13 ms·

Experiments reveal faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (2014)

120 points by renaudg 9y ago

romanovcode 9y ago
So basically men and women prefer women to gain tenure in STEM fields as shown in this graph[0]? Can we now close the "no women in stem" meme finally? [0] - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360/F1.expansion.html http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360/F1.expansion.html
- Veen 9y ago
  The study shows that the gender bias at the point of tenure approval is the opposite of what is claimed by some interest groups. That doesn't prove that gender bias isn't a factor in the number of women in STEM fields. Some fields are majority male, and some fields are majority female. There are two possible causes: that women and men have, on average, different preferences, or that there is a bias problem earlier in the process than the point at which tenure is considered. There is evidence that men and women do have different preferences and so we'd expect to see a gender imbalance in some fields. But we should still try to ensure that anyone with the ability and the inclination is able to enter the career path of their choice — that means schools, families, and the media not discouraging girls and boys from entering "non-typical" fields, something these studies don't address. They do, however, show that the way many ideologically motivated individuals go about achieving their aim of gender balance is based on misconceptions about the world and is therefore likely to be counter-productive.
  - tictacttoe 9y ago
    STEM positions have a long pipeline with appreciable attrition along the way. Any losses upstream propagate down stream so it's somewhat obvious that we'd have less women in physics national lab positions if we have less women studying physics in general. People need to address the issue at each stage of the pipeline. I would argue that early stage imbalances are even more important than late stage imbalances (post-graduate) because upstream imbalances necessarily propagate downstream but not vice versa.
- majos 9y ago
  I don't think so. I think the everyday experience for female academics still lags behind that of male academics. If you're an undergrad in an unfamiliar hard class it can be tricky to approach a male fellow student without risking misinterpretation of romantic interest; if you're applying to grad school, letter writers are conditioned to talk about women in different ways ("diligent", not "brilliant", maybe); if you're a grad student choosing an advisor, you never really know if the (probably guy) you're choosing has predatory instincts underneath (most don't but enough do); if you're presenting work at a conference, navigating after-conference social activities while being awkwardly hit on gets old fast. This comes from me talking to friends who are women in CS. It made me realize that as a dude in CS I have an interesting advantage of not being noticed when I walk into a room. The field has made progress but there are still real frictions that make the everyday experience worse for women, even if the balance has shifted during the big decisions. So it may shake out as an advantage when applying for faculty positions or grad schools, but it's probably not an advantage the rest of the time. I don't think the former compensates very well for the latter.
  - lumberjack 9y ago
    None of that stuff is because of bias though. That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      Sentence 1: > None of that stuff is because of bias though. Sentence 2: > That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
      - heavenlyblue 9y ago
        He's speaking about the boundary conditions, you're just parrotting something you have clearly misunderstood.
        linkmotif 9y ago
- learnstats2 9y ago
  There are evidently few women in STEM and this data doesn't contradict that. It's a consequence that hiring practices should favour women who are equally qualified on paper, because they have likely overcome more barriers in practice and, all other things being equal, are better hires.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    > should favour women This is sexism right here.
  - golergka 9y ago
    > It's a consequence that hiring practices should favour women who are equally qualified on paper, because they have likely overcome more barriers in practice and, all other things being equal, are better hires. I want to argue against this from a purely utilitarian standpoint, where we care about getting better hire, and don't care about any ethical implications. I think your logic is just bad math. You're right, and women have more barriers to entry into STEM. And if some barriers are already removed (as this study suggest), I can assume that others still exist. Let's make the numbers simpler, and assume that these barriers make it 2 times harder for a given woman to get into some experience level (I don't know real numbers anyway, and they don't matter). However, when we observe the effect of these barriers, we simply see that there are 2 times more men on that level than women. That's the whole effect. Statistically, if a woman had 2 times less chance of getting through, and there are already 2 times less women than men, then we already see the full effect of this barrier: there's no evidence that there should be some hidden variable to explain this barrier. However, if we would know that women's barrier makes it 10 times as harder, and still, there are only 2 times as many men as women, then we would need some other data to explain this; namely, that these women are actually 5 times as good as the men. But we don't know that. The whole knowledge about these barriers that we have comes from the outcome: we see that there are 2 times as many men as women, and that's how we assume (correctly, I think) that there is a barrier. But if we start from this outcome data, we can't through some magic come back to it and add a hidden variable - it's just a logic loop, and a strange one: we see data, make conclusions from observations, and from these conclusions change our observation of this very data to see it as incomplete, without help of any data points outside this original observation. How could such logic be correct?
danieltillett 9y ago
I am not too sure I would agree with this statement from the abstract: "These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science.” It might be less worse to be a woman, but in the same way it is better to lose a leg below the knee than above the knee.
- leroy_masochist 9y ago
  Everyday ableism....
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
IshKebab 9y ago
Very interesting. I presume this isn't a blind test though, so could there be a "ooo they're testing for sexism, better pick the women!" factor? Or did they account for that somehow? Edit: Skimmed it and they did go to significant lengths to disguise their hypothesis. Details on page 2 of the PDF.
- forestdev 9y ago
  Without this being a double-blind experiment, than it is highly questionable. People over-compensate for bias if you tell them you're testing their bias. The fact that the abstract makes no mention of this is highly suspect.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Blind recruiting had some unintended consequences http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
    - troupe 9y ago
      Doesn't that study basically suggests that there is institutional sexism against males?
      - danieltillett 9y ago
        Yes. But don’t say that unless you want to end up on the pointy end of some pressure group's stick.
  - wskinner 9y ago
    If you had read the paper, you would have found that they tested and rejected the idea that reviewers were overcompensating due to guessing what was being tested. In Experiment 5, they sent single resumes to reviewers and asked them to rate on a 1-10 scale. Female candidates still scored significantly higher.
billfruit 9y ago
Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  China has similar, if not worse problems, as the USA. The lab I worked for in Beijing made lots of effort to attract female researchers, and it was still very lopsided.
  - programmertote 9y ago
    From my graduate CS classes in the US, most women are from foreign countries. I notice the same in other US grad schools as well. From that, I am led to believe that women from developing nations (which kind of includes China) still choose STEM careers (most likely for practical purpose of making money).
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      There is a lot of selection bias in who comes to the USA to study and work. But also, in china, women don’t drop out of the field all together, but rather tend to move into less technical ones (e.g. PM), and are less likely to get the PhD needed to be a researcher. There are likewise cultural issues that make this hard (e.g. China’s leftover women problem). There has also been a lot less outreach compared to the west because communism was already supposed to have fixed these problems (this is changing of course), while the west has been perversely drawing away a lot of gender diversity at the high end with their current hiring practices. Perhaps India does a bit better? When I visited Microsoft research Bangalore, it seemed a bit more diverse than Microsoft research Beijing.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  It is. In countries where women have the freedom of choice due to political and economical circumstances, the gender imbalance is more pronounced. Basically, most women choose to not pursue engineering if they don't have to (unfortunately, I'm glad we have some women at the office).
marchenko 9y ago
The simulation of an academic job search used in this study is not very much like a real academic job search. This study was well designed, but it is harder to do a faithful blind replication of the hiring process in academia vs the public or private sector because job searches are much rarer, and most of the applicants are known - at least by reputation - by most of the evaluation committee - their future coworkers. The researchers made a strong effort to obscure the goal of the study, but if you are an academic participating in an artificial candidate search, you are likely to suspect that one of the variables being tested is either sex, race, or both. The experiment where evaluators rated a single candidate addresses this somewhat, but even in that case the participants are almost certain to have known that there was no job search in progress, and very likely to have realized that there was a socially desirable response possible to be given at no cost. By no cost, I mean that this person is not going to show up and take space and resources that could go to your preferred candidate/collaborator.
pbnjay 9y ago
Study from 2014. I really wonder how it has changed in 2017+
rdtsc 9y ago
> Research on actual hiring shows female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, but if they do apply, they are more likely to be hired, sometimes by a 2:1 ratio. I think the society and culture needs to work a bit harder to promote the idea of a girl as a professor, scientist, hacker, math wiz etc. Not just lip service but change the stories, the cartoons, movies, games etc. For too long in popular culture, starting early on girls are just princesses, then then later just a romantic interest side-kick. I noticed with my own daughter, she really wants identify with bad guys in the cartoons because even though they are naughty they have the coolest toys, rule the world and tell their minions what to do. But she finds it hard because the majority of the "cool" roles are taken by boys. Yes by the time it comes to apply for tenure track positions, girls have already been told verbally and non-verbally many times -- "this is not for you, probably". I remember in Eastern Europe in primary education, girls and women were more interested in math than boys. I was getting help with calculus homework from them. My high school CS teacher was a professional programmer before and she was an inspiration many girls and to boys alike, including me. She had a large book on Pascal and if we were good we could stay after school and do exercises from it. So I have seen it work in practice -- it is possible to have a culture and attitude where girls see math, science and CS as appealing disciplines. On the other hand, I think it is worth to acknowledge that maybe there is also an element were women just don't want to do CS or math. Even if they had positive role models. I know we all think tech is super awesome, getting paid to do what we love, implement and develop cool algorithms, etc. But what if sitting in a cubicle inverting binary trees all day, mostly in isolation, doesn't appeal to others, and maybe those other are more likely to be women. Is that controversial to say? I imagine it might be soul crushing for some even if they were promised to get RSUs, options and a large salary.
- dnautics 9y ago
  >I think the society and culture needs to work a bit harder to promote the idea of a girl as a professor, scientist, hacker, math wiz etc I keep being reminded of Phillip greenspun's quip: "A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?"
mc32 9y ago
Couple of things, tangentially contradictory. 1. We need more women in STEM because there is both an industry shortage and because it provides a potential avenue to a good career. 2. We should look for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome. 3. We see greater STEM participation in China, Russia, India, etc., despite barriers, so it's apparent there are other cultural factors influencing decisions and those need addressing in order to make STEM more appealing to women in the first place.
- gaius 9y ago
  there is both an industry shortage Including former cow-orkers I probably know a couple of hundred PhDs. Of those, a mere handful work in academia doing research. Even fewer are tenure-track. Of the remainder, how many do you think slogged through the programme in say physics or biology with the intent of becoming a software developer after? I absolutely believe in equal opportunities but a false promise of a good job due to a shortage is not a fair way to promote it.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
At an academic institute I used to work at they hired a woman whose job was to improve equality for women. One of the specific tasks was finding out why there were fewer women in the institute. She gave a long presentation showing all kinds of statistics and bizarre graphics comparing job adverts to Playstation controllers (which only appeal to men, apparently). The talk concluded with a figure comparing number of women to number of men at each stage in the hiring process. From application, to interview, to hire. The numbers were equal all the way through, with a slight bias towards women, in fact. Every woman who was at the institute also took advantage of options that were not available to me as a man. There are special grants for women. They can apply for the ones available for me as well. So really the question for me is why there is such a divide between the science and what people believe. It's simple confirmation bias. If you tell people that they will be at a disadvantage due to a certain characteristic then they will blame every misfortune in their life on that characteristic. Same goes for the wage gap. We know there is no gap. It's illegal and ridiculous to suggest it exists. But you will always be able to find at least one man who gets paid more than you. As a man I don't think it's becaues of his blue eyes. But women think it's because he's a man, because that's what they already believe.
- katrinamo 9y ago
  > Same goes for the wage gap. We know there is no gap. I'm curious how you've come to this conclusion considering the preponderance of studies that say otherwise. This article by the Washington Post examines a few claims regarding the wage gap if you are interested: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-pay-gap/?utm_term=.4c461e142d86 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-...
  - dang_ 9y ago
    If this conspiracy theory would be true, companies would only hire women, because they are 20% cheaper. Why is this not happening?
  - cup-of-tea 9y ago
    > The median salary for women working full-time is about 80 percent of men’s. I don't need to read any further because I've read it all before. Women tend do different jobs to men. Easier, safer, less responsibility and less stress. That's not a wage gap, it's just a different choice of career. Which makes the next statement downright offensive: > That gap, put in other terms, means women are working for free 10 weeks a year.

120 points by renaudg 9y ago

So basically men and women prefer women to gain tenure in STEM fields as shown in this graph[0]? Can we now close the "no women in stem" meme finally? [0] - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360/F1.expansion.html http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360/F1.expansion.html

Veen 9y ago
The study shows that the gender bias at the point of tenure approval is the opposite of what is claimed by some interest groups. That doesn't prove that gender bias isn't a factor in the number of women in STEM fields. Some fields are majority male, and some fields are majority female. There are two possible causes: that women and men have, on average, different preferences, or that there is a bias problem earlier in the process than the point at which tenure is considered. There is evidence that men and women do have different preferences and so we'd expect to see a gender imbalance in some fields. But we should still try to ensure that anyone with the ability and the inclination is able to enter the career path of their choice — that means schools, families, and the media not discouraging girls and boys from entering "non-typical" fields, something these studies don't address. They do, however, show that the way many ideologically motivated individuals go about achieving their aim of gender balance is based on misconceptions about the world and is therefore likely to be counter-productive.
- tictacttoe 9y ago
  STEM positions have a long pipeline with appreciable attrition along the way. Any losses upstream propagate down stream so it's somewhat obvious that we'd have less women in physics national lab positions if we have less women studying physics in general. People need to address the issue at each stage of the pipeline. I would argue that early stage imbalances are even more important than late stage imbalances (post-graduate) because upstream imbalances necessarily propagate downstream but not vice versa.
majos 9y ago
I don't think so. I think the everyday experience for female academics still lags behind that of male academics. If you're an undergrad in an unfamiliar hard class it can be tricky to approach a male fellow student without risking misinterpretation of romantic interest; if you're applying to grad school, letter writers are conditioned to talk about women in different ways ("diligent", not "brilliant", maybe); if you're a grad student choosing an advisor, you never really know if the (probably guy) you're choosing has predatory instincts underneath (most don't but enough do); if you're presenting work at a conference, navigating after-conference social activities while being awkwardly hit on gets old fast. This comes from me talking to friends who are women in CS. It made me realize that as a dude in CS I have an interesting advantage of not being noticed when I walk into a room. The field has made progress but there are still real frictions that make the everyday experience worse for women, even if the balance has shifted during the big decisions. So it may shake out as an advantage when applying for faculty positions or grad schools, but it's probably not an advantage the rest of the time. I don't think the former compensates very well for the latter.
- lumberjack 9y ago
  None of that stuff is because of bias though. That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    Sentence 1: > None of that stuff is because of bias though. Sentence 2: > That is just the result of being in a field dominated by the other gender.
    - heavenlyblue 9y ago
      He's speaking about the boundary conditions, you're just parrotting something you have clearly misunderstood.
      - linkmotif 9y ago
learnstats2 9y ago
There are evidently few women in STEM and this data doesn't contradict that. It's a consequence that hiring practices should favour women who are equally qualified on paper, because they have likely overcome more barriers in practice and, all other things being equal, are better hires.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  > should favour women This is sexism right here.
- golergka 9y ago
  > It's a consequence that hiring practices should favour women who are equally qualified on paper, because they have likely overcome more barriers in practice and, all other things being equal, are better hires. I want to argue against this from a purely utilitarian standpoint, where we care about getting better hire, and don't care about any ethical implications. I think your logic is just bad math. You're right, and women have more barriers to entry into STEM. And if some barriers are already removed (as this study suggest), I can assume that others still exist. Let's make the numbers simpler, and assume that these barriers make it 2 times harder for a given woman to get into some experience level (I don't know real numbers anyway, and they don't matter). However, when we observe the effect of these barriers, we simply see that there are 2 times more men on that level than women. That's the whole effect. Statistically, if a woman had 2 times less chance of getting through, and there are already 2 times less women than men, then we already see the full effect of this barrier: there's no evidence that there should be some hidden variable to explain this barrier. However, if we would know that women's barrier makes it 10 times as harder, and still, there are only 2 times as many men as women, then we would need some other data to explain this; namely, that these women are actually 5 times as good as the men. But we don't know that. The whole knowledge about these barriers that we have comes from the outcome: we see that there are 2 times as many men as women, and that's how we assume (correctly, I think) that there is a barrier. But if we start from this outcome data, we can't through some magic come back to it and add a hidden variable - it's just a logic loop, and a strange one: we see data, make conclusions from observations, and from these conclusions change our observation of this very data to see it as incomplete, without help of any data points outside this original observation. How could such logic be correct?

danieltillett 9y ago

I am not too sure I would agree with this statement from the abstract: "These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science.” It might be less worse to be a woman, but in the same way it is better to lose a leg below the knee than above the knee.

leroy_masochist 9y ago
Everyday ableism....
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

IshKebab 9y ago

Very interesting. I presume this isn't a blind test though, so could there be a "ooo they're testing for sexism, better pick the women!" factor? Or did they account for that somehow? Edit: Skimmed it and they did go to significant lengths to disguise their hypothesis. Details on page 2 of the PDF.

forestdev 9y ago
Without this being a double-blind experiment, than it is highly questionable. People over-compensate for bias if you tell them you're testing their bias. The fact that the abstract makes no mention of this is highly suspect.
- gaius 9y ago
  Blind recruiting had some unintended consequences http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
  - troupe 9y ago
    Doesn't that study basically suggests that there is institutional sexism against males?
    - danieltillett 9y ago
      Yes. But don’t say that unless you want to end up on the pointy end of some pressure group's stick.
- wskinner 9y ago
  If you had read the paper, you would have found that they tested and rejected the idea that reviewers were overcompensating due to guessing what was being tested. In Experiment 5, they sent single resumes to reviewers and asked them to rate on a 1-10 scale. Female candidates still scored significantly higher.

billfruit 9y ago

Perhaps the lack of women in STEM is a first world phenomenon. In my third world undergraduate CS class, 10 years ago, there were 40 women and 20 men. I would say it even appeared to me that more women were in college than men.The few courses were I found less women than men were in Mechanical Engineering departments.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
China has similar, if not worse problems, as the USA. The lab I worked for in Beijing made lots of effort to attract female researchers, and it was still very lopsided.
- programmertote 9y ago
  From my graduate CS classes in the US, most women are from foreign countries. I notice the same in other US grad schools as well. From that, I am led to believe that women from developing nations (which kind of includes China) still choose STEM careers (most likely for practical purpose of making money).
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    There is a lot of selection bias in who comes to the USA to study and work. But also, in china, women don’t drop out of the field all together, but rather tend to move into less technical ones (e.g. PM), and are less likely to get the PhD needed to be a researcher. There are likewise cultural issues that make this hard (e.g. China’s leftover women problem). There has also been a lot less outreach compared to the west because communism was already supposed to have fixed these problems (this is changing of course), while the west has been perversely drawing away a lot of gender diversity at the high end with their current hiring practices. Perhaps India does a bit better? When I visited Microsoft research Bangalore, it seemed a bit more diverse than Microsoft research Beijing.
MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
It is. In countries where women have the freedom of choice due to political and economical circumstances, the gender imbalance is more pronounced. Basically, most women choose to not pursue engineering if they don't have to (unfortunately, I'm glad we have some women at the office).

marchenko 9y ago

The simulation of an academic job search used in this study is not very much like a real academic job search. This study was well designed, but it is harder to do a faithful blind replication of the hiring process in academia vs the public or private sector because job searches are much rarer, and most of the applicants are known - at least by reputation - by most of the evaluation committee - their future coworkers. The researchers made a strong effort to obscure the goal of the study, but if you are an academic participating in an artificial candidate search, you are likely to suspect that one of the variables being tested is either sex, race, or both. The experiment where evaluators rated a single candidate addresses this somewhat, but even in that case the participants are almost certain to have known that there was no job search in progress, and very likely to have realized that there was a socially desirable response possible to be given at no cost. By no cost, I mean that this person is not going to show up and take space and resources that could go to your preferred candidate/collaborator.

pbnjay 9y ago

Study from 2014. I really wonder how it has changed in 2017+

rdtsc 9y ago

> Research on actual hiring shows female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, but if they do apply, they are more likely to be hired, sometimes by a 2:1 ratio. I think the society and culture needs to work a bit harder to promote the idea of a girl as a professor, scientist, hacker, math wiz etc. Not just lip service but change the stories, the cartoons, movies, games etc. For too long in popular culture, starting early on girls are just princesses, then then later just a romantic interest side-kick. I noticed with my own daughter, she really wants identify with bad guys in the cartoons because even though they are naughty they have the coolest toys, rule the world and tell their minions what to do. But she finds it hard because the majority of the "cool" roles are taken by boys. Yes by the time it comes to apply for tenure track positions, girls have already been told verbally and non-verbally many times -- "this is not for you, probably". I remember in Eastern Europe in primary education, girls and women were more interested in math than boys. I was getting help with calculus homework from them. My high school CS teacher was a professional programmer before and she was an inspiration many girls and to boys alike, including me. She had a large book on Pascal and if we were good we could stay after school and do exercises from it. So I have seen it work in practice -- it is possible to have a culture and attitude where girls see math, science and CS as appealing disciplines. On the other hand, I think it is worth to acknowledge that maybe there is also an element were women just don't want to do CS or math. Even if they had positive role models. I know we all think tech is super awesome, getting paid to do what we love, implement and develop cool algorithms, etc. But what if sitting in a cubicle inverting binary trees all day, mostly in isolation, doesn't appeal to others, and maybe those other are more likely to be women. Is that controversial to say? I imagine it might be soul crushing for some even if they were promised to get RSUs, options and a large salary.

dnautics 9y ago
>I think the society and culture needs to work a bit harder to promote the idea of a girl as a professor, scientist, hacker, math wiz etc I keep being reminded of Phillip greenspun's quip: "A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?"

mc32 9y ago

Couple of things, tangentially contradictory. 1. We need more women in STEM because there is both an industry shortage and because it provides a potential avenue to a good career. 2. We should look for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome. 3. We see greater STEM participation in China, Russia, India, etc., despite barriers, so it's apparent there are other cultural factors influencing decisions and those need addressing in order to make STEM more appealing to women in the first place.

gaius 9y ago
there is both an industry shortage Including former cow-orkers I probably know a couple of hundred PhDs. Of those, a mere handful work in academia doing research. Even fewer are tenure-track. Of the remainder, how many do you think slogged through the programme in say physics or biology with the intent of becoming a software developer after? I absolutely believe in equal opportunities but a false promise of a good job due to a shortage is not a fair way to promote it.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

At an academic institute I used to work at they hired a woman whose job was to improve equality for women. One of the specific tasks was finding out why there were fewer women in the institute. She gave a long presentation showing all kinds of statistics and bizarre graphics comparing job adverts to Playstation controllers (which only appeal to men, apparently). The talk concluded with a figure comparing number of women to number of men at each stage in the hiring process. From application, to interview, to hire. The numbers were equal all the way through, with a slight bias towards women, in fact. Every woman who was at the institute also took advantage of options that were not available to me as a man. There are special grants for women. They can apply for the ones available for me as well. So really the question for me is why there is such a divide between the science and what people believe. It's simple confirmation bias. If you tell people that they will be at a disadvantage due to a certain characteristic then they will blame every misfortune in their life on that characteristic. Same goes for the wage gap. We know there is no gap. It's illegal and ridiculous to suggest it exists. But you will always be able to find at least one man who gets paid more than you. As a man I don't think it's becaues of his blue eyes. But women think it's because he's a man, because that's what they already believe.

katrinamo 9y ago
> Same goes for the wage gap. We know there is no gap. I'm curious how you've come to this conclusion considering the preponderance of studies that say otherwise. This article by the Washington Post examines a few claims regarding the wage gap if you are interested: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-pay-gap/?utm_term=.4c461e142d86 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-...
- dang_ 9y ago
  If this conspiracy theory would be true, companies would only hire women, because they are 20% cheaper. Why is this not happening?
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  > The median salary for women working full-time is about 80 percent of men’s. I don't need to read any further because I've read it all before. Women tend do different jobs to men. Easier, safer, less responsibility and less stress. That's not a wage gap, it's just a different choice of career. Which makes the next statement downright offensive: > That gap, put in other terms, means women are working for free 10 weeks a year.