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In large parts of the publicly-funded science ecosystem in the STEM fields, I have a very strong impression that the pendulum has swung so far that women are no

In large parts of the publicly-funded science ecosystem in the STEM fields, I have a very strong impression that the pendulum has swung so far that women are now at a significant advantage over men as a result of affirmative action policies. They should really not be complaining about discrimination. For example, the DOC fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences which funded my PhD was structured in such a way that the grant was split into two equal pots. One pot took applications ONLY from women. The other pot was enforcing 50% of the fellowships going to women. That means: The rules stipulated that there was 3x as much funding available for women as there was for men, despite the fact that there were much fewer female applicants, so chances for a female to get funding were, by design, at least an order of magnitude higher than for a man. -- This was the only publicly funded scholarship program in Austria that pays enough to study at, say, an ivy leage in the U.S. or something like that. -- On top of that they had great mentoring programmes and networking opportunities that were open ONLY to women, and nothing of the sort that men were welcome for. Similar story told to me by my male cousin, working for a solar technology startup with close ties to an Austrian university and the Austrian science funding ecosystem: They had received public funding to hire some physicists, but some of the funding was earmarked so it could be used only for hiring women. Hiring a woman proved to be a thing of impossibility, since they couldn't find a single one that wanted to apply. They ended up having to give back the funding. An applicant could have had a job there, and all it would have taken was to (a) be vaguely a physicist (b) be female. She didn't need to be good or anything. She just needed to show up, and the job would have been guaranteed to her, since, from the company's POV, it was free money being left on the table to do anything else. I know a lot of people working for research institutions being funded by the Austrian taxpayer. They tend to all have really shitty careers, with one exception. Guess what that exception was. You guessed right: The one woman I know that travels in those circles. I don't know if things are as bad in Germany yet as they are in Austria, but women in the publicly-funded science ecosystem in the STEM fields complaining about discrimination at this point in history is simply outrageous. If anything, men should be the ones complaining.

stakhanov 7y ago
Another male friend of mine, working for a U.S.-based tech startup, told me the following story: They are hiring a backend engineer right now. What applicants don't know: They want to hire a woman. Word came down from on high, that a team of 10 backend engineers being all-male is a situation that's going to end. So they're hiring a woman, doing whatever it takes, as in: (a) making a conscious effort to lower the bar (b) making up a role that they don't even need with a job description that will appeal to women (c) paying high premiums for recruiting channels that will deliver female applicants (d) running the process in such a way that, unbeknownst to applicants due to legal ramifications, all applications by men are dead on arrival.
- MichaelGlass 7y ago
  Especially in Europe, it's very clear that in tech, there's a huge unfair bias for women. I mean look at the speaker lineups of conferences and management / tech teams of large tech organizations. It's hard to spot a single man among the ranks. https://corporate.zalando.com/sites/default/files/media-download/Zalando-SE_annual_report_2018.pdf https://corporate.zalando.com/sites/default/files/media-down... https://www.curry-on.org/2019/ https://www.curry-on.org/2019/
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - xnHA 7y ago
    It is better in the garbage collection business in Munich. Witness two women in bureaucrat positions and a man actually collecting the garbage: https://www.awm-muenchen.de/ueber-uns/struktur/werkleitung.html https://www.awm-muenchen.de/ueber-uns/struktur/werkleitung.h... This is Europe now.
  - doersino 7y ago
    I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, but for anyone who didn't check out the links: Zalando: > On top of this improved focus, we remain committed to increasing female leadership – our target is to have 25% of positions at the first level and 30% at the second level below the Management Board filled by women by 2022 (currently 11% and 16% respectively). Curry On: 2/4 keynote speakers are men, 11/12 invited speakers are men, 29/32 presentations are held by men (as far as I can tell based on names and pictures).
dual_dingo 7y ago
Just yesterday, I read about a dutch university (Eindhoven) that wants to only hire women for the next 18 months (and give them a bonus 100k€ grant on top that male hires wouldn't get). I am 100% pro equal rights for everybody, but this is just the opposite, and all it will achieve is to create tension, prejudice and anger towards women hired under this rules.
- gattilorenz 7y ago
  Source?
  - dual_dingo 7y ago
    See above
- DanielleMolloy 7y ago
  This one, TU Eindhoven? https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/17-06-2019-tue-vacancies-for-academic-staff-exclusively-for-women-for-the-time-being/ https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/17-06-2019-tue-vaca... Where did you read about "18 months"? Sounds like "first 6 months" to me. In my experience searching for good academic staff, especially in fields with a lucrative industry takes ages, so I wouldn't be too sure that there will be a strong discriminatory effect when there are not that many women to recruit anyway. I agree that this move is not the best one. It will end up sending the wrong signals again, which will just lead to backlash on women working in STEM fields. Attacking with opposite discrimination is certainly a bad temporal fix for an existing systematic bias and the tendency of men to downplay competent women. However, this tendency costs society a lot. It is a fix at least. Someone listened. I wouldn't expect that they want to make this permanent once things have equaled out a bit.
  - abbasaamer 7y ago
    I believe I read the article this person is referring to and it did say 18 months: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/eindhoven-university-opens-academic-jobs-to-women-only/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/eindhoven-university-o...
mcv 7y ago
That these skewed measures favouring women exist, does not mean that discrimination and sexual harassment towards women doesn't also exist. Sexism is still depressingly common. These measures seem like a very heavy-handed way to even the scales, but it tries to fight a symptom rather than the cause, and it's probably not very effective at that.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  It's basically throwing money at a problem and hoping it solves it. But money or funding isn't the problem.
  - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
    It absolutely is. All other things equal, a graduate program with 20% women phd students vs one with 40-60% women phd students will have a lot more misogyny. Forcefully raising the number of women in a program insures that there are enough of them that they can work together and speak up when harassment and discrimination happens.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - wvh 7y ago
      But the primary goal of a graduate program isn't avoiding harassment and discrimination at all costs. It's to provide the best candidates for the relevant field. To "forcefully" throw in some extra "support pets" feels like a really silly solution to tackle that problem.
      - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        I don't agree at all. I think the primary goal of every government funded institution is to promote social welfare - not economic growth. As a physics PhD, I am totally happy if the progress in my field slows down by even 50%, if it means that 50% of the population, who currently are and feel discriminated against, aren't and don't feel that way any more. I will always vote for the political candidate who supports one over the other. In most (but not all) fields of human intellectual endeavor, we have made progress far beyond needed, that with the right politics and social commitment, every human on this planet can have all their needs and basic wants fulfilled. There is no need to constantly fuel the GDP, only the craft a world in which people can be happy.
itronitron 7y ago
They tend to all have really shitty careers are 'they' mostly (all) men? Anecdotally, the shittiest groups/institutions that I have worked in were over 80% male. In my experience the organizations that are diverse are also the most productive and enjoyable to work in.
- zeveb 7y ago
  You've definitely identified a correlation, but which direction is the causation, if any? I can easily imagine it going either way (or there be none at all), which means more investigation is required.
abdullahkhalids 7y ago
You can take a look at https://bmbwf.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/gender/2019/EN_KV_BMBWF-GSD_BFREI_FINAL.pdf https://bmbwf.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/gender/2019/EN_KV_... Women are still fairly underrepresented in the pipeline converting undergrads to phds->postdocs->profs, with numbers dropping most of the way. I am pretty okay with affirmative action happening till those numbers are closer to 50% and then slowly phasing them out. As far as your cousin story goes, that exactly illustrates the problem. There is no reason a women could not have become a solar tech physicist. But the persistent misogyny that permeates academia, despite all these financial incentives from the top, stopped most women from taking that particular line. We need to fix the problem. You can argue that throwing money at women is perhaps not the best way, but then you have to present a method that works better at righting the wrongs in academia.
- stakhanov 7y ago
  You could also argue this: The part you stated before the "BUT" is a statement of fact. The part you stated after the "BUT" is complete speculation. I've never seen misogyny actually happen at any company I worked for, ever. Another piece of speculation: Women don't get those jobs because they DON'T WANT those jobs. So why throw these jobs at them, against their will? Why engage in some weird social engineering projects to make little girls want to build robots when, clearly, they don't?
  - vertex-four 7y ago
    I’ve seen plenty of misogyny at nearly every tech event and gathering I’ve ever been to, as well as within the occasional work I’ve had, so either I’m going to the wrong places or you’re not looking very hard.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      Or you two are working with different definitions of misogyny.
      - 7y ago
0815test 7y ago
Women tend to suffer the hardest under a dysfunctional, abusive, bullying-infested work environment. They have to take abuse from narcissistic, harrassing men, and from women higher-up in the hierarchy, who are well known for bullying their female subordinates while mostly leaving males alone! They may have an easier time getting hired but that doesn't mean they have it easy all-around once they're onboard.
- xenihn 7y ago
  >They have to take abuse from narcissistic, harrassing men The worst are narcissistic, harassing women who are presumed to be incapable of such behavior by people like you, and shielded from any consequences for their recurring bad behavior that spans across years.
  - dang 7y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
bitL 7y ago
I am wondering how many scientists are going to become temporarily transgender to have a larger pool for funding available... Or another take, bureaucrats know that not many women show up, so that's a neat way to reduce expenses in sciences.
martin_a 7y ago
I have experienced this during university. We were a very technical field of studies and had only a few woman enlisted. Bringing those few successfully through their time was valued quite high. Requirements to their work were clearly lower than for us and getting an appointment with the professors was easier for them, too. All in all it was less of an overall-hassle for them. But yeah, one might say this is some kind of survivorship bias or whatever, I don't care. It's what I perceived and it was also a recurring topic in "mens only"-discussions. So other perceived it that way, too.
- FakeComments 7y ago
  Women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978. For the past forty years, there have been no male-only advancement programs, and (nearly) all sex-based funding has been provided to the majority sex, to advantage them in any field where they’re not currently dominant (and sometimes, just to advantage them in general). It’s a willful and generational-scale violation of Title IX: that kind of sexist favoritism of the majority is blatantly illegal under discrimination laws. For forty years, feminism on college campuses has been a majoritarian, sexist power movement — and now it’s spreading to the workplace, as a generation of entitled women graduate and demand the continuation of privilege.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    If women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978, why are the majority of educated leadership still men? If women have been a majoritarian sex-based power movement for 40 years this should be plenty of time to replace professors, CEOs, business owners, presidents and vice presidents, grant reviewers, and significant, public-facing leaders of the world's top educational instutions. Why is this not the case? (For the record: I'm not denying your understanding of the situation. I'm trying to understand your position regarding feminism's role in empowering women and the disparate power between men and women that you're seeing.
    - FakeComments 7y ago
      What do you mean? Women are presently becoming presidents, vice-presidents, etc and forming women advocacy committees inside of corporations and other organizations to use their influence to create special programs for women which advantage them in the same way we’ve seen from the educational system. And women have become prevalent in all of those fields, over the same time period. The reason you don’t see them storming the ranks of business leadership is twofold: 1. It simply takes time. A woman who was 22 in 1978 is 63 now, so the very beginning of that group is only now reaching senior leadership — exactly in line with the timing of female advantage programs in the workplace. If my theory is right (and people don’t do anything — which is unlikely), then we’d see the same sexist programs from colleges rolled out into the workplace over the next twenty years. (I think pointing it out is part of pushing back on excess in democracy — hence me calling it out here.) 2. Biology is a thing, and we see that in equitable societies — where women are free to pursue passions rather than coerced to amass power — they tend to choose a different distribution of lifestyles than men. There’s two cohorts in women that are smaller in men, the ones who want to stay home as caretakers and the ones who want to work part time and be part time caretakers. It’s not clear that women try to lead major corporations at the same rate as men — and as anecdata, around half the small business owners, and majority of crafters or service contracting company owners, I meet are women. We may actually be seeing a more fair outcome than first blush would lead you to believe — and desires simply aren’t evenly distributed. I’m not saying there isn’t sexism anywhere. I’m just saying there’s systemic sexism against men in education — and women who are accustomed to that are trying to bring it into the workplace.
Quanttek 7y ago
What the hell dude? First of all, this survey shows how widespread bullying, sexual harrassment, and exclusion is for women (and foreigners) at Max Planck (quite representative of academia) and your first reaction is "but what about men?" Secondly, these programs are there to counteract long-standing structural discrimination of women in those fields. Mere legal equality and lack of blatant discrimination does not mean equality is achieved. These programs help push toward a society that may give women equal standing not only in the legal but also in the political, social, cultural, and economic spheres. (Outcomes can speak to existing inequalities in society [1]) Women are paid less than men, are much less represented in well-paying jobs, and barely hold any jobs in many academic fields and decision-making (funding) bodies. Computer science is still a hostile environment for many women [2]. You might common with the continuously disproven "it's due to personal choice" but it ain't that easy: These choices of e.g. working less hours are strongly influenced by our social surroundings and the fact that e.g. working less earns you a lower hourly wage is too. For example, in Germany the share of female academics suddenly drops as they move up the ladder because that happens at an age, when many women might choose to become mothers [3]. However, limiting career progression because of a possible pregnancy is definitely not their choice. Also, the idea that women are just naturally less assertive doesn't hold as studies show that when the social pressure wanes (e.g. by advocating for someone else) they become comparable assertive [4]. The idea that women choose not to work in high-paying professions is also wrong, looking at the historical change in CS [5] or at countries like India or Turkey [6]. Also, pay drops when women move into an industry [7]. Stuff like long working hours also factor in [8]. Third, you are merely offering some anecdotal evidence without providing any case for why women are more advantaged now. The existence of positive discrimination doesn't show equality is achieved and by stating that women are evena dvandatged now, you're going against the scientific consensus. That doesn't detract from the original point: Your whataboutism regarding funding earmarking has nothing to do with sexual harrassment and bullying. It's still interesting how all the comments piling up ere are based on anecdotes of shock "discrimination" - probably the first time they experience something like that. [1] For the case: Phillips, Anne. 2004. “Defending Equality of Outcome.” Journal of Political Philosophy 12(1): 1–19. [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-industrys-gender-discrimination-problem https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-indus... [3] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildung-Forschung-Kultur/Hochschulen/Tabellen/frauenanteile-akademischelaufbahn.html;jsessionid=AD0F7A5323C4D24AB8A1C79A32660A58.internet741 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildun... [4] Amanatullah, Emily T., and Michael W. Morris. 2010. “Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women's fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others.” [eng]. Journal of personality and socialpsychology 98 (2): 256–67. [5] https://gender.stanford.edu/news-publications/gender-news/researcher-reveals-how-computer-geeks-replaced-computer-girls https://gender.stanford.edu/news-publications/gender-news/re... [6] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186026-decoding-femininity-in-computer-science-in-india/abstract https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186026-decoding-femini... [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over... [8] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/upshot/women-long-hours-greedy-professions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/upshot/women-long-hours-g...
mkr-hn 7y ago
Big systemic problems can't be solved with spot treatments. A personal example: the SCOTUS ruling in favor of marriage equality didn't end homophobia. People claimed it did out of ignorance, but it didn't. See: Pulse. I was afraid to leave the house for a week, and looked over my shoulder outside for months. That fear affects everything, and it didn't go away completely once the memory of the event faded. The fear is reinforced through negative stereotypes in media and the occasional gaybashing/murder. Affirmative action and legal victories can help, but it doesn't mean much without a society-level movement. I do see how this could become a problem at the university level if the pipeline situation isn't fixed. You can see it in other fields where the gender balance flips. Programming became highly paid and women got pushed out. PHDs became overworked and underpaid, and now men don't want to do it because they can access better opportunities. It becomes a matter of status and culture where people who don't look like everyone there feels it and goes on to other fields. Men may not care about the pay difference, but they do care about the bullying in the workplace and the negative stereotypes. Spot treatments are usually a frustration thing. They come when people run out of energy trying to fix the system and start looking for Infinity Stones.
- specialist 7y ago
  How useful, effective have Truth & Reconciliation efforts been, historically? It seems to me that much of the pushback is from people who can't even imagine, much less perceive, that there's a problem needing fixing. Any way, learning about these truth telling exercises, like done at the end of Apartheid in South Africa, is on my to do list. Input, ideas, and tips most welcome.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  > See: Pulse. I was afraid to leave the house for a week, and looked over my shoulder outside for months. Hilariously enough, the Pulse shooter didn't know it was a gay nightclub [0]. Not that this hurts your position - after all, fear doesn't have to be real. But it does offer a (potential) parallel to the "women are being discriminated against in tech!" issues we've been seeing lately... 0: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17202026/pulse-shooting-lgbtq-trump-terror-hate https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17202026/pu...

stakhanov 7y ago

Another male friend of mine, working for a U.S.-based tech startup, told me the following story: They are hiring a backend engineer right now. What applicants don't know: They want to hire a woman. Word came down from on high, that a team of 10 backend engineers being all-male is a situation that's going to end. So they're hiring a woman, doing whatever it takes, as in: (a) making a conscious effort to lower the bar (b) making up a role that they don't even need with a job description that will appeal to women (c) paying high premiums for recruiting channels that will deliver female applicants (d) running the process in such a way that, unbeknownst to applicants due to legal ramifications, all applications by men are dead on arrival.

MichaelGlass 7y ago
Especially in Europe, it's very clear that in tech, there's a huge unfair bias for women. I mean look at the speaker lineups of conferences and management / tech teams of large tech organizations. It's hard to spot a single man among the ranks. https://corporate.zalando.com/sites/default/files/media-download/Zalando-SE_annual_report_2018.pdf https://corporate.zalando.com/sites/default/files/media-down... https://www.curry-on.org/2019/ https://www.curry-on.org/2019/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xnHA 7y ago
  It is better in the garbage collection business in Munich. Witness two women in bureaucrat positions and a man actually collecting the garbage: https://www.awm-muenchen.de/ueber-uns/struktur/werkleitung.html https://www.awm-muenchen.de/ueber-uns/struktur/werkleitung.h... This is Europe now.
- doersino 7y ago
  I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, but for anyone who didn't check out the links: Zalando: > On top of this improved focus, we remain committed to increasing female leadership – our target is to have 25% of positions at the first level and 30% at the second level below the Management Board filled by women by 2022 (currently 11% and 16% respectively). Curry On: 2/4 keynote speakers are men, 11/12 invited speakers are men, 29/32 presentations are held by men (as far as I can tell based on names and pictures).

dual_dingo 7y ago

Just yesterday, I read about a dutch university (Eindhoven) that wants to only hire women for the next 18 months (and give them a bonus 100k€ grant on top that male hires wouldn't get). I am 100% pro equal rights for everybody, but this is just the opposite, and all it will achieve is to create tension, prejudice and anger towards women hired under this rules.

gattilorenz 7y ago
Source?
- dual_dingo 7y ago
  See above
DanielleMolloy 7y ago
This one, TU Eindhoven? https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/17-06-2019-tue-vacancies-for-academic-staff-exclusively-for-women-for-the-time-being/ https://www.tue.nl/en/news/news-overview/17-06-2019-tue-vaca... Where did you read about "18 months"? Sounds like "first 6 months" to me. In my experience searching for good academic staff, especially in fields with a lucrative industry takes ages, so I wouldn't be too sure that there will be a strong discriminatory effect when there are not that many women to recruit anyway. I agree that this move is not the best one. It will end up sending the wrong signals again, which will just lead to backlash on women working in STEM fields. Attacking with opposite discrimination is certainly a bad temporal fix for an existing systematic bias and the tendency of men to downplay competent women. However, this tendency costs society a lot. It is a fix at least. Someone listened. I wouldn't expect that they want to make this permanent once things have equaled out a bit.
- abbasaamer 7y ago
  I believe I read the article this person is referring to and it did say 18 months: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/eindhoven-university-opens-academic-jobs-to-women-only/ https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/eindhoven-university-o...

mcv 7y ago

That these skewed measures favouring women exist, does not mean that discrimination and sexual harassment towards women doesn't also exist. Sexism is still depressingly common. These measures seem like a very heavy-handed way to even the scales, but it tries to fight a symptom rather than the cause, and it's probably not very effective at that.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
It's basically throwing money at a problem and hoping it solves it. But money or funding isn't the problem.
- abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  It absolutely is. All other things equal, a graduate program with 20% women phd students vs one with 40-60% women phd students will have a lot more misogyny. Forcefully raising the number of women in a program insures that there are enough of them that they can work together and speak up when harassment and discrimination happens.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wvh 7y ago
    But the primary goal of a graduate program isn't avoiding harassment and discrimination at all costs. It's to provide the best candidates for the relevant field. To "forcefully" throw in some extra "support pets" feels like a really silly solution to tackle that problem.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      I don't agree at all. I think the primary goal of every government funded institution is to promote social welfare - not economic growth. As a physics PhD, I am totally happy if the progress in my field slows down by even 50%, if it means that 50% of the population, who currently are and feel discriminated against, aren't and don't feel that way any more. I will always vote for the political candidate who supports one over the other. In most (but not all) fields of human intellectual endeavor, we have made progress far beyond needed, that with the right politics and social commitment, every human on this planet can have all their needs and basic wants fulfilled. There is no need to constantly fuel the GDP, only the craft a world in which people can be happy.

itronitron 7y ago

They tend to all have really shitty careers are 'they' mostly (all) men? Anecdotally, the shittiest groups/institutions that I have worked in were over 80% male. In my experience the organizations that are diverse are also the most productive and enjoyable to work in.

zeveb 7y ago
You've definitely identified a correlation, but which direction is the causation, if any? I can easily imagine it going either way (or there be none at all), which means more investigation is required.

abdullahkhalids 7y ago

You can take a look at https://bmbwf.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/gender/2019/EN_KV_BMBWF-GSD_BFREI_FINAL.pdf https://bmbwf.gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/gender/2019/EN_KV_... Women are still fairly underrepresented in the pipeline converting undergrads to phds->postdocs->profs, with numbers dropping most of the way. I am pretty okay with affirmative action happening till those numbers are closer to 50% and then slowly phasing them out. As far as your cousin story goes, that exactly illustrates the problem. There is no reason a women could not have become a solar tech physicist. But the persistent misogyny that permeates academia, despite all these financial incentives from the top, stopped most women from taking that particular line. We need to fix the problem. You can argue that throwing money at women is perhaps not the best way, but then you have to present a method that works better at righting the wrongs in academia.

stakhanov 7y ago
You could also argue this: The part you stated before the "BUT" is a statement of fact. The part you stated after the "BUT" is complete speculation. I've never seen misogyny actually happen at any company I worked for, ever. Another piece of speculation: Women don't get those jobs because they DON'T WANT those jobs. So why throw these jobs at them, against their will? Why engage in some weird social engineering projects to make little girls want to build robots when, clearly, they don't?
- vertex-four 7y ago
  I’ve seen plenty of misogyny at nearly every tech event and gathering I’ve ever been to, as well as within the occasional work I’ve had, so either I’m going to the wrong places or you’re not looking very hard.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Or you two are working with different definitions of misogyny.
    - 7y ago

0815test 7y ago

Women tend to suffer the hardest under a dysfunctional, abusive, bullying-infested work environment. They have to take abuse from narcissistic, harrassing men, and from women higher-up in the hierarchy, who are well known for bullying their female subordinates while mostly leaving males alone! They may have an easier time getting hired but that doesn't mean they have it easy all-around once they're onboard.

xenihn 7y ago
>They have to take abuse from narcissistic, harrassing men The worst are narcissistic, harassing women who are presumed to be incapable of such behavior by people like you, and shielded from any consequences for their recurring bad behavior that spans across years.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.

bitL 7y ago

I am wondering how many scientists are going to become temporarily transgender to have a larger pool for funding available... Or another take, bureaucrats know that not many women show up, so that's a neat way to reduce expenses in sciences.

martin_a 7y ago

I have experienced this during university. We were a very technical field of studies and had only a few woman enlisted. Bringing those few successfully through their time was valued quite high. Requirements to their work were clearly lower than for us and getting an appointment with the professors was easier for them, too. All in all it was less of an overall-hassle for them. But yeah, one might say this is some kind of survivorship bias or whatever, I don't care. It's what I perceived and it was also a recurring topic in "mens only"-discussions. So other perceived it that way, too.

FakeComments 7y ago
Women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978. For the past forty years, there have been no male-only advancement programs, and (nearly) all sex-based funding has been provided to the majority sex, to advantage them in any field where they’re not currently dominant (and sometimes, just to advantage them in general). It’s a willful and generational-scale violation of Title IX: that kind of sexist favoritism of the majority is blatantly illegal under discrimination laws. For forty years, feminism on college campuses has been a majoritarian, sexist power movement — and now it’s spreading to the workplace, as a generation of entitled women graduate and demand the continuation of privilege.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  If women have been earning more degrees than men since 1978, why are the majority of educated leadership still men? If women have been a majoritarian sex-based power movement for 40 years this should be plenty of time to replace professors, CEOs, business owners, presidents and vice presidents, grant reviewers, and significant, public-facing leaders of the world's top educational instutions. Why is this not the case? (For the record: I'm not denying your understanding of the situation. I'm trying to understand your position regarding feminism's role in empowering women and the disparate power between men and women that you're seeing.
  - FakeComments 7y ago
    What do you mean? Women are presently becoming presidents, vice-presidents, etc and forming women advocacy committees inside of corporations and other organizations to use their influence to create special programs for women which advantage them in the same way we’ve seen from the educational system. And women have become prevalent in all of those fields, over the same time period. The reason you don’t see them storming the ranks of business leadership is twofold: 1. It simply takes time. A woman who was 22 in 1978 is 63 now, so the very beginning of that group is only now reaching senior leadership — exactly in line with the timing of female advantage programs in the workplace. If my theory is right (and people don’t do anything — which is unlikely), then we’d see the same sexist programs from colleges rolled out into the workplace over the next twenty years. (I think pointing it out is part of pushing back on excess in democracy — hence me calling it out here.) 2. Biology is a thing, and we see that in equitable societies — where women are free to pursue passions rather than coerced to amass power — they tend to choose a different distribution of lifestyles than men. There’s two cohorts in women that are smaller in men, the ones who want to stay home as caretakers and the ones who want to work part time and be part time caretakers. It’s not clear that women try to lead major corporations at the same rate as men — and as anecdata, around half the small business owners, and majority of crafters or service contracting company owners, I meet are women. We may actually be seeing a more fair outcome than first blush would lead you to believe — and desires simply aren’t evenly distributed. I’m not saying there isn’t sexism anywhere. I’m just saying there’s systemic sexism against men in education — and women who are accustomed to that are trying to bring it into the workplace.

Quanttek 7y ago

What the hell dude? First of all, this survey shows how widespread bullying, sexual harrassment, and exclusion is for women (and foreigners) at Max Planck (quite representative of academia) and your first reaction is "but what about men?" Secondly, these programs are there to counteract long-standing structural discrimination of women in those fields. Mere legal equality and lack of blatant discrimination does not mean equality is achieved. These programs help push toward a society that may give women equal standing not only in the legal but also in the political, social, cultural, and economic spheres. (Outcomes can speak to existing inequalities in society [1]) Women are paid less than men, are much less represented in well-paying jobs, and barely hold any jobs in many academic fields and decision-making (funding) bodies. Computer science is still a hostile environment for many women [2]. You might common with the continuously disproven "it's due to personal choice" but it ain't that easy: These choices of e.g. working less hours are strongly influenced by our social surroundings and the fact that e.g. working less earns you a lower hourly wage is too. For example, in Germany the share of female academics suddenly drops as they move up the ladder because that happens at an age, when many women might choose to become mothers [3]. However, limiting career progression because of a possible pregnancy is definitely not their choice. Also, the idea that women are just naturally less assertive doesn't hold as studies show that when the social pressure wanes (e.g. by advocating for someone else) they become comparable assertive [4]. The idea that women choose not to work in high-paying professions is also wrong, looking at the historical change in CS [5] or at countries like India or Turkey [6]. Also, pay drops when women move into an industry [7]. Stuff like long working hours also factor in [8]. Third, you are merely offering some anecdotal evidence without providing any case for why women are more advantaged now. The existence of positive discrimination doesn't show equality is achieved and by stating that women are evena dvandatged now, you're going against the scientific consensus. That doesn't detract from the original point: Your whataboutism regarding funding earmarking has nothing to do with sexual harrassment and bullying. It's still interesting how all the comments piling up ere are based on anecdotes of shock "discrimination" - probably the first time they experience something like that. [1] For the case: Phillips, Anne. 2004. “Defending Equality of Outcome.” Journal of Political Philosophy 12(1): 1–19. [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-industrys-gender-discrimination-problem https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/the-tech-indus... [3] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildung-Forschung-Kultur/Hochschulen/Tabellen/frauenanteile-akademischelaufbahn.html;jsessionid=AD0F7A5323C4D24AB8A1C79A32660A58.internet741 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildun... [4] Amanatullah, Emily T., and Michael W. Morris. 2010. “Negotiating gender roles: Gender differences in assertive negotiating are mediated by women's fear of backlash and attenuated when negotiating on behalf of others.” [eng]. Journal of personality and socialpsychology 98 (2): 256–67. [5] https://gender.stanford.edu/news-publications/gender-news/researcher-reveals-how-computer-geeks-replaced-computer-girls https://gender.stanford.edu/news-publications/gender-news/re... [6] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186026-decoding-femininity-in-computer-science-in-india/abstract https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186026-decoding-femini... [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over... [8] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/upshot/women-long-hours-greedy-professions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/upshot/women-long-hours-g...

mkr-hn 7y ago

Big systemic problems can't be solved with spot treatments. A personal example: the SCOTUS ruling in favor of marriage equality didn't end homophobia. People claimed it did out of ignorance, but it didn't. See: Pulse. I was afraid to leave the house for a week, and looked over my shoulder outside for months. That fear affects everything, and it didn't go away completely once the memory of the event faded. The fear is reinforced through negative stereotypes in media and the occasional gaybashing/murder. Affirmative action and legal victories can help, but it doesn't mean much without a society-level movement. I do see how this could become a problem at the university level if the pipeline situation isn't fixed. You can see it in other fields where the gender balance flips. Programming became highly paid and women got pushed out. PHDs became overworked and underpaid, and now men don't want to do it because they can access better opportunities. It becomes a matter of status and culture where people who don't look like everyone there feels it and goes on to other fields. Men may not care about the pay difference, but they do care about the bullying in the workplace and the negative stereotypes. Spot treatments are usually a frustration thing. They come when people run out of energy trying to fix the system and start looking for Infinity Stones.

specialist 7y ago
How useful, effective have Truth & Reconciliation efforts been, historically? It seems to me that much of the pushback is from people who can't even imagine, much less perceive, that there's a problem needing fixing. Any way, learning about these truth telling exercises, like done at the end of Apartheid in South Africa, is on my to do list. Input, ideas, and tips most welcome.
DuskStar 7y ago
> See: Pulse. I was afraid to leave the house for a week, and looked over my shoulder outside for months. Hilariously enough, the Pulse shooter didn't know it was a gay nightclub [0]. Not that this hurts your position - after all, fear doesn't have to be real. But it does offer a (potential) parallel to the "women are being discriminated against in tech!" issues we've been seeing lately... 0: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17202026/pulse-shooting-lgbtq-trump-terror-hate https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17202026/pu...