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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

#711

Post by sethammons »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #709
sethammons wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the plural of anecdote is not data, my director of engineering started as an individual contributor on my team. As a single mom, she has been promoted multiple times. She works two days from home and leaves early to beat traffic so she can do kid stuff. She is also very good at each role she has had.

Thats great it may be changing - my story was about 10 - 15 years ago now. I was sharing my experience, and I still see it everywhere. I would imagine that it takes extreme time management for her to achieve this, which is great, and kudos to her but this is definitely the exception. I have known people that can do this, they usually have very impressive Filofaxes with things scheduled to the minute in my experience.…

Totally agree. Nothing aside from "that's the way it works" is preventing what you described.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#712

Post by nl »

codingmess wrote: post #605
nl wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the person you are replying to is either agreeing or disagreeing it is a privilege. They are just pointing out the increadibly bad argument they are replying to. A brand new account posting self-contradictory nonsense like For dads to step up, as feminists demand, mothers would have to give up that privilege. sounds like a troll to me. I think the comment "no, you see, I can't possibly help you with thi…

No - what is going on is that feminists point to statistics of dads not staying home, then claim it is because dads "don't step up to help in the home". That's a feminist lie - several, actually. First lie: it is a burden to take care of your kids. Second lie: dads are lazy slobs oppressing the mothers to do all the awful work, while they chill in their comfy careers. It's not even a question of "I can't help you wit…

As someone with kids I can verify it's a huge amount of work taking care of them! It's incredibly hard work, by far the hardest thing I've ever done. If you want to call that a burden then so be it.

For you to call that a feminist lie makes it sound more like you are trying to make this an ideological argument rather than anything based on experience. All your arguments are based on some strawman argument if feminism.

Why do you think mothers "less often" don't want to stay home?

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#713

Post by [deleted] »

danans wrote: post #463
detoxdetox wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. A bit of nuance: Young children are information sponges. Think about how easy a 2-3 year old picks up language. It is not that hard to believe that 2-3 year olds also pick up behavioral patterns from their surroundings. For life. Do we want Mothers to shape their young children's behavioral patterns, or low paid child care workers with no skin in the game? 8 year olds? Send them to school with a key aroun…

> 2-3 kids, spaced 2 years, up to 3-4 years old = a career break of 5-8 years. That ought become social norm and be encouraged. This is what a lot of wealthy people already do, because they can afford it due to one spouse's very high income, so the other spouse has a sort of vanity job (i.e. serving on the board of a charity). But for the working and middle class, this is a bit of a pipe dream. Two people working are…

[deleted]

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#714

Post by Terretta »

e12e wrote: post #401
Terretta wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this seems to be typical sexism: there’s work at home which is paid, and work at home which is not If it’s not paid, how do those doing it live? Tax documents call the salary worker + home maker combo “household income”, which may be an appropriate way of thinking about the household getting paid and the household looking after the home. This applies regardless of the genders of the happy couple, so I’m not sure it…

There are two questions here: why is some work not recognized and compensated? And: why is one sex doing less paid work and more unrecognized work?

Among same-gender couples, ‘sex’ doesn’t figure into it. Many make the homemaker choice.

Presumably the work is recognized.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#715

Post by gbrown »

dang wrote: post #23
gbrown wrote: post #6

Judging by what happens most times gender in tech comes up on HN, I’m sure this thread will be buckets of fun.

Please don't make the thread even worse by posting unsubstantive comments about it. It's a divisive topic, so fractiousness is not easy to avoid, but everyone should make sure they're up to date on the site guidelines before posting. They include: " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#716

Post by daseiner1 »

uncle_j wrote: post #693
daseiner1 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bizarre line about sports gear is racism, or bigotry at least. Black people are mentioned so let’s talk about “louts” dressed poorly?

> If there was a young guy dressed in sports gear and appeared to be somewhat of a lout, no matter what the colour of his skin I would cross the road. I didn't say anything about Black men. I said if I saw young men in General that looked like louts I would be wary.

Oh, give me a break please. You explicitly brought up young, shadily-dressed men on the street as a subpoint in the context of talking about black people.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#717

Post by randomsearch »

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…

In the UK at least, there has been a huge exodus from academia, but it’s not really visible. Great post docs rarely stay, because either they’re enticed elsewhere by better wages and no nonsense, or they’re pushed out by awful treatment.

But there are plenty of other people willing to take their place, so the only consequence is that research standards drop, which is something most of society will only notice over the very long term.

So I disagree with the idea that individuals leaving will somehow fix the problem. The real solution is to change the terrible culture imposed on academic by the people at the very top. Turning it into a business espousing KPI driven nonsense rather than a vocation. This culture began in the USA and is now widespread in the UK, and it has destroyed goodwill and IMO resulted in dramatic drops in teaching and research standards.

The solution is to scrap REF, restore direct government funding, rebalance funding from grants to departmental funds, reverse the centralisation of administration and the lop-sided admin-academic balance, remove admin workload from academics, provide proper teaching and research career tracks, and cut the number of students attending university.

This is a problem that can only be solved with intelligent thought at the top, not by people acting individually. Market forces are the problem in academia, not the solution.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#718

Post by randomsearch »

buboard wrote: post #270
hguant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Working longer/harder doesn’t mean more efficiently. And the idea of the visionary idealist scientist upon whom humanity rests is a romantic idea from the past.

No, it really isn’t. But cynicism like yours drives most of them out.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#719

Post by blub »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #648
blub wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time men approach their fertility limits they either have children or have decided they don't want them. Most men don't leave their careers at any age because they have to provide for the preganant wife which can't work and needs lots of care.

Pregnant women can work except in the last stages of pregnancy and the recovery period after birth takes at most a few months (normally a month and a half should be enough). But even assuming the whole business of giving birth took a whole year (the full nine months for carrying a baby to term and another three to recover) there is no reason that this has to be the end of a woman's career for good. It's one year. Peo…

In an easy pregnancy the woman may work until the end. In Germany for example women are expected to work until 6 weeks before the birth.

Then there's 8 weeks of recuperation after birth, paid by the health insurance which are more or less mandatory and it would be stupid not to take them. Even if the body's not fully recovered at this point, the woman can work.

The question is, why would a mother leave her newborn in order to work, when the outcome will be worse both for the mother (weaker bonding, working through recuperation) and the baby (missing its mother during the day)? That's why it's common here that women either take one or two full years of parental leave or they stay at home N years. This can also be and is mixed with part-time work.

In any case, that would be an easy pregnancy. Childbirth over 30 becomes harder and over 35 it's classified as a high-risk pregnancy.

"After that a man is free to leave work to raise the kids and the woman can go back to work, if they so wish. So why don't they do it?"

One reason could be that by the time those months (in reality a year) are over the mother's better at caring for the child than the father.

I've also seen that women tend to like spending time with their babies(!) so they prefer working part-time or staying at home.

Finally, it's often the case that the husband earns more. Women also tend to prefer men which are successful. In the case where she earns more, it makes economical sense for the husband to work part-time or stay at home. I read an article about such a case a while ago, and being a stay at home dad looked like a sad existence: besides the social disdain and emasculation, that person wasn't even welcome to spend time with other parents (i.e. mothers), because they were looked on with suspicion.

Re: An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

#720

Post by Jemm »

one of the aspects of being bullied, and sexism is a form of bullying, is the the bullied person is humiliated, made to doubt their own capabilities and made to fear repercussions. The result being that women leave and cite personal reasons for, their departure.

Surveys like this are not necessarily honest as the participants are not necessarily being honest.

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