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Social, historical, and cultural factors undoubtedly make the level of effort required to be successful as a woman in tech or science spaces higher than the lev

Social, historical, and cultural factors undoubtedly make the level of effort required to be successful as a woman in tech or science spaces higher than the level of effort a man has to make for the same level of success (if you could control everything else). This can be true without any derogatory implication about the inherent capabilities of women generally. That you can't tell the difference astonishes me.

rjf72 7y ago
What do you base your first sentence on? Unsurprisingly there is now research indicating that female candidates are now twice as likely to be chosen as equally qualified men for tenure track positions in university science departments. [1] And I'm sure my computer science class was no exception in that the generally ~three females in the class had about 90% of the rest of the class willing to do any and everything they possible could to help them, mostly being happy to just be able to spend time around a woman interested in CS. I have an inside track there as one of those three is now my wife! I don't understand how people can think it would be harder to achieve as a female in STEM in the current environment (and neither does my wife for that matter). You get jobs easier, you get tenure tracks easier, you have enormous support networks, and so on. 30 years ago I'd agree with you, but I think we've long since radically overcorrected and, as you would say, that somebody can't see this does genuinely astonish me. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/1...
- themarkn 7y ago
  It's based on things I've listened to women say about working in male-dominated fields, and on the many other studies that contradict the one in that article. Even the author of that study doesn't go as far as you, she admits the results do not mean there is no discrimination. "Radically overcorrecting" seems a couple of steps beyond that. I guess we'll just both be astonished. Sometimes two people look at the exact same world and see different things.
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Please do share these studies. I'm reasonably well read on this topic and have found all contemporary studies to be of a similar result. The thing you may be misunderstanding, as it's often made less than clear, is that there is an inequality of result - not of opportunity. Women who choose to pursue STEM are embraced with open arms. BUT very few choose to pursue it in the first place and, of those that do, many end up swapping pursuits later in life. And so studies focus on this as if it's a problem, because it surely cannot be the case that genders may be intrinsically attracted to different pursuits in life. This inequality of result, and the inability to attribute such to intrinsic factors, is the great "gender bias." I did not say women do not face discrimination. They do. And, to varying degrees, everybody does. This is true even in the most homogeneous of societies. The region of birth based discrimination in China is far more vigorous than any form of discrimination we've had in many decades. What matters of course are the consequences of such discrimination. Cultures, interests, and aptitudes vary among any selection of individuals. Even what seem to be completely 'agnostic' selection criterion such as height will yield extreme differences in distributions [1]. So the presumption of equal opportunity leading to equal results is nonsensical. "Bias" is a loaded word, and not completely equal is not the same thing as biased, or at least the connotation of such. I think there are two salient issues here: 1. There is a severe publication bias both against negative results and results that are not 'meaningful.' Negative results are results that indicate a hypothesis is not true. This sounds reasonable but it isn't in practice as it leads to the scenario we are currently in where finding evidence of discrimination is generally publication worthy. Yet, and this study notwithstanding, finding a lack of discrimination is generally not publication worthy. I expect the replication crisis, which is hitting the social sciences particularly hard, is in part driven by this. People need to publish something, and it generally needs to be shocking. That leads to... 2. Many people's careers and livelihoods depend upon the presence of discrimination. At one time astrology was a science at least as reputable and scholarly as psychology is today. And it's quite likely that a good number people who studied the field for decades had some inclining, perhaps buried deep in the back of their mind, that it was a bunch of crap. But of course they would quickly snuff such wrongthink out simply because such a possibility was unacceptable. After all, what are you to do when you've dedicated your life to something and you come to no longer see it as relevant? You go from a well regarded expert, to a master of nothing perhaps past thee point of being able to reboot your direction in life. No, such possibilities cannot be accepted. This is not to say discrimination is no more real than astrology. It certainly is. But rather I emphasize only that when people's livelihood depends upon finding evidence of discrimination, they will find it - whether or not it exists. "Science advances one funeral at a time." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence

rjf72 7y ago

What do you base your first sentence on? Unsurprisingly there is now research indicating that female candidates are now twice as likely to be chosen as equally qualified men for tenure track positions in university science departments. [1] And I'm sure my computer science class was no exception in that the generally ~three females in the class had about 90% of the rest of the class willing to do any and everything they possible could to help them, mostly being happy to just be able to spend time around a woman interested in CS. I have an inside track there as one of those three is now my wife! I don't understand how people can think it would be harder to achieve as a female in STEM in the current environment (and neither does my wife for that matter). You get jobs easier, you get tenure tracks easier, you have enormous support networks, and so on. 30 years ago I'd agree with you, but I think we've long since radically overcorrected and, as you would say, that somebody can't see this does genuinely astonish me. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in-stem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/1...

themarkn 7y ago
It's based on things I've listened to women say about working in male-dominated fields, and on the many other studies that contradict the one in that article. Even the author of that study doesn't go as far as you, she admits the results do not mean there is no discrimination. "Radically overcorrecting" seems a couple of steps beyond that. I guess we'll just both be astonished. Sometimes two people look at the exact same world and see different things.
- rjf72 7y ago
  Please do share these studies. I'm reasonably well read on this topic and have found all contemporary studies to be of a similar result. The thing you may be misunderstanding, as it's often made less than clear, is that there is an inequality of result - not of opportunity. Women who choose to pursue STEM are embraced with open arms. BUT very few choose to pursue it in the first place and, of those that do, many end up swapping pursuits later in life. And so studies focus on this as if it's a problem, because it surely cannot be the case that genders may be intrinsically attracted to different pursuits in life. This inequality of result, and the inability to attribute such to intrinsic factors, is the great "gender bias." I did not say women do not face discrimination. They do. And, to varying degrees, everybody does. This is true even in the most homogeneous of societies. The region of birth based discrimination in China is far more vigorous than any form of discrimination we've had in many decades. What matters of course are the consequences of such discrimination. Cultures, interests, and aptitudes vary among any selection of individuals. Even what seem to be completely 'agnostic' selection criterion such as height will yield extreme differences in distributions [1]. So the presumption of equal opportunity leading to equal results is nonsensical. "Bias" is a loaded word, and not completely equal is not the same thing as biased, or at least the connotation of such. I think there are two salient issues here: 1. There is a severe publication bias both against negative results and results that are not 'meaningful.' Negative results are results that indicate a hypothesis is not true. This sounds reasonable but it isn't in practice as it leads to the scenario we are currently in where finding evidence of discrimination is generally publication worthy. Yet, and this study notwithstanding, finding a lack of discrimination is generally not publication worthy. I expect the replication crisis, which is hitting the social sciences particularly hard, is in part driven by this. People need to publish something, and it generally needs to be shocking. That leads to... 2. Many people's careers and livelihoods depend upon the presence of discrimination. At one time astrology was a science at least as reputable and scholarly as psychology is today. And it's quite likely that a good number people who studied the field for decades had some inclining, perhaps buried deep in the back of their mind, that it was a bunch of crap. But of course they would quickly snuff such wrongthink out simply because such a possibility was unacceptable. After all, what are you to do when you've dedicated your life to something and you come to no longer see it as relevant? You go from a well regarded expert, to a master of nothing perhaps past thee point of being able to reboot your direction in life. No, such possibilities cannot be accepted. This is not to say discrimination is no more real than astrology. It certainly is. But rather I emphasize only that when people's livelihood depends upon finding evidence of discrimination, they will find it - whether or not it exists. "Science advances one funeral at a time." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence