Why is the female crowd not attracted to STEM fields?

[iNow]

For that matter does anyone have anything to say on the StringJunky's post??.... maybe not because it goes against their religion.

Oh, please. Childish comments like this are neither helpful nor necessary. It appears to be a good study. I've got it open as a browser tab to read more fully and will do exactly that in a few moments. I've just had real-life to deal with so haven't been able to yet. Some of us post in our free time here, and some of us have less free time than others.

 

Also, different studies say different things and we have to keep that in context. Let's drop the attitude, stop accusing people of being religious, and have a reasonable discussion.

 

http://equitablegrowth.org/news/early-origins-gender-pay-gap/

One of the more remarkable and discouraging facts about the U.S. economy is that even while women have increasingly entered the workforce, they still make less than comparable men on a variety of metrics. Even though women now outnumber men in college, there is still a difference in earnings.

<snip>

Consider a paper published in 2000 by Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin and Princeton University economist Cecilia Rouse. They looked at how gender biases might affect auditions for seats in a symphony orchestra. Goldin and Rouse found that making the audition blind by having the musician play behind a screen resulted in the hiring of many more female musicians. The orchestra staff appeared to have an unconscious bias against female applicants.

 

The new paper, by economists Victor Lavy and Edith Sand of the University of Warwick and Tel Aviv University, respectively, looks at how this kind of bias from teachers might affect the future educational path of students. Specifically, they look at the implicit gender biases of primary school teachers.

<snip>

Lavy and Sand find that these gender biases do exist and they have long-term effects. Male students that had more biased teachers do better on standardized tests later in their schools years. And the opposite happens for female students: they will do less well. And the effects aren’t just limited to test scores. Boys with biased primary school teachers are more likely to take math classes in high school and girls are less likely. Considering that these courses serve as a base for further course in math and science, this could explain future gaps. The authors show a strong correlation between test scores and future earnings.

 

And the effect is larger for certain kinds of students. In particular, girls that come from a family with a large difference in education levels are more affected by the early gender bias. In other words, if a girl’s father is more educated than her mother, she’ll be more affected by the gender bias of an early teacher.

Helpful data and evidence showing the actual gender pay trend: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1350163/women_education_workforce.pdf

Harvard study on differences in orchestra selection when listeners do and don't know gender of player: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readings/goldin-rouse99.pdf

Tel-Aviv study around teacher bias: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20909

.

 

Okay, so key points the study StringJunky was kind enough to share:

 

1 - It's important to split all STEM fields apart and unpack them... stop treating them as a monolithic whole. Better to separate between those related to spatial reasoning like math and engineering and those related to life sciences like biology and sociology

2 - Many different factors are involved in the gender inequalities seen, but it seems that early childhood experiences are key, have long-lasting influence on attitudes and expectations, and can be corrected for and changed if given the proper environment

3 - Women pursuing advanced degrees in the more spatial fields tend to enjoy greater parity than those in the life sciences fields, even though their representation in these fields is drastically different at all levels below advanced degree study

4 - The barriers women face change over time and cannot be narrowly focused on to any individual issue. It's a complex issue and must be treated as such.

 

Now... Tell me again what specifically our "religion" is preventing us from addressing?

 

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/women-in-academic-science.html

Research investigating the early years of childhood seems to indicate that gender differences in children’s attitudes toward and expectations of math and science careers, rather than gender differences in math ability, are a main factor in an early loss of girls from the sciences. These differences in attitude, which become evident as early as age 5, highlight math as being considered a “boy” activity, leading girls to be less likely to identify themselves with math and science. These attitudes and preferences persist into middle school, with middle school boys being twice as likely as girls to expect to work in engineering or science. In high school, these outlooks are reflected in the types of advanced placement exams male and female high-school students take as well as in their expressed interest in majoring in science in college.

 

Interestingly, research has shown that these attitudes can be changed, and that women who enter college not expecting to major in math-based fields can be influenced to do so on the basis of their college experiences. Despite this, women are less likely to major in math-intensive sciences in college and are more likely to major in non-math-intensive sciences, a trend that continues through graduate education.

<snip>

The authors hope the findings discussed in this report — findings that highlight the complexity, nature, and timing of the factors limiting women’s representation in math-based sciences, as well as suggest possible interventions across the lifespan — will help advance the debate regarding the best way to encourage women to pursue careers in these types of disciplines.

Edited February 3, 2015 by iNow

[overtone]

Excluding married people who hold jobs does not exclude those other factors. It may in fact amplify them.

So you are saying that if you get married and have kids that you're more likely to dedicate more time to work and go for promotion and not take time out????

No, I am pointing out that your argument there is garbage. You have assumed that excluding married people will leave you with comparable subgroups of men and women not biased in their correlations between competence and gender. That is ridiculous, unrealistic in the extreme.

As was made clear, with example, in the rest of the post 114, where I easily draw exactly the opposite conclusion you draw from exactly the same data.

And this kind of muddle dominates the entire discussion here, for good reason - it's actually quite difficult to winnow out the influence of societal bias, and isolate whatever genuinely biological and biological only influences there might be on women's STEM interests and careers.

Edited February 4, 2015 by overtone

[waitforufo]

Perhaps if the subject of this topic should be asked a different way. Instead of “Why is the female crowd not attracted to STEM Fields”, the question should be “Why aren’t more women pursuing Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees in STEM fields?” To answer that alternate question one might first want to start with “Why does anyone attend a college or university?” One obvious reason would be to gain further knowledge in a field of personal interest. Another would be to gain knowledge in a field with future high earning potential. Still another might be to improve a personal understanding of the human condition and our place in the universe. There are many other reasons as well. Many of them have to do with who attends colleges and universities and what motivates those individuals.

 

I would imagine that the vast majority of those studying for Bachelor’s degrees are students between that ages of 19 and 25. So what motivates 19 to 25 year olds? Sure they have personal fields of interest, desire for future earning potential, and yearning to understand the human condition better, but are those there primary motivators? Perhaps their interests are more social. Perhaps they are also motivated by procreation. How would this impact the fields that they study?

 

Now imagine you are a 19 year old choosing a field of study. Would you choose a field of study dominated by the opposite sex? How many friendships are you going to form with your classmates? Will these friendships have sexual tension? Are you comfortable with that? Will studying in a field dominated by the opposite sex encourage or discourage same sex friendships with those studying in other fields? Is that a positive or a negative? Will it help you succeed or fail in your studies? How will this opposite sex dominance impact your social motivations? How important are those motivations to you, a 19 to 25 year old?

 

Now let’s consider an individual’s desire to procreate. Does future earning potential motivate women in the same way as men in our culture? Does future earning potential make women more attractive to potential mates? Does it make men? How important is answer to that question to a person that feels their sexual attractiveness needs a major upgrade? Finally, how sexually attracted is the 19 to 25 year old in question to the opposite sex members dominating the potential field of study? How would selecting a typical member of that group impact their social interactions with others?

 

Perhaps the solution to attracting more women to STEM fields is to make the men studying in STEM fields more sexually attractive to 19 to 25 year old women. Future earning potential may not be enough for women 19 to 25 years olds. Perhaps the men that study STEM fields should be assigned personal physical trainers and be required to also study the social graces.

[physica]

 

done

[overtone]

done

 

 

As I listened to that video, several fairly serious holes in the argument stuck out (job satisfaction ratings don't say jack about sexism, wage comparisons between differently selected groups don't mean what the video speaker says they mean, neither do promotion rates, the presence of a wife taking care of men's children is not evidence against sexism, sexism is not limited to hostility on the job, and so forth) but it's basically impossible to deal with a damn video argument.

 

The bottom line is the video did not "reveal the truth". It presented an argument, in the course of reporting on a study. Nothing's "done".

 

For example: somewhere in that video she makes the claim, apparently from the research being reported, that because women in male-dominated STEM professions such as engineering rate their job satisfaction the same - high - as the men in those professions, they must not be suffering from gender hostility or harassment in the workplace. That is invalid reasoning. The women are a self-selected minority, and not a comparable group.

 

One could as easily argue the opposite: that these few women who have overcome whatever is screening all the other women out must like the work much more than the average person, and so if even these unusually motivated and work-enjoying women have no higher job satisfaction than the average man - less motivated, lower entry bar of interest and enjoyment - then they must be having problems with the work environment. Sexism seems likely.

Edited September 30, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

First of all, women in STEM academia ≠ women in STEM fields. Secondly, all that needs to be true for some of these results is that academia is no more sexist (or not appreciably more sexist) than other professions. It doesn't indicate an absence of sexism. Her "but think about it" commentary is not factual at all. (Nor is relying on a single study). Sexism does exist in STEM, for the simple reason that sexism exists in society.

 

Finally, is it any better if it's society in general that biases women away from STEM, rather than the STEM institutions specifically? The result is the same.