6 ms·

You missed my point, which is that none of those statistics are meaningful one way or the other.

manfredo 8y ago
> You missed my point, which is that none of those statistics are meaningful one way or the other I'm not sure I follow. You alleged that there may be discrimination against women in university education. I pointed out that women are already over represented in university, and that engineering universities display clear disparities in their admissions rates that favor women by large margin. How are these statistics not relevant to your claim that women are disadvantaged in admissions?
- OpieCunningham 8y ago
  Those are not the things I said. I specifically said that this statistic approach is an impossible debate because fundamentally it assumes everything down the chain (elementary school, parenting, society) is not prone to similar gender bias. In reality, all of those things are prone to gender bias. There is no debate here. If there is a genetic difference between genders that demonstrates aptitude/proclivity towards STEM, then statistics can be leveraged as pointers towards the result of actions taken to equalize gender opportunity. If or until such a time as that genetic evidence is discovered, I see no reason to believe that women, by nature, are inherently less capable or interested in STEM - therefore, the only useful statistic in a debate on hiring results (i.e. 38% are women) is that 50% of humans are women. Please re-read what I have posted.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    You're saying that there is discrimination of some kind down the line, but the person you're responding to is pointing out that, even if that discrimination does in fact exist, women are still over-represented in university education, including at engineering focused schools. How is that not strong evidence against your position?
    - OpieCunningham 8y ago
      > You're saying that there is discrimination of some kind down the line, but the person you're responding to is pointing out that, even if that discrimination does in fact exist, women are still over-represented in university education, including at engineering focused schools. How is that not strong evidence against your position? https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2013/cb13-162_stem_female.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/... So that's a few years old - there's a bunch of statistics there. Do those statistics mean that women get hired more than men? No. They mean the rate of women hires in STEM is increasing over time. They also mean that specific to computer science they have more recently decreased. So should we assume that affirmative action policies and general pressure on society over the last 40 years has had zero contribution towards the increase in women hires? Or should we assume that there is no possibility that the more recent decrease in women in computer science could partially be a result of workplace culture or limited advancement due to bias? Considering there is no evidence that women are less capable or interested in STEM or computer science, I can't think of any rational reason we should jump towards the conclusion that "women just don't do it well or like it". Bias existed before, it exists now, it is likely decreasing (though all we can say for certain is that over time the effect of bias has decreased - it may continue to exist at it's earlier levels while the effect is being mitigated by actions such as diversity hiring).
  - manfredo 8y ago
    > Those are not the things I said. The second sentence of your 3rd to last comment: > If 20% of graduates are women, is that because of subconscious bias favoring men in admissions or grading? This is definitely proposing that the disparity in computing graduates could be due to bias in admissions. This is very explicit. > I specifically said that this statistic approach is an impossible debate because fundamentally it assumes everything down the chain (elementary school, parenting, society) is not prone to similar gender bias. In reality, all of those things are prone to gender bias. The onus is on you to prove that bias exists. Otherwise, this entire chain of reasoning boils down to the a priori assumption that any disparity is the result of bias. We conclude that disparity exists because of bias. We also conclude that bias exists because of disparity. This is circular logic. > If or until such a time as that genetic evidence is discovered, I see no reason to believe that women, by nature, are inherently less capable or interested in STEM - therefore, the only useful statistic in a debate on hiring results (i.e. 38% are women) is that 50% of humans are women. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is the case: * Contrary to your earlier suggestion that women are less prevalent in stem due to being steered towards housework, the countries where women and men have the closest participation in housework actually have some of the lowest percentages of women in stem [1]. * Women form the minority in STEM in almost every country.[2] All across Europe, North America, Asia, South America, and Africa women make up the minority of STEM graduates. In every country in the study outside of Africa and the Middle East (which, to reiterate, are counter intuitively some of the most misogynistic countries in the world) women made up less than 1/3rd of STEM graduates. When the same pattern is consistent across widely varying societies and cultures then it's extremely difficult to attribute the disparity in STEM to culture. * There is ample evidence to suggest that girls are inherently more social than boys. Newborn girls direct more attention towards human faces than boys, and newborn boys direct more attention towards mechanical objects than newborn girls [3]. Here's some additional reading from psychology publications: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full https://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612458937 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761245893... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/gender-bias-in-science-or-biased-claims-gender-bias https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox 2. 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... 3. https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf

> You missed my point, which is that none of those statistics are meaningful one way or the other I'm not sure I follow. You alleged that there may be discrimination against women in university education. I pointed out that women are already over represented in university, and that engineering universities display clear disparities in their admissions rates that favor women by large margin. How are these statistics not relevant to your claim that women are disadvantaged in admissions?

OpieCunningham 8y ago
Those are not the things I said. I specifically said that this statistic approach is an impossible debate because fundamentally it assumes everything down the chain (elementary school, parenting, society) is not prone to similar gender bias. In reality, all of those things are prone to gender bias. There is no debate here. If there is a genetic difference between genders that demonstrates aptitude/proclivity towards STEM, then statistics can be leveraged as pointers towards the result of actions taken to equalize gender opportunity. If or until such a time as that genetic evidence is discovered, I see no reason to believe that women, by nature, are inherently less capable or interested in STEM - therefore, the only useful statistic in a debate on hiring results (i.e. 38% are women) is that 50% of humans are women. Please re-read what I have posted.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  You're saying that there is discrimination of some kind down the line, but the person you're responding to is pointing out that, even if that discrimination does in fact exist, women are still over-represented in university education, including at engineering focused schools. How is that not strong evidence against your position?
  - OpieCunningham 8y ago
    > You're saying that there is discrimination of some kind down the line, but the person you're responding to is pointing out that, even if that discrimination does in fact exist, women are still over-represented in university education, including at engineering focused schools. How is that not strong evidence against your position? https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2013/cb13-162_stem_female.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/... So that's a few years old - there's a bunch of statistics there. Do those statistics mean that women get hired more than men? No. They mean the rate of women hires in STEM is increasing over time. They also mean that specific to computer science they have more recently decreased. So should we assume that affirmative action policies and general pressure on society over the last 40 years has had zero contribution towards the increase in women hires? Or should we assume that there is no possibility that the more recent decrease in women in computer science could partially be a result of workplace culture or limited advancement due to bias? Considering there is no evidence that women are less capable or interested in STEM or computer science, I can't think of any rational reason we should jump towards the conclusion that "women just don't do it well or like it". Bias existed before, it exists now, it is likely decreasing (though all we can say for certain is that over time the effect of bias has decreased - it may continue to exist at it's earlier levels while the effect is being mitigated by actions such as diversity hiring).
- manfredo 8y ago
  > Those are not the things I said. The second sentence of your 3rd to last comment: > If 20% of graduates are women, is that because of subconscious bias favoring men in admissions or grading? This is definitely proposing that the disparity in computing graduates could be due to bias in admissions. This is very explicit. > I specifically said that this statistic approach is an impossible debate because fundamentally it assumes everything down the chain (elementary school, parenting, society) is not prone to similar gender bias. In reality, all of those things are prone to gender bias. The onus is on you to prove that bias exists. Otherwise, this entire chain of reasoning boils down to the a priori assumption that any disparity is the result of bias. We conclude that disparity exists because of bias. We also conclude that bias exists because of disparity. This is circular logic. > If or until such a time as that genetic evidence is discovered, I see no reason to believe that women, by nature, are inherently less capable or interested in STEM - therefore, the only useful statistic in a debate on hiring results (i.e. 38% are women) is that 50% of humans are women. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is the case: * Contrary to your earlier suggestion that women are less prevalent in stem due to being steered towards housework, the countries where women and men have the closest participation in housework actually have some of the lowest percentages of women in stem [1]. * Women form the minority in STEM in almost every country.[2] All across Europe, North America, Asia, South America, and Africa women make up the minority of STEM graduates. In every country in the study outside of Africa and the Middle East (which, to reiterate, are counter intuitively some of the most misogynistic countries in the world) women made up less than 1/3rd of STEM graduates. When the same pattern is consistent across widely varying societies and cultures then it's extremely difficult to attribute the disparity in STEM to culture. * There is ample evidence to suggest that girls are inherently more social than boys. Newborn girls direct more attention towards human faces than boys, and newborn boys direct more attention towards mechanical objects than newborn girls [3]. Here's some additional reading from psychology publications: https://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full https://www.pnas.org/content/108/8/3157.full https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612458937 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761245893... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/why-brilliant-girls-tend-favor-non-stem-careers https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707/gender-bias-in-science-or-biased-claims-gender-bias https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/rabble-rouser/201707... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox 2. 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... 3. https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf https://www.math.kth.se/matstat/gru/5b1501/F/sex.pdf