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225 Comments
- Bloodwine, on 06/01/2008, -9/+98I'm getting tired of all the conspiracy theories that men are somehow out to prevent women from entering the fields of math and science.
Maybe, just maybe, it's just not their cup of tea. Maybe, just maybe, women are being forced into math and science curriculums by their feminist peers and politically correct government to prove a point. I'm not trying to make generalizations, because there are good female scientists and mathematicians who really enjoy that line of work, but I wonder if that is just a fraction of who enters the field.
What are the ages of the male professors? Are they all young or from a previous generation where males dominated academia? Maybe the women pursue careers outside academia after they graduate? Maybe women change their course of their lives by starting a family ... a decision -not- forced upon them by social pressures?
If anything, I wondering if trying to force women to have careers over families is the exact same sort of oppression (just in reverse) as the old days where women were forced to stay home?
And if women, in general, do not gravitate towards math and science? then so be it. Maybe, as a gender, they have a different lean in what they find fascinating and enjoy. - nwoantibody, on 06/01/2008, -30/+107Cuz most of them are shopping.
- stgeorge, on 06/01/2008, -17/+75Because women can make a lot more money showing their boobies than men can.
- jhaydon, on 06/01/2008, -5/+63Perhaps it's due to social reasons; the same mentality that results in fewer male midwives.
- Zippo, on 06/01/2008, -16/+73*insert sexist comment here*
- JettaMan, on 06/01/2008, -3/+59A better question is, why are some people so concerned about have every statistic 50-50? As long as all fields are open to anyone, which they are, then why sweat when things aren't precisely equal in everything? If it's 80-20, why do they think we must do something to "rectify" the situation. What is so wrong that men like science more than women?
- straylight08, on 06/01/2008, -5/+36One real reason why this happens is to do with childbearing, one of my uni friends was telling me about this. She said that a lot of female scientists fall behind, because if you end up having to take time off on maternity leave whilst you're doing a major, long term piece of research, someone else will just end up picking up where you left off whilst you're dealing with being pregnant. They'll then end up publishing the thing you were working on, and taking credit for your idea.
Quite a sizable chunk of women will want to have kids some time or another, hence why this is a big factor. Getting a professorship or moving higher up in academia requires consistent, long term dedication, with little in the way of breaks. Scientific effort is always going to get interrupted when bringing children into the world comes into play. Men don't have this problem at all! - darkstar949, on 06/01/2008, -1/+29Agreed, most construction jobs are heavily tipped towards being all men, but how often do you hear people saying that we need to "balance out" the construction jobs?
- kenvsryu, on 06/01/2008, -6/+29because I'm busy inserting stuff in them?
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -33/+55because guys are smarter than girls.
- inactive, on 06/01/2008, -9/+28"Let women make their own decisions whether to stay or to go."
1950's stereotypes don't apply in 2008.
Women, even when they are very good at math and other , aren't interested by it:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2 ...
"The United States, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers." - AlekNovi, on 06/01/2008, -2/+20True.
They (feminists) might be right or they might not, but the conspiracy theory knee-jerk fashion in which they "judge" everything is getting out of line. And by out of line i mean, non-scientific.
You know how in court it's "innocent until proven guilty?"
With gender study these days... The immediate default assumption is always "oh it's a patriarchical conspiracy".
In the past, whenever differences between gender were spotted, the default assumption was "oh, it's genetics". Which is stupid since it doesn't allow for exceptions. We as humans are purposefully varied and diverse, it's a way for nature to create progress. So the previous paradigm didn't allow for gender to exist outside of tightly defined roles.
If you were a man, you HAD to like sports and/or science, and you were not allowed to like "girly" stuff like "knitting", "design" etc... If you were a woman, you were considered "unfemine" if you dared liked being a lawyer or an athlete.
This paradigm obviously hurt BOTH gender, as it restricted them. So there came feminism to solve this. But what did they do? Allow people to be what they intrisically feel like? nah. It just reversed the switch.
Where in the past whenever differences were spotted the default assumption was "it's genetics"... now, today, the immediate knee-jerk assumption is "it's a patriarchical conspiracy".
The trouble with ass--amptions is that they're like "guilty until proven innocent"... We will assume that if there are less women scientists that it must be a bad thing.
And what happens when you take that assumption? Well today women are *forced* to be scientists, lawyers and have careers. Women are actually made to feel guilty if they don't like math or science.
I don't know what the truth is, it might be that women are intrisically just as motivated for these. The problem is, that two evils don't make a right.
You don't solve centuries of forcing women to be housewifes by now forcing them to be lawyers.
It's the same thing.
How about freedom? How about letting people be what they want to be?
If a guy wants to be a designer, let him be ono.
Metrosexual post feminist paradigm: Accuse a man of being an old-fashioned patriarch if he doesn't like (for example) design and fashion. And make him feel guilty for wanting to be an athlete.
PreFeminist, patriarch paradigm: Call a man a fag if he wants to be into design and fashion. And bully him into being an athlete.
How about FREEDOM. Let people be what they want to be.
And don't use their choice of either one as proof of "conspiracy" against the other one. - jamesdew, on 06/01/2008, -6/+23Well my electronics degree course had 0 girls in my year. There were 2 in the year below and they both dropped out.
- wafflez, on 06/01/2008, -1/+17ahah note that the writer of this article doesn't explicitly back up her claims with sexist evidence in the field...she's just bitching for the sake of bitching. If women don't tend to want to pursue scientific careers, so be it..
- CaptainLando, on 06/01/2008, -5/+21I just recently wrote a research paper on this topic. To be brief, some reasons are:
- Cultural perceptions about women's abilities in the sciences. This brings about less confidence and hence less interest.
- Many women want to have children at age 22-28, which is the same time as graduate school. Lack of support for pregnant students causes many women to drop out.
(Also, some women choose to have children after 28. However, most are in the "junior professor" stage now. Traditionally universities have rejected women applicants who are pregnant or were likely to become pregnant soon.)
- Lack of knowledge about the social relevance of the sciences. Many people call math and computer science "dry sciences" because the work is perceived to have little social impact. Many women scientists today have been able to see past this stereotype to the immense social impact that one can have through research.
Oh, and there is absolutely no evidence supporting the belief that men are more capable than women at math. NONE. - Comanche, on 06/01/2008, -0/+15Computer/Electrical/Electronic/Civil Engineering too, but not as bad.
- unionaire, on 06/01/2008, -2/+16"Why Are Senior Female Scientists So Heavily Outnumbered by Men?"--- there, fixed it for you.
sick of made-up digg titles just to get more diggs. buried as inaccurate.
as for the question, if you can reason why there are more male geeks than female ones, i guess this wouldn't be a surprise at all. - mKdiR, on 06/01/2008, -4/+16cus girls have cooties
- lukas88, on 06/01/2008, -0/+12I think that most people agree that it is primarily social reasons. The question is, is our society creating the environment where women feel pressured to pursue families and less prestigious positions, or is our society creating the environment where women feel that it is acceptable to pursue a family or a less prestigious position, even after earning the highest degree possible. I think it is a mix of both, but mostly the second.
Consider this: Say a man works 12 years and earns a Ph.D. Then he gets married and stays at home with the kids or decides to work part time. Most people would think there is something wrong with his motivation. Now put a woman in that position. Many people would think that she is very gracious and commendable (which was the word the woman in the article used) for picking family over career. Clearly, society has different expectations for men and women, and too seldom are they contrasted in this debate.
I also think that, occasionally, remnants from a darker time are making it harder for women to achieve prestigious positions in some situations. To deny that this happens implies that your head is in a sandy environment. But it is hard for me to believe that this type of thing is widespread any more. Putting too much emphasis on this possibility limits how well one can understand the problem.
I am probably a little biased because I work for a female Ph.D with two kids. In fact, the head of our department is female as well. - jc7012, on 06/01/2008, -5/+17Their brains are a third the size of a man's.
It's science. - twomeyw23334, on 06/01/2008, -0/+12Dude, where have you been? You obviously are missing the secret man meetings where we discuss how to keep women away from math and science Get with the act and find out where your local meetings are held
Some may think by me typing this I'm letting women onto our conspiracy, but don't worry, they are too stupid to understand this comment as I didn't use any periods They'll run out of breath before they are able to complete reading it out loud (the only way they can) - pardimate, on 06/01/2008, -1/+12I'm calling BS on this.
I am pretty sure I did not pick chemical engineering to
A) Impress men
B) Find myself a good man to take care of me
C) Get knocked up
I also have never felt intimidated by men, or cared about the ratio in the classroom, resulting in more attention on me. I go to an engineering school with 3/4 men, and I have to say, I've never felt or seen any of these ridiculous theories you have on why women go into science and technology. - unpolloloco, on 06/01/2008, -6/+16Because only recently has the shift been made from male domination of then sciences to less so. The average age of a professor is somewhere around 50 (random guess). That means that there's something like a 20-25 year lag between any changes in student demographics to changes in professor makeup
- linuxpenguin, on 06/01/2008, -1/+10I don't get it. She's using the fact that these women aren't professors as "proof" that something is preventing them from jobs in math and science, but that's not proof at all. There's a million reasons why this might be the case - for example, becoming a professor often requires teaching experience and/or training to become a professor (which costs money). Also, professors may not make as much money as scientists doing actual field work - not to mention, some people just don't like to be teachers. I don't think I'd ever want to be a teacher or professor, regardless of how much I would make.
- TobiasParker, on 06/01/2008, -0/+9"How man girls use digg"
A how-to guide for transexuals? - carpespasm, on 06/01/2008, -5/+14Screw all the sexist as hell comments on here. You guys are making the rest of us look bad, and it's not even funny.
To the article though, the author cites an anecdote to there not being as many men as women entering scientific fields. I'd be interested to know what her specific field was because I can cite personal anecdote that says there's about a 1:4 ratio at best of women to men in the higher level science classes I've been in. Also, even if there are as many or more women going into science today as men, there would still be more men statistically, particularly in education since professors in higher level teaching tend to be older, in this case from a generation that had way more men than women, and until that generation retires we might not see the gender split decrease too much. I did have a very cool prof. that was a 67 year old lady once though. She was awesome.
Also, does anyone else notice the comment field bouncing around like a fricking rubber ball as they type. That's driving me nuts as I'm typing this out. - kelmaster1, on 06/01/2008, -0/+8hey its nothing to be ashamed about, prostitution is the worlds oldest profession.
- rolexxx11, on 06/01/2008, -1/+9Is it just me or does it seem like this article is trying to drum up support for an issue that it doesn't really even present any credible evidence for? The article never really says ANYTHING in its entirety. I came away from the article with nothing but a vague sense of irritation that men would keep women down, but when I actually looked closely at the article, the author has no evidence and doesn't even really have a thesis or conclusion at all.
- sarge96, on 06/01/2008, -2/+9No *****. How long are women going to bitch about "Oh wah, Hillary Clinton didn't get the nomination and there's not many women in science and mangers are mostly men." It's semi-retarded. I can see why the neo-cons get so down on feminists. If girls wanted to go into science, they could. It's not because the scientific community is "forcing" them out of it. How man girls use digg? How many write code? Women are almost non-existent in the technology sector, does that mean they're being "forced" out? Or does it mean that women just don't want to do those jobs?
- jaymcdaniel, on 06/01/2008, -5/+12Because more men want to be scientists.
next question. - Laminarcissus, on 06/01/2008, -2/+9What's wrong with it is that "men liking science more than women" may not be the cause.
It's funny to me that the majority of posters here -- men, who are supposedly the scientific creatures, are taking a less-than-scientific approach to this.
An 80-20 disparity against women in a particular area when the feeder population is more like 51-50 in favor of women is more than "aren't precisely equal." Believe me, if you got $5 every time a coin toss came up heads, and it consistently came up tails 8 out of 10 times, you would think that was more than "not precisely equal."
You tried to slip in a conclusion on the core premise here when you said, "as long as all fields are open to anyone, which they are..." That's not been proved.
Your hypothesis is that "dudes dig sciences more than chicks," and I'd suggest that's only one out of many explanations, and from the (granted, anecdotal) evidence she presented in the article, a pretty unsubstantiated one .
Another is that there may still be active discrimination in hiring, or more subtle discrimination in who picks whom for the study groups that help create success in school, or even further back -- that there are many places in this country that don't encourage girls in the sciences wither directly or socially. Or that later, some of the old stereotypes that existed (okay, still exist) in business persist - that men are breadwinners and their positions carry more weight than womens'.
See, all interesting hypotheses, and worth looking at. In that light is it really so easy for you to look at such a gross disparity in numbers, unscientifically pick your own pet theory, and run with it?
The only hopeful thing about this is that there's plenty of science to be done to get to the bottom of it; I just hope we're not waiting for the 80% of men to get around to it. - Catsmacking, on 06/01/2008, -0/+7Women are more likely to drop out of a degree after receiving B's while men tend to stick it out after receiving C's. Since degrees in math, computer science, etc. try to weed out students it tends to take out more women because they see themselves as failing when they really aren't. So many women tend to drop out sooner, not because they aren't able to complete it or are doing worse or don't care about a degree but because they feel like they are not doing as good as they should (which often isn't the case).
- mcic1984, on 06/01/2008, -0/+7I quite liked Anna Kushnir's solution of "let women make their own decisions whether to stay or to go". It is so darned obvious, and is exactly the same as men would do.
I am a bit more troubled by suggestions that "day care" is a benefit good for women – it is good for any parent, mother or father.
However, it needs to go further than that. If it is "not acceptable if women are forced to choose between a family and a career in science", the solution is actually to improve parental rights for MEN. That means, mandating parental leave that is equivalent to maternity leave.
From an economics perspective, that removes the artificial competitive advantage for men, and creates an equal playing field. - Stormwern, on 06/01/2008, -2/+8You'd expect an aspiring scientist to look up more than one statistic, but I guess with men enslaving you it's the best you can accomplish.
- eir574, on 06/01/2008, -0/+6"Why should a university pay for their employee's daycare?"
Why would any employer subsidize day care or provide any other benefit above and beyond what's standard for that industry? To keep talented people around. Losing a talented person who's capable of attracting research money and the best and brightest graduate students costs a university money (not to mention the costs associated with conducting a search for a replacement, start up money for the replacement's lab, etc). They will be willing to consider something like subsidizing day care if it costs them less than losing valuable faculty. Sometimes, however, employers need a bit of a push to recognize that a benefit costs them less than it earns them. - dstz, on 06/01/2008, -0/+5I see that we have a strong Turkish representation here :D
- DeathGod321, on 06/01/2008, -1/+6Markbri: Don't yell at him, he has down syndrome.
- Pinkertinkle, on 06/01/2008, -5/+10Maybe women don't want the deformed babies they're certainly going to have after running radioactive northern blots all year long?
- arobicha, on 06/01/2008, -0/+5That's because you're in electronics.
- catachip, on 06/01/2008, -1/+6I went to a very large research university (University of British Columbia, ~50,000 students). In undergraduate life science programs (i.e., physiology, biology, biochemistry, etc.) women vastly outnumber men. I studied Pharmacology in undergrad and out of our graduating class of 30 there were only 5 guys. I think there are at least two things working here: 1) the careers of many university graduate women (certainly not all, perhaps even not a majority) are stunted in their mid 20s by the desire to start a family. This is the prime time for starting graduate programs and post-doctoral fellowships that are the foundation of a career in academic science. The second is that the trend of women overtaking men in many fields of science takes a while to filter down (up?) into the upper echelons of academia. Give it time, it'll come sooner or later. The one thing I worry about is a reverse situation, where young males are ignored and subsequently put at a disadvantage.
- dstz, on 06/01/2008, -1/+6Conjectures and anecdotes are fun, but here is a good article with.. dun dun dun.... actual statistics: http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=h ...
"In this week's Science, they show that the gap in mathematics scores between boys and girls virtually disappears in countries with high levels of sexual equality, though the reading gap remains [note from me: in favor of girls, and increasing, as the article notes later]."
"even though the girls had the ability, fewer than expected ended up reading maths and sciences at university. Instead, they went on to be become successful in areas such as law"
"On average, girls' maths scores were, as expected, lower than those of boys. However, the gap was largest in countries with the least equality between the sexes (by any score), such as Turkey. It vanished in countries such as Norway and Sweden, where the sexes are more or less on a par with one another." - Darunium, on 06/01/2008, -1/+6At least at the universities in my area, women have a huge advantage over men in getting tenure-track positions and securing tenure, I don't think this is an issue of women not being accepted in the higher echelons of the scientific community. As long as we're dealing with sanecdotes, my department, chemical engineering, scours the field for women who might consider professorship positions, a stark contrast to the incredible competition facing male post-docs vying for tenure-track positions. Despite this, there were last year only 3 female professors versus 5 male professors and 3 male untenured professors. I do not think this has anything to do with the way women in science are treated, I think it has much more to do with why now there is only 1 female professor in the department, the two other female professors left to go into industry, where jobs pay better and, I believe crucially, are more focused on actual results. I think women have a stronger tendency then men to seek jobs where they can 'make a difference'. I see this not only at a professoral level, but also at undergraduate and graduate level where female students tend to have a career goal in mind whereas male students tend to seek general boons without a specific target. All of this anecdotal evidence, however, is pointless, real data is required including sociological evaluations of men and women who choose to and choose not to enter academia after receiving doctoral degrees to determine why women choose their paths.
- fuze44, on 06/01/2008, -0/+5Because math is hard! -Barbie
- scotticus, on 06/01/2008, -3/+8You diggers are a sexist bunch. Instead of reading the article and discussing it's merits, your responses are knee-jerk and anti-female. It's no wonder none of you get laid. I think this section of the article best describes her point:
"The next set of numbers is slightly puzzling, however. That is the ratio of female to male professors in our department, at a well-respected academic institution, is 48 to 7 men to women.
Interesting reversal, isn’t it? We go from 7 to 1 in grad school to roughly 1 to 7 in professorships.
Clearly, something does not compute. Where did all the women go? What is happening to all the women en route from graduate school to professorship? Where is the leak? Then again, is it a leak, or more like a pressurized stream? What is applying this pressure to force women out of a career in science? Is it societal pressure to be a mom and take care of the family? Have generations of both men and women perpetuated the belief that in a fist fight between family and work, one or the other has to crawl away a loser? Do some women lack self confidence and convince themselves that they don’t have what it takes to succeed in academic science?
It is perfectly acceptable, even commendable if women make the choice, which is rightfully theirs, to stay at home, to choose careers outside of science, or to choose, well, anything at all.
It would be all right if the scientific community is still paying catch up with the rest of society in accepting women into their midst and the ratio will equalize in the next decade (not sure there is evidence either for or against this, but I feel compelled to present it nonetheless). " - DaBomb2704, on 06/01/2008, -0/+4It is difficult to look at the current ratios of male to female professors. In science, it is not uncommon for professors have been in the field for over 20 as good research professors are often tenured. Thus, the turnover rate for professors is extremely low, and the rate of hiring postdocs for a well-established university is even lower. Good research university often steal the well-known professors from other lesser known universities. The surge of women in the field of science has only occurred very recently like within the last ten years or so; therefore, it is still way too early to demand a 50:50 ratio in professorship. Maybe look at the hiring ratios of new postdocs instead of pointing at the ratios of current professors.
- musicpyrite, on 06/01/2008, -4/+8wow you are so edgy and cool that comment totally blew my mind
- Catsmacking, on 06/01/2008, -0/+4It is not just the fact that it is more socially acceptable to be a housewife though. I was discussing a research project that one of my university professors just completed on gender stereotypes and degrees. Even though women are starting to get involved equally in many majors (on the undergraduate level math has nearly achieved gender parity-though clearly equality has not yet been reached), computer science is still dramatically underrepresented.
I think my professor's project is onto something. Frankly, a larger gap is found during a time when the stereotypes surrounding it favored men. My professor thus looked at how gender stereotypes affected a person's decision on a major. When a person took a survey on preferences in a room which had the male favored vs. neutral stereotype cues in the room, the women's preferences decreased dramatically when surrounded by stereotypes favoring males. However, an equal amounts of women chose to explore computer science along with men in a neutral room. It seems that our culture associates computer science with men and prefer it.
http://tinyurl.com/3edygl
Granted there are not enough studies to say for sure that is the case. It hasn't been explored enough yet. But my own person, shallow experience seems to indicate that men involved in computer science or just enjoy it (like with digg) have a particular niche which is hard to break through. There seems to be the "other" factor when people discuss women on here which I find odd. As if we are a part of a weird species. I also know that if there is any rape story I am to avoid the comment section at all costs before I fall into a deep rage and want bash some of you over the head with a two-by-four.
Holy crappola, I wrote a lot. Suck it, I refuse to edit now. - Conwaysb0718, on 06/01/2008, -0/+4"its genetics" is a fact/data/logic based bandwagon.
- Conwaysb0718, on 06/01/2008, -0/+4thats what she said.
- scotticus, on 06/01/2008, -3/+7I think this is a question worth asking... science isn't like construction where there's a clear physical reason why the field is predominately male. I don't think the reasons are entirely sexist, but early in my academic training, I knew of several up and coming female stars who were denied tenure for no apparent reason.
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