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An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

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Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#541

Post by pnako »

detoxdetox wrote: post #451
maire wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife. That is why the newly affluent men of the mid-20th century wanted it so much. They came out of the great depression, fought a great war, and wanted a wife at home. You should not judge all of history by this one era. The work of child care used to fall on the entire extended family. The nuclear family reduced…

Of course! But that's only a tiny minority of wealthy women. Nobody is claiming that, historically, women did not work. It's just that female work was performed in proximity of their young children and interweaved with their care. Which is work in itself as well. The historical norm of peasant societies is gendered work roles. Roughly speaking, the male works in the fields and the female works around the house / vill…

I think we observe that in primate societies as well. So saying that the modern / western view is an anomaly is a bit of an understatement.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#542

Post by allovernow »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #395

The author is missing the forest for the trees. She argues that a specific kind of sexism (harrassment) is not sufficient to explain why so many women are forced out of their careers in STEM academia. She argues that the real reason is that those women want to start a family and they can't do both at once. She herself is considering leaving academia to start a family (she wants to have two or three children). Yet she…

>Yet she never for a moment stops to wonder why it is that a woman like her has to make a choice between family and career, why that is a choice that so many women have to make and why it is a choice that so few men have to make.

She literally spends 25%+ of the post explaining the fertility wall that does not affect men.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#543

Post by nl »

datashow wrote: post #437
maire wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife. That is why the newly affluent men of the mid-20th century wanted it so much. They came out of the great depression, fought a great war, and wanted a wife at home. You should not judge all of history by this one era. The work of child care used to fall on the entire extended family. The nuclear family reduced…

> Non-working mothers is a modern anomaly. It used to be a sign of wealth for a man to have a non-working wife. You really need some data to back it up here. "I worked, my mother worked, my grandmothers worked, and my great grandmothers worked." is not good evidence. For one, there is a representative issue. For another, there is a huge difference between part-time work and full-time work. We don't know how many hour…

Non-working wife can mean work in the sense of employed, or it can mean worked as in did unpaid work in the house.

This varied from what we'd now call "housework" to "productive" labor on farms etc.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-hours-dedicated-to... shows how females use to work full time in the home (and as Hans Roslings' famous talk about the impact of the washing machine shows - this was hard, physical labor).

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#544

Post by nl »

username90 wrote: post #471
satyrnein wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds sort of like "no, you see, I can't possibly help you with this, because it's such a privilege for you."

Being able to stay at home is a privilege. My brother, my dad and some of my friends took a few years off to stay at home when the mother worked, I don't see how being able to do that is not a privilege, all of them did it because they wanted to and liked it. However all of them experienced a lot of sexism from being a stay at home dad. So an alternative explanation to the skew between men and women at work could be…

I don't think the person you are replying to is either agreeing or disagreeing it is a privilege. They are just pointing out the increadibly bad argument they are replying to.

A brand new account posting self-contradictory nonsense like For dads to step up, as feminists demand, mothers would have to give up that privilege. sounds like a troll to me.

I think the comment "no, you see, I can't possibly help you with this, because it's such a privilege for you." captured the contradiction pretty well.

(I "stepped up" and took time off when my child was born. It was both a privilege that I was able to do that, a burden that it needed to be done, and one of the hardest things I've done in my life. Trying to make it an identity labelled "feminist" move is insulting. I too experienced the sexism you referred to - I mean I bought dipers that say "only a mother knows" on them.)

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#545

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

falcor84 wrote: post #484
kendallpark wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. How many times have you heard a man say he had to choose between his career and having kids? The fact that it is predominantly women who feel they have to choose between children and career IS institutional sexism. We say we've achieved "equal opportunity" when women are allowed to participate in career fields that had originally evolved around the male workforce. Is that parity? That women can succeed in cer…

>How many times have you heard a man say he had to choose between his career and having kids? I agree with your sentiment, but there's a big biological difference here in terms of the fertility age. As discussed in the article, this question is very urgent for women in their 30s, but men can delay reproduction until their late 40s with no major issues. As such, men don't face an ultimatum on this, the way that women…

There is a difference in fertility age, but men don't start leaving STEM academia in droves when they approach their fertility limits- only women do. So the part about it being urgent to have children at a certain age may be a biological difference, as you say, but the part about leaving academia to have children is not a biological difference.

Or, to put it more simply: why don't men leave their careers to have children at any age?

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#546

Post by rixed »

detoxdetox wrote: post #79
entee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this and the subtlety of the OP’s argument. There is clearly a problem, there are clearly many contributors, I have personally seen The OP situation play out with my female friends/colleagues in STEM (and other “high power” sectors). This does NOT discount that sexism still is a problem nor that there may be cultural/societal norms that influence the family planning issue. It’s a complicated issue, it ne…

Lost in the modern rush for status and money, "obscenely convenient high quality daycare" used to be called "Motherhood" and was supplied by Mothers themselves. Some would argue, the most valuable contribution to society, even if not directly monetized. To sustain a healthy population, we used to need 10 children per fertile woman, which made "stay at home Mother" an obvious necessity for the vast majority of women.…

Two children is a lot of effort only because male and/or public involvment is so low, and it is so because it is socially expected. It is socially expected because, I assume, men are setting the expectations here. As to how, your comment, assuming it fall on to women to care for children and ridiculing "female empowerment", is a textbook example of it.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#547

Post by nine_k »

narrator wrote: post #204
Barrin92 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia The first thing I thought as well. When you read all these horror stories about burned out phd students, why is anyone doing this? If a woman in STEM wants to combine family and work (or a man or anyone else really) there are many jobs in the industry that are actually relatively 9-5, and pay really well. I don't un…

You can also be working on stuff that has no impact whatsoever. There are a lot of physics PHDs working in cosmology trying to figure what's going on on the other side of the universe. Sure they are doing some interesting engineering setting up experiments, but if they find the answer to their scientific question they have to find something new to research and get grants for which is a big hassle. I think the joy of…

Being a professor in USSR gave one not only a rather high state-mandated salary, but also an opportunity to be bribed for passing an exam when a student would otherwise flunk it.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#548

Post by jmpeax »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #395

The author is missing the forest for the trees. She argues that a specific kind of sexism (harrassment) is not sufficient to explain why so many women are forced out of their careers in STEM academia. She argues that the real reason is that those women want to start a family and they can't do both at once. She herself is considering leaving academia to start a family (she wants to have two or three children). Yet she…

I agree. We should try to guide women to date and marry men who are poorer or make less money, rather than the sexist women choosing rich guys over poor guys. After time this will reduce the pressure on men to sacrifice their life for money. If women's top mate selection criteria was how nurturing a male is rather than how much money he can provide for the family, then the problem would quickly solve itself.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#549

Post by oarabbus_ »

fizwhiz wrote: post #226
thereisnospork wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By 27 they've probably just wrapped up their PhD and were making a paltry stipend to work in a professor's research lab followed by 2-4 years at a postdoc, asked for in every job application for a 'biologist II' which has an average salary of ~77k (per indeed). This is for industry, not academia. So how am I am misrepresenting the fact that being a biologist takes over 7+ years of being grossly underpaid relative t…

Forgive me for I live in a bubble so I don't know a great deal about why someone would spend that many years in school to land a 77k job. I also don't know much about compensation structure (ex: is comp == salary or are there other components?) I do know a couple of friends that work at Genentech who comfortably pull in > 200k so there's that.

Really? You don't understand why someone would want to become a PhD and make contributions driving a field forward? It's not something I want to do personally, but I find it odd that someone couldn't see _why_ someone would choose to do that. Additionally, positions in academia come with a great deal of prestige.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#550

Post by nine_k »

tharne wrote: post #60

I think the author buried the lede here. 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. Each person that puts up with this only makes the problem worse, giving at least tacit approval to the status quo. If folks were to start opting out of academia in larger numbers for jobs in private industry, schools would be forced to improv…

I have no question why a reasonable person, woman or not, might stay away from academia.

I wonder why there are few women in engineering, where the conditions and the pay are so much better. I've seen a number of women in IT industry, from junior developers to CTOs, and most of them were brilliant and sharp. But they are still a minority in the field. This puzzles me.

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