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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

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

#191

Post by belorn »

TuringTest wrote: post #190
foobardeveloper wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is a result of female sexual selection pressure? It is seen in human beings and animals that statistically females mate sidewards or upwards in terms of providability. This in turn applies a pressure on males to compete for more and accumulate more resources, whereas females are not measured by males on their providability hence have no pressure on them to fight for the same resources. So, m…

You would first need to achieve equality of opportunity, which is not the current starting point. You can't ignore that we come from a culture with a tradition of 60+ centuries of male-favouring sexism and patriarchy, which has not vanished merely because of a theoretical solution to it (legal equality) has been formally declared. There's a lot of social inertia introducing biases in the opportunities available to wo…

When two people make two opposing theories it is often best to judge each based on their ability to predict, how it match current data sets, and how well it works out in experimental studies.

The incentive models, which take data from both biology and culture, claims a prediction that as you measure equality of opportunity and compare nations it will correlate to inverse gender segregation in the work force. The more equality of opportunity the higher gender segregation will be, caused by incentives that is derived from gender roles, sexual strategies, and sexual dimorphism.

The prejudices model make the opposite prediction. It claims that when measuring the equality of opportunity the higher it is the lower the gender segregation should be.

In order to resolve the question one measure equality of opportunity and gender segregation, creating data. This create a scientific valid argument in favor of one model over the other.

That is one aspect of the theory. An other aspect would be to measure difference in prejudices between different professions. If the model is correct then it should be able to predict based on such measure which professions are gender segregated and which are not, and inversely predict the level of prejudices exist per profession given any country. The incentive model claim that incentives are a large influence and such you could not make a predictive model based on measuring prejudices.

The incentive model also predict that nation where the incentives are different (based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs), you should see a correlated change in gender segregation. Incentives such as reproduction is listed last among the physiological need, so nations where water and food is scare for women should result in higher incentive to seek professions where those are easier achievable. The prejudices model would argue that there is no such correlation.

This is of course just a small sample in order to scientifically evaluate the two different theories. There is also matching philosophy theories (their names escape me right now), arguing in different direction to explain the data.

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

#192

Post by TuringTest »

belorn wrote: post #191
TuringTest wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would first need to achieve equality of opportunity, which is not the current starting point. You can't ignore that we come from a culture with a tradition of 60+ centuries of male-favouring sexism and patriarchy, which has not vanished merely because of a theoretical solution to it (legal equality) has been formally declared. There's a lot of social inertia introducing biases in the opportunities available to wo…

When two people make two opposing theories it is often best to judge each based on their ability to predict, how it match current data sets, and how well it works out in experimental studies. The incentive models, which take data from both biology and culture, claims a prediction that as you measure equality of opportunity and compare nations it will correlate to inverse gender segregation in the work force. The more…

Thanks for the approach, I'll need to read about those models and how they correlate with real data. It seems likely that the gender gap appears from a combination of incentives and prejudices, so ideally we should use a combined model that describes how much each factor affects the final outcome.

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

#193

Post by kurthr »

pedrosorio wrote: post #180
kurthr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know the old guys - Erdos, Polya, Von Neumann, etc. Who are the up-and-coming Hungarian mathematicians in the 21st century?

Eva and Gabor Tardos are two I'm familiar with, but there are many more.

Another Hungarian woman, Marianna Csörnyei, proved the equivalence of the zero measure notions of infinite dimensional Banach spaces.

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

#194

Post by cholantesh »

whatshisface wrote: post #188
cholantesh wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would emphatically say that this isn't a thing in 2018.

How could you even know that it wasn't? Besides, kids never got bullied for wanting to become engineers, kids got bullied for all of the hyper-focused interests and trait expressions that makes them in to good engineers.

Because the cultural zeitgeist is pretty much entirely for the things stereotypically dumped on in past decades. Because STEM's importance is axiomatic in the same culture. Because the arts/humanities/SocSci outgroup is far more universally derided upon (the merits of that derision are not relevant to this discussion).

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

#195

Post by cholantesh »

howlgram wrote: post #99
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…

Yes thank you, people seem to forget that the reason why STEM gets a higher paycheck is because there's less people willing to go for it, both female and male, the paycheck is not a prize you get for being male, it's a prize you get for the sacrifice you make. Look at it this way: no one is complaining about the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

>Look at it this way: no one is complaining about the lack of girls in the blue collar industry.

Actually, I remember hearing quite a bit of complaining back when I was in middle and high school. However, it occurred alongside a concerted effort by the Province of Ontario to increase the supply of tradespeople at a time when there was a shortage of 'qualified' (read: certified by provincial licensing bodies) ones in Ontario, which led to exorbitant prices on associated goods and services. So, to be cynical, this could be much more about price correction than anything else.

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

#196

Post by whatshisface »

cholantesh wrote: post #194
whatshisface wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you even know that it wasn't? Besides, kids never got bullied for wanting to become engineers, kids got bullied for all of the hyper-focused interests and trait expressions that makes them in to good engineers.

Because the cultural zeitgeist is pretty much entirely for the things stereotypically dumped on in past decades. Because STEM's importance is axiomatic in the same culture. Because the arts/humanities/SocSci outgroup is far more universally derided upon (the merits of that derision are not relevant to this discussion).

The culture you're describing sounds like something that might arise in SV, but trust me it doesn't really describe America... Propaganda campaigns rarely set what kids think is cool.

The impact of all of these weird pro-STEM programs is a really complicated discussion, but let me suggest that it doesn't really make high school any easier for the vast majority. (The social structure of kids doesn't really look to DuPont for ideas about which way is up...) Your response almost reminds me of how some people are feeling left out of minority help programs ("what did I do to deserve a landscape devoid of scholarships," that kind of thing.) without realizing exactly how little help those programs really provide. In a sense, overestimating the effectiveness of a response to privilege so harshly that you think the privilege has been reversed.

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

#197

Post by cholantesh »

whatshisface wrote: post #196
cholantesh wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the cultural zeitgeist is pretty much entirely for the things stereotypically dumped on in past decades. Because STEM's importance is axiomatic in the same culture. Because the arts/humanities/SocSci outgroup is far more universally derided upon (the merits of that derision are not relevant to this discussion).

The culture you're describing sounds like something that might arise in SV, but trust me it doesn't really describe America... Propaganda campaigns rarely set what kids think is cool. The impact of all of these weird pro-STEM programs is a really complicated discussion, but let me suggest that it doesn't really make high school any easier for the vast majority. (The social structure of kids doesn't really look to DuP…

>The culture you're describing sounds like something that might arise in SV, but trust me it doesn't really describe America... Propaganda campaigns rarely set what kids think is cool.

I didn't mention my geographic location (Toronto) or the root causes of the cultural shift (I can't speak to that), so these are some strange assumptions to make. I'm also not really following the rest of your argument, tbh.

In any case, I stand by my argument that this:

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

is a fairly tall order in 2018. Positioning yourself as someone who seeks a career in STEM, regardless of your gender, is not marking yourself out for bullying, and hasn't been for a long time.

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

#198

Post by ekianjo »

nukeop wrote: post #90
ekianjo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you swoop all promising new hires if you have a free market? its not like all of them want to work in the same place and the same culture. Even right now we have tons of startups despite the existence of Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

By nipping competition in the bud and starting company towns. When you're an unregulated monopoly with no danger of anti-trust, lots of things are possible.

> unregulated monopoly with no danger of anti-trust, lots of things are possible.

It's far from being proven yet. Even with anti-trust laws, breaking out companies in smaller entities does not challenge their market position that much, and anti-trust laws have a nasty effect: they encourage companies which are close to monopoly to let a weak competitor survive just to say "hey, at least there is one competitor left so we are not a monopoly". It's just not working well.

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