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If you look at the distribution of gender in the field, it is very heavily skewed towards men. One can argue about why this is the case, but if you don't believ

If you look at the distribution of gender in the field, it is very heavily skewed towards men. One can argue about why this is the case, but if you don't believe that women are inherently "dumber" or less capable of doing scientific work then celebrating one of them reaching such success is a great way of inspiring other women and girls of attempting the same. In practical terms, imagine all humans have similar potential. If this is the case, then you must realize that the potential of nearly half the population is completely wasted. Indeed an entire gender is underrepresented in the tech & science field. Thus your best way of action should be to alleviate the issue and normalize the gender distribution. Inspiring younger women to enter the field is a step towards this goal. Of course, if you cling to the notion that women are not capable enough of doing this demanding intellectual work and should rather stick to doing menial labor surely it must be a fantastically rare statistical anomaly to have a woman win the most prestigious scientific accolade, and thus mentioning it in the title makes complete sense.

sheepmullet 8y ago
> you must realize that the potential of nearly half the population is completely wasted Umm you do realize there are important roles outside of STEM right?
- montenegrohugo 8y ago
  This is hackernews, does something "non-STEM" even exist? :) But seriously, of course other fields than STEM exist. And of course they are important too. But if you believe that the underrepresentation in STEM is not entirely due to beneficial reasons and that remedying that would be beneficial, then the above mentioned still holds true.
kgwgk 8y ago
The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM: 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... (Edit: for the record, the "simplistic summary" is not mine. It's the title of the article.)
- krastanov 8y ago
  This is rather simplistic way to summarize the article. From the link you provided: > In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with STEM degrees. That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects. The women-in-STEM advocates could, for starters, focus their efforts on those would-be STEM stars. There are two takeaways for me: - If people do not feel economic pressure (the need to find a high paying job) they might follow a non-STEM passion (the article exemplifies this in the case of women, who usually are not expected to be the breadwinner) - Even in liberal societies (and I find it amusing that the US is taken as a beacon in this example) there is difference between "what percentage perform well in STEM" and "what percentage pursue STEM". It would be instructive to study why, not just assume why.
qubax 8y ago
> In practical terms, imagine all humans have similar potential. We should imagine all humans have the same rights, but not the same potential. If we all had similar potential, then we would all have the same shot at being top physicists, NBA players or chess grandmasters. But we don't. We know that all humans don't have similar potential because there are women only sporting events. We created women's soccer and women's tennis and women's golf precisely because we acknowledge that all humans don't have similar potential. > Of course, if you cling to the notion that women are not capable enough of doing this demanding intellectual work and should rather stick to doing menial labor But most menial labor is done by males - especially the dangerous ones? Why are you so fixated on physics? Why aren't you demanding women go into garbage collecting, logging, steel work, etc which are some of the most dangerous and most male fields? > surely it must be a fantastically rare statistical anomaly to have a woman win the most prestigious scientific accolade, and thus mentioning it in the title makes complete sense. Can you please not do this? This type of feminism ( especially coming from a male ) comes off just as badly as chauvanism and extremely patronizing. If you truly believe what you say, why aren't you out there protesting women's world cup or any women specific sporting event? All humans have the same potential right? Also your argument would make sense if the west still discriminated against women. We haven't for quite a long time. As a matter of fact, we have had programs and scholarships specifically to encourage women to go into male dominated fields for generations. And yet, women choose not to? Should we force women to go into these fields since encouraging and giving them a choice certainly isn't working.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  > if we all had similar potential, then we would all have the same shot at being top physicists Even if we all did "have the same shot at being top physicists", some people may prefer to be something else.
adwn 8y ago
> In practical terms, imagine all humans have similar potential. This is evidently false. The intelligence trait is at least partly inheritable, and not all humans are equally intelligent, so not all humans have the same potential. Now, if what you actually meant was "both genders have the same potential in general" (as opposed to every individual human being), then it's not as simple as that. There's some evidence that although men and women are equally intelligent on average, the distribution is flatter and wider for men. This means that there are more men than women at the extreme high and low ends of the distribution. This is part of the reason (though probably not the only reason) why men are more strongly represented among the extreme overachievers in STEM fields.

sheepmullet 8y ago

> you must realize that the potential of nearly half the population is completely wasted Umm you do realize there are important roles outside of STEM right?

montenegrohugo 8y ago
This is hackernews, does something "non-STEM" even exist? :) But seriously, of course other fields than STEM exist. And of course they are important too. But if you believe that the underrepresentation in STEM is not entirely due to beneficial reasons and that remedying that would be beneficial, then the above mentioned still holds true.

kgwgk 8y ago

The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM: 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... (Edit: for the record, the "simplistic summary" is not mine. It's the title of the article.)

krastanov 8y ago
This is rather simplistic way to summarize the article. From the link you provided: > In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with STEM degrees. That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects. The women-in-STEM advocates could, for starters, focus their efforts on those would-be STEM stars. There are two takeaways for me: - If people do not feel economic pressure (the need to find a high paying job) they might follow a non-STEM passion (the article exemplifies this in the case of women, who usually are not expected to be the breadwinner) - Even in liberal societies (and I find it amusing that the US is taken as a beacon in this example) there is difference between "what percentage perform well in STEM" and "what percentage pursue STEM". It would be instructive to study why, not just assume why.

qubax 8y ago

> In practical terms, imagine all humans have similar potential. We should imagine all humans have the same rights, but not the same potential. If we all had similar potential, then we would all have the same shot at being top physicists, NBA players or chess grandmasters. But we don't. We know that all humans don't have similar potential because there are women only sporting events. We created women's soccer and women's tennis and women's golf precisely because we acknowledge that all humans don't have similar potential. > Of course, if you cling to the notion that women are not capable enough of doing this demanding intellectual work and should rather stick to doing menial labor But most menial labor is done by males - especially the dangerous ones? Why are you so fixated on physics? Why aren't you demanding women go into garbage collecting, logging, steel work, etc which are some of the most dangerous and most male fields? > surely it must be a fantastically rare statistical anomaly to have a woman win the most prestigious scientific accolade, and thus mentioning it in the title makes complete sense. Can you please not do this? This type of feminism ( especially coming from a male ) comes off just as badly as chauvanism and extremely patronizing. If you truly believe what you say, why aren't you out there protesting women's world cup or any women specific sporting event? All humans have the same potential right? Also your argument would make sense if the west still discriminated against women. We haven't for quite a long time. As a matter of fact, we have had programs and scholarships specifically to encourage women to go into male dominated fields for generations. And yet, women choose not to? Should we force women to go into these fields since encouraging and giving them a choice certainly isn't working.

kgwgk 8y ago
> if we all had similar potential, then we would all have the same shot at being top physicists Even if we all did "have the same shot at being top physicists", some people may prefer to be something else.

adwn 8y ago

> In practical terms, imagine all humans have similar potential. This is evidently false. The intelligence trait is at least partly inheritable, and not all humans are equally intelligent, so not all humans have the same potential. Now, if what you actually meant was "both genders have the same potential in general" (as opposed to every individual human being), then it's not as simple as that. There's some evidence that although men and women are equally intelligent on average, the distribution is flatter and wider for men. This means that there are more men than women at the extreme high and low ends of the distribution. This is part of the reason (though probably not the only reason) why men are more strongly represented among the extreme overachievers in STEM fields.