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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 198 posts

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

#21
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 :)

Possible. So possible in fact that is mentioned in the article itself, citing the original authors.

> “Countries with the highest gender equality tend to be welfare states,”

> they write, “with a high level of social security.” Meanwhile, less

> gender-equal countries tend to also have less social support for people

> who, for example, find themselves unemployed. Thus, the authors

> suggest, girls in those countries might be more inclined to choose stem

> professions, since they offer a more certain financial future than,

> say, painting or writing.

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

#22
post #4

It’s almost like... men and women are different.

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.

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

#23

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 good and being capable are different things: I am very capable of cleaning toilets, but I am not very good at it since I do not do it with a passion.

Edit: and I obviously do not imply with my tongue in cheek joke that women are the ones cleaning toilets. Just going the extra mile here to avoid offending anybody.

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

#24
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 :)

[deleted]

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

#25
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.)

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

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

#26
post #13
post #9

I just discovered that where i work (Algeria) there is hidden rule in hiring new devs that wasn't known publicly it's simply no women, seriously i work with 20 men for more than two years and i just discovered that our head of recruitment doesn't hire woman at all no matter how she's talented because of so many reason most of them are racist but kind are hard to argue with him like if woman get married she will stop…

In a free market such companies would be at disadvantage versus the ones who also attract top talent regardless of gender or race or any other demographic criteria whatsoever.

I don't think the myth of a theoretical "free" market holds any water and can be applied sensibly to any real world scenario. In the actual free market a giant megacorp would swoop all promising hires and suppress all competition by selling at a loss until nobody else dares to enter the field.

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

#27
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 is the thesis of the linked article.

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

#28

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 (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 equality" to me.

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

#30

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.

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