An alternative argument for why women leave STEM • Hacker News Board

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#231

Post by jacobwilliamroy » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #200

One tactical approach: a high achieving woman could prioritize finding a partner who is interested in deprioritizing his own career for the sake of supporting her and raising children. This is a strategy high achieving men have used for a long time. So, pursue men involved in "child friendly" careers. Nurses instead of doctors; teacher aides over academics; tax preparers over management consultants. Or even men who a…

I think hospital work is unsuitable for people with children. Strangers spilling their blood and guts all over the place; and the hours suck rotten eggs.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#232

Post by balls187 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #145

balls187 wrote: post #72

My note to the author, enjoy your career. If and when you feel ready to start a family, you will. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be okay too. Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women. Perhaps STEM women who are early career (24-28) would benefit from meeting mothers (both who are in STEM and not in STEM careers) who had children at age 35+. > ...Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and…

My wife was a developer (EE degree). As soon as our first child was on-the-way she put down her programming books and picked up the child rearing books. She dropped her dev job the moment her water broke and never looked back. The opportunity cost was enormous but now that the kids are grown it sure seems like it was a great plan for us. My wife did get a lot grief from her family for dropping out of the workforce ($…

Between the two of you, why did you stay in workforce?

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#233

Post by buzzkillington » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #153

hguant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia given how poorly you'll be treated. Every now and then I get an overwhelming sense of guilt when I talk to/think about my friends who are engaged in academia or pursuing advanced degrees (I'm 28, for reference). The crazy workloads they have, the insane restrictions on how they can do their jobs, and the cut-throat n…

I worked in a company for a while that hired lots of people out of academia. The fascinating thing was that despite the vast majority of candidates being smart and incredibly well qualified, a massive chunk of them had been so tuned to the stupid hoops you have to jump through for academia that they were near worthless in industry. Whether that was the complete inability to treat other people as equals, or just compl…

If I had a dollar for every time someone mentioned prestige for why we should be doing something I'd have had enough to fund one of those dumb projects.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#234

Post by mc32 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #213

hinkley wrote: post #87

I can't speak for women, and I'm just smart enough not to try. But what I can say is that I don't hold all of the values that I did as a young man. I'm not excited about the same things, and today I find some of those ideas uncomfortably naive or even off-putting. As I've engaged in more activities, as I've socialized with more people, I've encountered many more ideas and a lot of nuance. Nothing has simple answers a…

In her article, she explains her hypothesis that women leave top-flight STEM/academic careers because the demands (and, crucially, when they must be met: 20s & 30s) conflict with the demands of bearing children during a woman's most-likely-to-be-successful childbearing years. She goes on to suggest that creating more supports for mothers such as affordable childcare and possibly collaborative academic working environ…

Yes from her description it does seem like childcare would help a lot. But one of the other things she mentions is the moving (city/state) as well as travel. But sure looks like childcare would go a long way in helping.

I don’t think we would build “science towns” like Los Alamos in this day and age, but that would probably help as well.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#235

Post by balls187 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #195

balls187 wrote: post #72

My note to the author, enjoy your career. If and when you feel ready to start a family, you will. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be okay too. Maternal Age seems like a boogie man story to scare women. Perhaps STEM women who are early career (24-28) would benefit from meeting mothers (both who are in STEM and not in STEM careers) who had children at age 35+. > ...Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and…

> I gladly set aside my career to raise my kids. You’re going to need some money when they get to be old enough to go to college.

Nah.

They're 3rd generation immigrants. They need to learn to struggle.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#236

Post by celticmusic » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

maximente wrote: post #212

kalenx wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After pregancy and the very first months of life, I fail to see any "obvious biological reasons".

WHO recommends breast feeding until age of 2, so that's at least one thing that seems not readily changeable across sexes.

you can bottle feed breast milk.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#237

Post by dustinmoris » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

Maybe some people value spending time with their children and seeing them grow up more than chasing a stupid meaningless promotion at a mundane STEM job somewhere. If you have one child then you have only one chance in life to answer all their curious questions when they are 6 years old, only one chance in life to see them learn how to swim, etc. etc.

Life is about collecting wonderful memories with the people who you love, not about maintaining some idiotic excel spreadsheets in an open plan office. Maybe we should measure how many women are happy with their life rather than measure how many of them have a certain job title in a certain field. If we can maximise the former then who gives a shit about the latter.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#238

Post by icandoit » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

zajio1am wrote: post #174

icandoit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People would have children for emotional reasons even if society does not intervene. What if that isn't true though? Fertility is universally falling in rich countries. Could you give me a number of births-per-woman that would motivate your concern? I think 1 birth per woman is a reasonable number for national concern. South Korea is already at 1.0. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/KOR/south-korea/fertil... Wit…

It is true that developed countries have often get to this point where it may be reasonable for society so support child-rearing for stability reasons. But they often still have much more people than say hundred years ago. But note that this situation is relatively new, while natality was praised even during times where population was expanding. My point in this thread is that natality is not intristically good (or b…

I think framing child-rearing as an individual choice is a dangerous framing.

That's what I was getting at with the comparison to the movie Bird Box.

It's important to think of ourselves as biological systems first and thinkers-as-choosers second.

I suspect that an increase in the virtualization of our lives will lead to an equal increase in the will-full termination of our lives. Suicide. As our lives become less biological we will end them with greater intensity and frequency.

You may not be convinced, but ask yourself what would that road look like? Would you recognize the indicators? Could you and the people you care about hop off the ride in time? Why did so many Westerners join the ranks of ISIS?

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#239

Post by kingdomcome50 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

eej71 wrote: post #123

csb6 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structural sexism is not perpetuated by infants. I mean come on. Children wanting to nurse is not the big issue; children grow up, and do not need nursing when they become toddlers. So why are women still expected to be caretakers of toddlers, middle-schoolers, and tweens? Surely, there isn’t a physiological reason. There is clearly something larger going on. In reality, men and women’s roles are arbitrary, and the s…

While its not a universal construct - it is challenging to look at the history of many cultures who arrived at a similar distribution of labor and the behavior of other mammals and not wonder if men and women aren't inherently different in some generalized way that isn't readily alterable. For those of us on the other side of the debate, there is always this vague sense of some people are underestimating the impact o…

> For those of us on the other side of the debate, there is always this vague sense of some people are underestimating the impact of these intrinsic differences.

Nailed it.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#240

Post by darawk » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #167

darawk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the employer is not beside the point. The employer pays your salary. If you do less work, you get less salary. That isn't saying their work isn't valuable, it is saying it isn't valuable to the employer . The person who values work pays for it. In this case, it is the woman herself who values the work. She is literally choosing to pay herself, in the form of a well cared for child. In the same way that when I cle…

You could have compared it to caring about elderly dad, doing volunteer work or anything else boring, unpaid but useful. Instead, you compared it to playing games which rubs people wrong.

Who cares what the evocation is? Are we not adults capable of following chains of reasoning without descending into literary analogy and euphemism? We're not analyzing Shakespeare here.