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Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

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Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#51
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny, for men to think society is against them, when in reality they define society. As a straight white male, there are very few rooms, very few jobs, very few situations where I don’t have absolute confidence that I belong there. Is it so bad to think everybody should feel that way? Your son will be fine.

What are your thoughts on the study GP linked to? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112

The thing about these statistics is that the size of the underlying groups are not the same, and there's a whole lot of factors that impact them in complicated ways. The article you linked even gives a direct explanation of why the data is hard to interpret and suggests that the solution is encouraging more females to apply, because females are likely to self-select out of the field unless they are very likely to go further:

> [See SI Appendix for descriptions of other audits of actual hiring that accord with this view, some dating back to the 1980s. Many studies have argued (see ref. 14) that because only the very top women persist in math-intensive fields, their advantage in being hired is justified because they are more competent than the average male applicant. This is why an accurate evaluation of gender preference in hiring depends on data from an experiment in which competence is held constant.] Thus, real-world hiring data showing a preference for women, inherently confounded and open to multiple interpretations because of lack of controls on applicant quality, experience, and lifestyle, are consistent with our experimental findings.

The FA has the same thing going on, it says that females are 3-15 times more likely to be elected, but _also_ that they only make up 40% of elected members, so not even half. The only way that's possible is if significantly less of them are apply to begin with, and it's reasonable to assume there's some self-selecting going (or at the very least, since the groups are so different in size they're not directly comparable in terms of qualifications) on the same as the article you linked.

The issue of men and women acceptance rates in college is even the exact example given on the Simpson's paradox Wikipedia page, because it's such a simple one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a son and I caught him and friends gravitating to Andrew Tate like content. He's so young, and he already feels that society is hostile against him. Society is hostile against him. Anti-male prejudice is absolutely everywhere. Andrew Tate is a get-rich-quick grifter and possibly a criminal, but he’s right about some things.

https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-ga... Yes, the anti-male prejudice is just awful. /s

I'm not sure that link is actually helping your point. From the link:

> The controlled gender pay gap is $0.99 cents for every $1 men make, which is one cent closer to equal but still not equal. The controlled pay gap tells us what women earn compared to men when all compensable factors are accounted for — such as job title, education, experience, industry, job level, and hours worked. This is equal pay for equal work. The gap should be zero. It’s not zero.

> In other words, women who are doing the same job as a man, with the exact same qualifications as a man, are still paid one percent less than men at the median for no attributable reason.

Given these circumstances and given the development of recent years, I can't help but hear their clear agenda and it's very likely that this development is partially attributable to overcorrections as in the context discussed here.

Also, since male/females have some differences due to our different biology (especially thinking about hormones influencing behavior to some degree, e.g. causing males to be more aggressive in salary negotiations), the notion of it having to be zero and "no attributable reason" doesn't seem rational to me, but again just underlining their agenda.

I think that link is actually a good example for the current anti-male societal tendencies.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#53
post #27
post #2

How is this an "accomplishment for gender equity." Isn't this still inequity? I think the fact that the writer couldn't perceive how this is still, logically speaking, "inequity" speaks to the bias at play in this area. But then again is true equity even possible? Is it a logical possibility given the biological differences between men and women? Perhaps it's a scientific fact that women are superior to men in scienc…

Greater intellectual superiority because of the % entering college? College is a status symbol and women are buying into it more than males. It shows men are more independent thinkers and feel confident they can get along without a degree. It also because entry level jobs in fields women are interested in require college where men have more options in the trades. As women are dominating college entry over men a colle…

>College is a status symbol and women are buying into it more than males.

Isn't this a sexist statement? You're saying that women are more into superficial status symbols than males. This clearly isn't true and is sexist.

What isn't sexist at all is to say women are, from a biological perspective, intellectually superior to men. This is the only logical and scientific conclusion when you look at everything from an analytical perspective.

Think about it. Any other formulation of what's going on inevitably leads to a sexist conclusion which automatically, by fundamental logic, precludes it from consideration.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#54

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Even where I work, I'm under a lot of pressure to hire more women engineers to the point we bend rules and relax standards. There is a ton of societal and economic pressure with slogans like "the future is female". I'm a mother and I do not think this is a good thing. I have a so…

In the US:

* The majority of suicides are male

* The majority of homeless are male

* Men are less likely to go to college

* The vast majority of prison inmates are male

* The vast majority of workplace deaths are male

* The majority of violent crime victims are male

* The vast majority of police brutality victims are male

Now if we were talking about say India it would be a different story, and this is not to suggest that being a woman doesn't come with its own hazards, like a higher risk of being sexually assaulted.

But it's an objective, quantitative fact that there are way more men in awful life circumstances than there are women. Frankly in 2023 if a woman is strutting around an American college campus with a shirt that says "The future is female," she's a member of the ruling class who's rubbing it in.

In fact men so overwhelmingly dominate the worst outcomes in our society that I would go as far as to say that we cannot fix its worst injustices until we recognize many of them are uniquely male problems. Police brutality will remain permanently unsolved. Our world-leading incarceration rate will remain permanently unsolved.

But as a society we simply ignore the gendered nature of these atrocities. For some reason we can shrug off another human being's suffering when it's a son or a brother, far more easily than when it's a sister or daughter.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#55
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/gender-pay-ga... Yes, the anti-male prejudice is just awful. /s

It can be true that entrenched systems favor males in some areas, and new social and cultural phenomena disfavor them in others at the same time. My wife has made the observation that there seems to be so much more media, events, toys, etc., targeted at girls in a positive way than for boys. We have two boys, and she has been quite the feminist in the time I’ve known her. As a guy I tend to err on the side of being s…

The pay scales seem to indicate that we are pretty damn far from having a general problem with anti-male prejudice. Media events targeted to girls, like the super bowl, Mardi Gras, military conflicts, just naming a few. Sorry, I'm missing it. What media events favored women.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#56

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Even where I work, I'm under a lot of pressure to hire more women engineers to the point we bend rules and relax standards. There is a ton of societal and economic pressure with slogans like "the future is female". I'm a mother and I do not think this is a good thing. I have a so…

Well, your son has inherited your perspicacity, so be thankful for that. He's right: society is hostile to him. He's not even twenty. Twenty years ago, we had shirts like "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them." Not long after, Obama was saying that we need more women in college ... despite them being fifty-five percent of the enrolled. And so on and so forth. Your son is only picking up his environment.

If you want him to avoid people like Andrew Tate, provide some other positive male role model for him. Don't seem to be a lot around. Be honest with him: "Yes, you picked this up. Yes, it's true. Yes, I may have benefited from this. No, it's not fair. No, it isn't going to go away any time soon. No, I don't think it is a good idea either. I'm sorry."

You'll have to prepare him against people who will say dumb things like "it only feels like oppression because they had it so good." Your child isn't a collective they, he's an individual, he never experienced it being Great to Be a Guy. The people who want to tell him that have visions of some elderly ass-pinching stereotype from Mad Men who is finally getting his comeuppance, not your child ... but they're pretty okay with your kid taking the hit by proxy. They're pretty okay with it, they're not going to lose any sleep at night. They'll tell you this to your face if you ask. You're going to have to warn him about the world he is entering.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#57
post #39

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Even where I work, I'm under a lot of pressure to hire more women engineers to the point we bend rules and relax standards. There is a ton of societal and economic pressure with slogans like "the future is female". I'm a mother and I do not think this is a good thing. I have a so…

Ending inequality requires asymmetric behavior. Achieving equality will feel like oppression to those used to having a good deal. Society isn't generally hostile against your son; its hostility is to patriarchy, something Andrew Tate seeks to restore and extend. As a guy, I'm perfectly fine with things like "the future is female" for the same reason I'm fine with things like "gay pride" and "black pride" even though…

This might be my management role leaking, but in my experience you are being far too rational. Humans are emotional beings first and foremost, then rational.

I do think society is hostile to him, but I don't want him to become a reactionary, or a culture warrior.

I'm his mother, I want him to be happy. I won't sacrifice my son to some abstract societal goal no matter how noble it might seem.

This is why I cannot agree with your idea of ending inequality requires asymmetric behavior. It is wrong to rationalize away all the collateral damage that happens to living human beings under the guise of statistics and history.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#58
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Female researchers in mathematics, psychology and economics are 3–15 times more likely to be elected as members of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences than are male counterparts who have similar publication and citation records That line doesn't really match with men being asked to try equally hard. It seems to me that academic and professional societies are despar…

That’s not what’s happening though. It’s a highly imbalanced class, just “the right way”. You’re also quite incorrect about when DEI programs started, they’re just actually called that now. Women have outnumbered men in universities since around 1980 because of attempts to get more women into college. Edit: hard to keep up with the ninja edits, the point in the last paragraph is significantly changed.

Sorry, I have a habit of refining my thinking a bit and editing my posts to match. I didn't realize that there was already a reply. I didn't really change much of substance though - mainly just added the point about historical gender disparity in PhDs and added the last paragraph.

> Women have outnumbered men in universities since around 1980 because of attempts to get more women into college.

Outnumbered in undergrad, when you account for all fields. But that’s not what's relevant here. What's relevant is PhDs, specifically in the sciences, because that's the pool from which scientific researchers are drawn. And the gender ratios there have changed dramatically since the 80s [1].

> You’re also quite incorrect about when DEI programs started

I never said that these programs hadn't yet started. I said that they didn't exist to the same extent that they do now. There is plenty of data showing a uptrend in the number of university positions dedicated to DEI over the past few decades. And it's not just an issue of naming.

[1] https://www.aip.org/statistics/data-graphics/percent-phds-ea...

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#59

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1418878112 Even where I work, I'm under a lot of pressure to hire more women engineers to the point we bend rules and relax standards. There is a ton of societal and economic pressure with slogans like "the future is female". I'm a mother and I do not think this is a good thing. I have a so…

> He's so young, and he already feels that society is hostile against him.

This really shouldn't be surprising. It's incredibly tough when from the moment you enter the education stream, every single chip is stacked against you, you are constantly blamed for problems you had no hand in, and are then bombarded with fundamental questions about your identity such as if you're sure you're even a boy.

If you make it to the age where you realize that the adults are very wrong and your teachers can have specific biases against you, then you can make it. But until that point, there's a lot of confusing suffering to survive through.

Re: Females more likely than males to be elected in US scientific societies

#60
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny, for men to think society is against them, when in reality they define society. As a straight white male, there are very few rooms, very few jobs, very few situations where I don’t have absolute confidence that I belong there. Is it so bad to think everybody should feel that way? Your son will be fine.

No one group defines society. It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power, and its admirable to acknowledge your own privilege as you are doing here, but it's critical to not start believing that the cultural narrative du jour is somehow the ground truth. The minute we do this, we feed political polarization between genuinely good people, and open the door for liars and sociopaths to manipulate us li…

> It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power

No it's not. It's neither accurate nor fair.

A disproportionate amount of power is held by people who happen to be men. That does not mean men as a group hold a disproportionate amount of power.

People always confuse these things.

Treat people as individuals, not as instances of groups.

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