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On the other hand we have tons of data on how women in science are currently treated, and I don't think it's a huge leap to assume things used to be worse. So y

On the other hand we have tons of data on how women in science are currently treated, and I don't think it's a huge leap to assume things used to be worse. So yes I'm pretty sure it's because she was a woman. "according to the National Science Foundation research, after examining other factors such as age, experience, and education as the causes of why there is a gap in success between men and women, they concluded that discrimination is the only explanation for the poor positions and salaries of women and minorities." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science#Statistics_about_women_in_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science#Statistics_abo...

tuttotutti 13y ago
And it can't be because there are more men geniuses than women (as statistics on iq point out) or because men are naturally more interested in some subjects than women (which has also been the subject of studies and demonstrated). Nope, we have to come up with a conspiracy theory which places the blame on, as always, evil white men. This is why nobody takes feminists seriously.
- quinnchr 13y ago
  And you are why no one takes white men complaining about feminists seriously... Care to back up any of your outrageous assertions? Do you actually know anything about feminism? Because all of your points have been addressed in feminist literature ad infinitum.
  - Tichy 13y ago
    And evolution theory has been addressed ad infinitum by religious groups... Care to give any links?
    - quinnchr 13y ago
      Well I was asking for evidence to back up the parent's argument. Not sure why the burden of proof is on me, but since you asked: I would think it should be obvious, but women test equally or higher then men on IQ: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/men-women-and-iq-setting-the-record-straight http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/m... As for the second part you're going to have to do some reading on your own. Believe it or not not all feminists think the exact same way. Some schools of feminist thought would agree that there are some inherent differences between men and women, others would vehemently disagree. For more information read about difference feminism vs. postmodern feminism.
      - Tichy 13y ago
        The theory about IQ is not that the averages are higher, but that the distribution is different. Supposedly there are more very intelligent and more very stupid men than women. So the average IQs will be roughly the same, but there are more high IQ men. Of course high IQ women do exist, just apparently less frequent. One article that explains that is http://triggeralert.blogspot.de/2010/10/is-there-anything-good-about-men.html http://triggeralert.blogspot.de/2010/10/is-there-anything-go... The article you linked to only addresses averages. As for not all feminists thinking the same way: yes, they keep claiming that, but I have yet to see an exception. My impression is that all feminism ultimately tries to portray women as victims (of the "patriarchy", a conveniently nebulous concept), and in turn want to claim special rights for women as a compensation. If you can provide exceptions to that, I'd welcome it. Certainly this pamphlet about Cecilia Payne was a prime example of that pattern.
        quinnchr 13y ago
        Here's a fantastic article on the variability hypothesis: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-gap-in-maths-driven-by-social-factors-not-biological/ http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-g... Men having a higher variance in intelligence pretty much only holds for white americans. The opposite is true in other cultures, which to me, seems to indicate it's a cultural issue, not in innate biological difference. You are right some feminists would argue that women are harmed by the "patriarchy" but they would also argue that the patriarchy hurts men too. Beyond that there are a plethora of widely varying feminist schools of thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologi...
        Tichy 13y ago
        Thanks - I am actually not that interested in the variability hypothesis, as I would expect other factors to be much more important. So I guess I won't spend the time to read the paper in detail. The summary mentions that variability seems to be the lowest in countries with the most gender equality. That doesn't seem to contradict the notion that some inequality is caused by variability - after all, you could read it the other way round, where there is high variability, it leads to gender disparity. I've come to jokingly say that a bad maths teacher at primary school could be worth millions of $ in damage compensation. It must be the primary school maths teacher fault that you didn't make a high earning STEM career, right? Except of course nowhere in society is math talent really supported, most math talents are mostly on their own (just my impression, though). To me differences in incentives seem likely to have a much higher effect. It doesn't pay off for women to take risks, or not nearly as much as for men. Women have biological value in their own right (reproduction machinery), whereas men are much more expendable. To get ahead, men have to take higher risks - nobody will care for an average man. And men can gain extreme advantages in reproduction by taking risks and winning (even fathering thousands of kids like Ghengis Khan). On the other hand consider that for a woman planning on becoming a housewife with no special skills is actually a viable strategy. Few feminists will consider that because they are biased by their own preferences, but if only a fraction of women take the "easy" route, it will show in things like pay gaps and percentages of women in certain types of jobs. (Btw I don't think any of the pay gap studies take into account that women typically get half of their husbands income - I assume that is also the case in the US?). For example that recent hype of "we need more women in action movies" is complete nonsense, because women simply don't have the incentive to put themselves into risky situations where they might be shot to death. Yes, there are exceptions, but on average there will simply be fewer women who will do that. So demanding that 50% of action heroes should be women is simply bullshit. It's not role models that makes women not clamor to get themselves killed, it is simply that they have no need to do so (apparently even the women joining the army are exposed to much less risk because they get different jobs than men). As for the plethora of feminist movements, does that mean one can't criticize feminism? I don't think so. Most of them seem to have in common that they blame men for suppressing women. I know that some acknowledge that the "patriarchy" hurts men, too (although how prominently it features in their campaigns is another matter). It is still an ideology of victims. The crazy thing to me is that feminists don't just get it a little bit wrong (in my opinion) - in many cases they get it 180° wrong, exactly the opposite of what they believe is true. Examples: women are not pressured into becoming housewives (as feminists believe), they have the privilege of having the option to become housewives - try to plan on becoming a stay at home dad? (This is actually one of the points where feminists believe they also help men, but they overlook that they simply have the higher biologically claim to be stay at home, because they invest so much energy into child bearing. I don't expect a huge shift towards stay-at-home daddying). Or rape culture: our culture does not condone rape, as feminists believe, it actually sees rape as an especially horrible crime. Therefore it is given proportionally more attention than other crimes - men are much more likely to be attacked on the street, but the disproportionate rape scare makes us feel as if women are more endangered. Also every movie or book uses rape as an easy way to evoke emotions (because it hits us especially hard), adding further to the distorted conception of the prevalence of rape. Scantily clad women in advertising are of course weird, but they don't signal women are readily available everywhere - they signal that you have to work a lot, get rich and buy a fancy car to attract women. Quite the opposite - if men would really believe that women were readily available without them having to show economic viability, they'd stop working and the economy would go to ruins immediately. And so on, and so on...
Tichy 13y ago
I've been reading a lot about that topic recently and I am pretty sure the science on that is not as conclusive as you claim. Most studies stop as soon as they find anything that could support their claim that it's discrimination, too. For starters, any article that claims the pay gap is 20% is dishonest. Last I read all but 3% were accounted for by other factors like choice of profession, work hours and so on. So the actual wage gap is only 3%. And that doesn't prove discrimination either, could just as well be some other reason they haven't found yet. But feminism works like religion - discrimination is a handy explanation for everything, no need to ask any further questions.
- quinnchr 13y ago
  Try 12%: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_in_scien.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_i... And feminism works more like philosophy than religion. In fact pretty much all notable feminist thinkers are in fact philosophers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
  - Tichy 13y ago
    That article doesn't even seem to compare people in similar jobs, only people with comparable education. Women often choose different jobs, for example because they allow them more flexibility (yes, to take care of family, and also possibly because they are under less pressure to make a lot of money). A common example you see in that kind of articles is comparing physicians to physicians. Seems only fair, right? But it makes a big difference whether you are a surgeon or a pediatrician. You can not step out in the middle of a 12h heart surgery to pick up your kids from school. Just to give one example, there are lots of other factors (for example type of business/research, willingness to relocate). I am too lazy to Google for the 97% quote right now, came across it only yesterday. Perhaps later. (OK: just duckduckgoed, the first link that came up was this: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22058 http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22058 - June O'Neill, "The Disappearing Gender Wage Gap," National Center for Policy Analysis, June 22, 2012). That article also claims that single, childless women earn 8% more than their male counterparts. So children really are the big issue. As for Judith Butler, I tried to read her stuff, but it seems extremely convoluted. To be honest I suspect their confusion starts somewhere before the gender issue. If you have a recommendation for something readable, I'd welcome it.
ismarc 13y ago
The source that the quote is pulled from (Schiebinger, Londa (2001). Has Feminism Changed Science?. United States of America: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674005449) includes (in the very next paragraph): "In 1996 salaries for women in professional fields increased to 85–95 percent of men with similar jobs. Younger women in the United States (childless women between the ages of 27 and 33) earned nearly the same (98 percent) as men in their age group." The quote from the National Science Foundation in the book is unsourced, however, the only related information from the National Science foundation I could find was http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib99352.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib99352.htm which is not necessarily contradictor, but paints an entirely different picture. While I disagree with who you are responding to, there has been a massive improvement in 1 1/2 generations and it removes a significant amount of credibility to present information in a way to try and say that widespread systemic discrimination still occurs in areas where it does not.
- quinnchr 13y ago
  The most recent information I can find says that the wage gap for similarly educated women in the physical sciences is 12% http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_in_scien.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_i... While I agree there have been drastic improvements, I don't think you can say structural discrimination no longer exists.

tuttotutti 13y ago

And it can't be because there are more men geniuses than women (as statistics on iq point out) or because men are naturally more interested in some subjects than women (which has also been the subject of studies and demonstrated). Nope, we have to come up with a conspiracy theory which places the blame on, as always, evil white men. This is why nobody takes feminists seriously.

quinnchr 13y ago
And you are why no one takes white men complaining about feminists seriously... Care to back up any of your outrageous assertions? Do you actually know anything about feminism? Because all of your points have been addressed in feminist literature ad infinitum.
- Tichy 13y ago
  And evolution theory has been addressed ad infinitum by religious groups... Care to give any links?
  - quinnchr 13y ago
    Well I was asking for evidence to back up the parent's argument. Not sure why the burden of proof is on me, but since you asked: I would think it should be obvious, but women test equally or higher then men on IQ: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/men-women-and-iq-setting-the-record-straight http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201207/m... As for the second part you're going to have to do some reading on your own. Believe it or not not all feminists think the exact same way. Some schools of feminist thought would agree that there are some inherent differences between men and women, others would vehemently disagree. For more information read about difference feminism vs. postmodern feminism.
    - Tichy 13y ago
      The theory about IQ is not that the averages are higher, but that the distribution is different. Supposedly there are more very intelligent and more very stupid men than women. So the average IQs will be roughly the same, but there are more high IQ men. Of course high IQ women do exist, just apparently less frequent. One article that explains that is http://triggeralert.blogspot.de/2010/10/is-there-anything-good-about-men.html http://triggeralert.blogspot.de/2010/10/is-there-anything-go... The article you linked to only addresses averages. As for not all feminists thinking the same way: yes, they keep claiming that, but I have yet to see an exception. My impression is that all feminism ultimately tries to portray women as victims (of the "patriarchy", a conveniently nebulous concept), and in turn want to claim special rights for women as a compensation. If you can provide exceptions to that, I'd welcome it. Certainly this pamphlet about Cecilia Payne was a prime example of that pattern.
      - quinnchr 13y ago
        Here's a fantastic article on the variability hypothesis: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-gap-in-maths-driven-by-social-factors-not-biological/ http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-g... Men having a higher variance in intelligence pretty much only holds for white americans. The opposite is true in other cultures, which to me, seems to indicate it's a cultural issue, not in innate biological difference. You are right some feminists would argue that women are harmed by the "patriarchy" but they would also argue that the patriarchy hurts men too. Beyond that there are a plethora of widely varying feminist schools of thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologi...
        Tichy 13y ago
        Thanks - I am actually not that interested in the variability hypothesis, as I would expect other factors to be much more important. So I guess I won't spend the time to read the paper in detail. The summary mentions that variability seems to be the lowest in countries with the most gender equality. That doesn't seem to contradict the notion that some inequality is caused by variability - after all, you could read it the other way round, where there is high variability, it leads to gender disparity. I've come to jokingly say that a bad maths teacher at primary school could be worth millions of $ in damage compensation. It must be the primary school maths teacher fault that you didn't make a high earning STEM career, right? Except of course nowhere in society is math talent really supported, most math talents are mostly on their own (just my impression, though). To me differences in incentives seem likely to have a much higher effect. It doesn't pay off for women to take risks, or not nearly as much as for men. Women have biological value in their own right (reproduction machinery), whereas men are much more expendable. To get ahead, men have to take higher risks - nobody will care for an average man. And men can gain extreme advantages in reproduction by taking risks and winning (even fathering thousands of kids like Ghengis Khan). On the other hand consider that for a woman planning on becoming a housewife with no special skills is actually a viable strategy. Few feminists will consider that because they are biased by their own preferences, but if only a fraction of women take the "easy" route, it will show in things like pay gaps and percentages of women in certain types of jobs. (Btw I don't think any of the pay gap studies take into account that women typically get half of their husbands income - I assume that is also the case in the US?). For example that recent hype of "we need more women in action movies" is complete nonsense, because women simply don't have the incentive to put themselves into risky situations where they might be shot to death. Yes, there are exceptions, but on average there will simply be fewer women who will do that. So demanding that 50% of action heroes should be women is simply bullshit. It's not role models that makes women not clamor to get themselves killed, it is simply that they have no need to do so (apparently even the women joining the army are exposed to much less risk because they get different jobs than men). As for the plethora of feminist movements, does that mean one can't criticize feminism? I don't think so. Most of them seem to have in common that they blame men for suppressing women. I know that some acknowledge that the "patriarchy" hurts men, too (although how prominently it features in their campaigns is another matter). It is still an ideology of victims. The crazy thing to me is that feminists don't just get it a little bit wrong (in my opinion) - in many cases they get it 180° wrong, exactly the opposite of what they believe is true. Examples: women are not pressured into becoming housewives (as feminists believe), they have the privilege of having the option to become housewives - try to plan on becoming a stay at home dad? (This is actually one of the points where feminists believe they also help men, but they overlook that they simply have the higher biologically claim to be stay at home, because they invest so much energy into child bearing. I don't expect a huge shift towards stay-at-home daddying). Or rape culture: our culture does not condone rape, as feminists believe, it actually sees rape as an especially horrible crime. Therefore it is given proportionally more attention than other crimes - men are much more likely to be attacked on the street, but the disproportionate rape scare makes us feel as if women are more endangered. Also every movie or book uses rape as an easy way to evoke emotions (because it hits us especially hard), adding further to the distorted conception of the prevalence of rape. Scantily clad women in advertising are of course weird, but they don't signal women are readily available everywhere - they signal that you have to work a lot, get rich and buy a fancy car to attract women. Quite the opposite - if men would really believe that women were readily available without them having to show economic viability, they'd stop working and the economy would go to ruins immediately. And so on, and so on...

Tichy 13y ago

I've been reading a lot about that topic recently and I am pretty sure the science on that is not as conclusive as you claim. Most studies stop as soon as they find anything that could support their claim that it's discrimination, too. For starters, any article that claims the pay gap is 20% is dishonest. Last I read all but 3% were accounted for by other factors like choice of profession, work hours and so on. So the actual wage gap is only 3%. And that doesn't prove discrimination either, could just as well be some other reason they haven't found yet. But feminism works like religion - discrimination is a handy explanation for everything, no need to ask any further questions.

quinnchr 13y ago
Try 12%: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_in_scien.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_i... And feminism works more like philosophy than religion. In fact pretty much all notable feminist thinkers are in fact philosophers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
- Tichy 13y ago
  That article doesn't even seem to compare people in similar jobs, only people with comparable education. Women often choose different jobs, for example because they allow them more flexibility (yes, to take care of family, and also possibly because they are under less pressure to make a lot of money). A common example you see in that kind of articles is comparing physicians to physicians. Seems only fair, right? But it makes a big difference whether you are a surgeon or a pediatrician. You can not step out in the middle of a 12h heart surgery to pick up your kids from school. Just to give one example, there are lots of other factors (for example type of business/research, willingness to relocate). I am too lazy to Google for the 97% quote right now, came across it only yesterday. Perhaps later. (OK: just duckduckgoed, the first link that came up was this: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22058 http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22058 - June O'Neill, "The Disappearing Gender Wage Gap," National Center for Policy Analysis, June 22, 2012). That article also claims that single, childless women earn 8% more than their male counterparts. So children really are the big issue. As for Judith Butler, I tried to read her stuff, but it seems extremely convoluted. To be honest I suspect their confusion starts somewhere before the gender issue. If you have a recommendation for something readable, I'd welcome it.

ismarc 13y ago

The source that the quote is pulled from (Schiebinger, Londa (2001). Has Feminism Changed Science?. United States of America: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674005449) includes (in the very next paragraph): "In 1996 salaries for women in professional fields increased to 85–95 percent of men with similar jobs. Younger women in the United States (childless women between the ages of 27 and 33) earned nearly the same (98 percent) as men in their age group." The quote from the National Science Foundation in the book is unsourced, however, the only related information from the National Science foundation I could find was http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib99352.htm http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib99352.htm which is not necessarily contradictor, but paints an entirely different picture. While I disagree with who you are responding to, there has been a massive improvement in 1 1/2 generations and it removes a significant amount of credibility to present information in a way to try and say that widespread systemic discrimination still occurs in areas where it does not.

quinnchr 13y ago
The most recent information I can find says that the wage gap for similarly educated women in the physical sciences is 12% http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_in_scien.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/08/gender_wage_gap_lower_i... While I agree there have been drastic improvements, I don't think you can say structural discrimination no longer exists.