If you enjoyed this post you should read a few others that have been posted by Scott recently (on the linked website).
If any chance were to be made, the least that I would hope for is that people stop responding to every argument with nothing but hatred. Just pure, unfiltered, hatred. It's very difficult nowadays to find communities, or even individuals, who are good at this.
I agree that Scott is worth reading. I don't always agree with his points, but he's always careful and seems clear to highlight data that disagree with his points. I've never understood how he has the time (as an M.D. with a day job!) to write as much as he does, including his fiction works.
> If you enjoyed this post you should read a few others that have been posted by Scott recently (on the linked website).
In fact, you should read all posts in that blog (only joking a little here). I am saying this as a person who disagrees with Scott on many political views. If everybody approached to controversial topics the same way as he does, Internet would be the best place ever for political discussions.
Interesting you say that, as this seems to be one of his weaker entries, precisely because he's taking a mocking tone without sufficiently backing up his case.
Given as the alternative is "punch the Nazis!" from one side and "lol libtards are nutz, praise kek" from the other, I'd rather take a gentle mocking now at then. Even if I disagree from time to time. Scott is not ideal, maybe, but definitely in the top 10%. Maybe even 1%, but I don't read enough to claim that.
Also, I don't see much mocking going on there, could you give a couple examples, maybe my understanding of mocking is different?
> without sufficiently backing up his case.
There's plenty of links in the article. Which claim do you think is not backed?
See my other comment about women having "conquered" the field of law because they have a representation in higher education 1 percentage point lower than their proportion in society, falling to 36% working in the field and 30% at state judge level.
It's such a superficial appraisal of the reality, it's insulting that he then mocks people who think there may be systemic issues.
> It's such a superficial appraisal of the reality
The reality is exactly as described, namely:
As the feminist movement gradually took hold, women conquered one of these fields after another. 51% of law students are now female. So are 49.8% of medical students, 45% of math majors, 60% of linguistics majors, 60% of journalism majors, 75% of psychology majors, and 60% of biology postdocs. Yet for some reason, engineering remains only about 20% female.
These figures are accurate, as far as I can see. The only objection could be to the word "conquered", which sounds to me like an attempt to mine outrage out of nothing. The discussion is about why there's 51% of female law students (despite huge gap existing not so long before) but only 20% of CS students (despite having 40% 20 years ago). Clearly, there is something going on, and that's the interesting part, not discussing whether 51% of female students is "conquering".
> it's insulting that he then mocks people who think there may be systemic issues
I still had no examples of "mocking", but given the reality as described, there should be explanation why "systemic issues" exist in CS and engineering, but not in law, medicine, math, biology, etc. If the concept does not explain that, it is not fitting the facts, and as such can be dismissed.
So 30% of judges being women is what, the natural state of things? This is the highest heights that women can reach? Or are you just ignoring the state of gender in the law, even as you present it as a success story, just as the original blog did?
Is there some collective blind spot here?
Let me spell it out. The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors. Pretending those don't exist, so that you can mock people who think systemic issues apply elsewhere, as if the very thought of it amuses you, is bizarre.
Thinking that the natural state of affairs is 50% of both genders [1] in everything is exactly the assumption that Scott shows to be unsupported by data. And just to be sure: unsupported does not mean 'false'. The 'opposite' assumption is not supported either.
If there was no sexism, no racism, no *ism, no history and no cultural predisposition towards anything whatsoever, it could still be that only 30% of all leaders would be women, simply because women would be found to be less biologically predisposed to wanting to be the leader and leadership would go to the best suited person that wants to do the job.
Some women argue that in that situation 70% of all leaders would be women, because everyone would recognize them as better leaders and would ask them to lead. I recognize and acknowledge that as a fully valid option. That could also be. The point is that we simply do not know.
[1] 'all identities in ratio of their self-identification'
Let me spell it out. The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors.
Since there are other possible explanations, like men and women having different interests and drives and following different paths in pursuing those interests, there's no tight logical proof dictating that "systemic factors" ipso facto is definitely the cause of the outcome we are evaluating because there are no other possible causes.
There are other possible causes, so given this reality of multiple possible causes, what evidence would suffice to convince you that "systemic factors," aren't the primary cause?
If we want to stick with the premise that "systemic factors" are a problem, what are they specifically? How are the remedied specifically?
If it turns out after following these prescriptions there is still a divergence in the sex ratio, then what? Should we basically just force some number of women to work as judges so that the sex ratio in the field is equal?
There are far more occupations than judge that have a divergent sex ratio, should we work tirelessly to equalize sex ratios for all occupations where this is the case?
If your understanding of "systemic factors" basically means the system of sexual evolutionary history extending over millions of years, then we can agree.
> So 30% of judges being women is what, the natural state of things?
What you mean by "natural state of things"? In nature, there are no judges at all :) I'm not sure what you understand by "natural" here.
> This is the highest heights that women can reach?
I don't see any reason why any specific figure would be "highest heights that women can reach" (excepting obvious cases of 100% :). Statistics doesn't work that way. Statistics shows what happened now. Why it happened is a different question - i.e. why female law students become female judges less than male law students. I personally have no idea and no opinion on this, I didn't research that question. But I think there's a very high probability there is nothing sacred in "30%" number.
> Or are you just ignoring the state of gender in the law, even as you present it as a success story, just as the original blog did?
I am not ignoring anything. The discussion was about the difference in student numbers. Which needs to be explained. The difference of post-education numbers needs to be explained too, certainly, but to be workable, the hypothesis has to explain both (actually, all) facts. That's the whole point - if we have a mismatch between law and CS students, we need to account for it or invalidate or hypothesis if it does not. It is pointless to switch the discussion to other point if we aren't done with this one. You can't reach parity in CS employment starting with 20% of CS students. Unless of course one wants to cause massive unemployment and discrimination against male graduates, which I believe nobody is considering.
> The reason that there is not a percentage of judges equal to the prevelance of women in the population, is due to systemic factors.
What is "systemic factors"? It sounds like placeholder that could mean anything. How can I check why "systemic factors" influence judges but not pediatricians? Why they influence CS students but not psychology students? Engineers but not mathematicians or veterinarians?
> Pretending those don't exist
I can't pretend those don't exist because I have no idea what "systemic factors" are. A definition would be nice. Maybe I agree with you 100% that they exist - I just don't know you call them "systemic factors".
> so that you can mock people who think systemic issues apply elsewhere,
Since I asked to give examples of "mocking" twice and none followed, I conclude that this claim is false, and respectfully ask to stop mentioning any "mocking" until example would be produced. I didn't "mock" anybody, neither did Scott, as becomes clear from absence of examples despite repeated asking for them.
And how many women had "conquered" the field of law 50 years ago?! Because had they a representation in higher education 1 percentage point lower than their proportion in society 50 years ago?! Were even 6% working in the field fifty years ago? And what if only 30% left for family reasons?! What percentage of women would you expect to see at state judge level based on how many women studied law, how many used that to get into the bar, how many of those stuck it out long enough (and with enough full time equivalent experience to make it as a judge?! Would that be more, or less, than 30%?!
In the UK feminists are whinging that "only" around an eighth of senior lawyers are women and "only" around a quarter of judges are female.
That in itself should be lighting up a bulb in a logical brain, but the fact is that when judges were going to university only about 1% of law students were female here, and most of those dropped out to raise families, and yet an eighth of "senior" barristers (QCs) are women and a whole quarter of judges are?!
Are they making women judges straight out of law school?!?!?!
Slate Star Codex has one of the best comment sections on the internet. I think Scott has done a really good job at encouraging and setting good norms for civil discussion of controversial topics.
Am I missing part of the argument here? At the beginning of section IV, Scott argues that stereotypes can’t explain the gender gap in engineering because of the differential rate at which people major in math vs. engineering (45% women in math, 20% women in engineering). He says:
> Might girls be worried not by stereotypes about computers themselves, but by stereotypes that girls are bad at math and so can’t succeed in the math-heavy world of computer science? No. About 45% of college math majors are women, compared to (again) only 20% of computer science majors. Undergraduate mathematics itself more-or-less shows gender parity. This can’t be an explanation for the computer results.
Later, he introduces the thing-people interest spectrum and makes a case that it’s inherent. He then breaks down the gender gap in various medical fields in way that’s suggestive that the differences are due to the thing-people idea.
But, how does that apply math vs engineering or math vs. programming? Or for that matter, programming vs. chemical engineering or electrical engineering vs. chemical engineering? During undergrad, my recollection was that there were proportionally fewer women in electrical engineering than in chemical engineering in the classes I saw, and some quick googling seems to bear this out. If math vs. engineering is a mystery that can't be explained by streotypes, it also appears to be a mystery that can't be explained by thing-people. Although I think it's a long stretch, maybe you can argue that computers are more "thing-like" than math, but I don't think you can really push that argument through to explain the relative ratios in CS, math, EE, CivE, AE, MSE, and ChemE? BTW, the reason I think it's a stretch is because you could also argue that computers are more "people-like" than math, so you could flip the arugment around if the ratios were reversed. For EE vs. ChemE, maybe EE rates are depressed because there's a lot of cross-over between EE and BME classwork and BME is arguably more people-like, so the would-be EEs go into BME, but if there's crossover, maybe that makes EE more BME-like and therefore more people-like. I don't think you can give an explanation that's much stronger than a just-so story for some other set of observed ratios.
Sure, you can pick a subset of fields where thing-people appears to explain the variance[1], but you can also pick a set of fields where it doesn’t appear to explain the variance. Scott seems to view a set of counter-examples as a knockdown argument against stereotypes. But then why doesn’t this other set of examples invalidate the thing-people explanation he argues for? Why can’t you apply the exact same line of reasoning he applied to stereotypes to thing-people?
This line of reasoning seems internally inconsistent to me. Am I missing something that would make this line of reasoning consistent?
One line of reasoning is that Scott is merely rebutting someone else's argument and that he therefore doesn't need to explain what's going on and he only needs to explain why the other explanation is wrong. But in that case, there isn't a need to bring up thing-people. It seems like it's been brought up because Scott believes thing-people has more explanatory power than sterotypes and Scott is making a positive argument about thing-people, not just knocking down someone else's argument.
[1] Even within the fields he picks, one example he gives is the rate at which women go pediatrics at a higher rate than any other specialization he lists other than ob/gyn. But why is the rate in pediatrics so different than in psychiatry? He argues that they're both "people" fields, which sounds reasonable. But there's one field is 25% male and the other is 43% male. That's almost the same as the math/engineering difference he cites earlier with the genders flipped. Is dealing with babies somehow more people-like or less thing-like than talking to adults? It's certainly a strong stereotype that women are more interested in babies than men, but this is cited as an example of the explanatory power of thing-people, not of the explanatory power of stereotypes.
> explain the relative ratios in CS, math, EE, CivE, AE, MSE, and ChemE?
What are the relevant ratios you mean here? I found this data[0] on engineering degrees by gender. Here is the percentage of female graduates for each of the ones you mentioned:
14% - Computer Science
13% - Electrical Engineering
22% - Civil Engineering
14% - Aeronautical Engineering
13% - Mechanical Engineering
32% - Chemical Engineering
Other than Chemical, they're all in the same ballpark. My wife studied Chemical Engineering; I'll have to ask her if she had any thoughts about why it's a higher percentage female.
Interestingly, that same chart has two engineering disciplines that tower over the other two: Biomedical, and Environmental, which exactly squares with the hypothesis put forth by this blog post author.
So you're issue is that math is more "things" oriented too, so why would women make up 45% of undergraduate mathematics if the things/people brain differences were real? I think it's an interesting point.
It's purely anecdotal, but the two women math majors I personally know are high school math teachers, which would be more "people". Are math teachers enough to account for a 20% (engineering) to 45% (math) difference? Probably not, but I think it is more open ended in terms of what math majors end up doing vs engineering or computer science.
I find Scott's arguments persuasive though, and could easily be fitting my memory/interpretation/facts etc to work within other beliefs. Post hoc rationalizations like this are always tricky.
I'm not sure about math[1] but chemical engineering can (though not always) have a lot of overlap with bio-eng and med-eng, which parallels his argument somewhat. I'd be curious to see the degree to which a more detailed breakdown of gender differences both in engineering disciplines and scientific disciplines matches his thesis for sure. If his argument holds maybe physics would be more male, biology more female, and chemistry somewhere in the middle-ish?
[1]: Anecdotally, foreign students have made up a larger percentage of the female mathematics (and physics) graduate students I've known than of the male math (and physics) graduate students I've known, though I have no idea if my experience normal, sample size is very small and biased, etc.
If math vs. engineering is a mystery that can't be
explained by streotypes,
Scott gives an explanation in the article. Interestingly, it's exactly the suggestion commenter peacetreefrog puts forward: relatively many math graduates become teachers. And teaching is a 'person' thing.
As for engineering: the variation within engineering disciplines is much smaller than the variation between engineering and other disciplines and since we already have a hard time explaining the large difference, let's not worry about the small differences. Perhaps chemical engineering is perceived to be about 'people' more often.
Nice! Just went back and checked, I subscribe to SSC and read the original version via email, that didn't really get into the math major thing. Scott must have added the note on math afterwards (maybe he reads HN?) - anyway, cool to see it born out by data.
"In the year 1850, women were locked out of almost every major field, with a few exceptions like nursing and teaching. The average man of the day would have been equally confident that women were unfit for law, unfit for medicine, unfit for mathematics, unfit for linguistics, unfit for engineering, unfit for journalism, unfit for psychology, and unfit for biology. He would have had various sexist justifications – women shouldn’t be in law because it’s too competitive and high-pressure; women shouldn’t be in medicine because they’re fragile and will faint at the sight of blood; et cetera.
"As the feminist movement gradually took hold, women conquered one of these fields after another. 51% of law students are now female. So are 49.8% of medical students, 45% of math majors, 60% of linguistics majors, 60% of journalism majors, 75% of psychology majors, and 60% of biology postdocs. Yet for some reason, engineering remains only about 20% female.
"And everyone says “Aha! I bet it’s because of negative stereotypes!”
"This makes no sense. There were negative stereotypes about everything! Somebody has to explain why the equal and greater negative stereotypes against women in law, medicine, etc were completely powerless, yet for some reason the negative stereotypes in engineering were the ones that took hold and prevented women from succeeding there."
why the equal and greater negative stereotypes against women in law, medicine, etc were completely powerless
They weren't powerless; it took several class-action lawsuits and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints in the 70's to increase the number of women lawyers.[1] I've also heard, for example from some comments by 'rayiner here on HN, that law schools made deliberate changes to their admission policies
yet for some reason the negative stereotypes in engineering were the ones that took hold and prevented women from succeeding there
Maybe because tech, both industry and academia, hasn't made the same efforts that the legal profession did?
The first women were admitted to Harvard Business School in 1963 [1], which is a couple of years after Yuri Gagarin first orbited the earth. The first women were admitted as undergraduates to Caltech in 1970 [2], which is a year after the first moon landing.
He's also talking about a field being "conquered" by quoting stats on graduating students. I would guess the split in law is less for Judges, in business for CEOs etc. so if this process is happening, then it's still in progress in all of those fields, and I'd guess you could look into each one in turn and find that some started earlier and progressed faster than others. Be interesting to see what the common points for the laggards are. I don't see any great case being made for computing to be an outlier that's different in kind rather than simply degree.
I googled some stats on judges, I was correct that it lags student numbers (I say "lags" on the optimistic assumption that those students will eventually go on to be judges in similar quantities. Possibly a judge will release a 10 page manifesto about how the marxist left is forcing women to be judges when they're rather be baking cakes though, so maybe we shouldn't count our chickens until they've hatched):
in particular this infographic which points out that women have been 50% of the students for 2 decades now, but still only 36% of the profession, and only 30% of state judges.
If this makes sense to you, you haven't actually talked to women in this field who trust you.
Scott has a bad habit of setting up bad strawmen and doing literature reviews without talking to domain experts.
(Frankly the weakness of the arguments he's choosing to debunk make me doubt that he even engaged in this topic with good faith. If you think the opposing view point is summarized by ' "And everyone says “Aha! I bet it’s because of negative stereotypes!” ', then you're not serious about this conversation.)
If any chance were to be made, the least that I would hope for is that people stop responding to every argument with nothing but hatred. Just pure, unfiltered, hatred. It's very difficult nowadays to find communities, or even individuals, who are good at this.