3 ms·
Related: the article is misguided on the women thing. I teach CS in college. I see it every day. Women on average are more interested to work with people than
by raarts 6y ago
Related: the article is misguided on the women thing.
I teach CS in college. I see it every day. Women on average are more interested to work with people than men. This hasn't changed despite trying to boost girls' interest in typical STEM fields for 25 years. HR departments have been pouring money into this like mad. Hasn't moved the needle. Research has shown that girls don't fare worse in math tests if they are told beforehand that girls are worse at math. In countries where the sexes are treated more equally men more often choose thing-jobs and women more often choose people jobs.
Who thinks that if society would treat everybody completely equal, all occupations would end up exactly even distributed across the sexes? There are real differences between the sexes.
The push towards exact equal distribution in everything is futile, hasn't worked and will not work.
I think it's more important that people can choose to do what they want to do.
Sounds like a rant, sorry.
- jayd16 6y agoThis is simply inaccurate, at least in the US. The percentage of women in STEM has gone up. The percentage of workers in the computer field is lower than the rest and declining. Your premise also confuses me as I would argue software engineering is more people focused than, say, lab work.
- raarts 6y agoDo note that stem is not one field. It contains medicine and biology but also IT and physics. Likewise IT is not one field. UI/UX design is very different from infrastructure or backend work. Many stats and research lump things together.
- lunias 6y agoEven if the percentage of women in STEM has gone up do you disagree with the assertion that: "Women on average are more interested to work with people than men"? I believe that while societal factors have contributed to women pursuing specific career paths, if one was to factor that out or course-correct in some way you'd still see less women in engineering due to their preferences. Is it wrong to feel like on average men and women are different in their preferences? This is not to say that there are not men who exhibit traditionally female preferences and vice versa. If we could undo the last 2000 years of societal programming (and run a new experiment) I think we'd see different preferences in men and women then we see today, but I seriously doubt you'd see 50/50 engagement across the board because men and women are distinct - although they certainly share a common set of attributes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]