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The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)

• jlebar 7y ago
  If you look at the scatterplot excluding the four countries at the bottom right (Algeria, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE), you get basically a circle and (to my eye anyway) the trendline is horizontal, meaning, no correlation. Moreover, there are two countries with approximately the same gender inequality but many fewer women in STEM, namely Qatar and Korea. It seems to me that reducing this to "the more gender equality, the fewer women in tech" is a stretch! You could have just as easily written a headline to the effect of, "Turkey and three northern African countries have a higher percentage of women in STEM than almost anywhere in the world, including places that have the same gender (in)equality, like Qatar and S. Korea. Why is that?"
  • _Nat_ 7y ago
    > If you look at the scatterplot excluding the four countries at the bottom right (Algeria, Turkey, Tunisia, UAE), you get basically a circle and (to my eye anyway) the trendline is horizontal, meaning, no correlation. Their hypothesis doesn't predict a straight line. Rather, they're saying that free women don't tend to choose STEM as often as men in the same society choose STEM. If they're correct, then we should expect a lack of data points in the top-right quadrant, above those 4 you pointed out, as such points would represent free societies in which women do pick STEM. For there to be a straight line, we'd have to further assume that oppressive societies always force women into STEM, which doesn't follow. For example, early-1900's America didn't grant women freedom, but it didn't force them into STEM, either.
• namirez 7y ago
  This has been posted here a few times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699498
• m0skit0 7y ago
  Correlation is not causation.
  • banads 7y ago
    Is it even possible to prove objective causation in a complex social sciences study, since there can be no control group?
    • DuskStar 7y ago
      Yeah, by the same logic you can't blame sexism or racism for any differences in outcomes, since there's no control group there either.
      • banads 7y ago
        It would seem any univariate analysis of social dynamics is by default erroneous
  • homonculus1 7y ago
    No, it could be a third variable or it could even be that women avoiding STEM somehow increases gender equality. But regardless of the cause, if there is an inverse correlation then pursuing gender parity in STEM is at best a huge waste of effort and at worst counterproductive for all parties involved. The graph in the article doesn't look too far removed from a cloud though, so I question the strength of the correlation.
  • dang 7y ago
    Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
• dralley 7y ago
  The headline does this article a disservice. The data does not boil down so cleanly (as the article itself points out clearly) and to leave out the other factors it discusses is to invite false conclusions. I realize that it's difficult to write a headline that is both scientifically precise and short, but the point remains.
  • DuskStar 7y ago
    What are you saying it leaves out? From my reading of the article the only obvious other cause would be that countries with lower gender equality also tend to have worse social support systems, which would allow people to pursue their desires more than otherwise - but that still leaves open the question of why those differences affect women more than men.
• Porthos9K 7y ago
  It sounds like women who grow up hearing they can be whoever they want to be tend to not want to be techies. I don't blame them. If I were any good at anything else I wouldn't do STEM for a living, either. It's a thankless job best outsourced.
  • Lio 7y ago
    Each to there own. I think it's a great life. I'd almost do my work for free. I can't imagine doing a job I hated long term.
    • sokoloff 7y ago
      I’d absolutely write code for free. You need to pay me to come to your spreadsheet mine every day and work on your specific problems though.
• jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  This! I have said this so many times and all my girl friends hate me for it! I also believe in gender segregated schools(after HS and at university level). I am not advocating gender segregation but just gender segregated education. This is only a BS theory of mine..and so I am trying to work it into my hobby fiction writing. Please allow me to test it here for opinions. I think that in formative years, children should not be gender segregated, but when rubber hits the road at specialized and advanced education, it’s better if there is gender segregation because there is so much competition and rivalary between genders when both are at peak reproductive phase. I tend to be on the biology trumps/mind rules body/nature vs nurture side of the camp. I believe that there will be equality between the genders and less conflict if they don’t compete with each other in the same space. This might bring out the innate strengths and better intellectual capabilities of both genders because fundamentally they clash and neutralization absorbs the explosion of what good might come out of great human potential. This is not just in an intellectual setting. Last week I had a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy I hired to do some work. I just lost it. It’s a constant battle of wits dealing with men that it’s exhausting. It’s even worse than in an office environment because men think the tasks that involve physical prowess is their domain. They simply will NOT take orders from a woman. And it’s exhausting trying to make every instruction sound like a ‘suggestion’. I am running out of time and honestly the man was just using brute strength to achieve what physics could do... And for every grudging acceptance of my way of doing things, I had to endure dumbass flirting. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. And then after every attempt to puff his chest, I have to listen to him talk about his wife because now he feels guilty for flirting. And it’s stuff I don’t need to hear. And this is a person I am PAYING to work FOR me. I can’t even wrap my head around it. I had spent another part of my life in office environments and it was just the same. It’s better farming because it’s easier to cut off people if I have the right machine for the job. I think there ought to be a jobs boards and work spaces for JUST WOMEN. It was the same during my years of education. I went to a co-Ed school and I loved it. My college education was at a nun run women’s only college. And I LOVED it.
  • glofish 7y ago
    What you are saying is that since you prefer something everyone should do the same. And what you prefer is the correct choice for everyone ...
• alfromspace 7y ago
  This is essentially what James Damore was fired for saying.
  • pmdulaney 7y ago
    No more callers, please. We have a winner.
  • kleer001 7y ago
    > essentially exactly
  • pootpucker 7y ago
    I think more importantly what Google did was fire an autistic man for citing scientific literature.
• nathias 7y ago
  this seems to do more about the specifics of cultural integration of math/science/reading and not gender
• glofish 7y ago
  I have a hard time believing that Hungary, Malta and Slovakia have comparable gender equality to Indonesia or Arab Emirates. Based on that, if those countries were moved up I would say the trend will be even stronger.
• deleted 7y ago
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• calibas 7y ago
  Gender equality means you can enter into whatever profession you choose and not be discriminated against. It's about equal rights, equal treatment, it does not mean that men and women are the same, it's not a mathematical equality. Seems to me people are confusing conformity with social/political equality.
  • blunte 7y ago
    This is exactly the point. Freedom to direct your energies toward your personal passion _without artificial restraints_ is equality.
    • malandrew 7y ago
      > _without artificial restraints_ What constitutes an artificial restraint? For classical liberals, that means being free from the constraint imposed by other individuals. Today the definition of "restraints" is being expanded beyond the artificial to the point where everything is being declared a "human right" without any consideration for the fact that some of those things can only be provided by taking from someone else (resources and/or labor). Basically, more and more people feel that people should be free from natural restraints like the responsibility of having to provide for oneself (or at least trying to). But the rub is that the only way to free some people from those natural restraints is bondage of others to provide for them.
      • blunte 7y ago
        An artificial constraint is one that exists outside of your personal capability. If you are capable of solving the toughest scientific or technical challenges, but you are prevented from doing so because of some attribute of your circumstance (your color, your gender, your age, your wealth level, your current job title, etc.), then you are being artificially restrained. If you can solve the toughest challenge, but you choose not to because you would rather throw clay on a pottery wheel, then you are also free from constraints. (There are plenty of people that are practically forced into careers because they are technically capable, and because their elders believe that if one can, one should.)
• deleted 7y ago
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• iamsb 7y ago
  The most important thing that matters is ability to earn a decent living. Decent living is essentially ability to afford most things like a property in good neighborhoods, personal identity (clothes), transportation, quality education for children, and safety. People are really smart and they optimise for their own survival. Essentially - decent wage -> better options for partner -> better standard of living. In some countries, like Norway, a teacher makes a decent wage. Not as much as a software engineer, but good enough to support a pretty good lifestyle. Where in some countries, like India, a stem graduate makes a LOT more money than a teacher. I made more money in my third year as a software engineer, than my father who worked in public sector as a civil engineer with 25+ years of experience. Comparison with non technical workers with stem fields is really lop sided when it comes to earning potential. Plus if you are possibly the first generation which can break out of poverty cycle for your entire family, then that adds another layer of pressure to choose certain fields. Hence men or women tend to choose these fields. As wealth creation in some of these countries reaches to a point where non stem fields receive similar earning potential, already happening in India, we will see lower number of women opting for these fields as well. We would really like to find a non economic reason for some of these disparities, like patriarchy, gender discrimination and so on, but it is probably mostly economic.
  • throwaway8548 7y ago
    But why doesn't this affect men's decision making as well?
    • throwaway8459 7y ago
      Men and women are optimised for _slightly_ different thinking that results in _huge_ divergences at scale?
      • Doingmything123 7y ago
        Why do you think the issue is biological and not social? Isn't this the nature vs nurture debate?
• dang 7y ago
  The main discussion was here in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411227 and the same topic was discussed here in 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16407678
  • squidsurfer 7y ago
    And it needs to be brought up frequently because marxist DEI policy trying to force an outcome is all the rage in tech these days.
    • dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for using HN exclusively for ideological battle. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • squidsurfer 7y ago
        I definitely didnt read the guidelines. thanks for sharing them and letting me know.
• zarkov99 7y ago
  Two possible explanations: A) Biology is a real thing and genders have differences that extend beyond their gonads. B) Nope. It is all sexism, always, and these Scandinavian women are just traversing an uncanny valley of internalized misogyny.
  • squidsurfer 7y ago
    Dont be a bigot! Of course its B!
• pmdulaney 7y ago
  People ask me how The Atlantic differs from Harper's. Here is a good example. Harper's would _not_ run an article that would even suggest a crack in the framework of leftist orthodoxy. But noting the date of the article, would this article be published now that Mrs Jobs is at the helm? Perhaps not...
  • IAmEveryone 7y ago
    The Atlantic was bought by Laurene Powell Jobs in July 2017[0], about nine months before this article was published. I've stopped asking people not to make such accusations without any evidence. But could you at least check if the most basic facts do not contradict them? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic#Ownership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atlantic#Ownership
    • pmdulaney 7y ago
      I am duly rebuked for not having done fact checking on my comment.
  • topspin 7y ago
    > People ask me how The Atlantic differs from Harper's. They do? Really?
    • pmdulaney 7y ago
      OK, not really. But when I get into a discussion with people about the Atlantic, I give them my view on how it differs from Harper's, the other longform American magazine that is over 150 years old.
• sakopov 7y ago
  > Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 percent of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math—or “STEM,” as it’s known—are female. I used to live in Russia in my teenage years and went to school there until grade 9. One thing that I remember being distinctly different from public education in the US is that the course selection was provided by the school each year and students had no say in this process. The benefit of this is being exposed to subjects that you thought you wouldn't like, but ended up gravitating towards after completing the course work. Not saying that Algeria uses similar technique in their public education, but I always wondered how much being able to select your class schedule keeps students away from discovering their potential in areas where they didn't know they could excel.
  • fatnoah 7y ago
    >One thing that I remember being distinctly different from public education in the US is that the course selection was provided by the school each year and students had no say in this process I grew up in the US and that was my experience as well. There were no "optional" classes until high school, but even then only one or two of my classes were my own choice.
    • bluGill 7y ago
      Even when there were optional courses the school made it clear the only real option was band/choir/french/german/spanish (I think there was home-ec and shop courses available too). There was one hour free that you could pick one of the above, in theory you didn't have to take math and science the last year, but they made it clear that if you had any hope of college you better not skip them. I found out the hard way that band/choir were not really options because my college wouldn't admit me without the foreign language (I had to do catch up classes)
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• pj_mukh 7y ago
  Coming from one of these countries to America, the answer seems obvious. STEM jobs have a HUGE differential in stability and status in those countries, so women put up up with much more patriarchal BS at the workplace to hold on to them. My sister was a STEM worker in India. When she moved to America, she looked around to see writers with relatively safe, high-status job and switched out immediately. Yes, women in America are "organically" picking non-STEM jobs, but that is because the jobs suck, the environments suck and people are assholes at these jobs. My sister loved the core STEM aspects of her job, but hated the culture of the companies she was stuck working with. This is not "equality", its hostile corporate culture. tl;dr: Ask Women.
  • DuskStar 7y ago
    The problem I always have with this argument is "Why not medicine? Why not Law?" Why is it that two professions that you'd naively expect to be just as sexist, if not far more sexist than STEM (Higher status, more of an "old boys club", established hierarchy that has positions like nurses for women, etc) have achieved gender parity, while STEM hasn't?
    • nervousvarun 7y ago
      Not necessarily disagreeing or commenting on your point, but doesn't medicine typically fall under STEM?
      • maxnoe 7y ago
        NOOO. Science, Technics, Engineering, Math. The M is not for Medicine
        • diffeomorphism 7y ago
          But science includes biology, chemistry, pharmacy and medical research (e.g. molecular biology, neurology,...). So just because it is not the M does not say it is not part of STEM. Actually, I am unsure how country specific this is and where to put medicine with respect to hard sciences, soft sciences, social sciences etc.
• turc1656 7y ago
  This isn't new information. Not even sort of new. This has been known for quite some time (20-30 YEARS). Jordan Peterson has also mentioned it numerous times over the years but the original studies are quite old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjvzH24Mwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjvzH24Mwo Yet people are shocked to learn this because this data/facts aren't liked by politicians and even some scientists so it doesn't get discussed. Not sure why. There's nothing wrong with having different preferences. But some people like to pretend everyone is more or less exactly the same and want to do the same things and the only reason to differ would be societal influence.
  • 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
    The odd thing is that the same people who talk about there being no inherent biological differences between sexes then go ahead and talk about 'male aggression'. The amount of people that employ mental gymnastics to justify saying both these things is amazing. In fact the attacks I've seen on Peterson have bordered on the downright delusional/incoherent.
    • IAmEveryone 7y ago
      It's perfectly possible to consider traits to be culturally assigned to the genders and not biologically determined, and still complain about them. Complaining about innate (and therefore unchangeable) biological traits would actually be somewhat useless. Besides, nobody denies the existence of biological differences. It's pretty obvious that women tend to have breasts and men tend not to. What's being criticised is: - Misinterpreting culturally-enforced differences as biological and therefore fixed. Hair length, for example, could be misinterpreted as a difference between the sexes if any aliens did a quantitative study without ever noticing the barbers. Job choices could very well be similar, except the process how they are culturally reinforced are less obvious. - Making decisions affecting individuals based on group differences (biological, culturally, or imagined): Even if women are 2% at picking stocks, using that information only to hire Alice and not Bob will lead to the wrong decision in 45% of cases because the differences between individuals swamp the group averages.
• omarhaneef 7y ago
  "Just 18 percent of American computer-science college degrees go to women.... Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 percent of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math—or “stem,” as it’s known—are female." Wait, so they're comparing computer science with all of STEM? That might obfuscate the picture. It should be STEM:STEM. Edit: Perhaps I am not being clear but computer science is a subset of STEM, so even within the US, the number of people going into STEM > Computer Science. Comparing STEM in country X with CS in country Y seems like the wrong comparison.
  • edoo 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure it has been proven most genius women go into medicine and most genius men go into engineering. The genius part means you get to pick your path. Biological imperatives are at play.
    • malcolmgreaves 7y ago
      There are absolutely zero "biological imperatives" here -- your take is some pretty low-effort, tired sexual discrimination.
      • lawnchair_larry 7y ago
        Nothing in his post is sexually discriminatory, and stereotyping women as more inclined to select medicine is not even negative (whether it’s correct or not), so admonishment in place of debate is not necessary. Medicine is far more prestigious and more highly compensated than engineering.
      • edoo 7y ago
        https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep03/clues https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep03/clues https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201402/brain-differences-between-genders https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/2... Males and females are biologically different. That is like 2nd grade stuff.
  • viggity 7y ago
• lowdose 7y ago
  When people are more equal they will have more reason to differentiate. Women in countries like Norway tend to choose more professions based on the alignment with their gender. Men in the same country are known to have more typical "guy" hobbies and toys. It's basically a catch-22.
• jl2718 7y ago
  Mostly because it’s not a very good job. The total hours, job security, and amortization of training time, are some of the worst of any profession.
  • Nursie 7y ago
    That's nonsense. It pays very well and can give you great freedom to set your own path.
    • uwuhn 7y ago
      I think that poster is referring to STEM as a whole. Software engineering is a small subset of STEM, and I'd argue that it is, surprisingly, both the most accessible and the most lucrative.
      • jl2718 7y ago
        I mean software. Professional sports is also accessible and lucrative in the same way. Most white-collar professions secure their gravy trains through guild membership, insider knowledge, and personal relationships. Software, however, gets more competitive throughout a career, not less, and most people don't understand how obsessed they must be to keep up. I like that about it, and I didn't make it as an athlete, so it suits me, but most people that come into this profession would rather retire into management than keep up their coding skills for more than a few years.
• georgeburdell 7y ago
  I submitted a similar article last week about how muslim countries punch above their weight on women in STEM. https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/the-stem-paradox-why-are-muslim-majority-countries-producing-so-many-female-engineers.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/11/the-stem-paradox-wh... The conclusion there was parental authoritarianism (especially dads) was a primary cause. My own family is part Muslim so I have direct experience. Every child must be an engineer or doctor. As the Atlantic article notes, women in the West have more freedom to NOT choose STEM.
• 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  It's good that the article mentions poverty and interest in STEM, but they plotted the participation in STEM against Gender Equality instead of say, affordability to survive on minimum wage. They are literally quoting a study on the effects of basically poverty of a country, and then decide to plot against gender gap? Seems like they are trying to sell a narrative instead of understanding the issue fully. It also seems odd the amount of information they glance over to create their narrative. In the article, there's a video that mentions a ton of facts. Among the facts: Women make up 18% of CS engineers. 1:4 computing jobs are held by women. I'm no math genius, but this actually seems to dispel the myth of women just aren't hired in tech. I mean, if they are 18% of CS engineering graduates, you'd expect them to hold slightly < 1:5 computing jobs, not 1:4.
• lgleason 7y ago
  It all comes down to equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. When there is equality of opportunity women choose different fields...often (but not always) because of different interests. Equality of outcome forces people to do things that they may not have an interest in. And that is before you get into interests vs natural talent and how that does or does not affect ones success in a field. On a fundamental level I personally prefer equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks, creating toxic work environments or harassing people. Personally I've seen bad behavior from both sides. I've also seen exceptional talent, skill, empathy etc. come from both groups. Many corporate cultures are toxic to everybody, irregardless of your gender. I'm sure this will be down voted, but it is what it is.
  • TulliusCicero 7y ago
    > As to the men being jerks/toxic etc argument. Are there times when that is true? Absolutely. But, men do not have a monopoly on being jerks I'd say the bigger point against the idea that women aren't in CS purely* because of men being sexist, is that this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. Does anyone actually believe this? * of course, it may still be a partial factor
    • foldr 7y ago
      >this implies that male doctors and lawyers in the 60's and 70's were less sexist than male engineers of today. I don't see how it implies this. The more relevant question is whether STEM has higher levels of sexism than other similarly attractive fields.
      • TulliusCicero 7y ago
        How could it not imply it? That's when women started entering those fields en masse and really increasing their numbers. Going by the "the problem is men being sexist" reasoning, that they were able to do this successfully implies that the lawyers and doctors in charge then were less sexist than engineers today.
• coatmatter 7y ago
  Chess Grandmaster David Smerdon (PhD, Economics) noticed a similar correlation with chess too: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-best-and-worst-countries-to-be-a-female-chess-player https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-best-and-worst-countries-t...
• xwowsersx 7y ago
  Jordan Peterson has highlighted this many times. As he puts it: in Scandinavia, which has gone further than any other country in promoting gender equality, as equality increases, the differences between the genders (interest, careers, other pursuits) INCREASE, not the other way around. This came as a big surprise to many.
• gamesbrainiac 7y ago
  I think the truth of the matter is that you cannot dictate what people feel passionate about or what they need to do. For example, people in Algeria or from my region of South Asia study the sciences because it is a way to better incomes in the future. Simply giving people all the opportunity in the world will not guarantee that they will take up that opportunity. Just because you offer someone a carrot does not mean that that person will bite.
• wufufufu 7y ago
  Is it not arrogant to think engineering is the profession that all minorities aspire to?
• jariel 7y ago
  "A new study explores a strange paradox:" It's not a paradox!! That people refer to it as a 'paradox' only confirms their very entrenched, possibly ideological view of reality, to the point wherein 'real life data' that calls into question that view ... is considered 'strange'. It's not a paradox, it's just reality, probably easily explained (in very crude terms) by the fact that men and women are different, ergo, different outcomes. 'Gender' is a very powerful construct with underlying physical aspects, and it's just a part of who we are. So we can try to make sure everyone has a real chance (taking into account systematic issues i.e. it's really hard for the 'lone minority' in a group etc.), but going too far beyond that might be hard.
• manfredhe 7y ago
  It's very interesting to hear that very good submission
• downerending 7y ago
  I have no doubt that women face adversity, often in the form of sh__ty behavior during their STEM careers, so I'm not particularly surprised by accounts of it. I'm far less sanguine about the idea that they face more of it than men, as I've been on the receiving end of a lot of it myself (some life-changing). It'd be interesting to see this studied.
• squidsurfer 7y ago
  Wow, it turns out that much to the protestations of the left, women are in fact not men, and given more equality of opportunity and freedom to choose will gravitate more towards fields suited to their natures, on average. This was common sense a generation or two ago, but now feels like heresy to speak out loud. Certainly a fireable offense (just ask James Damore!)
• b0rsuk 7y ago
  I think it's safe to say that board games are kinda STEM-related? I go to a local fantasy/SF club that's dominated by board gaming. There are lots of STEM students in there due to location, also plenty of programmers. And very few girls, and the only woman over 30 is mentally <inoffensive word>. No, there's no beer, no cigarettes, no posters with elves in g-strings, that sort of thing. It's almost as if girls and young women weren't really interested in that. The few that do occasionally show up gravitate towards LARPs, pen&paper RPG games, and RPG-ish board games like Arkham Horror. If anything, I think those activities are more associated with toxic and sexist behavior and subtexts. I mean those are the people that spend lots of time in the same company, often in pubs or cellars, as opposed to board games where there are always people coming and going. I don't know why, but very few young women come to us to play heavier or more competitive board games and we have several games going at any given time. And because board game renaissance is pretty recent in my country, there's absolutely no possibility it's traditionally male. I'm for equal opportunities, but I think differences between sexes are not limited to physical. It's hard to pinpoint the tendencies, but they seem to be there. I mean look at smaller guys - they often have confidence issues and the ones I know are gym rats. They are also more afraid to go out after dark. Would it be crazy to think that people who evolved having about 20% less muscle mass also got some related mental differences?
  • softfalcon 7y ago
    More than likely, the reason others avoid you is because once it became a distinct group huddled around a table nerding out about a technical board game, it became intimidating to join. Hell, I was raised playing D&D and other games, am male, have a computer science degree, and even I feel intimidated walking up to another table of gamers. The same thing applies in reverse when you're with your mates at a pub. You want to go over and talk to a girl, but she's surrounded by her army of friends who are forming a social barricade that is intimidating to enter. Those girls don't want to leave their comfortable social circle and risk entering this unknown board game world either. Here are a bunch of guys who all "know" this game and she has to enter into it not just from a social disadvantage, but also a gaming skill disadvantage. That's a tough ask for anyone, male or female. People do not like to enter social situations where they feel isolated. Even if you were all a bunch of ripped, attractive, friendly, well dressed, wealthy, and obviously social gents, you'd still probably find women don't waltz right up to you and your friends playing a game of Scythe or some other complex strategy game. If you want people to join your game, you have to go out of your way to make the game environment approachable to other people. This means playing simpler games, inviting people over, and including other fun things to ease them into it. This means networking outside of just going to a board game cafe and hoping a girl will come through the door. You have to go out and find those wonderful people yourself. NOTE: this can be really hard, cause the same way you and your friends are hiding out in this board game cafe, so are all those other like-minded individuals. They're also hiding away in basements, back alley cafes, etc, playing board games. Remember, the reason you're into this hobby is because you've been a gaming fan for years. If we take away all your prior knowledge of games, you too would be anxious to jump right into the thick of it.
• deleted 7y ago
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• ajuc 7y ago
  It's pretty obvious once you stop with ideology and politics. When STEM is your only shot at a comfortable life - you go STEM if you can, even if you don't want to. When it's not - you pursue your interests instead.
• b0rsuk 7y ago
  I know it's not a popular opinion, but consider a company analogy. People who leave because they're not competent have a tendency to badmouth the company. I'm not saying all of them do, and all that badmouth were incompetent. But there is a tendency to rationalize and lash out. What if women were calling those environments toxic because they had a hard time doing well in there? There are absolutely toxic, hermetic, unpleasant environments. But we should at least permit considering the idea that people of different sexes have different abilities. I get sexist comments all the time (men can't distinguish colors, men can't multitask) and there are no white knights riding to my rescue.
  • b0rsuk 7y ago
    If you rule out an idea without verification and forbid studies in the area, that's just a variant of "la la la la I can't hear you". It's childish, and taboo.
  • SubuSS 7y ago
    Let's say you bring up an issue about a bug in software you're working on. Let's also say you didn't cause it. But the moment you talk about it, I respond, 'didn't the code you wrote yesterday have a bug?', 'isn't this code base from a reputed oss repo?' and so on. Essentially my exact words don't mean that this is also your bug, but there is an (un)intended implication that you're a crappy developer. You're probably gonna latch on to that at the speed of light rather than giving a Data like logical response. That's the problem with bringing up such alternatives. It alludes that women or minority will right away fall back to their gender or whatever when convenient. It also alludes that they don't know the weight of one such allegation, they aren't thinking about the effect it is going to have on their future employment opportunities (It so happens this kind of allegations true or not seriously affect your career, everyone starts to tiptoe around you at the least in your new job) - essentially attributes a lack of integrity and foresight. IOW - I do agree that there is a very interesting question around what do we do about incompetent employees who happen to be a minority. I also know this line of responses are probably not going to be productive :)
    • b0rsuk 7y ago
• ProofByAccident 7y ago
  These comments are wild and the headline is not great. I know this is a contentious issue and that people like to armchair philosophize about stuff like this, but I think the study conclusions warrant a lot of critical attention before you say anything about "equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome". First off: this is one study. No matter where you fall on gender politics, I wouldn't hang anything too seriously on a single paper. Obviously gender discrimination has been a historical cause of the gender STEM gap; so are we saying that we've solved that particular problem? Is there still room to improve? How much room? To me it seems naive to assume the first one without lots of evidence, and this paper is not that. Second: the regression shown in the article doesn't seem great. For one thing: there's a small cluster of countries with pretty high X values, and pretty low Y values which suggests that they have relatively high leverage over the results and should probably be excluded. If you cover up UAE, Tunisia, Algeria, and Turkey does the regression line make any sense at all? To me it seems way too steep, ie. leverage. (Maybe the authors talk about this in the paper, I can't get behind the paywall). Also my priors would be that there are a number of country- and regional-level effects at work for an issue like this. It would be way more informative if the authors were to perform subgroup regressions by region of the world, cultural factors, ecnomic factors, etc. It's very possible, for example, that these two variables have an opposite correlation within region, education system, etc, but appear to have a negative correlation on aggregate. Simpson's Paradox is real and can cut many ways. Third: choice of metric. Per the article """In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was still larger than the number of women who were graduating with STEM degrees. That means there’s something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects""" This could be caused by a lot of things, but this suggests to me that the "Global Gender Gap" metric may not be giving us the whole picture. I think it's real hasty to draw basically any conclusions about eg. the US STEM culture based on this study. When the results suggest a paradox like this, I think it calls for looking at a variety of metrics to see if the same results are borne out repeatedly. tl;dr there's a lot of research on the gender STEM gap, and a lot of people shooting from the hip in these comments.
• sunkenvicar 7y ago
  Almost as if men and women hold different preferences.
• dfilppi 7y ago
  Women dont like nerds
• octokatt 7y ago
  I need to stop reading these comment sections. They get repetitive, and whenever I see the word "female" online now, I wonder if black pill shills are deciding to jack the conversation.
• sossles 7y ago
  I've always wondered: Does encouraging women to pursue STEM subjects send the subconscious message that it isn't something they are naturally suited to? Ironically having the opposite effect?
• EGreg 7y ago
  What if I just post an alternative hypothesis without any apologies? Let’s find out... Perhaps women in general are less interested than men in problems that require long stretches of “cold” and abstract reasoning, including building back-end software, and prefer activities that involve more human interaction or more frequent decisions involving “warmer” human elements such as aesthetics, human perception, relationship building, understanding everyday needs etc. Also, perhaps women prefer more of a work-life balance, and not stretching themselves too thin when working on abstractions?
• wfbarks 7y ago
  When people are truly free to choose the careers they want, it accentuates natural gender preferences.
• fefe23 7y ago
  I always wonder why we just assume STEM are an attractive field to be in. Because if it is not attractive, then why would we want to force more women into it? Maybe we should not be asking why there are so few women doing it but why there are so many men doing it. Almost nobody who studied physics ends up doing physics. Both men and women will do unfulfilling jobs if they need the money, but when it comes to investing into a career, women will more often choose one that leads to interesting and fulfilling jobs, while men tend to select for "return on investment". Men are much more likely than women to invest into an career that only has unfulfilling but well-paying job prospects. I view this is a defect in men, not a sign of oppression. Men are the victim of reactionary gender stereotypes and think they have to study something that will lead to them being able to provide for a family. Look at, for example, container ship crew or workers on an oil platform. Clearly both genders can do those jobs, but almost only men will actually do it. Oil workers are getting paid exceptionally well. Not sure about container ship crews, maybe that was not a great example.
• aznpwnzor 7y ago
  If companies truly value diversity, just pay women more then men.
• selfishgene 7y ago
  In the United States, medicine and law have something that most professions in STEM do not: licensing boards and professional school admission committees that strictly control the flow of new employees into their respective fields. Is it possible that women are better at seeing how poorly a lot of employees in STEM are treated (especially in those disciplines that have been flooded by H1-B applicants) and realizing that better opportunities lie elsewhere?
• shephardjhon 7y ago
  Before we keep fighting, I would like to point out that Cambridge Analytica isn't dead yet and one of their and Russia's goals is to sue discord among all Western people, including a gender war. If you watch the documentary The Great Hack, you will know that articles and discussions like these are one of their tools. Please ensure not to allow CA to use nlp to influence your vote. It is likely that after seeing this and commenting about this, you will see ads follow that try to convince you of some kind of bias in either direction. That is a CA trick, keep that in mind. Don't let Putin and CA influence your vote.
• b0rsuk 7y ago
  How about the 'forbidden fruit' syndrome? What if hard-to-get-into STEM attracts the girls who are naturally competitive and strong-willed, who want to SHOW THEM? In that case easing the resistance could also lower the perceived attractiveness.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• stemwoman 7y ago
  As a woman who worked in stem, stem has very bad payoff for me. It takes a lot of work/efforts to get anywhere if you want to do real work in stem. It's much easier for me to give talks and become a influencer as lots of men follow me on social media. So why should I scarifice opportunity meet powerful men in social setting through my work and spend my young/pretty years at a desk job where no one will notice me? My grandmother told me, men value young women so don't waste your pretty years.
• stemwoman 7y ago
  Young women has lot more options than your young men. I can signal a man with Ferrari on the road and he will let me spend my time with him but the chances of man getting the same treatment is next to nothing.
• luord 7y ago
  All this article tells me is that there's a problem regarding boys and reading and that we need to find ways to motivate boys into reading more. Women aren't inherently better than men (obligatory "and viceversa") so if both are about as good in one area but one group is (only seemingly) better at another area, there clearly is an issue that needs addressing.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Women aren't inherently better than men (and viceversa) While I would agree that that is true, axiomatically, when discussing moral worth and human dignity (whether speaking in terms of gender identity or biological sex), it's very clearly not true when talking about, well, a whole lot of capacities with physiological components when speaking of either averages or distributions between the biological sexes. I mean, this is fairly obvious with biological capacities closely related to sex and reproduction (I don't think anyone is going to argue against the idea that biological females are inherently advantaged when it comes to childbearing), but strucural and hormonal (among other) sex differences have far wider impacts. Testosterone levels alone, which are clearly linked to though not strictly determined by biological sex, have fairly wide ranging impacts on physical capacities and psychology/behavior.
    • luord 7y ago
      Oh, I don't disagree with that. Men and women are certainly different in many ways, just not necessarily better, as you said, in worth and dignity. In this case, I meant reading; I don't think there's anything in our biology that would necessarily make one group better than the other at reading.