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This was a short post, but it was a good reading list. I'm always in a strange spot with these posts, because I don't so much disagree as take a completely dif
by geebee 13y ago
This was a short post, but it was a good reading list.
I'm always in a strange spot with these posts, because I don't so much disagree as take a completely different angle. Any discussion of the relative scarcity of women in science needs to consider the risks of a career in science.
I wish Phil Greenspun's infamous "women in science" article were a little less caustic, because it really does provide a pretty remarkable explanation about why women in particular, but people in general, might want to avoid science as a career.
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
A less provocative but very data-driven study by the RAND institute found that the American aversion to science careers (at the PhD level) is rational and market driven.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html
The whole thing is very complicated. A career as a research scientist is very different from trying to start a tech company, so we're talking about a very wide range of issues.
I also want to make it clear that "science is a terrible career" doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about the scarcity of women. It's one thing to claim sour grapes for yourself, it's another thing entirely to tell someone else not to worry because the grapes are sour.
However, I do think the general context is meaningful - that any discussion of women in science need to include the possibility that science is a poor career choice compared to other options available to highly intelligent, academically motivated, hard working people, men and women.
- jacalata 13y agoI actually think that if your focus is PhD/academic research positions, you're not so much taking a different angle as having a different conversation. The attractiveness of a post-doc in biology is barely relevant at all to the attraction of a dev job at Google or a Silicon Valley startup, for instance. And I might be biased because I am a professional developer, but that's the context I've always thought of for these conversations.
- bfe 13y agoThat lack of room for bias is a reasonable intuition, but at least one straightforward experiment contradicts it: "In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student — who was randomly assigned either a male or female name — for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109 Graphs summarizing the results are here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/scientists-your-gender-bias-is-showing http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/...
- jacalata 13y agoI'm sorry? I don't know if you meant to reply to my comment. When I said 'I might be biased', I meant 'towards talking about professional programmers over academics'.