My colleague Garett Jones mentioned he’d just written on how to get more women in economics, just after I’d noticed a recent Science article, "Igniting Girls’ Interest in Science." Both of which raise the question: Do those who want more women in science, economics, politics, etc. understand that
While today I might have a different answer, my answer at the time would be "In front of the TV". 100s of lifetimes have been spilled on TV dramas like "The OC", disproportionately women's. That's a start, anyway.
Not only is the question "Where Do We Want Fewer Women?", but also "Where Do We Want More Men?". If we transfer a female from a position in X to one in computer science/engineering, then, to fill the vacancy, we need to tranfer a male from a position in computer sc/eng to one in X.
What a load of rubbish! Today's universities are spewing with anti-male feminazi horse radish! Political correctness is the child of feminazism, trying to remove all the innate differences in the sexes and differences in the races. Sure there's exceptions, but who's been the real *innovators* in all walks of life? men, men, and more men! Women aren't that independently minded or critically thoughtful, they're credulous and orthodox, they don't argue with professors, they *please* them! Women prefer *social harmony* and emotional satisfaction, not the pursuit of truth or wisdom! Not to mention the anti-male affirmitive action in employment, "affirmitive action" = anti-male, anti-white male. Remember University of Delaware? Forcing everyone to accept "all white males are racist"? Or whatever it was. How about the Duke Scandal? "all males are rapists"? Political correctness has ruined everything true about the world, it has sacrificed wisdom for social harmony and comforting egos. The real statistics show something entirely different, boys are more likely to drop out, fail, pushed back years, commit suicide, ESPECIALLY commit suicide! etc... I've even heard of virulent anti-male bashing in schools! http://www.rense.com/genera...
The modern education and law system is intentionally designed to turn males and boys into *demoralized criminals*
"I don't think many women want disproportionate attention due to their gender."Posted by: Nick Tarleton
You obviously don't know much about women do you lol?
My question is, practically speaking what can be done about the gender disparity in science fields? I'm gonna go ahead and venture a guess here and say that whatever "outreach" programs and efforts that are in place are failing miserably. I'm a college student majoring in computer science and I can confirm the 1/30 ratio mentioned above. My school has at least one female engineer club/group/whatever and I know they make attempts to get high school girls and undeclared freshmen girls into engineering. Clearly it's not working.
I've spoken with my girlfriend's mother about this, she was a math/computer science major back in the early 70s and she said the ratio of men to women in her classes was no worse than what it is in mine (2-3 girls in a class of 30-60). Granted that's purely anecdotal, but I kind of found this surprising. My whole life in school I've been told girls can do whatever boys can do. I don't think girls my age didn't get this memo as well. I fully expect discouragement among women older than me, especially from my parents generation or older, because they were born in a time were the concept of women being able to do the things men do was genuinely a new concept to pretty much everyone. That nothing seems to have changed (in engineering and science, much has changed elsewhere) makes me wonder what's happening. Girls today probably do face sexism and discouragement when it comes to science and math, but given the sheer amount of political correctness my generation has grown up with I find it hard to believe its effects are nearly as great as it used to be.
Good point. I had forgotten that Franklin died early.I just googled her, and she was treated very badly in variousways. One sign of this is that at a certain point she was actually forced to not work on the DNA project. Ack! I willgrant that things are much improved since then, however, ifnot completely so.
Michael, women are also often praised for taking roles previously taken by men. A friend of mine was just in a mixed martial arts (MMA) tournament with two female fighters who were praised (sincerely? I have no idea) by the announcer for doing just that. Maybe I'm too young to have noticed, but I've never seen a woman ridiculed for it in the business world. I have heard remarks against policies of forced diversity, but nothing against women of equal qualifications. I think there are general feelings of resentment towards anyone who gets hired on the basis of diversity policies, which can lead to general skepticism of qualifications of women and minorities.
The biggest complaint I've heard concerning hiring women (and I'm surprised no one mentioned it) is pregnancy. Employers loathe to hire someone valuable who, on short notice, might become unavailable for an entire year and possibly collect maternity pay. If the woman is in a key position, this can naturally be a big problem for the business.
Although I suppose none of this may be relevant to the sciences. The institution of tenure makes me wonder if logic enters into academia's hiring practices at all ;)
Another argument that more should be done to support and encourage women going into science and engineering is that there certainly has been a history of serious discrimination against them, even when they get in. Some here might argue that everything is better now, and we are so enlightened, blah blah, but I shall simply point out the scandalous case of the mistreatment of Rosalind Franklin in regard to the assignment of credit for the discovery of the double helix model of DNA. She was basically robbed of credit, with the Nobel being given to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins.
Re: Grant's comment,"it is still considered weird for men to focus on raising a family."
As a man who was a stay-at-home father, I would say yes, it is considered unusual for a man to be the primary caregiver, but not at all "weird" (which implies a very negative assessment). I was frequently stopped on the street to be complimented, told how wonderful I was to be taking care of my children. Can you even imagine a mother receiving such praise for simply doing her job? There really is no sense in which a man's being praised for loving his kids can represent an equivalent social stigma with a woman being ridiculed for displaying interest/aptitude for "unfeminine" pursuits.
I really don't think that the main point is social utility, or what proportion of women would enter the sciences, or whether it would benefit women at large -- the point is to try and remove barriers to science-minded female individuals entering scientific fields.
All these other speculations -- about genetics, the economic effects of discrimination, etc -- seem irrelevant to me. There are still stereotypes and social norms that are acting to prevent some women from entering science, and we should be proactive about continuing to combat these forces.
It was only 2 generations ago that women were only considered fit in auxiliary roles, as secretaries and nurses, and too weak-minded for real responsibility. I think it's undeniable that some of this attitude still remains after such a short time. This means that individual women are not as free to consider all options for achieving self-actualization, are more limited in picking the career/discipline that would most fulfill them.
You can say that women are generally not as well-suited for the sciences as men, or that women in general are inherently less interested in it. I would disagree with you and find it insulting, but you can say it. That doesn't change the fact that it's still important to make science as open to women as possible, just so that those women who ARE scientifically inclined are not discouraged from entering a field where she could be happy and make important contributions.
I think a program aimed at encouraging young girls to embrace their scientific sides is a wonderful idea.
Paul, I don't think thats necessarily true. If our culture results in women not even wanting high-paying and more prestigious jobs, is that a bad thing? How much of that is genetics, and not culture? Can we tell the difference?
People already hang out with dissimilar people, since thats virtually required in order to realize gains from trade. I'd like someone to show me why it would be beneficial for more of this to occur, and what the optimal amount of cultural diversity is.
I also don't think its totally clear that our culture results in worse outcomes for women than men. It certainly resulted in worse outcomes for career-oriented women (which was, and seemingly still is in some fields, an injustice), but certainly did not for women who wanted to be homemakers. Sure it gave men the edge in the workplace, but not in the home, where it is still considered weird for men to focus on raising a family.
I'm very skeptical that it is possible to arrive at any sort of conclusion on this issue. For one, its nigh-impossible to valuate the effects of good parenting, or to judge parenting at all, which you need to do if your talking about subsidizing women that move out of the home and into the workplace. If someone found a good way to measure it, I'd bet a good amount of money that women are genetically better parents than men.
No, it's not irrelevant. It's precisely what IS relevant. Because if women and men are socialized to have different interests, and that socialization results in worse outcomes for women than for men (i.e. women in lower-paid and less prestigious jobs) then an injustice has been done. And we ought to remedy it.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it's most productive (and really most fair) to assume equal capabilities in both genders
We have lots of evidence to the contrary. We also have lots of evidence showing that men and women tend to have different interests - whether this difference is innate or the result of socialization is irrelevant.
Grant: We can believe that one problem (of many) with placing value on allowing people to discriminate is that our comfort level with people we have things in common with is also endogenous. Put without social-science jargon, if you hang out with dissimilar people long enough, they stop looking dissimilar. That's a debatable position, but a lot of very smart people believe it...
Barkley raises an interesting question about how difficult it might be for an old fart and even, perhaps, a young male to evaluate this question because we don't have even anecdotal direct knowledge of a woman's preferences. I agree with Robin that we should generally resist a knee-jerk impulse to force change. But should we defer to Wendy's position that this "market" isn't in equilibrium?
A related question: those who believe change is good on this issue, do you support single sex education?
While today I might have a different answer, my answer at the time would be "In front of the TV". 100s of lifetimes have been spilled on TV dramas like "The OC", disproportionately women's. That's a start, anyway.
Edit: Next: Models. Lingerie models
Not only is the question "Where Do We Want Fewer Women?", but also "Where Do We Want More Men?". If we transfer a female from a position in X to one in computer science/engineering, then, to fill the vacancy, we need to tranfer a male from a position in computer sc/eng to one in X.
Apollo,
Marie Curie. Ah, but she was the exception who proved the rule, right?
What a load of rubbish! Today's universities are spewing with anti-male feminazi horse radish! Political correctness is the child of feminazism, trying to remove all the innate differences in the sexes and differences in the races. Sure there's exceptions, but who's been the real *innovators* in all walks of life? men, men, and more men! Women aren't that independently minded or critically thoughtful, they're credulous and orthodox, they don't argue with professors, they *please* them! Women prefer *social harmony* and emotional satisfaction, not the pursuit of truth or wisdom! Not to mention the anti-male affirmitive action in employment, "affirmitive action" = anti-male, anti-white male. Remember University of Delaware? Forcing everyone to accept "all white males are racist"? Or whatever it was. How about the Duke Scandal? "all males are rapists"? Political correctness has ruined everything true about the world, it has sacrificed wisdom for social harmony and comforting egos. The real statistics show something entirely different, boys are more likely to drop out, fail, pushed back years, commit suicide, ESPECIALLY commit suicide! etc... I've even heard of virulent anti-male bashing in schools! http://www.rense.com/genera...
The modern education and law system is intentionally designed to turn males and boys into *demoralized criminals*
"I don't think many women want disproportionate attention due to their gender."Posted by: Nick Tarleton
You obviously don't know much about women do you lol?
My question is, practically speaking what can be done about the gender disparity in science fields? I'm gonna go ahead and venture a guess here and say that whatever "outreach" programs and efforts that are in place are failing miserably. I'm a college student majoring in computer science and I can confirm the 1/30 ratio mentioned above. My school has at least one female engineer club/group/whatever and I know they make attempts to get high school girls and undeclared freshmen girls into engineering. Clearly it's not working.
I've spoken with my girlfriend's mother about this, she was a math/computer science major back in the early 70s and she said the ratio of men to women in her classes was no worse than what it is in mine (2-3 girls in a class of 30-60). Granted that's purely anecdotal, but I kind of found this surprising. My whole life in school I've been told girls can do whatever boys can do. I don't think girls my age didn't get this memo as well. I fully expect discouragement among women older than me, especially from my parents generation or older, because they were born in a time were the concept of women being able to do the things men do was genuinely a new concept to pretty much everyone. That nothing seems to have changed (in engineering and science, much has changed elsewhere) makes me wonder what's happening. Girls today probably do face sexism and discouragement when it comes to science and math, but given the sheer amount of political correctness my generation has grown up with I find it hard to believe its effects are nearly as great as it used to be.
Nick T.,
Good point. I had forgotten that Franklin died early.I just googled her, and she was treated very badly in variousways. One sign of this is that at a certain point she was actually forced to not work on the DNA project. Ack! I willgrant that things are much improved since then, however, ifnot completely so.
Michael, women are also often praised for taking roles previously taken by men. A friend of mine was just in a mixed martial arts (MMA) tournament with two female fighters who were praised (sincerely? I have no idea) by the announcer for doing just that. Maybe I'm too young to have noticed, but I've never seen a woman ridiculed for it in the business world. I have heard remarks against policies of forced diversity, but nothing against women of equal qualifications. I think there are general feelings of resentment towards anyone who gets hired on the basis of diversity policies, which can lead to general skepticism of qualifications of women and minorities.
The biggest complaint I've heard concerning hiring women (and I'm surprised no one mentioned it) is pregnancy. Employers loathe to hire someone valuable who, on short notice, might become unavailable for an entire year and possibly collect maternity pay. If the woman is in a key position, this can naturally be a big problem for the business.
Although I suppose none of this may be relevant to the sciences. The institution of tenure makes me wonder if logic enters into academia's hiring practices at all ;)
She was basically robbed of credit, with the Nobel being given to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins.
There's also the fact that she was four years dead when their Nobel was awarded, not that it affects your general point.
Another argument that more should be done to support and encourage women going into science and engineering is that there certainly has been a history of serious discrimination against them, even when they get in. Some here might argue that everything is better now, and we are so enlightened, blah blah, but I shall simply point out the scandalous case of the mistreatment of Rosalind Franklin in regard to the assignment of credit for the discovery of the double helix model of DNA. She was basically robbed of credit, with the Nobel being given to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins.
Re: Grant's comment,"it is still considered weird for men to focus on raising a family."
As a man who was a stay-at-home father, I would say yes, it is considered unusual for a man to be the primary caregiver, but not at all "weird" (which implies a very negative assessment). I was frequently stopped on the street to be complimented, told how wonderful I was to be taking care of my children. Can you even imagine a mother receiving such praise for simply doing her job? There really is no sense in which a man's being praised for loving his kids can represent an equivalent social stigma with a woman being ridiculed for displaying interest/aptitude for "unfeminine" pursuits.
Just the tuppence of another "old fart."
I really don't think that the main point is social utility, or what proportion of women would enter the sciences, or whether it would benefit women at large -- the point is to try and remove barriers to science-minded female individuals entering scientific fields.
All these other speculations -- about genetics, the economic effects of discrimination, etc -- seem irrelevant to me. There are still stereotypes and social norms that are acting to prevent some women from entering science, and we should be proactive about continuing to combat these forces.
It was only 2 generations ago that women were only considered fit in auxiliary roles, as secretaries and nurses, and too weak-minded for real responsibility. I think it's undeniable that some of this attitude still remains after such a short time. This means that individual women are not as free to consider all options for achieving self-actualization, are more limited in picking the career/discipline that would most fulfill them.
You can say that women are generally not as well-suited for the sciences as men, or that women in general are inherently less interested in it. I would disagree with you and find it insulting, but you can say it. That doesn't change the fact that it's still important to make science as open to women as possible, just so that those women who ARE scientifically inclined are not discouraged from entering a field where she could be happy and make important contributions.
I think a program aimed at encouraging young girls to embrace their scientific sides is a wonderful idea.
Paul, I don't think thats necessarily true. If our culture results in women not even wanting high-paying and more prestigious jobs, is that a bad thing? How much of that is genetics, and not culture? Can we tell the difference?
People already hang out with dissimilar people, since thats virtually required in order to realize gains from trade. I'd like someone to show me why it would be beneficial for more of this to occur, and what the optimal amount of cultural diversity is.
I also don't think its totally clear that our culture results in worse outcomes for women than men. It certainly resulted in worse outcomes for career-oriented women (which was, and seemingly still is in some fields, an injustice), but certainly did not for women who wanted to be homemakers. Sure it gave men the edge in the workplace, but not in the home, where it is still considered weird for men to focus on raising a family.
I'm very skeptical that it is possible to arrive at any sort of conclusion on this issue. For one, its nigh-impossible to valuate the effects of good parenting, or to judge parenting at all, which you need to do if your talking about subsidizing women that move out of the home and into the workplace. If someone found a good way to measure it, I'd bet a good amount of money that women are genetically better parents than men.
Caledonian:
No, it's not irrelevant. It's precisely what IS relevant. Because if women and men are socialized to have different interests, and that socialization results in worse outcomes for women than for men (i.e. women in lower-paid and less prestigious jobs) then an injustice has been done. And we ought to remedy it.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it's most productive (and really most fair) to assume equal capabilities in both genders
We have lots of evidence to the contrary. We also have lots of evidence showing that men and women tend to have different interests - whether this difference is innate or the result of socialization is irrelevant.
Grant: We can believe that one problem (of many) with placing value on allowing people to discriminate is that our comfort level with people we have things in common with is also endogenous. Put without social-science jargon, if you hang out with dissimilar people long enough, they stop looking dissimilar. That's a debatable position, but a lot of very smart people believe it...
Barkley raises an interesting question about how difficult it might be for an old fart and even, perhaps, a young male to evaluate this question because we don't have even anecdotal direct knowledge of a woman's preferences. I agree with Robin that we should generally resist a knee-jerk impulse to force change. But should we defer to Wendy's position that this "market" isn't in equilibrium?
A related question: those who believe change is good on this issue, do you support single sex education?