A pretty reasonable explanation is that men and women have different interests. Egalitarian countries generally provide an environment where people are free to express these differences in preferences. A mechanism that would make it causal.
I don't think it's a breakthrough, I remember seeing the exact same conclusion from a different research a few years ago already. It was even a little broader since it mentioned that countries with the most gender equality also had the most stay at home moms.
> Girls also tended to register a lower interest in science subjects. These differences were near-universal across all the countries and regions studied.
So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).
No sure why you were down voted, it's a reasonable point that women have more economically viable career choices in countries with better gender equality.
It's also very similar to the point raised in the original article:
> The researchers, from Leeds Beckett University and the University of Missouri, believe this might be because countries with less gender equality often have little welfare support, making the choice of a relatively high-paid STEM career more attractive.
That sounds right to me. Anecdatally I've talked with a lot of latin American girls e.g. Colombians, who are studying engineering, (and busy with exams on maths and science subjects) who don't seem at all the type. I think it's an in-demand job with good prospects, where maybe there aren't so many competing career choices.
(Interesting psychological study, why you're being downvoted for saying that. Maybe that people are nowadays conditioned to assume any talk of gender differences is sexism, I've noticed.)
In richer countries the family and friends force/pressure girls to do "girly" things and study a non STEM subject, but in poor countries they can do whatever is necessary for survival and can choose a better paying field, like STEM if they want.
It's a difficult subject, because it's almost impossible to make a controlled experiment and distinguish which explanation is the correct one. (You can't get a million subject and create 10-20 isolated societies with a different level of resources and initial culture and measure the results 100 years later.)
I also would like to see the correlation with the number of "stay at home moms". In some rich countries is common that after marriage / the first child the mom left the work. In poor countries it's more difficult and both parents must have a paying work. Why study a long career if you are not going to work too long in the field?
Do you know at what age they checked that? I've seen prior research that suggests that the disinterest in stem appears in middle or high school, and isn't statistically significant before then.
This would heavily imply some level of social conditioning to be the cause for disinterest.
What people say they like is one thing, but observing proclivities is another. In elementary schools, boys score higher in math and girls score higher in reading comprehension.
Well, if they don't want to pursue STEM careers, perhaps we should respect their decisions? Meanwhile most big American companies are bent on having a 50/50 ratio in all job types on all levels.
I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing criteria for choosing careers, and artificially forcing the distributions towards the middle might do more harm than good.
I think it's certainly possible that different career preferences is true and that the current distribution in practice is still skewed. That is, perhaps the "right" distribution is something like 60/40 men/women, in which case both 50/50 men/women and 90/10 men/women would be skewed and pushing people out of careers they'd be happy with.
It is possible. But it's also possible that it's not skewed, or even skewed the other way. It's as though someone should investigate this question before embarking on programs to shift the distribution to arbitrary places.
> It's as though someone should investigate this question before embarking on programs to shift the distribution to arbitrary places.
If the status quo is 90/10 or worse, I don't agree: 50/50 is the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis can certainly be disproven, but the amount of evidence needed to hold a belief that 50/50 is probably correct is much smaller than the amount of evidence needed to hold a belief that 90/10 is probably correct. I don't think the right approach is "We should let the status quo stay indefinitely until we've convinced ourself of what the right number is" - if we have evidence that the status quo is potentially right, that evidence should be plenteous and easy to gather.
(That said, I do agree that programs focused on improving "the pipeline" and getting more girls interested in STEM are misguided and it would be better to focus on removing the barriers that cause women already interested in STEM careers to leave. But that's a little bit of a different subject.)
I said that someone should investigate it. As in, actively. 50/50 is a null hypothesis. Another perfectly reasonable null hypothesis is the status quo.
For instance, do you know that the proportion of female software engineers is approximately the same as the proportion of females that pass the AP computer science exam in high school? This implies strongly that if there is some effect that's shifting the distribution against women, it happens before high school. That is to say, it has nothing to do with workplace culture or discriminatory hiring practices. Of course, that doesn't mean that those things aren't important - they are. But they likely aren't causing under-representation of women in CS.
As to distribution, there are some fundamental biological differences that explain the skew that have been discovered. The largest pertinent difference being aptitude for mechanical reasoning in the general population.
> 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population
> For the young adolescents, the observed difference in Mechanical Reasoning is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents.
> Beyond the observed small average sex difference in the general factor of intelligence (g), the boys' large advantage in mechanical reasoning (MR) must be strongly underscored. This sex difference is not explained by g, and therefore the probable contributions of what is measured by relevant subtests such as abstract reasoning (AR) or spatial relations (SR) can be excluded. The MR difference is still present with almost the same magnitude when the general factor of intelligence (g) is removed. It is also noteworthy that, for the old adolescents, more than half of the variance associated with numerical reasoning (NR) cannot be attributed to g. Thus, we suggest that mental processes captured by these psychological measures are behind the documented male advantage in STEM disciplines
This means that, at the average point in the distribution, the average everday man has a one standard deviation edge in measurements of mechanical reasoning over the average everyday woman. This explains why you would see such a large skew in the field of engineering.
What is "mechanical reasoning"? That paper gives examples of two standardized test questions about pulleys and levers - intuition about that sort of thing is important for some parts of STEM, sure, but I'm not sure it's a skill I've ever used in software engineering, except maybe when plugging in a second monitor on a crowded desk.
There are fundamental biological differences, sure. What do those fundamental biological differences mean for specific career fields and why - and given the mean and standard deviation, which presumably we have, what's the right number, if it's not 50/50?
Sure, one standard deviation makes the ratio like 63% to 37%? That's not what we see in tech job ratios, it's worse than that. Everything past that is unjust and deserves effort to rectify
That's just at the mean. It skews even more once you start heading toward the tails, the high end of which you would expect to see in the engineering labor force.
How many standard deviations past the mean do you need to be to work in STEM?
One way to bound this is to look at the number of people in STEM careers. 6.2% of US jobs were in STEM in 2015 (https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/science-technology-engine...), meaning that STEM employment requires at most being just under 2 standard deviations above the mean—and that only if you assume that society optimizes perfectly to fill all of those careers with the people most suited to them in terms of base biological aptitude. Once you throw in other factors like location and access to education, it probably gets significantly lower than that.
Would you say that all your coworkers at all STEM jobs you've been at have been at least one standard deviation above the mean at aptitude for the job?
He said worse than that, IIRC. But his lawsuit will maybe bring more clarity on what he really thinks vs. what might have been mis-written or mis-read in various versions of 'the memo'.
His argument proposed that women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks[1]. I could find more questionable positions but have attached a copy of the memo below.
Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both
people and aesthetics.
Another point he raised was that Google's hiring initiatives 'lower the bar' for their targeted groups.
Google has created several
discriminatory practices: [...]
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar
for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
> His argument proposed that women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks
Could you please point to the exact sentence that says this? Because I did a quick search for "biolog" and I did not find a single passage that proposed what you wrote. What I did ̶s̶a̶y̶
find is sentences like "women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men" which say nothing about women being less capable of performing any software-associated tasks.
> Could you please point to the exact sentence that says this? Because I did a quick search for "biolog" and I did not find a single passage that proposed what you wrote. What I did say is sentences like "women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men" which say nothing about women being less capable of performing any software-associated tasks.
From his article:
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because...
It's not sufficient to Control-F to understand an argument. I encourage you to read his article and would look forward to your analysis once you have done this.
> It's not sufficient to Control-F to understand an argument. I encourage you to read his article and would look forward to your analysis once you have done this.
Indeed, I have read the article in its entirely before. And I didn't remember such a passage (my memory isn't great), so I went back and Ctrl-F'd to try to find it and still didn't find it. Then I read on in each instance and saw that, just as I remembered, he was talking about preferences everywhere I found. So, yeah, I've already done everything you're saying, and that's why I think your claim is baseless, but I acknowledge maybe I'm still missing something. So instead of telling me to RTFA, it would behoove you to just spend 5 seconds pasting the full passage you are concluding this from. It isn't any harder to copy-paste the relevant portion of the passage than to comment about why you're refusing to do so when it actually exists. It's only harder when it doesn't exist.
> So instead of telling me to RTFA, it would behoove you to just spend 5 seconds pasting the full passage you are concluding this from. It isn't any harder to copy-paste the relevant portion of the passage than to comment about why you're refusing to do so when it actually exists. It's only harder when it doesn't exist.
I'm not sure what you'd like me to do, as I pasted the passages I was referring to in my initial comment. I don't think he's referring to preferences when he says that Google women have higher levels of self-reported anxiety due in part to their innate neuroticism[1].
Fundamentally, my problem with this article is that it makes an enormous leap from psychology studies to innate capabilities to unsuitability for certain types of work. We just don't know enough about each of these areas to make the generalizations that are put forth in the essay.
[1] Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs
> [Damore's] argument proposed that women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks
The line and paragraph that quoted above makes no judgments about the capability of men or women for software tasks or otherwise, as far as I can tell. (Edit: I’ve read the whole memo at least twice)
The statements that men and women differ biologically, and that this impacts occupational preferences, is not scientifically novel or controversial. Writing about Damore's memo in Quilette, Deborah Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience) said:
> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.
Another other article by Koh goes into more detail about the specific scientific research into this topic, and includes links to several original research publications (so you don't need to take her word for it): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manife...
As I'll reply to the other commenter, it's not sufficient to Control-F to understand an argument. I encourage you to read his article and would look forward to your analysis once you have done this.
> His argument proposed that women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks[1].
I see nothing there about "capability" but about preferences and about how much the work & teams can/can't be (re)shaped to match those preferences.
We should strive to create conditions where people can be effective in jobs they enjoy as it makes teams, projects, and companies better overall. How responsibilities are divided, teams are formed, and people interact are all variables that should be tweakable to some degree.
There was a whole section on his memo about not reducing a distribution to its average. A difference in distribution will result in different averages or percentiles, however this doesn't mean all women are less capable or interested in a field which is the way I heard most of his detractors characterize his memo.
> Google has created several discriminatory practices: - Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
To me, that translates to: "Google creates programs that lower the bar for hiring "diverse" people. This directly implies to me that at least some "diverse" people who got hired got hired primarily because of their gender/race/whatever. Now, I work in a team with 3 female software engineers (out of ~10). According to his conclusions, probably at least one of them didn't pass the mustard, and only got the job because of her gender.
There is a tragic ambiguity in the memo. There is a line that says women may not be suitable for all tech jobs. There is another that clearly says it's tech that isn't suitable to women, and can change to accommodate them. His opponents are sure he meant the former, and his supporters are sure he meant the latter. Still others believe that any hint of biological essentialism whatsoever must not be tolerated. So it is quite difficult to determine to anyone's satisfaction whether what he wrote was 'worse'.
Something I've wondered: how is this reconciled with the notion of "ignorance of the law isn't a defense"? If you do something that's a crime but have no idea that it's a crime (and had no intention to commit one) then you can generally still get convicted because that's not a defense, right? So where does the guilty mind come into play?
He didn't 'wonder about this publicly', he wrote an argument insisting that women were less capable of doing engineering. Don't sugar coat his words, he is not a martyr.
As expected, this is the top comment on an article practically built for this argument.
It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand.
Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they are disrespected, unrightfully criticized, and scrutinized to a degree unlike their male counterparts. As a whole, they have recognized that this is not the fault of individuals in their workplaces. It's "natural" to be more critical of the few women in your workplace because as a human, that's how your brain is built to work. Correcting that requires conscious effort on your part, and most are unwilling to correct themselves.
Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually a good idea.
Women are interested. Women want to do the work. Many that do are forced out for one reason or another, and this makes many not want to do it any longer.
Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
Yes. If you feel differently, and you are a woman then I highly encourage you to become more involved with activism because that is the only way to make your voice and opinions heard.
It is not fair that all womens' positions have been decided by activists, and many women in tech have specifically noted this issue. However, activism is available for any individual interested in it.
You miss the point that a satisfied person has little incentive for activism. Also, most conservative opinions tend to be met with anything from disgust to derision online, further disincentivizing counter-protest.
> You miss the point that a satisfied person has little incentive for activism.
This is interesting - what do you mean by this? I'm not sure what you mean in this context, but in an overall, general sense I strongly disagree.
Certainly there is significant incentive for activism from a satisfied person. A person may be satisfied but that does not mean that there is not room for improvement or change. Satisfaction is something that is static, stagnant, and doesn't last forever. One day you may be satisfied with a product or political situation, and the next day you might not be even if it remains unchanged itself.
Activism is a method of creating change. Everyone is incentivized by it because everyone can benefit immensely from change, even the ultra-rich.
> Also, most conservative opinions tend to be met with anything from disgust to derision online, further disincentivizing counter-protest.
I have found the opposite to be true, actually. Depending on the online community, sometimes it is the conservative opinions that are the only ones deemed acceptable by the community (as is often the case here on HN), and in others perhaps the liberal comments.
But I have been a liberal commenter on the internet for nearly 20 years and I have found, time and time again, that the internet has little room for acceptance of left-wing opinions.
> Yes. If you feel differently, and you are a woman then I highly encourage you to become more involved with activism because that is the only way to make your voice and opinions heard.
And what kind of social or career impact on their lives do you expect from such activism against the current flow?
In the United States, political views are a protected class and one can sue if fired on the basis of them.
I expect one will claim that James Damore offers evidence of a life being "ruined" by their views, but I think the kid is doing pretty damn well for himself - especially due to his views. If you are a conservative activist in tech then feel free to shout your views from the rooftops, I'm sure there are many on 4chan who would love to follow you and help you succeed.
> In the United States, political views are a protected class and one can sue if fired on the basis of them.
Political views and affiliations are not protected under federal law, though at least some states have protected them. See this page: https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html
> But apparently your experience = every experience.
I never made any such claim. Instead you're the one arguing that because your team has no issues, then clearly the women who speak out are in the minority.
I'm simply arguing that these women who speak out exist, and we shouldn't just ignore their claims without evaluating their merit. Instead, you say we should ignore them because they are
"in the minority?". Maybe it is you who does understand the goals of gender equality. A view should never be ignored because it is the minority - it should be evaluated on the basis of its own merit.
I think it lacks nuance and can very well be mishandled as an agenda, but the reality is that simply having more women in a particular setting can help make the atmosphere more welcoming of them. (Or people of color. Or long haired hippies. Or whatever group you would like to see more of.)
I really think it matters how we get there and most people advocating for it seem to think that piece does not matter, so I certainly have sympathy for the skepticism with which the idea gets met. But observation of actual reality pretty strongly bear's out the idea that if you can succeed in passing a certain threshold, it will tend be self perpetuating beyond that.
This data entirely negates that claim. In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces, they simply self-select not to participate in certain fields (on average).
If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.
> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces
The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/mea... , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.
Sure, give me a research lab and some funding. I don't know that there have been many rigorous studies across all of STEM that measure this effect and give an answer one way or another.
For tech in particular, see the Kapor Center's report: https://www.kaporcenter.org/tech-leavers/ (which, it should be noted, reports on people who have left tech: the percentages in that report should not be read as the fraction of people in tech who decide to leave).
For studies like these, it actually helps to look at the data rather than just skim the headlines/talkimg points, which tend to cherry pick to support the narrative.
For example, when "left due to unfair treatment" is unpacked by group, white women are the lowest percentage! (28% vs. 38% for white/asian men).
Yes, that's true. Again this is the percentage thing I mentioned—the study is not claiming that more white and Asian men leave because of unfair treatment than women, it's claiming that of those who leave, more white and Asian men report unfair treatment as a motivation than women do.
If the raw fraction of women leaving is much higher than it is for Asian and white men, then the net effect is that a higher percentage of women are leaving because of unfair treatment than men are.
Also, it's certainly the case that unfair treatment is a problem worth solving regardless of gender.
(I don't think the design of that particular study was equipped to answer the question of what the raw fraction is / whether the numbers are in fact alarming, so people who are making that claim are not making it solely on the basis of information in that study.)
Of course it does. Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries. The data overwhelmingly shows that when you give men and women equal opportunities and the freedom to make their own choices, that men and women, on average, make different choices.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and their oppressors, which is clearly just toxic bullshit.
> Feminism is ingrained into the cultures of these countries.
Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a much deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being restricted to men, of only men having political representation, of the father being the head of the household, etc. That stuff doesn't evaporate from a culture quickly, and even today many of those are strongly believed by huge parts of Western civilization.
I'll ignore the irrelevant marxist talking point and trump references, and redirect you back to the data. The Nordic countries always lead in these stats.
These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life. The data shows that under these conditions, this freedom has a negative correlation to women choosing a career in STEM.
You can't say that this is a remnant of some patriarchal system of oppression, because as women's freedom has increased in those countries, their participation in STEM has decreased.
Wow, good job focusing on minute details instead of addressing the overall point your parent is making.
However, I'll indulge you and hazard a guess:
* The historically naive and somewhat incorrect generalization of some ill-defined "Western" culture (what time frame is he using?)
* the negative portrayal of it
* and the implicit assumption that any part of the portrayal is somehow unique to all Western countries, but not the rest of the world.
I will give you that this criticism of "Western culture" probably doesn't really relate to traditional Marxism, which more or less worked within the framework of Western culture.
I believe your parent might have had the concept of "cultural Marxism" in mind.
This trend hold in even the most progressive countries. Do you seriously think that "STEM across the world in multiple different cultures are prejudiced against women in precisely the same ways so as to produce the same gender disparities in the same fields" is a more reasonable explanation than there being some other factor, like some kind of inherent disinterest in these subjects?
Don't take my word for it though, there are actually plenty of studies showing that the "people vs. things" theory far better explains these gender disparities.
I think you may have misread the article. It does not present the data you think it does.
> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces
That is absolutely not what a high level of gender equality means. Countries that have "higher levels of gender equality" do not guarantee or even suggest any likelihood of not having these negative forces in a girl or woman's life. (I would privately posit that it may be the opposite, in fact - that perhaps those countries would find that in private home lives, those forces are as strong or stronger than elsewhere. But I don't know this, I'm speculating on that point.)
Often the forces in a person's life are from close friends or their family - these are not measured in this article and certainly have an impact on how people choose their careers and interests in life.
You also made up the idea that they are "self-selecting" to not be a part of the system. The article does not make that claim - you did, out of thin air.
The article never claims that areas of high gender equality do not have these negative forces.
In fact, my main issue with this article is how it defines "gender equality".
> If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.
I never made any such claim - you have twisted my words in order to make me appear irrational and prejudiced. I claim that women do not participate in tech because they feel actively ostracized and unwelcome. More women would help alleviate this issue. Do not put words into my mouth instead of addressing the statements that I make.
This is a horribly un-empathetic position to take that ignores most women's testimonials. Reading the accounts of women in tech who have been forced out would not lead me to believe that they just aren't that interested. They are systematically encouraged to get out, and do something else with their lives.
Being so skeptical of these opinions because they're in the minority, rather than evaluating their actual merit is horribly toxic.
Also this is just a damn job. You don't have to love it completely to want to do it. I sure as hell don't love programming wholeheartedly but I still do it as a career—I'm one of those folks who doesn't do side projects when they get off the clock.
The exact opposite is true. With all the pressure on diversity numbers, talented female engineers are very highly sought after.
The truth is it doesn't matter what the data says. There's an entire political philosophy that's based on everybody being either oppressed, or an oppressor. For people who subscribe to that, they will always claim that invisible forces are at work oppressing people, no matter how much reality proves otherwise, and they will never offer any proof to support these claims, because it's just so axiomatic to them.
The OP did not draw any conclusion besides claiming that what we are doing is bad. I assumed this meant we should not do anything, because doing something is "artificial".
If they don't feel that way, they are free to correct my assumption.
1. There are a minority of women in tech.
2. Trying to correct (1) will do more harm than good.
aspaceman's scenario:
1. There are a minority of women in tech, because on the whole, more men like tech jobs than women.
NOT that NO women would do tech jobs, but in the "absence of discrimination", maybe gender ratios would be 60-40 men or something.
2. Because women are in the minority, male co-workers take them less seriously, and their opinions aren't as valued as mens'.
3. Womens' opinions being less valued, etc., results in women leaving tech for other fields.
4. Tech gender ratios are further skewed than they otherwise would be (Maybe 80-20 men).
Now here's where it gets tricky. It _is_ entirely possible that trying to correct these imbalances would do more harm than good. However, it is _also_ possible that there are some "low-hanging fruit" corrections which would bring tech gender ratios back into balance without really inconveniencing anybody. Given that it's possible that some interventions might bring about a more natural gender ratio, it's reasonable to try many different types of interventions, and see which ones work.
Note that the root of this problem is men not taking women seriously. The more serious men take womens' views, the better everything gets.
I completely agree with this description of my point, and would only add that this sentence
"the root of this problem is men not taking women seriously"
is what I find to be the most important takeaway. As a person in STEM, you need to take women seriously when they talk about this stuff. Ask yourself why you're so quick to dismiss the "minority of women" and "activists'" experiences.
> Ask yourself why you're so quick to dismiss the "minority of women" and "activists'" experiences.
That's a good question. Personally, I take people seriously if they take the problem seriously. I don't take activists seriously because too many of the them come from a subjective "feels before facts" place, and my strong belief that the main reason there is a gender disparity in tech is that women simply aren't interested (which TFA proves).
I emphatically think that tech would greatly benefit from having a more equal gender ratio, but I think that the programs and solutions activists want to implement -- and have implemented, like affirmative action -- and the impossibility of discussing their validity is absurd.
What we should focus on is the reasons behind women's disinterest in engineering fields. What are they?
None of their friends want to pursue the field? Culture? Biology? Lack of role models? That they simply, given the chance, would rather do something else?
Perhaps a mix of the above?
Once we've identified what the reasons are, and which reasons we can actually do something about, we should use this information to eliminate any external obstacles preventing women to choose a tech career.
My sad anecdotal experience from asking many brilliant women why they wouldn't pursue a career in IT even though they clearly possess the potential for it, is that because they are brilliant they can choose any career path they want, and they are more interested in things that are not tech, because tech is not social enough.
In the end, I believe much of it is a PR issue; we need to get rid of the cultural idea that IT is only for the anti-social 80s hacker living in his mom's basement.
Affirmative action, e.g., "positive" discrimination, may indirectly deal with this PR issue, but surely there are many, many methods that are better and more fair to everyone?
Men have massive school problems and the one field we’re focusing on is STEM. Please everyone, look at the chart of men/female ratio at university since 1980 (hint: men are a minority at uni, hitting 1/3 in the nect years) and explain me why, for $1 spent on females in STEM, we don’t spend $10 on males at university?
Men are systematically forgotten in every single « equality » program. Case in point :
> Women in STEM complain that...
Have we EVER interviewed men in STEM in this whole story ? How do they feel abour the recognition of their skills and hard work ? Oh, yeah, the last one who « talked » was James Damore.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes. I totally feel men are going to be listened to, I totally feel we’re on an equal basis with how women’s problems are equal to men’s problems. Men can go fuck themselves in this society, that’s all I witness.
Oh is that a surprise that mens commit suicide at 4x the pace of women? Sure that can’t be because we tell them to fuck off?
You're free to discuss men's issues in the numerous internet forums, boards, and communities that find this to be an important issue. However I was talking about women, so maybe we should stay focused.
My favorite is reddit.com/r/MensLib
Why must we respond to legitimate concerns with "but it's hard for us TOO". We can address both at the same time. This does not have to be framed as men vs. women.
This comment most closely represents what women friends in tech have expressed to me consistently. I'd like to point out that even if it were agreed upon that women were less interested in STEM careers in aggregate, it would still be valuable to improve this situation for the women who are interested in STEM careers.
>Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they are disrespected, unrightfully criticized, and scrutinized to a degree unlike their male counterparts.
A lot of the girls I meet in tech tell me stories of positive discrimination. One even said she didn't take a higher paid job because she didn't want it offered to her just because she was a woman (I believe the interviewer said that was why they offered it).
I didn't hear these kinds of stories 5 years ago but I do now.
It all kind of makes me a bit uneasy - I'm not sure this newfound enthusiasm for companies biasing hiring specifically to women is actually making things better for women in tech.
>Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually a good idea.
This doesn't make much sense if we assume that "It may very well be that men and women have different criteria".
According to what you wrote, the real problem is that women in STEM have "have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions".
For this, the desired solution would obviously be "better treatment of women in STEM" -- not, "more women in STEM".
Now, getting more women in STEM might indeed be ONE way to achieve "better treatment of women in STEM", but it's the wrong way to achieve that if more women don't really want to go into STEM. If we are willing to accept that
(a) women in STEM have "have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions".
(b) "It may very well be that men and women have different criteria" (and might be less inclined to go into STEM)
then we should just fix (a). Ensure that women in STEM are treated better -- WHATEVER their percentage of STEM jobs.
>Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
At the same time not entertaining the thought that - as the linked study shows - that women might not just have "different criteria" but like some STEM careers less (and not just the treatment they get while in STEM careers, but some STEM fields in general as fields) makes it a "thought crime" and stops searching for truth in favor of what's the fashionable ideology of the day.
> it's the wrong way to achieve that if more women don't really want to go into STEM
This is a good point, which is why my argument rests on the claim that more women will want to go into STEM if they are going to feel more comfortable in those positions.
In my view, it all comes down to why you think women aren't in STEM. Is it because they don't want to do STEM work, or is it because they don't want to be in these spaces? Based on the myriad amount of women who can do work of a similar calibre (in medicine especially), AND the evidence that women used to be not only more welcome in programming, but absolutely DOMINANT in it: I disagree with the former, and subscribe to the latter opinion.
I feel that many think that women don't want to do STEM work because they think of the women who made fun of them in high school or some other such rubbish and use that to infer how all women think about STEM (and tech especially). One's reasoning for not being inclined to do STEM is just as important as them not doing it.
If STEM would "naturally" be 60% men, 40% women, and sexism makes it 80% men, 20% women, it's important to fight sexism so that the 20% of women can get their career back.
It's just insane that people make the leap from "STEM might not have equal interest between men and women" to "Diversity-promoting programs are harmful".
Except you're making the leap that the natural ratio is much higher than the norms that are seen in every progressive nation on Earth, many of which have very different cultures. Don't you see how this shifts the burden to those who claim it's naturally higher to demonstrate this fact?
Any other position is literally assuming the existing culture is full of bigots that must be stopped and forced to comply via "diversity promoting programs", all of which may ultimately have zero positive effects. How is that not insane?
> Based on the myriad amount of women who can do work of a similar calibre (in medicine especially), AND the evidence that women used to be not only more welcome in programming, but absolutely DOMINANT in it: I disagree with the former, and subscribe to the latter opinion.
You would be incorrect. Programming used to be considered an offshoot of secretarial and data entry work, which is why it was once dominated by women. Then men's engagement skyrocketed while women's ambled along at a more gradual pace.
Secondly, this isn't about ability. Women are just as capable of doing this work, but there does exist an innate interest component. I recommend you read up on the people vs. things hypothesis, which has a high degree of predictive success in categorizing those who ultimately choose STEM work [1]. Those interested in working with things are driven towards pure STEM, and those interested in working with people largely avoid STEM or do STEM where they can apply those skills to work with people (think chemistry degrees to become pharmacists, math degrees to become teachers, etc.).
And lo and behold, wouldn't you know that those interested in working with things are largely men, by a significant margin, and those interested in working with people are largely women. Some of these tendencies may be socially influenced, but these preferences show up as young as grade 3!
Now there's definitely discrimination in STEM, but I haven't seen a comparative analysis that demonstrates that STEM exhibits worse rates of discrimination than other fields, such that it deserves all of this negative press. People just seem to assume that's the case because of the gender ratios and some terrible discrimination stories you've no doubt read about. I've read such stories about medicine and law, which have long since achieved gender parity.
So then empathetic people naturally conclude that the best way to stop this discrimination is by balancing the gender scales, but this whole edifice is based on very questionable premises, and the remedy consists of literally forcing women to pursue careers they're not interested in. The cure seems frankly worse than the disease.
>This is a good point, which is why my argument rests on the claim that more women will want to go into STEM if they are going to feel more comfortable in those positions. In my view, it all comes down to why you think women aren't in STEM.
So, doesn't the post contradict this? Less women are in STEM in countries with BETTER equality.
> men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant
No, it's not at all irrelevant, because the fact that fewer women choose STEM fields has been used to design a narrative about the causes when the evidence does not actually support that narrative, and in fact the simplest explanation is simply that women prefer other fields, and therefore choose these fields unless other pressures override those preferences.
> Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions.
Citation needed. All we have are (a) individual stories, read anecdotes, not data on actual problems occurring and (b) hard statistical data on the distribution.
These two independent facts are woven together to create the narrative that (a) is systemic, for which there is no evidence and the cause of (b), for which there is also no evidence.
(I am assuming you mean either "all women" or "women in general", rather than "some women")
The only actual data I am aware of was a survey by the ACM a while back[1]. It showed few if any significant differences in job experience, socialization and attitudes between men and women.
The differences it did find were "supervisor support, career related", where women reported slightly higher support, and "comfort with technical language" and "confidence in technical skills" where men supported slightly higher levels (but still not huge).
Motivation for entering the profession were also largely the same, with men supporting slightly higher for "love of technology/computers" and women reporting slightly higher for "ease of entry into profession", "job security" and "flexible working hours".
And of course there's the Ceci/Williams study showing a 2:1 hiring advantage for women in STEM fields (academia).
>Women are interested.
Yes, some are. But not very many. In fact, most people in general aren't that interested in STEM, it's a minority occupation.
> Many that do are forced out for one reason or another
In a big survey, the biggest reasons for leaving were "spend more time with family", "lost interest", "no advancement" and "didn't like daily tasks".
Again: you are being duped by the narrative. Neither the science (see article) nor the other data back this narrative.
> the simplest explanation is simply that women prefer other fields
I either don't find this particularly simple or a particularly explanatory.
On one reading it's just banal/tautologous; most of this discussion (innate inalienable preference, versus systemic bias, versus cultural pressure) concerns preference in some sense - people choosing to do something rather than being directly forced or prevented. My understanding of this discussion is that it is about what influences preference, and whether we should try and alter those influences across the life of a person.
Furthermore it's only really explanatory if you have some a priori expectation that the class of 'woman' ought to possess some group characteristic in this respect. So to me again this seems like a phenomenological observation ('people called Harry are less scared of heights') rather than much of an explanation.
The only way I can make sense of it as an explanation is if we are linking some innate biological preference in sexual females with some intrinsic quality inherent in STEM work. I am not ideologically opposed to either biological biases or intrinsic qualities of work from a cognitive standpoint. But the casual chains I have seen spun out from one to the other seem highly inconclusive, partial, or dubious (e.g. some notion of 'mechanical reasoning' to 'preference across all of STEM'). If the argument based on this simple explanation is intended to dismiss or substantially dismiss theories of systemic biases or structural inequality then I would need to be persuaded that there are not too many nooks and crannies for these cultural mechanisms to work. But it seems to me there are. At the start of this chain there are potential biases in early education (even in the neurological bootstrapping of infancy), and at the end of the chain the link between intrinsic quality of work versus how the work is done within a cultural context.
To try and be more concrete and hypothetical, what of the effect of the teaching of discursive comprehension based subjects to boys that may make it less likely to be their best subject, what about the types of things given to babies to play with (I see this regularly with a 6 month year old daughter), what about the differential effect on working hours across pregnancy, what about the way in which daily tasks in STEM are defined, etc. Seems to me like there are many degrees of freedom here.
To me the cognitive difference between women and men seem like minor cognitive perturbations - so it is surprising that this could cause large differences in distributions in some higher order effects many steps removed like profession.
That isn’t simple at all if women do not want to get into STEM at the same ratio you are either forcing them to chose a career path they do not wish or more likely forcing men into other career paths both of which are destructive like any other the equality of outcome measure.
What complicates this even further is that there are more women in secondary education than man and the ratio is growing men are also considerably more likely to drop out of school than women.
Both men and women have much bigger problems than the so called STEM ratio problem which is also only apparent in engineering and computer science faculties and less so in other science and then pops up again in the PhD figures.
> No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually a good idea.
Not true. The concern IS over statistical gender bias and the automatic assumption by many on the radical left that if women (no concern about men) do not make up at least 50% of some occupation's workforce, then it MUST be because of sexism or implicit bias or whatever. The problem with that claim is that there is little or no evidence for any of that in today's workforce. Furthermore, there is positive evidence that would explain the differences in terms of sex differences, something that is ideological heresy for the radical left.
The negatives you speak of, what is the evidence that women are leaving because of hostility toward women in STEM fields? If there is evidence[0], why not address the problem instead of using dubious measures like trying to force other women into fields they don't want to enter just so the ones in STEM feel comfortable. This compulsion to get women into these disciplines against their own wishes is not only intrusive and weird. It's using people.
[0] I know of certain types of things women tend to have difficulty with not just in STEM but everywhere, like asking for raises. But that's not hostility nor particular to STEM. Again, that may be something women need to learn to do instead of trying to adapt the world to themselves.
> Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their position.
Which is definitely a problem. But there seems to be an implicit assumption that it happens at a higher rate than discrimination in every other field, and thus STEM deserves this criticism. Is this actually true? The only data I've seen keeps harping on gender parity as if parity is its own end, rather than a means to an end as you've suggested.
> Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM.
Did they? Was there a group meeting and they all voted? Where is the evidence that gender parity would actually yield this result? If so, where is the evidence that the gender parity measures being taken would actually lead to parity? This seems to rest on a lot of suppositions.
Also, from what I've seen, women in STEM largely aren't driving this movement, contrary to what you seem to believe.
> Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
There are two problems being conflated here: the gender parity "problem", and the sexism/discrimination problem.
Articles like this are attacking the arguments that gender parity is a) actually a problem, and b) one that can be solved by simplistic measures like quotas, marketing directed at women, etc. If women truly are less interested in CS and similar fields, then none of these measures are likely to work. And so far they haven't made a dent.
I'm also skeptical the discrimination problem will be solved by these measures either. I'd prefer something far more direct.
> I wonder if it's possible that men and women, on average, have differing criteria for choosing careers
Not only is this true, it has been fairly exhaustively researched.
> Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations.
> Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.
That paper doesn't provide evidence for a biological basis for occupational preferences (which was an online BBC survey for a TV show "Secrets of the Sexes," asking people to self-report how interested they were in 10 professions, many of which are strongly culturally gendered or "male-versus-female-typical" as the author puts it). It seems pretty likely that there's a biological basis for differences in base personality traits and a cultural basis for careers and gender norms; the fact that the author found that sex predicts three personality traits and one career preference isn't really an argument that all four of them are biological.
(Also I don't think a single paper counts as "exhaustively researched")
> Results showed that men prefer working with
things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things–People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = 0.35), Social (d = 0.68), and Conventional (d = 0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests.
> The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in
gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields.
This shows that girls are more inclined to have different interests than boys. There is clearly not equal distribution
in interests between genders. There is nothing wrong with that. We shudn't enforce equal distribution by some quotas. Instead we should allow everbody to have an equal chanche to achive their full potential.
Men and women do have different criteria today. But how can you tell when they're cultural criteria, or when they're intrinsic and inherent gender differences? Are you assuming that the current differences in career choices aren't already artificially forced away from the middle by cultural biases and even perceived or real sexism?
Sure, it is always "possible" to do harm by taking action, but is it likely? There is widely acknowledged bias that is not believed to be a natural intrinsic gender difference by many scientists who study this, so is it better to do nothing, or to try and address the issue?
To me, this question seems a little like asking whether I should avoid erasing some files when my computer fills up, because I might delete something important. Yes, you could accidentally delete something you wanted to keep, but on the other hand, if you want to continue using it, you have no choice.
I agree about not forcing the distribution. I think positive action either solves no issue (no sexism in the industry and the current distribution is simply the "natural" one); or doesn't solve the deeper issue (sexism in the industry). However, until there's no scientific consensus about whether or not there's sexism in the workplace, the current state is not satisfying and we should continue until we clear out that concern, and if there is sexism, fix it.
My personal guess would be that there's indeed sexism, particularly in the programming industry. This overall "not my problem" attitude from men about anything regarding this subject is a clear hint of it.
It would have been interesting to control for wealth. Unless I missed it in the article, it could be valuable to analyze a group of countries deemed "rich", but with low gender equality (I don't really even know how the latter is calculated).
"If governments want to increase women’s participation in STEM, a more effective strategy might be to target the girls who are clearly being lost from the STEM pathway – those for whom science and maths are their best subjects and who enjoy it but still don’t choose it"
I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do.
well making Engineering and Science careers as well rewarded and give them the same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help.
Those young women with triple A's beloved of headline writers come exam time are making a rational decision not to go into a field where they are badly paid.
It seems to me that the assumptions which gave rise to your comment would imply that Wall Street traders should be dominated by women. Why is this not the case, in your opinion?
Would increasing the pay and status of a job increase, or decrease the percentage of women?
Should CEOs be paid more to increase their percentage of women?
It is a pink ghetto and traditionally pre compulsory education was performed by women and was on the very few profession open to women pre 20th century
the same social status as say the Law, Medicine are might help
Don’t forget the impact of offshoring/outsourcing. Male or female, I couldn’t in good faith recommend tech as a career choice for any young person right now. Go into something that has to be delivered in person and/or is protected by regulators. If I were young now I’d be looking at a skilled trade - a good tradesman or woman makes as much or more than most programmers, esp if they become a foreperson or other supervisory role.
Engineering and Science careers are quite competitive with law and medicine. That's why these fields aren't filled with male AND female failed lawyers/doctors.
Imagine a subject only sociopaths are willing to take. I see good reasons why the society might want to change the framework so that even non-sociopaths take that subject.
Now, neither men nor women are sociopaths, but they are different. They have different behaviour towards risks, on average, among other things. That gives reasons for the society to work on having both genders in every subject.
The next sentence is: "If we can understand their motivations, then interventions can be designed to help them change their minds." I imagine there is a non-coercive way to try to understand the reasons, and use that to inform counseling of students.
Where I come from, it is extremely standard for high school students to receive friendly counseling about what they want to pursue in college. Most young people I know do not sit in isolation deciding what to do with their lives, without discussing it with any adults.
You’re turning it around, this is not about disrespecting personal choice, but rather to identify conditioning factors that effectively force out women that would have otherwise taken that path.
Take a women who is a talented programmer and enjoys programmer, but chooses not to work as a programmer because she is sick of constant sexual harassment. Should we respect her choices or design interventions?
> Take a women who is a talented programmer and enjoys programmer, but chooses not to work as a programmer because she is sick of constant sexual harassment. Should we respect her choices or design interventions?
Nice strawman you are doing here. You're implying women aren't choosing STEM careers because of sexual harassment which is a complete lie. Your assertion is backed only by your misandrist ideology who sees men as harassers. But facts don't care about ideology facts are facts and you chose to live in a lie.
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. Doing that will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
I think the logic here is a nontrivial portion of the women who "fall out of the pipeline" do it for reasons other than lack of enthusiasm for the subject. If indeed there are girls who want to pursue math/cs but run into extrinsic obstacles that put them off, we should try to identify what those obstacles are.
> I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do.
If they didn't choose to do a subject because, for example, they had their high school teacher(s) tell them that he "does not expect female students to do as well as male students" (I have seen that happen few years back when I was still in high school), then it surely is an undertaking worth considering.
OK, so you're saying they are misinformed? Fair enough. I don't mind informing them, as long as they have a free choice and are not coerced into selecting a career that is not interesting.
However, this very much contradicts to the paradox. Why should women in countries with greater gender equality be less informed about available options?
I have observed a female student, super talented in math/programming (IMO/ICPC), to choose finances instead, as a teacher (male) was once saying to her that programming/math don't pay well and have low prestige and finances give easier, secure life. I can't say I had much sympathies to her choice after that, experiencing first time typical female stereotypes about mostly caring about money.
I was upset she was wasting her talent going purely after money (she was a winner of math/programming competitions). And men are often way more idealistic, willing to endure hardships for ideas instead of cashing out whenever possible. She ended up programming in the end due to job market, but could have achieved way more than working for Accenture-type companies on BS assignments.
What are you on about? Are you unaware that the finance industry is dominated by men? That generally men are more wage earners and women are more homemakers, so men have more pressure to economic success than women?
As somebody that spent significant amount of time mentoring females, getting such a blank statement from a random person on HN feels absolutely motivating to continue to do so. Thanks!
Often the reason motivating people to make statements like this is that they assume a systemic reason as to why a given group are not choosing a particular choice. An illustrative example would be asking why fewer men participate in cheer squad. The answer is derivative of the context - maybe football recruits more vigorously and has masculine traits which appeal more to young men. The follow-up question, if we were looking to have more boys in cheer, would be to ask what can we do to appeal more to those traits or appeal to things which no other activity satisfies.
The quote proposes looking at the context within which girls who show aptitude choose not to pursue STEM and see if there is anything the government, who wants more women in STEM, can do to facilitate this. It isn’t about removing the choice, it is about making a particular choice more appealing by better understanding the fundamental drivers behind particular choices.
My sister when to STEM instead on another field, because of campaigns. She hates herself for doing that, even now at 38 years old. It’s entirely probable that encouraging women to do things they stubbornly wouldn’t choose otherwise is making a generation of depressive mothers.
First of all, what we choose for our career is depending on many external factors, it can be people putting you off your interest but also someone helping you to learn more about it.
An important fact you're missing here, girls are lost from the STEM pathway in their early teenage years. https://it-online.co.za/2017/03/07/teenage-girls-fall-out-of...
Teachers not thinking they could do STEM, parents who have other ideas for their kids (I include boys, if my mom had her way I wouldn't be a programmer) and friends who think STEM is just for stupid nerds.
The defensive tone of this article is alarming. If you don't study computer science now you will likely be in the same boat 30 years from now with illiterate folks of today. Disparity in computer science education in Western countries puts women at a massive economic disadvantage and is a major geopolitical risk. Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous. Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.
If women do actually naturally prefer non-STEM fields on average then is the science on the subject being sexist? I am more interested in the truth than in making the numbers between men and women be exactly 50/50 in everything.
Women don't prefer non-STEM fields on average, this is an artifact of Western countries. There's no disparity in many developing countries including China. It's not about 50/50, it's about 100% of the population being literate with respect to complexities of modern economy.
Developing countries have different influences on job choice than wealthier/Western countries. Countries in Scandinavia typically have high gender disparity between the sexes in most occupations, because they are wealthy enough that men and women can choose what kind of jobs they take rather than doing whatever earns the most money. Developing countries are biased towards survival-jobs, as it were, rather than enjoyment-jobs. If this is correct then we can expect the developing countries to slowly increase in disparity as they become wealthier.
I'm not so sure, CS is essentially a new blue collar job. There need to be lots of computer programmers, but they don't actually need a university education in most cases, so in countries with working vocational education tons of people get programming jobs without a university degree.
> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.
What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for the very important work they actually do, first?
Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software engineering?
Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me than a nurse or teacher? The pay can partially be explained by supply/demand (qualified nurses are in high demand but buyers don't seem to be able to pay, at least not here.)
You've answered your own question. Supply/demand is not something we can negotiate or tweak to our liking. Teaching/nursing jobs need to be automated as much as possible if we want to deal with global issues like aging populations and educational inequality.
Because that’s how capitalism works. Money follows value generated to society not individual perceived value. A teacher at maximum capacity can only deliver a tiny tiny fraction of the value that a software developer can.
100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well say.
>Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist
While I agree with the entirety of your comment, I don't see how this is the case. If the physical differences between human groups cause one to prefer something over the other, how is it disparaging to attempt to validate this hypothesis?
Because it's false if you consider the entire human population. You can argue that women in US & Europe prefer non-STEM fields but generalizing to all of women is logically false because of numbers in China and other developing countries with large populations.
However you feel about Jordan Peterson, he brings up this fact all the time, esp w/ regards to Scandinavia, would define this phenomenon as the difference between equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome, and that the genders, when provided the option, tend towards different preferences (e.g. bricklayers vs nurses), and that environment factors can skew these natural preferences in either direction.
raises the question of _why_ women in these egalitarian societies are currently are selecting against STEM. Because for example there are plenty of female accountants, which is not normally thought of as a "people" business. So perhaps the environmental factors could change the preferences.
Whether the overall result is preferable for society, I have no idea.
I realize this is an anecdote, but one of my long-term clients is a tax/accounting office run and staffed almost entirely by women. When I started working there, I fully expected to find it tedious and drab. It turns out that it is surprisingly fun- they get clients that run all kinds of small businesses, we meet, talk about things, see what we can do to help them... Knowing the tax code & GAAP is important, but they turn out to be only the means to a far more social end. Really changed my mind in a positive way.
How about doctors vs nurses? I think this is a much more relevant comparison. In the united states (sorry) male doctors outnumber female by about 2:1 [1], while female nurses outnumber male nurses by more than 10:1 [2]. Comparing these two professions it's a lot easier to make the argument that women are implicitly encouraged to set their expectations lower than men, who actually may feel emasculated as a nurse.
STEM jobs are seen as more difficult to train for and to achieve than non-STEM jobs, similar to the job of a doctor compared to the job of a nurse. If you're confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often, I hope this line of thinking is convincing...
lesser pay rates on average, less training required, more nurses than doctors exist in the work force.
That doesn't make the profession less noble or endearing or anything -- but by any metric that we use to judge modern occupations, a nurse ranks lower than a doctor in most every way besides number of hours worked.
Let's explore some other possible theories for the gender ratio of doctors and nurses. What if it was the case that men more than women are attracted to the most demanding jobs? And women more than men favor family-friendly hours and work life-balance? If that was the case, then it could explain why men more than women become doctors, and women nurses: because becoming a doctor is significantly more demanding than becoming a nurse.
Getting through medical school and residency requires absolutely horrendous working hours including night shifts, and extremely long work shifts that seem unreasonable or unsafe to me, but that doctors have just accepted. Becoming a medical doctor definitely seems like it's in the upper echelon of demanding jobs. Within the field of medicine, men also disproportionately select the most demanding specialties like surgery while female doctors are more likely to become pediatricians.
The theory that men and women have different preferences concerning demanding jobs and work-life balance has been scientifically studied, and there's evidence in support of it. I'll share a quote from one publication that contains citations to further studies: "Women, careers, and work-life
preferences":
> The majority of working women seek a large degree of work-life balance (Hakim, 2005), certainly more than men do. Women are more likely to ask for shorter work hours than to ask for higher pay or promotion (Babcock & Laschever, 2003).
I've heard this phrased in another way. The question isn't why many women seek more balance, it's why some men are insane enough to want to work such intense hours.
Let's take a country that's mentioned in TFA, and ranks higher on the gender equality scale: Sweden.
Here, just as in the US, we have way more female nurses. However, we are also going towards way more female than male doctors; more women than men are admitted to medical school.
What we are not seeing however, are more women in science (biology is a bit of an outlier, though) and technology.
Outside of managerial roles, IT in particular is as bereft of women as it has always been.
As we have more women in medicine and law I have a hard time believing they are setting their expectations lower. I think it's as the article claims: for whatever reason they just aren't interested in STEM (in average).
I wonder how much of this is related to parental leave policy versus generic social safety net. Countries with a strong safety net also have generous maternity leave but are behind on paternity. I imagine that at a large scale this does make many companies slightly less likely to hire women, and families much more likely to have the mother take time away from her job. The ultimate effect, albeit in a warm and fuzzy way, could be to deemphasize women’s careers by normalizing the idea that it’s best if you stay home with the kids.
I don't suppose that this could have a larger effect than the gender inequality in many countries lacking a social safety net, but it could be a contributing factor.
The idea that women, given the choice, generally would rather prioritize motherhood seems totally plausible. If that's the case, it could indicate that we need to think about diversity differently.
But I'm uncomfortable with a side effect that some of these policies could have - subtly pressuring women to focus on motherhood. The solution is complicated though if the mere existence of a good maternity leave policy encourages sexism. Hopefully general parental leave can help address this.
As far as I know, all developed countries have birthrates that are below replacement values. Is it really so bad to think that motherhood is something that should be focused on? Of my family/friends that are women with children, every single one of them wants more flexibility with their work, because they want more time to spend with the children. Children certainly benefit from parental attention. Yet many workplace policies regarding childcare are downright draconian. Perhaps we should accept that prioritizing parenting is a good thing, and try and make it so that people can both work and have the support they need to help with their familial obligations.
Possibly has to do with wealth? When you have little, you have to prioritize finding a job that pays as much as you can possibly make. STEM jobs top that list easily. If you have a lot, pursuing a more leisurely or personally rewarding job is possible.
My family came to the US as fairly poor immigrants from Portugal. My mother worked at the time, went to college at night to earn more, which was unusual then. She didn't this out of some sense of pride or feminism, but because she simply had to. The area where I lived had other poor immigrants from Romania, Armenia, Soviet Union, etc. and many of the mothers worked very hard outside the home as well.
Where are you coming up with these claims? First of all, the article is talking about gender equality and not social safety nets (although the two may be correlated). But more importantly, the countries with more gender equality tend to also have more equal paternity/maternity leave. Look up Norway and Sweden policies, for example.
I'll probably face wrath, and hell's fury for this, but maybe, men and women are different. Has forcing STEM upon the female population, driven any more of them towards the discipline? Taking the sampling size of every woman I've ever went on a date with in my 37 years, none of them were interested in anything related. The vast majority were teachers, psychologists, and nurses. Occupations based around nurturing others. One, was a designer/artist. None of the women in my huge family, sister, mother, none of them care about technology fields. My father, and male cousins on the other hand, are in various fields of tech and engineering.
Is it possible that your dating pool is subject to sampling bias?
Empirically speaking, about 1/4 of people in STEM are women, so if you've met 0 women interested in STEM, it seems like your experience simply aren't an accurate reflection of reality. [0]
I think it's incredibly ironic that you're highlighting your own relative interest in STEM while failing to apply any degree of scientific rigor to your own thinking.
Oh brother, there's always that one guy on HN. None of this was supposed to "scientific", so relax. I'm giving you my 37 years of experience dating at least a couple hundred women, that's it.
Which country do you assume OP is in? In Germany women only make up 16% of engineers http://www.zeit.de/2013/38/frauenanteil-ingenieure. In my starting class of 300 ten years ago there were 5 women in electrical and computer engineering. Mech and building engineering was much higher. Computer science was somewhat in between.
In my high school some girls went for math and many for medicine (still a science, somewhat), but none went for engineering or computer science AFAIK.
I think you're too easily discounting his personal experience. If you ask me, at least in Germany, EE and CS is pretty much devoid of women. And if you're talking about dating, a small pool of women surrounded by men will probably be off the market most of the time. So him never dating engineers at least in my experience, is the norm.
They're doing a lot here to attract girls to STEM, but it isn't bearing much fruit.
It's certainly been the case that the participation of women in medicine and law, both peripheral to STEM, has increased significantly over the last 50 years.
Umm.. even US courts have disagreed with you in the James Damore case, saying that Google was right to fire him for suggesting this... I agree with you, however when the govt, judiciary and private employers agree that "men and women are the same, except when difference benefits women", there isnt a lot that can be done
>Google didn't break the law when it fired James Damore over a memo that criticized the company's diversity policies and claimed tech's gender gap may be due to biological differences between men and women.
You're right, its some other entity in US that interprets laws, I assumed it was a court
The head of the National Labor Relations Board said it was scientifically false that girls are biologically less likely to become interested in STEM when they grow up. So yea, they very much are making scientific claims out their ass and calling it harrasment to point out that they're wrong.
Has anyone ever looked at it from the network effect angle? I’m a software dev because I didn’t like being a CPA and my friend was a tech guy who got me into it.
My wife went into the medical field because her sister turned her onto this speciality that was easy to get into and paid quite well.
I tried to teach my smart wife to program and failed miserably because that’s not how our relationship works.
Most people in even your industry are not die hard passionate live and breathe the code lifestyle types. They show up, work, and go back to their lives.
We all know that ‘in general’ in the USA at least but I’m sure in other countries as well the genders tend to self segregate their peer networks. My close friends are men. Her close friends are women.
Yeah this is absolutely a large chunk of it. Especially when you consider how many jobs are filled through referrals [0]. At my last company, I only worked with male engineers, and so when I got a new job, I could only think of male engineers to refer to open positions.
I think this is also why inertia is so hard to offset here, we have a strong self-reinforcing cycle that's going to take a lot of external force to break out of.
Wonderful. Yet another publicly-funded research project with implications for public policy that is behind a paywall.
I guess I'll never know the details of how "gender equality" was operationalized, and therefore never have an informed interpretation of these data. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.
Their definition of "gender equality" is this:
> The World Economic Forum publishes The Global Gender Gap Report annually. We used the 2015 data (World Economic Forum, 2015). For each nation, the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) assesses the degree to which girls and women fall behind boys and men on 14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary enrollment ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men falling behind). For the countries participating in the 2015 PISA, GGGI scores ranged from 0.593 for the United Arab Emirates to 0.881 for Iceland.
(One of the things I'd be curious about is whether that's just a proxy for Western cultural norms; the more commonly cited reasons for a gender gap in STEM fields in the US are things like harassment and misogyny, and it's certainly possible that those are correlated more strongly with Western culture than with cross-cultural structural inequality.)
The article posits that the affluence of a country (not gender equality itself, though correlated) affects how much the economic security that comes with high-paying STEM jobs is an incentive to purse those jobs.
That can explain a gradient between countries, and doesn't affect the original, purely gender question either way.
Given a choice, more women than men will go for non-STEM careers, so in rich countries you will find way more STEM-proficient men than women. This has been known for quite some time.
But take care not to mention this at workplaces where they use diversity hiring practices to try to artificially and unfairly inflate their percentage of women compared to the field as a whole.
If I (male) had a chance to be on a permanent comfortable welfare, I would probably spend more time playing games, doing sports, socializing, traveling etc. instead of being in a noisy office with bad light around desperate people I often dislike, whipped by my boss in a constant rat race, being refused bonuses for great performance as a new car/boat/house is of a sudden interest to my superior.
Even if we do conclusively find that women on average prefer non STEM careers, I think for the good of our society, we should still make an effort to entice more women into STEM who otherwise would not. Not for dime immediate social justice reason, but because the advancement and progress of our own society needs more STEM grads, if we don't produce our own, we'll have to import them, which we should not have to, if we could develop policies of encouragement.
I find the that those who use this as some sort of argument against feminism often are ignoring the emphasis feminists put on social conditioning as an influencing and oppressive factor on the behaviour of each gender.
Just because a country, by law, affords women the same rights as men that doesn't mean it's a country which is free of the social conditioning which force certain expectations upon each gender. These are things that are inherited from previous generations and do not go away so easily.
People use these results to imply something like "when people are free to do what they want they tend to their 'natural' gender role". But I don't believe this statement can be justified as countries with "more gender equality" (i.e. better women's rights) have yet to shed themselves of societal idioms and culture that feminist theory would call oppressive. I.e. traditional gender roles in the media, toys etc.
I think a more accurate statement would be "when people are free to do what they want, they will tend to behaviours they're conditioned toward." After all, as we can see in the "less gender equality" countries, larger percentages of women in society can and do enjoy careers in STEM fields. What would be interesting is to see 10-20 years down the line how some countries progress and how these behaviours feedback into the next generation.
309 comments
[ 493 ms ] story [ 386 ms ] threadA pretty reasonable explanation is that men and women have different interests. Egalitarian countries generally provide an environment where people are free to express these differences in preferences. A mechanism that would make it causal.
Let X = "angle"
Let Y = sin(X)
Then X has a causal relationship with Y, but Corr(X, Y) = 0.
I doubt that's what you're saying, though!
So girls are less interested in these subjects, but in more unequal countries (read poorer) they do it for career prospects, while in more equal countries (read richer) they do what they want (not STEM subjects).
> The researchers, from Leeds Beckett University and the University of Missouri, believe this might be because countries with less gender equality often have little welfare support, making the choice of a relatively high-paid STEM career more attractive.
The downvoters should explain themselves.
(Interesting psychological study, why you're being downvoted for saying that. Maybe that people are nowadays conditioned to assume any talk of gender differences is sexism, I've noticed.)
In richer countries the family and friends force/pressure girls to do "girly" things and study a non STEM subject, but in poor countries they can do whatever is necessary for survival and can choose a better paying field, like STEM if they want.
It's a difficult subject, because it's almost impossible to make a controlled experiment and distinguish which explanation is the correct one. (You can't get a million subject and create 10-20 isolated societies with a different level of resources and initial culture and measure the results 100 years later.)
I also would like to see the correlation with the number of "stay at home moms". In some rich countries is common that after marriage / the first child the mom left the work. In poor countries it's more difficult and both parents must have a paying work. Why study a long career if you are not going to work too long in the field?
This would heavily imply some level of social conditioning to be the cause for disinterest.
Some analysis (source of link): https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
If the status quo is 90/10 or worse, I don't agree: 50/50 is the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis can certainly be disproven, but the amount of evidence needed to hold a belief that 50/50 is probably correct is much smaller than the amount of evidence needed to hold a belief that 90/10 is probably correct. I don't think the right approach is "We should let the status quo stay indefinitely until we've convinced ourself of what the right number is" - if we have evidence that the status quo is potentially right, that evidence should be plenteous and easy to gather.
(That said, I do agree that programs focused on improving "the pipeline" and getting more girls interested in STEM are misguided and it would be better to focus on removing the barriers that cause women already interested in STEM careers to leave. But that's a little bit of a different subject.)
For instance, do you know that the proportion of female software engineers is approximately the same as the proportion of females that pass the AP computer science exam in high school? This implies strongly that if there is some effect that's shifting the distribution against women, it happens before high school. That is to say, it has nothing to do with workplace culture or discriminatory hiring practices. Of course, that doesn't mean that those things aren't important - they are. But they likely aren't causing under-representation of women in CS.
> 3233 young and old adolescents representative of the population
> For the young adolescents, the observed difference in Mechanical Reasoning is equivalent to 10 IQ points, and this difference increases to 13 IQ points for the old adolescents.
> Beyond the observed small average sex difference in the general factor of intelligence (g), the boys' large advantage in mechanical reasoning (MR) must be strongly underscored. This sex difference is not explained by g, and therefore the probable contributions of what is measured by relevant subtests such as abstract reasoning (AR) or spatial relations (SR) can be excluded. The MR difference is still present with almost the same magnitude when the general factor of intelligence (g) is removed. It is also noteworthy that, for the old adolescents, more than half of the variance associated with numerical reasoning (NR) cannot be attributed to g. Thus, we suggest that mental processes captured by these psychological measures are behind the documented male advantage in STEM disciplines
http://atavisionary.com/study-index/intelligence-psychometri...
This means that, at the average point in the distribution, the average everday man has a one standard deviation edge in measurements of mechanical reasoning over the average everyday woman. This explains why you would see such a large skew in the field of engineering.
There are fundamental biological differences, sure. What do those fundamental biological differences mean for specific career fields and why - and given the mean and standard deviation, which presumably we have, what's the right number, if it's not 50/50?
One way to bound this is to look at the number of people in STEM careers. 6.2% of US jobs were in STEM in 2015 (https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/science-technology-engine...), meaning that STEM employment requires at most being just under 2 standard deviations above the mean—and that only if you assume that society optimizes perfectly to fill all of those careers with the people most suited to them in terms of base biological aptitude. Once you throw in other factors like location and access to education, it probably gets significantly lower than that.
Would you say that all your coworkers at all STEM jobs you've been at have been at least one standard deviation above the mean at aptitude for the job?
https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/occ_gender_share_em_1020_txt.ht...
Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things. We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this).
More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.
Another point he raised was that Google's hiring initiatives 'lower the bar' for their targeted groups.
Google has created several discriminatory practices: [...] Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170809220001/https://diversity...
Could you please point to the exact sentence that says this? Because I did a quick search for "biolog" and I did not find a single passage that proposed what you wrote. What I did ̶s̶a̶y̶ find is sentences like "women are generally more cooperative and agreeable than men" which say nothing about women being less capable of performing any software-associated tasks.
From his article:
On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because...
How do you conclude "women are biologically less capable than men to perform certain software-associated tasks" from merely that sentence?
Indeed, I have read the article in its entirely before. And I didn't remember such a passage (my memory isn't great), so I went back and Ctrl-F'd to try to find it and still didn't find it. Then I read on in each instance and saw that, just as I remembered, he was talking about preferences everywhere I found. So, yeah, I've already done everything you're saying, and that's why I think your claim is baseless, but I acknowledge maybe I'm still missing something. So instead of telling me to RTFA, it would behoove you to just spend 5 seconds pasting the full passage you are concluding this from. It isn't any harder to copy-paste the relevant portion of the passage than to comment about why you're refusing to do so when it actually exists. It's only harder when it doesn't exist.
I'm not sure what you'd like me to do, as I pasted the passages I was referring to in my initial comment. I don't think he's referring to preferences when he says that Google women have higher levels of self-reported anxiety due in part to their innate neuroticism[1].
Fundamentally, my problem with this article is that it makes an enormous leap from psychology studies to innate capabilities to unsuitability for certain types of work. We just don't know enough about each of these areas to make the generalizations that are put forth in the essay.
[1] Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs
The line and paragraph that quoted above makes no judgments about the capability of men or women for software tasks or otherwise, as far as I can tell. (Edit: I’ve read the whole memo at least twice)
The statements that men and women differ biologically, and that this impacts occupational preferences, is not scientifically novel or controversial. Writing about Damore's memo in Quilette, Deborah Soh (PhD in sexual neuroscience) said:
> Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at.
http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...
Another other article by Koh goes into more detail about the specific scientific research into this topic, and includes links to several original research publications (so you don't need to take her word for it): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manife...
I see nothing there about "capability" but about preferences and about how much the work & teams can/can't be (re)shaped to match those preferences.
We should strive to create conditions where people can be effective in jobs they enjoy as it makes teams, projects, and companies better overall. How responsibilities are divided, teams are formed, and people interact are all variables that should be tweakable to some degree.
> Google has created several discriminatory practices: - Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate
To me, that translates to: "Google creates programs that lower the bar for hiring "diverse" people. This directly implies to me that at least some "diverse" people who got hired got hired primarily because of their gender/race/whatever. Now, I work in a team with 3 female software engineers (out of ~10). According to his conclusions, probably at least one of them didn't pass the mustard, and only got the job because of her gender.
It may very well be that men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant, and I find this line of argumentation very frustrating as it completely ignores the actual complaints at hand.
Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions. Many women feel they are disrespected, unrightfully criticized, and scrutinized to a degree unlike their male counterparts. As a whole, they have recognized that this is not the fault of individuals in their workplaces. It's "natural" to be more critical of the few women in your workplace because as a human, that's how your brain is built to work. Correcting that requires conscious effort on your part, and most are unwilling to correct themselves.
Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM. This will slowly correct the negatives by causing more individuals to come into contact with women and have to learn how to behave properly. But these same systemic issues prevent many women who would otherwise enter STEM from doing so. No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually a good idea.
Women are interested. Women want to do the work. Many that do are forced out for one reason or another, and this makes many not want to do it any longer.
Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
I missed when the voting took place. You mean a group of activist women (and men) assumed to talk on behalf of all women in the field?
It is not fair that all womens' positions have been decided by activists, and many women in tech have specifically noted this issue. However, activism is available for any individual interested in it.
This is interesting - what do you mean by this? I'm not sure what you mean in this context, but in an overall, general sense I strongly disagree.
Certainly there is significant incentive for activism from a satisfied person. A person may be satisfied but that does not mean that there is not room for improvement or change. Satisfaction is something that is static, stagnant, and doesn't last forever. One day you may be satisfied with a product or political situation, and the next day you might not be even if it remains unchanged itself.
Activism is a method of creating change. Everyone is incentivized by it because everyone can benefit immensely from change, even the ultra-rich.
> Also, most conservative opinions tend to be met with anything from disgust to derision online, further disincentivizing counter-protest.
I have found the opposite to be true, actually. Depending on the online community, sometimes it is the conservative opinions that are the only ones deemed acceptable by the community (as is often the case here on HN), and in others perhaps the liberal comments.
But I have been a liberal commenter on the internet for nearly 20 years and I have found, time and time again, that the internet has little room for acceptance of left-wing opinions.
Not everyone. And, some people don't feel like they need charge. Some people are actually happy with their life, career and situation.
> even the ultra-rich.
What does the ultra-rich have to do with anything? You've kind of jumped the shark there.
And what kind of social or career impact on their lives do you expect from such activism against the current flow?
I expect one will claim that James Damore offers evidence of a life being "ruined" by their views, but I think the kid is doing pretty damn well for himself - especially due to his views. If you are a conservative activist in tech then feel free to shout your views from the rooftops, I'm sure there are many on 4chan who would love to follow you and help you succeed.
Nobody’s perfect, if you need a decent excuse you’ll find one.
Political views and affiliations are not protected under federal law, though at least some states have protected them. See this page: https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html
I'm not sure you understand the goal of gender equality.
> then I highly encourage you to become more involved with activism because that is the only way to make your voice and opinions heard.
I'm a software engineer. Every woman on our team is treated as an equal. Because they are. But apparently your experience = every experience.
Maybe, just maybe, the women that you speak of are in the minority?
I never made any such claim. Instead you're the one arguing that because your team has no issues, then clearly the women who speak out are in the minority.
I'm simply arguing that these women who speak out exist, and we shouldn't just ignore their claims without evaluating their merit. Instead, you say we should ignore them because they are "in the minority?". Maybe it is you who does understand the goals of gender equality. A view should never be ignored because it is the minority - it should be evaluated on the basis of its own merit.
I really think it matters how we get there and most people advocating for it seem to think that piece does not matter, so I certainly have sympathy for the skepticism with which the idea gets met. But observation of actual reality pretty strongly bear's out the idea that if you can succeed in passing a certain threshold, it will tend be self perpetuating beyond that.
If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.
The data does not support correlating those two. "Gender equality" in this report refers to the factors in Table 1 at http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/mea... , which is about things like life expectancy and number of female politicians and salary - not about disrespect, unrightful criticism, and scrutiny in technical fields on the basis of sex.
Well since these are claims you can undoubted produce data that all of these issues are significant across the entire field?
For tech in particular, see the Kapor Center's report: https://www.kaporcenter.org/tech-leavers/ (which, it should be noted, reports on people who have left tech: the percentages in that report should not be read as the fraction of people in tech who decide to leave).
For example, when "left due to unfair treatment" is unpacked by group, white women are the lowest percentage! (28% vs. 38% for white/asian men).
Why, then, are other people commenting here claiming that bad treatment of women is the main reason they leave tech, and at alarming numbers, no less?
Also, it's certainly the case that unfair treatment is a problem worth solving regardless of gender.
(I don't think the design of that particular study was equipped to answer the question of what the raw fraction is / whether the numbers are in fact alarming, so people who are making that claim are not making it solely on the basis of information in that study.)
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Apart from those who buy into the world view that the only two groups in any society are the oppressed and their oppressors, which is clearly just toxic bullshit.
Given that the leader of the free world has said that he's not a feminist, I'm not sure I would say that it's ingrained into the culture. It's a recent cultural phenomenon of these countries, sure. But Western civilization has a much deeper culture of patrilineal succession, of the priesthood being restricted to men, of only men having political representation, of the father being the head of the household, etc. That stuff doesn't evaporate from a culture quickly, and even today many of those are strongly believed by huge parts of Western civilization.
These are the countries that are the most egalitarian in the world, where 3rd wave feminism forms a major part of social policy, where women have an equal level of opportunity to men and the freedom to choose their own paths in life. The data shows that under these conditions, this freedom has a negative correlation to women choosing a career in STEM.
You can't say that this is a remnant of some patriarchal system of oppression, because as women's freedom has increased in those countries, their participation in STEM has decreased.
Which part of the parent comment was a "marxist talking point"?
However, I'll indulge you and hazard a guess:
* The historically naive and somewhat incorrect generalization of some ill-defined "Western" culture (what time frame is he using?) * the negative portrayal of it * and the implicit assumption that any part of the portrayal is somehow unique to all Western countries, but not the rest of the world.
I will give you that this criticism of "Western culture" probably doesn't really relate to traditional Marxism, which more or less worked within the framework of Western culture.
I believe your parent might have had the concept of "cultural Marxism" in mind.
Don't take my word for it though, there are actually plenty of studies showing that the "people vs. things" theory far better explains these gender disparities.
> In countries with the highest levels of gender equality, where women are least likely to experience any of these negative forces
That is absolutely not what a high level of gender equality means. Countries that have "higher levels of gender equality" do not guarantee or even suggest any likelihood of not having these negative forces in a girl or woman's life. (I would privately posit that it may be the opposite, in fact - that perhaps those countries would find that in private home lives, those forces are as strong or stronger than elsewhere. But I don't know this, I'm speculating on that point.)
Often the forces in a person's life are from close friends or their family - these are not measured in this article and certainly have an impact on how people choose their careers and interests in life.
You also made up the idea that they are "self-selecting" to not be a part of the system. The article does not make that claim - you did, out of thin air.
In fact, my main issue with this article is how it defines "gender equality".
> If you cannot participate in a field where not enough of the people look and act like you, then perhaps you have the problem.
I never made any such claim - you have twisted my words in order to make me appear irrational and prejudiced. I claim that women do not participate in tech because they feel actively ostracized and unwelcome. More women would help alleviate this issue. Do not put words into my mouth instead of addressing the statements that I make.
If people do what they love they will be driven to overcome barriers, perceived and real.
Being so skeptical of these opinions because they're in the minority, rather than evaluating their actual merit is horribly toxic.
Also this is just a damn job. You don't have to love it completely to want to do it. I sure as hell don't love programming wholeheartedly but I still do it as a career—I'm one of those folks who doesn't do side projects when they get off the clock.
But I don't believe for a second that women "are systematically encouraged to get out, and do something else with their lives."
The truth is it doesn't matter what the data says. There's an entire political philosophy that's based on everybody being either oppressed, or an oppressor. For people who subscribe to that, they will always claim that invisible forces are at work oppressing people, no matter how much reality proves otherwise, and they will never offer any proof to support these claims, because it's just so axiomatic to them.
OP did not draw that conclusion.
If they don't feel that way, they are free to correct my assumption.
1. There are a minority of women in tech. 2. Trying to correct (1) will do more harm than good.
aspaceman's scenario:
1. There are a minority of women in tech, because on the whole, more men like tech jobs than women. NOT that NO women would do tech jobs, but in the "absence of discrimination", maybe gender ratios would be 60-40 men or something. 2. Because women are in the minority, male co-workers take them less seriously, and their opinions aren't as valued as mens'. 3. Womens' opinions being less valued, etc., results in women leaving tech for other fields. 4. Tech gender ratios are further skewed than they otherwise would be (Maybe 80-20 men).
Now here's where it gets tricky. It _is_ entirely possible that trying to correct these imbalances would do more harm than good. However, it is _also_ possible that there are some "low-hanging fruit" corrections which would bring tech gender ratios back into balance without really inconveniencing anybody. Given that it's possible that some interventions might bring about a more natural gender ratio, it's reasonable to try many different types of interventions, and see which ones work.
Note that the root of this problem is men not taking women seriously. The more serious men take womens' views, the better everything gets.
"the root of this problem is men not taking women seriously"
is what I find to be the most important takeaway. As a person in STEM, you need to take women seriously when they talk about this stuff. Ask yourself why you're so quick to dismiss the "minority of women" and "activists'" experiences.
That's a good question. Personally, I take people seriously if they take the problem seriously. I don't take activists seriously because too many of the them come from a subjective "feels before facts" place, and my strong belief that the main reason there is a gender disparity in tech is that women simply aren't interested (which TFA proves).
I emphatically think that tech would greatly benefit from having a more equal gender ratio, but I think that the programs and solutions activists want to implement -- and have implemented, like affirmative action -- and the impossibility of discussing their validity is absurd.
What we should focus on is the reasons behind women's disinterest in engineering fields. What are they?
None of their friends want to pursue the field? Culture? Biology? Lack of role models? That they simply, given the chance, would rather do something else?
Perhaps a mix of the above?
Once we've identified what the reasons are, and which reasons we can actually do something about, we should use this information to eliminate any external obstacles preventing women to choose a tech career.
My sad anecdotal experience from asking many brilliant women why they wouldn't pursue a career in IT even though they clearly possess the potential for it, is that because they are brilliant they can choose any career path they want, and they are more interested in things that are not tech, because tech is not social enough.
In the end, I believe much of it is a PR issue; we need to get rid of the cultural idea that IT is only for the anti-social 80s hacker living in his mom's basement.
Affirmative action, e.g., "positive" discrimination, may indirectly deal with this PR issue, but surely there are many, many methods that are better and more fair to everyone?
Men are systematically forgotten in every single « equality » program. Case in point :
> Women in STEM complain that...
Have we EVER interviewed men in STEM in this whole story ? How do they feel abour the recognition of their skills and hard work ? Oh, yeah, the last one who « talked » was James Damore.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes. I totally feel men are going to be listened to, I totally feel we’re on an equal basis with how women’s problems are equal to men’s problems. Men can go fuck themselves in this society, that’s all I witness.
Oh is that a surprise that mens commit suicide at 4x the pace of women? Sure that can’t be because we tell them to fuck off?
My favorite is reddit.com/r/MensLib
Why must we respond to legitimate concerns with "but it's hard for us TOO". We can address both at the same time. This does not have to be framed as men vs. women.
- man
Can you read at all? OP did not say anything like that
A lot of the girls I meet in tech tell me stories of positive discrimination. One even said she didn't take a higher paid job because she didn't want it offered to her just because she was a woman (I believe the interviewer said that was why they offered it).
I didn't hear these kinds of stories 5 years ago but I do now.
It all kind of makes me a bit uneasy - I'm not sure this newfound enthusiasm for companies biasing hiring specifically to women is actually making things better for women in tech.
This doesn't make much sense if we assume that "It may very well be that men and women have different criteria".
According to what you wrote, the real problem is that women in STEM have "have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions".
For this, the desired solution would obviously be "better treatment of women in STEM" -- not, "more women in STEM".
Now, getting more women in STEM might indeed be ONE way to achieve "better treatment of women in STEM", but it's the wrong way to achieve that if more women don't really want to go into STEM. If we are willing to accept that
(a) women in STEM have "have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions".
(b) "It may very well be that men and women have different criteria" (and might be less inclined to go into STEM)
then we should just fix (a). Ensure that women in STEM are treated better -- WHATEVER their percentage of STEM jobs.
>Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
At the same time not entertaining the thought that - as the linked study shows - that women might not just have "different criteria" but like some STEM careers less (and not just the treatment they get while in STEM careers, but some STEM fields in general as fields) makes it a "thought crime" and stops searching for truth in favor of what's the fashionable ideology of the day.
This is a good point, which is why my argument rests on the claim that more women will want to go into STEM if they are going to feel more comfortable in those positions.
In my view, it all comes down to why you think women aren't in STEM. Is it because they don't want to do STEM work, or is it because they don't want to be in these spaces? Based on the myriad amount of women who can do work of a similar calibre (in medicine especially), AND the evidence that women used to be not only more welcome in programming, but absolutely DOMINANT in it: I disagree with the former, and subscribe to the latter opinion.
I feel that many think that women don't want to do STEM work because they think of the women who made fun of them in high school or some other such rubbish and use that to infer how all women think about STEM (and tech especially). One's reasoning for not being inclined to do STEM is just as important as them not doing it.
It's just insane that people make the leap from "STEM might not have equal interest between men and women" to "Diversity-promoting programs are harmful".
Any other position is literally assuming the existing culture is full of bigots that must be stopped and forced to comply via "diversity promoting programs", all of which may ultimately have zero positive effects. How is that not insane?
You would be incorrect. Programming used to be considered an offshoot of secretarial and data entry work, which is why it was once dominated by women. Then men's engagement skyrocketed while women's ambled along at a more gradual pace.
Secondly, this isn't about ability. Women are just as capable of doing this work, but there does exist an innate interest component. I recommend you read up on the people vs. things hypothesis, which has a high degree of predictive success in categorizing those who ultimately choose STEM work [1]. Those interested in working with things are driven towards pure STEM, and those interested in working with people largely avoid STEM or do STEM where they can apply those skills to work with people (think chemistry degrees to become pharmacists, math degrees to become teachers, etc.).
And lo and behold, wouldn't you know that those interested in working with things are largely men, by a significant margin, and those interested in working with people are largely women. Some of these tendencies may be socially influenced, but these preferences show up as young as grade 3!
Now there's definitely discrimination in STEM, but I haven't seen a comparative analysis that demonstrates that STEM exhibits worse rates of discrimination than other fields, such that it deserves all of this negative press. People just seem to assume that's the case because of the gender ratios and some terrible discrimination stories you've no doubt read about. I've read such stories about medicine and law, which have long since achieved gender parity.
So then empathetic people naturally conclude that the best way to stop this discrimination is by balancing the gender scales, but this whole edifice is based on very questionable premises, and the remedy consists of literally forcing women to pursue careers they're not interested in. The cure seems frankly worse than the disease.
[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0018...
So, doesn't the post contradict this? Less women are in STEM in countries with BETTER equality.
That's because it's a good comment.
> men and women have different criteria, but that is completely irrelevant
No, it's not at all irrelevant, because the fact that fewer women choose STEM fields has been used to design a narrative about the causes when the evidence does not actually support that narrative, and in fact the simplest explanation is simply that women prefer other fields, and therefore choose these fields unless other pressures override those preferences.
> Women in STEM complain that they have less job prospects and feel uncomfortable in their positions.
Citation needed. All we have are (a) individual stories, read anecdotes, not data on actual problems occurring and (b) hard statistical data on the distribution.
These two independent facts are woven together to create the narrative that (a) is systemic, for which there is no evidence and the cause of (b), for which there is also no evidence.
(I am assuming you mean either "all women" or "women in general", rather than "some women")
The only actual data I am aware of was a survey by the ACM a while back[1]. It showed few if any significant differences in job experience, socialization and attitudes between men and women.
The differences it did find were "supervisor support, career related", where women reported slightly higher support, and "comfort with technical language" and "confidence in technical skills" where men supported slightly higher levels (but still not huge).
Motivation for entering the profession were also largely the same, with men supporting slightly higher for "love of technology/computers" and women reporting slightly higher for "ease of entry into profession", "job security" and "flexible working hours".
And of course there's the Ceci/Williams study showing a 2:1 hiring advantage for women in STEM fields (academia).
>Women are interested.
Yes, some are. But not very many. In fact, most people in general aren't that interested in STEM, it's a minority occupation.
> Many that do are forced out for one reason or another
In a big survey, the biggest reasons for leaving were "spend more time with family", "lost interest", "no advancement" and "didn't like daily tasks".
Again: you are being duped by the narrative. Neither the science (see article) nor the other data back this narrative.
[1] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/2/5453-women-and-men-in-...
I either don't find this particularly simple or a particularly explanatory.
On one reading it's just banal/tautologous; most of this discussion (innate inalienable preference, versus systemic bias, versus cultural pressure) concerns preference in some sense - people choosing to do something rather than being directly forced or prevented. My understanding of this discussion is that it is about what influences preference, and whether we should try and alter those influences across the life of a person.
Furthermore it's only really explanatory if you have some a priori expectation that the class of 'woman' ought to possess some group characteristic in this respect. So to me again this seems like a phenomenological observation ('people called Harry are less scared of heights') rather than much of an explanation.
The only way I can make sense of it as an explanation is if we are linking some innate biological preference in sexual females with some intrinsic quality inherent in STEM work. I am not ideologically opposed to either biological biases or intrinsic qualities of work from a cognitive standpoint. But the casual chains I have seen spun out from one to the other seem highly inconclusive, partial, or dubious (e.g. some notion of 'mechanical reasoning' to 'preference across all of STEM'). If the argument based on this simple explanation is intended to dismiss or substantially dismiss theories of systemic biases or structural inequality then I would need to be persuaded that there are not too many nooks and crannies for these cultural mechanisms to work. But it seems to me there are. At the start of this chain there are potential biases in early education (even in the neurological bootstrapping of infancy), and at the end of the chain the link between intrinsic quality of work versus how the work is done within a cultural context.
To try and be more concrete and hypothetical, what of the effect of the teaching of discursive comprehension based subjects to boys that may make it less likely to be their best subject, what about the types of things given to babies to play with (I see this regularly with a 6 month year old daughter), what about the differential effect on working hours across pregnancy, what about the way in which daily tasks in STEM are defined, etc. Seems to me like there are many degrees of freedom here.
To me the cognitive difference between women and men seem like minor cognitive perturbations - so it is surprising that this could cause large differences in distributions in some higher order effects many steps removed like profession.
Perhaps this article might shed some light on things:
http://neurosciencenews.com/women-in-neuroscience-4548/
(Why are females underrespresented in neuroscience)
What complicates this even further is that there are more women in secondary education than man and the ratio is growing men are also considerably more likely to drop out of school than women.
Both men and women have much bigger problems than the so called STEM ratio problem which is also only apparent in engineering and computer science faculties and less so in other science and then pops up again in the PhD figures.
> No one is claiming that a perfect 50/50 ratio is all we need and then "we're done, pack it up folks". Simply that making efforts to get women into tech is actually a good idea.
Not true. The concern IS over statistical gender bias and the automatic assumption by many on the radical left that if women (no concern about men) do not make up at least 50% of some occupation's workforce, then it MUST be because of sexism or implicit bias or whatever. The problem with that claim is that there is little or no evidence for any of that in today's workforce. Furthermore, there is positive evidence that would explain the differences in terms of sex differences, something that is ideological heresy for the radical left.
The negatives you speak of, what is the evidence that women are leaving because of hostility toward women in STEM fields? If there is evidence[0], why not address the problem instead of using dubious measures like trying to force other women into fields they don't want to enter just so the ones in STEM feel comfortable. This compulsion to get women into these disciplines against their own wishes is not only intrusive and weird. It's using people.
[0] I know of certain types of things women tend to have difficulty with not just in STEM but everywhere, like asking for raises. But that's not hostility nor particular to STEM. Again, that may be something women need to learn to do instead of trying to adapt the world to themselves.
Which is definitely a problem. But there seems to be an implicit assumption that it happens at a higher rate than discrimination in every other field, and thus STEM deserves this criticism. Is this actually true? The only data I've seen keeps harping on gender parity as if parity is its own end, rather than a means to an end as you've suggested.
> Instead, as a group women have decided that the best way to make themselves more welcome in STEM - is to have more women in STEM.
Did they? Was there a group meeting and they all voted? Where is the evidence that gender parity would actually yield this result? If so, where is the evidence that the gender parity measures being taken would actually lead to parity? This seems to rest on a lot of suppositions.
Also, from what I've seen, women in STEM largely aren't driving this movement, contrary to what you seem to believe.
> Claiming that men and women just have different criteria, and thus the problem should be ignored entirely completely misses the point.
There are two problems being conflated here: the gender parity "problem", and the sexism/discrimination problem.
Articles like this are attacking the arguments that gender parity is a) actually a problem, and b) one that can be solved by simplistic measures like quotas, marketing directed at women, etc. If women truly are less interested in CS and similar fields, then none of these measures are likely to work. And so far they haven't made a dent.
I'm also skeptical the discrimination problem will be solved by these measures either. I'd prefer something far more direct.
Not only is this true, it has been fairly exhaustively researched.
> Cross-cultural consistency of sex differences for four traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and male-versus-female-typical occupational preferences. Men and women differed on all four traits. 200,000 participants from 53 nations.
> Only sex predicted means for all four traits, and sex predicted trait means much more strongly than did gender equality or the interaction between sex and gender equality. These results suggest that biological factors may contribute to sex differences in personality and that culture plays a negligible to small role in moderating sex differences in personality.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-008-9380-7
(Also I don't think a single paper counts as "exhaustively researched")
> Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things–People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = 0.35), Social (d = 0.68), and Conventional (d = 0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests.
> The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields.
Sure, it is always "possible" to do harm by taking action, but is it likely? There is widely acknowledged bias that is not believed to be a natural intrinsic gender difference by many scientists who study this, so is it better to do nothing, or to try and address the issue?
To me, this question seems a little like asking whether I should avoid erasing some files when my computer fills up, because I might delete something important. Yes, you could accidentally delete something you wanted to keep, but on the other hand, if you want to continue using it, you have no choice.
My personal guess would be that there's indeed sexism, particularly in the programming industry. This overall "not my problem" attitude from men about anything regarding this subject is a clear hint of it.
This, code of conduct, fake news, peter theil ect
I don't understand why we should try to make somebody choose a subject they didn't choose to do.
Those young women with triple A's beloved of headline writers come exam time are making a rational decision not to go into a field where they are badly paid.
Are women more money-seeking than men?
It seems to me that the assumptions which gave rise to your comment would imply that Wall Street traders should be dominated by women. Why is this not the case, in your opinion?
Would increasing the pay and status of a job increase, or decrease the percentage of women?
Should CEOs be paid more to increase their percentage of women?
Don’t forget the impact of offshoring/outsourcing. Male or female, I couldn’t in good faith recommend tech as a career choice for any young person right now. Go into something that has to be delivered in person and/or is protected by regulators. If I were young now I’d be looking at a skilled trade - a good tradesman or woman makes as much or more than most programmers, esp if they become a foreperson or other supervisory role.
Now, neither men nor women are sociopaths, but they are different. They have different behaviour towards risks, on average, among other things. That gives reasons for the society to work on having both genders in every subject.
How about just respecting people's choices??
The data from the article shows that women aren't "forced out", but rather that when external forces are removed they prefer to do other things.
Nice strawman you are doing here. You're implying women aren't choosing STEM careers because of sexual harassment which is a complete lie. Your assertion is backed only by your misandrist ideology who sees men as harassers. But facts don't care about ideology facts are facts and you chose to live in a lie.
These facetors aren't limited to geographical boundaries and hence could affect the populace of countries with both low and high HDI equally.
There is no such thing as a career without having to overcome obstacles
If they didn't choose to do a subject because, for example, they had their high school teacher(s) tell them that he "does not expect female students to do as well as male students" (I have seen that happen few years back when I was still in high school), then it surely is an undertaking worth considering.
However, this very much contradicts to the paradox. Why should women in countries with greater gender equality be less informed about available options?
As somebody that spent significant amount of time mentoring females, getting such a blank statement from a random person on HN feels absolutely motivating to continue to do so. Thanks!
The quote proposes looking at the context within which girls who show aptitude choose not to pursue STEM and see if there is anything the government, who wants more women in STEM, can do to facilitate this. It isn’t about removing the choice, it is about making a particular choice more appealing by better understanding the fundamental drivers behind particular choices.
The answer I usually hear is "an encouraging environment in college didn't prepare me for the abuse I faced in my career".
First of all, what we choose for our career is depending on many external factors, it can be people putting you off your interest but also someone helping you to learn more about it.
An important fact you're missing here, girls are lost from the STEM pathway in their early teenage years. https://it-online.co.za/2017/03/07/teenage-girls-fall-out-of... Teachers not thinking they could do STEM, parents who have other ideas for their kids (I include boys, if my mom had her way I wouldn't be a programmer) and friends who think STEM is just for stupid nerds.
"Studying computer science" and "using a computer" are worlds apart. And the distance seems to be increasing even further.
What if we try to respect womens choices and work to get them better pay for the very important work they actually do, first?
Why is it that nursing or teaching should be paid so much less than software engineering?
Or even worse: why is it so much cooler to be an engineeer like me than a nurse or teacher? The pay can partially be explained by supply/demand (qualified nurses are in high demand but buyers don't seem to be able to pay, at least not here.)
100 students per class 8 classes a day 40 year career. You have provided value to 32,000 children all of whom have two parents so value to 96,000 people well say.
If that teacher was a difference maker for 100k people, that seems very valuable.
While I agree with the entirety of your comment, I don't see how this is the case. If the physical differences between human groups cause one to prefer something over the other, how is it disparaging to attempt to validate this hypothesis?
How so?
> is a major geopolitical risk
How so?
> Arguing that women naturally prefer non-STEM fields is sexist and dangerous
How so?
> Helping drive up the numbers of women and other underrepresented populations in CS should be a major priority for developed countries.
Why? People should do what they want to do, not what you think they should be doing.
30 years is a long time. I suspect we'll have figured out how to close the semantic gap for the 99.999% of people who aren't programmers.
raises the question of _why_ women in these egalitarian societies are currently are selecting against STEM. Because for example there are plenty of female accountants, which is not normally thought of as a "people" business. So perhaps the environmental factors could change the preferences.
Whether the overall result is preferable for society, I have no idea.
How about doctors vs nurses? I think this is a much more relevant comparison. In the united states (sorry) male doctors outnumber female by about 2:1 [1], while female nurses outnumber male nurses by more than 10:1 [2]. Comparing these two professions it's a lot easier to make the argument that women are implicitly encouraged to set their expectations lower than men, who actually may feel emasculated as a nurse.
STEM jobs are seen as more difficult to train for and to achieve than non-STEM jobs, similar to the job of a doctor compared to the job of a nurse. If you're confused as to why women choose 'difficult' jobs less often, I hope this line of thinking is convincing...
[1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-gend... [2] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-number-of-pr...
so, all those high-power, highly-paid, female lawyers are likely to have just breezed right though?
Why did you even post this acerbic and wrong reply that ignored the whole point of what I was saying?
That doesn't make the profession less noble or endearing or anything -- but by any metric that we use to judge modern occupations, a nurse ranks lower than a doctor in most every way besides number of hours worked.
Getting through medical school and residency requires absolutely horrendous working hours including night shifts, and extremely long work shifts that seem unreasonable or unsafe to me, but that doctors have just accepted. Becoming a medical doctor definitely seems like it's in the upper echelon of demanding jobs. Within the field of medicine, men also disproportionately select the most demanding specialties like surgery while female doctors are more likely to become pediatricians.
The theory that men and women have different preferences concerning demanding jobs and work-life balance has been scientifically studied, and there's evidence in support of it. I'll share a quote from one publication that contains citations to further studies: "Women, careers, and work-life preferences":
> The majority of working women seek a large degree of work-life balance (Hakim, 2005), certainly more than men do. Women are more likely to ask for shorter work hours than to ask for higher pay or promotion (Babcock & Laschever, 2003).
https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2011/SPP457/um/23632422/Hakim...
Here, just as in the US, we have way more female nurses. However, we are also going towards way more female than male doctors; more women than men are admitted to medical school.
What we are not seeing however, are more women in science (biology is a bit of an outlier, though) and technology.
Outside of managerial roles, IT in particular is as bereft of women as it has always been.
As we have more women in medicine and law I have a hard time believing they are setting their expectations lower. I think it's as the article claims: for whatever reason they just aren't interested in STEM (in average).
I don't suppose that this could have a larger effect than the gender inequality in many countries lacking a social safety net, but it could be a contributing factor.
The idea that women, given the choice, generally would rather prioritize motherhood seems totally plausible. If that's the case, it could indicate that we need to think about diversity differently.
But I'm uncomfortable with a side effect that some of these policies could have - subtly pressuring women to focus on motherhood. The solution is complicated though if the mere existence of a good maternity leave policy encourages sexism. Hopefully general parental leave can help address this.
My family came to the US as fairly poor immigrants from Portugal. My mother worked at the time, went to college at night to earn more, which was unusual then. She didn't this out of some sense of pride or feminism, but because she simply had to. The area where I lived had other poor immigrants from Romania, Armenia, Soviet Union, etc. and many of the mothers worked very hard outside the home as well.
Empirically speaking, about 1/4 of people in STEM are women, so if you've met 0 women interested in STEM, it seems like your experience simply aren't an accurate reflection of reality. [0]
I think it's incredibly ironic that you're highlighting your own relative interest in STEM while failing to apply any degree of scientific rigor to your own thinking.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
I think you're too easily discounting his personal experience. If you ask me, at least in Germany, EE and CS is pretty much devoid of women. And if you're talking about dating, a small pool of women surrounded by men will probably be off the market most of the time. So him never dating engineers at least in my experience, is the norm.
They're doing a lot here to attract girls to STEM, but it isn't bearing much fruit.
Umm.. even US courts have disagreed with you in the James Damore case, saying that Google was right to fire him for suggesting this... I agree with you, however when the govt, judiciary and private employers agree that "men and women are the same, except when difference benefits women", there isnt a lot that can be done
U.S. courts have not yet weighed in on the James Damore case.
>Google didn't break the law when it fired James Damore over a memo that criticized the company's diversity policies and claimed tech's gender gap may be due to biological differences between men and women.
You're right, its some other entity in US that interprets laws, I assumed it was a court
My wife went into the medical field because her sister turned her onto this speciality that was easy to get into and paid quite well.
I tried to teach my smart wife to program and failed miserably because that’s not how our relationship works.
Most people in even your industry are not die hard passionate live and breathe the code lifestyle types. They show up, work, and go back to their lives.
We all know that ‘in general’ in the USA at least but I’m sure in other countries as well the genders tend to self segregate their peer networks. My close friends are men. Her close friends are women.
I think this is also why inertia is so hard to offset here, we have a strong self-reinforcing cycle that's going to take a lot of external force to break out of.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-job...
Wonderful. Yet another publicly-funded research project with implications for public policy that is behind a paywall.
I guess I'll never know the details of how "gender equality" was operationalized, and therefore never have an informed interpretation of these data. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do they announce their domain changes somewhere?
The findings only present a paradox if you believe that gender equality requires equal representation in all fields.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719
> The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.
Their definition of "gender equality" is this:
> The World Economic Forum publishes The Global Gender Gap Report annually. We used the 2015 data (World Economic Forum, 2015). For each nation, the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) assesses the degree to which girls and women fall behind boys and men on 14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary enrollment ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men falling behind). For the countries participating in the 2015 PISA, GGGI scores ranged from 0.593 for the United Arab Emirates to 0.881 for Iceland.
(One of the things I'd be curious about is whether that's just a proxy for Western cultural norms; the more commonly cited reasons for a gender gap in STEM fields in the US are things like harassment and misogyny, and it's certainly possible that those are correlated more strongly with Western culture than with cross-cultural structural inequality.)
That can explain a gradient between countries, and doesn't affect the original, purely gender question either way.
But take care not to mention this at workplaces where they use diversity hiring practices to try to artificially and unfairly inflate their percentage of women compared to the field as a whole.
It will get you fired.
Is there female attrition due to sexual harassment?
You're making a bold claim, which I am personally not seeing at all.
Care to back it up with any references?
Just because a country, by law, affords women the same rights as men that doesn't mean it's a country which is free of the social conditioning which force certain expectations upon each gender. These are things that are inherited from previous generations and do not go away so easily.
People use these results to imply something like "when people are free to do what they want they tend to their 'natural' gender role". But I don't believe this statement can be justified as countries with "more gender equality" (i.e. better women's rights) have yet to shed themselves of societal idioms and culture that feminist theory would call oppressive. I.e. traditional gender roles in the media, toys etc.
I think a more accurate statement would be "when people are free to do what they want, they will tend to behaviours they're conditioned toward." After all, as we can see in the "less gender equality" countries, larger percentages of women in society can and do enjoy careers in STEM fields. What would be interesting is to see 10-20 years down the line how some countries progress and how these behaviours feedback into the next generation.