The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by ac29 » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

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…

>This, and similar research I'd seen before seems to point to women being equal or better at STEM than men

I'm not sure that was the conclusion of the research:

"But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon—boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading."

That being said, you could also read this as boys are so much worse than girls at verbal skills that by default, their best subject was science or math.

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

#162

Post by bryanlarsen » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

trabant00 wrote: post #121

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…

When I read the OP's paragraph it seems to be implying the opposite of what you seem to think. To me it's implying "Sweden isn't special, it has gender roles too..."

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

#163

Post by ac29 » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #156

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I humbly suggest its none of our damn business how the women choose marriage patterns (if they choose to marry at all). Its definitely not "our responsibility".

I believe you read that the wrong way around. I'm not suggesting women change their marriage patterns. I'm saying it is irresponsible to advice boys to make live choices that are at odds with female mating behaviour, because it adversely affects their life outcomes.

What are these "non-traditional" life/career choices you think are adversely affecting men's life outcomes due to "female mating behaviour"?

Your comments read as weirdly patriarchal, and dont reflect at all close to my experience with women.

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

#164

Post by nukeop » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #160

nukeop wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being a highly paid professional in an extremely intellectual field is a "low-status role"? Where? Let’s not pretend that cranking out CRUD apps is in any way intellectual, outside of Silly Valley the pay is nothing special and “geek” is synonymous with “total loser”.

So bitter! Should have stayed in school.

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

#165

Post by mpweiher » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

TuringTest wrote: post #157

mpweiher wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. But preferences do explain why women don't emphasize money in their career choice, whereas men do. The vast majority of women will not continue dating a man who earns less than they do. Two thirds of young women in Germany expect their future partners to take care of them financially. So for men, earning money and status is absolutely essential. See also: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/02/a-let…

What makes you think this is explained by biological preferences alone, or that those preferences scale to society-wide differences in salary?

(1) Actually, I didn't even mention biology. I just wrote "preferences".

(2) What makes you think it wouldn't? After all, it affects everyone in society. And motivation is a pretty powerful force, it is basically how our entire economy is structured.

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

#166

Post by zerr » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #114

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 could be true, assuming USA is a poor/developing country.

The absence of a good welfare/healthcare system is one of the main reason I'm reluctant to moving to US - while personally I might be well off, assuming "big 4" (or 10, whatever) provide good insurance for developers - what if my children won't want to became developers but e.g. musician, literature school teacher, artist, etc... they would be doomed in US. So yes, when it comes to healthcare and affordable education, and gun control - US is really poor/undeveloped country, worse - they aren't even moving in the right direction.

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

#167

Post by kurthr » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

pedrosorio wrote: post #53

kurthr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they might act differently, unless they're from a country like Hungary, Russia, or Sweden, and then they are just like men in math. Nurture or Nucleotides... the experiment has already been run. The results are in, accepted or not.

> Well they might act differently, unless they're from a country like Hungary, Russia, or Sweden, and then they are just like men in math. Could you clarify what does this mean (what is special about Hungary, Russia, Sweden)?

In those countries women succeed in math and sciences at the same rate as men... Hungary is known for its mathematicians, and just about half are women. Unfortunately, they have to undergo genetic modification at the border.

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

#168

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 3:15 PM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #163

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you read that the wrong way around. I'm not suggesting women change their marriage patterns. I'm saying it is irresponsible to advice boys to make live choices that are at odds with female mating behaviour, because it adversely affects their life outcomes.

What are these "non-traditional" life/career choices you think are adversely affecting men's life outcomes due to "female mating behaviour"? Your comments read as weirdly patriarchal, and dont reflect at all close to my experience with women.

Income is a more important factor in rating men's attractiveness compared to women.

Here is just one study I quickly dug up, there are others confirming this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726811...

Another one: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ETD_SUBID:113754

I don't understand whats patriarchal about my comment, care to elaborate? If you have a more solid data point than "thats not my personal experience", I'd be certainly interested in it.

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

#169

Post by haberman » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

hackpert wrote: post #113

mpweiher wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Sure, this question definitely deserves further probing for other causative factors. But about discrimination, what stage are we talking about? During early childhood when males tend to be pushed towards mechanical toys and construction sets, and females towards caring for dolls? During university when you're repeatedly singled out as the token female in a STEM class by the professor? At the workplace? Discrimination…

No one is arguing to rule it out entirely. Not even James Damore.

The question is: how do we measure the problem of discrimination? Many people assume that we can measure discrimination by looking at the percentage of women in engineering and comparing it to the percentage of women in the general population. Many people believe that any difference between these numbers proves discrimination. But an increasing amount of evidence suggests that this a bad assumption.

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

#170

Post by gurkendoktor » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #119

guitarbill wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 qua…

Another, less paranoid, motivation to consider, some might argue that STEM is important to civilization and having more of it is a good thing, even if people could go into other careers that are more personally lucrative, but are more zero-sum in their potential for benefitting the human race. Making the pie bigger rather than fighting for the biggest slice of a diminished pie.

If maximizing the STEM workforce is the goal, then aiming for a 50:50 gender balance seems like an unintuitive way to get there. If not enough women apply for a job, the incentive is to stop hiring men, and the number of STEM professionals goes down.