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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

theatlantic.com

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#101

Post by throwaway1748 »

gonvaled wrote: post #10

I would take the whole equality movement more seriously if I had been able, in the past decade, to spot a negative news article / report on women. When you get all the time exclusively negative news about men, you could start thinking that this is a coordinated (or emergent?) campaign.

Yep, the "women are wonderful" trope is extremely widespread in the media. I've seen dozens of articles with a headline like "women are better than men at investing" or "women make for better leaders". You never read anything saying "men are better than women at X", not that they'd be any more socially beneficial than the toxic male-bashing that occurs today.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#102

Post by mpweiher »

hackpert wrote: post #60

Whenever such studies or analyses come up in the media, I find that people are often eager to jump to causative conclusions on the lines of "oh females must have a natural inclination towards 'softer' fields" or (as in case of this article) "In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less." However, even if we ignore the obvious correla…

We don't have to go to claiming a specific cause.

The simple fact is that if your claim is that discrimination is the primary cause for the lack of representation of women in STEM fields, then these data show that you are wrong. Not because we can eliminate subtle pressures with 100% certainty, we don't need to do that.

The hypothesis is wrong because it makes the wrong prediction: if discrimination were the major cause, then more discrimination would lead to more unequal distribution. And the data show that it's the other way around: less discrimination leads to more unequal distribution.

It's not a matter of degrees, it's a matter of sign, of the direction of the change. And that's effectively boolean, the sign is either positive or negative. The "discrimination" hypothesis predicts the sign is positive, in reality the sign is negative. Can't really get any more clear-cut than that.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#103

Post by dalbasal »

dvt wrote: post #2

Equality of opportunity does not necessarily imply equality of outcome . This isn't a paradox. Why are still people still confused about this? (Actually, people aren't confused about this, but it makes for great clickbait articles and ad revenue because it fans the flames of both sides of the argument.)

Let's assume we're not all disingenious a----les, trying for clickbait and gotchas, but still disagree on some points.

I would say that you're right, and this means that specific outcome equality is not indicative of equality of opportunity.

But, it's also true that equality before the law and other measures that have been tKe over the last 3 generations do not guarantee equality of opportunity. Opportunity is in itself a sticky concept.

If you grow up in a family/community where a lot of people are tradesmen then you'll be more likely to be a tradesman. Same for long term welfare dependance, academia, public services, fireman/police, housewives, medicine...

The dynamics are complex and not fully understood. People form an idea about what's normal, possible and such. This is a socially based phenomenon.

I would argue that it is important to the concept of opportunity. The boxes that you put yourself into by default, and others put you in.

There aren't necessarily physical barriers. Lots of people don't end up on the default paths, maybe even most. But, defaults matter.

Anyway, let's think about it in reverse. Let's say we are abolishing sexism, racism, caste systems or some other form of big societal discrimination. A generation later, no change in outcomes. Did we succeed?

OTOH, it's hard to know what to do with specifics like women in tech. It's not inherently bad for women to have different average preferences and that will cause unequal outcomes. But, we also can't ignore outcomes (imo) entirely either. There must be actual outcome changes.

There's also the issue of feedback loops. If certain spheres are male realms, with women in a tiny minority this makes it harder for women to enter in the future.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#104

Post by throwaway1748 »

michaelt wrote: post #30
gonvaled wrote: post #10

I would take the whole equality movement more seriously if I had been able, in the past decade, to spot a negative news article / report on women. When you get all the time exclusively negative news about men, you could start thinking that this is a coordinated (or emergent?) campaign.

I get positive news about my place in STEM every month, in the form of a paycheck which is more than four times my country's median individual income. I'll take concrete, quantifiable rewards over nice words in an opinion piece any day.

Why should it be an either-or proposition? There's lots of evidence that young boys are falling behind to girls in early to college education. Maybe both genders need encouraging words? And if we're collectively going to dish out negative articles about men, maybe that should cut both ways too

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#105

Post by mpweiher »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #17

This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal or better at STEM than men (and also being better at non-STEM stuff), but actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options. Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication. The data appears to be saying you (we) suck, but that's a win if you think the data was going to sho…

> Slightly baffling to see this celebrated by men in these careers as some kind of vindication.

How is it baffling when the dominant narrative is "men in STEM are such horrid creepy sexist misogynists that they are driving the women out"?

Now that was always risible, but still it is the dominant narrative.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#106

Post by hackpert »

howlgram wrote: post #63
hackpert wrote: post #60

Whenever such studies or analyses come up in the media, I find that people are often eager to jump to causative conclusions on the lines of "oh females must have a natural inclination towards 'softer' fields" or (as in case of this article) "In wealthy nations, they believe that they have the freedom to pursue those alternatives and not worry so much that they pay less." However, even if we ignore the obvious correla…

are you implying that male students who go for stem don't face bullying akin to being "geeky" or "nerds"? Please...

Oh no I'm sorry for the lack of clarity, that was certainly not what I'm implying. They do, and it's an extremely unfortunate problem that we ought to do something about. I was merely suggesting that these differences we tend to eagerly attribute to biology (a la James Damore) could very well be caused by a bunch of cultural and societal factors, of which bullying could be one.

Also, over the last two decades there has been a significant increase in cultural recognition and representation of male "nerds," as people who belonged to that category have gained positions of influence, thanks to the tech boom in the 90s, which can sometimes inspire students to pursue their interests despite the bullying. The lack of such representative role models for young females is disconcerting and could even cause some people to be slightly more affected by the bullying, because perhaps they don't know a female who works in STEM or know of anyone in recent years who made it big, and simply didn't know it was possible to go against the social tide (which happens all too frequently.)

All in all, I think there are a lot of factors at play here and reducing it to one cause seems like wilful ignorance at best.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#107

Post by throwaway1748 »

skjerns wrote: post #44
gonvaled wrote: post #10

I would take the whole equality movement more seriously if I had been able, in the past decade, to spot a negative news article / report on women. When you get all the time exclusively negative news about men, you could start thinking that this is a coordinated (or emergent?) campaign.

coordinated by who? By negative reports you mean 'something that women do wrong'?

It's definitely not coordinated. It's an emergent phenomenon that was created by the engagement-maximizing feed and recommendation algorithms we're plugged into

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#108

Post by ajuc »

cm2187 wrote: post #76
dvt wrote: post #2

Equality of opportunity does not necessarily imply equality of outcome . This isn't a paradox. Why are still people still confused about this? (Actually, people aren't confused about this, but it makes for great clickbait articles and ad revenue because it fans the flames of both sides of the argument.)

One of the many simplifications in this debate. Another one: if someone is arguing that there is a difference in the distribution of a particular character between men and women. Immediatly I read comments jumping to the conclusion “my god it says women are more/less [whatever] than men”, as in “all women”. Lots of people seem to be incapable of thinking in term of distributions, which makes it really hard to have an…

In such discussions "most" is implied. Interpreting it as "all" is just a rhetoric trick to weaken the opponent's position.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#109

Post by guitarbill »

mamon wrote: post #96
guitarbill wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current diversity program is incapable to achieve its own goal What exactly is the goal of this "diversity program"? Maybe they are completely capable of achieving their goal, it's just not the one you think it is. (This is the curse of technical people: when you spend so much time thinking and solving problems rationally, it's easy to assume all situations can be approached in this way.)

Most diversity programs state 50/50 man/women ratio as their goal, which, according to the article is counterproductive.

Counterproductive for what? Individual happiness? Yeah, maybe. But that's not the only possibility.

50/50 is the "goal", but what's the motivation? Let's assume that we're talking increase in people, i.e. you want more women in STEM/tech/whatever, not simply less men (for some reason this option is rarely mentioned. You could fire enough men to get to 50/50, mathematically that's equally valid). Say I wanted more qualified employees without paying more - I can't think of a better to achieve this.

Of course, I have no evidence for this and it's super paranoid, but it's just one example how the goal might still make sense.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

#110

Post by mpweiher »

K0nserv wrote: post #65
telesilla wrote: post #54

Let's turn the argument on it's head. Statistics say boys are more heavily inclined to have a STEM career. Does this mean they feel they cannot consider a career in other fields like teaching, nursing or other female-dominated fields? As a woman I often wonder, what's so great about STEM aside from the paycheck? It depends on your bosses (or being your own if you are lucky and that way inclined), but I don't think we…

Boys desire for large pay checks could be explained by patriarchal/societal expectations that they must be the main bread winner in a household

> patriarchal/societal expectations .. main breadwinner

Let's be clear who expects this: women do.

Most women will stop dating a man if they discover he makes less than they do. When I was still in the Bay Area I was on match.com for a bit. >90% of the women's profiles stated they expected their match to make more than they do (even having this information in the form felt a bit weird for me).

And no, this is not because of the "pay gap", which is a myth, or because they can't. In fact, the unwillingness actually increases with income levels, so the women who could most afford it are least willing to date a guy who makes less than they do.

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