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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)

#431

Post by the_gipsy »

briandear wrote: post #352
CydeWeys wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And lots of people are investing lots of time and effort into trying to fix that problem in education, healthcare, etc.

> And lots of people are investing lots of time and effort into trying to fix that problem Are they? I worked in the mental health space for over 10 years and almost 80% of therapists are women -- and a vast majority of those are white women. There hasn't been any significant movement to "fix" that despite a very compelling argument that finding a therapist who is a good match to a patient is fundamental to the succe…

It's a matter of power. There extremely few women CEOs, or millionaires, in positions of power. Legally they have all the same rights, sure, but all these power structures are men's clubs. IT is one of those, it's a matter of power, but much less ambitious.

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

#432

Post by knicholes »

losvedir wrote: post #329
foldr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I've served multiple times at SheTech (an event where we invite thousands of highschool girls to come learn about tech and jobs), and I've helped host at least five Hour of Code events at Adobe where we make sure half of those invited are female where we teach robotics. I've also spent a couple years teaching refugees how to code, and we make sure half of those students are female, as well.

I've never attended personally, but we also host an event yearly called "Girls Who Code."

Adobe has also partnered with a local dev bootcamp to hire intern graduates-- I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty confident that there's an emphasis on female graduates.

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

#433

Post by tptacek »

banads wrote: post #427
tptacek wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the distinction between face-to-face and screen-to-screen is at all relevant. But: the programmers I work with spend lots of time in meetings, too.

Why don't you believe there can be any relation between female infants preference towards faces and female adults preference towards occupations with more face to face, people oriented interactions?

I don't, but I also don't care to debate it, and don't need to, because, once again, face-to-face interactions are also extremely common in professional software development.

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

#434

Post by bigger_cheese »

naasking wrote: post #346
foldr wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. I don't see how it implies this. The more relevant question is whether STEM has higher levels of sexism than other similarly attractive fields.

> I don't see how it implies this. Gender disparity fell in those professions, while in roughly the same time frame, gender disparity dramatically increased in STEM. If women could put up with the sexism in those two professions, is it really plausible that sexism is the reason they didn't similarly push into STEM? Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.

>Engineers would have had to have been a lot more sexist to explain this data.

I think in general among engineers there is a lot of awareness about sexism and diversity issues but that doesn't always extend to people on the periphery of the engineering world (I'm from non-software engineering world).

Tradespeople such a boilermakers, fitters and welders as well as suppliers, technicians etc don't always have the same attitudes. These are people you have to work closely with on engineering projects which are often in remote locations like mines, construction sites etc where management is not typically present (or visible). Attitudes are improving, for example its not common these days to see pornography in site sheds and similar out on construction sites, 10 years ago this was rife, but I still feel culture out on sites is maybe 5 to 10 years behind where it is in the office.

My sister and I are both engineers (I'm Chem/materials and she is a mech. eng) the way she gets treated and I am treated there is a noticeable difference. People visiting her office have done things like assume she is a secretary and ask her to fix them a coffee this has happened in last 5 years so I think there are still some strides to be made in the engineering world.

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

#435

Post by allovernow »

kaitai wrote: post #151
throwaway8548 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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

Not a single person in this thread has said anything like that. Perhaps your perception is skewed. I know the consensus is different in certain pockets of our society, and especially online, but being [female|minority race|LGBT] does not automatically make your interpretation of your experiences valid.

Kind of like the humorous rule of thumb: if everyone around you is an asshole, maybe you're the asshole.

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

#436

Post by belorn »

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…

Historically, the military mostly drafted people, especially if we look at the last 100 years. Conscription has very little to do with choices, and male only conscription has a long history.

There is a good discussion to be had over why conscription has mostly been male only. Is it powerful men wanting to get rid of young expendable men in some form of evolutionary benefit to themselves? It it because of historical benefit of muscle differences? Did women use their power and influence within society to get a pass on conscription?

Men did not choose to be forced into the military. People do not generally chose to be forced to the front line and die. It is also worth mentioning that in the US, black males were proportionally drafted in higher rates than white males during the Vietnam war. Most people would agree that white men used their power and influence to get a pass on military service.

Maybe the first question to discuss is if being drafted is a benefit or disadvantage in term of power and influence.

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

#437

Post by yibg »

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'm all for equality of opportunity, remove unconscious bias and creating a welcoming environment for all groups, including women. But equality of outcome I think pretty quickly breaks down. If we force 50% of software engineers to be women, we'd pretty quickly run out of women. This cascades as well, as we're not getting gender balance for CS enrollment in colleges either.

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

#438

Post by yibg »

partiallypro wrote: post #425
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 don't understand why modern society doesn't understand/want to believe that men and women have different career interests than men. Men and women value things differently, and it's not all because of society.

Animals have behavioral differences between males and females, I also don't understand why it's so hard to believe that humans will have differences between the genders as well.

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

#439

Post by Thorentis »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #316
Thorentis wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you ask can be just as important as asking. Hence, my comment.

Isn't there another study that said that women were punished for being aggressive like a male in the form of lower performance reviews?

Consider the reverse. A female boss, and a male being aggressive in wanting a pay rise. How do you think she would respond? Or even just consider a woman going to another woman for a pay rise. Do you think being more aggressive would work or not?

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

#440

Post by yibg »

ajuc wrote: post #301
Buldak wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically no one endorses "equality of outcome" in itself. It's a question of whether disparate outcomes evidence disparate opportunities (findings like those in question suggest that they may not).

Gender quotas are basically enforcing equality of outcome. If the reason for disparity in some trades isn't discrimination but preferences (as this article strongly suggests) - gender quotas make both man and women less happy to satisfy statistics and ideology. It's insane. BTW I wonder if people proposing gender quotas because of pay gap would also support gender quotas in hospitals to fight life expectance gap, and…

Also prison populations. Women are severely under represented there.
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