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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

#681

Post by usaar333 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #656
usaar333 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we want Mothers to shape their young children's behavioral patterns, or low paid child care workers with no skin in the game I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of childcare workers more passionate about raising children than the parents themselves. Fwiw, in many societies retired grandparents raise the kids which has better alignment and allows parents to readily keep their jobs.

No matter how well-trained and passionate the childcare workers are. At least in my country, a typical daycare has around 6 kids per caregiver for children less than a year old, 10 for 1-year-olds and maybe 15 or so for 2-year-olds. If you have ever cared for a less than a year old child, you will surely know that caring for six at the same time, and doing it well, is simply impossible. So most of the time they end u…

Those are pretty high ratios - and I agree detrimental to children and very hard on the caregivers.

As we're talking about stem mothers, I was thinking more of ratios I've seen in the SF for more affluent parents:

* Private nanny offering 1:1 time until kid is 2 or so (better option than daycare) or daycare with 1:3 ratio for infants

* Preschool for kids older than 2 with a 1:6 ratio.

My general read is that some childcare providers can outperform some parents. Yes, it's not their kid, but the higher passion for education can more than outweigh that.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#682

Post by celticmusic »

chongli wrote: post #665
celticmusic wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of things in life that aren't perfect, yet they're still solutions.

They are solutions, but would people choose them? This story is about what women are choosing to do with their lives. From what I gather, they’re not choosing the hard, inconvenient, uncomfortable way without a good reason.

this is so disingenous. You're trying to imply that the reason women leave STEM is because they'll have to pump at work.

that's ridiculous.

And I've personally seen plenty of women pump at work.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#683

Post by maire »

maire wrote: post #428
detoxdetox wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

Just a small additional comment - if a company creates an environment that encourages community then they will keep women. I was lucky to work at two companies like this - Xerox and early Apple. I don't think they set out to create a family friendly environment. They were trying to have an environment that encouraged creativity. They were part of the zeitgeist of the Bay Area. It just happened to also be family friendly. Those days are gone (sadly).

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#684

Post by [deleted] »

lutorm wrote: post #587
toomuchtodo wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, day care should be exceedingly expensive to account for the cost of having high quality labor (vs minimum wage caregivers) tend to children, with the end result being day care is a last resort, not something provided universally (when taking into consideration the volume of “bullshit jobs” in the marketplace); your job should be of an exceptional nature to be preferred over childcare obligations.

Given that daycare effectively pools more than one family's children per adult caretaker, it should still only cost a fraction of an equally good job's salary.

[deleted]

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#685

Post by daxfohl »

war1025 wrote: post #475
sethammons wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. My wife and I were faced with the option of her contributing financially to the home and we pay for child care, or her being an at home mom. If she went to work, she would net $20 a week after paying for child care. Yeah, nope.

When we had just one kid, the math of my wife working or not worked out to basically what you found. If she was feeling engaged in what she was doing, we probably would have found someone to watch our daughter. But she wasn't really, so she stayed home. Then we had twins. There is a daycare just down the street that we looked into just for shits and giggles. A mere $550 / week if we wanted all three there full time.…

My wife earned negative income for a few years but kept with it. I didn't agree with her decision but supported her in it. She just didn't want to be out of the work force so long that she would have trouble getting back in once the kids were in school.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#686

Post by [deleted] »

lutorm wrote: post #587
toomuchtodo wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, day care should be exceedingly expensive to account for the cost of having high quality labor (vs minimum wage caregivers) tend to children, with the end result being day care is a last resort, not something provided universally (when taking into consideration the volume of “bullshit jobs” in the marketplace); your job should be of an exceptional nature to be preferred over childcare obligations.

Given that daycare effectively pools more than one family's children per adult caretaker, it should still only cost a fraction of an equally good job's salary.

[deleted]

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#687

Post by aratakareigen »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #49

There's a big tendency to ignore the price at which career success is sold. You have to give up more fulfilling and creative work, perhaps, or spend long hours in front of a screen on difficult yet boring tasks, or put in years and years of all-encompassing work in various qualification gauntlets. Not having paid the price for fame in academic STEM, I have no jealousy of the success these people have found - they hav…

Yeah, I'm super uninformed here, but single men's expectations of potential partners are totally the prime suspect here.

Anecdote: My uncle explicitly stated on his dating profile that he was looking for women with masters degrees who were willing to stay at home. I have no idea why he wanted that or why my dad's sister agreed, but this kind of demand is oddly common.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#688

Post by uncle_j »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #673
uncle_j wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids being picked up from school predominately by woman is a social arrangement, the kind we hopefully at least try to change if we consider there to be better options. Define "Better". Why should we be trying to change it? Why should we be meddling with other people's lives? People aren't being harmed here. > But spending effort to keep pre-defined gender roles in check must be somehow bad? Both men and women at l…

>> People aren't being harmed here. Well, the author is saying that she is considering giving up her career in reearch which she very much wants to pursue to have children because she can't find a way to reconcile the two. That is clearly harmful and if it is affecting women at a large scale as the author suggests then it is definitely something that should be corrected.

> Well, the author is saying that she is considering giving up her career in reearch which she very much wants to pursue to have children because she can't find a way to reconcile the two.

I disagree. Unfortunately you have to make decisions in life on what you want to prioritise. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Also I don't consider having to make a choice harmful. Being harmed mean things like being assaulted, having your house robbed, being abused by your spouse. What it does not mean is coming to realisation that you may have to make a choice between family and career.

You know what does allow you to have both, wealth.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#689

Post by uncle_j »

Faark wrote: post #658
uncle_j wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids being picked up from school predominately by woman is a social arrangement, the kind we hopefully at least try to change if we consider there to be better options. Define "Better". Why should we be trying to change it? Why should we be meddling with other people's lives? People aren't being harmed here. > But spending effort to keep pre-defined gender roles in check must be somehow bad? Both men and women at l…

> I seems to me that they are already kept in check. To a degree, yes. But are you really trying to pretend it's already perfect? Though you seem to not believe in systemic injustice, so I doubt we will be able to find a shared consensus. Custody is a more widely known example were us men fight an uphill battle. Obviously not everyone is unsatisfied with societies default roles, but I'd certainly consider this a harm…

> To a degree, yes. But are you really trying to pretend it's already perfect?

Perfect is the enemy of Good.

> Again, it could be worse. And I'm not trying to meddle in your life. If you and your SO want to live by traditional roles, that's great. But I don't want those thrust on (and thus being meddled with) my life. And I don't want to live in a society that doesn't even try to improve anymore.

Everyone is trying to pin an opinion to me here because I am just questioning the underlying assumptions. I don't really have one other than "You can't have it all" unless you are extremely wealthy or extremely gifted.

> But I don't want those thrust on (and thus being meddled with) my life. And I don't want to live in a society that doesn't even try to improve anymore.

Neither do I. However there will never be a utopia. I find it actually pretty immature to think that you can make everything perfect, there are trade offs to everything.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#690

Post by daseiner1 »

uncle_j wrote: post #487
n4r9 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't justify that sort of systematic pressure. An African American is much more likely to be a [edit: convicted] murderer than a white American, but that doesn't make it ok to cross the road whenever you see one.

> That doesn't justify that sort of systematic pressure. If I were a parent I would be trying to mitigate the risk to my child. As I previously stated it is unfair but not unfounded. It cannot be sexism if it is based in fact. > An African American is much more likely to be a murderer than a white American, but that doesn't make it ok to cross the road whenever you see one. * I don't live in the US, I am from the UK.…

Your bizarre line about sports gear is racism, or bigotry at least. Black people are mentioned so let’s talk about “louts” dressed poorly?
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