5 ms·

Why Are Women Under-Represented in Physics?

62 points by andrenth 8y ago

dev_dull 8y ago
> With colleagues, I spent the summer checking the data and exploring ways to present them at the workshop that wouldn’t harm our careers.
- mrguyorama 8y ago
  I wonder how many of those colleagues were women?
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Yeah looking at his slides he did a shit job. Some genuinely interesting data and theories but it's filled with indignant snippets like "not sexism - it's merit!". The data could easily have been presented in a far less confrontational and provocative way.
chopin 8y ago
Interesting article but it eludes me what his bibliographical research found other than gaps which where already known. I fail to notice where he differs from mainstream based on results his research found. To be clear I don't like stifling discussion with non-scientific arguments either (which the author accuses CERN of). But imho the article fails to bring his arguments across other than "I was attacked on unscientific grounds". If he bases broader male variation on observations of citation indexes I think this is a poor measure as citation indexes favor the incumbents very much. A problem which also male newcomers have trouble with.
NoblePublius 8y ago
Jordan Peterson constantly alludes to similar findings in similar studies; gender difference actually correlates strongly with a country’s gender equality. The more “equal” a society, the starker the difference of male and female outcomes. He also noted that smart women are generally more talented than smart men; if a woman is good at math, she is likely to be good at other things whereas a man who is good at math is less likely to be good at other things. So smart women often end up out of STEM because it’s easier for their intelligence to manifest. I’m frankly amazed this article got this high on HN, and I hope you all give yourselves a chance to fully analyze it before letting a political bias force you to downvote.
- Pigo 8y ago
  I'm pretty amazed as well, honestly. I think people get too emotional when you even discuss this topic. I may disagree, I may even be offended, but so what. Downvoting to oblivion, blocking, banning dissenting opinions is literal censorship. If you disagree with me, write a response that shows how dumb I am and then move on with your life. That said, any hints I see at trying to force an equality of outcome at the expense of other groups is authoritarian, and should be stopped.
  - NoblePublius 8y ago
    PREACH
- return0 8y ago
  this is not the right forum to present such thoughts
ahelwer 8y ago
Remember a week ago when this site scoured a public GitHub repo to ensure a woman physicist wasn't getting more credit than she was due? Imagine having to conduct yourself in your professional life as though you were under persistent threat of audit by some know-nothings if you stuck your head up too high. I would go insane.
- basetop 8y ago
  She wasn't a physicist, she was a computer scientist. Harrassing her was wrong, but so is what happened to this physicist. Stop trying use her to push divisions. If you truly cared about harrassment, you'd be just as offended at what happened to this guy as much as you are about her. Also, people like you do far more to push women and minorities out of STEM than anything. You are constantly telling women and minorities what a terrible racist and misogynist place academia is.
  - ahelwer 8y ago
    It is not pushing divisions to highlight existing divisions. They must be addressed, not papered over. Academia (and other places) indeed is or can be a racist & misogynistic place, but you don't have to take my word for it - many women scientists have spoken up about this issue.
  - vkhn 8y ago
    Bro.
- uclscount 8y ago
  Or you know, work hard and have integrity by not taking undue credit or unfair favoritism so that any audit by "know-nothings" (?) becomes fruitless. The reason for the "audit" is that looking closer at stories like this very often reveals a hidden truth: it's made up fluff to push an agenda.
neya 8y ago
I'm not saying this to stir up some kind of controversy. But, I think it's wrong to silence him simply because we don't agree with him. He presented data, some efforts to support his view points. This is far better than fuelling hatred and bigotry just by providing opinions. For instance, this person who wrote this article titled ("Why can't we hate men?") is actually a gender studies professor (now a director?) in a well known top university in Boston and still has their job: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men... But we are offended and want to silence someone and fire them for providing atleast reasonable data to back his claims?
NotAnEconomist 8y ago
> I find it alarming that a scientific organization has rules that restrict free speech using such vague, subjective language. Feminism has always been a sexist power movement, and the natural outcome of that is always authoritarian social policy. At it's core, feminism is about the sole focus on accruing benefits and status for one sex (or gender, depending on who you ask). Feminism fights for women's rights, but not men's: the vote, but not forcing women to enlist in selective service; workplace rights, but not for men to have parental rights; women in STEM, but not men in psychology, teaching, etc -- or even men in school at all. Perhaps there was a time that kind of sexist focus was a force for good, but I have to seriously question that. Regardless -- If you're part of feminism in an academic context, you're part of a majority power movement, which routinely denigrates and attacks the minority gender in blatant violation of Title IX -- and have been for decades. Feminism is sexism. So it's surprising to me that the scientists are surprised.
- lm28469 8y ago
  > Feminism fights for women's rights, but not men's I mean, that's the whole purpose. I don't have a crystallised opinion on 3rd wave feminism but the 1st and 2nd were clearly necessary. It's like saying the black panthers were bad because they were not fighting for white people's rights.
  - Ygg2 8y ago
    As far as I know, women aren't a minority. They have longer lifespans than men. But overall I do agree, they needed some extra rights. However, the feminist movement now feels extraneous, as most of their rights have been achieved. Like any good bureaucracy, IMO the organization exists to further promote its existence, goals be damned.
    - tghw 8y ago
      No, but women are marginalized in many aspects of life, including their careers. That leads them to be minorities in leadership positions and other positions of power, which then perpetuates the cycle.
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
Women are just as smart as men, i don't think anyone can debate this. Are women just as interested in the same things men are? This is highly debatable. There are biological differences between men and women.
- dnautics 8y ago
  I think there's an arguable point: Men are more likely to be stupid (defective chromosome and all that), and going into academia today is a really stupid choice. It's stupid in the "high risk, but maybe high but questionable payoff" sense in the same way that wingsuiting is, and there's also a gender gap in wingsuiting too.
- yasp 8y ago
  > All or most of the major tests commonly used to measure intelligence have been constructed so that there are no overall score differences between males and females. Thus, there is little difference between the average IQ scores of men and women. Differences have been reported, however, in specific areas such as mathematics and verbal measures. Also, studies have found the variability of male scores is greater than that of female scores, resulting in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...
- jchw 8y ago
  Just saying "biological differences" is too handwave-y I think. I'm a programmer and not a scientist of any kind but I would guess we go against our biology in many, many ways in modern day-to-day life, and without better justification it feels a bit silly to run with this reasoning for a clearly complicated issue. If it were a truly unsolvable problem, then I assume we would never make any progress, but that's not the case.
tagrun 8y ago
> Data show that, at the moment they’re hired in research or academic posts, female physicists have on average fewer (fractionally counted) papers and citations than their male equivalents. As the careers of physicists progress, the initial representation gap doesn’t change much, and a second difference known as the “productivity gap” appears. This was confirmed by my data. I can confirm this does happen based on my limited observations. Some people get hired at the expense of candidates which are better by objective measures of publication, citation and funding records, and those people tend to be women and/or minority groups. And despite being an unfair practice, it is encouraged from top and employed. If there is a sexism/racism problem, I don't understand how more sexism/racism would solve it. I don't understand how there can be a righteous and endorsed flavor of sexism/racism.
lumberjack 8y ago
If he had acted with more tact, he could have avoided the outcry. His presentation was not at the right time nor place. Then going public (although he's not the only one at fault here) made things worst. You cannot do science in the public sphere. It speaks for itself that he was quickly embraced by anti-intellectual political factions.
basetop 8y ago
This is an example of where a topics based news aggregation and discussion would be better rather than article based aggregation and discussion. Instead of getting one side's story (one article), how great would it be if we had a "CERN gender topic" and a list of articles about that topic that encompasses all sides ( and possibly different regions ). Beyond one side or the another, wouldn't it be interesting to see what indians, chinese, south americans, africans, etc think of it too? I'm sure this topic is a lot more nuanced and complex than either side lets on and I feel these issues lend themselves to topic based aggregation and discussion. Just an opinion. But whatever side you are on, I think the real issue here is the personal and professional attacks this academic got for providing an honest opinion ( backed by stats and sources ). The viciousness displayed by his fellow phycists and CERN as an organization is really disappointing as is their attempt to silence him. One of the basis of academia is the idea of "devil's advocacy". Where you or someone takes the other's side in order to getting a fuller understanding of any topic. How is any discussion possible when the opposing side is silenced?
zpeti 8y ago
Is it just me or did this thread appear on the front page of HN and rising and then just disappear into nowhere?
- durovo 8y ago
  Yes, I noticed the same thing. I may not entirely agree with what is in the article, but I believe that the author deserves to be heard.
return0 8y ago
why would he present the results in an academic conference anyway? Those are archaic gatherings with extreme social/political biases and nothing good ever came out of them (i ve been in quite a few). not a very smart academic
mrguyorama 8y ago
I think the single most interesting result from this whole thing is that there is near equal representation of both men and women in the law profession. I wonder why that is? What was counted as a person in a "Law profession"? Where support staff and secretaries included? If it was just lawyers, what are they doing right to get equal representation that everyone else does wrong?
- apta 8y ago
  > If it was just lawyers, what are they doing right to get equal representation that everyone else does wrong? Phrasing the gender gap in different areas as "wrong" is weird. Do you see people fighting to bring people into law enforcement, construction, etc? Or to bring men into nursing or day care? Let's accept that there are biological differences that affect what men and women are interested in (which says nothing about their intelligence and aptitude), and leave this far left liberal agenda on the side.
- belorn 8y ago
  It is an interesting question, through I think I suspect the answer has to do with the values that profession provides to the employee. In many studies we see a gender difference in men valuing high pay over other aspects in work place, and women valuing social respect and a feeling of helping more than high pay. The legal profession, and I suspect pro-bono lawyers in particular, provide tends to a value of respect and being helpful, while high profile cases brings in the high pay. It would not surprise me if men and women would give very different answer in surveys on why they entered the legal profession.
apta 8y ago
Why are women underrepresented in construction, police force, military, etc. Why are men underrepresented in day care, nursing, etc.
rekabis 8y ago
This is a glorious example of where the truth is hated simply because it’s inconvenient and utterly fails to support the sociopolitical narrative. The reaction of the far-leftists to evidence like this is what has pushed me clear out of the left and into centrism. I will never become a conservative (that philosophy has even more patently bankrupt ideas it still desperately clings to), but I cannot consider myself “of the left” anymore. I simply cannot abide those levels of toxicity and religious-like ideology against which any dissent is heresy to be punished and crushed.
NoblePublius 8y ago
Why did this get flagged?

62 points by andrenth 8y ago

> With colleagues, I spent the summer checking the data and exploring ways to present them at the workshop that wouldn’t harm our careers.

mrguyorama 8y ago
I wonder how many of those colleagues were women?
IshKebab 8y ago
Yeah looking at his slides he did a shit job. Some genuinely interesting data and theories but it's filled with indignant snippets like "not sexism - it's merit!". The data could easily have been presented in a far less confrontational and provocative way.

chopin 8y ago

Interesting article but it eludes me what his bibliographical research found other than gaps which where already known. I fail to notice where he differs from mainstream based on results his research found. To be clear I don't like stifling discussion with non-scientific arguments either (which the author accuses CERN of). But imho the article fails to bring his arguments across other than "I was attacked on unscientific grounds". If he bases broader male variation on observations of citation indexes I think this is a poor measure as citation indexes favor the incumbents very much. A problem which also male newcomers have trouble with.

NoblePublius 8y ago

Jordan Peterson constantly alludes to similar findings in similar studies; gender difference actually correlates strongly with a country’s gender equality. The more “equal” a society, the starker the difference of male and female outcomes. He also noted that smart women are generally more talented than smart men; if a woman is good at math, she is likely to be good at other things whereas a man who is good at math is less likely to be good at other things. So smart women often end up out of STEM because it’s easier for their intelligence to manifest. I’m frankly amazed this article got this high on HN, and I hope you all give yourselves a chance to fully analyze it before letting a political bias force you to downvote.

Pigo 8y ago
I'm pretty amazed as well, honestly. I think people get too emotional when you even discuss this topic. I may disagree, I may even be offended, but so what. Downvoting to oblivion, blocking, banning dissenting opinions is literal censorship. If you disagree with me, write a response that shows how dumb I am and then move on with your life. That said, any hints I see at trying to force an equality of outcome at the expense of other groups is authoritarian, and should be stopped.
- NoblePublius 8y ago
  PREACH
return0 8y ago
this is not the right forum to present such thoughts

ahelwer 8y ago

Remember a week ago when this site scoured a public GitHub repo to ensure a woman physicist wasn't getting more credit than she was due? Imagine having to conduct yourself in your professional life as though you were under persistent threat of audit by some know-nothings if you stuck your head up too high. I would go insane.

basetop 8y ago
She wasn't a physicist, she was a computer scientist. Harrassing her was wrong, but so is what happened to this physicist. Stop trying use her to push divisions. If you truly cared about harrassment, you'd be just as offended at what happened to this guy as much as you are about her. Also, people like you do far more to push women and minorities out of STEM than anything. You are constantly telling women and minorities what a terrible racist and misogynist place academia is.
- ahelwer 8y ago
  It is not pushing divisions to highlight existing divisions. They must be addressed, not papered over. Academia (and other places) indeed is or can be a racist & misogynistic place, but you don't have to take my word for it - many women scientists have spoken up about this issue.
- vkhn 8y ago
  Bro.
uclscount 8y ago
Or you know, work hard and have integrity by not taking undue credit or unfair favoritism so that any audit by "know-nothings" (?) becomes fruitless. The reason for the "audit" is that looking closer at stories like this very often reveals a hidden truth: it's made up fluff to push an agenda.

neya 8y ago

I'm not saying this to stir up some kind of controversy. But, I think it's wrong to silence him simply because we don't agree with him. He presented data, some efforts to support his view points. This is far better than fuelling hatred and bigotry just by providing opinions. For instance, this person who wrote this article titled ("Why can't we hate men?") is actually a gender studies professor (now a director?) in a well known top university in Boston and still has their job: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men... But we are offended and want to silence someone and fire them for providing atleast reasonable data to back his claims?

NotAnEconomist 8y ago

> I find it alarming that a scientific organization has rules that restrict free speech using such vague, subjective language. Feminism has always been a sexist power movement, and the natural outcome of that is always authoritarian social policy. At it's core, feminism is about the sole focus on accruing benefits and status for one sex (or gender, depending on who you ask). Feminism fights for women's rights, but not men's: the vote, but not forcing women to enlist in selective service; workplace rights, but not for men to have parental rights; women in STEM, but not men in psychology, teaching, etc -- or even men in school at all. Perhaps there was a time that kind of sexist focus was a force for good, but I have to seriously question that. Regardless -- If you're part of feminism in an academic context, you're part of a majority power movement, which routinely denigrates and attacks the minority gender in blatant violation of Title IX -- and have been for decades. Feminism is sexism. So it's surprising to me that the scientists are surprised.

lm28469 8y ago
> Feminism fights for women's rights, but not men's I mean, that's the whole purpose. I don't have a crystallised opinion on 3rd wave feminism but the 1st and 2nd were clearly necessary. It's like saying the black panthers were bad because they were not fighting for white people's rights.
- Ygg2 8y ago
  As far as I know, women aren't a minority. They have longer lifespans than men. But overall I do agree, they needed some extra rights. However, the feminist movement now feels extraneous, as most of their rights have been achieved. Like any good bureaucracy, IMO the organization exists to further promote its existence, goals be damned.
  - tghw 8y ago
    No, but women are marginalized in many aspects of life, including their careers. That leads them to be minorities in leadership positions and other positions of power, which then perpetuates the cycle.

strikelaserclaw 8y ago

Women are just as smart as men, i don't think anyone can debate this. Are women just as interested in the same things men are? This is highly debatable. There are biological differences between men and women.

dnautics 8y ago
I think there's an arguable point: Men are more likely to be stupid (defective chromosome and all that), and going into academia today is a really stupid choice. It's stupid in the "high risk, but maybe high but questionable payoff" sense in the same way that wingsuiting is, and there's also a gender gap in wingsuiting too.
yasp 8y ago
> All or most of the major tests commonly used to measure intelligence have been constructed so that there are no overall score differences between males and females. Thus, there is little difference between the average IQ scores of men and women. Differences have been reported, however, in specific areas such as mathematics and verbal measures. Also, studies have found the variability of male scores is greater than that of female scores, resulting in more males than females in the top and bottom of the IQ distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligenc...
jchw 8y ago
Just saying "biological differences" is too handwave-y I think. I'm a programmer and not a scientist of any kind but I would guess we go against our biology in many, many ways in modern day-to-day life, and without better justification it feels a bit silly to run with this reasoning for a clearly complicated issue. If it were a truly unsolvable problem, then I assume we would never make any progress, but that's not the case.

tagrun 8y ago

> Data show that, at the moment they’re hired in research or academic posts, female physicists have on average fewer (fractionally counted) papers and citations than their male equivalents. As the careers of physicists progress, the initial representation gap doesn’t change much, and a second difference known as the “productivity gap” appears. This was confirmed by my data. I can confirm this does happen based on my limited observations. Some people get hired at the expense of candidates which are better by objective measures of publication, citation and funding records, and those people tend to be women and/or minority groups. And despite being an unfair practice, it is encouraged from top and employed. If there is a sexism/racism problem, I don't understand how more sexism/racism would solve it. I don't understand how there can be a righteous and endorsed flavor of sexism/racism.

lumberjack 8y ago

If he had acted with more tact, he could have avoided the outcry. His presentation was not at the right time nor place. Then going public (although he's not the only one at fault here) made things worst. You cannot do science in the public sphere. It speaks for itself that he was quickly embraced by anti-intellectual political factions.

basetop 8y ago

This is an example of where a topics based news aggregation and discussion would be better rather than article based aggregation and discussion. Instead of getting one side's story (one article), how great would it be if we had a "CERN gender topic" and a list of articles about that topic that encompasses all sides ( and possibly different regions ). Beyond one side or the another, wouldn't it be interesting to see what indians, chinese, south americans, africans, etc think of it too? I'm sure this topic is a lot more nuanced and complex than either side lets on and I feel these issues lend themselves to topic based aggregation and discussion. Just an opinion. But whatever side you are on, I think the real issue here is the personal and professional attacks this academic got for providing an honest opinion ( backed by stats and sources ). The viciousness displayed by his fellow phycists and CERN as an organization is really disappointing as is their attempt to silence him. One of the basis of academia is the idea of "devil's advocacy". Where you or someone takes the other's side in order to getting a fuller understanding of any topic. How is any discussion possible when the opposing side is silenced?

zpeti 8y ago

Is it just me or did this thread appear on the front page of HN and rising and then just disappear into nowhere?

durovo 8y ago
Yes, I noticed the same thing. I may not entirely agree with what is in the article, but I believe that the author deserves to be heard.

return0 8y ago

why would he present the results in an academic conference anyway? Those are archaic gatherings with extreme social/political biases and nothing good ever came out of them (i ve been in quite a few). not a very smart academic

mrguyorama 8y ago

I think the single most interesting result from this whole thing is that there is near equal representation of both men and women in the law profession. I wonder why that is? What was counted as a person in a "Law profession"? Where support staff and secretaries included? If it was just lawyers, what are they doing right to get equal representation that everyone else does wrong?

apta 8y ago
> If it was just lawyers, what are they doing right to get equal representation that everyone else does wrong? Phrasing the gender gap in different areas as "wrong" is weird. Do you see people fighting to bring people into law enforcement, construction, etc? Or to bring men into nursing or day care? Let's accept that there are biological differences that affect what men and women are interested in (which says nothing about their intelligence and aptitude), and leave this far left liberal agenda on the side.
belorn 8y ago
It is an interesting question, through I think I suspect the answer has to do with the values that profession provides to the employee. In many studies we see a gender difference in men valuing high pay over other aspects in work place, and women valuing social respect and a feeling of helping more than high pay. The legal profession, and I suspect pro-bono lawyers in particular, provide tends to a value of respect and being helpful, while high profile cases brings in the high pay. It would not surprise me if men and women would give very different answer in surveys on why they entered the legal profession.

apta 8y ago

Why are women underrepresented in construction, police force, military, etc. Why are men underrepresented in day care, nursing, etc.

rekabis 8y ago

This is a glorious example of where the truth is hated simply because it’s inconvenient and utterly fails to support the sociopolitical narrative. The reaction of the far-leftists to evidence like this is what has pushed me clear out of the left and into centrism. I will never become a conservative (that philosophy has even more patently bankrupt ideas it still desperately clings to), but I cannot consider myself “of the left” anymore. I simply cannot abide those levels of toxicity and religious-like ideology against which any dissent is heresy to be punished and crushed.

NoblePublius 8y ago

Why did this get flagged?