The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by kaitai » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

throwaway8548 wrote: post #63

allovernow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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…

Throwaway commenter, despite being downvoted, you're absolutely right!

I'm a woman. I AM A WOMAN IN STEM. You know what makes my blood pressure rise? People in real life and in this thread who tell me that I'm naturally not suited to it, that I like people more than things. Go away! Shut the f(*& up! I want to sit here and deal with my code and not have people tell me that I either don't know what I like or I'm not a real, normal woman. Maybe we won't get to 50-50 in some STEM fields. Who cares. People telling me for forty years that I'm a weirdo for existing with this brain in this body is not equality.

And you know what? I've got family in STEM in Scandinavia, and the horrifying discrimination stories I've heard directly about their working conditions (down to classic, "You shouldn't be here because when you get pregnant you'll stop doing science" conversations with superiors) dwarf anything I personally have experienced in STEM in the US. The homophobic comments in the sauna are direct and cruel. Scandinavian STEM is not the egalitarian paradise that Americans think it is.

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

#152

Post by rayiner » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #146

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…

> 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?

There have been decades of efforts at the various stages of the pipeline. In the 1960s and 1970s law schools started admitting gender balanced classes. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a series of lawsuits as a result of which law firms began to hire gender balanced classes of entry level lawyers. The Mansfield rule is now directed at addressing remaining disparities in the partner ranks.

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

#153

Post by blattimwind » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

Hitton wrote: post #50

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #9

This! I have said this so many times and all my girl friends hate me for it! I also believe in gender segregated schools(after HS and at university level). I am not advocating gender segregation but just gender segregated education. This is only a BS theory of mine..and so I am trying to work it into my hobby fiction writing. Please allow me to test it here for opinions. I think that in formative years, children shou…

>This is not just in an intellectual setting. Last week I had a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy I hired to do some work. I just lost it. >It’s a constant battle of wits dealing with men that it’s exhausting. It’s even worse than in an office environment because men think the tasks that involve physical prowess is their domain. They simply will NOT take orders from a woman. And…

> voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy

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

#154

Post by kaitai » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

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…

Most people, period, are not interested in programming a computer all day.

My girl child likes trucks, not Frozen, and the pressure from other adults to get her to conform and play with Disney-branded dolls is non-trivial and unrelenting. Ugh.

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

#155

Post by metalforever » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #119

masteranza wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

My experience in school was more that the men in group projects would think that you were an idiot and you couldn’t find a team.

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

#156

Post by harryh » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

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…

Yes indeed. Women just don't want to work in one of the fastest growing and highest paying professions in America. They would much rather take lower paying jobs where you don't get free lunches and flexible dress codes at the office.

I'm sure you're right.

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

#157

Post by jelliclesfarm » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

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?

It’s not suggested as a ‘solution’. It’s an ‘option’ some of us women would like...that’s all.

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

#158

Post by TulliusCicero » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

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:…

It's true that few on the left will assert that there are zero sex-based average behavioral differences, but you can't deny that it makes most progressives...uncomfortable. I'm pretty far left and I've seen it; people won't deny the possibility outright, but they'll look for every other possible explanation first, even if they sound substantially less plausible.

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

#159

Post by kaitai » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

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.

My engineering university only started taking women in the 1970s. My mother could not attend as they did not accept women.

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

#160

Post by big_chungus » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #97

Hitton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is not just in an intellectual setting. Last week I had a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy I hired to do some work. I just lost it. >It’s a constant battle of wits dealing with men that it’s exhausting. It’s even worse than in an office environment because men think the tasks that involve physical prowess is their domain. They simply will NOT take orders from a woman. And…

Curious: have you asked female managers if they have any grievances? How do you know that they don’t face ‘these problems’?

Most good employees do this quarterly at performance reviews. Asking for feedback is absolutely the norm, and good managers will give it to an employee in an honest fashion. I've seen truculent employees of either gender giving a hard time to managers of either gender.

I also don't think that the sort of screaming you described is ever an appropriate activity in which any manager should engage. If you don't like the work he's doing, fire him; a "a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode" is never appropriate.