Women in STEM

[Jennywocky]

In general, I believe that people should gain entry to programs and occupations (in general) regardless of gender, race, age, etc.

This would keep the bar high enough with certain types of occupations that can't afford low quality.

The unfortunate problem is that discrimination doesn't necessarily begin with the job application, it begins when people are born... the culture is very capable of limiting opportunities and shaping goals for people right away as very young children. So that's where we really need to be focusing... to allow aptitude and personal motivation less hindrance early in life.

 

[r4ch3l]

I think women are smarter than this, only men are stupid enough to do something as hard and unforgiving as STEM. What happens to the women who go into it? In my experience they most often quickly rise up into management.

@Architect, I remember you expressing similar opinions way back when I was active on the forum and inquiring about going into CS as a slightly older (say, 23 -- 28) year old student. I felt frustrated because my path/interests/education indicated that programming could be a good fit... and somehow I had only just realized that just as college was over. This made me question the messages I was sent about myself in school and do some reflection on identity formation in general.

But I also understood your point. If women don't want to be in STEM they shouldn't feel pressured to in order to be "smart" or "educated" or achieve some kind of "equal" ratio.

A lot of this comes back to the idea of "equal pay". "Equal pay" is still in its incubation stage because we want to see the numbers line up on spreadsheets. To me "equal pay" means valuing skills that are considered more feminine...not making sure that women and men with the same job title are getting the same salary.

 

[dark+matters]

Re: Is Architect a misogynist?

How terrible! Your poor wife.

Meanwhile there's women people (because I'm sick of separating genders anyway) around the globe who would kill for an opportunity like this, who for whatever reason - issues with finances, family or health simply can't even consider it. How awful that programs aimed at providing equal opportunity exist for such people!

I mean honestly. What an outrage that your wife with her big house, car and basic needs all easily met feels like an underachiever because she didn't get into STEM. We should start a riot.

This response isn't directed specifically at redbaron, but I included it because a lot of responses to this question involved reasoning based on statistical outliers and personal anecdotes. But I think that if we are going to look at the question of whether or not to encourage women to go into STEM, the answers won't rely on personal examples or outliers, but on income statistics divided by gender, and on the historical flow of political and social power. Only then can it be accurate to zoom in on day-to-day interactions and use those as the basis for refining an answer.

Women should be encouraged to get into STEM because it's an extremely good strategy for closing some of the income gap between men and women. The majority of women will make significantly less than men over the courses of their lives, and they often are the ones raising the future generations. But as with all power and wealth, wealth cannot exist without others. Also, diversity of thought and background enhances a team's ideas. STEM would only improve with a greater diversity of personality and culture getting involved. Feelers could lend an incredible amount to the field. Think of how unpopular science is among most Americans, who are steeped in religion and pop culture. They don't trust science. This attitude will doom us as a species.

Keep in mind that our lives are brief, and our opinions about ourselves and the world change slowly. Even a minor amount of exposure to discrimination can have a subtle, long term impact. Most women are steeped in cultures of other women who just want to get married and have kids, or at least consider that the most important thing that they could do in life. This is a completely impractical philosophy that most women will bump into many, many times in their lives, especially in lower-income brackets. Unless they marry wealthy partners and stay married to wealthy partners, this strategy, for many, will lead to lifelong poverty or domestic abuse. This a societal cause and society pays for it in terms of slower advances and the need to assist the mothers of impoverished children, women who become dependent on abusers, and women who avoid strong efforts in career enhancement in order to focus on personal relationships (because of what society has taught them).

 

[Bock]

Re: Is Architect a misogynist?

Women should be encouraged to get into STEM because it's an extremely good strategy for closing some of the income gap between men and women. The majority of women will make significantly less than men over the courses of their lives, and they often are the ones raising the future generations. But as with all power and wealth, wealth cannot exist without others. Also, diversity of thought and background enhances a team's ideas. STEM would only improve with a greater diversity of personality and culture getting involved. Feelers could lend an incredible amount to the field. Think of how unpopular science is among most Americans, who are steeped in religion and pop culture. They don't trust science. This attitude will doom us as a species.

STEM is an area that should be populated by people with aptitude for the sciences, not force-fed people via aggressive agenda.

The humongous gender pay gap is a myth btw.

Think of how unpopular science is among most Americans, who are steeped in religion and pop culture. They don't trust science.

If deGrasse doesn't work...


I suggest you go read Missfortunes post on page 2.

 

[Nibbler]

If it was about getting more men there would be an uproar. Why not women!!!!! [ . . . ] The only way we will reach a point where we have completely equal human rights is when we stop grouping people.

I disagree. We'll only have equal rights when we can have a world of male dominated STEM without the overly simplistic thinkers erroneously recognizing it as a pattern that translates into "This is why women/minorities/gays/dolphins should be prevented from... To encourage it only wastes time in the first place..." which resets a society that begins to inform little girls/minority children/boys in wheelchairs that they shouldn't even bother trying--even for those who have the correct mindset, talents and nature for those careers.

We'll truly have equality when men can dominate blue collar work (as many of them desire) and the one or two qualified women show up to work and are just regarded as one of the qualified workers, and not treated as the anomalously present woman without anyone there to protect her from the group's harassment.

Society "forces" integration in areas so that the worst of what can happen doesn't fester and grow making it impossible to repair for generations.

We'll become truly equal when one day a person (man, woman, child) can display human frailty and be evaluated on their individual merits without onlookers relegating the person's faults the burden of the person's entire sex/race/sexuality, etc.

I think some quality has suffered from forced integration of sexes, races, etc. But the alternative is that those few "souls" who are MEANT to do certain life's work aren't prevented from doing so because the SJ society thinks it's a waste of time trying to make a world where people are fulfilled and reaching their true potential.

I see it as a "liberty to pursue happiness" issue. An SJ world hinders truly universal pursuit of happiness. An SJ world promotes stereotype job aptitudes and practical assignments--free will and rare potential be damned. As long as SJ is a prevalent type, we'll always need these artificial and imperfect "fixes".

 

[Cherry Cola]

We don't know how the male/female employment ratios would pan out discounting sexism, we can't just make a calculation by discounting the influence of sexism since we cannot precisely separate the effects of culture from those of nature, nor can we tell the effects of the sexism we do spot.

The fact that women being encouraged to get into STEM is being perceived not as a necessary experiment that will leave us all the wiser in the end regardless of the outcome but rather as "force fed aggressive agenda" among other things is puzzling to me.

 

[Cherry Cola]

The unfortunate problem is that discrimination doesn't necessarily begin with the job application, it begins when people are born... the culture is very capable of limiting opportunities and shaping goals for people right away as very young children. .

erh last page you were all like in denial about this, post 82 in particular

 

[Cherry Cola]

+1 (and I'm coming back to this thread later).

Why would you +1 the most stupid part of the post? The number of women in STEM fields aren't near 25%.

 

[scorpiomover]

We don't know how the male/female employment ratios would pan out discounting sexism, we can't just make a calculation by discounting the influence of sexism since we cannot precisely separate the effects of culture from those of nature, nor can we tell the effects of the sexism we do spot.

The fact that women being encouraged to get into STEM is being perceived not as a necessary experiment that will leave us all the wiser in the end regardless of the outcome but rather as "force fed aggressive agenda" among other things is puzzling to me.

Because of the precise reason you just gave. If I understand you correctly, it is your belief that we should carry out experiments on an appropriate scale to measure (a) precisely what the effects of sexism are on men and women's intelligence and employment capacities, (b) the natural nature of society if there was no sexism, and (c) what the effects of current policies and encouragement of women would have on the current situation.

All of that sounds extremely rational. However, one could equally ask that question of a great many things. Normally, when we do studies like that, we don't want to roll these experiments out large-scale, like on the scale of a country the size of Russia, because at this stage, they would be experiments where we don't know the results yet, and if our current policies would be detrimental, then rolls-outs on a massive scale would mean massive detriment that might take decades to fix. So normally, we would do extremely small-scale tests over a few years, developing better and better accuracy on our predictions, and then building up and up, until we KNOW what will happen when we decide to apply our ideas to the whole of society to make it a better place.

But it's obvious that feminist policies are being rolled out to everyone, everywhere that people are not vehemently against them, when according to you, that would be risking seriously harming billions of women without solid scientific facts or solid reasoning. If you're not crazy, and we take you at your word, then that would have to mean they're nuttier than a bar of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut.

 

[Valentas]

I was surprised when after going through random surveys by university, I found that mathematics had 25% bigger proportion of women than engineering or computer science. To me, pure maths are an epitome of logical thinking(I could not do pure maths, I am just not suited to it) and it is an established fact that most women prefer feeling over thinking careers. But, on the other hand, I have three girl friends who do maths. One is really depressed about the subject, two others are quite indifferent. I am sure there are plenty who enjoy pure maths though.

Honestly, I see those ads by Google being sent to my mailbox around September-November where they even have grants to get more women in STEM. Those women who attempt engineering careers could actually get into Big 4 a lot easier than we men can. Recruiting of women is quite fierce but due to low enrollment rates in engineering discipline, very few women are snapped up by tech giants.

Also, aptitude is important but even more important is really wanting to learn about engineering and when you combine those two together, very few women want to go this route. All the girls in CS class are introverted, thinker types(I would dare to say we have a few feelers though) and are just different from regular feelers.

However, I do not think that encouraging women to do STEM is working very well. We had people who came to school and talked about careers in science, engineering but most women seemed to be unaffected by the prospects and just went with their hearts mostly. Some probably gave in(I can see some very unhappy girls in my CS course) and as a consequence either found pleasure in the major or silently feel not in their place. I believe that women who are suited for STEM careers do not need additional recruitment to choose the particular major. As a final note, my class in school was 50/50 girls and boys. None of the girls chose STEM field, none. We had recruiters but none went with it.

EDIT: Just to add why girls did not go to STEM. Because they were lazy. That is hard truth but truth nonetheless. But so were a lot of boys. So no sexism here. I was never called smarter than my peers by my teachers but I was repeatedly called 'hard-working and determined'. I studied more for my science classes and set my goals to get straight 10s in my science classes. And I did but it was hard. Also, I know several women from higher up years. Most of them are in medicine(highly competitive to get into state funded place), one is in chemistry and one studies veterinary medicine. I know no one who studies CS or engineering though. My data shows that if a woman is good at science and excels at school, she will choose medicine over anything else.

 

[Cherry Cola]

scorpiomover: I disagree with your assesment. It is not being applied to everyone everywhere it's not vehemently oppossed. It's not on the scale you make it out to be.

 

[Architect]

Honestly, I see those ads by Google being sent to my mailbox around September-November where they even have grants to get more women in STEM. Those women who attempt engineering careers could actually get into Big 4 a lot easier than we men can.

REALLY? Surprising ... sorry for my sarcasm ...

I went to a big 4 decades ago in physics, and yes the few women in the program had it made compared to the rest of us. Reverse-sexism? You judge.

 

[scorpiomover]

scorpiomover: I disagree with your assesment. It is not being applied to everyone everywhere it's not vehemently oppossed. It's not on the scale you make it out to be.

You live in Schweden, ya? You know sweet FA about feminism in the UK, or you would never have said that.

 

[Brontosaurie]

feminism is pretty much normalized, CC. how do you act toward strangers to maximize their positive attitude toward you? advocate gender feminist intervention policy and dogmatic absolutist social constructivist analysis. it's the only position not guaranteed to yield ostracizing trash talk afterward. this holds especially true in Schweden, for the record.

of course there are micro contexts where this doesn't apply. typically among the poor, uneducated, loathed etc - or the too-rich-to-have-to-give-a-shit. you see where i'm going with this.

 

[Cherry Cola]

You live in Schweden, ya? You know sweet FA about feminism in the UK, or you would never have said that.

worlds pretty globalized, feminists are more vocal and prominent in sweden than in the UK anyway

@Bronto: True in our demographic, not true all over.

About the micro contexts you forgot the religious.

 

[scorpiomover]

worlds pretty globalized, feminists are more vocal and prominent in sweden than in the UK anyway

MORE vocal? Feminists here changed the entire educational system to be mostly based on coursework, just because women did worse in exams than men.

The entire fabric of society has been changed because of feminists demanding change. They got nearly all the old men's clubs shut down. They made fun of men so much, that men ended up learning to do the cooking and cleaning. Even young men here normally can cook, and it's expected that they will have to do cooking and cleaning if they live with a woman.

I knew young women in university who didn't know how to use a kettle. We were way tidier than women's flats, which were often a pigsty, and that was over 20 years ago.

I can't make sexist jokes anymore. I'd get fired, because the company would get sued for sexual harrassment. But women put up public signs and make offensively derogatory insults about men, and get away with it all the time here, because anytime anyone calls foul, feminists scream blue murder.

If your feminists are more vocal than ours, then in Sweden, they're calling for the mass enslavement of all men to be put in chains, because anything less extreme would not qualify as more vocal sweden than in the UK.

I seriously doubt they are more prominent. Even 25 years ago, everyone knew who Germaine Greer was.

These days, even the prime minister goes to see female groups, and not the other way around. This doesn't happen for men, and never has for all but the very rich and powerful. But when it comes to women, the mountain now goes to them.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

They made fun of men so much, that men ended up learning to do the cooking and cleaning. Even young men here normally can cook, and it's expected that they will have to do cooking and cleaning if they live with a woman.

I knew young women in university who didn't know how to use a kettle. We were way tidier than women's flats, which were often a pigsty, and that was over 20 years ago.

If your feminists are more vocal than ours, then in Sweden, they're calling for the mass enslavement of all men to be put in chains, because anything less extreme would not qualify as more vocal sweden than in the UK.

maybe you should "talk to someone" about these issues.

not even joking.

 

[Brontosaurie]

PNB you are always joking : O what happened. are you serious now?

 

[Cherry Cola]

Lol half of those things arent even bad. And yes I'm quite certain feminists are more vocal in Sweden, although their prominence might be more of a recent development here.

 

[Ex-User (11125)]

the way engineering is being taught today is so banal, dull and not intellectually stimulating like i thought it would be, so i wouldnt "encourage" people to get into it. three of my good friends(one in computer engineering, the other two in environmental engineering) feel the same way. engineering degree programs need a lot of improvement imo...

you will have a greater number of engineers working who don't know what they are doing.

yeah. i can attest to this already happening. from what i can see in engineering school, i would say 90% of the students have no idea what theyre doing

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

PNB you are always joking : O what happened. are you serious now?

ugh god no! have returned to default mode now unless otherwise specified.

 

[Brontosaurie]

ugh god no! have returned to default mode now unless otherwise specified.

delightful, splendid

 

[redbaron]

Even young men here normally can cook, and it's expected that they will have to do cooking and cleaning if they live with a woman.

It's a lot more enjoyable cooking with someone, sharing the end result and minimizing the boring part for both people by cleaning up together. I really don't see how this is a bad thing.

Other stuff made me giggle.

 

[TBerg]

I don't know. My mom always stigmatized my dad, sometimes with good reason, and told me not to be like him. She would talk like I was part of the problem, even when I stood up to him and sympathized with her. Feminism always felt like self-hatred for that reason. There has to be a way of promoting the development of the full femininity and masculinity in everyone without waging war on one or the other.