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

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

#181

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

A few years ago I was on a plane wearing a sweater with the logo of the major tech company I work at. The person sitting next to me was excited to talk to me about how he was trying to develop his son into an engineer. His son was like six. He was buying his son toys and games that tried to promote an interest in technology.

He also had a daughter. Similar age. He was not doing the same for her.

Perhaps these children had such a strong idea of what they wanted at a very very early age and the father was responding to that. But I find it more likely that the father held an implicit bias about what jobs his son and daughter should have and was providing support to push his son into tech.

When these two people graduate college and the son becomes a software engineer and the daughter doesn't it will be their choice. But it is not clear to me that it wasn't sexism that produced the circumstances for that choice.

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

#182

Post by jimbokun »

izzydata wrote: post #174
jayd16 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implicit bias also guides interests and choice. Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career, not that they were forced out of it. We look to outcome equality to gain some kind of insight into this.

It sounds like informing everyone that these options exist is part of creating a more equal opportunity. If two people didn't have the same information for available options then there wasn't an equal opportunity.

I'm not following you.

Girls don't know that there's such a thing as programming or Computer Science degrees?

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

#183

Post by TulliusCicero »

jayd16 wrote: post #164
lgleason wrote: post #130

It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always) because of different interests. Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in. And that is before you get into interests vs natural talent and how that does or does not affect ones success in a field. On a fundamental l…

Implicit bias also guides interests and choice. Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career, not that they were forced out of it. We look to outcome equality to gain some kind of insight into this.

> Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career

And I'm sure many men simply did not consider the possibility of a career in female dominated professions, like nursing or elementary education. I think there's certainly something to the idea that we internalize stereotypes and that can restrict our options, but I'm skeptical that it generally explains large differences in career preference today.

For example, women were once stereotyped as not being doctors or lawyers, but that didn't seem to stop them from joining those fields en masse. If internalized stereotyping didn't matter enough to stop them then, for those fields, why does it matter now for engineering?

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

#184

Post by kaitai »

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…

I had a Saudi colleague in mathematics who said she'd never experienced discrimination in mathematics in Saudi Arabia, simply because every mathematician she worked with on a daily basis was also female.

Saudi culture is sort of orthogonal to American culture, but it was an interesting comment.

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

#185

Post by stubybubs »

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?

Medicine is, in fact, absolutely brutal with misogyny and every other kind of discrimination. People just can't leave it because they are $200k deep in debt, and just have to put up with it. It can be better if you end up as an attending with autonomy, but you still have problem with hospital management etc.

Even straight white men hate medicine and can't leave because of debt... so it's not a great comparison.

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

#186

Post by mixmastamyk »

izzydata wrote: post #174
jayd16 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implicit bias also guides interests and choice. Many women I meet today simply did not consider the possibility of an engineering career, not that they were forced out of it. We look to outcome equality to gain some kind of insight into this.

It sounds like informing everyone that these options exist is part of creating a more equal opportunity. If two people didn't have the same information for available options then there wasn't an equal opportunity.

I remember high-school guidance counsel lists being dominated by things like "actuarial" and "insurance salesman." After reading that I would have rather worked in a restaurant my whole life.

Absolutely had no clue what to go into and they didn't help much. Perhaps they were at a greater disadvantage because the internet revolution was about to hit.

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

#187

Post by Reedx »

kaitai wrote: post #154
Reedx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That's true. But if you ask 1000 men and 1000 women if they want to program all day, you'll get a much higher % of men.

> 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.

I largely agree, Disney is overwhelming. Though no one has pressured or tried to make my daughter conform, other adults do mostly buy her girl typical things. Her cars, trains, dinosaurs, legos and the like mostly came from us (didn't buy any dolls, she got those from others). She likes trucks and Frozen. But mostly Paw Patrol. It's amazing, everything else is a distant 2nd to those pups!

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

#188

Post by izzydata »

jimbokun wrote: post #182
izzydata wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like informing everyone that these options exist is part of creating a more equal opportunity. If two people didn't have the same information for available options then there wasn't an equal opportunity.

I'm not following you. Girls don't know that there's such a thing as programming or Computer Science degrees?

If they aren't convinced it is a real option than they didn't have the same opportunity. Either way it isn't a problem that can be solved by pushing people into the field to create a more equal ratio.

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

#189

Post by swagtricker »

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?

Perhaps the biases around the home PC and video games from the 80's is still embedded today? It's my personal favorite theory: the girls were told they couldn't play in our forts 30+ years ago. This became part of modern western culture with respect to computers & gaming and became applied to computers in general.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

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

#190

Post by commandlinefan »

harryh wrote: post #156
Reedx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, you seem to be sarcastically implying the opposite: that there are hordes of women who want to move into a profession that’s in high demand with a low barrier for entry, but that… they’re not for some reason? Where are all these women? What are their reasons? I’m not even familiar with any anecdotal evidence that there are a lot of women who want to work as software developers but are unable to. Everywhere I’ve ever worked has fallen all over itself to hire women, even going so far as to lower the hiring bar to meet some diversity quotas, and has _still_ been unable to find these apocryphal women who are interested and capable of working as computer programmers but are unable to find the opportunity.
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