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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)

#221

Post by jimbokun »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #148
TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are women better represented in those roles?

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

#222

Post by foldr »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #183
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.

> 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 car…

>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?

The fields you mention made serious efforts to counter sexism. STEM hasn't, yet.

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

#223

Post by uwuhn »

Nursie wrote: post #122
jl2718 wrote: post #94

Mostly because it’s not a very good job. The total hours, job security, and amortization of training time, are some of the worst of any profession.

That's nonsense. It pays very well and can give you great freedom to set your own path.

I think that poster is referring to STEM as a whole. Software engineering is a small subset of STEM, and I'd argue that it is, surprisingly, both the most accessible and the most lucrative.

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

#224

Post by jxramos »

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…

I was curious if these terms were formally defined anyplace, looks like there's actually wikipedia articles devoted to them:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity

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

#225

Post by aidenn0 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #139
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…

> As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks I'd say the bigger point against the idea that women aren't in CS purely* because of men being sexist, is that this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. Does anyone actually believe this? * of course, it may s…

Eh, pain is relative. If you think hospitals today are less sexist workplaces than software companies, you might pick med school.

I hope that it's clear to most people that there isn't a single reason for the disparity though. People are complicated.

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

#226

Post by jbay808 »

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…

This is a tangent, but,

"More Americans died in making stuff for the WW1 than in the actual war, as the conditions of factory work was brutal."

I'm doubtful that this is true for many other countries involved in that war.

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

#227

Post by mixmastamyk »

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,…

Interesting. I wonder if law vs CS makes much difference.

I do remember in my first CS class: about 70% of the men, and all but one or two women dropped the week after pointers were introduced.

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

#228

Post by freeone3000 »

jimbokun wrote: post #206
TulliusCicero wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Are we talking about programming, specifically? Programmers are paid relatively well because 1. Software is "eating the world", so a lot of software is being written leading to demand for programmers. 2. Programming scales really well. Software has zero reproduction cost and can reach a global audience almost instantaneously. So software companies can make a lot of money with relatively few employees. What would be t…

It's because women are getting paid less, promoted later, and have lower bonuses.

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

#229

Post by jelliclesfarm »

zarkov99 wrote: post #195
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t mean to paint all men like so..I was giving an example of one instance in my own life experience..one of many that has shaped my opinion re gender segregation in higher education and work place. It was the most recent example that explained my own motivation to evangelize gender segregation.

Sure. I don't understand the competition argument though. In my HS and College years it did not matter if the top student was a man or a women, it just mattered if it was you or someone else. And as far as I recall men and women were fairly evenly matched. Why do you think they should compete separately?

I had to think about this. As a heterosexual, I want to say chemistry.

(Others have brought to non binary individuals but I have to confess that I can’t make assumptions about their dynamics.)

Sometimes I feel the same way with problem solving as I do when I am attracted to a person. It makes me wonder if competition and inter personal romantic chemistry are related wrt how our brain perceives it.

And there is limited/fixed mental bandwidth that we can only focus on one at a time? Just wool gathering..off the top of my head. What do you think?

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

#230

Post by foldr »

jimbokun wrote: post #193
zmmmmm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ask women and you'll find that most aren't interested in programming a computer all day I think this though itself is an artefact of a male dominated profession. The fact that working with software is "programming a computer all day" reflects a male preference and value system, and many people open acknowledge that it's quite harmful and often creates quite dysfunctional teams. We need better requirements, better c…

If I understand you correctly, people who like working alone on challenging tasks are inherently deficient and we need to drive them out of the workplace to make others more comfortable? Isn't there a place for people good at thinking deeply about difficult problems on their own and coming up with effective solutions? Yes, everyone needs to be able to communicate well to be part of an effective team. But there is als…

> If I understand you correctly, people who like working alone on challenging tasks are inherently deficient and we need to drive them out of the workplace to make others more comfortable?

You can't possibly think that this is what the person you are replying to is saying. But anyway, the point is that the conception of programming as a task suited to people who like to work in isolation is incorrect and harmful. One of the most common pitfalls of software development is writing software that no-one wants or needs. The solution to that problem lies in better communication. Of course, there are some kinds of programming problems that are suited to intense work in isolation. But most programmers probably need to spend more time talking to their non-programmer colleagues.

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