even today. More Americans died in making stuff for the WW1 than in the actual war, as the conditions of factory work was brutal. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to that environment if they can avoid it? Not even for a minute suggesting that women sh…

If women started working in dangerous environments that harms their bodies, it would have a direct impact on their reproductive ability..which on a large scale would be detrimental to the perpetuation of humans as a species and hence our survival. This is how we evolved. Not likely going to be a popular opinion, but it is mine.

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

#142

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

> she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job

She did? Where did she find these writers with safe, high status jobs? Maybe PR?

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

#143

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #123
4ntonius8lock wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odd thing is that the same people who talk about there being no inherent biological differences between sexes then go ahead and talk about 'male aggression'. The amount of people that employ mental gymnastics to justify saying both these things is amazing. In fact the attacks I've seen on Peterson have bordered on the downright delusional/incoherent.

It's perfectly possible to consider traits to be culturally assigned to the genders and not biologically determined, and still complain about them. Complaining about innate (and therefore unchangeable) biological traits would actually be somewhat useless. Besides, nobody denies the existence of biological differences. It's pretty obvious that women tend to have breasts and men tend not to. What's being criticised is:…

My point is the article is biased away from any conclusions that are biological.

From the study the article is quoting: > in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality

This is only paradoxical if you're presuming men and women are NOT attracted to different things. Experiments with little kids before they can even process coherent though, and across cultures, have produced quite conclusive statistical evidence that there's innate gender differences (preferences of color, of soft vs spinney/mechanical things, etc) that don't fit the 'evil men suppressing women through artificial social constraints' narrative.

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

#144

Post by lawnchair_larry »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #67
edoo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it has been proven most genius women go into medicine and most genius men go into engineering. The genius part means you get to pick your path. Biological imperatives are at play.

There are absolutely zero "biological imperatives" here -- your take is some pretty low-effort, tired sexual discrimination.

Nothing in his post is sexually discriminatory, and stereotyping women as more inclined to select medicine is not even negative (whether it’s correct or not), so admonishment in place of debate is not necessary. Medicine is far more prestigious and more highly compensated than engineering.

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

#145

Post by TulliusCicero »

Reedx wrote: post #108
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…

Ask women and you'll find that most aren't interested in programming a computer all day. Which one could argue is a sane choice. If anything it's more sane. Stop trying to make them feel like something is wrong if they don't have this inclination. Males and females have different preferences on average, some as early as birth[1]. This is not a bad thing. For the ones that want to program all day, obviously they shoul…

> Males and females have different preferences on average, and do from birth[1]. This is not a bad thing.

Sure, but it seems more than a little convenient that the male-chosen professions seem to generally pay significantly more, on average, than the female-chosen ones. Haven't there been studies that showed that women moving into a profession was actually associated with pay dropping?

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

#146

Post by TulliusCicero »

rayiner wrote: post #72
DuskStar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

> The legal profession is far ahead of STEM in addressing sexism. Many law firms have adopted the Mansfield Rule

But did they have this back in the 60's and 70's when representation started going up? What caused it back then, that didn't apply to engineering?

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

#147

Post by metalforever »

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…

I am a woman in software and I agree with this.

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

#148

Post by TulliusCicero »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80
DuskStar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In case of medicine - because it's a large field full of career paths that are very different from each other. The daily realities of being a pediatrician, a surgeon, a psychiatrist or a radiologist have very little in common. There's this hypothesis that men statistically tend to pick jobs involving working with and treating patients as things, and women tend to pick jobs involving people and socializing. Medicine a…

> And I suspect - but didn't check - that if you expand the definition of "software" to include supporting fields like design, UX and testing, the overall gender ratio will be much closer to 1:1.

Could also look at careers like "developer evangelist" and "solutions engineer", both of which are technical but much more people-oriented than being a regular software engineer.

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

#149

Post by blattimwind »

lowdose wrote: post #128
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one is public transport. I have been groped a few times during peak transit time in the BART. It was incredibly unpleasant and ruined the whole week for me. It’s creepy and the violation of personal space feels like rape.

So segregated public transport is the solution?

Apparently segregation is the new answer, according to progressives on HackerNews.
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