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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)

#501

Post by rumanator »

novok wrote: post #423
briandear wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think it comes from how software has become a financially lucrative profession in nice office environment with semi-flexible hours relatively recently. An overall attractive package with the corresponding political attention it gets as a result. While all the other things you mentioned other than maybe oil field work are not as financially lucrative.

> I think it comes from how software has become a financially lucrative profession in nice office environment with semi-flexible hours relatively recently.

In short, the goal is to put people of a certain group in positions of power and influence.

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

#502

Post by iamsb »

jbay808 wrote: post #226
iamsb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Factory work was not yet as common place as America and England in many other countries. Ford assembly lines were not yet widely used when WW1 broke out, most of the WW1 was fought with less industrialized weaponry.

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

#503

Post by WalterBright »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #481
WalterBright wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really too bad they never released a compilation DVD set of it. AL is consistently funnier than SNL. Much of the humor is local, though.

My favorite is the 425 area code skit, with a snobby lady (in character) complaining about Renton being in the same area code as Bellevue. No one outside of the Seattle area would ever get that joke, however. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jlo4Ht2YA Done in the same style as the WSU drinking ban...another later classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kozfrph9LU Or Bill Nye as a street walking lawyer on Aurora av…

sweet!

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

#504

Post by iamsb »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #141
iamsb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If women started working in dangerous environments that harms their bodies, it would have a direct impact on their reproductive ability..which on a large scale would be detrimental to the perpetuation of humans as a species and hence our survival. This is how we evolved. Not likely going to be a popular opinion, but it is mine.

Also remember lot (most) of Marxism predates Darwin and evolutionary biology. Even though Darwin and Marx were contemporaries. Since left is still quite based on Marxists ideas, it just does not account for many evolutionary biology theories and hence tends to find reasons which do not explain things correctly.

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

#505

Post by iamsb »

throwaway8548 wrote: post #70
iamsb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does. I know many men in India who would rather do something else than do engineering. Look at the background of most standup comedians in India for example. Most of them come from engineering/stem background and use that to fulfill their side hustle to be a comic and then become full time comics if successful. I was personally far more interested in studying classic Sanskrit literature, but was talked…

I should rephrase. Why does it affect men disproportionately less?

I do not know how to calculate that. At least few stem fields have very high number of women, medicine for example. So why more women do not choose mechanical engineering, hard to say. It is not because these fields are dominated by men. Women were not dominating medicine, but now they do. So clearly women are not afraid of taking up fields which are male dominated. Women are far more courageous than that. Women also dominate HR departments of many financial, software, and other industries. So clearly they work in the same industry as men do, just in different roles. So why they do not choose to be engineers in these companies instead of HR person, I have no idea. All I am contesting it, it is not because men have an invisible alliance to stop women from doing so.

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

#506

Post by iamsb »

cortesoft wrote: post #109
throwaway8548 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should rephrase. Why does it affect men disproportionately less?

Could be a lot of reasons.... if STEM majors have a 'bro' culture, then more men would feel comfortable in that culture than women, and would not be driven away from it.

will bro culture explain women not enrolling to these majors or just dropping out of these majors? My guess is latter.

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

#507

Post by tarsinge »

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.

What I don’t understand is the obsession to draw conclusions as soon as possible. We just don’t have the data yet. From my experience developers are still seen as black magicians by other roles. Being initiated is having been a weird unpopular boy which used computer since he was young. It’s slowly starting to change, and maybe real trends will emerge in 20 years, but why the hurry?

Our only responsibility is that we provide welcoming environment and equality of opportunity. But I may be missing some US context on the obsession here.

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

#508

Post by iamsb »

iamsb wrote: post #22

The most important thing that matters is ability to earn a decent living. Decent living is essentially ability to afford most things like a property in good neighborhoods, personal identity (clothes), transportation, quality education for children, and safety. People are really smart and they optimise for their own survival. Essentially - decent wage -> better options for partner -> better standard of living. In some…

Also just to add - In countries like India, it is incredibly difficult to defer which major to choose. You basically have to choose a major as soon as you have graduated high school and it is quite painful and costly(time+money) to change it afterwords. Which is why we see far higher percentage of engineers go get a MBA in India, as most do not want to be engineers in the first place.

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

#509

Post by kilotaras »

westoncb wrote: post #490
speedplane wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. There are far more male bosses than female bosses. Accordingly, assuming bad bosses are relatively rare, it's far more likely every female boss you've ever had is awful than every male boss you've ever had is awful. This is just probability. Let's take an example. Suppo…

Someone want to break down how to calculate the odds here?

Assuming gender has no impact on awfulness

P(all your female bossses awful) = P(awful boss)^(number of female bosses)

P(all your male bossses awful) = P(awful boss)^(number of male bosses)

The lower the number of male/female bosses, the greater the probability of all of them being awful. The opposite (probability of all of them being not awful) increasing is also true.

This is generally known as a small numbers fallacy[1]

https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Philosophy/Book%3A_...

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

#510

Post by wutbrodo »

speedplane wrote: post #487
koonsolo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. "Men are more honest and straightforward, women more jealous and backstabbing". Their words, not mine. But since the whole upheaval of women in workplaces that flowed to Europe from US, I have the feeling that this sentiment has changed.

> I worked with a few women in software development. 2 of them separately told me they liked working in an all men team more than working with women. There are far more male bosses than female bosses. Accordingly, assuming bad bosses are relatively rare, it's far more likely every female boss you've ever had is awful than every male boss you've ever had is awful. This is just probability. Let's take an example. Suppo…

GP's example didn't say anything about bosses, but rather all-male teams vs teams with >0 women. Your comment is just an extended non sequitur
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