4 ms·

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone wh

It’s important to investigate this topic from various perspectives, and the text contains a couple of important points (which of course are not new to anyone who’s been following this debate). However, right at the beginning, this is really a bad argument: “There is particular concern about the lack of women in prestigious STEM fields, such as Ph.D.-level faculty positions, but surprisingly there is no concern about the under-representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing.” This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender imbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields (an example: the recent study about facial recognition being less accurate on female faces). Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. Edit: In other words: no matter where one stands in the debate about the reasons for gender imbalance in STEM, it is totally reasonable not to be too concerned about imbalances among plumbers or car mechanics, because this imbalance does have less consequences. It doesn’t matter for any other aspect in life whether a woman or man fixes the car, but it matters who creates the algorithms that control everyone’s lives.

shard972 9y ago
> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics? Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?
- imartin2k 9y ago
  Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this. That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.
  - shard972 9y ago
    I initially read the comment as you positing your chain of thought (instead of theirs) and i was trying to work out the underlying fact being such a chain of logic. I guess what ill say is that having a mental concept of debate, i personally find useful in getting to the root of ideas. Of course circling the wagons in your echo chamber by always taking on the debate in your favour isn't good, asking people to further explain thoughts and arguments you don't understand/don't agree with i think is good and people should do more of it.
- michaelt 9y ago
  I think imartin2k is reading this: surprisingly there is no concern about the under- representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing And then reading this, two paragraphs below in the same article: These differences are socially important because these tend to be prestigious occupations, and practically important because the different numbers of men and women in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex difference in earnings. When I read the article, this incongruity made me feel the surprise was feigned for rhetorical effect. And I was shocked - shocked! - to find crass rhetorical tricks in an article about gender bias in STEM :)
SidiousL 9y ago
Well, the argument feminists make is that inequality=injustice. For car mechanics, there is clearly inequality. Why aren't they rushing to fix the injustice? And by the way, this car mechanic supposed injustice, must affect more people since clearly there are more car mechanics than STEM PhD's. > People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. If you ask me, about the only people who have power in society are celebrities (singers, movie stars), politicians and journalists. And among people in academia, people in STEM fields have less power than economists, sociologists, political science, medical doctors. Notice how all these fields are not male dominated?
JorgeGT 9y ago
> Thus gender imbalances [in lower-level technical jobs] don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields . Others have commented in this thread how gender-biased attitudes towards engineering fields are present even in young children. There's an obvious connection between this and the fact that when you're a child most of the adults you met in your everyday life practicing technical jobs (plumbers, cable technicians, car mechanics) are male. On the other hand, children see how their pre- and middle- school teachers are mostly female. Thus, children learn by observation that technical job => male. Yes, neither car mechanics nor pre-school teachers have prestigious, 6-figure salary, PhD level positions, and yet they have a big impact in the perception of gender bias in adult labor when children are growing up and unconsciously cementing their views of the world. I believe that a big step to close the gender gap in engineering would be young girls watching the super cool woman in the car shop expertly fixing daddy's car.
- mantas 9y ago
  Or cool dude teaching them at school. More men at education -> more positions in tech for women. As well as more women looking for these positions. Can't wait for the next campaign to make men 50:50 in kindergardens and schools!
  - kirillkh 9y ago
    It's when you talk about young men in kinder gardens that you realize how ridiculous this whole discussion truly is. There will never be 50:50 young men to young women in kinder gardens. Not even 20:80. That much is obvious. Most young men do not like to be with children. Most young women do not like working in car repair. While none of these claims are sufficiently substantiated in research, if the first can be true, then surely the second one can be, as well?
    - mantas 9y ago
      IMO the only reason is that IT looks relatively clean and easy job for nice money. Although after working in the field for over a decade, I don't really think that's true. While it's clean physically, mentally it's totally different story. Personally I'm on the line if I want to keep doing what I love or if I switch to something more sane.
barry-cotter 9y ago
Can someone with vouching powers vouch for SidiousL? He appears to have been shadowbanned for no discernible reason.
- prepend 9y ago
  How can you tell if someone is shadowbanned? I thought shadowbanned people can’t have their comments seen by others.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    There's a setting in your profile called showdead and it can be set to yes or no. If set to no you won't see it. Otherwise you will.
- yorwba 9y ago
  The discernible reason was given by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14882450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14882450
  - SidiousL 9y ago
    I don't know if you're going to see this, but I feel the need to defend myself. Sorry about going on a tangent here, but I have no other way of doing this. Here's what happened. Somebody posted a link to a PhD thesis in mathematics which was not at all written in the style in which math PhD these are written. Somebody else commented that this is great all math PhD these should be written like that. Then, I pointed out that the author of this thesis (a black woman), wrote a piece on a blog of the American Mathematical Society website saying that all the white male in the math departments in the USA are the problem, she wants them out and they should all resign. Then various people started down-voting and attacking me. I replied to their attacks and defended myself. This amounted to "ideological war" according to some moderator. Also, since I did not use this account for making lots of comments, it appeared to the moderator that this account was created to primarily to start flamewars. The people who attacked me in a very nasty and personal way did not suffer any consequences since they had more comments hence their accounts looked more legitimate. So yes, I feel like I've been the victim of an injustice.

shard972 9y ago

> This can hardly be surprising to the authors. People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. Thus gender inbalances there don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural inbalances. Thus they are not considered as harmful in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to misrepresent you but are you making the claim that if we had more female PHDs in STEM, that would lead to more female plumbers and car mechanics? Or is it more, the changes needed to get women into stem would necessarily get women into other "less prestigious" fields?

imartin2k 9y ago
Neither. I only was critizing what I think is a flawed argument, nothing else. I didn’t make any mental connection to what you bring up. I understand why your impression is that I must have meant something more, as this usually is the case with comments about polarizing topics like this. That aside (and not meant as criticism against you), it’s super frustrating how when it comes to this specific topic, it’s unbelievably hard to express a thought in a way which is not being misunderstood by others. We all seem to have a mental concept of the debate in mind and then just match everything we read to this existing concept, which leads to all kinds of misrepresentations.
- shard972 9y ago
  I initially read the comment as you positing your chain of thought (instead of theirs) and i was trying to work out the underlying fact being such a chain of logic. I guess what ill say is that having a mental concept of debate, i personally find useful in getting to the root of ideas. Of course circling the wagons in your echo chamber by always taking on the debate in your favour isn't good, asking people to further explain thoughts and arguments you don't understand/don't agree with i think is good and people should do more of it.
michaelt 9y ago
I think imartin2k is reading this: surprisingly there is no concern about the under- representation of women in lower-level technical jobs, such as car mechanics or plumbing And then reading this, two paragraphs below in the same article: These differences are socially important because these tend to be prestigious occupations, and practically important because the different numbers of men and women in these fields contribute, in part, to the sex difference in earnings. When I read the article, this incongruity made me feel the surprise was feigned for rhetorical effect. And I was shocked - shocked! - to find crass rhetorical tricks in an article about gender bias in STEM :)

SidiousL 9y ago

Well, the argument feminists make is that inequality=injustice. For car mechanics, there is clearly inequality. Why aren't they rushing to fix the injustice? And by the way, this car mechanic supposed injustice, must affect more people since clearly there are more car mechanics than STEM PhD's. > People in lower-level technical jobs don’t have as much power over society at large as those in high-level positions. If you ask me, about the only people who have power in society are celebrities (singers, movie stars), politicians and journalists. And among people in academia, people in STEM fields have less power than economists, sociologists, political science, medical doctors. Notice how all these fields are not male dominated?

JorgeGT 9y ago

> Thus gender imbalances [in lower-level technical jobs] don’t have the same supposed impact and perpetuating effect on structural imbalances as those in high-level fields . Others have commented in this thread how gender-biased attitudes towards engineering fields are present even in young children. There's an obvious connection between this and the fact that when you're a child most of the adults you met in your everyday life practicing technical jobs (plumbers, cable technicians, car mechanics) are male. On the other hand, children see how their pre- and middle- school teachers are mostly female. Thus, children learn by observation that technical job => male. Yes, neither car mechanics nor pre-school teachers have prestigious, 6-figure salary, PhD level positions, and yet they have a big impact in the perception of gender bias in adult labor when children are growing up and unconsciously cementing their views of the world. I believe that a big step to close the gender gap in engineering would be young girls watching the super cool woman in the car shop expertly fixing daddy's car.

mantas 9y ago
Or cool dude teaching them at school. More men at education -> more positions in tech for women. As well as more women looking for these positions. Can't wait for the next campaign to make men 50:50 in kindergardens and schools!
- kirillkh 9y ago
  It's when you talk about young men in kinder gardens that you realize how ridiculous this whole discussion truly is. There will never be 50:50 young men to young women in kinder gardens. Not even 20:80. That much is obvious. Most young men do not like to be with children. Most young women do not like working in car repair. While none of these claims are sufficiently substantiated in research, if the first can be true, then surely the second one can be, as well?
  - mantas 9y ago
    IMO the only reason is that IT looks relatively clean and easy job for nice money. Although after working in the field for over a decade, I don't really think that's true. While it's clean physically, mentally it's totally different story. Personally I'm on the line if I want to keep doing what I love or if I switch to something more sane.

barry-cotter 9y ago

Can someone with vouching powers vouch for SidiousL? He appears to have been shadowbanned for no discernible reason.

prepend 9y ago
How can you tell if someone is shadowbanned? I thought shadowbanned people can’t have their comments seen by others.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  There's a setting in your profile called showdead and it can be set to yes or no. If set to no you won't see it. Otherwise you will.
yorwba 9y ago
The discernible reason was given by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14882450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14882450
- SidiousL 9y ago
  I don't know if you're going to see this, but I feel the need to defend myself. Sorry about going on a tangent here, but I have no other way of doing this. Here's what happened. Somebody posted a link to a PhD thesis in mathematics which was not at all written in the style in which math PhD these are written. Somebody else commented that this is great all math PhD these should be written like that. Then, I pointed out that the author of this thesis (a black woman), wrote a piece on a blog of the American Mathematical Society website saying that all the white male in the math departments in the USA are the problem, she wants them out and they should all resign. Then various people started down-voting and attacking me. I replied to their attacks and defended myself. This amounted to "ideological war" according to some moderator. Also, since I did not use this account for making lots of comments, it appeared to the moderator that this account was created to primarily to start flamewars. The people who attacked me in a very nasty and personal way did not suffer any consequences since they had more comments hence their accounts looked more legitimate. So yes, I feel like I've been the victim of an injustice.