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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

#121

Post by trabant00 »

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…

> as much of a gender-equality-utopia Scandinavian countries are, they're certainly not free of gender roles and the societal institutions that enforce those

Compared to Algeria, Albania, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE, Romania, etc? Please get your head of western social "justice" bubble. The factors that you think the article doesn't take into consideration are not explicitly there because they are implicit to everybody who really knows these countries.

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

#122

Post by ZeroGravitas »

guitarbill wrote: post #85
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…

> actively avoiding it as a low-status role when they have better options. So why don't men avoid it? It's hardly a high-status role for them, either. I hope my kids don't go into tech, regardless of gender. The most cynical part of me thinks that this "equality" agenda isn't put forward to further humanity, but simply to get more people into the job market and drive wages down. Then I realise I should probably lay o…

To be clear, this is the research I'm paraphrasing, but they seem to be suggesting that the men have the STEM skills to compare with women, but they don't have the non-STEM skills to compete as well in something like Law or Medicine or whatever. So they have a comparitive advantage, not an absolute advantage in STEM fields.

(I also just replied to someone else to point out that "putting more people into STEM" could be considered good for the human race. I personally think that more people should be allowed into Medicine for example, because there's some monopolies there that are driving costs up. Probably feels like an attack if you're a highly paid doctor though).

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

#123

Post by tom_mellior »

howlgram wrote: post #84
zerr wrote: post #14

One reason could be - in poor/developing countries STEM is understood as the escape path from the poverty, while in developed countries people seem assured in their future even if they go in humanities or any other non-tech field - thus following their interests/hobbies rather than the need. EDIT: unintentional tl;dr as it seems :)

this would not only explain why less women go into stem, but also why more guys go into it, as it is common for a guy to feel the onus of securing financial safety for his family. And not gonna lie, even I, a guy, picked STEM partly because I see it as the best escape route from this country, I would have picked something more fun and less demanding otherwise

> it is common for a guy to feel the onus of securing financial safety for his family

In other words, this is not about what the article claims (girls are just not interested, presumably for biological reasons) but about expectations hammered into all of us by society.

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

#124

Post by belorn »

howlgram wrote: post #84
zerr wrote: post #14

One reason could be - in poor/developing countries STEM is understood as the escape path from the poverty, while in developed countries people seem assured in their future even if they go in humanities or any other non-tech field - thus following their interests/hobbies rather than the need. EDIT: unintentional tl;dr as it seems :)

this would not only explain why less women go into stem, but also why more guys go into it, as it is common for a guy to feel the onus of securing financial safety for his family. And not gonna lie, even I, a guy, picked STEM partly because I see it as the best escape route from this country, I would have picked something more fun and less demanding otherwise

Securing financial prospects is also highly associated with dating success for men but not women. One might wonder how important dating success is during the ages in which young men decide to go into stem.

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

#125

Post by TuringTest »

RyanZAG wrote: post #43
platz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preferences aren't static, and are part of a dynamical system. It needs to be explained why preferences are the way they are. Environment could be changed to address causes of preference

Most studies on this seem to show that gender based preferences can be at least partially explained from birth before any environmental factors play a part in it. People have been doing these studies for a long time now, but they get ignored because we don't like the results. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ And of course, far more studies that have been going on for decades.

Biological preferences don't explain why careers preferred by women have less average pay than careers preferred by men.

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

#126

Post by joty »

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…

I am entirely capable of thinking in terms of distribution. It is people who suggest that small differences in biology would lead to large differences in outcomes that are incapable of that thinking and ignoring the large overlap between groups. Few people are protesting that marginal differences between sexes exist. It is just not relevant as a scientific explanation for gender distribution in e.g. CS.

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

#127

Post by gonvaled »

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'?

If we insist on reporting by gender (that is questionable in itself) reporting must be truthful, otherwise we risk that these reports are not taken seriously.

I am sure women are better than men at a lot of things, and equally good at other things. What are men better at? We know men are better at some things than women, but currently nobody is willing/interested/daring to report on this.

Does it matter who is better? It seems yes, since lots of news are talking about how much better women are.

Come on, I am extremely positive about equality; if you are starting to antagonize people like me, something is going really wrong.

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

#128

Post by draw_down »

rullelito wrote: post #64
taneq wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) What I find onerous is that it's perfectly acceptable to make blanket statements about women being better at things than men, while it's now literally a sackable offense at many major tech companies to even imply the opposite. This doesn't seem like "progress towards eq…

Variations of this has been growing for a long while. You can't be proud to be man or white; and you shouldn't be proud of success if you belong to that group. Unless your success is something that has benefited someone not in that group.

Good grief.

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

#129

Post by nukeop »

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…

Being a highly paid professional in an extremely intellectual field is a "low-status role"? Where?

I'm fine with it if that's what you're telling yourself to cope with why you in particular were unable to enter the field, though.

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

#130

Post by soVeryTired »

nukeop wrote: post #115
soVeryTired wrote: post #86

If you look closely at their scatter plot, you can see that the UAE, Turkey, Algeria, and Tunisia cluster in the lower right. Without them, the relationship would be considerably weaker. Is there something in particular about Middle Eastern culture that's skewing the results? I'm not sure I understand the choice of countries in the regression either. Where are India and China, for example?

What could be so particular about the Middle Eastern culture that would result in a different treatment of women in these countries? Is it about the climate? Is it about the diet? The research must continue to resolve this mindboggling mystery.

Not sure I understand the reason for the sarcasm there.
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