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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] - ht

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?

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?