9 ms·

Why Brilliant Girls Tend to Favor Non-STEM Careers

116 points by hudon 9y ago

SerLava 9y ago
I've been questioning the general assumption that male-dominated things are always desirable. Maybe some things are stupid to do, and men tend to get tricked into them more often. Maybe moderately high pay is a trick to get people to do draining, unhealthy jobs, and men are more likely to succumb to the temptation. It's not a good idea to become an underwater welder, but you do get paid a lot. It all goes into medical care, but you do get paid a lot.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  I would agree that there is a certain, eh... stupidity, around risk-taking, lol. Or perhaps just a "not giving into loss aversion." For whatever reason (and while it pains me to generalize), the high-risk, high-reward jobs are all almost all men. Any woman who feels a calling should of course go for it, and no one should stand in that person's way, but I wouldn't ever expect, say, a 50/50 perfect proportion of gender participants at some future date (as this article indicates, this is a dysfunctional expectation) Back when bitcoin was only $10 a pop, a bunch of guys in our programming shop wanted to get involved. 100% of their wives nixed it. 100%. I was the only single guy, so I put in some money... Crazy at the time? Perhaps. Crazy now? Not with 20/20 hindsight...
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Despite just-so explanations from evolutionary psychology, there is definitely an argument to be made that this is the byproduct of our culture, rather than something innate.
    - dilemma 9y ago
      Culture is just as real as physiology and physics.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      That a culture can survive the death of a much higher percentage of men than it can of women is not a "just-so" story. It is a fact.
      - holografix 9y ago
        I think you hit the nail on the head here. Are there any studies showing men have a higher predisposition to taking risks? I cant quote one but I think there are. There is an evolutionary reason for men to take more risks and have a desire to engage in hunting behaviours. We just have to be conscious of that and as per one of the top commenter's remarks not "fall" for something irrational or be driven by societal pressures.
        steanne 9y ago
        white men, actually "What on first inspection seemed like a sex difference was actually a difference between white males and everyone else." http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-think-about-risk http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-...
        kalleboo 9y ago
        Interesting. The sexist aspect also seems to be a U.S. thing. From that article: > Interestingly, a recent study conducted in the more socially egalitarian and gender-equal Sweden failed to find the “white male effect.” This national survey of nearly 1,500 households found that, all else being equal—and in stark contrast with the U.S. data—Swedish men and women had very similar perceptions of lifestyle, environmental, technological, health, and social risks
        vacri 9y ago
        In order to make 100 babies in 1 year, you need a minimum of 1 man and 100 women. Men actually are more disposable in terms of propagation of the species. However, our societies are considerably more complex than that one fact; it's a mistake to use it to explain the fundamentals of everything our society does.
    - solidsnack9000 9y ago
      What is the argument?
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      It's definitely true that guys are encouraged to take risks by peers, parents and others.
  - soup10 9y ago
    Software isn't high-risk for women though. Diversity thirsty companies are desperate to hire technical women with even a shred of competency. It's just not a cool thing to do though, women don't want to be geeks. There is much more stigma against non-normie women than there is men. Nay for men, there is a heavy stigma against being normal and boring.
    - pmarreck 9y ago
      The article pointed out that men are typically more interested in working with things than women, and women are typically more interested in working with people than men, and that this is highly correlative and can explain many of the differences we see in STEM, because most STEM fields have a lot of "things" going on. The article even generously suggests that many women are adept in BOTH math and verbal, but end up in more verbal jobs because men are typically NOT adept in both, so all the high-math low-verbal guys end up doing mathy jobs, and all the high-math high-verbal women do verbal/people jobs, because the mathy jobs are all the guys can do, while the women can do either (but take the non-mathy jobs due to market effects). Software is kinda mathy, I guess.
      - jerf 9y ago
        "Software is kinda mathy, I guess." Food for thought: Software has a bizarre curve if you look at it from a math/verbal skills perspective. For what could very well be the first 10-15 years of a software career, software is very math-y. Then, if you want to continue to grow, it takes a very verbal turn. If you want to continue to grow in software leadership and capabilities, you need to be able to express yourself, convince others, navigate politics, and figure out how to translate these issues into the code you structure and write. It isn't a sudden transition and some may transition earlier than 10 years, but it's an interesting way of looking at things. (Note I'm not talking "management", but continuing up an engineering path.) A lot of engineering looks like that. If software has any unique characteristics it is how far a single math-oriented programmer can get due to our unique abilities to pull down huge libraries with incredible functionality without having to work with anyone to do it. Again, just food for thought with no particular argument in sight here.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  Men often do those stupid high paying things simply due to societal pressure. Barring being physically beautiful (which most men just aren't), for a male to be attractive as a mate it helps tremendously to not be poor. I don't see that changing in my lifetime no matter how much people gnash their teeth. There's the political stance, and then there are down to earth, real life considerations such as having a comfortable lifestyle for yourself an your children. Currently, and as far as the eye can see into the future, men are responsible for providing that, and they largely don't have a choice in the matter.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. But even if, it's pretty clear that it were men who declared those things to be desirable. So it sounds a bit hollow when they now tell women "Oh, you don't want to do that anyway. It's too dangerous!"
  - noobermin 9y ago
    Another thing to touch on even if you agree with the article, this is mostly talking about choices in career, not how well we pay such people in those careers.
  - meric 9y ago
    If men find it desirable then is it automatically desirable to women?
    - matt4077 9y ago
      Men write, direct, and play the lead in most movies. They write the news, journal articles, books, speeches, and laws. Then, they're more likely to hold those speeches, break those laws, and peer-review those journal articles. They hold more power deciding which job gets paid how much, which group of people gets a parade on July 4th (soldiers, not nurses), and which profession to glorify in the next credit card commercial. So, yes: our impression of a job's prestige is formed by culture, and that culture certainly was–and largely still is–dominated by men. And yes, of course that culture has the same impact on mens' and women's views. They are people, you know?
      - meric 9y ago
        According to your logic - A patriarchal culture has influenced what roles society find desirable, and therefore we ought to declare that those roles ARE in fact desirable, and the roles patriarchal culture has deemed less desirable , we declare they ARE in fact less desirable. How does that do anything to patriarchy except by reinforcing it? If those who are not in the roles patriarchy has defined as desirable, and are in the roles patriarchy has defined as less desirable, by doubling down on the patriarchy's preferences, they have rigged the game and declared themselves the losers. How can equality be achieved?
- cropsieboss 9y ago
  Testosterone does wonders. Logarithmic increase in quality of life, if any, by time wasted, yet men do it all the time. Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. These things influence and create inequalities. There's no discrimination in modern western world capable enough and encompassing to create that kind of impact. It might be that exactly discrimination (as is done in Iran) influences women to pursue STEM fields (and they do) but in the free world women go for their own desires.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - klipt 9y ago
    > Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. I don't know the demographic breakdown, but they might even be in the majority?
    - Shorel 9y ago
      Writing is not a quick improvisation activity. I think we can say there are plenty of successful male stand up comedians. It is more related to the issue.
    - cropsieboss 9y ago
      > And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. And yet the more verbally competent the woman, more she's inclined to go away from stem. More women played the piano during the era when blues was in the making, yet it was mostly african-american men that pushed the genre, and women inventing no genres at all. There's obviously an inherent biological drive making men do stuff large scale, and women do stuff in their small circles.
deleted 9y ago
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peterwwillis 9y ago
A coherent article trying to establish evidence of a particular argument or claim would include all available studies and weigh them against their various differences in order to find a viable conclusion. It would, at the very least, attempt to search for alternate explanations and present them, and then make an attempt to debunk them. The article's main problem is it's trying to attack a very specific problem, which is actually part of broader trends in human behavior and culture. It doesn't address that at all. The author claims "gap != discrimination", which is true in basic definition and theory. But if you look at all the other studies that show things like hiring discrimination, discrimination getting into a good school, discrimination based on where/how one grows up, cultural discrimination, etc, gaps immediately form and cause a ripple effect. That there are about as many black men as white women (or less) in a given tech field is one example of this. Pick any other discriminated-against minority and you see the same, except when hiring from overseas (economic benefit) or hiring someone with a preferred social stereotype. If the author's argument is that women simply prefer not to go into this field due to some weird connection between math and speech, then you have to ask why the connection? Is it due to "biology", or social conditioning, or the wariness of sexual harassment in a male-dominated field, or the low pay, or a combination of these things? This article doesn't attempt to look at those, and its limited view of the subject leaves it running into the same correlation-is-causation conclusions it laments.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  > Pick any other discriminated-against minority and you see the same, except when hiring from overseas (economic benefit) or hiring someone with a preferred social stereotype. So you really think that the huge over-representation of Indians and East Asians (relative to population) in STEM fields is just because people are hiring a preferred social stereotype? Could in perhaps be that they're actually more qualified? That's my main problem with arguments that all numeric disparities are because on discrimination. I've never seen any convincing argument or study that Indians and East Asians suffer less discrimination than, say, Hispanics, but as they are no longer "under-represented minorities", they no longer "count" toward diversity goals.
  - 9y ago
le-mark 9y ago
This blog posts challenges the gender gap in STM, does it exist? Why does it exist? The author cites some studies that support his argument that women simply prefer to work with people, not things.
chrismealy 9y ago
In 1970 law and medical school graduates were about 10% female. Now it's about 50%. Did women change their interests? Are interests fixed? It doesn't matter. Just stop discriminating and give everyone the chance to develop their interests and capabilities.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  > Surely girls and women have, historically, been discriminated against in such fields. But discrimination in 1950 or 1970 does not constitute evidence of ongoing discrimination. That quote is straight from the article. I think the author is arguing that everyone should be given a chance to develop their interests and abilities, rather than forcing anyone's interest to match a preconceived notion of the desired population outcome.
  - bbatha 9y ago
    Considering that some fields, computer science in particular have fewer female participants than they did a few decades ago[0] its pretty clear something other than inherent differences in the sexes is at play. 0: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      Yes and no. It turns out that the more egalitarian the society, the more the genders self-segregate. The easy explanation is that once outside pressures reduce, innate differences have a much greater chance to exert themselves.
- tachyonbeam 9y ago
  I think the bigger question here is: we now have over 50% of people enrolling in medical fields being women. It stands to reason that this is because discrimination was taken away. Why didn't the same thing happen in math and engineering fields? Are we really supposed to believe that women entered the medical field in vast numbers because the medical field rapidly became much more welcoming of women? Do we really believe that women didn't enter engineering fields, as they have done in medical fields, because of widespread discrimination everywhere in North America?
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
By the time they are born, male and female brains are already different: "A huge testosterone surge beginning in the eighth week will turn this unisex brain male by killing off some cells in the communication centers and growing more cells in the sex and aggression centers." Since they are different at birth, we shouldn't be surprised that their interests are different, and accept that these differences contribute to varying populations of men and women in different professions. Stamp out bias. Don't force a specific population distribution. [0] http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2274147&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2274147&page=1
- deleted 9y ago
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- yodon 9y ago
  Did you read the article? It's most definitely not trying to force a specific population distribution.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
    I read it. I am not disagreeing with it, it supports my position.
- vectorpush 9y ago
  It does not follow logically that just because men and women are biologically different that those differences are necessarily significant with regard to career distributions.
  - hasenj 9y ago
    It does follow that we should not expect them to be the same.
    - rexpop 9y ago
      For a strict enough definition of "the same", your statement is meaninglessly apodictic.
josephagoss 9y ago
Should STEM be seen as desirable though? It is one of those careers where you either make it before you are 25 or you are replaced. STEM fields are extremely ageist where at 25 and onwards you have to look over your shoulder and watch out for the next 16 year old taking your job. STEM for this reason is stressful and non sustainable. Being in STEM and much older than 25 I feel that perhaps I made the wrong decision getting into STEM. Perhaps a people orientated career would have lasted me longer. I haven't been replaced yet, but can feel it coming...
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  Next article - STEM is ageist and stressful.
- hobo_mark 9y ago
  Why 25? On my planet most people in STEM at 25 are students or entry-level employees with little if any clue about what they are going to do with their life?
- notanidiot666 9y ago
  STEM != programmer. There are plenty of STEM jobs you can't even start until you're ~30. Also, being replaced by a younger person is a function of the utility you provide vs. your cost. I work with plenty of "older" people, and some of them definitely get replaced. If you're not delivering, it doesn't make sense to keep you around if the budget is limited. "Older" specialists don't necessarily get replaced, as it's silly to imagine a kid can substitute specialized experience, but rather the development strategy pivots to something deliverable with the resources at hand for the given timeframe. Edit: I probably fall into your "older" category...
- tnecniv 9y ago
  > It is one of those careers where you either make it before you are 25 or you are replaced. Unless you are some prodigy who started college early, you won't even have a PhD until you are 27 and many STEM fields tend to require multiple years of post-doc work before you can get a professorship due to the number of qualified candidates (unless you are working under a different definition of making it).
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
I think the author's evidence that there is scientific bias (social scientists preferring to see bias-based explanations for numeric disparities over other reasons) is quite strong. I'm curious if there is other data on this subject.
EGreg 9y ago
Many years ago, I happened upon this analysis of why things are the way they are, and it rang true: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm I def recommend Baumeister and Tice to HN.
- cropsieboss 9y ago
  Brilliant!
WalterBright 9y ago
Consider this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE476MvO_g&feature=youtu.be&t=124 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE476MvO_g&feature=youtu.be... If this doesn't rock you down to your toes, you are not an engineer. At least not a born engineer.
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  I guess I'm not an engineer.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    How about this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnXBasZ5yBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnXBasZ5yBc
- mmel 9y ago
  If this doesn't rock you down to your toes, you are not an motor enthusiast. At least not a born motor enthusiast.
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    My reaction when I got my souped up engine to run the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c
- madez 9y ago
  While I think your conclusion is clearly wrong, I can't stop watching and listening to the machine starting up at 4:56. It also bursts into life with a violent explosion as one can see in the mans cloth, but the prior build-up with the short period of decreasing frequency exactly before the start fascinates me. I don't even like engines particularly :S
  - WalterBright 9y ago
    8:28 ain't bad, either. If you get a chance, go see an air show like the one at Paine Field where they fly P-51s, etc. The engine starts are the best part. No video can ever do it justice. Hanging out at Top Fuel drag racing events is also major fun.
Spooky23 9y ago
I never understood why certain female dominated fields like Nursing are excluded from STEM. My mom was a nurse, my sister in law is a NP and my wife is studying to be an RN. It sure looks a lot more like STEM than my "tech" job, which has more elements in common with what my aunt did as a secretary in the 70s than science.
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  I often refer to most computer programming as "digital carpentry." Of course, there are definitely jobs that require someone be more of an architect or a scientist, but the vast majority of jobs just need someone who can build common things that work and work well. In that sense, most of the programming work I did in the first decade of my career had more in common with the blue collar tradecraft that my father did than it did with anything anyone would consider to be a STEM career.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Agreed. I always thought of it more as a trade, though now that I've been in the field for a few years, I'm realizing that technical prowess is secondary to political skill. A sub par programmer with excellent political skills will be seen by the organization as more valuable, whether or not he actually is. (This isn't sour grapes, I've been on both sides of the evaluation).
    - coolgeek 9y ago
      Political skill can certainly get some people, in some situations, a lot further than they deserve. But technical prowess is absolutely not secondary to political skill in any general sense And you can substitute just about anything else for 'technical skill' in the above sentences and it will still read true
  - tzs 9y ago
    > I often refer to most computer programming as "digital carpentry" Then perhaps it is appropriate that at at least one company, Hughes Aircraft, the union that represents programmers is the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. That odd situation came about because a whole bunch of union carpenters worked on the Spruce Goose. After that project was shelved many of those carpenters went on to other jobs within the company, but kept the UBC as their representative. As Hughes expanded and also acquired other companies, UBC continued to represent them. In the '70s they made a big effort to organize the rest of the workers, and the result was the UBC ended up representing the majority of Hughes Aircraft workers even though almost no actual carpentry takes place there.
noobermin 9y ago
Very interesting article, and sort of depressing for me, specifically the conclusion of Wang et. al[0]. That if you're good at both math and communication, you choose a more social field over the mathematical one is almost a condemnation of the mathier fields. Then again, being good at math in high school as Wang et. al measures doesn't really translate to math in college, which is much more problem solving oriented than math in high school. That's something to keep in mind here, so the whole idea that they end up being spread more broadly and thus aren't concentrated in STEM as the socially dumb men are is a more convincing explanation, it really doesn't have to do with differences in ability, it's merely other factors, mainly which major they try first. How interesting. [0] http://www.cds.web.unc.edu/files/2014/10/not_lack_of_ability.pdf http://www.cds.web.unc.edu/files/2014/10/not_lack_of_ability...
- pmarreck 9y ago
  > That if you're good at both math and communication, you choose a more social field over the mathematical one is almost a condemnation of the mathier fields. I didn't see it that way. I saw it as: There's a market of "mathy" and "verby" jobs. Men can mainly only be good at the mathy ones. Women can be good at both. So women end up at the verby jobs simply by nature of market forces.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aidenn0 9y ago
  It's more complicated than that, even with very simple models. Consider the toy model where there are two types of talent, "A" and "B" and that society benefits roughly equally, but sub-linearly, from productivity added to "A" talent jobs and "B" talent jobs. Consider the following talent distribution: A | B -------------- Men |1 | 2 Women |2 | 2 As society tends towards the maximally efficient it will tend towards women in all A jobs and men in all B jobs, despite the fact that women are just as good at B jobs. This obviously is a toy model, but it shows that even very simple assumptions can lead to very odd outcomes.
  - 9y ago
dlwdlw 9y ago
A large weakness people have is the necessity of a sense of safety before taking risks. A risk here is defined as a testing of a personal idea. 3rd party ideas necessarily are already vetted to some degree by reality because transportation to you require going through reality. Risks as defined then are a necessity for living a unique life. It isn't always the most desirable thing as the majority of people would rather follow a crowd, but it does often have the most disproportionate rewards for work input. I don't know if it's biological or cultural, but girls/women often require a much higher sense of safety before being willing to do risky things. There is also a much higher "cost" from society from doing things that look foolish. This results in less of a desire to learn, especially as you approach the cutting edge where the failure rate rapidly rises and civilized structures start deteriorating. (the social structure that works best in this "wild" is the frat bro/alpha male structure) Being born beautiful is actually a weakness due to an addiction to strength in this regard. A corresponding male strength is academic excellence. Both these strengths become weaknesses because of lack of experience dealing with setbacks and shocks as well as the accumulated dry tinder that was never periodically cleared via said setbacks. (old people are stubborn because they have too much tinder to risk in a fire/refactor) I use academics as the male example as it creates a drives to validate the prior excellence often forcing them along paths into finance or other areas with high monetary compensation. Selling soul for money, taking no risk by not being true to yourself. Thus addiction to strength creates risk averseness and stagnates growth. Girls are often shielded from reality and also have an escape route of marriage. (men don't, an extreme example of an alternative for them for meaning is being a suicide bomber) Almost all social structures in the world heavily cause girls to become addicted to social validation. (Note that individual validation can be "proved" by money while social validation cannot. Objective and subjective tokens of value) The stereotype of "ugly" girls in STEM is a result of being beautiful increasing the chance of this addiction. (The stereotype of smart/beautiful but crazy may have origins in life-changing experiences that shatters the status addiction but did collateral damage. ) Safety is a necessity for learning which necessarily involves mistakes. However the minimum safety level can be vastly lowered by encouraging a dismissive attitude towards social validation.
- jhanschoo 9y ago
  I understand the point you are trying to illustrate, but your choice of examples require more evidence than folk knowledge and stereotypes. For example, you talk about men and academic excellence being such an example. But isn't it the case that women in general excel academically more than men? Why do you not point out/why do we not obeserve such a pattern, then?
PlugTunin 9y ago
1. 70 percent more girls than boys had strong math and verbal skills; 2. Boys were more than twice as likely as girls to have strong math skills but not strong verbal skills. No surprise on the 1st; I recognize that women can do/be anything they want in this world. But I wonder if the 2nd stat is explained mostly by the fact that MORE men are strong at math (not being a chauvinist pig; just running with stereotype)...or are the two genders equally represented among Math Elite and girls twice as likely to have strong verbal skills?
- tnecniv 9y ago
  > or are the two genders equally represented among Math Elite and girls twice as likely to have strong verbal skills? Going straight by the numbers, it seems like the former. Assuming you define math elite to be PhDs holders, this AMS study from 2005 [1] (a little old, I know), says that 30% of math PhDs are awarded to women. Societal factors could also be at play, obviously. [1] http://www.ams.org/profession/data/cbms-survey/chapter4.pdf http://www.ams.org/profession/data/cbms-survey/chapter4.pdf
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  It really depends how you define "strong." But boys outnumber girls over 2:1 in getting 800 on the math SAT, while it's something like 1:1.2 on the verbal.
TimTheTinker 9y ago
Is this being modded down? (93 points/6 hours, and already on page 3 after being on the front front page 2 hours ago...)
knbknb 9y ago
My gut feeling is that women prefer jobs where one must communicate more. Many tech professionals are required to spend their workdays lonely in front of the computer. This is a very unattractive concept to most women. This may be a biased view, yes, but that's just how they perceive it.
- nostromo123 9y ago
  Funny, I perceive work in tech as having too much interaction! It definitely depends on your personality, but I have yet to encounter the magical "no interaction" software engineer job. Just when you get in a good zone, there's some developer meeting or someone needs some information from you. Workdays spent lonely in front of the computer are rare and almost like vacation :-D PS. I'm a woman, but I think this affects both genders, as it's more of a personality factor (my husband is the same).

116 points by hudon 9y ago

I've been questioning the general assumption that male-dominated things are always desirable. Maybe some things are stupid to do, and men tend to get tricked into them more often. Maybe moderately high pay is a trick to get people to do draining, unhealthy jobs, and men are more likely to succumb to the temptation. It's not a good idea to become an underwater welder, but you do get paid a lot. It all goes into medical care, but you do get paid a lot.

pmarreck 9y ago
I would agree that there is a certain, eh... stupidity, around risk-taking, lol. Or perhaps just a "not giving into loss aversion." For whatever reason (and while it pains me to generalize), the high-risk, high-reward jobs are all almost all men. Any woman who feels a calling should of course go for it, and no one should stand in that person's way, but I wouldn't ever expect, say, a 50/50 perfect proportion of gender participants at some future date (as this article indicates, this is a dysfunctional expectation) Back when bitcoin was only $10 a pop, a bunch of guys in our programming shop wanted to get involved. 100% of their wives nixed it. 100%. I was the only single guy, so I put in some money... Crazy at the time? Perhaps. Crazy now? Not with 20/20 hindsight...
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Despite just-so explanations from evolutionary psychology, there is definitely an argument to be made that this is the byproduct of our culture, rather than something innate.
  - dilemma 9y ago
    Culture is just as real as physiology and physics.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    That a culture can survive the death of a much higher percentage of men than it can of women is not a "just-so" story. It is a fact.
    - holografix 9y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head here. Are there any studies showing men have a higher predisposition to taking risks? I cant quote one but I think there are. There is an evolutionary reason for men to take more risks and have a desire to engage in hunting behaviours. We just have to be conscious of that and as per one of the top commenter's remarks not "fall" for something irrational or be driven by societal pressures.
      - steanne 9y ago
        white men, actually "What on first inspection seemed like a sex difference was actually a difference between white males and everyone else." http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-think-about-risk http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/the-hidden-sexism-of-how-we-...
        kalleboo 9y ago
        Interesting. The sexist aspect also seems to be a U.S. thing. From that article: > Interestingly, a recent study conducted in the more socially egalitarian and gender-equal Sweden failed to find the “white male effect.” This national survey of nearly 1,500 households found that, all else being equal—and in stark contrast with the U.S. data—Swedish men and women had very similar perceptions of lifestyle, environmental, technological, health, and social risks
      - vacri 9y ago
        In order to make 100 babies in 1 year, you need a minimum of 1 man and 100 women. Men actually are more disposable in terms of propagation of the species. However, our societies are considerably more complex than that one fact; it's a mistake to use it to explain the fundamentals of everything our society does.
  - solidsnack9000 9y ago
    What is the argument?
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    It's definitely true that guys are encouraged to take risks by peers, parents and others.
- soup10 9y ago
  Software isn't high-risk for women though. Diversity thirsty companies are desperate to hire technical women with even a shred of competency. It's just not a cool thing to do though, women don't want to be geeks. There is much more stigma against non-normie women than there is men. Nay for men, there is a heavy stigma against being normal and boring.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    The article pointed out that men are typically more interested in working with things than women, and women are typically more interested in working with people than men, and that this is highly correlative and can explain many of the differences we see in STEM, because most STEM fields have a lot of "things" going on. The article even generously suggests that many women are adept in BOTH math and verbal, but end up in more verbal jobs because men are typically NOT adept in both, so all the high-math low-verbal guys end up doing mathy jobs, and all the high-math high-verbal women do verbal/people jobs, because the mathy jobs are all the guys can do, while the women can do either (but take the non-mathy jobs due to market effects). Software is kinda mathy, I guess.
    - jerf 9y ago
      "Software is kinda mathy, I guess." Food for thought: Software has a bizarre curve if you look at it from a math/verbal skills perspective. For what could very well be the first 10-15 years of a software career, software is very math-y. Then, if you want to continue to grow, it takes a very verbal turn. If you want to continue to grow in software leadership and capabilities, you need to be able to express yourself, convince others, navigate politics, and figure out how to translate these issues into the code you structure and write. It isn't a sudden transition and some may transition earlier than 10 years, but it's an interesting way of looking at things. (Note I'm not talking "management", but continuing up an engineering path.) A lot of engineering looks like that. If software has any unique characteristics it is how far a single math-oriented programmer can get due to our unique abilities to pull down huge libraries with incredible functionality without having to work with anyone to do it. Again, just food for thought with no particular argument in sight here.
0xbear 9y ago
Men often do those stupid high paying things simply due to societal pressure. Barring being physically beautiful (which most men just aren't), for a male to be attractive as a mate it helps tremendously to not be poor. I don't see that changing in my lifetime no matter how much people gnash their teeth. There's the political stance, and then there are down to earth, real life considerations such as having a comfortable lifestyle for yourself an your children. Currently, and as far as the eye can see into the future, men are responsible for providing that, and they largely don't have a choice in the matter.
matt4077 9y ago
Maybe, maybe not. But even if, it's pretty clear that it were men who declared those things to be desirable. So it sounds a bit hollow when they now tell women "Oh, you don't want to do that anyway. It's too dangerous!"
- noobermin 9y ago
  Another thing to touch on even if you agree with the article, this is mostly talking about choices in career, not how well we pay such people in those careers.
- meric 9y ago
  If men find it desirable then is it automatically desirable to women?
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Men write, direct, and play the lead in most movies. They write the news, journal articles, books, speeches, and laws. Then, they're more likely to hold those speeches, break those laws, and peer-review those journal articles. They hold more power deciding which job gets paid how much, which group of people gets a parade on July 4th (soldiers, not nurses), and which profession to glorify in the next credit card commercial. So, yes: our impression of a job's prestige is formed by culture, and that culture certainly was–and largely still is–dominated by men. And yes, of course that culture has the same impact on mens' and women's views. They are people, you know?
    - meric 9y ago
      According to your logic - A patriarchal culture has influenced what roles society find desirable, and therefore we ought to declare that those roles ARE in fact desirable, and the roles patriarchal culture has deemed less desirable , we declare they ARE in fact less desirable. How does that do anything to patriarchy except by reinforcing it? If those who are not in the roles patriarchy has defined as desirable, and are in the roles patriarchy has defined as less desirable, by doubling down on the patriarchy's preferences, they have rigged the game and declared themselves the losers. How can equality be achieved?
cropsieboss 9y ago
Testosterone does wonders. Logarithmic increase in quality of life, if any, by time wasted, yet men do it all the time. Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. These things influence and create inequalities. There's no discrimination in modern western world capable enough and encompassing to create that kind of impact. It might be that exactly discrimination (as is done in Iran) influences women to pursue STEM fields (and they do) but in the free world women go for their own desires.
- deleted 9y ago
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- klipt 9y ago
  > Verbal brilliance of women is also a purely biological thing. Their brain is wired for it. And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. I don't know the demographic breakdown, but they might even be in the majority?
  - Shorel 9y ago
    Writing is not a quick improvisation activity. I think we can say there are plenty of successful male stand up comedians. It is more related to the issue.
  - cropsieboss 9y ago
    > And yet there are plenty of successful male writers. And yet the more verbally competent the woman, more she's inclined to go away from stem. More women played the piano during the era when blues was in the making, yet it was mostly african-american men that pushed the genre, and women inventing no genres at all. There's obviously an inherent biological drive making men do stuff large scale, and women do stuff in their small circles.

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peterwwillis 9y ago

A coherent article trying to establish evidence of a particular argument or claim would include all available studies and weigh them against their various differences in order to find a viable conclusion. It would, at the very least, attempt to search for alternate explanations and present them, and then make an attempt to debunk them. The article's main problem is it's trying to attack a very specific problem, which is actually part of broader trends in human behavior and culture. It doesn't address that at all. The author claims "gap != discrimination", which is true in basic definition and theory. But if you look at all the other studies that show things like hiring discrimination, discrimination getting into a good school, discrimination based on where/how one grows up, cultural discrimination, etc, gaps immediately form and cause a ripple effect. That there are about as many black men as white women (or less) in a given tech field is one example of this. Pick any other discriminated-against minority and you see the same, except when hiring from overseas (economic benefit) or hiring someone with a preferred social stereotype. If the author's argument is that women simply prefer not to go into this field due to some weird connection between math and speech, then you have to ask why the connection? Is it due to "biology", or social conditioning, or the wariness of sexual harassment in a male-dominated field, or the low pay, or a combination of these things? This article doesn't attempt to look at those, and its limited view of the subject leaves it running into the same correlation-is-causation conclusions it laments.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
> Pick any other discriminated-against minority and you see the same, except when hiring from overseas (economic benefit) or hiring someone with a preferred social stereotype. So you really think that the huge over-representation of Indians and East Asians (relative to population) in STEM fields is just because people are hiring a preferred social stereotype? Could in perhaps be that they're actually more qualified? That's my main problem with arguments that all numeric disparities are because on discrimination. I've never seen any convincing argument or study that Indians and East Asians suffer less discrimination than, say, Hispanics, but as they are no longer "under-represented minorities", they no longer "count" toward diversity goals.
- 9y ago

le-mark 9y ago

This blog posts challenges the gender gap in STM, does it exist? Why does it exist? The author cites some studies that support his argument that women simply prefer to work with people, not things.

chrismealy 9y ago

In 1970 law and medical school graduates were about 10% female. Now it's about 50%. Did women change their interests? Are interests fixed? It doesn't matter. Just stop discriminating and give everyone the chance to develop their interests and capabilities.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
> Surely girls and women have, historically, been discriminated against in such fields. But discrimination in 1950 or 1970 does not constitute evidence of ongoing discrimination. That quote is straight from the article. I think the author is arguing that everyone should be given a chance to develop their interests and abilities, rather than forcing anyone's interest to match a preconceived notion of the desired population outcome.
- bbatha 9y ago
  Considering that some fields, computer science in particular have fewer female participants than they did a few decades ago[0] its pretty clear something other than inherent differences in the sexes is at play. 0: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    Yes and no. It turns out that the more egalitarian the society, the more the genders self-segregate. The easy explanation is that once outside pressures reduce, innate differences have a much greater chance to exert themselves.
tachyonbeam 9y ago
I think the bigger question here is: we now have over 50% of people enrolling in medical fields being women. It stands to reason that this is because discrimination was taken away. Why didn't the same thing happen in math and engineering fields? Are we really supposed to believe that women entered the medical field in vast numbers because the medical field rapidly became much more welcoming of women? Do we really believe that women didn't enter engineering fields, as they have done in medical fields, because of widespread discrimination everywhere in North America?

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

By the time they are born, male and female brains are already different: "A huge testosterone surge beginning in the eighth week will turn this unisex brain male by killing off some cells in the communication centers and growing more cells in the sex and aggression centers." Since they are different at birth, we shouldn't be surprised that their interests are different, and accept that these differences contribute to varying populations of men and women in different professions. Stamp out bias. Don't force a specific population distribution. [0] http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2274147&page=1 http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2274147&page=1

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yodon 9y ago
Did you read the article? It's most definitely not trying to force a specific population distribution.
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  I read it. I am not disagreeing with it, it supports my position.
vectorpush 9y ago
It does not follow logically that just because men and women are biologically different that those differences are necessarily significant with regard to career distributions.
- hasenj 9y ago
  It does follow that we should not expect them to be the same.
  - rexpop 9y ago
    For a strict enough definition of "the same", your statement is meaninglessly apodictic.

josephagoss 9y ago

Should STEM be seen as desirable though? It is one of those careers where you either make it before you are 25 or you are replaced. STEM fields are extremely ageist where at 25 and onwards you have to look over your shoulder and watch out for the next 16 year old taking your job. STEM for this reason is stressful and non sustainable. Being in STEM and much older than 25 I feel that perhaps I made the wrong decision getting into STEM. Perhaps a people orientated career would have lasted me longer. I haven't been replaced yet, but can feel it coming...

zaptheimpaler 9y ago
Next article - STEM is ageist and stressful.
hobo_mark 9y ago
Why 25? On my planet most people in STEM at 25 are students or entry-level employees with little if any clue about what they are going to do with their life?
notanidiot666 9y ago
STEM != programmer. There are plenty of STEM jobs you can't even start until you're ~30. Also, being replaced by a younger person is a function of the utility you provide vs. your cost. I work with plenty of "older" people, and some of them definitely get replaced. If you're not delivering, it doesn't make sense to keep you around if the budget is limited. "Older" specialists don't necessarily get replaced, as it's silly to imagine a kid can substitute specialized experience, but rather the development strategy pivots to something deliverable with the resources at hand for the given timeframe. Edit: I probably fall into your "older" category...
tnecniv 9y ago
> It is one of those careers where you either make it before you are 25 or you are replaced. Unless you are some prodigy who started college early, you won't even have a PhD until you are 27 and many STEM fields tend to require multiple years of post-doc work before you can get a professorship due to the number of qualified candidates (unless you are working under a different definition of making it).

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago

I think the author's evidence that there is scientific bias (social scientists preferring to see bias-based explanations for numeric disparities over other reasons) is quite strong. I'm curious if there is other data on this subject.

EGreg 9y ago

Many years ago, I happened upon this analysis of why things are the way they are, and it rang true: http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm http://www.denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm I def recommend Baumeister and Tice to HN.

cropsieboss 9y ago
Brilliant!

WalterBright 9y ago

Consider this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE476MvO_g&feature=youtu.be&t=124 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BE476MvO_g&feature=youtu.be... If this doesn't rock you down to your toes, you are not an engineer. At least not a born engineer.

miguelrochefort 9y ago
I guess I'm not an engineer.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  How about this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnXBasZ5yBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnXBasZ5yBc
mmel 9y ago
If this doesn't rock you down to your toes, you are not an motor enthusiast. At least not a born motor enthusiast.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  My reaction when I got my souped up engine to run the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c
madez 9y ago
While I think your conclusion is clearly wrong, I can't stop watching and listening to the machine starting up at 4:56. It also bursts into life with a violent explosion as one can see in the mans cloth, but the prior build-up with the short period of decreasing frequency exactly before the start fascinates me. I don't even like engines particularly :S
- WalterBright 9y ago
  8:28 ain't bad, either. If you get a chance, go see an air show like the one at Paine Field where they fly P-51s, etc. The engine starts are the best part. No video can ever do it justice. Hanging out at Top Fuel drag racing events is also major fun.

Spooky23 9y ago

I never understood why certain female dominated fields like Nursing are excluded from STEM. My mom was a nurse, my sister in law is a NP and my wife is studying to be an RN. It sure looks a lot more like STEM than my "tech" job, which has more elements in common with what my aunt did as a secretary in the 70s than science.

michaelchisari 9y ago
I often refer to most computer programming as "digital carpentry." Of course, there are definitely jobs that require someone be more of an architect or a scientist, but the vast majority of jobs just need someone who can build common things that work and work well. In that sense, most of the programming work I did in the first decade of my career had more in common with the blue collar tradecraft that my father did than it did with anything anyone would consider to be a STEM career.
- weberc2 9y ago
  Agreed. I always thought of it more as a trade, though now that I've been in the field for a few years, I'm realizing that technical prowess is secondary to political skill. A sub par programmer with excellent political skills will be seen by the organization as more valuable, whether or not he actually is. (This isn't sour grapes, I've been on both sides of the evaluation).
  - coolgeek 9y ago
    Political skill can certainly get some people, in some situations, a lot further than they deserve. But technical prowess is absolutely not secondary to political skill in any general sense And you can substitute just about anything else for 'technical skill' in the above sentences and it will still read true
- tzs 9y ago
  > I often refer to most computer programming as "digital carpentry" Then perhaps it is appropriate that at at least one company, Hughes Aircraft, the union that represents programmers is the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. That odd situation came about because a whole bunch of union carpenters worked on the Spruce Goose. After that project was shelved many of those carpenters went on to other jobs within the company, but kept the UBC as their representative. As Hughes expanded and also acquired other companies, UBC continued to represent them. In the '70s they made a big effort to organize the rest of the workers, and the result was the UBC ended up representing the majority of Hughes Aircraft workers even though almost no actual carpentry takes place there.

noobermin 9y ago

Very interesting article, and sort of depressing for me, specifically the conclusion of Wang et. al[0]. That if you're good at both math and communication, you choose a more social field over the mathematical one is almost a condemnation of the mathier fields. Then again, being good at math in high school as Wang et. al measures doesn't really translate to math in college, which is much more problem solving oriented than math in high school. That's something to keep in mind here, so the whole idea that they end up being spread more broadly and thus aren't concentrated in STEM as the socially dumb men are is a more convincing explanation, it really doesn't have to do with differences in ability, it's merely other factors, mainly which major they try first. How interesting. [0] http://www.cds.web.unc.edu/files/2014/10/not_lack_of_ability.pdf http://www.cds.web.unc.edu/files/2014/10/not_lack_of_ability...

pmarreck 9y ago
> That if you're good at both math and communication, you choose a more social field over the mathematical one is almost a condemnation of the mathier fields. I didn't see it that way. I saw it as: There's a market of "mathy" and "verby" jobs. Men can mainly only be good at the mathy ones. Women can be good at both. So women end up at the verby jobs simply by nature of market forces.
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aidenn0 9y ago
It's more complicated than that, even with very simple models. Consider the toy model where there are two types of talent, "A" and "B" and that society benefits roughly equally, but sub-linearly, from productivity added to "A" talent jobs and "B" talent jobs. Consider the following talent distribution: A | B -------------- Men |1 | 2 Women |2 | 2 As society tends towards the maximally efficient it will tend towards women in all A jobs and men in all B jobs, despite the fact that women are just as good at B jobs. This obviously is a toy model, but it shows that even very simple assumptions can lead to very odd outcomes.
- 9y ago

dlwdlw 9y ago

A large weakness people have is the necessity of a sense of safety before taking risks. A risk here is defined as a testing of a personal idea. 3rd party ideas necessarily are already vetted to some degree by reality because transportation to you require going through reality. Risks as defined then are a necessity for living a unique life. It isn't always the most desirable thing as the majority of people would rather follow a crowd, but it does often have the most disproportionate rewards for work input. I don't know if it's biological or cultural, but girls/women often require a much higher sense of safety before being willing to do risky things. There is also a much higher "cost" from society from doing things that look foolish. This results in less of a desire to learn, especially as you approach the cutting edge where the failure rate rapidly rises and civilized structures start deteriorating. (the social structure that works best in this "wild" is the frat bro/alpha male structure) Being born beautiful is actually a weakness due to an addiction to strength in this regard. A corresponding male strength is academic excellence. Both these strengths become weaknesses because of lack of experience dealing with setbacks and shocks as well as the accumulated dry tinder that was never periodically cleared via said setbacks. (old people are stubborn because they have too much tinder to risk in a fire/refactor) I use academics as the male example as it creates a drives to validate the prior excellence often forcing them along paths into finance or other areas with high monetary compensation. Selling soul for money, taking no risk by not being true to yourself. Thus addiction to strength creates risk averseness and stagnates growth. Girls are often shielded from reality and also have an escape route of marriage. (men don't, an extreme example of an alternative for them for meaning is being a suicide bomber) Almost all social structures in the world heavily cause girls to become addicted to social validation. (Note that individual validation can be "proved" by money while social validation cannot. Objective and subjective tokens of value) The stereotype of "ugly" girls in STEM is a result of being beautiful increasing the chance of this addiction. (The stereotype of smart/beautiful but crazy may have origins in life-changing experiences that shatters the status addiction but did collateral damage. ) Safety is a necessity for learning which necessarily involves mistakes. However the minimum safety level can be vastly lowered by encouraging a dismissive attitude towards social validation.

jhanschoo 9y ago
I understand the point you are trying to illustrate, but your choice of examples require more evidence than folk knowledge and stereotypes. For example, you talk about men and academic excellence being such an example. But isn't it the case that women in general excel academically more than men? Why do you not point out/why do we not obeserve such a pattern, then?

PlugTunin 9y ago

1. 70 percent more girls than boys had strong math and verbal skills; 2. Boys were more than twice as likely as girls to have strong math skills but not strong verbal skills. No surprise on the 1st; I recognize that women can do/be anything they want in this world. But I wonder if the 2nd stat is explained mostly by the fact that MORE men are strong at math (not being a chauvinist pig; just running with stereotype)...or are the two genders equally represented among Math Elite and girls twice as likely to have strong verbal skills?

tnecniv 9y ago
> or are the two genders equally represented among Math Elite and girls twice as likely to have strong verbal skills? Going straight by the numbers, it seems like the former. Assuming you define math elite to be PhDs holders, this AMS study from 2005 [1] (a little old, I know), says that 30% of math PhDs are awarded to women. Societal factors could also be at play, obviously. [1] http://www.ams.org/profession/data/cbms-survey/chapter4.pdf http://www.ams.org/profession/data/cbms-survey/chapter4.pdf
SamReidHughes 9y ago
It really depends how you define "strong." But boys outnumber girls over 2:1 in getting 800 on the math SAT, while it's something like 1:1.2 on the verbal.

TimTheTinker 9y ago

Is this being modded down? (93 points/6 hours, and already on page 3 after being on the front front page 2 hours ago...)

knbknb 9y ago

My gut feeling is that women prefer jobs where one must communicate more. Many tech professionals are required to spend their workdays lonely in front of the computer. This is a very unattractive concept to most women. This may be a biased view, yes, but that's just how they perceive it.

nostromo123 9y ago
Funny, I perceive work in tech as having too much interaction! It definitely depends on your personality, but I have yet to encounter the magical "no interaction" software engineer job. Just when you get in a good zone, there's some developer meeting or someone needs some information from you. Workdays spent lonely in front of the computer are rare and almost like vacation :-D PS. I'm a woman, but I think this affects both genders, as it's more of a personality factor (my husband is the same).