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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)

#321

Post by triceratops »

jimbokun wrote: post #217
rayiner wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> (To paraphrase Justice Ginsberg, law will be “fixed” when there are nine women on the Supreme Court.) Wait, what? Is this an argument that men are inherently unsuited to be Supreme Court Justices? My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court. I find this dangerous logic. Seeking to alternate oppression of one group versus another do…

> My guess is this means having 9 women on the Supreme Court is to make up for all the years there were 9 men on the Supreme Court.

I took that to mean "just as it was unremarkable in the very recent past for the SC to be 100% male, it should be unremarkable if in the future it became 100% female (on merit)".

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

#322

Post by m0zg »

throwaway8548 wrote: post #114
oerpli wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!!

Women have unrealistic expectations sometimes. Elsewhere in this comment section someone (you?) mentioned that men are "unaccommodating" to women. But men _are_ in fact more accommodating to women nowadays than to _other men_. How do we know this? _Because men told us_! You're asking for special treatment and you don't even realize it.

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

#323

Post by banads »

tmh79 wrote: post #318
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... I think its a lot more complicated than this. Yes, men and women can be jerks. The bigger issues seem to be when a team is 80%+ one gender or another, and the issues aren't about "being mean" the issues are about the dominant group being blind to and then not accommodating the nondominant group's needs. A huge problem is that we have a lot of 6 person tech teams with…

The same is true is in fields dominated by women, such as education

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

#324

Post by youngteacher »

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…

Fuck training people that are older than me, have higher credentials than me but still expect me to handhold them and then cry that its a hostile environment while they fail to do the job they obtained a 5 year degree for and then in the end some third party like an intern with even less experience than me redoes the job better. Said intern is not a man so clearly the damn problem is not the gender. It's complete disinterest in the job.

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

#325

Post by roenxi »

foldr wrote: post #235
zarkov99 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, don't forget all the shitty careers, with long hours, danger, and significant health hazards. Not much equality of outcome on those either. Somehow no one is claiming sexism is the cause of disparity for those.

Actually, a lot of people are saying that sexism is the cause of disparity in those cases. It's a commonplace observation that sexism harms men as well as women. Historically, the professions you're alluding to have been closed to women by men . So for example, the reason that women couldn't serve in the military until relatively recently is not that women used their power and influence within society to get a pass o…

I'd hope if women had thought about the serving example they would have made the same choice out of a sensible respect for setting up the future. A society that keeps their women from dying needless deaths has a reproductive advantage over societies that send them into the meat grinder - the protective society can produce more children after the conflict. From a quick and lazy glance at some statistics [0] losing a young man in 1945 is statistically losing a man, losing a young women is more like statistically losing 6 people (1 now, 5 next generation). The baby boom doesn't work out as well as it did if a big group of women just died off.

Equality of opportunity to die serving a country is all very well, but until men figure out how to operate wombs without women there are practical differences when deciding who is risks probable death. The situation has probably changed now that growing populations no longer looks like an easy win but the calculus goes a bit beyond 'men just didn't like the idea'. Men didn't like the idea because it is an objectively bad idea in an era where population really mattered. The women probably agreed with that one on the whole.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

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

#326

Post by banads »

rayiner wrote: post #132
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…

> Males and females have different preferences on average, and do from birth[1]. This is not a bad thing. I feel like this is a “??? Profit!” argument. Accepting that girl infants prefer faces and boy infants prefer trucks—what does that have to do with programming? Even within the context of traditional stereotypes about male/female preferences, what makes programming a “male” thing? The analogy that programmers “bu…

>Accepting that girl infants prefer faces and boy infants prefer trucks—what does that have to do with programming?

Programming jobs often involve extremely minimal face to face interactions

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

#327

Post by throwaway09851 »

whack wrote: post #312
throwaway09851 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a woman, and this pervasive opinion that women are leaving STEM fields because of toxic behavior feels more sexist to me than anything else. It seems to me that if you have a genuine passion for STEM stuff, it takes a lot more than a bad environment to completely redirect your career path. Every woman I know with a genuine and deep interest in STEM subjects has had to deal with some level of toxic/sexist/whateve…

> this pervasive opinion that women are leaving STEM fields because of toxic behavior feels more sexist to me than anything else I don't think it is sexist at all to claim that some people would not want to be in a field because of its hostile work environment. I sure wouldn't. Factually debatable? Sure. But sexist? > It might sound harsh, but I don't feel terribly concerned about keeping these displaced women in STE…

> If they aren't interested enough to put up with racism, they shouldn't be here to begin with

I did not say "put up with", I said "deal with", which includes many options other than accepting what you're given. If your workplace discriminates on the basis of race, you could report them for violation of anti-discrimination laws, lobby for stronger laws, leave the workplace for a better one, etc.

> It is their own responsibility to do something about it and fix the racist environment that they are in

Exactly what I just discussed, maybe in an ideal world such things shouldn't be your responsibility, but the only way to guarantee action is to take it. If someone pushes you into a puddle, you might be right to say that it shouldn't be your responsibility to remove yourself from that situation, as you did not put yourself into it, but I think most would agree that the right course of action is to deal with it yourself anyways.

I am not suggesting that the responsibility falls solely on women or minorities to deal with their own problems at all, but I am suggesting that they should take some agency of their own.

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

#328

Post by jelliclesfarm »

lowdose wrote: post #258
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am very sorry this happened to you, this kind of behaviour would not be tolerated in Europe. Could this be related to the fact POTUS literally said to "grab women by the pussy"?

No. I don’t think it’s because of POTUS. I think it’s because there are a large number of men with mommy issues.

Thoughts?

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

#329

Post by losvedir »

foldr wrote: post #222
TulliusCicero wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The fields you mention made serious efforts to counter sexism.

Do you have any references on what those efforts were?

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

#330

Post by jelliclesfarm »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #208
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I don’t know. To clarify: I am not saying that education must be segregated. I am just saying that spaces...personal spaces must be segregated. I am suggesting this because how/what women consider ‘personal space’ is different from how/what men consider ‘personal space’. Speaking for myself..I can focus and concentrated better when my personal space is my domain..physical space as well as emotional/mental…

But does this mean nonbinary people shouldn't get personal spaces, or their own personal space, and what happens when someone is genderfluid, etc, do they have to shift their personal space each time they feel more male/female? I'm mostly just trying to understand how this is applicable within my circle of friends.

I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought, but would like to know more. I am listening.
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