5 ms·

is it so hard to believe that women don't enjoy stem fields as much as men? that men and women are actually different and that it implies different behaviour?

• hdevalence 13y ago
  Yes. All of those things are, indeed, hard to believe.
  • Retric 13y ago
    There is plenty of research showing women and men do actually behave differently on average. One of the more interesting is when it comes to there jobs women are more rational as in they chose jobs that better fit their goals. Another is you find more men at the extremes both high and low height, weight, IQ etc. As in there standard deviation is generally higher which is just as often a good thing as a bad thing. Note: Averages and standard deviations say nothing about individuals but they do explain trends.
    • tw268 13y ago
      Gender differences in personality are larger in more egalitarian countries: http://m.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-misunderstands-about-gender-differences/274138/ http://m.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/what-lean-in-...
      • jheriko 13y ago
        thank you. i've been looking for this... my google skills are clearly not adequate :)
    • quinnchr 13y ago
      This is true, but why do these differences change so dramatically when you cross national borders? Specifically, Men have a higher variability in IQ in countries that have higher gender inequality. To me this seems to indicate that it's an issue of culture and the way men and women are socialized, not something biologically inherent to each sex. Not related to IQ, but this study debunks the variability hypothesis in regards to mathematics performance: http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201201/rtx120100010p.pdf
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  • jheriko 13y ago
    really? maybe my sense of humour lacks...
• wwweston 13y ago
  > that actually you know what... the more freedom women get the /less likely/ they are to work in a stem field? It seems likely enough to me that this is true for men, too.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    oh sure - in desperation people will take the jobs they can get, but what it does is wash out the natural tendency for men to prefer stem - which is very clear if you look at western nations and those considered to have good sex equality in general (Scandanavia, western europe) its a shame i cant find any of the studies on this to link. they are buried beneath rubbish populist/magazine articles on google... here is some wiki on something related and well studied - which would not be contentious imo if it were not for the popularity of political correctness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing-systemizing_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing-systemizing_theory and a related paper: http://docentes.cs.urjc.es/~odeluis/Docencia/ABP/Articulos/baroncohen.pdf http://docentes.cs.urjc.es/~odeluis/Docencia/ABP/Articulos/b... i am ashamed to belong to a society that necessitates such an article saying in its opening paragraph 'Leaving aside politcal correctness, there is compelling evidence...'
• rbehrends 13y ago
  Unless you can identify the biological mechanism that supposedly makes women less likely to work in STEM fields (nevermind that in some countries and fields this doesn't hold), yes, it is hard to believe.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    is data not good enough? i don't really care to speculate on the cause - that can be debated. there are plenty of differences in brain physiology and development between sexes though. its a much weaker hypothesis to assume that there is no difference imo. we have every reason (including the objective data) to believe that there should be a difference - even if small.
    • rbehrends 13y ago
      is data not good enough? No. Otherwise, "Storks Deliver Babies (p=0.008)" :http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9639.00013/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9639.00013/a... The way science works is that you start with a hypothesis of how the world works, based on cause and effect, then you test that hypothesis. Data by itself can have any number of explanations. In particular, you cannot construct a hypothesis from statistical data and expect that to hold water. its a much weaker hypothesis to assume that there is no difference imo. Nobody says that there isn't any difference. But you have to exclude the possibility that the difference is caused (primarily) by cultural factors. You also offer no explanation why, if there is a biological difference, it does not favor women instead; if the entire basis of your hypothesis is that men and women are different in some way (which is as of yet unknown), then any difference can go either way.
      • jheriko 13y ago
        > But you have to exclude the possibility that the difference is caused (primarily) by cultural factors. fine, if we are going to have a very serious discussion on this... (i'm always mildly flabbergasted this isn't common sense --- we have all met men and women right?) this has been very well covered over the last half a century or so. we have the many 'sex reassignment' disasters on hermaphrodite babies showing us that women and men are intrinsically so - we can also point at the related psychological issues of transgender people... ( i don't want a negative connotation - but if you are confused about your sex - that is an issue for you i would assume ) sure this might not apply to precisely this, but afaik medical professionals believe that there are gender differences beyond naive physiology and treat their patients accordingly - when they assumed the differences were merely cultural they caused well documented suffering. i'll recycle my previous links for something directly addressing this issue though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing-systemizing_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing-systemizing_theory and a related paper: http://docentes.cs.urjc.es/~odeluis/Docencia/ABP/Articulos/b.. http://docentes.cs.urjc.es/~odeluis/Docencia/ABP/Articulos/b.... this paints the male 'advantage' in a fairly negative light too and the underlying theory proposed is decoupled from but strongly correlated with gender. looking around the area the nurture/culture side of the debate is very weak imo. but there are certainly ample studies and papers on both sides of the debate...
• alukima 13y ago
  As a female developer, yes, those things are hard to believe. This is a great example of why I was hesitant of entering the field. You feel totally comfortable saying this when your profile links to your blog with your real name and place of employment. If you're that comfortable in this belief you can't expect me to believe that you don't treat women in your work place differently and with less respect. Gender roles still very much exist. If something biological were keeping women from entering the IT industry it wouldn't vary so much from culture to culture. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gsf/12220332.0001.103?rgn=main;view=fulltext http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/gsf/12220332.0001.103?rgn=main;v...
  • AnimalMuppet 13y ago
    False dichotomy. I can believe that there are biological differences that make women, on average, less likely to enter STEM fields, and also treat those that do enter as equals.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    i'm not ashamed to speak my opinion, nor associate it with my name. i don't think i'm making especially ridiculous or unbackable claims... it shouldn't be offensive to women imo. i am not offended by the many opportunities that women have and i don't - that they are /generally/ more socially adept, need to make significantly less investment to find a mate /in general/, and are constantly treated with special care an attention in particular areas (e.g. violence against women is constantly considered especially distasteful even though 90%+ of violent crimes are between men exclusively, there are more illnesses and disabilities specific to men - but most research focuses on those specific to women etc...) i don't think my opinion that women and men are measurably different should imply that i will treat women with less respect... why should it? i'm not saying women are somehow distatsteful or undesirable in some moral or value sense - just that they are different, measurably so and that claiming we are all equal in the sense of political correctness, and shoehorning every possible behaviour into that ideal is ignorant - it does disservice to humanity - not just men or women as a sex. i've had a look at that article, but it is authored with a tremendous bias imo... the fact that its hosted on an openly feminist website does of course skew me but the wording itself is highly presumptuous (perhaps iam too?). i will not deny that their data does show a large variation... but i will gladly deny your conclusion because reorganising that graph shows a reasonable correlation between those countries we consider 'most free' and those we do not... with outliers and natural variation as you would expect.
• skwirl 13y ago
  Women as a whole aren't born being more inclined to go into non-CS fields. This preference is acquired at some point in childhood. I am comfortable making this claim because we know that in the mid 80s 37% of CS graduates were women vs. 12% today. Something happened in the meantime. I don't think it is a result of supposed wage gaps (which supposedly exist in all fields) or supposed widespread sexism (as if other fields are any better). But I do think it is a problem. We have a shortage of good developers in this country and not being able to draw talent very well from roughly half the population is not helping.
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Women as a whole aren't born being more inclined to go into non-CS fields. This preference is acquired at some point in childhood. I am comfortable making this claim because we know that in the mid 80s 37% of CS graduates were women vs. 12% today. Something happened in the meantime. The impressive and oft-reported increase of female representation in the biological sciences, to the point where they've reached a majority at all levels, degree programs happened in the meantime. Related? Dunno. But something to think about.
  • johnbm 13y ago
    Yes, what happened was that people are now more free to choose their occupation, which is shown to increase the stereotypical occupation choices of both men and women in practically every country in the world: http://psych.fullerton.edu/rlippa/abstracts_2009.htm http://psych.fullerton.edu/rlippa/abstracts_2009.htm Don't tell the feminists.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    i strongly disagree. see the stuff i linked and research the subject. there is plenty of research showing that tech/social biases are measurable from the earliest possible ages. there are certainly lots of opinions that this is not true from sociologists and other 'almost doctor' types. and treating this matter seriously will make you unpopular with women and men alike... i won't deny wage gaps or sexism. i just think its sexist in a sort of nasty and ignorant way, to try and incentive women to do things they may not want...
• doorhammer 13y ago
  I don't think that the way you're phrasing this is as tactful as it could be, given that it's going to be a really divisive thing to say no matter the efficacy, but I don't necessarily think you're trying to be an ass. I think it's better to assume that two groups of people are less different than one would initially think, because of the natural tendency to create in and out groups. When there has been a history of systemic oppression between those groups, I'd lean toward requiring more rigorous proof of the differences before accepting it, and I'd be very careful as to what I accepted as rigorous proof. This is my quick thought on the subject. Please don't consider it my philosophical magnum opus on discrimination.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    thanks. i am not exactly trying to be an ass. it may be surprising but the lack of tact is intentional (and more muted than i feel i should feel free to use without lashback). > I think it's better to assume that two groups of people are less different than one would initially think, because of the natural tendency to create in and out groups. this is a very valid point and one i've never really considered before. i've never really fallen into that kind of behaviour but have observed it plenty (with some mystification tbh). thanks. you are probably right that the problems caused by discrimination against women in e.g. strongly patriarchal society in recent times (Saudi Arabia or something) massively outweighs the trouble caused by the reverse situation - botched gender reassignments and dubious equality policies, but nothing on a large scale directed against the whole of a portion of society. :)
    • doorhammer 13y ago
      I'm ambivalent about having to consider blowback from conversations like this. For me it's less about the content or the topic, though and more about the emotional content. I don't think you should get flayed for expressing an unpopular viewpoint, but I don't want someone's emotional content, or outrage. I want information, conversation, and counterpoints. I don't think being purposefully evocative leads towards changing minds. I think it tends toward polarization. I'm in it to figure things out and learn, if I can, and to help other people figure things out, if I can do that. Mostly I just want productive dialogue where I get to pat myself on the back for trying to be a better person ;). And yeah, I definitely think it would be disingenuous for someone to say or imply that we haven't made a lot of progress in the last hundred years. That being said, I'm on the side of the gender and ethnic fence that has largely benefited from discrimination in the past, so I try to be relatively sensitive to it, especially since it can be so subtle and hard to spot. One example: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2013/HUDNo.13-091 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_release... (this is ethnic, not gender discrimination)
• vacri 13y ago
  that men and women are actually different and that it implies different behaviour? Individual variation within gender is almost always far, far greater than demographic variation between genders. Here's an easy example: most men are not in STEM and aren't all that interested in STEM. In these debates people throw around 'man' as a term, assuming the archetype of the engineer, when actually the 'average' man (if there is such a thing) is not particularly interested in STEM. So painting STEM as 'what men do' is inaccurate, because most men do not do it.
  • jheriko 13y ago
    stem is a bit wooly. i think of the construction, driving/motor and manufacturing industries as being part of STEM and that covers a significant portion of men - several of the most common modes of employment for men if not all of them. i could be wrong, but i am skeptcial - is this not a common interpretation?