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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

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Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#101

Post by jelliclesfarm »

zarkov99 wrote: post #95
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a ‘diatribe’? It is my life. It is my work. That each gender has its own set of pathologies is exactly my point. When they don’t complement each other, why not create an environment where each of us can be our best?

I am with you. I was just triggered by your unflattering, though probably accurate enough, characterization of the male psyche.

I didn’t mean to paint all men like so..I was giving an example of one instance in my own life experience..one of many that has shaped my opinion re gender segregation in higher education and work place. It was the most recent example that explained my own motivation to evangelize gender segregation.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#102

Post by jelliclesfarm »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #87
tathougies wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a man, I'll say I absolutely agree. I went to an all-boys high school, and teenage boys simply do better without girls around. Boys are more likely to engage in not traditionally masculine activities when girls are not around because there is no need to impress. Furthermore, girls often mature faster than boys, and this leads to unnecessary stress for both girls and boys at this stage. Furthermore, a lot of what d…

> Without the need to compete with boys, the girls developed their own leadership and competitive structures that they excelled at. I think there are several arenas where girls and women benefit when men are excluded; secondary education isn't the only one. A few others to mention: - Sports and physical competition. Excluding men enables women to compete on their own plane, set world records, etc. - Restrooms, locker…

Another one is public transport. I have been groped a few times during peak transit time in the BART. It was incredibly unpleasant and ruined the whole week for me. It’s creepy and the violation of personal space feels like rape.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#103

Post by oerpli »

throwaway8548 wrote: post #63
allovernow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's about equal rights, equal treatment, it does not mean that men and women are the same, it's not a mathematical equality. Sure, perhaps in theory. In practice, the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women are immediately blamed on discrimination and the like. There is an implicit assumption that men and women a…

> the kind of differences in performance and achievement that would be explained by psychological and physiological differences between men and women That's a bit of circular reasoning though. - Look how men and women behave differently! - But why do they behave differently? - Because they're different. - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently. It's not logically consistent and doesn't answer anythin…

And how would you argue the other side?

- Women and men are equal! - But they behave differently - Because women are discriminated against - How do you know that? - Because they behave differently.

What now?

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#104

Post by georgeburdell »

I submitted a similar article last week about how muslim countries punch above their weight on women in STEM.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/the-stem-paradox-wh...

The conclusion there was parental authoritarianism (especially dads) was a primary cause. My own family is part Muslim so I have direct experience. Every child must be an engineer or doctor. As the Atlantic article notes, women in the West have more freedom to NOT choose STEM.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#105

Post by jelliclesfarm »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #93
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I have a few non binary friends. I find them more artistically inclined rather than STEM inclined. I feel like creative pursuits tend be more collaborative and thrives better when there is more inter personal energy. Study(for me at least) is solitary. Artists and creative people flourish when there is a lot of back and forth of energies and they birth something from those interactions. Within my circle…

And I'm just kind of confused on, if there are specific gender-specific education, what happens to people who are agender, third gender, etc. Do they get to choose their own education, or is it assigned to them? How would they even know before self-actualization is fully realized in the brain for them to explore their own identities?

Good point. I don’t know.

To clarify: I am not saying that education must be segregated. I am just saying that spaces...personal spaces must be segregated. I am suggesting this because how/what women consider ‘personal space’ is different from how/what men consider ‘personal space’.

Speaking for myself..I can focus and concentrated better when my personal space is my domain..physical space as well as emotional/mental domain. I draw concentric circles around me and assign people there so they won’t cross the threshold of their boundaries. I have noticed that if they cross the assigned boundaries, my sense of everything becomes confusing and I am befuddled. There is tremendous loss of mental energy and time to rearrange everything back to where it belongs for optimal functioning.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#106

Post by cortesoft »

DuskStar wrote: post #58
nervousvarun wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily disagreeing or commenting on your point, but doesn't medicine typically fall under STEM?

Not that I'm aware - Science Technology Engineering Math is the definition of STEM I see most frequently. I'd consider Medicine to be heavily STEM adjacent , particularly in the US where most doctors get a bachelors in a STEM field before heading to med school, but not a part of it. Googling around seems that it's contentious, and that a lot of people consider nurses, physicians etc to be STEM careers under the 'scie…

Engineering and Math are the only two of those letters that have an actual college major with the same name..... you can't major in 'science', you major in one of the subfields of science. In fact, medicine isn't even an undergraduate major (although some universities will offer a 'pre-med' major, but not many).

Many people who go on to go to medical school will major in a STEM subject in undergrad (like biology or something)

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#107

Post by Herodotus38 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #98
TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case of medicine - because it's a large field full of career paths that are very different from each other. The daily realities of being a pediatrician, a surgeon, a psychiatrist or a radiologist have very little in common. There's this hypothesis that men statistically tend to pick jobs involving working with and treating patients as things, and women tend to pick jobs involving people and socializing. Medicine a…

> There's this hypothesis that men statistically tend to pick jobs involving working with and treating patients as things, and women tend to pick jobs involving people and socializing. Data to support this hypothesis here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagge... ObGyns are 85% female, Pediatrics 75%, while radiology is 72% male and anesthesiology 63%.

One caveat is that OB-GYN falls under much more of a surgical specialty so it doesn't really fit that hypothesis.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#108

Post by Reedx »

pj_mukh wrote: post #35

Coming from one of these countries to America, the answer seems obvious. STEM jobs have a HUGE differential in stability and status in those countries, so women put up up with much more patriarchal BS at the workplace to hold on to them. My sister was a STEM worker in India. When she moved to America, she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job and switched out immediately. Yes, women in Am…

Ask women and you'll find that most aren't interested in programming a computer all day. Which one could argue is a sane choice. If anything it's more sane.

Stop trying to make them feel like something is wrong if they don't have this inclination. Males and females have different preferences on average, some as early as birth[1]. This is not a bad thing.

For the ones that want to program all day, obviously they should be welcomed and any company that doesn't is doing themselves a huge disservice. In fact the best programmer I've ever worked with is a woman.

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222673203_Sex_Diffe...

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#109

Post by cortesoft »

throwaway8548 wrote: post #70
iamsb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely does. I know many men in India who would rather do something else than do engineering. Look at the background of most standup comedians in India for example. Most of them come from engineering/stem background and use that to fulfill their side hustle to be a comic and then become full time comics if successful. I was personally far more interested in studying classic Sanskrit literature, but was talked…

I should rephrase. Why does it affect men disproportionately less?

Could be a lot of reasons.... if STEM majors have a 'bro' culture, then more men would feel comfortable in that culture than women, and would not be driven away from it.

Re: The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

#110

Post by commandlinefan »

kleer001 wrote: post #55
pj_mukh wrote: post #35

Coming from one of these countries to America, the answer seems obvious. STEM jobs have a HUGE differential in stability and status in those countries, so women put up up with much more patriarchal BS at the workplace to hold on to them. My sister was a STEM worker in India. When she moved to America, she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job and switched out immediately. Yes, women in Am…

> tl;dr: Ask Women. This would be an amazing survey. I look forward to its publishing. I wouldn't be surprised if someone is doing it as we speak. It shouldn't be too hard or cost that much. Though, I do have to say, your sample of one is not sufficiently convincing to me.

I don’t know how such a survey could control for projection, though. I remember reading Susan Fowler’s “blog post that was heard around the world” that ended up taking down Uber’s CEO (and nearly Uber itself) and being surprised how little of it had anything to do with being a woman - most of the frustrations she expressed were things that I’ve been frustrated by, too. It seems to me that she just experienced what every developer experienced (other than the thing about the T-shirts) and attributed all of it to her being a women, assuming that the grass must be greener on the other side.
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