5 ms·

You either have to believe that there is a meritocracy and that it's under attack by an unnamed mob of truth-haters or you have to believe there is a pattern of

by aklemm 8y ago

You either have to believe that there is a meritocracy and that it's under attack by an unnamed mob of truth-haters or you have to believe there is a pattern of shitty behavior (against women in this case) that people are--sometimes clumsily--trying to rectify so that anyone with a contribution to make to physics (or computer science, etc.) gets a decent chance at it. I believe the latter.

hanselot 8y ago
And people should respect your dogmatic religious beliefs.
traverseda 8y ago
Right. The thing is that there's gender disparity going in the other direction as well, fields that pay well and are well respected but that are dominated by women. Nursing being an obvious example. Any theory that explains why physics is gendered should also explain why education is also gendered. It's unlikely that those two fields ended up with skewed gender ratios for completely different reasons. So, why do you think psychology, education, and nursing are all female dominated fields? If it was simply a pattern of shitty behavior, what I would expect is some fields that women obviously don't have access to, and a more or less even gender ratio in all the other fields. What I'm seeing instead looks a lot like gender ratios are a gaussian distribution, which I don't think fits your hypothesis that the gender ratios are caused by "a pattern of shitty behavior". That probably is a co-factor, but it doesn't explain the female-dominated fields very well.
- aklemm 8y ago
  Interesting, but I think this flirts a little too close to the fallacy that this goes both ways equally. In your examples of nursing, education, and psychology I would suggest that a man in each of those fields is actually advantaged compared to his female peers, even if he is outnumbered significantly. The same is not true for women in many of the well-paying fields in which they are underrpresented. So, just from a very high level consideration of what is the most important thing to focus on, I still think shitty behavior is it. There is no better use of time than reading and reflecting on what shitty behavior is and then building up the bravery to call it out daily. That is hard, critical, adult work.
  - traverseda 8y ago
    So why do you think the female dominated fields are female dominated? I'm not trying to do the false equivalence thing here, or saying "what about the men". I'm certainly not saying "well men have it bad too". What I am saying is that male-dominated fields and female-dominated fields both likely have the same root cause, and any hypothesis that explains one needs to explain the other. Well, plus or minus some co-factors. So, how do we explain this data? If you're looking for the answer that makes this men's fault, you could pretty easily say that men don't enter those fields because it doesn't live up to their self-image. That definitely avoid the "fallacy that this goes both ways equally" while still having one root cause for all the data. But that's a pretty lazy answer in my opinion, and doesn't fit with the data I've observed. Can you come up with a few more hypothesis that explain both male and female dominated gender ratios?
    - aklemm 8y ago
      I'm just guessing, and I get the sense that you're open to that, so bear with me. I think the fields have sorted out by gender because of intrinsic interests/tendencies, cultural expectations (to your point about self-image), pay (women often can afford to make less while their spouses make more), and finally the systems that naturally come about which enforce those things. I do think men bear most of the responsibility, and that's largely historical (men controlled the money) and partly because of the sex dynamic. For my part, I think men, including myself, just have a long way to go to treat women fairly in the workplace. After that, my #2 focus is why "women's work" pays less. Elevating the economic worth of care jobs and such is another great societal discussion that needs a lot of attention.
      - traverseda 8y ago
        I'm by no means an expert, so I'll definitely bear with you. But your hypothesis more or less matches mine. I do think you underestimate the amount of sexism men experience in nursing and child-education. Now my problem is that gender ratio is the key metric we seem to be using to measure sexism in STEM fields, and I don't think any policy is going to fix that. We can try and mitigate cultural expectations, but if those cultural expectations are grounded on intrinsic interests, we're going to have a very hard time getting rid of them. I think you really need to examine your idea that "men bear most of the responsibility". Men always bear most of the responsibility, and that's one of the oldest stereotypes. Men are generally considered to be more responsible for their own actions then women are. I think it's why they get longer prison sentences for the same crime. If you're not an object, you're a subject. So why do you think men bear most of the responsibility, aside from historical precedent? Are men best situated to fix these problems? I will note that a lot of new programmers are indian or asian men, which implies to me that tech is pretty good as far as racial discrimination goes. It certainly seems like a welcoming environment for those visable minorities. Or at least more welcoming then most of the alternatives.
tomp 8y ago
I lean towards the former, although a more charitable interpretation would be, it's under attack by people who have different values (i.e. they value diversity/proportional representation/equality of outcome more than they value meritocracy).
dexen 8y ago
I'd love to agree with you, but the science provides us[1] with a clear trend: the freer the women and the more equal they are culturally and legally, the lower their participation in STEM. That doesn't agree too well with the "shitty behavior" scenario, putting me in a "we need a better explanation with more predictive power" camp for now. [1] off of the top of Google: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
- aklemm 8y ago
  Not exactly, because I'm not saying we must have more women in STEM at all costs. I'm saying we need them if they want it and will contribute. If the women are truly empowered and being treated fairly and then choosing against STEM, fine.
  - traverseda 8y ago
    The big problem there is we seem to be using gender ratio as the main metric for determining if women are empowered and being treated fairly.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Way too early in the process to be faulting that measure, because the ratio is so far out of whack. When its not way out on the bell curve somewhere, then its reasonable to fault the metric.
      - traverseda 8y ago
        But what if women consistently choose fields other then STEM for legitimate non-sexism reasons? Won't that metric do a lot of harm?
        aklemm 8y ago
        Only if enforcing quotas is the only solution put forward. But realistically what's happening is that girls are being offered lots of STEM enrichment down into elementary school now so we'll know soon enough if they decide to pursue those fields.
Magnets 8y ago
Too many of the people trying to solve the gender imbalance in STEM are ignoring the fact that girls and women just don't pick STEM (biology/maths excluded) at A-level or degree level and want to fix it by tipping the scales when it comes to hiring in the hope that will encourage more girls to follow STEM career and "fix" the problem instantly. The problem isn't that women are overall disadvantaged when it comes to getting hired in STEM, it's that women are not choosing STEM careers. You could argue that too many men in the workplace will put women off following that career, but I really doubt that is the only significant factor at play here.
- aklemm 8y ago
  Why aren't they choosing STEM fields?
  - traverseda 8y ago
    Because of intrinsic interests/tendencies, cultural expectations, pay (women often can afford to make less while their spouses make more), and finally the systems that naturally come about which enforce those things. Also probably a fair heaping of sexism.
    - aklemm 8y ago
      Could you share your top 1-3 ideas for solving this problem?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - gspetr 8y ago
        Why is it framed as a problem in the first place? If you're running a convenience store and your customers purchase 65/35 apples/oranges, how would you solve a "problem" of getting them to buy 50/50? Nowhere in real life do we see an equal representation unless it's enforced artificially. If I told you that hispanics outnumber asians majoring in History 8:1, but asians outnumber hispanics majoring in Chemistry 10:1, then how would one solve that? Does that need to be solved?
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Or one might believe the world is not black and white, nor even shades of grey, but is, instead, in living glorious technicolor and the truth is a hair more complicated than such discussions would like it to be for the purposes of conveniently lining people up on two sides and trying to decide which one is right and which one is the villain.

by aklemm 8y ago

hanselot 8y ago

And people should respect your dogmatic religious beliefs.

traverseda 8y ago

Right. The thing is that there's gender disparity going in the other direction as well, fields that pay well and are well respected but that are dominated by women. Nursing being an obvious example. Any theory that explains why physics is gendered should also explain why education is also gendered. It's unlikely that those two fields ended up with skewed gender ratios for completely different reasons. So, why do you think psychology, education, and nursing are all female dominated fields? If it was simply a pattern of shitty behavior, what I would expect is some fields that women obviously don't have access to, and a more or less even gender ratio in all the other fields. What I'm seeing instead looks a lot like gender ratios are a gaussian distribution, which I don't think fits your hypothesis that the gender ratios are caused by "a pattern of shitty behavior". That probably is a co-factor, but it doesn't explain the female-dominated fields very well.

aklemm 8y ago
Interesting, but I think this flirts a little too close to the fallacy that this goes both ways equally. In your examples of nursing, education, and psychology I would suggest that a man in each of those fields is actually advantaged compared to his female peers, even if he is outnumbered significantly. The same is not true for women in many of the well-paying fields in which they are underrpresented. So, just from a very high level consideration of what is the most important thing to focus on, I still think shitty behavior is it. There is no better use of time than reading and reflecting on what shitty behavior is and then building up the bravery to call it out daily. That is hard, critical, adult work.
- traverseda 8y ago
  So why do you think the female dominated fields are female dominated? I'm not trying to do the false equivalence thing here, or saying "what about the men". I'm certainly not saying "well men have it bad too". What I am saying is that male-dominated fields and female-dominated fields both likely have the same root cause, and any hypothesis that explains one needs to explain the other. Well, plus or minus some co-factors. So, how do we explain this data? If you're looking for the answer that makes this men's fault, you could pretty easily say that men don't enter those fields because it doesn't live up to their self-image. That definitely avoid the "fallacy that this goes both ways equally" while still having one root cause for all the data. But that's a pretty lazy answer in my opinion, and doesn't fit with the data I've observed. Can you come up with a few more hypothesis that explain both male and female dominated gender ratios?
  - aklemm 8y ago
    I'm just guessing, and I get the sense that you're open to that, so bear with me. I think the fields have sorted out by gender because of intrinsic interests/tendencies, cultural expectations (to your point about self-image), pay (women often can afford to make less while their spouses make more), and finally the systems that naturally come about which enforce those things. I do think men bear most of the responsibility, and that's largely historical (men controlled the money) and partly because of the sex dynamic. For my part, I think men, including myself, just have a long way to go to treat women fairly in the workplace. After that, my #2 focus is why "women's work" pays less. Elevating the economic worth of care jobs and such is another great societal discussion that needs a lot of attention.
    - traverseda 8y ago
      I'm by no means an expert, so I'll definitely bear with you. But your hypothesis more or less matches mine. I do think you underestimate the amount of sexism men experience in nursing and child-education. Now my problem is that gender ratio is the key metric we seem to be using to measure sexism in STEM fields, and I don't think any policy is going to fix that. We can try and mitigate cultural expectations, but if those cultural expectations are grounded on intrinsic interests, we're going to have a very hard time getting rid of them. I think you really need to examine your idea that "men bear most of the responsibility". Men always bear most of the responsibility, and that's one of the oldest stereotypes. Men are generally considered to be more responsible for their own actions then women are. I think it's why they get longer prison sentences for the same crime. If you're not an object, you're a subject. So why do you think men bear most of the responsibility, aside from historical precedent? Are men best situated to fix these problems? I will note that a lot of new programmers are indian or asian men, which implies to me that tech is pretty good as far as racial discrimination goes. It certainly seems like a welcoming environment for those visable minorities. Or at least more welcoming then most of the alternatives.

tomp 8y ago

I lean towards the former, although a more charitable interpretation would be, it's under attack by people who have different values (i.e. they value diversity/proportional representation/equality of outcome more than they value meritocracy).

dexen 8y ago

I'd love to agree with you, but the science provides us[1] with a clear trend: the freer the women and the more equal they are culturally and legally, the lower their participation in STEM. That doesn't agree too well with the "shitty behavior" scenario, putting me in a "we need a better explanation with more predictive power" camp for now. [1] off of the top of Google: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...

aklemm 8y ago
Not exactly, because I'm not saying we must have more women in STEM at all costs. I'm saying we need them if they want it and will contribute. If the women are truly empowered and being treated fairly and then choosing against STEM, fine.
- traverseda 8y ago
  The big problem there is we seem to be using gender ratio as the main metric for determining if women are empowered and being treated fairly.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Way too early in the process to be faulting that measure, because the ratio is so far out of whack. When its not way out on the bell curve somewhere, then its reasonable to fault the metric.
    - traverseda 8y ago
      But what if women consistently choose fields other then STEM for legitimate non-sexism reasons? Won't that metric do a lot of harm?
      - aklemm 8y ago
        Only if enforcing quotas is the only solution put forward. But realistically what's happening is that girls are being offered lots of STEM enrichment down into elementary school now so we'll know soon enough if they decide to pursue those fields.

Magnets 8y ago

Too many of the people trying to solve the gender imbalance in STEM are ignoring the fact that girls and women just don't pick STEM (biology/maths excluded) at A-level or degree level and want to fix it by tipping the scales when it comes to hiring in the hope that will encourage more girls to follow STEM career and "fix" the problem instantly. The problem isn't that women are overall disadvantaged when it comes to getting hired in STEM, it's that women are not choosing STEM careers. You could argue that too many men in the workplace will put women off following that career, but I really doubt that is the only significant factor at play here.

aklemm 8y ago
Why aren't they choosing STEM fields?
- traverseda 8y ago
  Because of intrinsic interests/tendencies, cultural expectations, pay (women often can afford to make less while their spouses make more), and finally the systems that naturally come about which enforce those things. Also probably a fair heaping of sexism.
  - aklemm 8y ago
    Could you share your top 1-3 ideas for solving this problem?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - gspetr 8y ago
      Why is it framed as a problem in the first place? If you're running a convenience store and your customers purchase 65/35 apples/oranges, how would you solve a "problem" of getting them to buy 50/50? Nowhere in real life do we see an equal representation unless it's enforced artificially. If I told you that hispanics outnumber asians majoring in History 8:1, but asians outnumber hispanics majoring in Chemistry 10:1, then how would one solve that? Does that need to be solved?

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Or one might believe the world is not black and white, nor even shades of grey, but is, instead, in living glorious technicolor and the truth is a hair more complicated than such discussions would like it to be for the purposes of conveniently lining people up on two sides and trying to decide which one is right and which one is the villain.