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For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

chronicle.com

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Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#11

Post by patio11 »

roguecoder wrote: post #5

The article mis-states their case: women earn 52% of chemistry undergrad degrees and 41% of straight-up math degrees. The problem is not math itself but the culture surrounding Engineering, Physics and Computer Science in particular.

I think the problem is the culture in Elementary Education, Public Health, Social Work, and Medicine: if they weren't poaching all of the women who are CS's by right we'd stabilize at three women for every two men like is the just and natural result for university studies.

(The following line might have been feminist once: women have agency and are not puppets for men. When you see a group of women doing something, if your first thought is "What have men done to cause this?", Occam is not on your side.)

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#12

Post by robertpateii »

Do bias, discrimination, and biological differences not drive preferences? Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

Why is this a mystery to the authors?

Referenced Quote from Article: "While bias, discrimination, and biological differences may have some secondary influence, they found, women simply prefer careers that don't involve math over careers in engineering, physics, mathematics, operations research, computer science, and chemistry. Why this is so remains unanswered."

Some Related Material: Podcast interview by Scott Hanselman on this same topic(http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in-tech...)

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#13

Post by anusinha »

Some thoughts about the coder culture and how it relates to women can be found on this really interesting blog post. http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/the-ugly-...

I can't say that I agree with all of it, but it's definitely worth reading to understand certain social and cultural dynamics.

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#15

Post by mustafa0x »

Tichy wrote: post #9
meta-coder wrote: post #3

With all due respect, I think it is in the DNA. Looking at our evolution during the past million years, may be women were dominated by men. They might not have had enough freedom to follow their curiosities until several thousand years back. So it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at. Have we done enough comparative studies of men's and women's brains?

If there is a biological reason, I think it would be more likely that it is because men have reasons to take risks and women haven't - other than men, women can almost always reproduce, no matter if they are rich or poor. See "Is there anything good about men?" http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

Thank you, that talk was fascinating - and I don't use that lightly.

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#16

Post by Retric »

robertpateii wrote: post #10
Retric wrote: post #2

Significantly more Women graduate with a BS from US collages than Men. Is that yet another gender imbalance that needs to be addressed by schools? Or is that a societal issue and having collages focusing on increasing Male admission and graduation rates a waste of resources?

"Significantly" is an exaggeration. The numbers i found ( http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&... ) said that women earn 57% of all BS degrees. I imagine it'd have to get closer to 75% before people actually started worrying about men's graduation rates.

57:43 = ~33% more women get a BS degree than men which is a fairly large gap IMO.

As to the gender gap in the hard sciences 52% of undergraduate Chemistry degrees go to women which arguably makes them under represented, but only relative to their overall dominance. Chemistry is often looked at as a gateway to Medicine so it's arguably a great choice for an undergraduate degree. However, I would argue getting a PHD in Astronomy or Physics is a poor economic choice which is one of the reasons why so few women do so.

PS: Any argument that women can't hack / are unprepared for the hard sciences falls apart based on chemistry numbers.

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#17

Post by crusso »

gm wrote: post #14

Article does not pass the smell test. College is not where people go to decide if they are mathematically oriented or not. Everything that precedes it does.

The article is in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It's speaking to an audience of Educators at the University level.

Naturally, the context of their solutions will be one in which those Educators operate.

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#18

Post by crusso »

robertpateii wrote: post #12

Do bias, discrimination, and biological differences not drive preferences? Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age. Why is this a mystery to the authors? Referenced Quote from Article: "While bias, discrimination, and biological differences may have some secondary influence, they found, women simply prefer careers that don't involve math over careers in engineering, physics, mathematics,…

> Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

How are you determining the weight and timing of causative factors in order to make a nurture over nature proclamation like that?

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#19

Post by realitygrill »

robertpateii wrote: post #10
Retric wrote: post #2

Significantly more Women graduate with a BS from US collages than Men. Is that yet another gender imbalance that needs to be addressed by schools? Or is that a societal issue and having collages focusing on increasing Male admission and graduation rates a waste of resources?

"Significantly" is an exaggeration. The numbers i found ( http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&... ) said that women earn 57% of all BS degrees. I imagine it'd have to get closer to 75% before people actually started worrying about men's graduation rates.

People will only start worrying when the ratio is closer to 3 women graduating per male?

Re: For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively

#20

Post by rmc »

meta-coder wrote: post #3

With all due respect, I think it is in the DNA. Looking at our evolution during the past million years, may be women were dominated by men. They might not have had enough freedom to follow their curiosities until several thousand years back. So it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at. Have we done enough comparative studies of men's and women's brains?

it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at

Wait, did you actually compare women to cave men or half monkey? Maybe that's why blacks aren't represented well in highly technical or high paying jobs, cause they only came down from the trees recently?

OK I'll bite: The problem with your 'evolution theory' is that men and women aren't separate species and interbreed, a lot. Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman. If "women DNA" were 'stupider' than "man DNA", then (like lots of genetic traits (e.g. skin colour, height)), you'd see it evening out over the generations. If there was a "dum dum gene" that only lived on the X or Y chromosome, you'd have to explain why it doesn't seem to affect people who don't have XX and XY (some men are XXY, some women are X, etc.)

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