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An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

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Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#341

Post by icandoit »

blub wrote: post #186
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature and sexual selection have nothing to do with it. A complete lack of societal support for women who want to have children and maintain a career in STEM academia (or similar) is all there is to it. >> Many fathers would very much prefer to spend time with their families, but can't because they're expected to first and foremost provide for them. Why do the fathers "have to provide"? Why is it so difficult for a m…

Society is supporting women who raise children and men who provide. This worked quite fine for the history of human civilization, but it's painful for women that want to build careers and men who want to be with their families. First of all, there are very many people that are content with that situation. There is no easy solution for those that aren't, because nature does play a huge part and those 9 months and at l…

I thought the pre-industrial role of women included crafts and gathering. I would put those under the "providing" umbrella.

If we imagine that fathers taught their children to hunt and fight we would expect children to be raised those abilities too.

I wonder if role specialization is more prevalent now than it used to be. Perhaps some pre-industrial societies were more egalitarian than we pretend to be today.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#342

Post by maire »

hinkley wrote: post #87

I can't speak for women, and I'm just smart enough not to try. But what I can say is that I don't hold all of the values that I did as a young man. I'm not excited about the same things, and today I find some of those ideas uncomfortably naive or even off-putting. As I've engaged in more activities, as I've socialized with more people, I've encountered many more ideas and a lot of nuance. Nothing has simple answers a…

Is this poster for real? I am not sure how this got top upvotes since it doesn't seem to be about the article at all. The article was about women in STEM academia which doesn't seem to be at all about women whiffing a poster's reality.

The article is about women in STEM academia which is a tiny subset of women in the STEM workforce. Some STEM professions do a better job of retaining women than others.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#343

Post by m0zg »

The fundamental unaddressed issue in our society is that having children is treated as something that's optional, a luxury, and even though the society fundamentally depends on its constituents procreating, we continue to pretend that having children is not a necessary part of one's life. Which is true individually, but not true on the macro level.

Anecdotally, observing my own family and that of my (mostly well-off STEM) social circle, I can tell you that this is when women really take a hit career-wise. What's less obvious in the graphs is that many of them take it deliberately, and _choose_ to focus on things other than career. This, ironically, puts pressure on men to provide, and compete in the workplace. I know it put pressure on me like you wouldn't believe - we "settled", got a mortgage, monthly expenses went through the roof. I've roughly tripled my earnings between the time my son was born and his 10th birthday. It came at a tremendous personal cost - I basically didn't have a life for a decade, and our marriage nearly fell apart. I like where we are today, though, thanks to all that effort. My wife took a couple of years off work, and did not aim for a quick career progression afterwards, preferring lower stress and more family time. Was my career progression done at the expense of someone less motivated at work? Quite likely, yes. Was it worth it to my family? It was, although there were many times when I was in doubt about that.

This is something the workforce percentage graphs do not communicate at all.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#344

Post by rb808 »

hguant wrote: post #93
tharne wrote: post #60

I think the author buried the lede here. My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia given how poorly you'll be treated. Each person that puts up with this only makes the problem worse, giving at least tacit approval to the status quo. If folks were to start opting out of academia in larger numbers for jobs in private industry, schools would be forced to improv…

>My biggest takeaway from the article is that you'd have to be an absolute sucker to work in academia given how poorly you'll be treated. Every now and then I get an overwhelming sense of guilt when I talk to/think about my friends who are engaged in academia or pursuing advanced degrees (I'm 28, for reference). The crazy workloads they have, the insane restrictions on how they can do their jobs, and the cut-throat n…

> I will never have any fears about job security,

Sounds like you're under 45

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#345

Post by commandlinefan »

Nouser76 wrote: post #287
proc0 wrote: post #267

Why do we care that there are equal women and men again? Why does representation actually matter again? I would find it more exciting to see a field with no representation because I could make a greater impact! This whole ideology of having representation everywhere is very dumb and conformist.

Because diverse opinions lead to better end products. Having homogenized groups of people means you're leaving some viewpoints out, and those viewpoints have sometimes been extremely helpful for me as a software developer.

Maybe (although it's hard to imagine how somebody's non-education related upbringing could lead them to optimize software, for example), but at what cost? The linked article is suggesting that it's going to cost billions of dollars (more!) to bring in these diverse opinions.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#346

Post by tylermenezes »

naasking wrote: post #326
tylermenezes wrote: post #272

I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child. That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are really thinking about. Many years ago an ex-girlfriend, who works in STEM academia (and is otherwise a liberal, progressive feminist), expressed concerns similar to the author about having kids. When I brought up that it wasn't written in stone that she would need t…

A woman would still need almost a year of special work consideration for the pregnancy, appointments, and post-birth recovery, even if they're not a primary care giver afterwards.

That's a really small part of the problem. The article actually cites data from Italy, which already requires 5 months of maternity leave.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#347

Post by AndrewKemendo »

There is no explicitly agreed upon objective function for humanity. However there is kind of a default one baked into our DNA and it's the desire to reproduce and see our offspring reproduce.

Modern society is conflicted however because enlightenment philosophy, which is baked into everything, as well as some Eastern traditions teaches us that knowledge or enlightenment is the highest virtue.

So when it comes to agreeing on how to align society from the perspective of governance, time allocation, what to promote socially etc.. we have this existential crisis where people try to saddle the fence between reproduction (aka "family") and enlightenment style "progress."

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#348

Post by selimthegrim »

imgabe wrote: post #292
tomp wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a sufficient explanation. There’s more women in law and medicine, which are equally, if not more demanding. There must be something else - the nature of work (more people, less machines), the atmosphere (less bro, more professional), the pay (STEM careers plateau quickly)...

Law and medicine allow for maternity leave. In academia, you have a set amount of time to get tenure. It is not extended for pregnancy. If you don't get tenure, your career is basically over. While the article talks about leaving STEM it focuses on PhDs and academia. This is an academia problem, it's not specific to STEM.

I’ve heard pregnancy gave you an extra year

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#349

Post by tylermenezes »

hyperdunc wrote: post #338
tylermenezes wrote: post #272

I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child. That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are really thinking about. Many years ago an ex-girlfriend, who works in STEM academia (and is otherwise a liberal, progressive feminist), expressed concerns similar to the author about having kids. When I brought up that it wasn't written in stone that she would need t…

Women are more likely to want to be the primary caregiver to something that actually came out of them. It's biological and there's nothing sexist about it.

> it's biological

"It's biology" has a long history of being used to justify everything from sexism to racism to genocide. Please provide a source for your claim (and for the implied claim that men do not have the same drive).

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#350

Post by [deleted] »

tylermenezes wrote: post #272

I think it's still a form of sexism to assume women are the ones who need to care for a child. That's something that very few diversity-in-STEM folks are really thinking about. Many years ago an ex-girlfriend, who works in STEM academia (and is otherwise a liberal, progressive feminist), expressed concerns similar to the author about having kids. When I brought up that it wasn't written in stone that she would need t…

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