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It says that women make up over 50% of undergrads, as well as graduate school students. Then when it comes to professors, they decline in representation. Why is

• fzeroracer 7y ago
  This was addressed in the article from multiple angles: The first being that women have to work harder than men for recognition, and that they benefit less from co-authored papers with men (because it's assumed that the man did most of the work). There's also feeder labs with male PIs that are less likely to hire women in addition to sexual harassment potentially stymying professional growth. So while none of these are directly responsible, each individual piece contributes to the systematic sexism women face and can potentially explain the gap.
  • pnw_hazor 7y ago
    Maybe systematic hiring preferences that may hire less qualified female assistant professors contribute to less of them becoming full professors.
• mjmahone17 7y ago
  There is a lot of specific data presented in the article, such as that women have higher writing standards, in the form of more revisions to publication. If we have concrete data that is only explainable via anti-female or pro-male bias, we should probably conclude that bias (sexism) is the primary cause for disparities in career progression. Other factors may also contribute to the effect, but arguing that sexism isn’t a primary factor, despite data showing sexism has a strong explanatory effect, is not much different from arguing that the world’s warming probably isn’t human caused because we’ve been coming out of an ice age regardless of human activity. While likely true, we have enough data to conclude that’s not the primary explanation for recent global warming.
  • ralusek 7y ago
    It's not as though this assumption hasn't been incredibly off base in the past. The entire earnings gap started off at women earning 77 cents on the male dollar, until we controlled for field, and then specific profession, and then hours worked, and seniority. Controlling for each of these things has moved the earnings gap to less than 5%, and people still will claim that the last 5% must be due to sexism. My question is, why? It's been the wrong hypothesis so far.
    • strken 7y ago
      Is controlling for hours worked and seniority just controlling for the specific methods sexism works through? Seems like you could implement a sexist pay gap by rewarding bums in seats even when it's not economically productive, or by only promoting men, and that these measures would then be controlled for.
      • ameister14 7y ago
        No, it isn't, because controlling for those things means comparing the same job to the same job. The gap complaint is women being paid less for the exact same job and hours. It's different from the sexist glass ceiling.
      • ralusek 7y ago
        At this point, though, you would have conceded the point that women are not simply paid less than men on the basis of their sex, the earnings are actually a function of hours worked and seniority. The earnings gap would simply be a downstream effect of the new proposition you are putting forward, which is that the hours worked and seniority are denied to women on the basis of their sex. This is not something that has been demonstrated to have been true, of course, but that would be the correct way of framing the argument.
    • mjmahone17 7y ago
      I’m not sure why you’d assume that the field people choose is not related to sexism, or why seniority is not related to sexism. Maybe they aren’t (I don’t know the data either way), but this specific article provides data that shows even when a field is dominated by women at the undergraduate level, it is still dominated by men at the tenured professor level, who make sexist decisions at various points in the pipeline. Each of your controls could easily be explained by sexism. Seniority: if men are given promotions when their work was the same quality as women who were passed over, that’s sexism. Hours worked: if men are given full time employment, women part time, even when both want full time, that’s sexism. Field and specific profession: if women are encouraged by the exact same mentors to choose different fields, despite having the same credentials as men, that’s sexism. I’m not saying these factors are the result of sexism, but it’s a bit weird to assume it is, while having data in the original article that indicates all of the above, at least in academic professions, are significantly affected by sexism.
• sct202 7y ago
  I think that their statistic of women being full professors being lower than the percentage of women assistant professors, highlights that women aren't promoted as much to higher levels. Full professors and assistant professors are in the same vocation, and I would doubt that someone (regardless of gender) who has spent decades in academia to become an academic wouldn't want to become a full professor.
  • ralusek 7y ago
    But there being less full professors than assistant professors isn't evidence of them not being promoted on the basis of their sex? Are they dropping out at different rates or different ages? Are they putting in the same hours? Are they accomplishing the same things? Are they in the same fields? The analysis of the gender earnings gap showed that these assumptions that all of these things were a given to have been equal between the sex populations were actually far from it. There are so many variables at play. The argument would be much more compelling if it didn't just offer the single variable of their sex, with the assumption being that all else considered, the candidates are identical.
  • oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Well, whether or not IQ correlates to intelligence, we do know that males tend to have greater variance in IQ while females tend to be more clustered around the mean - while also having a higher mean IQ. If IQ correlates to academic success (which I believe studies have shown it does) then this would lead one to reasonably conclude there should be more female undergraduates and graduate students, and an equal number (or possibly slightly more) male assistant professors; we'd also expect a greater proportion of full professors who are male. This is in fact what is observed. I'm not a biological determinist, and it's certainly possible the IQ test itself is sexist/ not unbiased, but this is one possible explanation where we can observe what we do without the presence of sexism. It's also certainly possible there IS sexism preventing women from becoming professsors, I'd just need to see more compelling evidence than what's presented here.
    • UncleMeat 7y ago
      This argument would only make sense if hiring for academic positions included random samples.
• aphextim 7y ago
  Probably an unpopular opinion but I've noticed when labeling the reasons for something as being due to systematic sexism, or racism, the statement implies something greater and beyond an individuals control is holding them back, rather than personal choice, or maybe a multitude of variables. This creates and easy explanation/scapegoat for a problem rather than trying to actually figure out all variables involved. It very well could be that when taking into account all the variables, it is systematic sexism/racism or whatever the claim may be. However one should be careful to jump on the ship that claims sexism/racism first without looking at all the other reasons and factors that could be at work. (Biological differences, family vs career importance, instances of sexism/racism, instances of reverse sexism/racism [helping an individual solely based on their race/sex], subjective influence, personal upbringing etc.)
  • charliesharding 7y ago
    > This creates an easy explanation/scapegoat for a problem rather than trying to actually figure out all variables involved. He certainly doesn't help that impression with the florid language he uses: "THE QUOTIDIAN MACHINERY of patriarchy functions as a complex of many moving parts. The same mechanisms that pull women down are the ones that push men up, compensating for the latter’s initial lack of numbers in undergraduate studies until they become an overwhelming majority among the academic elite. All these various parts, some seemingly innocuous and others quite abominable, operate together, defeating attempts that remediate only a single aspect of the patriarchal machine."
• afpx 7y ago
  Wait, so, more women than men get bachelors and graduate degrees. And, women are almost at parity with men for faculty positions [1]. But, yet only a small portion of women get tenure. I'm calling Occam's Razor here. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_315.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_315.10.a...
• gilbetron 7y ago
  As an anecdote, living in a college town, I know many academics at various levels in their career. I happen to know 3 couples where both partners in the marriage are in academia, and actually in the same general branch. In all three cases, the women have been talked to about how they must be treated tougher because their spouses are in academia as well and it the administration needs to prove to the academic world that the women are not riding on the coattails of their husbands. The men have not had any such discussions with their superiors. Additionally, why is assuming there is no sexism and proceeding with the status quo better than the assumption there is sexism and trying to improve the situation?
  • ralusek 7y ago
    Because if there is no sexism, then what needs to be improved? Strategies that have been used in the past, such as affirmative action or quotas arbitrarily seek to create representational parity regardless of the input. That is a bad thing, and you're acting like it's at worst neutral.
  • charliesharding 7y ago
    The same reason we don't assume the accused is guilty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence
    • BigFish12 7y ago
      We do assume the accused of rape or sexual harassment against a woman is guilty though. In that case, it's guilty until proven innocent. Allegations only are enough to ruin a man's whole career.
    • gilbetron 7y ago
      From your link: "In civil proceedings (like breach of contract) the defendant is initially presumed correct unless the plaintiff presents a moderate level of evidence and thus switches the burden of proof to the defendant." There is absolutely a moderate level of evidence of discrimination against women.
  • 7y ago
• selectionbias 7y ago
  >Why is the implication that this is due primarily to sexism? Well perhaps because of the persuasive evidence the article cites from peer-reviewed journals. For example, in the paragraph below from the article: "In one experiment, reported by Corinne A. Moss-Racusin and her coauthors in PNAS, 127 US scientists were asked to hire an undergraduate lab assistant and decide on a salary based on fictional CVs of equally qualified men and women. The scientists were more likely to offer the position to men as well as more hours of mentorship, and gave a lower salary to women, about eighty-eight cents to the dollar."
• o09rdk 7y ago
  "Sexism" is a fuzzy concept. I came from a department with rampant problems with sexism (by personal observation as well as legal decisions), and I never heard anyone express anything about women being inferior. The way the sexism was manifested was far more indirect and subtle. One way this occurred was in discussions about sex-differentiated choices. So, for example, a big problem the department had (has?) was (is?) groups of male faculty deciding that the choice to have children is a choice against a career. The implied assumption was that women stay home, and men have no reason for family leave or any impact on their working. This eventually led to sex discrimination lawsuits by men as well as women surrounding family leave and promotion policies surrounding tenure, but the problems didn't entirely go away. The far biggest problem that I saw though was what I'd call indirect sex biases, where the biases were against sex-differentiated interpersonal styles. So the bias wasn't against gender per se, but against traits that females differed from males in on average. This struck me the most clearly when we were hiring faculty one year; the female faculty candidates tended to be more polite, calm, and deferential in research talks, but no less competent; the male candidates tended to be more aggressive and dominant. The hiring faculty in the audience, though, would see the female interpersonal style as a sign of weakness, and become more aggressive in their questioning, later concluding that the female candidates were less competent, when they were subject to much more stringent questioning the male candidates were never subject to, solely because the male candidates were more aggressive in their responses. This came up in other ways as well, such as in promotions; the department lost a sex discrimination lawsuit after women who were objectively more accomplished were less successful in tenure promotions primarily because they were seen as not socially dominant or attention-seeking enough. I could go on and on. We are seeing a lot of evidence that academics is increasingly a narcissistic pissing contest. I suspect a lot of women just get out while they can because they see it for what it is, and are on the losing end of a game whose rules they disagree with to begin with. Some of it is outright sexism, but some of it is bias that affects women differentially because of average group differences.
• UncleMeat 7y ago
  It isn't the default assumption. It is the conclusion of decades of research and analysis that have sought alternative explanations and been left with bias.
• lkjhdcba 7y ago
  Lol every time a piece like this gets posted some 'experts' come out of the woodwork and go like 'but what if women actually liked having low-paying low-status jobs though? Something something population differences something genetics something evolution blah blah.' (Note that none of these people are in fact evolutionary biologists) It's like a broken record, despite the enormous literature accounting for sexist biases in hiring, promoting, rating performance, evaluating stereotypes, etc. At this point I'm left to wonder if any of these people are arguing in good faith.
• mraudiobook_com 7y ago
  Because 2019